This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We propose to entirely exclude prayer and every form of ritual. Thus shall we avoid even the appearance of interfering with those to whom prayer and ritual, as a mode of expressing religious sentiment, are dear. And on the other hand we shall be just to those who have ceased to regard them as satisfactory and dispensed with them in their own persons.
One ought to know everything, to write. All of us scribblers are monstrously ignorant. If only we weren?t lacking in stamina, what a rich field of ideas and similes we could tap! Books that have been the source of entire literatures, like Homer and Rabelais, contain the sum of all the knowledge of their times. They knew everything, those fellows, and we know nothing.
She remembered the heroines of novels she had read, and the legion of lyrical those adulterous women began to sing in her memory with sisterly voices that enchanted her. Now she saw herself as one of those whom she had love so envied: she was becoming, in reality, one of that gallery of fictional figures, long dream of her youth was coming true. He remembered the heroines of novels she read and the lyrical legion of adulterous women those began to sing in her memory with sisterly voices that enchanted her. Now she saw herself as one of those whom she had love so envied: she was becoming, in reality, one of that gallery of fictional figures, long dream of her youth was the coming true.
Gustavo Dudamel and the Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra
For me to rehearse with a children's orchestra a Mahler symphony was to really work. We had three or four weeks of rehearsal with the orchestra, every day eight or nine hours, putting the First together. I had been conducting Tchaikovsky a lot and Beethoven, but Mahler was different.
There was an air of indifference about them, a calm produced by the gratification of every passion; and through their manners were suave, one could sense beneath them that special brutality which comes from the habit of breaking down half-hearted resistances that keep one fit and tickle one?s vanity?the handling of blooded horses, the pursuit of loose women.
Day | Fate | God | Hate | Life | Life | Nothing | Fate | God |
When all was over at the cemetery Charles returned to the house. There was no one downstairs. He went up into the bedroom and saw her dress hanging up at the foot of the bed. Then, leaning against the secretaire, he remained there till it was dark, lost in sorrowful meditation. After all, she had loved him.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
There is no truth except in its relation, that is to say, the fashion in which we perceive the objects.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
In any combat between a rogue and a fool the sympathy of mankind is always with the rogue.
Life | Life | Television |
If you ask a member of this generation two simple questions: "How do you want the world to be in fifty years?" and "What do you want your life to be like five years from now?" the answers are quite often preceded by "Provided there is still a world" and "Provided I am still alive." To the often-heard question, ?Who are they, this new generation?? one is tempted to answer, Those who hear the ticking. And to the other question, Who are they who utterly deny them? the answer may well be, Those who do not know, or refuse to face, things as they really are.
Will |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
We are, in fact, a nation of evangelists; every third American devotes himself to improving and lifting up his fellow-citizens, usually by force; the messianic delusion is our national disease.
Living beings, men and animals, are not just in the world, they are of the world, and this precisely because they are subjects and objects-perceiving and being perceived-at the same time.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
The liberation of the human mind has never been furthered by such learned dunderheads; it has been furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries and then went roistering down the highways of the world, proving to all men that doubt, after all, was safe - that the god in the sanctuary was finite in his power, and hence a fraud. One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent.
Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being.