This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
It is right and necessary that all men should have work to do which shall be worth doing, and be of itself pleasant to do; and which should be done under such conditions as would make it neither over-wearisome nor over-anxious.
Men |
Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen
A living dog's better than a dead lion.
Little |
Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen
Towards the end of April, a breath from the north blew cold down Milan platforms to meet the returning traveler. Uncertain thoughts of home filled the station restaurant where the English sat lunching uneasily, facing the clock.
Light |
Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen
During a strained little silence, between two gusts of wind, Mrs Vermont observed that an angel must be passing over the house; she wanted them to listen for its wings. They listened; they thought of empty country blotted out by the darkness.
True moral elegance consists in the art of disguising one's victories as defeats.
Man |
Leo Tolstoy, the greatest anti-patriot of our time, defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers; a trade that requires better equipment in the exercise of man-killing than the making of such necessities as shoes, clothing, and houses; a trade that guarantees better returns and greater glory than that of the honest workingman.
Bigotry | Economics | Future | God | Kill | Love | Man | Means | Men | Past | Position | Religion | Will | Worth | God |
Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.
Even as we grew up, my mother could not help imposing herself between her children and whatever it was they might take it in mind to reach out for in the world. For she would get it for them, if it was good enough for them--she would have to be very sure--and give it to them, at whatever cost to herself: valiance was in her very fibre. She stood always prepared in herself to challenge the world in our place. She did indeed tend to make the world look dangerous, and so it had been to her. A way had to be found around her love sometimes, without challenging that, and at the same time cherishing it in its unassailable strength. Each of us children did, sooner or later, in part at least, solve this in a different, respectful, complicated way.
Day |
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
And in that very moment, away behind in some far corner of the city, a cock crowed. Shrill and clear he crowed reckoning nothing of wizardry or war, welcoming only the morning that in the sky far above the shadows of death was coming with the dawn.
Change | Freedom | Government | Life | Life | Government |
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
As he fell slowly into sleep, Pippin had a strange feeling: he and Gandalf were still as stone, seated upon the statue of a running horse, while the world rolled away beneath his feet with a great noise of wind.
J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
The time has gone by when a Huxley could believe that while science might indeed remold traditional mythology, traditional morals were impregnable and sacrosanct to it. We must learn not to take traditional morals too seriously. And it is just because even the least dogmatic of religions tends to associate itself with some kind of unalterable moral tradition, that there can be no truce between science and religion.
Father | Little | Understand |