This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them all.
A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them. It is a wrong to his family. Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it. And the love of knowledge, in a young mind, is almost a warrant against the inferior excitement of passions and vices.
Books | Children | Excitement | Family | Knowledge | Love | Man | Means | Mind | Reading | Right | Wrong | Learn |
It is better to be the builder of our own name than to be indebted by descent for the proudest gifts known to the books of heraldry.
I still find each day too short for all thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see. The longer I lie the more my mind dwells upon the beauty and wonder of the world.
Beauty | Books | Day | Mind | Wonder | World | Beauty | Friends |
Luther Standing Bear, aka Ota Kte or Mochunozhin
Knowledge was inherent in all things. The world was a library and its books were the stones, leaves, grass, brooks ... We learned to do what only the students of nature ever learn, and that was to feel beauty.
Luther Standing Bear, aka Ota Kte or Mochunozhin
For all the great religions have preached and expounded, or have been revealed by brilliant scholars, or have been written in books and embellished in fine language with finer covers, men - all man - is still confronted with the Great Mystery.
Luther Standing Bear, aka Ota Kte or Mochunozhin
Knowledge was inherent in all things. The world was a library and its books were the stones, grass, brooks… What we learned to do what only the students of nature ever learn, and that was to feel beauty.
Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
A room without books is a body without a soul.
Maurice Sendak, fully Maurice Bernard Sendak
You cannot write for children. They're much too complicated. You can only write books that are of interest to them.
I am told that nothing that we do on earth, and nothing that we make on earth, is in as great abundance as force. We now have 30,000 pounds of destructive force, TNT equivalent, available for every human being on earth. We don't have 30,000 pounds of food or medicine or art or books or any of the things that ennoble life, but we have 30,000 pounds of instant force for every human being on earth.
Abundance | Art | Books | Earth | Force | Life | Life | Nothing | Art |
Mortimer J. Adler, fully Mortimer Jerome Adler
Wonder is the beginning of wisdom in learning from books as well as from nature.
Beginning | Books | Determination | Freedom | Learning | Self | Self-determination | Wisdom |
Worthy books are not companions, they are solitudes; we lose ourselves in them, and all our cares.
Books |
A man is known by the books he reads, by the company he keeps, by the praise he gives, by his dress, by his tastes, by his distastes, by the stories he tells, by his gait, by the motion of his eye, by the look of his house, of his chamber; for nothing on earth is solitary, but everything hath affinities infinite.
Proverbs, like the sacred books of each nation, are the sanctuary of the intuitions.
‘Tis the good reader that makes the good book in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.
Books | Good | Heart | Mind | Passion | Sensibility | Thought | Thought |