This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Christians talk about the horror of sin, but they have overlooked something. They keep talking as if everyone were a great sinner, when the truth is that nowadays one is hardly up to it. There is very little sin in the depths of the malaise. The highest moment of a malaisian's life can be the moment when he manages to sin like a proper human (Look at us, Binx — my vagabond friends as good as cried out to me — we're sinning! We're succeeding! We're human after all!)
Beauty | Evil | Existence | God | Good | Man | Order | People | Search | Time | Wrong | Beauty | God | Child |
W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
What do nations care about the cost of war, if by spending a few hundred millions in steel and gunpowder they can gain a thousand millions in diamonds and cocoa?
Ends | Glory | Men | Right | Righteousness | Search | Training | Truth | Work | Think |
Just as my fingers on the keys make music, so the selfsame soul on my spirit make a music, too. Music is feeling, then, not sound.
Poetry |
One ought not to hoard culture. It should be adapted and infused into society as a leaven. Liberality of culture does not mean illiberality of its benefits.
Poetry |
Perhaps it is of more value to infuriate philosophers than to go along with them.
Mother of heaven, regina of the clouds, o sceptre of the sun, crown of the moon, there is not nothing, no, no, never nothing, like the clashed edges of two words that kill.
Vita Sackville-West, fully The Hon Victoria Mary Sackville-West, Lady Nicolson
Within the people I love, I always seem to detect something obstinate, almost up to the cruelty. A kind of core, a flame absolute rigor, a bit like they were determined to be faithful no matter what their commitments.
Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL
For the human body is so designed by nature that the face, from the chin to the top of the forehead and the lowest roots of the hair, is a tenth part of the whole height; the open hand from the wrist to the tip of the middle finger is just the same; the head from the chin to the crown is an eighth, and with the neck and shoulder from the top of the breast to the lowest roots of the hair is a sixth; from the middle of the breast to the summit of the crown is a fourth. If we take the height of the face itself, the distance from the bottom of the chin to the under-side of the nostrils is one third of it; the nose from the under-side of the nostrils to a line between the eyebrows is the same; from there to the lowest roots of the hair is also a third, comprising the forehead. The length of the foot is one sixth of the height of the body; of the forearm, one fourth; and the breadth of the breast is also one fourth... Then again, in the human body the central point is naturally the navel. For if a man be placed flat on his back, with his hands and feet extended, and a pair of compasses centered at his navel, the fingers and toes of his two hands and feet will touch the circumference of a circle described therefrom. And just as the human body yields a circular outline, so too a square figure may be found from it. For if we measure the distance from the soles of the feet to the top of the head, and then apply that measure to the outstretched arms, the breadth will be found to be the same as the height, as in the case of plane surfaces which are perfectly square.
Appearance | Compensation | Desire | Pleasure | Search | Will |
If from the earth we came, it was an earth that bore us as a part of all the things it breeds and that was lewder than it is. Our nature is her nature. Hence it comes, since by our nature we grow old, earth grows the same. We parallel the mother's death.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
All official and liberal science defends wage-slavery, whereas Marxism has declared relentless war on that slavery.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Everything in the world is beautiful, but Man only recognizes beauty if he sees it either seldom or from afar. Listen, today we are gods Our blue shadows are enormous We move in a gigantic, joyful world
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
In accordance with the law the death sentence was announced to Cincinnatus C. in a whisper. All rose, exchanging smiles.
Consciousness | Poetry | Position | Regard | Universe |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
There is an old American saying 'He who lives in a glass house should not try to kill two birds with one stone.
Battle | Books | Growth | Life | Life | Loafing | Man | Mind | Obsession | Pleasure | Rest | Science | Search | Struggle | World | Old |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.
Poetry |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?
Design | Example | Habit | Impossibility | Reading | Search | War |
Vine Deloria, fully Vine Victor Deloria, Jr.
Never has America lost a war ... But name, if you can, the last peace the United States won. Victory yes, but this country has never made a successful peace because peace requires exchanging ideas, concepts, thoughts, and recognizing the fact that two distinct systems of life can exist together without conflict. Consider how quickly America seems to be facing its allies of one war as new enemies.