This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
José Martí, fully José Julián Martí Pérez
A poem is something sacred. Let no one take it for anything except itself.
Major writing is to say what has been seen, so that it need never be said again.
Edward Albee, fully Edward Franklin Albee
The act of writing is an act of optimism; you would not take the trouble to do it if you felt that it didn't matter.
David Hare, fully Sir David Hare
The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.
A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape and significance of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.
Change | Good | Knowledge | Reality | Universe | World | Poem |
To see what students learn in school, look at how they leave school. If they leave thinking that reading and writing are difficult and pointless, that mathematics is confusing, that history is irrelevant, and that art is a bore, then that is what they have been taught. People learn what is demonstrated to them, and this reality will not change to suit the convenience of politicians and educations administrators.
Art | Change | History | Mathematics | People | Reading | Reality | Thinking | Will | Writing | Art | Learn |
Could Hamlet have been written by a committee, or the Mona Lisa painted by a club? Could the New Testament have been composed as a conference report? Creative ideas do not spring from groups. They spring from individuals. The divine spark leaps from the finger of God to the finger of Adam, whether it takes ultimate shape in a law of physics or a law of the land, a poem or a policy, a sonata or a mechanical computer.
Computer | God | Ideas | Land | Law | Policy | God | New Testament | Poem |
It is not wide reading but useful reading that tends to excellence.
Excellence | Reading |
Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, known as Dean Stanley
Insist on reading the great books, on marking the great events of the world. Then the little books can take care of themselves, and the trivial incidents of passing politics and diplomacy may perish with the using.
Books | Care | Diplomacy | Events | Little | Politics | Reading | World |