This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Spontaneous eloquence seems to me a miracle." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
"The past is a source of knowledge, and the future is a source of hope. Love of the past implies faith in the future." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
"Religion is for people who're afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is for those who've already been there." - Vine Deloria, fully Vine Victor Deloria, Jr.
"Anyone who has the temerity to write about Jane Austen is aware of [two] facts: first, that of all great writers she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness; second, that there are twenty-five elderly gentlemen living in the neighborhood of London who resent any slight upon her genius as if it were an insult to the chastity of their aunts." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
"Anyone who’s worth anything reads just what he likes, as the mood takes him, and with extravagant enthusiasm." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
"For here again, we come to a dilemma. Different though the sexes are, they intermix. In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only the clothes that keep the male or female likeness, while underneath the sex is the very opposite of what it is above. For it was this mixture in her of man and woman, one being uppermost and then the other, that often gave her conduct an unexpected turn. The curious of her own sex would argue how, for example, if Orlando was a woman, did she never take more than ten minutes to dress? And were not her clothes chosen rather at random, and sometimes worn rather shabby? And then they would say, still, she has none of the formality of a man, or a man’s love of power." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
"He stretched himself. He rose. He stood upright in complete nakedness before us, and while the trumpets pealed Truth! Truth! Truth! we have no choice left but confess – he was a woman." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
"It seems that a profound, impartial, and absolutely just opinion of our fellow-creatures is utterly unknown. Either we are men, or we are women. Either we are cold, or we are sentimental. Either we are young, or growing old. In any case life is but a procession of shadows, and God knows why it is that we embrace them so eagerly, and see them depart with such anguish, being shadows. And why, if this -- and much more than this is true -- why are we yet surprised in the window corner by a sudden vision that the young man in the chair is of all things in the world the most real, the most solid, the best known to us--why indeed? For the moment after we know nothing about him." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
"One feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. Such fools we are, she thought, crossing Victoria Street. For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can't be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason: they love life. In people's eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment in June." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
"One likes people much better when they’re battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
"She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts if family life. She sacrificed herself daily. If there was chicken, she took the led; if there was a draft she sat in it-- in short she was so constituted that she never had a mind or wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize always with the minds and wishes of others... I did my best to kill her. My excuse, if I were to be had up in a court of law, would be that I acted in self defense. Had I not killed her, she would have killed me." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
"The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
"What people had had shed and left--a pair of shoes, a shooting cap, some faded skirts and coats in wardrobes--those alone kept the human shape and in the emptiness indicated how once they were filled and animated; how once hands were busy with hooks and buttons; how once the looking-glass had held a face; had held a world hollowed out in which a figure turned, a hand flashed, the door opened, in came children rushing and tumbling; and went out again. Now, day after day, light turned, like a flower reflected in water, its sharp image on the wall opposite. Only the shadows of the trees, flourishing in the wind, made obeisance on the wall, and for a moment darkened the pool in which light reflected itself; or birds, flying, made a soft spot flutter slowly across the bedroom floor." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
"Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
"Grecian history is a poem; Latin history, a picture; modern history a chronicle." - François-René de Chateaubriand, fully François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand
"It is necessary to repent for years in order to efface a fault in the eyes of men; a single tear suffices with God." - François-René de Chateaubriand, fully François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand
"Religion assures us that our afflictions shall have an end; she comforts us, she dries our tears, she promises us another life. On the contrary, in the abominable worship of atheism, human woes are the incense, death is the priest, a coffin the altar, and annihilation the Deity." - François-René de Chateaubriand, fully François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand
"You are not superior just because you see the world in an odious light." - François-René de Chateaubriand, fully François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand
"History has its truth, and so has legend. Legendary truth is of another nature than historical truth. Legendary truth is invention whose result is reality. Furthermore, history and legend have the same goal: to depict eternal man beneath momentary man." - Victor Hugo
"The child’s murmuring is more and is less than words; there are no notes, and yet it is a song; there are no syllables, and yet it is language…. This poor stammering is a compound of what the child said when it was an angel, and of what it will say when it becomes a man." - Victor Hugo
"The sickness of a nation does not kill Man." - Victor Hugo
"There is a way of falling into error while on the way to truth." - Victor Hugo
"Where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incident, chaos will soon reign." - Victor Hugo
"You can make no arrangements with destiny; tomorrow will not obey you." - Victor Hugo
"It is the role of the poet to look at what is happening in the world and to know that quite other things are happening." - V. S. Pritchett, fully Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett
"Well, youth is the period of assumed personalities and disguises. It is the time of the sincerely insincere." - V. S. Pritchett, fully Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett
"Shut up and God will speak to you. How do you want it to do when you're so much noise?" - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
"Attention to a subject depends upon our interest in it." - Tryon Edwards
"Character shows itself apart from genius as a special thing. The first point of measurement of any man is that of quality." - Thomas Wentworth Higginson
"Do not waste a minute -- not a second -- in trying to demonstrate to others the merits of your performance. If your work does not vindicate itself, you cannot vindicate it." - Thomas Wentworth Higginson
"The bee himself did not evade the schoolboy more than she evaded me, and even at this day I still stand somewhat bewildered, like the boy." - Thomas Wentworth Higginson
"Golf is a game in which one endeavors to control a ball with implements ill adapted for the purpose." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
"We shall fight for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
"Life will frequently languish, even in the hands of the busy, if they have not some employment subsidiary to that which forms their main pursuit." - Hugh Blair
"The discipline which corrects the baseness of worldly passions, fortifies the heart with virtuous principles, enlightens the mind with useful knowledge, and furnishes it with enjoyment from within itself, is of more consequence to real felicity, than all the provisions we can make of the goods of fortune." - Hugh Blair
"For most people, self-awareness and self-pity blossom simultaneously in early adolescence. It's about that time that we start viewing the world as something other than a whoop-de-doo playground, we start to experience personally how threatening it can be, how cruel and unjust. At the very moment when we become, for the first time, both introspective and socially conscientious, we receive the bad news that the world, by and large, doesn't give a rat's ass." - Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins
"Between two hawks, which flies the higher pitch; Between two dogs, which hath the deeper mouth; Between two blades, which bears the better temper; Between two horses, which doth bear him best; Between two girls, which hath the merriest eye,— I have perhaps some shallow spirit of judgment; But in these nice sharp quillets of the law, Good faith, I am no wiser than a daw. King Henry VI. Part I. Act ii. Sc. 4." - William Shakespeare
"A genuine first-hand religious experience like this is bound to be a heterodoxy to its witnesses, the prophet appearing as a mere lonely madman. If his doctrine proves contagious enough to spread to any others, it becomes a definite and labeled heresy. But if it then still prove contagious enough to triumph over persecution, it becomes itself an orthodoxy; and when a religion has become an orthodoxy, its day of inwardness is over: the spring is dry; the faithful live at second hand exclusively and stone the prophets in their turn. The new church, in spite of whatever human goodness it may foster, can be henceforth counted on as a staunch ally in every attempt to stifle the spontaneous religious spirit, and to stop all later bubblings of the fountain from which in purer days it drew its own supply of inspiration." - William James
"Despair lames most people, but it wakes others fully up." - William James
"Give up the feeling of responsibility, let go your hold, resign the care of your destiny to higher powers, be genuinely indifferent as to what becomes of it all and you will find not only that you gain a perfect inward relief, but often also, in addition, the particular goods you sincerely thought you were renouncing." - William James
"Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity successful men act as though they have accomplished or are enjoying something. Soon it becomes a reality. Act, look, feel successful, conduct yourself accordingly, and you will be amazed at the positive results." - William James
"The difference between a good man and a bad man is the choice of cause." - William James
"The exercise of prayer, in those who habitually exert it, must be regarded by us doctors as the most adequate and normal of all the pacifiers of the mind and calmers of the nerves." - William James
"We already have the Wooden Pillar, the Steel Pillar and the Plastic Pillar. In a moment we will have the Golden Bail... No, you won't.' We will,' stated the robot simply. No, you won't. It makes my ship work.' In a moment,' repeated the robot patiently, 'we will have the Golden Bail... You will not,' said Zaphod. And then we must go,' said the robot, in all seriousness, 'to a party.' Oh,' said Zaphod, startled, 'can I come?' No,' said the robot, 'we are going to shoot you.' Oh, yeah?' said Zaphod, waggling his gun. Yes,' said the robot, and they shot him. Zaphod was so surprised that they had to shoot him again before he fell down." - Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
"Avarice is more opposite to economy than liberality." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"The height of ability in the least able consists in knowing how to submit to the good leadership of others." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"It is necessary to form a distinct notion of what is meant by the word volition in order to understand the import of the word will; for this last word expresses the power of mind of which volition is the act." - Dugald Stewart
"Humor implies a sure conception of the beautiful, the majestic, and the true, by whose light it surveys and shapes their opposites. It is an humane influence, softening with mirth the ragged inequalities of existence, prompting tolerant views of life, bridging over the spaces which separate the lofty from the lowly, the great from the humble." - Edwin Percy Whipple
"The greatness of action includes immoral as well as moral greatness--Cortes and Napoleon, as well as Luther and Washington." - Edwin Percy Whipple
"We can never see the world other than incompletely: deliberately to see it as incomplete is to create an artistic aspect." - Egon Friedell, born Egon Friedmann