This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
Housework is a treadmill from futility to oblivion with stop offs at tedium and counter productivity.
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Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
How come anything you buy will go on sale next week?
Mysteriously, the Ecotopians do not feel ‘separate’ from their technology. They evidently feel a little as the Indians must have felt: that the horse and the teepee and the bowand arrow all sprang, like the human being, from the womb of nature, organically. Of course the Ecotopians work on natural materials far more extensively and complexly than the Indians worked stone into arrowpoint, or hide into teepee. But they treat materials in the same spirit of respect, comradeship. The other day I stopped to watch some carpenters working on a building. They marked and sawed the wood lovingly (using their own muscle power, not our saws). Their nail patterns, I noticed, were beautifully placed and their rhythm of hammering seemed patient, almost placid. When they raised wood pieces into place, they held them carefully, fitted them (they make many joints by notching as well as nailing). They seemed almost to be collaborating with the wood rather than forcing it into the shape of a building.
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Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
I have noticed that doctors who fail in the practice of medicine have a tendency to seek one another's company and aid in consultation. A doctor who cannot take out your appendix properly will recommend you to a doctor who will be unable to remove your tonsils with success.
Behavior | Day | Determination | Enough | Good | Kill | Man | Nothing | Sorrow | Understand |
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
But, you say, there is very little conversation in this book. Why isn't there more dialogue? What we want in a book by this citizen is people talking; that is all he knows how to do and now he doesn't do it. The fellow is no philosopher, no savant, an incompetent zoologist, he drinks too much and cannot punctuate readily and now he has stopped writing dialogue. Someone ought to put a stop to him. He is bull crazy.
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Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
If the book is good, is about something that you know, and is truly written, and reading it over you see that this is so, you can let the boys yip and the noise will have that pleasant sound coyotes make on a very cold night when they are out in the snow and you are in your own cabin that you have built or paid for with your work.
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
If you stop complaining and asking for what you never will get, you will have a good life. A good life is not measured by any biblical span.
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Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
The fun of talk is to explore, but much of it and all that is irresponsible should not be written. Once written you have to stand by it. You may have said it to see whether you believed it or not. On the question you raised, the effects of wounds vary greatly. Simple wounds which do not break bone are of little account. They sometimes give confidence. Wounds which do extensive bone and nerve damage are not good for writers, nor anybody else.
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
That seemed to handle it. That was it. Send a girl off with one man. Introduce her to another to go off with him. Now go and bring her back. And sign the wire with love. That was it all right. I went in to lunch.
Better | Courage | Good | Kill | Light | Loneliness | Love | Man | People | Time | Will | Wishes | World | Afraid |
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
The clouds were building up now for the trade wind and he looked ahead and saw a flight of wild ducks etching themselves against the sky over the water, then blurring, then etching again and he knew no man was ever alone on the sea.
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Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be. But what will happen in all the other days that ever come can depend on what you do today. It's been that way all this year. It's been that way so many times. All of war is that way.
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