This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incident, chaos will soon reign.
V. S. Pritchett, fully Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett
It is the role of the poet to look at what is happening in the world and to know that quite other things are happening.
V. S. Pritchett, fully Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett
Well, youth is the period of assumed personalities and disguises. It is the time of the sincerely insincere.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
Shut up and God will speak to you. How do you want it to do when you're so much noise?
Genius |
Do not waste a minute -- not a second -- in trying to demonstrate to others the merits of your performance. If your work does not vindicate itself, you cannot vindicate it.
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
Golf is a game in which one endeavors to control a ball with implements ill adapted for the purpose.
Genius | Perseverance |
The bee himself did not evade the schoolboy more than she evaded me, and even at this day I still stand somewhat bewildered, like the boy.
Genius |
Character shows itself apart from genius as a special thing. The first point of measurement of any man is that of quality.
Advice | Body | Genius | Haste | Important | Life | Life | Literature | Man | Nothing | Perfection | Play | Pleasure | Popularity | Reason | Recreation | Wonder | Work | Think |
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
We shall fight for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.
Age | Agony | Beauty | Body | Children | Cost | Counsel | Diversity | Energy | Enough | Evil | Genius | Gold | Government | Helpfulness | Individual | Liberty | Life | Life | Men | Model | Riches | Strength | Struggle | Sympathy | System | Will | World | Riches | Government | Counsel | Beauty |
The discipline which corrects the baseness of worldly passions, fortifies the heart with virtuous principles, enlightens the mind with useful knowledge, and furnishes it with enjoyment from within itself, is of more consequence to real felicity, than all the provisions we can make of the goods of fortune.
Beauty | Genius | Good | Little | Mind | Power | Rest | Sensibility | Taste | Words | Beauty |
Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins
For most people, self-awareness and self-pity blossom simultaneously in early adolescence. It's about that time that we start viewing the world as something other than a whoop-de-doo playground, we start to experience personally how threatening it can be, how cruel and unjust. At the very moment when we become, for the first time, both introspective and socially conscientious, we receive the bad news that the world, by and large, doesn't give a rat's ass.
Between two hawks, which flies the higher pitch; Between two dogs, which hath the deeper mouth; Between two blades, which bears the better temper; Between two horses, which doth bear him best; Between two girls, which hath the merriest eye,— I have perhaps some shallow spirit of judgment; But in these nice sharp quillets of the law, Good faith, I am no wiser than a daw. King Henry VI. Part I. Act ii. Sc. 4.
A genuine first-hand religious experience like this is bound to be a heterodoxy to its witnesses, the prophet appearing as a mere lonely madman. If his doctrine proves contagious enough to spread to any others, it becomes a definite and labeled heresy. But if it then still prove contagious enough to triumph over persecution, it becomes itself an orthodoxy; and when a religion has become an orthodoxy, its day of inwardness is over: the spring is dry; the faithful live at second hand exclusively and stone the prophets in their turn. The new church, in spite of whatever human goodness it may foster, can be henceforth counted on as a staunch ally in every attempt to stifle the spontaneous religious spirit, and to stop all later bubblings of the fountain from which in purer days it drew its own supply of inspiration.
Give up the feeling of responsibility, let go your hold, resign the care of your destiny to higher powers, be genuinely indifferent as to what becomes of it all and you will find not only that you gain a perfect inward relief, but often also, in addition, the particular goods you sincerely thought you were renouncing.
The exercise of prayer, in those who habitually exert it, must be regarded by us doctors as the most adequate and normal of all the pacifiers of the mind and calmers of the nerves.
Genius |
Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity successful men act as though they have accomplished or are enjoying something. Soon it becomes a reality. Act, look, feel successful, conduct yourself accordingly, and you will be amazed at the positive results.
Chance | Genius | Individual | Men | Mystery | People | Public | Inertia |