This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Exile (being where we don't want to be with people we don't want to be with) forces a decision: Will I focus my attention on what is wrong with the world and feel sorry for myself? Or will I focus my energies on how I can live at my best in this place I find myself?...I will do my best with what is here.
Discipline | Listening | Quiet |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you're a great writer, you must say that you are.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
The theater needs continual reminders that there is nothing more debasing than the work of those who do well what is not worth doing at all.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
The unfed mind devours itself.
For the good, when praised, feel something of disgust, if to excess commended.
The real hero stands steadfast in the front row, unperturbed not blinking an eye in the face of the launch of the winged spear.
I have read somewhere that one of the popes refused to accept an edition of a saintÂ’s works, which were presented to him, because the saint, in his effigies before the book, was drawn without a beard.
Worth |
Two movements merge in the real act of communion. First, the creature's profound sense of need, of incompleteness: its steadfast desire... Next, a humble and loving acceptance of God's answer to that prayer of desire, however startling, disappointing, and unappetizing it may be.
Quiet |
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
Downstairs Peter Beste-Chetwynde mixed himself another brandy and soda and turned a page in Havelock Ellis, which, next to The Wind in the Willows, was his favourite book.
Church | Faith | Father | Hunger | People | Religion | Right | Words | Worth | Think |
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
Perhaps all our lovers are merely hints and symbols; vagabond languages scrawled on gate-posts and paving stones along the weary road that others have trampled before us; perhaps you and I are types and this sadness which sometimes falls between us springs from disappointment in our search, each straining through and beyond each other, snatching a glimpse now and then of the shadow which turns the corner always a pace or two ahead of us.
Grace is God himself, his loving energy at work within his church and within our souls.
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
If it could only be like this always – always summer, always alone, the fruit always ripe and Aloysius in a good temper...
Worth |