This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
A discussion between Haldane and a friend began to take a predictable turn. The friend said with a sigh, 'It's no use going on. I know what you will say next, and I know what you will do next.' The distinguished scientist promptly sat down on the floor, turned two back somersaults, and returned to his seat. 'There,' he said with a smile. 'That's to prove that you're not always right.'
Day |
J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
An ounce of algebra is worth a ton of verbal argument.
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
Being a cheerful hobbit, he had not needed hope, as long as despair could be postponed.
Aid | Government | Need | Praise | Government |
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
But Sauron was not of mortal flesh, and though he was robbed now of that shape in which had wrought so great an evil, so that he could never again appear fair to the eyes of Men, yet his spirit arose out of the deep and passed as a shadow and a black wind over the sea, and came back to Middle-earth and to Mordor that was his home. There he took up again his great Ring in Barad-dur, and dwelt there, dark and silent, until he wrought himself a new guise, an image of malice and hatred made visible; and the Eye of Sauron the Terrible few could endure.
J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
There is romance, the genuine glinting stuff, in typewriters, and not merely in their development from clumsy giants into agile dwarfs, but in the history of their manufacture, which is filled with raids, battles, lonely pioneers, great gambles, hope, fear, despair, triumph. If some of our novels could be written by the typewriters instead of on them, how much better they would be.
Time |
J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
Capitalism, though it may not always give the scientific worker a living wage, will always protect him, as being one of the geese which produce golden eggs for its table.
J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
My final word, before I'm done, is 'Cancer can be rather fun'? provided one confronts the tumor with a sufficient sense of humor. I know that cancer often kills, but so do cars and sleeping pills; and it can hurt till one sweats, so can bad teeth and unpaid debts. A spot of laughter, I am sure, often accelerates one's cure; so let us patients do our bit to help the surgeons make us fit.
Cause |
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
Beautiful she is, sir! Lovely! Sometimes Luke a great tree in flower, sometimes like a white daffadowdilly, small and slender like. Hard as di'monds, soft as moonlight. Warm as sunlight, cold as frost in the stars. Proud and far-off as a snow-mountain, and as merry as any lass I ever saw with daisies in her hair in springtime.
Action | Global | Present | Property | Sense | System | Thought | Will | Thought |
J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
Any fool can be fussy and rid himself of energy all over the place, but a man has to have something in him before he can settle down to do nothing.
J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
Coming to the question of life being found on other planets, Professor Haldane apologized for discoursing, as a mere biologist, on a subject on which we had been expecting a lecture by a physicist [J. D. Bernal]. He mentioned three hypotheses:
J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
I have tried to show why I believe that the biologist is the most romantic figure on earth at the present day. At first sight he seems to be just a poor little scrubby underpaid man, groping blindly amid the mazes of the ultra-microscopic, engaging in bitter and lifelong quarrels over the nephridia of flatworms, waking perhaps one morning to find that someone whose name he has never heard has demolished by a few crucial experiments the work which he had hoped would render him immortal.
J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
The future will be no primrose path. It will have its own problems. Some will be the secular problems of the past, giant flowers of evil blossoming at last to their own destruction. Others will be wholly new.
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
And yet their wills did not yield, and they struggled on.