This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
So I have to create the whole thing afresh for myself each time. Probably all writers now are in the same boat. It is the penalty we pay for breaking with tradition, and the solitude makes the writing more exciting though the being read less so. One ought to sink to the bottom of the sea, probably, and live alone with ones words.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Is it not possible — I often wonder — that things we have felt with great intensity have an experience independent of our minds; are in fact still in existence? And if so, will it not be possible, in time, that some device will be invented by which we can tap them? … Instead of remembering here a scene and there a sound, I shall fit a plug into the wall; and listen in to the past …
Freedom |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Look here Vita — throw over your man, and we’ll go to Hampton Court and dine on the river together and walk in the garden in the moonlight and come home late and have a bottle of wine and get tipsy, and I’ll tell you all the things I have in my head, millions, myriads — They won’t stir by day, only by dark on the river. Think of that. Throw over your man, I say, and come.
Freedom |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.
Freedom |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
I understand Nature’s game—her prompting to take action as a way of ending any thought that threatens to excite or to pain. Hence, I suppose, comes our slight contempt for men of action—men, we assume, who don’t think. Still, there’s no harm in putting a full stop to one’s disagreeable thoughts by looking at a mark on the wall.
Belief | Body | Children | Courage | Determination | Effort | Freedom | Habit | Life | Life | Little | Men | Need | Opportunity | Past | Poverty | Power | Reality | Talking | Will | World | Worth |
Zoroaster, aka Zarathustra or Zarathushtra Spitama NULL
I praise good thoughts, good words, and good deeds and those that are to be thought, spoken, and done. I do accept all good thoughts, good words, and good deeds. I do renounce all evil thoughts, evil words, and evil deeds.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
There is no room for the impurities of literature in an essay.
Freedom |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
There was no treachery too base for the world to commit.
Freedom |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
The clock ticks. The two hands are convoys marching through a desert. The black bars on the clock face are green oases. The long hand has marched ahead to find water. The other, painfully stumbles among hot stones in the desert. It will die in the desert.
Beauty | Freedom | Heart | Power | Universe | World | Beauty |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
To enjoy freedom, if the platitude is pardonable, we have of course to control ourselves. We must not squander our powers, helplessly and ignorantly, squirting half the house in order to water a single rose-bush; we must train them, exactly and powerfully, here on the very spot.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
There is no doubt in my mind, that I have found out how to begin (at 40) to say something in my own voice.
Freedom |
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
One value of self-observation and self-knowledge is to see who you are “not”.
Freedom |
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
People fight to preserve their frozen beliefs and then complain of the cold!
Freedom |
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
Fighting inner darkness in the wrong way is the same as submitting to it. Truth will show you how to truly fight for light.
Ends | Insecurity | Journey | People | Security | Following |
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
Everyone has imaginary ideas of himself as being this or that sort of person. And you can be sure that the images are highly complementary! But since they are purely imaginary, they are highly sensitive to assault by reality.