This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Men, forever tempted to lift the veil of the future?with the aid of computers or horoscopes or the intestines of sacrificial animals?have a worse record to show in these "sciences" than in almost any scientific endeavor." - Hannah Arendt
"The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any." - Hannah Arendt
"This is the precept by which I have lived: Prepare for the worst; expect the best; and take what comes." - Hannah Arendt
"This shows to what extent violence and its arbitrariness were taken for granted and therefore neglected; no one questions or examines what is obvious to all." - Hannah Arendt
"To be free in an age like ours, one must be in a position of authority. That in itself would be enough to make me ambitious." - Hannah Arendt
"To be sure, nothing is more important to the integrity of the universities than a rigorously enforced divorce from war-oriented research and all connected enterprises." - Hannah Arendt
"We may remember what the Romans... thought a cultivated person ought to be: one who knows how to choose his company among men, among things, among thoughts, in the present as well as in the past." - Hannah Arendt
"Everything rhythmically organic is true. Everything, which results from the proper feeling for rhythmically organized spiritual units, is true and alive ? alive within itself. When we lose the sense for such true beauty we lose our natural sense for the rich flavor of life, which is the basis for all inspirational work." - Hans Hoffman
"We are frequently faced with the necessity of looking for the picture required for the visualization of an object, not in the perception of this particular object, but in a different perceptual image... we can assert the discrepancy between the perceived picture and the objective state. This discrepancy... proves absolutely nothing against the fact that all visualizations are merely sense qualities of the perceptual space... If the parallelism is... to be visualized, we must supplement our assertion by the description of certain qualities with which we are familiar from perceptual space." - Hans Reichenbach
"We have chosen to write the biography of our disease because we love it platonically ? as Amy Lowell loved Keats ? and have sought its acquaintance wherever we could find it. And in this growing intimacy we have become increasingly impressed with the influence that this and other infectious diseases, which span ? in their protoplasmic continuities ? the entire history of mankind, have had upon the fates of men." - Hans Zinnser
"Never speak of a rope in the house of one who was hanged." - Italian Proverbs
"Of what does not concern you say nothing, good or bad." - Italian Proverbs
"On a long journey even a straw is heavy." - Italian Proverbs
"One may have good eyes and yet see nothing." - Italian Proverbs
"The liar is not believed when he speaks the truth." - Italian Proverbs
"The world wags on with three things: doing, undoing, and pretending." - Italian Proverbs
"When the danger is past God is cheated." - Italian Proverbs
"Our trouble is that we drink too much tea. I see in this the slow revenge of the Orient, which has diverted the Yellow River down our throats." - J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
"In the development and the maintenance of a living organism the coordination is very clear. The development of each part can be shown to be dependent on that of other parts, including the immediate environment; and the more closely development and maintenance are studied the more evident does this become. But the particular manner in which the parts and the environment influence one another is such that the specific structure and activities of the organism are maintained. They are unmistakably developed and maintained as a whole, and this is what we mean when we say that the organism lives a specific life. The conception of its life enables us to predict the general behavior of its parts so long as it is alive, and in particular it enables us to predict the general manner of its reproduction from a rudimentary part of the same organism? it is this co-ordinated maintenance that we call life." - J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
"Every writer making a secondary world wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality: hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality, or are flowing into it." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"And in the darkness bind them." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"Any corner of that county (however fair or squalid) is in an indefinable way 'home' to me, as no other part of the world is. There was a willow hanging over the mill-pool and I learned to climb it. It belonged to a butcher on the Stratford Road, I think. One day they cut it down. They didn't do anything with it: the log just lay there. I never forgot that." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"I wonder if people will ever say, Let's hear about Frodo and the Ring. And they'll say, Yes, that's one of my favorite stories. Frodo was really courageous, wasn't he, Dad? Yes, m'boy, the most famousest of hobbits. And that's saying a lot." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"I would rather share one lifetime with you than face all the Ages of this world alone." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"I?ll bet I?m the first person to compare Bill Johnson to an old elf!" - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"If I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject?which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"If thou hadst thy will what wouldst thou reserve? said Manwe. Of all thy realm what dost thou hold dearest? All have their worth, said Yavanna, and each contributes to the worth of the others. But the kelvar can flee or defend themselves, whereas the olvar that grow cannot. And among these I hold trees dear. Long in the growing, swift shall they be in the felling, and unless they pay toll with fruit upon their bough little mourned in their passing. So I see in my thought, would that the trees might speak on behalf of all things that have roots, and punish those that wrong them!" - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"If you mean you think it is my job to go into the secret passage first, O Thorin Thrain?s son Oakenshield, may your beard grow ever longer, he said crossly, say so at once and have done!" - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"If you want to know what cram is, I can only say that I don?t know the recipe; but it is biscuitish, keeps good indefinitely, is supposed to be sustaining, and is certainly not entertaining, being in fact very uninteresting except as a chewing exercise." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"In this hour, I do not believe that any darkness will endure." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"In those days of our tale, there were still some people who had both elves and heroes of the North for ancestors and Elrond, the master of the house, was their chief. He was as noble and as fair in face as an elf lord, as strong as a warrior, as wise as a wizard, as venerable as a king of dwarves and as kind as summer." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien