This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
For the body to perform to the optimum level it is necessary that all the doors work perfectly.
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
If you can see a thing whole, he said, it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives. . . . But close up, a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you loose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful earth is, is to see it from the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death. That's all right for Urras. Let it stay off there and be the moon-I don't want it! But I am not going to stand up on a gravestone and look down on life and say, 'O lovely!' I want to see it whole right in the middle of it, here, now. I don't give a hoot for eternity. It's nothing to do with eternity, said Shevek, grinning, a thin shaggy man of silver and shadow. All you have to do to see life as a whole is to see it as mortal. I'll die, you'll die; how could we love each other otherwise? The sun's going to burn out, what else keeps it shining? Ah! your talk, your damned philosophy! Talk? It's not talk. It's not reason. It's hand's touch. I touch the wholeness, I hold it. Which is moonlight, which is Takver? How shall I fear death? When I hold it, when I hold in my hands the light-Don't be propertarian, Takver muttered. Dear heart, don't cry. I'm not crying. You are. Those are your tears. I'm cold. The moonlight's cold. Lie down. A great shiver went through his body as she took him in her arms. I'm afraid, Takver, he whispered.
There is only one art, whose sole criterion is the power, the authenticity, the revelatory insight, the courage and suggestiveness with which it seeks its truth. Thus, from the standpoint of the work and its worth it is irrelevant to which political ideas the artist as a citizen claims allegiance, which ideas he would like to serve with his work or whether he holds any such ideas at all.
The relationship to the world that the modern science fostered and shaped now appears to have exhausted its potential. It is increasingly clear that, strangely, the relationship is missing something. It fails to connect with the most intrinsic nature of reality and with natural human experience. It is now more of a source of disintegration and doubt than a source of integration and meaning. It produces what amounts to a state of schizophrenia: Man as an observer is becoming completely alienated from himself as a being.
Culture | Happy | People | Revolution | Society | Strength | Trust | Wonder | World | Society |
When you’re up to your ears in crocodiles, it's no time to discuss draining the swamp.
Trust |
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
If our friends do us a service, we think they owe it to us by their title of friend. We never think that they do not owe us their friendship.
Children | Dependence | Energy | Glory | Judgment | Love | Memory | Mind | Order | Success | Teach | Truth |
Any act often repeated soon forms a habit; and habit allowed, steadily gains in strength. At first it may be but as the spider's web, easily broken through, but if not resisted it soon binds us with chains of steel.
Providence | Trust |
Thomas Szasz, fully Thomas Stephen Szasz
The psychiatric profession’s most distinguishing feature… the deliberate, systematic dehumanization of man, in the name of mental health.
Thomas J. Watson, Jr., fully Thomas John Watson, Jr.
The way to succeed is to double your error rate.
Thomas R. Kelly, fully Thomas Raymond Kelly
In considering one gateway into this life of holy obedience, let us dare to venture together into the inner sanctuary of the soul, where God meets man in awful immediacy. There is an indelicacy in too-ready speech.
Thomas J. Watson, fully Thomas John Watson, Sr.
The way to succeed is to double your error rate.
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now.
Better | Change | Distrust | Heart | Man | Nations | Reason | Thought | Trust | War | Will | World | Afraid | Child | Thought |
Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question, inaptness to act on any. Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting, a justifiable means of self-defense. The advocate of extreme measures was always trustworthy; his opponent a man to be suspected. To succeed in a plot was to have a shrewd head, to divine a plot a still shrewder; but to try to provide against having to do either was to break up your party and to be afraid of your adversaries.
Absence | Accuracy | Aid | Coincidence | Cost | Desire | History | Knowledge | Labor | Partiality | Past | Romance | Trust |
Double – minded men cannot handle affairs. With many tasks nothing is ever finished. (Too many irons in the fire)
Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins
Boomer had asked her once, in a telephone call from Virginia, Why does this stuff, these hand-painted hallucinations that don’t do nothin’ but confuse the puddin’ out of a perfectly reasonable wall, why does it mean so much to you? It was a poor connection, but he could have sworn he heard her say, In the haunted house of life, art is the only stair that doesn’t creak.
All but mariners Plunged in the foaming brine and quit the vessel; Then all afire with me the King's son Ferdinand, with hair up-standing (then liek reeds, not hair), was the first man that leapt; cried 'Hell is empty, and all the devils are here!' The Tempest, Act I, Scene 2
Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath, hath had no power yet upon thy beauty; thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet is crimson in thy lips, and in thy cheeks, and death's pale flag is not advanced there. Romeo and Juliet, Act v, Scene 3