This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
She was pale all over, white as a sheet. The skin was drawn tight over her nose. She had a vague look in the eyes. And because she discovered three grey hairs on her temples, she talked about being an old woman.
Will |
The deplorable mania of doubt exhausts me. I doubt about everything, even my doubts.
I go dreaming into the future, where I see nothing, nothing. I have no plans, no idea, no project, and, what is worse, no ambition. Something ? the eternal ?what?s the use?? ? sets its bronze barrier across every avenue that I open up in the realm of hypothesis.
The conversation flagged. Madame Bovary frequently relapsed into silence, while Leon himself seemed ill at ease. He was seated on a low chair near the fire, and kept turning over the ivory needle-case in his fingers. She plied her needle, pressing down the hem of the cloth from time to time with her nail. She did not speak, and he too held his peace, just as entranced by her silence as he would have been by her words.
People |
It's splendid to be a great writer, to put men into the frying pan of your imagination and make them pop like chestnuts.
That was how they would have liked to be: what they were doing was to dream up ideals and then refashion their past lives to match them. Speech is a rolling-machine that always stretches the feelings it expresses.
Wants |
If you participate in life, you don?t see it clearly: you suffer from it too much or enjoy it too much. The artist, to my way of thinking, is a monstrosity, something outside nature. All the misfortunes Providence inflicts on him come from his stubbornness in denying that maxim.
One mustn't look at the abyss, because there is at the bottom an inexpressible charm which attracts us.
Better | Fear | Relationship | Will | World |
In the tragedy in question, for example, he condemned the ideas but admired the style, abhorred the conception but praised all the details, found the characters impossible but their speeches marvelous
Nevertheless the flames did die down -- whether exhausted from lack of supplies or choked by excessive feeding. Little by little, love was quenched by absence; regret was smothered by routine; and the fiery glow that had reddened her pale sky grew gray and gradually vanished... But the storm kept raging, her passion burned itself to ashes, no help was forthcoming, no new sun rose to the horizon. Night closed in completely around her, and she was left alone in a horrible void of piercing cold.
One never tires of what is well written, style is life! It is the very blood of thought!
Learn | Understand |
The brazen arms were working more quickly. They paused no longer. Every time that a child was placed in them the priests of Moloch spread out their hands upon him to burden him with the crimes of the people, vociferating: "They are not men but oxen!" and the multitude round about repeated: "Oxen! oxen!" The devout exclaimed: "Lord! Eat!"
One must always hope when one is desperate, and doubt when one hopes.
People | Punishment |
She recognized the passion and the pain whereof she had all but died. The voice of the heroine seemed but the echo of her own heart, and the lovely illusion before her, part and parcel of her life. But no one on earth had ever loved 'her' with such a love as that.
Wants |
In the dark room a cloud of yellow dust flew from beneath the tool like a scatter of sparks from under the hooves of a galloping horse. The twin wheels turned and hummed. Binet was smiling, his chin down, his nostrils distended. He seemed lost in the kind of happiness which, as a rule, accompanies only those mediocre occupations that tickle the intelligence with easy difficulties, and satisfy it with a sense of achievement beyond which there is nothing left for dreams to feed on.
In the end idealism annoyed Bouvard. ?I don?t want any more of it: the famous cogito is a bore. The ideas of things are taken for the things themselves. What we barely understand is explained by means of words that we do not understand at all! Substance, extension, force, matter and soul, are all so many abstractions, figments of the imagination. As for God, it is impossible to know how he is, or even if he is! Once he was the cause of wind, thunder, revolutions. Now he is getting smaller. Besides, I don?t see what use he is.
So from now on the days were going to continue one after the other like this, always the same, innumerable, bringing nothing!... It was God's will. The future was a pitch-black tunnel, ending in a locked door. She gave up her music: why should she play? Who was there to listen?... She left her drawing books and her embroidery in a closet. What was the use of anything? What was the use?
Poor little thing! She's gasping for love like a carp on a kitchen table gasping for water.
Story |
The morality of art consists, for everyone, in the side that flatters its own interests. People do not like literature.