This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
It is never to be expected in a revolution that every man is to change his opinion at the same moment. There never yet was any truth or any principle so irresistibly obvious that all men believed it at once. Time and reason must cooperate with each other to the final establishment of any principle; and therefore those who may happen to be first convinced have not a right to persecute others, on whom conviction operates more slowly. The moral principle of revolutions is to instruct, not to destroy.
Reeds of Innocence - Piping down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee, On a cloud I saw a child, And he laughing said to me: ‘Pipe a song about a Lamb!’ So I piped with merry cheer. ‘Piper, pipe that song again;’ So I piped: he wept to hear. ‘Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe; Sing thy songs of happy cheer!’ So I sung the same again, While he wept with joy to hear. ‘Piper, sit thee down and write In a book that all may read.’ So he vanish’d from my sight; And I pluck’d a hollow reed, And I made a rural pen, And I stain’d the water clear, And I wrote my happy songs Every child may joy to hear.
Love to faults is always blind; Always is to joy inclin’d, Lawless, wing’d and unconfin’d, And breaks all chains from every mind. Deceit to secrecy confin’d, Lawful, cautious and refin’d; To anything but interest blind, And forges fetters for the mind.
Benevolence | Burial | Divinity | Enemy | God | Man | Marriage | Men | Murder | Receive | Smile | Time | Will | Wishes | Worship | Friendship | God | Murder | Forgive | Friends |
I think humor is a very serious thing. I use it as a way of weakening the reader's defenses so that I can more easily take him to something more.
Wishes |
Can a woman's tender care cease towards the child she bare? Yes, she may forgetful be, yet will I remember thee.
Wilkie Collins, fully William Wilkie Collins
And earth was heaven a little the worse for wear. And heaven was earth, done up again to look like new.
Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
Millions and millions of people don't pay an income tax, because they don't earn enough to pay on one, but you pay a land tax whether it ever did or ever will earn you a penny. You should pay on things that you buy outside of bare necessities. I think this sales tax is the best tax we have had in years.
Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
Well, they finally stopped us from sending marines to every war that we could hear of. They are having one in Afghanistan. The thing will be over before Congress can pronounce it, much less find out where it is located.
Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather
Thirty or forty years ago, in one those grey towns along the Burlington railroad which are so much greyer to-day than they were then, there was a house well know from Omaha to Denver for its hospitality and for a certain charm of atmosphere.
Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers
Crime, violence, infamy are not tragedy. Tragedy occurs when a human soul awakes and seeks, in suffering and pain, to free itself from crime, violence, infamy, even at the cost of life. The struggle is the tragedy - not defeat or death. That is why the spectacle of tragedy has always filled men, not with despair, but with a sense of hope and exaltation.
Conservatism | Little | Struggle | Wishes |
Since you have forsaken the world and turned wholly to God, you are symbolically dead in the eyes of men; therefore, let your heart be dead to all earthly affections and concerns… For you must be well aware that if we make an outward show of conversion to God without giving Him our hearts, it is only a shadow and pretense of virtue, and no true conversion. Any man or woman who neglects to maintain inward vigilance, and only makes an outward show of holiness in dress, speech, and behavior, is a wretched creature. For they watch the doings of other people and criticize their faults, imagining themselves to be something when in reality they are nothing. In this way they deceive themselves. Be careful to avoid this, and devote yourself inwardly to His likeness by humility, charity, and other spiritual virtues. In this way you will be truly converted to God.
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
Nobody can honestly think of himself as a strong character because, however successful he may be in overcoming them, he is necessarily aware of the doubts and temptations that accompany every important choice.
Wishes |
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
In the course of many centuries a few laborsaving devices have been introduced into the mental kitchen — alcohol, coffee, tobacco, Benzedrine, etc. — but these are very crude, constantly breaking down, and liable to injure the cook. Literary composition in the twentieth century A.D. is pretty much what it was in the twentieth century B.C.: nearly everything has still to be done by hand.
W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer
I enjoyed the mathematics that I had time to learn. If I ever need or want to learn some more, I shall not be afraid to do so.
Crime | Energy | Force | Fulfillment | Good | Important | Individual | Learning | Little | Means | Sense | Society | Will | Wishes | Society |