This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
What's this, Aurora Leigh, you write so of the poets and not laugh? Those virtuous liars, dreamers after dark, exaggerators of the sun and moon, and soothsayers in a tea-cup? I write so of the only truth-tellers, now left to God,— the only speakers of essential truth, opposed to relative, comparative, and temporal truths... the only teachers who instruct mankind, from just a shadow on a charnel-wall.
Characters take on life sometimes by luck, but I suspect it is when you can write more entirely out of yourself, inside the skin, heart, mind, and soul of a person who is not yourself, that a character becomes in his own right another human being on the page.
Enough | Imagination | Little | People | Praise | Wonder | Blessed |
Oh, trebly blest the placid lot of those whose hearth foundations are in pure love laid, where husband's breast with tempered ardor glows, and wife, oft mother, is in heart a maid!
One of the dreariest spots on life's road is the point of conviction that nothing will ever again happen to you.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.
Praise |
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
Being a cheerful hobbit, he had not needed hope, as long as despair could be postponed.
Aid | Government | Need | Praise | Government |
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
I am in fact a Hobbit (in all but size). I like gardens, trees, and unmechanized farmlands; I smoke a pipe, and like good plain food (unrefrigerated), but detest French cooking; I like, and even dare to wear in these dull days, ornamental waistcoats. I am fond of mushrooms (out of a field); have a very simple sense of humor (which even my appreciative critics find tiresome); I go to bed late and get up late (when possible). I do not travel much.