This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The Emperor of Ice-Cream - Call the roller of big cigars, the muscular one, and bid him whip in kitchen cups concupiscent curds. Let the wenches dawdle in such dress as they are used to wear, and let the boys bring flowers in last month's newspapers. Let be the finale of seem. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream. Take from the dresser of deal, lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet on which she embroidered fantails once and spread it so as to cover her face. If her horny feet protrude, they come to show how cold she is, and dumb. Let the lamp affix its beam. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
In European thought in general, as contrasted with American, vigor, life and originality have a kind of easy, professional utterance. American—on the other hand, is expressed in an eager amateurish way. A European gives a sense of scope, of survey, of consideration. An American is strained, sensational. One is artistic gold; the other is bullion.
Change | Contentment | Death | Dreams | Fulfillment | Mother | Need |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
My vocabulary dwells deep in my mind and needs paper to wriggle out into the physical zone. Spontaneous eloquence seems to me a miracle. I have rewritten, often several times, every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.
Accident | Day | Infancy | Mother | Nothing | Style | Writing |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
The day, a compunctious Sunday after a week of blizzards, had been part jewel, part mud. In the midst of my usual afternoon stroll through the small hilly town attached to the girls' college where I taught French literature, I had stopped to watch a family of brilliant icicles drip-dripping from the eaves of a frame house. So clear-cut were their pointed shadows on the white boards behind them that I was sure the shadows of the falling drops should be visible too. But they were not. (The Vane Sisters)
Common Sense | Existence | Light | Mother | Panic | People | Sense | Time | World |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
Every man is a creature of the age in which he lives, and few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Kay Arr, said the nursemaid, and Septimus heard her say Kay Arr close to his ear, deeply, softly, like a mellow organ, but with a roughness in her voice like a grasshopper's, which rasped his spine deliciously and sent running up into his brain waves of sound which, concussing, broke. A marvelous discovery indeed - that the human voice in certain atmospheric conditions (for one must be scientific, above all scientific) can quicken trees into life!
Contemplation | Control | Decision | Father | Inclination | Light | Mother | Position | Qualities | Quiet | Sadness | Spirit | Parting | Contemplation | Old |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
I begin to long for some little language such as lovers use, broken words, inarticulate words, like the shuffling of feet on pavement.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Has the finger of death to be laid on the tumult of life from time to time lest it rend us asunder? Are we so made that we have to take death in small doses daily or we could not go on with the business of living? And then what strange powers are these that penetrate our most secret ways and change our most treasured possessions without our willing it? Had Orlando, worn out by the extremity of his suffering, died for a week, and then come to life again? And if so, of what nature is death and of what nature life? Having waited well over half an hour for an answer to these questions, and none coming, let us get on with the story.
Nature, if we can attribute thought to it, knows that limits are necessary for everything little and big thing to live. The web of life is a web of boundaries between millions of species living in dynamic balance rather than one big amoeba of life. The acuity of the hawk determines the agility of the mouse. Farmers know their crops depend on respecting the requirements of soil, season and seed. The natural constraints of natural systems are liberating limits.
Mother |
It would have been difficult to say what was the nature of this look, and whence proceeded the flame that flashed from it. It was a fixed gaze, which was, nevertheless, full of trouble and tumult. And, from the profound immobility of his whole body, barely agitated at intervals by an involuntary shiver, as a tree is moved by the wind; from the stiffness of his elbows, more marble than the balustrade on which they leaned; or the sight of the petrified smile which contracted his face,— one would have said that nothing living was left about Claude Frollo except his eyes.
To rescue from oblivion even a fragment of a language which men have used and which is in danger of being lost --that is to say, one of the elements, whether good or bad, which have shaped and complicated civilization --is to extend the scope of social observation and to serve civilization.
Fill the World with Love. Love will warn you against advising another to do something which you are unwilling to do; your conscience will tell you that you are living in a lie.
Utter the name of God; it acts like a spark, which can burn into ash a big hill of cotton. All evil thoughts, wicked plans and plots will disappear like fog before the Sun when the Name of God is remembered sincerely.
Mother |
The Principle of Appearance that deludes as multiple manifestation is Maya. It is not external to God; it is inherent in God, just as all Powers are inherent in Him.
The music that can take them is the singing aloud the Name of God. And when they are too intoxicated to move and harm, catch them by the neck and pull out their fangs as the charmer does. Thereafter they can be your play things; you can handle them as you please.