This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
Comedy, we may say, is society protecting itself - with a smile.
Experience | God | Human nature | Life | Life | Nature | Sense | God |
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
A real taste for fairy-stories was wakened by philology on the threshold of manhood, and quickened to full life by war.
Belief | Uncertainty | Wrong |
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
Bilbo almost stopped breathing, and went stiff himself. He was desperate. He must get away, out of this horrible darkness, while he had any strength left. He must fight. He must stab the foul thing, put its eyes out, kill it. It meant to kill him. No, not a fair fight. He was invisible now. Gollum had no sword. Gollum had not actually threatened to kill him, or tried yet. And he was miserable, alone, lost. A sudden understanding, a pity mixed with horror, welled up in Bilbo?s heart: a glimpse of endless unmarked days without light or hope of betterment, hard stone, cold fish, sneaking and whispering.
Abuse | Chance | Effort | Exploit | Good | Little | Office | People | Price | Right | Child |
With art and knavery we live through half the year; with knavery and art we live through the other.
Generosity | Selfishness | Time | Unkindness |
J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
I can't help feeling wary when I hear anything said about the masses. First you take their faces from 'em by calling 'em the masses and then you accuse 'em of not having any faces.
Spirituality | Wrong |
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
And in the darkness bind them.
Conversation | Man | Ugly | Will |
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.
Men |
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
Deserves it I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.
Anti-semitism | Cause | Object | Race |
J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
Britain, which in the years immediately before this war was rapidly losing such democratic virtues as it possessed, is now being bombed and burned into democracy.
Compassion | Intolerance | Meaning | Means | People | Pity | Practice | Religion | Time | World |
J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
As we read the school reports on our children, we realize a sense of relief, that can rise to delight, that, thank Heaven, nobody is reporting in this fashion on us.
Ambiguity | Better | Compassion | Enemy | Failure | Injustice | Injustice | Justice | Little | Means | People | Religion | Sense | Tradition | Understanding | Work | Failure |
J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
But some of us are beginning to pull well away, in our irritation, from... the exquisite tasters, the vintage snobs, the three-star Michelin gourmets. There is, we feel, a decent area somewhere between boiled carrots and Beluga caviar, sour plonk and Chateau Lafitte, where we can take care of our gullets and bellies without worshipping them.
Absolute | Compassion | Equity | Heart | Honor | Suffering | Work | World |
J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
Life implies constant activity, and the vital principle was accordingly regarded as something essentially active, constantly controlling and therefore interfering with physical tendencies towards disintegration of organic structure, and building up new organic structure in the process of nutrition and reproduction.