This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
Do you see, Arren, how an act is not, as young men think, like a rock that one picks up and throws, and it hits or misses, and that's the end of it. When that rock is lifted, the earth is lighter; the hand that bears it is heavier. When it is thrown, the circuits of the stars respond, and where it strikes or falls the universe is changed.
If a person is gifting away his elephant but his heart is set on the rope used for tying the elephant, of what use is his attachment to the rope when he is giving away the elephant itself.
Nature | People | Friendship |
There is atonement, laid down by men of character, for one who kills a cow, consumes intoxicating drinks, steals or breaks one’s promise but there is no atonement for one who is ungrateful.
One night with an ugly woman and one day in the mountains both are like an eternity.
Liar's candle will last till evening. (Meaning: Lies will work only for a limited time.)
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
But the Indias and Chinas are increasingly adding one more thing to low-cost labor and high-power technology: unfettered imagination–that is, high innovative and creative capabilities. They will focus first on solving their own problems with cheap labor, high technology, and high creativity–re-imagining their own futures… So, for the last time, you have been warned. This is not a test.
If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will avoid a hundred days of sorrow.
When a king is about to lose his power his orders burn more intensely than fire.
Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins
Boomer had asked her once, in a telephone call from Virginia, Why does this stuff, these hand-painted hallucinations that don’t do nothin’ but confuse the puddin’ out of a perfectly reasonable wall, why does it mean so much to you? It was a poor connection, but he could have sworn he heard her say, In the haunted house of life, art is the only stair that doesn’t creak.
Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins
Now, the line that separates objects from ideas can be pretty twiggy, but let's not unzip that pair of pants. Galileo was right to drop objects rather than ideas off of his tower, and the Care Fest might have been wise to stick with objects, as well. Within the normal range of perception, the behavior of objects can be measured and predicted. Ignoring the possibility that in the wrong hands almost any object, including this book you hold, can turn up as Exhibit A in a murder trial; ignoring, for the moment, the far more interesting possibility that every object might lead a secret life, it is still safe to say that objects, as we understand them, are relatively stable, whereas ideas are definitely unstable, they not only can be misused, they invite misuse--and the better the idea the more volatile it is. That's because only the better ideas turn into dogma, and it is this process whereby a fresh, stimulating, humanly helpful idea is changed into robot dogma that is deadly. In terms of hazardous vectors released, the transformation of ideas into dogma rivals the transformation of hydrogen into helium, uranium into lead, or innocence into corruption. And it is nearly as relentless.
Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins
Human folly does not impede the turning of the stars.
Any bar, any cross, any impediment will be medicinable to me.
Cock-crow at Christmas 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 can walk abroad; the nights are wholesome; then no planets strike, no fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, so hallow'd and so gracious is the time. Hamlet, Act i, Scene 1
Better |
Cease to lament for that thou canst not help; and study help for that which thou lamentest.
Words |
William Howells, fully William Dean Howells, aka The Dean of American Letters
The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.
Property |