This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The planting of trees is the least self-centered of all that we can do. It is a purer act of faith than the procreation of children." - Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder
"An Athenian citizen does not neglect the state because he takes care of his own household; and even those of us who are engaged in business have a very fair idea of politics. We alone regard a man who takes no interest in public affairs, not as a harmless, but as a useless character, and if few of us are originators, we are all sound judges of a policy." - Thucydides NULL
"The freaks of chance are not determinable by calculation." - Thucydides NULL
"The examination of the bodies of animals has always been my delight; and I have thought that we might thence not only obtain an insight into the . . . mysteries of Nature, but there perceive a kind of image or reflex of the omnipotent Creator himself." - William Harvey
"We may be in the Universe as dogs and cats are in our libraries, seeing the books and hearing the conversation, but having no inkling of the" - William James
"When two minds of a high order, interested in kindred subjects, come together, their conversation is chiefly remarkable for the summariness of its allusions and the rapidity of its transitions. Before one of them is half through a sentence the other knows his meaning and replies. ... His mental lungs breathe more deeply, in an atmosphere more broad and vast..." - William James
"Women share with men the need for personal success, even the taste of power, and no longer are we willing to satisfy those needs through the achievements of surrogates, whether husbands, children, or merely role models." - Elizabeth Dole, fully Mary Elizabeth Alexander Hanford "Liddy" Dole
"Do I really deserve this pleasure? This is American, too-the insecurity about whether we have earned our happiness." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"Only the young and stupid are confident about sex and romance." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"There's a wonderful old Italian joke about a poor man who goes to church every day and prays before the statue of a great saint, begging, Dear saint-please, please, please...give me the grace to win the lottery. This lament goes on for months. Finally the exasperated staue comes to life, looks down at the begging man and says in weary disgust, My son-please, please, please...buy a ticket. Prayer is a realtionship; half the job is mine. If I want transformation, but can't even be bothered to articulate what, exactly, I'm ainming for, how will it ever occur? Half the benefit of prayer is in the asking itself, in the offering of a clearly posed and well-considered intention. If you don't have this, all your pleas and desires are boneless, floppy, inert; they swirl at your feet in a cold fog and never lift." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"To find the balance you want, this is what you must become. You must keep your feet grounded so firmly on the earth that it's like you have 4 legs instead of 2. That way, you can stay in the world. But you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart, instead. That way, you will know God." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"You may return here once you have fully come to understand that you are always here" - Elizabeth Gilbert
"Skepticism is the sadism of embittered souls." - Emil M. Cioran
"To foreswear vengeance is to chain oneself to forgiveness, to flounder in pardon, to be tainted by the hatred smothered within." - Emil M. Cioran
"His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly anymore because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"No subject is terrible if the story is true, if the prose is clean and honest, and if it affirms courage and grace under pressure." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"The emotion you feel is always about the vibrational variance between where you want to be and where you are. If you're out of balance, there are only two ways to bring yourself into alignment - either raise your expectation to match your desire, or lower your desire to match your expectation." - Ester and Jerry Hicks
"Neither prophets nor priests nor psalmists offer quick cures for the suffering: we don’t find any of them telling us to take a vacation, use this drug, get a hobby. Nor do they ever engage in publicity cover-ups, the plastic-smile propaganda campaigns that hide trouble behind a billboard of positive thinking. None of that the suffering is held up and proclaimed – and prayed." - Eugene Peterson
"The Pension Dressler stood in a side street and had, at first glance, the air rather of a farm than of a hotel. Frau Dressler's pig, tethered by one hind trotter to the jamb of the front door, roamed the yard and disputed the kitchen scraps with the poultry. He was a prodigious beast. Frau Dressler's guests prodded him appreciatively on the way to the dining-room, speculating on how soon he would be ripe for killing. The milch-goat was allowed a narrower radius; those who kept strictly to the causeway were safe, but she never reconciled herself to this limitation and, day in, day out, essayed a series of meteoric onslaughts on the passers-by, ending, at the end of her rope, with a jerk which would have been death to an animal of any other species. One day the rope would break; she knew it, and so did Frau Dressler's guests." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
"The soldier is well paid for doing mischief." - Italian Proverbs
"To promise and give nothing is comfort for a fool." - Italian Proverbs