This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"But you might as well bid a man struggling in the water, rest within arm's length of the shore! I must reach it first, and then I'll rest." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"Riches I hold in light esteem, and love I laugh to scorn, and lust of fame was but a dream that vanished with the morn. And if I pray, the only prayer that moves my lips for me is, 'Leave the heart that now I bear, and give me liberty!' Yes, as my swift days near their goal, 'tis all that I implore - in life and death, a chainless soul, with courage to endure." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"While enjoying a month of fine weather at the sea-coast, I was thrown into the company of a most fascinating creature: a real goddess in my eyes, as long as she took no notice of me. I 'never told my love' vocally; still, if looks have language, the merest idiot might have guessed I was over head and ears: she understood me at last, and looked a return - the sweetest of all imaginable looks. And what did I do? I confess it with shame - shrunk icily into myself, like a snail; at every glance retired colder and farther; till finally the poor innocent was led to doubt her own senses, and, overwhelmed with confusion at her supposed mistake, persuaded her mamma to decamp. By this curious turn of disposition I have gained the reputation of deliberate heartlessness; how undeserved, I alone can appreciate." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things.' Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world — prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal." - Emma Goldman
"What will you do with the lazy ones, who would not work?' No one is lazy. They grow hopeless from the misery of their present existence, and give up. Under our order of things, every men would do the work he liked, and would have as much as his neighbor, so could not be unhappy and discouraged." - Emma Goldman
"Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving." - Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
"It was a bitter moment for us. We weren't two mature parents. We were just two kids playing grown-up. We still needed Mommy and Daddy's permission, blessings, and money to survive." - Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
"There is a rumor that seven states are considering overpruning as a cause for divorce, second only to incompatibility and adultery. I hope our state is one of them. No judge would dare deny me freedom after he heard the story of my privet hedge." - Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
""Excellence," besought Kai Lung, not without misgivings, "how many warriors, each having some actual existence, are there in your never-failing band?" "For all purposes save those of attack and defence there are fifteen score of the best and bravest, as their pay-sheets well attest," was the confident response. "In a strictly literal sense, however, there are no more than can be seen on a mist-enshrouded day with a resolutely closed eye."" - Ernest Bramah, born Ernest Brammah Smith
"He was completely detached from everything except the story he was writing and he was living in it as he built it. The difficult parts he had dreaded he now faced one after another and as he did the people, the country, the days and the nights, and the weather were all there as he wrote. He went on working and he felt as tired as if he had spent the night crossing the broken volcanic desert and the sun had caught him and the others with the dry gray lakes still ahead. He could feel the weight of the heavy double-barreled rifle carried over his shoulder, his hand on the muzzle, and he tasted the pebble in his mouth. Across the shimmer of the dry lakes he could see the distant blue of the escarpment. Ahead of him there was no one, and behind was the long line of porters who knew that they had reached this point three hours too late. It was not him, of course, who had stood there that morning, nor had he even worn the patched corduroy jacket faded almost white now, the armpits rotted through by sweat, that he took off then and handed to his Kamba servant and brother who shared with him the guilt and knowledge of the delay, watching him smell the sour, vinegary smell and shake his head in disgust and then grin as he swung the jacket over his black shoulder holding it by the sleeves as they started off across the dry-baked gray, the gun muzzles in their right hands, the barrels balanced on their shoulders, the heavy stocks pointing back toward the line of porters. It was not him, but as he wrote it was and when someone read it, finally, it would be whoever read it and what they found when they should reach the escarpment, if they reached it, and he would make them reach its base by noon of that day; then whoever read it would find what there was there and have it always." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"Yes, I remember. I fell in love with James Tyrone and was so happy for a time" - Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
"A wise fellow who is also worthless always charms the rabble." - Euripedes NULL
"One forgets words as one forgets names. One's vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
"Man is an over-complicated organism. If he is doomed to extinction he will die out for want of simplicity." - Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
"The sentimental songs she sang in music class were all about little angels with golden wings, madonnas, lagoons, gondoliers -- mawkish compositions that allowed her to glimpse, through the silliness of the words and the indiscretions of the music, the alluring, phantasmagoric realm of genuine feeling." - Gustave Flaubert