This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Paradise was unendurable, otherwise the first man would have adapted to it; this world is no less so, since here we regret paradise or anticipate another one. What to do? where to go? Do nothing and go nowhere, easy enough." - Emil M. Cioran
"And the whole garden was engulfed together with the couple in one last cry of love's passion. The tree-trunks bent as under a powerful wind. The blades of grass emitted sobs of intoxication. The flowers, fainting, lips half-open, breathed out their souls. The sky itself, aflame with the setting of the great star, held its clouds motionless, faint with love, whence superhuman rapture fell. And it was the victory of all the wild creatures, all plants and all things natural, which willed the entry of these two children into the eternity of life." - Emile Zola
"We journey to the day, and tell each other how we sang to keep the dark away." - Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
"He had been content with daily labor and rough animal enjoyments, 'till Catherine crossed his path. Shame at her scorn, and hope of her approval, were his first prompts to higher pursuits; and, instead of guarding him from one and winning him to the other, his endeavors to raise himself had produced just the contrary result." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"I have to remind myself to breathe -- almost to remind my heart to beat!" - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"If it is true that I killed you, chase me. It ensures that the victim pursues his murderer. Do it, then, follow me, until I freak out. But do not leave me in this abyss. I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!" - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"It's a rough journey, and a sad heart to travel it; and we must pass by Gimmerton Kirk, to go that journey! We've braved its ghosts often together, and dared each other to stand among the graves and ask them to come. But Heathcliff, if I dare you now, will you venture? If you do, I'll keep you. I'll not lie there by myself; they may bury me twelve feet deep, and throw the church down over me, but I won't rest till you are with me. I never will! She paused, and resumed with a strange smile, He's considering-he'd rather I'd come to him! Find a way, then! not through that Kirkyard. You are slow! Be content, you always followed me!" - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"Consciously or unconsciously, most theists see in gods and devils, heaven and hell, reward and punishment, a whip to lash the people into obedience, meekness and contentment." - Emma Goldman
"Leo Tolstoy, the greatest anti-patriot of our time, defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers; a trade that requires better equipment in the exercise of man-killing than the making of such necessities as shoes, clothing, and houses; a trade that guarantees better returns and greater glory than that of the honest workingman." - Emma Goldman
"Patriotism, sir, is the last resort of scoundrels, said Dr. Samuel Johnson. Leo Tolstoy, the greatest anti-patriot of our time, defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers; a trade that requires better equipment in the exercise of man-killing than the making of such necessities as shoes, clothing, and houses; a trade that guarantees better returns and greater glory than that of the honest workingman." - Emma Goldman
"The period of the actual revolution, the so-called transitory stage, must be the introduction, the prelude to the new social conditions. It is the threshold to the NEW LIFE, the new HOUSE OF MAN AND HUMANITY. As such it must be of the spirit of the new life, harmonious with the construction of the new edifice." - Emma Goldman
"There is no greater fallacy than the belief that aims and purposes are one thing, while methods and tactics are another, This conception is a potent menace to social regeneration. All human experience teaches that methods and means cannot be separated from the ultimate aim. The means employed become, through individual habit and social practice, part and parcel of the final purpose; they influence it, modify it, and presently the aims and means become identical." - Emma Goldman
"One of the first rules on the spiritual path is that you must attend strictly to your own business and not interfere with that of others. Your neighbor's life is sacred and you have no right to try to manage it for him. Let him alone. God has given him free will and self-determination, so why should you interfere? Many well-meaning people are constantly "butting in"" to their neighbors' lives without invitation. They pretend to themselves that their only desire is to help, but this is self-deception. It is really a desire to interfere. Interference always does more harm than good. Actually those who mind other people's business always neglect their own. The man who wants to put your house in order has always made a failure of his own life. M.Y.O.B. Of course, this does not mean that you are not to help people whenever you can; in fact, you should make it a rule to try to do at least one kind act every day; but you must do it without interfering or encroaching. When in doubt, claim Divine Guidance. It is always right to give your neighbor the right thought. Under any circumstances it can only do good to "Golden Key" him when you think of him. Don't fuss - God is running the universe." - Emmet Fox
"Doing is better than saying." - English Proverbs
"That which doesn't kill you makes you stronger." - English Proverbs
"That which one least anticipates soonest comes to pass." - English Proverbs
"There is no fire without smoke." - English Proverbs
"Housework is a treadmill from futility to oblivion with stop offs at tedium and counter productivity." - Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
"How come anything you buy will go on sale next week?" - Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
"Mysteriously, the Ecotopians do not feel ‘separate’ from their technology. They evidently feel a little as the Indians must have felt: that the horse and the teepee and the bowand arrow all sprang, like the human being, from the womb of nature, organically. Of course the Ecotopians work on natural materials far more extensively and complexly than the Indians worked stone into arrowpoint, or hide into teepee. But they treat materials in the same spirit of respect, comradeship. The other day I stopped to watch some carpenters working on a building. They marked and sawed the wood lovingly (using their own muscle power, not our saws). Their nail patterns, I noticed, were beautifully placed and their rhythm of hammering seemed patient, almost placid. When they raised wood pieces into place, they held them carefully, fitted them (they make many joints by notching as well as nailing). They seemed almost to be collaborating with the wood rather than forcing it into the shape of a building." - Ernest Callenbach
"But, you say, there is very little conversation in this book. Why isn't there more dialogue? What we want in a book by this citizen is people talking; that is all he knows how to do and now he doesn't do it. The fellow is no philosopher, no savant, an incompetent zoologist, he drinks too much and cannot punctuate readily and now he has stopped writing dialogue. Someone ought to put a stop to him. He is bull crazy." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"Fish, the old man said. Fish, you are going to have to die anyway. Do you have to kill me too?" - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"He thought of all the time in his life he had spent gambling." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"I have noticed that doctors who fail in the practice of medicine have a tendency to seek one another's company and aid in consultation. A doctor who cannot take out your appendix properly will recommend you to a doctor who will be unable to remove your tonsils with success." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"If the book is good, is about something that you know, and is truly written, and reading it over you see that this is so, you can let the boys yip and the noise will have that pleasant sound coyotes make on a very cold night when they are out in the snow and you are in your own cabin that you have built or paid for with your work." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"If you stop complaining and asking for what you never will get, you will have a good life. A good life is not measured by any biblical span." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"It was in the donor beginning writers Russians then later sacrifice all the others, but for a long time the Russians were only" - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"Nobody likes to life anchors." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"That seemed to handle it. That was it. Send a girl off with one man. Introduce her to another to go off with him. Now go and bring her back. And sign the wire with love. That was it all right. I went in to lunch." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"The clouds were building up now for the trade wind and he looked ahead and saw a flight of wild ducks etching themselves against the sky over the water, then blurring, then etching again and he knew no man was ever alone on the sea." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"The fun of talk is to explore, but much of it and all that is irresponsible should not be written. Once written you have to stand by it. You may have said it to see whether you believed it or not. On the question you raised, the effects of wounds vary greatly. Simple wounds which do not break bone are of little account. They sometimes give confidence. Wounds which do extensive bone and nerve damage are not good for writers, nor anybody else." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"The world is a fine place and worth fighting for and I hate very much to leave it." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"Thou wilt go now, rabbit. But I go with thee. As long as there is one of us there is both of us." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be. But what will happen in all the other days that ever come can depend on what you do today. It's been that way all this year. It's been that way so many times. All of war is that way." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"You don't have to destroy me. Do you? I'm only a woman who loves you and wants to do what you want to do. I've been destroyed two or three times already. You wouldn't want to destroy me again, would you?" - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"You never understand anybody that loves you." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"I would rather die standing up to live life on my knees." - Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara
"To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy of the paredón [execution wall]." - Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara
"Mortal danger is an effective antidote for fixed ideas." - Erwin Rommel, fully Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel
"My family helped start [this country], we've been in political life ... since the 1690s, and I have a very possessive sense about this country." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"Professor Frank recalled my idle remark some years ago: 'Never pass up the opportunity to have sex or appear on television.' Advice I would never give today in the age of AIDS and its television equivalent Fox News." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"The opposition tried to brand us as the 'Ground Zero megamosque.' The language was deliberately wordsmithed in order to arouse hostility against us. But the idea that the Jewish mayor of New York City and the president of the United States supported a mosque at Ground Zero, and took a lot of flak for it, raised their stature in the Muslim world." - Feisal Abdul Rauf
"No civilization ; would ever have been possible without a framework of stability, to provide the wherein for the flux of change; Foremost among the stabilizing factors, more enduring than customs, manners and traditions, are the legal systems that regulate our life in the world and our daily affairs with each other" - Hannah Arendt
"But Sauron gathered into his hands all the remaining Rings of Power; and he dealt them out to the other peoples of Middle-earth, hoping thus to bring under his sway all those that desired secret power beyond the measure of their kind. Seven Rings he gave to the Dwarves; but to Men he gave nine, for Men proved in this matter as in others the readiest to his will. And all those rings that he governed he perverted, the more easily since he had a part in their making, and they were accursed, and they betrayed in the end all those that used them. The Dwarves indeed proved tough and hard to tame; they ill endure the domination of others, and the thoughts of their hearts are hard to fathom, nor can they be turned to shadows. They used their rings only for the getting of wealth; but wrath and an over-mastering greed of gold were kindled in their hearts, of which evil enough after came to the profit of Sauron. It is said that the foundation of each of the Seven Hoards of the Dwarf-kings of old was a golden ring; but all those hoards long ago were plundered and the Dragons devoured them, and of the Seven Rings some were consumed in fire and some Sauron recovered." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"For Isildur would not surrender it to Elrond and C¡rdan who stood by. They counselled him to cast it into the fire of Orodruin night at hand... But Isildur refused this counsel, saying: 'This I will have as weregild for my father's death, and my brother's. Was it not I that dealt the Enemy his death-blow?' And the Ring that he held seemed to him exceedingly fair to look on; and he would not suffer it to be destroyed." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien