This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
See you now-- Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth, And thus do we of wisdom and of reach, With windlasses and with assays of bias, By indirections find directions out.
She either gives a stomach and no food— such are the poor, in health; or else a feast and takes away the stomach—such are the rich, that have abundance and enjoy it not.
Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, the bird of dawning singeth all night long, and then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad, the nights are wholesome, then no planets strike, no fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm. So hallowed and so gracious is that time.
Two thirds of human existence are wasted in hesitation.
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 |
Every minute you are thinking of evil, you might have been thinking of good instead. Refuse to pander to a morbid interest in your own misdeeds. Pick yourself up, be sorry, shake yourself, and go on again.
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
Rex has never been unkind to me intentionally. It's just that he isn't a real person at all; he's just a few faculties of a man highly developed; the rest simply isn't there.
The moral improvement of the nations and their individual components has not kept pace with the march of intellect and the advance of industry. Before the assaults of criticism many ancient strongholds of faith have given way, and doubt is fast spreading even into circles where its expression is forbidden. Morality, long accustomed to the watchful tutelage of faith, finds this connection loosened or severed, while no new protector has arisen to champion her rights, no new instruments been created to enforce her lessons among the people. As a consequence we behold a general laxness in regard to obligations the most sacred and dear. An anxious unrest, a fierce craving desire for gain has taken possession of the commercial world, and in instances no longer rare the most precious and permanent goods of human life have been madly sacrificed in the interests of momentary enrichment.
The artist must manage to make posterity believe that he never existed.
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
I was talking aloud to myself. A habit of the old: they choose the wisest person present to speak to.