This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens
It is not best that we use our morals week days; it gets them out of repair for Sundays.
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
Grand is the seen, the light, to me - grand are the sky and stars, grand is the earth, and grand are lasting time and space, but grander far the unseen soul of me, comprehending, endowing all those, lighting the slight, the sky and stars, delving the earth, sailing the sea, (what were all those, indeed, without thee, unseen soul? of what amount without thee?) More evolutionary, vast, puzzling, O my soul! More multiform far - more lasting thou than they.
Elsa Yur'evna Triolet, Born Ella Kagan
Killing time or killing yourself amounts to the same thing, strictly speaking.
The wise men of old have sent most of their morality down to the stream of time in the light skiff of apothegm or epigram; and the proverbs of nations, which embody the common sense of nations, have the brisk concussion of the most sparkling wit.
Character | Common Sense | Light | Men | Morality | Nations | Proverbs | Sense | Time | Wise | Wit | Old |
Xenophon, aka Xenophon of Athens NULL
Enemies are wealth to anyone who can derive profit from them.
Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
If we conceive of some point of time which cannot be divided into even the minutes parts of moments, that is the only point that can be called present: and that point flees at such lightning speed from being future to being past, that it has no extent of duration at all.
Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens
There are no grades of vanity, there are only grades of ability in concealing it.
They always say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.
As it is never too soon to be good, so it is never too late to amend; I will, therefore, neither neglect the time present, nor despair of the time past. If I had been sooner good, I might perhaps have been better; if I am longer bad, I shall I am sure, be worse.
Better | Character | Despair | Good | Neglect | Past | Present | Time | Will |
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish. This is bad for everyone; the majority lose all genuine taste of their own, and the minority become cultural snobs.
Art | Entertainment | Majority | Taste | Wisdom |
In our thinking we must preserve an open and enquiring mind, an ability to see things through the eyes of our opponents, a skill for understanding the motives and thoughts of those whom we oppose. Yet we must act in the light of the best knowledge and reason available to us at the moment.
Ability | Character | Knowledge | Light | Mind | Motives | Reason | Skill | Thinking | Understanding | Wisdom |
Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
Some things are hurrying into existence, and others are hurrying out of it; and of that which is coming into existence part is already extinguished. Motions and changes are continually renewing the world, just as the uninterrupted course of time is always renewing the infinite duration of ages. In this flowing stream, then on which there is no abiding, what is there of the things which hurry by on which a man would set a high price? It would be just as if a man should fall in love with one of the sparrows, which fly by, but it has already passed out of sight.
Existence | Hurry | Love | Man | Price | Time | Wisdom | World |