This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
But the root of things, what they were all afraid of saying, was that happiness is dirt cheap. You can have it for nothing. Beauty.
For I am more selves than Neville thinks. We are not simple as our friends would have us to meet their needs. Yet love is simple.
Other people have faces; Susan and Jinny have faces; they are here. Their world is the real world. The things they lift are heavy. They say ‘Yes’, they say ‘No’; whereas I shift and change and am seen through in a second. If they meet a housemaid she looks at them without laughing. But she laughs at me. They know what to say if spoken to. They laugh really; they get angry really; while I have to look first and do what other people do when they have done it.
Literature | Talking | Thought | Thought |
If you stand a lantern under a tree every insect in the forest creeps up to it—a curious assembly, since though they scramble and swing and knock their heads against the glass, they seem to have no purpose—something senseless inspires them. One gets tired of watching them, as they amble round the lantern and blindly tap as if for admittance, one large toad being the most besotted of any and shouldering his way through the rest. Ah, but what's that? A terrifying volley of pistol-shots rings out—cracks sharply; ripples spread— silence laps smooth over sound. A tree—a tree has fallen, a sort of death in the forest. After that, the wind in the trees sounds melancholy.
The current flows fast and furious. It issues in a spate of words from the loudspeakers and the politicians. Every day they tell us that we are a free people fighting to defend freedom. That is the current that has whirled the young airman up into the sky and keeps him circulating there among the clouds. Down here, with a roof to cover us and a gasmask handy, it is our business to puncture gasbags and discover the seeds of truth.
On Monday you were cruel and on Tuesday you said you were sorry. But on Wednesday you did it again, which means I’m not going to believe anything you say on Thursday.
Limits liberate. They focus us. They let in what contributes to fulfillment and keep out the clutter. Limits empower. In fact, anyone who has created anything of value – from a marriage to a monument to a path to FI – knows that well.
As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence, of the music. And, as you read and re-read, the book of course participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul.
But it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, which, by often rumination, wraps me in the most humorous sadness. As You Like It, Act iv, Scene 1
They've discovered how to turn excess body fat into gold, he said, in a sudden blur of coherence. You're kidding. Oh yes, he said, no, he corrected himself, they have. He rounded on the doubting part of his audience, which was all of it, and so it took a little while to round on it completely. Have you been to California? he demanded. Do you know the sort of stuff they do there? Three members of his audience said they had and that he was talking nonsense. You haven't seen anything, insisted Arthur. Oh yes, he added, because someone was offering to buy another round.
If diversity is what is a central value in every selective university in the United States, then it ought to be seen as a compelling interest by the Supreme Court.
Shine comforts from the east, That I may back to Athens by daylight From these that my poor company detest; And sleep, that sometimes shuts up sorrow's eye, Steal me awhile from mine own company.
Art | Beauty | Death | Enough | Evil | Father | Fortune | God | Good | Government | Heart | Rage | Shame | Tears | Vengeance | Virtue | Virtue | Government | Art | Beauty | God |
The prolonged slavery of women is the darkest page in human history.
To be a king and wear a crown is a thing more glorious to them that see it than it is pleasant to them that bear it.
Will |
You may go over the world and you will find that every form of religion which has breathed upon this earth has degraded woman... I have been traveling over the old world during the last few years and have found new food for thought. What power is it that makes the Hindoo woman burn herself upon the funeral pyre of her husband? Her religion. What holds the Turkish woman in the harem? Her religion. By what power do the Mormons perpetuate their system of polygamy? By their religion/ Man, of himself, could not do this; but when he declares, 'Thus saith the Lord,' of course he can do it. So long as ministers stand up and tell us Christ is the head of the church, so is man the head of woman, how are we to break the chains which have held women down through the ages? You Christian women look at the Hindu, the Turkish, the Mormon women, and wonder how they can be held in such bondage...
Indignation | Woman |
As women are taking an active part in pressing on the consideration of Congress many narrow sectarian measures, such as more rigid Sunday laws, the stopping of travel, the distribution of the mail on that day, and the introduction of the name of God into the Constitution; and as this action on the part of some women is used as an argument for the disfranchisement of all, I hope this convention will declare that the Woman Suffrage Association is opposed to all union of Church and State, and pledges itself as far as possible to maintain the secular nature of our Government.
The fact is that men need women more than women need men; and so, aware of this fact, man has sought to keep woman dependent upon him economically as the only method open to him of making himself necessary to her. Since in the beginning woman would not become his willing slave, he has wrought through the centuries a society in which woman must serve him if she is to survive.
Inferiority | Myth | Time |
One cannot be too extreme in dealing with social ills; the extreme thing is generally the true thing.
Inevitable | Inferiority | Merit | Position | Question | Right | Woman |