This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
It seems to me that the sense of beauty in the external world, of interest in the life of man as a drama, and the desire of communicating this sense of beauty and interest to our fellows is or ought to be an essential part of the humanity of man, and that any man or set of men lacking that sense are less than men, and lack a portion of their birthright just as they were blind or deaf.
Now such an one for daughter Creon had as maketh wise men fools and young men mad.
A strange volume of real life in the daily packet of the postman. Eternal love and instant payment!
Excellence | Life | Life | Worth | Excellence |
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
You know, said Arthur, it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young. Why, what did she tell you?I don't know, I didn't listen.
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
Zaphod felt he was teetering on the edge of madness and wondered if he shouldn't just jump over and have done with it.
Better | Cowardice | Discretion |
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
The truth of the matter is, that most English people don't know how to make tea anymore either, and most people drink cheap instant coffee instead, which is a pity, and gives Americans the impression that the English are just generally clueless about hot stimulants.
An interesting corollary to this media pattern that has popped up in recent years is advertisers getting a TV commercial banned on purpose. This seems counterintuitive, but it works amazingly well. A company intentionally concocts an offensive commercial and has it produced professionally. It then submits it to a TV network to be added into rotation with the other ads. The network then rejects it. Subsequently, the company in question raises a big stink about it in the media and puts the original commercial on its website for download. The result is a huge surge in traffic to the company’s Web site from curious people looking to download the banned commercial in question.
Worth |
The language of women should be luminous, but not voluminous.
The most dangerous folly of old people who were once attractive is to forget that they are not so any longer.
Worth |
Most women do not grieve so much for the death of their lovers for love's-sake, as to show they were worthy of being beloved.
O, how wretched is that poor man that hangs on princes' favors! There is betwixt that smile we would aspire to, that sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin, more pangs and fears than wars or women have; and when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, never to hope again.
The public sense is in advance of private practice.
Physical consciousness is indispensable for the achievement of knowledge.
Worth |
Plutarch tells us of an idle and effeminate Etrurian who found fault with the manner in which Themistocles had conducted a recent campaign. "What," said the hero in reply, "have you, too, something to say about war, who are like the fish that has a sword, but no heart?" He is always the severest censor on the merits of others who has the least worth of his own.
Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen
She was twenty-one, pretty but brittle and wax-like from steam-heated air. All day long she was just an appearance, a rhythm: in studio or ballroom she expanded into delicate shapes like a Japanese ‘mystery’ flower dropped into water.