This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"I acknowledge and do not deny that you love me before I existed, and that you love me unspeakably much, as one gone mad over your creature." - Saint Catherine of Siena NULL
"There is no hardship more oppressive to the soul than slander, whether one is slandered in his faith or in his conduct. And no one can disdain it except the one who like Susanna looks to God who alone can rescue in need, as he rescued her, and to reassure men, as he did in her case, and to encourage the soul with hope." - Saint Maximus the Confessor NULL
"Hence, every human law has the quality of the very nature of the law, in so far as is derived from the law of nature. If, however, disagree in any way from the natural law, shall be the law no longer, but the corruption of law." - Saint Thomas Aquinas, aka Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis or Doctor Universalis
"The renown which riches or beauty confer is fleeting and frail; mental excellence is a splendid and lasting possession." - Sallust, full name Carus Valerius Sailustius Crispus NULL
"Capitalism has brought about the emancipation of collective humanity with respect to nature. But this collective humanity has itself taken on with respect to the individual the oppressive function formerly exercised by nature." - Simone Weil
"It is because of my wretchedness that I am I. It is on account of the wretchedness of the universe that, in a sense, God is I (that is to say a person)." - Simone Weil
"The human soul has need of security and also of risk. The fear of violence or of hunger or of any other evil is a sickness of the soul. The boredom produced by a complete absence of risk is also a sickness of the soul." - Simone Weil
"The human soul has need of some solitude and privacy and also of some social life." - Simone Weil
"Although I tacitly admonished you to pay attention to what you hear, nevertheless I did not, it appears, do so in vain. For although you prove sophistically that no/nothing expert-in-grammar is a man—doing so by means of the consideration that being (an) expert-in-grammar is not identical with being a man—nevertheless this proof will be profitable to you when you will behold exposed in its fallaciousness the sophism which is deceiving you under the guise of correct reasoning." - Anselm of Canterbury, aka Saint Anselm or Archbishop of Canterbury NULL
"There were a Te Deum, clouds of incense, endless volleys of musketry and artillery; the peasants were frantic with joy and piety. Such a day undoes the work of a hundred numbers of the Jacobin papers." - Stendhal, pen name of Marie Henn Beyle or Marie-Henri Beyle NULL
"Surrender your own poverty and acknowledge your nothingness to the Lord. Whether you understand it or not, God loves you, is present in you, lives in you, dwells in you, calls you, saves you and offers you an understanding and compassion which are like nothing you have ever found in a book or heard in a sermon." - Thomas Merton
"O gather me the rose, the rose, While yet in flower we find it, For summer smiles, but summer goes, And winter waits behind it. For with the dream foregone, foregone, The deed foreborn forever, The worm Regret will canker on, And time will turn him never. So were it well to love, my love, And cheat of any laughter The fate beneath us, and above, The dark before and after. The myrtle and the rose, the rose, The sunshine and the swallow, The dream that comes, the wish that goes The memories that follow!" - William Henley, fully William Ernest Henley
"Forgiveness of enemies can only come upon their repentance." - William Blake
""You should not be discouraged; one does not die of a cold," the priest said to the bishop. The old man smiled. "I shall not die of a cold, my son. I shall die of having lived."" - Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather
"The expert knowledge of agriculture developed in the universities, like other such knowledges, is typical of the alien order imposed on a conquered land. We can never produce a native economy, much less a native culture, with this knowledge. It can only make us the imperialist invaders of our own country." - Wendell Berry
"All pity is self-pity." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
"There must always be two kinds of art: escape-art, for man needs escape as he needs food and deep sleep, and parable-art, that art which shall teach man to unlearn hatred and learn love." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
"The workers and peasants are still timid, they have not yet become accustomed to the idea that they are now the ruling class; they are not yet resolute enough. The revolution could not at one stroke instill these qualities into millions and millions of people who all their lives had been compelled by want and hunger to work under the threat of the stick." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
"The working class cannot play its world-revolutionary role unless it wages a ruthless struggle against this renegacy, spinelessness, subservience to opportunism and unexampled vulgarization of the theories of Marxism." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
"Improve memory and attention with scientific brain games." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
"The circling year completes its months since we entombed in earth the bones and remnants of my godlike father. Unless I err, that anniversary is here, the day that I shall always keep in grief and honor." - Virgil, also Vergil, fully Publius Vergilius Maro NULL
"The descent into Hell is easy" - Virgil, also Vergil, fully Publius Vergilius Maro NULL
"The irreclaimable time flies." - Virgil, also Vergil, fully Publius Vergilius Maro NULL
"Veiling truth in mystery." - Virgil, also Vergil, fully Publius Vergilius Maro NULL
"He is asleep. Though his mettle was sorely tried, he lived, and when he lost his angel, died. It happened calmly, on its own, the way the night comes when day is done." - Victor Hugo
"Love almost replaces thought. Love is a burning forgetfulness of everything else." - Victor Hugo
"Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
"My life is prosperous, fruitful and approved; I know that the Guru, the Supreme Lord God, is near me." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda
"No man, no power, can bind the action of wizardry or still the words of power. For they are the very words of Making, and one who could silence them could unmake the world." - Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
"After the battle they celebrate the military triumphs after the manner of the Romans, and even in a more magnificent way. Prayers by the way of thank-offerings are made to God, and then the general presents himself in the temple, and the deeds, good and bad, are related by the poet or historian, who according to custom was with the expedition." - Tommaso Campanella, baptized Giovanni Domenico Campanella
"Then the music strikes up, and freely they pardon the offences and faults of the enemy, and after the victories they are kind to them, if it has been decreed that they should destroy the walls of the enemy's city and take their lives." - Tommaso Campanella, baptized Giovanni Domenico Campanella
"It was a beautiful and striking reply, given by one in affliction, who, when asked how it was that he bore it so well, replied, - "It lightens the stroke, I find, to draw near to Him who handles the rod."" - Tryon Edwards
"The insane, for the most part, reason correctly, but from false principles, while they do not perceive that their premises are incorrect." - Tryon Edwards
"The issue of civil rights was too much for the establishment to handle. One of the chapters of history that's least studied by historians is the 300 to 500 riots in the U.S. between 1965 and 1970." - Tom Hayden, fully Thomas Emmet "Tom" Hayden
"Study with desire is real activity; without desire it is but the semblance and mockery of activity." - William Godwin
"I have been bent and broken, but -I hope- into a better shape." - Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
"Along the way, I had the opportunity to pass through the dominions of the United Fruit, convincing me once again of just how terrible these capitalist octopuses are. I have sworn before a picture of the old and mourned comrade Stalin that I won't rest until I see these capitalist octopuses annihilated." - Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara
"Who lives together with a pig will end up eating shit." - Estonian Proverbs
"Worship is the strategy by which we interrupt our preoccupation with ourselves and attend to the presence of God." - Eugene Peterson
"I was a poet who wrote an autobiography poetic without ceasing to beat at the gates of the impossible. I would not dare to speak of myth in my poetry, but there is a desire to question life. At the beginning I was skeptical, influenced by Schopenhauer . But in my verses of maturity I tried to hope, to beat the wall, to see what could be the other side of the wall, convinced that life has a meaning that escapes us. I knocked desperately as one who waits for a response." - Eugenio Montale
"Downstairs Peter Beste-Chetwynde mixed himself another brandy and soda and turned a page in Havelock Ellis, which, next to The Wind in the Willows, was his favourite book." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
"I never see you now,’ she said. ‘I never seem to see anyone I like. I don’t know why.’ But she spoke as though it were a matter of weeks rather than of years; as though, too, before our parting we had been firm friends. It was dead contrary to the common experience of such encounters, when time is found to have built its own defensive lines, camouflaged vulnerable points, and laid a field of mines across all but a few well-trodden paths, so that, more often than not, we can only signal to one another from either side of the tangle of wire." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
"The audiences certainly have [declined]. If I go to the theatre now I find people come there to eat and smoke and talk to one another. And look like scarecrows." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
"The proud wish God would agree with them. They are not interested in changing their opinions to agree with God's." - Ezra Taft Benson