This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
HOGAN: No, I wouldn't think it, but my motto in life is never trust anyone too far, not even myself.
Money | Wants | Understand |
Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
I hold more and more surely to the conviction that the use of masks will be discovered eventually to be the freest solution of the modern dramatist's problem as to how -- with the greatest possible dramatic clarity and economy of means -- he can express those profound hidden conflicts of the mind which the probings of psychology continue to disclose to us.
Dirty | Little | Marriage | Pain | Play | Time | Ugly | Think |
Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.
Whence comes to man the most sustainable of the pleasures of his heart, the pleasure of melancholy , this charming full of secrets , who is living his pain and s' love even in the sense of its ruin? [Where does the most enduring human enjoyments of his heart, the pleasure of melancholy, this charming full of secrets, which makes its living pain and still love the feeling of ruin?]
I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them--with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself.
Character | Good | Pleasure | Speech | Thought | World | Think | Thought |
Why are we put on the spot of being God’s defender. We are expected to explain God to his disappointed clients. We’re thrust into the role of a clerk at Wal-Mart’s customer service desk – the complaints department of humanity.
Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson
We do not need to project out own ideas into the economy of nature; they belong there in their own right. Our own ideas are in the economy of nature because we ourselves are in it. Any and every one of the things which a man does intelligently is done with a purpose and to a certain end which is the final cause why he does itÂ… Through man, who is part and parcel of nature, purposiveness most certainly is part and parcel of nature. In what sense is it arbitrary, knowing from within that where there is organization there always is a purpose, to conclude that there is a purpose wherever there is organization?
Absolute | Ego | Existence | People | Question | Revelation |
We live in a time when everyoneÂ’s goal is to be perpetually healthy and constantly happy. If any one of us fails to live up to the standards that are advertised as normative, we are labeled as a problem to be solved, and a host of well-intentioned people rush to try out various cures on us.
If you want to change people by talking about God, then there is only one way: instead of teaching God, you must live God. Because: “teaching” God is unthinkable in any other way than the way you would teach love or poetry. You teach love only through love, poetry only through writing poetry, faith in God only through a contagious way of trusting.
Money |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
If you let people break your spirit and detour you from your path, then you have not been true to yourself or those you're here to touch, those who believe in you.
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
The issue is Socialism versus Capitalism. I am for Socialism because I am for humanity. We have been cursed with the reign of gold long enough. Money constitutes no proper basis of civilization. The time has come to regenerate society — we are on the eve of universal change.
Machines |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
Style is knowing who you are, what to say, and not giving a damn.
Good |
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
Foolish and vain indeed is the workingman who makes the color of his skin the stepping-stone to his imaginary superiority. The trouble is with his head, and if he can get that right he will find that what ails him is not superiority but inferiority, and that he, as well as the Negro he despises, is the victim of wage-slavery, which robs him of what he produces and keeps both him and the Negro tied down to the dead level of ignorance and degradation.
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
Socialism is very properly recognized by the capitalist class as the one cloud upon the horizon which portends an end to the system in which they have waxed fat, insolent and despotic through the exploitation of their countless wage-working slaves.
Right |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
In general. . . novel-theorists have nothing very urgent or interesting to say about literature. Why then do they write when they have nothing to say? Because the ambitious teacher can only rise in the academic bureaucracy by writing at complicated length about writing that has already been much written about. The result of all this book-chat cannot interest anyone who knows literature while those who would like to learn something about books can only be mystified and discouraged by these commentaries.
Experiment | Revolution | Writing |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
It makes no difference who you vote for - the two parties are really one party representing four percent of the people.
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
If the people would but analyze the human equation of a prison they might better account for the crimes that are visited upon them in cities, towns, and hamlets, oft times by men who graduated with an education and equipment for just that sort of retributive service from some penal institution.
Self-interest | Slavery | Work |
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
When the mariner, sailing over tropic seas, looks for relief from his weary watch, he turns his eyes toward the southern cross, burning luridly above the tempest-vexed ocean. As the midnight approaches, the southern cross begins to bend, the whirling worlds change their places, and with starry finger-points the Almighty marks the passage of time upon the dial of the universe, and though no bell may beat the glad tidings, the lookout knows that the midnight is passing and that relief and rest are close at hand. Let the people everywhere take heart of hope, for the cross is bending, the midnight is passing, and joy cometh with the morning.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
If Henry Miller often sounded like a village idiot, it is because, like Whitman, he was the rest of the village as well.
People | Relationship |