This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
William Howells, fully William Dean Howells, aka The Dean of American Letters
An acre of performance is worth a whole world of promise.
Civilization | History | Literature | Talking |
Nothing really succeeds which is not based on reality; sham, in a large sense, is never successful. In the life of the individual, as in the more comprehensive life of the State, pretension is nothing and power is everything.
Advice | Literature | Nothing | Safe |
It is always the enemy who started it, even if he was not the first to speak out, he was certainly planning it; and if he was not actually planning it, he was thinking of it; and, if he was not thinking of it, he would have thought of it.
Literature | Means | Object |
Why, what's wrong! Religions are like rivers: all flow into a sea. Mother Mary embodies compassion, mercy, love and unconditional love. It is personal, but belongs to everyone. Never mind that you're a Muslim, you can still love her and even called his daughter Maria.
Literature | People | Right | Teach | Writing |
You think you're frightening me with your hell, don't you? You think Yyur hell is worse than mine.
Books | Giving | Literature | Present | Trial |
Ellen Glasgow, fully Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
What happens is not as important as how you react to what happens.
Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
A soft Sea washed around the House a Sea of Summer Air and rose and fell the magic Planks that sailed without a care — for Captain was the Butterfly for Helmsman was the Bee and an entire universe for the delighted crew.
Dreams | Knowledge | Literature | Pleasure | Old |
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.
Good | Literature | Nothing | Writing |
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
She should have. All women should see it. It's a face that ought to be thrown on every screen in the country. Every woman ought to be given a copy of this face as she leaves the altar. Mothers should tell their daughters about this face.
Literature | Writing |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
Mardonius was more fond of me than I was of him. That always gives one an advantage.
Literature | Virtue | Virtue | World |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
In matters of faith, inconvenient evidence is always suppressed while contradictions go unnoticed.
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
If you asked me now who I am, the only answer I could give with any certainty would be my name. For the rest: my loves, my hates, down even to my deepest desires, I can no longer say whether these emotions are my own, or stolen from those I once so desperately wished to be.
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
A necklace of pearls on a white neck. We had lost the sense of discovery which had infused the anarchy of our first year. I began to settle down... the old house in the foreground, the rest of the world abandoned and forgotten; a world of its own of peace and love and beauty.
Books | Dirty | Literature |
Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
A great spirit has been amongst us, and a great artist is gone.
Age | Literature |
Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
The modern artist must live by craft and violence. His gods are violent gods. Those artists, so called, whose work does not show this strife, are uninteresting.
Good | Impression | Literature | Man | Quiet | Understanding | Child |
Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
Hang it all, Robert Browning, there can be but the one "Sordello."
Language | Literature | Meaning |
Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
If a patron buys from an artist who needs money (needs money to buy tools, time, food), the patron then makes himself equal to the artist; he is building art into the world; he creates.