This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky
One of the most important lessons that experience teaches is that, on the whole, success depends more upon character than upon either intellect or fortune.
Aims | Attainment | Childhood | Happy | Leisure | Life | Life | Little | Pleasure | Purpose | Purpose | Right | Rule | Will | Work | Happiness |
There is no pain on this earth like seeing the same woman look at another man the way she once looked at you.
Mind | Order | Pleasure | Self | Time | Understanding | Understand |
W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer
Anyone who has ever been gripped by enthusiasm for a subject or a hobby knows the infinite difference between the way the mind works in such a situation and the way it works when we are engaged in something that does not appeal to us.
Pleasure |
W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer
One cannot expect Miss Jones to revolutionize her outlook overnight. One has to provide her with a steady stream of material, which she can introduce into her existing syllabus as enrichment. In the course of years, she will enlarge her repertoire. All the time, the new material should be as close as possible to what she already knows. This is how revolutions are made; not by taking one big step, but by taking many little steps quickly, one after other.
Force | Joy | Mathematics | Pleasure | Question | Regret | Sense | Worry |
Vita Sackville-West, fully The Hon Victoria Mary Sackville-West, Lady Nicolson
I suppose the pleasure of the country life lies really in the eternally renewed evidences of the determination to live. That is a truism when said, but anything but a truism when daily observed. Nothing shows up the difference between the thing said or read, so much as the daily experience of it.
Determination | Life | Life | Pleasure |
Vita Sackville-West, fully The Hon Victoria Mary Sackville-West, Lady Nicolson
I worshipped dead men for their strength, forgetting I was strong.
Determination | Experience | Life | Life | Nothing | Pleasure |
Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL
For the human body is so designed by nature that the face, from the chin to the top of the forehead and the lowest roots of the hair, is a tenth part of the whole height; the open hand from the wrist to the tip of the middle finger is just the same; the head from the chin to the crown is an eighth, and with the neck and shoulder from the top of the breast to the lowest roots of the hair is a sixth; from the middle of the breast to the summit of the crown is a fourth. If we take the height of the face itself, the distance from the bottom of the chin to the under-side of the nostrils is one third of it; the nose from the under-side of the nostrils to a line between the eyebrows is the same; from there to the lowest roots of the hair is also a third, comprising the forehead. The length of the foot is one sixth of the height of the body; of the forearm, one fourth; and the breadth of the breast is also one fourth... Then again, in the human body the central point is naturally the navel. For if a man be placed flat on his back, with his hands and feet extended, and a pair of compasses centered at his navel, the fingers and toes of his two hands and feet will touch the circumference of a circle described therefrom. And just as the human body yields a circular outline, so too a square figure may be found from it. For if we measure the distance from the soles of the feet to the top of the head, and then apply that measure to the outstretched arms, the breadth will be found to be the same as the height, as in the case of plane surfaces which are perfectly square.
Appearance | Compensation | Desire | Pleasure | Search | Will |
Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL
Let the stone be taken from the quarry two years before building is to begin, and not in winter, but in summer. Then let it lie exposed in an open place. Such stone as been damaged by the two years of exposure should be used in the foundations. The rest, which remains unhurt, has passed the test of nature and will endure in those parts of the building which are above ground.
Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL
Water from clay pipes is much more wholesome than that which is conducted through lead pipes, because lead is found to be harmful for the reason that white lead is derived from it, and this is said to be hurtful to the human system.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
There are two kinds of visual memory: one when you skillfully recreate an image in the laboratory of your mind, with your eyes open (and then I see Annabel in such general terms as: honey-colored kins, 'thin arms, brown bobbed hair, long lashes, big bright mouth_; and the other when you instantly evoke, with shut eyes on the dark inner side of your eyelids, the objective, absolutely optical replica of a beloved face, a little ghost in natural colors (and this is how I see Lolita).
Art | Impression | Lesson | Magic | Pleasure | Present | Unique | Art |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Once we deny a Higher Intelligence that plans and administrates our individual hereafters we are bound to accept the unspeakably dreadful notion of Chance reaching into Eternity.
Day | Life | Life | Man | Pleasure | Plenty | Space | Story | Time | Wife |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
My angel, oh my angel, perhaps our whole earthly existence is now but a pun to you, or a grotesque rhyme, something like dental and transcendental (remember?), and the true meaning of reality, of that piercing term, purged of all our strange, dreamy, masquerade interpretations, now sounds so pure and sweet that you, angel, find it amusing that we could have taken the dream so seriously (although you and I did have an inkling of why everything disintegrated at one furtive touch-- words, conventions of everyday life, systems, persons-- so, you know, I think laughter is some chance little ape of truth astray in our world.
Advice | Critic | Distinguish | Means | Mediocrity | Rest | Learn |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
I do not know if it has ever been noted before that one of the main characteristics of life is discreteness. Unless a film of flesh envelopes us, we die. Man exists only insofar as he is separated from his surroundings. The cranium is a space-traveler's helmet. Stay inside or you perish. Death is divestment, death is communion. It may be wonderful to mix with the landscape, but to do so is the end of the tender ego.
Absolute | Day | Dreams | Little | Play | Pleasure | Sense | Work | World |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
There is an old American saying 'He who lives in a glass house should not try to kill two birds with one stone.
Battle | Books | Growth | Life | Life | Loafing | Man | Mind | Obsession | Pleasure | Rest | Science | Search | Struggle | World | Old |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
This then is my story. i have reread it. it has bits of marrow sticking to it, and blood, and beautiful bright-green flies. At this or that twist of it i feel my slippery self-eluding me, gliding into deeper and darker waters than i care to probe.
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
It is not love that should be depicted as blind, but self-love.
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly
Pleasure |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Why is it so difficult—so degradingly difficult—to bring the notion of Time into mental focus and keep it there for inspection? What an effort, what fumbling, what irritating fatigue!
People |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
I already began to inspire the men with love. My breast began to take its right form, and such a breast! white, firm, and formed like that of the Venus de' Medici; my eyebrows were as black as jet, and as for my eyes, they darted flames and eclipsed the luster of the stars, as I was told by the poets of our part of the world. My maids, when they dressed and undressed me, used to fall into an ecstasy in viewing me before and behind; and all the men longed to be in their places.
Pleasure |