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
In plain words; now that Britain has told the world she has the H-Bomb, she should announce as early as possible that she has done with it, that she proposes to reject, in all circumstances, nuclear warfare. This is not pacifism. There is no suggestion here of abandoning the immediate defence of this island...No, what should be abandoned is the idea of deterrence-by-threat-of-retaliation. There is no real security in it, no decency in it, no faith, hope, nor charity in it.
Earth | Experience | Need | Revolution | Sacred | Will | Value |
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
Every writer making a secondary world wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality: hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality, or are flowing into it.
Man |
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey raincurtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.
J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
A lot of men who have accepted - or had imposed upon them in boyhood - the old English public school styles of careful modesty in speech, with much understatement, have behind their masks an appalling and impregnable conceit of themselves.
Beginning | Change | Silence | Understand |
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
And still Meriadoc the hobbit stood there blinking through his tears, and no one spoke to him, indeed none seemed to heed him. He brushed away the tears, and stooped to pick up the green shield that Eowyn had given him, and he slung it at his back. Then he looked for his sword that he had let fall; for even as he struck his blow his arm was numbed, and now he could only use his left hand.
Choice | Government | Industry | Labor | Question | Work | Government | Leadership |
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
Any corner of that county (however fair or squalid) is in an indefinable way 'home' to me, as no other part of the world is. There was a willow hanging over the mill-pool and I learned to climb it. It belonged to a butcher on the Stratford Road, I think. One day they cut it down. They didn't do anything with it: the log just lay there. I never forgot that.
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
And then alas! I let the matter reset, watching and waiting only, as we have too often done.
Debt |
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
But Arwen went forth from the House, and the light of her eyes was quenched, and it seemed to her people that she had become cold and grey as nightfall in winter that comes without a star. Then she said farewell to Eldarion, and to her daughters, and to all whom she had loved; and she went out from the city of Minas Tirith and passed away to the land of L¢rien, and dwelt there alone under the fading trees until winter came. Galadriel had passed away and Celeborn also was gone, and the land was silent. 'There at last when the Mallorn-leaves were falling, but spring had not yet come, she laid herself to rest upon Cerin Amroth; and there is her green grave, until the world is changed, and all the days of her life are utterly forgotten by men that come after, and Elanor and Niphredil bloom no more east of the Sea.
Change | Corruption | Labor | Responsibility | Revolution | Slavery | Old |
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
Clothes are of but little loss, if you escape from drowning.
Computer | Energy | Right | Technology |
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
And in the darkness bind them.
Conversation | Man | Ugly | Will |
J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
I think, however, that so long as our present economic and national systems continue, scientific research has little to fear.
Loneliness | Lying |
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
At least for a while the road must be trod, but it will be very hard. And neither strength nor wisdom will carry us far upon it. This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.
Change | Children | Controversy | Labor | Public | Work | Worry | Child | Learn |
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
But I am the real Strider, fortunately. I am Aragorn son of Arathorn; and if by life or death I can save you, I will.
Little | Reality | Slavery | Old Testament | Old | Think | Understand | Value |
J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
Until politics are a branch of science we shall do well to regard political and social reforms as experiments rather than short-cuts to the millennium.