This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
If it were lost in übermenschlichkeit, perhaps our wretched state would soon come right.
Dreams |
In European thought in general, as contrasted with American, vigor, life and originality have a kind of easy, professional utterance. American—on the other hand, is expressed in an eager amateurish way. A European gives a sense of scope, of survey, of consideration. An American is strained, sensational. One is artistic gold; the other is bullion.
Change | Contentment | Death | Dreams | Fulfillment | Mother | Need |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
But then what should I have done with you, Nina, how should I have disposed of the store of sadness that had gradually accumulated as a result of our seemingly carefree, but really hopeless meetings?
Disguise | Dreams | Evil | Life | Life | Promise | Reality | Thought | Thought |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
I've no general ideas to exploit, I just like composing riddles with elegant solutions.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Knowing you have something good to read before bed is among the most pleasurable of sensations.
Dreams | Man | Mathematics | Tomorrow |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
I think in images, and now and then a Russian phrase or an English phrase will form with the foam of the brainwave, but that's about all.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
In point of fact, the greater one's science, the deeper the sense of mystery.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
I do not know if it has ever been noted before that one of the main characteristics of life is discreteness. Unless a film of flesh envelopes us, we die. Man exists only insofar as he is separated from his surroundings. The cranium is a space-traveler's helmet. Stay inside or you perish. Death is divestment, death is communion. It may be wonderful to mix with the landscape, but to do so is the end of the tender ego.
Absolute | Day | Dreams | Little | Play | Pleasure | Sense | Work | World |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Thus, in pornographic novels, action has to be limited to the copulation of clichés.
Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh
The best way to know life is to love many things.
Dreams | Perfection |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Change was incessant, and change perhaps would never cease. High battlements of thought, habits that had seemed as durable as stone, went down like shadows at the touch of another mind and left a naked sky and fresh stars twinkling in it.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
He would give every penny he has (such is the malignity of the germ) to write one little book and become famous; yet all the gold in Peru will not buy him the treasure of a well-turned line.
Dreams |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
His wife was crying, and he felt nothing; only each time she sobbed in this profound, this silent, this hopeless way, he descended another step into the pit.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
For if there are (at a venture) seventy-six different times all ticking in the mind at once, how many different people are there not – Heaven help us – all having lodgment at one time or another in the human spirit?
Destroy | Dreams | Earth | Life | Life | Man | Soul | Style | Truth |
Virgil, also Vergil, fully Publius Vergilius Maro NULL
There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us. Even virtue is more fair when it appears in a beautiful person.
Navigation is education. The sea is a hard school. Cohabitation with these unmanageable phenomena produces a rough race of men who deserve to be cherished: the mariners. There are no other conquerors but them. Ulysses the voyager accomplishes more than Achilles the fighter.
Dreams |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world may still know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when a man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way - an honorable way - in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment.