This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The mystery lies in the here and now. The mystery is: What is one to do with oneself? As you get older you begin to realize the trick time is playing, and that unless you do something about it, the passage of time is nothing but the encroachment of the horrible banality of the past on the pure future. The past devours the future like a tape recorder, converting pure possibility into banality. The present is the tape head, the mouth of time. Then where is the mystery and why bother kicking through the ashes? Because there is a clue in the past.
W. Winwood Reade, fully William Winwood Reade
As for the system of the Commune, which makes it impossible for a man to rise or fall, it is merely the old caste system revived; if it could be put into force, all industry would be disheartened, emulation would cease, and mankind would go to sleep.
In this case I read on. And on. First with the sinking feeling that it was not bad enough to quit, then with a prickle of interest, then a growing excitement, and finally an incredulity: surely it was not possible that it was so good.
Consciousness | Discovery | Evolution | Knowing | Self | Discovery |
As for hobbies, people with stimulating hobbies suffer from the most noxious of despairs since they are tranquilized in their despair.
The enduring is something which must be accounted for. One cannot simply shrug it off.
Principles | Self | Understand |
What our eyes behold may well be the text of life but one's meditations on the text and the disclosures of these meditations are no less a part of the structure of reality.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
But every little difference may become a big one if it is insisted on.
Absurd | Attention | Books | Earth | Evidence | Humanity | Important | Means | Oppression | Order | Paradise | Philosophy | Practice | Proletariat | Question | Reflection | Religion | Society | Struggle | Tomorrow | Unity | Will | Society | Old | Propaganda |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Comrade Stalin, having become Secretary-General, has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution.
Equality | Experience | Nations | Right | Rights | Teach | Unity |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
It goes without saying that in examining the connection between one of the schools of modern physicists and the rebirth of philosophical idealism, it is far from being our intention to deal with specific physical theories. What interests us exclusively is the epistemological conclusions that follow from certain definite propositions and generally known discoveries. Our object, therefore, will be confined to explaining clearly the essence of the difference between these various trends and the relation in which they stand to the fundamental lines of philosophy.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
The sole "property" of matter with whose recognition philosophical materialism is bound up is the property of being an objective reality, of existing outside the mind.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Victory will belong only to those who have faith in the people, those who are immersed in the life-giving spring of popular creativity
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Everything in the world is beautiful, but Man only recognizes beauty if he sees it either seldom or from afar. Listen, today we are gods Our blue shadows are enormous We move in a gigantic, joyful world
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Some people — and I am one of them — hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam. The avalanche stopping in its tracks a few feet above the cowering village behaves not only unnaturally but unethically.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.
Beauty | Good | Heart | Literature | Mind | Unity | Will | Worth | Beauty |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Oh, do not scowl at me, reader, I do not intend to convey the impression that I did not manage to be happy.
Excitement | Grace | History | Little | Means | Men | Power | Right | Self | Television | Wonder | Understand |