This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
She was not happy--she never had been. Whence came this insufficiency in life--this instantaneous turning to decay of everything on which she leaned? But if there were somewhere a being strong and beautiful, a valiant nature, full at once of exaltation and refinement, a poet's heart in an angel's form, a lyre with sounding chords ringing out elegiac epithalamia to heaven, why, perchance, should she not find him? Ah! How impossible! Besides, nothing was worth the trouble of seeking it; everything was a lie. Every smile hid a yawn of boredom, every joy a curse, all pleasure satiety, and the sweetest kisses left upon your lips only the unattainable desire for a greater delight.
Land |
She was standing bolt upright. With big flaming eyes she looked down on him with a severe, almost terrible expression. Then tears came and made a mist in them, her shell-like eyelids drooped, she surrendered her hands.
Woman |
21 Suggestions for Success: Marry the right person. This one decision will determine 90% of your happiness or misery. Work at something you enjoy and that's worthy of your time and talent. Give people more than they expect and do it cheerfully. Become the most positive and enthusiastic person you know. Be forgiving of yourself and others. Be generous. Have a grateful heart. Persistence, persistence, persistence. Discipline yourself to save money on even the most modest salary. Treat everyone you meet like you want to be treated. Commit yourself to constant improvement. Commit yourself to quality. Understand that happiness is not based on possessions, power or prestige, but on relationships with people you love and respect. Be loyal. Be honest. Be a self-starter. Be decisive even if it means you'll sometimes be wrong. Stop blaming others. Take responsibility for every area of your life. Be bold and courageous. When you look back on your life, you'll regret the things you didn't do more than the ones you did. Take good care of those you love. Don't do anything that wouldn't make your Mom proud.
Good |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again next time.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
Every bachelor is a hero to some married woman.
Gustavo Dudamel and the Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra
I think the atmosphere of a Prom concert can change your life, in the best way. It's so deep, the feeling you have there. The audience is so close, and there are so many of them, that you feel they are almost embracing you.
Good |
You must take action now that will move you towards your goals. Develop a sense of urgency in your life.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.
Will |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
We must respect the other fellow's religion but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
It is characteristic of the Oxford school of criticism to understand these [metaphysical] fallacies as logical non sequiturs?as though philosophers throughout the centuries had been, for reasons unknown, just a bit too stupid to discover the elementary flaws in their arguments. The truth of the matter is that elementary logical mistakes are quite rare in the history of philosophy; what appear to be errors in logic to minds disencumbered of questions that have been uncritically dismissed as ?meaningless? are usually caused by semblances, unavoidable for beings whose whole existence is determined by appearance. Hence, In our context the only relevant question is whether the semblances are inauthentic or authentic ones, whether they are caused by dogmatic beliefs and arbitrary assumptions, mere mirages that disappear upon closer inspection, or whether they are inherent in the paradoxical condition of a living being that, though itself part of the world of appearances, is in possession of a faculty, the ability to think, that permits the mind to withdraw from the world without ever being able to leave it or transcend it.
When all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing.
I am not an optimist. I'm a very serious possibilist. It's a new category where we take emotion apart and we just work analytically with the world.
Bride |
J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
A lot of men who have accepted - or had imposed upon them in boyhood - the old English public school styles of careful modesty in speech, with much understatement, have behind their masks an appalling and impregnable conceit of themselves.
Beginning | Change | Silence | Understand |
J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
Right conduct, truth, and beauty are only different aspects of what is fundamentally the same. Right conduct embodies co-ordinated wholeness, which can be, and often is, called beautiful. It also embodies truth, as standing for a true perception of the relations between different individuals. Similarly, truth as being essentially motivated, involves not only a true realization of co-ordinated relations, but also the furthering of them. In a similar way, beauty involves both truth or right perception and the co-ordinated wholeness which we find also in right conduct.
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
I have not been nourished by English Literature... for the simple reason that I have never found much there in which to rest my heart (or heart and head together). I was brought up in the Classics, and first discovered the sensation of literary pleasure in Homer... I do know Celtic things (many in their original languages Irish and Welsh), and feel for them a certain distaste: largely for their fundamental unreason. They have bright color, but are like a broken stained glass window reassembled without design. They are in fact ?mad?. . . but I don?t believe I am... I set myself a task, the arrogance of which I fully recognized and trembled at: being precisely to restore to the English an epic tradition and present them with a mythology of their own.
Light |
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
I pass over pangs to me of passing through Hall Green--become a huge tram-ridden meaningless suburb, where I actually lose my way--and eventually down what is left of beloved lanes of childhood, and past the very gate of our cottage, now in the midst of a sea of new red-brick. The old mill still stands, and Mrs. Hunt's still sticks out into the road as it turns uphill; but the crossing beyond the now fenced-in pool, where the bluebell lane ran down into the mill lane, is now a dangerous crossing alive with motors and red lights. The White Ogre's house (which the children were very excited to see) is become a petrol station, and most of Short Avenue and the elms between it and the crossing have gone. How I envy those whose precious early scenery has not been exposed to such violent and peculiarly hideous change. Her hair was raven, her skin clear, her eyes bright, and she could sing--and dance.