This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Have you any notion how many books are written about women in the course of one year? Have you any notion how many are written by men? Are you aware that you are, perhaps, the most discussed animal in the universe?
Business | Change | Death | Life | Life | Nature | Possessions | Time | Business |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
He who robs us of our dreams robs us of our life.
Determination | Gold | Nature |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
It was enemies one wanted, not friends.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Really it would profit little to write down what they said, for they knew each other so well that they could say anything they liked, which is tantamount to saying nothing, or saying such stupid, prosy things, as how to cook an omelet or where to buy the best boots in London, which have no lustre taken from their setting, yet are positively of amazing beauty within it. For it has come about, by the wise economy of nature, that our modern spirit can almost dispense with language; the commonest expressions do, since no expressions do; hence, the most ordinary conversation is often the most poetic, and the most poetic is precisely that which cannot be written down. For which reasons we leave a great blank here, which must be taken to indicate that the space is filled to repletion.
Human nature | Nature |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
What is more irritating than to see one’s subject, on whom one has lavished so much time and trouble, slipping out of one’s grasp altogether and indulging — witness her sighs and gasps, her flushing, her palings, her eyes now bright as lamps, now haggard as dawns — what is more humiliating than to see all this dumb show of emotion and excitement gone through before our eyes when we know that what causes it — thought and imagination — are of no importance whatsoever?
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Waves of hands, hesitations at street corners, someone dropping a cigarette into the gutter-all are stories. But which is the true story? That I do not know. Hence I keep my phrases hung like clothes in a cupboard, waiting for some one to wear them. Thus waiting, thus speculating, making this note and then an· other I do not cling to life. I shall be brushed like a bee from a sunflower. My philosophy, always accumulating, welling up moment by moment, runs like quicksilver a dozen ways at once.
Beauty | Better | Books | Children | Enough | Hate | Life | Life | Love | Nature | Nothing | Past | People | Sorrow | Beauty | Friends |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
So we went to the Zoo; and I daresay I could write something interesting about that--a pale stone desert given over to charwomen and decorators: a few bears, a mandrill, and a fox or two--all in the desolation of depression.
Human nature | Nature | Sin |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
We have dined well. The fish, the veal cutlets, the wine have blunted the sharp tooth of egotism. Anxiety is at rest. The vainest of us, Louis perhaps, does not care what people think. Neville’s tortures are at rest. Let others prosper — that is what he thinks. Susan hears the breathing of all her children safe asleep. Sleep, sleep, she murmurs. Rhoda has rocked her ships to shore. Whether they have foundered, whether they have anchored, she cares no longer.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
The streets seemed to chafe the very air… and leave hotly, brilliantly, on waves of that divine vitality which Clarissa loved.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
What people had had shed and left--a pair of shoes, a shooting cap, some faded skirts and coats in wardrobes--those alone kept the human shape and in the emptiness indicated how once they were filled and animated; how once hands were busy with hooks and buttons; how once the looking-glass had held a face; had held a world hollowed out in which a figure turned, a hand flashed, the door opened, in came children rushing and tumbling; and went out again. Now, day after day, light turned, like a flower reflected in water, its sharp image on the wall opposite. Only the shadows of the trees, flourishing in the wind, made obeisance on the wall, and for a moment darkened the pool in which light reflected itself; or birds, flying, made a soft spot flutter slowly across the bedroom floor.
Genius | Integrity | Life | Life | Light | Means | Mind | Nature | People | Thought | Thought |
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
A sincere seeker constantly acquires self-insight, crisis or not.
Nature |
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
If we choose the easy way, by letting another think for us, we must eventually tread the hard way. If we select the hard way, by insisting upon our own mental integrity, we eventually come to the easy way.
Insight | Means | Mind | Nature | Truth | Will | Circumstance |
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
A clear understanding of negative emotions dismisses them.
Nature |
François-René de Chateaubriand, fully François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand
A moral character is attached to autumnal scenes. - The flowers fading like our hopes, the leaves falling like our years, the clouds fleeting like our illusions, the light diminishing like our intelligence, the sun growing colder like our affections, the rivers becoming frozen like our lives - all bear secret relations to our destinies.
Abuse | Destiny | Ends | Example | Family | Future | Glory | Humility | Nothing | Search | Silence | Thought | Following | Old | Thought |
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
Valuable self-knowledge comes through daily self-observation.
As all children do, like the vine's young shoots that cling to everything, she had tried to love.