This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Richard Wagner, fully Wilhelm Richard Wagner
Music has taken a bad turn; these young people have no idea how to write a melody, they just give us shavings, which they dress up to look like a lion's mane and shake at us... It's as if they avoid melodies, for fear of having perhaps stolen them from someone else.
Most precepts that are given are so general that they cannot be applied, except by an exercise of as much discretion as would be sufficient to frame them.
Robert Benchley, fully Robert Charles Benchley
New York - The city where the people from Oshkosh look at the people from Dubuque in the next theater seats and say These New Yorkers don't dress any better than we do.
A News-monger is a Retailer of Rumour, that takes up upon Trust, and sells as cheap as he buys. He deals in a perishable Commodity, that will not keep: for if it be not fresh it lies upon his Hands, and will yield nothing. True or false is all one to him; for Novelty being the Grace of bothe, a Truth grows stale as soon as a Lye.
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
Language is the only instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas.
A fair day's wage for a fair day's work: it is as just a demand as governed men ever made of governing. It is the everlasting right of man.
Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
Literature... is the union of suffering with the instinct for form.
A Farmhouse on the Wei River - In the slant of the sun on the country-side, Cattle and sheep trail home along the lane; And a rugged old man in a thatch door Leans on a staff and thinks of his son, the herdboy. There are whirring pheasants, full wheat-ears, Silk-worms asleep, pared mulberry-leaves. And the farmers, returning with hoes on their shoulders, Hail one another familiarly. ...No wonder I long for the simple life And am sighing the old song, Oh, to go Back Again.
Change | Doubt | Earth | God | Heart | Journey | Land | Love | Magic | Man | Nothing | People | Plan | Quiet | Reason | Search | Thinking | Time | World | God | Old | Think |
You don’t believe—I won’t attempt to make ye: You are asleep—I won’t attempt to wake ye. Sleep on! sleep on! while in your pleasant dreams Of Reason you may drink of Life’s clear streams. Reason and Newton, they are quite two things; For so the swallow and the sparrow sings. Reason says ‘Miracle’: Newton says ‘Doubt.’ Aye! that’s the way to make all Nature out. ‘Doubt, doubt, and don’t believe without experiment’: That is the very thing that Jesus meant, When He said ‘Only believe! believe and try! Try, try, and never mind the reason why!’
William Bolitho, pen name for Charles William Ryall
Wilson adventured for the whole of the human race. Not as a servant, but as a champion. So pure was this motive, so unfrocked with anything that his worst enemies could find, except the mildest and most excusable, a personal vanity, practically the minimum to be human, that in a sense his adventure is that of humanity itself. In Wilson, the whole of mankind breaks camp, sets out from home and wrestles with the universe and its gods.
Will |
Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
Nothing will spoil a big man’s life like too much truth.
People |
Whitney Young, fully Whitney Moore Young, Jr.
You can holler, protest, march, picket and demonstrate, but somebody must be able to sit in on the strategy conferences and plot a course. There must be strategies, the researchers, the professionals to carry out the program. That's our role.
Dignity |
In my youth I hoped to do great things; now I shall be satisfied to get through without scandal.
Discretion | Mind | Power | Public | Quiet | Responsibility |
Popular religion in our midst, however, has greatly reduced the notion of obedience, so that it has become either a virtue too much celebrated or a burden too much dreaded.
The dry eucalyptus seeks god in the rainy cloud. Professor Eucalyptus of New Haven seeks him in New Haven with an eye that does not look beyond the object.
Woman |
Vivienne Westwood, born Vivienne Isabel Swire
There's this idea that somehow you've got to keep changing things, and as often as possible. Maybe if people just decided not to buy anything for a while, they'd get a chance to think about what they wanted; what they really liked.
Vivienne Westwood, born Vivienne Isabel Swire
You have a much better life if you wear impressive clothes.
Beauty | People | Personality | Style | Will | Beauty | Think |