This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
All men cannot go to college but some men must; every isolated group or nation must have its yeast, must have for the talented few centers of training where men are not so mystified and befuddled by the hard and necessary toil of earning a living, as to have no aims higher than their bellies, and no God greater than Gold.
Contempt | Ideals | Looks | Revelation | Self | Sense | Soul | Strength | World |
Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL
In accordance with the foregoing investigations on mathematical principles, let bronze vessels be made, proportionate to the size of the theatre, and let them be so fashioned that, when touched, they may produce with one another the notes of the fourth, the fifth, and so on up the double octave.
Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh
At one time, the earth was supposed to be flat. Well, so it is, even today, from Paris to Asnieres. But that fact doesn't prevent science from proving that the earth as a whole is spherical. No one nowadays denies it. Well... we are still at the stage of believing that life itself is flat, the distance from birth to death. Yet the probability is that life, too, is spherical and much more extensive and capacious than the hemisphere we know.
Vince Lombardi, fully Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi
The will to excel and the will to win, they endure. They are more important than any events that occasion them.
Strength |
We are suffering throughout the world in the darkness of the misery we have created. By believing in the fragmentary and the superficial, we have failed to live together in peace and harmony, and so darkness looms very large on the horizon. It’s in such darkness that common people such as you and I feel the urgency to go deeper, to abandon superficial approaches that are inadequate and to activate the creative forces available to each of us as expressions of wholeness. The vast intelligence that orders the cosmos is available to all. The beauty of life, the wonder of living, is that we share creativity, intelligence, and unlimited potential with the rest of the cosmos. If the universe is vast and mysterious, we are vast and mysterious. If it contains innumerable creative energies, we contain innumerable creative energies. If it has healing energies, we also have healing energies. To realize that we are not simply physical beings on a material planet, but that we are whole beings, each a miniature cosmos, each related to all of life in intimate, profound ways, should radically transform how we perceive ourselves, our environments, our social problems. Nothing can ever be isolated from wholeness.
Action | Enough | Fear | Superiority |
Vince Lombardi, fully Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi
But I firmly believe that any man's finest hour, his greatest fulfillment of all he holds dear, is the moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle - victorious.
Dependence | Strength |
Vince Lombardi, fully Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi
I don't think there's a punch-line scheduled, is there?
Strength |
Correct diet implies the right quality and quantity as well as the frequency of intake. Eating should be related to appetite. It should not cause any excitement, or emotional disturbance. It should be gone through peacefully and happily. One has to be very alert to see that everything one eats is fully digested. The body should not be burdened with undigested food. The cleanliness of all the internal organs is one of the most important factors of meditation.
Compassion | Decision | Force | Life | Life | Strength | Wholeness |
Vince Lombardi, fully Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi
Once you agree upon the price you and your family must pay for success, it enables you to ignore the minor hurts, the opponent's pressure, and the temporary failures.
Commitment | Heart | Man | Nothing | Strength | Will | World |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.
Existence | Receive | Superiority |
Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh
Whoever lives sincerely and encounters much trouble and disappointment without being bowed down is worth more than one who has always sailed before the wind and has only known prosperity.
Fighting | Good | Heart | Life | Life | Order | Plan | Reward | Spirit | Strength |
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
If you will give up your life, God will give you His Life.
Strength |
Virgil, also Vergil, fully Publius Vergilius Maro NULL
God speed to your youthful valor, boy! So shall you scale the stars!
Virgil, also Vergil, fully Publius Vergilius Maro NULL
It is easy to go down into Hell night and day, the gates of dark Death stand wide but to climb back again, to retrace one's steps to the upper air - there's the rub, the task.
Strength |
No force is blind. Man must watch these forces, and seek to discover their laws.
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
Naturally only a few people were capable of reaching great spiritual heights. But a few were given the chance to attain human greatness even through their apparent worldly failure and death, an accomplishment which in ordinary circumstances they would have never achieved. To the others of us, the mediocre and the half-hearted, the words of Bismarck could be applied: Life is like being at the dentist. You always think that the worst is still to come, and yet it is over already.” Varying this, we could say that most men in a concentration camp believed that the real opportunities of life had passed. Yet, in reality, there was an opportunity and a challenge. One could make a victory of those experiences, turning life into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate, as did a majority of the prisoners.
Contemplation | Conversation | Life | Life | Love | Means | Mind | Need | Nothing | Prison | Strength | Thought | Wife | Contemplation | Think | Thought |