This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"By the time you swear you're his, shivering and sighing. And he vows his passion is, infinite, undying. Lady make note of this -- One of you is lying." - Dorothy Parker
"There was a reason for the cost of those perfectly plain black dresses." - Dorothy Parker
"There's a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words." - Dorothy Parker
"A people represents not so much an aggregate of ideas and theories as of obsessions." - Emil M. Cioran
"All my life, I have lived with the feeling that I have been kept from my true place. If the expression "metaphysical exile" had no meaning, my existence alone would afford it one." - Emil M. Cioran
"I do not forgive myself for being born. It is as if creeping into this world, I had profaned a mystery, betrayed some momentous pledge, committed a fault of nameless gravity. Yet in a less assured mood, birth seems a calamity I would be miserable not having known" - Emil M. Cioran
"I have always lived with the awareness of the impossibility of living. And what has made existence endurable to me is my curiosity as to how I would get from one minute, one day, one year to the next." - Emil M. Cioran
"I have no nationality - the best possible status for an intellectual." - Emil M. Cioran
"Life is possible only by the deficiencies of our imagination and memory." - Emil M. Cioran
"Philosophers write for professors; thinkers for writers." - Emil M. Cioran
"The desire to die was my one and only concern; to it I have sacrificed everything, even death." - Emil M. Cioran
"We inhabit a language rather than a country." - Emil M. Cioran
"What surrounds us we endure better for giving it a name - and moving on." - Emil M. Cioran
"What to think of other people? I ask myself this question each time I make a new acquaintance. So strange does it seem to me that we exist, and that we consent to exist." - Emil M. Cioran
"Not desirous to teach goodness." - Émile Souvestre
"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
"He loved her body so far. Now head began to love." - Emile Zola
"I am not even talking about the way the judges were hand-picked. Doesn't the overriding idea of discipline, which is the lifeblood of these soldiers, itself undercut their capacity for fairness? Discipline means obedience. When the Minister of War, the commander in chief, proclaims, in public and to the acclamation of the nation's representatives, the absolute authority of a previous verdict, how can you expect a court martial to rule against him?" - Emile Zola
"I want to portray, at the outset of a century of liberty and truth, a family that cannot restrain itself in its rush to possess all the good things that progress is making available and is derailed by its own momentum, the fatal convulsions that accompany the birth of a new world." - Emile Zola
"The day is not far off when one ordinary carrot may be pregnant with revolution." - Emile Zola
"The Revolution of 1848 found all the Rougons on the lookout, frustrated by their bad luck, and ready to use any means necessary to advance their cause. They were a family of bandits lying in wait, ready to plunder and steal." - Emile Zola
"The truth, first of all, about Dreyfus' trial and conviction: At the root of it all is one evil man, Lt. Colonel du Paty de Clam, who was at the time a mere Major. He is the entire Dreyfus case, and the entirety of it will only come to light when an honest enquiry firmly establishes his actions and responsibilities. ... Nobody would ever believe the experiments to which he subjected the unfortunate Dreyfus, the traps he set for him, the wild investigations, the monstrous fantasies, the whole demented torture. Ah, that first trial! What a nightmare it is for all who know it in its true details. Major du Paty de Clam had Dreyfus arrested and placed in solitary confinement. He ran to Mme Dreyfus, terrorised her, telling her that, if she talked, that was it for her husband. Meanwhile, the unfortunate Dreyfus was tearing his hair out and proclaiming his innocence." - Emile Zola
"These military tribunals have, decidedly, a most singular idea of justice." - Emile Zola
"This must have led to a brief moment of psychological anguish. Note that, so far, General Billot was in no way compromised. Newly appointed to his position, he had the authority to bring out the truth. He did not dare, no doubt in terror of public opinion, certainly for fear of implicating the whole General Staff, General de Boisdeffre, and General Gonse, not to mention the subordinates. So he hesitated for a brief moment of struggle between his conscience and what he believed to be the interest of the military. Once that moment passed, it was already too late. He had committed himself and he was compromised. From that point on, his responsibility only grew, he took on the crimes of others, he became as guilty as they, if not more so, for he was in a position to bring about justice and did nothing. Can you understand this: for the last year General Billot, Generals Gonse and de Boisdeffre have known that Dreyfus is innocent, and they have kept this terrible knowledge to themselves?" - Emile Zola
"Violence has never prospered, you can't remake the world in a day. Anyone who promises to change everything for you all at once is either a fool or a rogue!" - Emile Zola
"We have before us the ignoble spectacle of men who are sunken in debts and crimes being hailed as innocent, whereas the honor of a man whose life is spotless is being vilely attacked: A society that sinks to that level has fallen into decay." - Emile Zola
"I lost a world the other day. Has anybody found? You'll know it by the rows of stars around it's forehead bound. A rich man might not notice it; yet to my frugal eye of more esteem than ducats. Oh! Find it, sir, for me!" - Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
"She dealt her pretty words like Blades -- How glittering they shone -- And every One unbared a Nerve Or wantoned with a Bone -- She never deemed -- she hurt -- That -- is not Steel's Affair -- A vulgar grimace in the Flesh -- How ill the Creatures bear -- To Ache is human -- not polite -- The Film upon the eye Mortality's old Custom -- Just locking up -- to Die." - Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
"But when the days of golden dreams had perished, and even Despair was powerless to destroy; then did I learn how existence could be cherished, strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"Doubtless Catherine marked the difference between her friends, as one came in and the other went out. The contrast resembled what you see in exchanging a bleak, hilly, coal country for a beautiful fertile valley; and his voice and greeting were as opposite as his aspect." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"I cried so much for him as for her, sometimes we have compassion for creatures that do not have this feeling not for themselves nor for others." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"I don't know if it be a peculiarity in me, but I am seldom otherwise than happy while watching in the chamber of death, should no frenzied or despairing mourner share the duty with me. I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break, and I feel an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter--the eternity they have entered--where life is boundless in its duration, and love in its sympathy, and joy in its fullness." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"I sought, and soon discovered, the three head-stones on the slope next the moor — the middle one, gray, and half buried in heath — Edgar Linton's only harmonized by the turf and moss, creeping up its foot — Heathcliff's still bare. I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath, and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers, for the sleepers in that quiet earth." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"I'm happiest when most away I can bear my soul from its home of clay on a windy night when the moon is bright aAnd the eye can wander through worlds of light— when I am not and none beside— nor earth nor sea nor cloudless sky—but only spirit wandering wide through infinite immensity." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"It's a pity he cannot kill himself with drink." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"There is not room for Death, nor atom that his might could render void: Thou - Thou art Being and Breath, and what Thou art may never be destroyed." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"Winter is not here yet. There’s a little flower, up yonder, the last bud from the multitude of bluebells that clouded those turf steps in July with a lilac mist. Will you clamber up and pluck it to show papa?" - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"You must forgive me, for I struggled only for you." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"Anarchism is the only philosophy which brings to man the consciousness of himself; which maintains that God, the State, and society are non-existent, that their promises are null and void, since they can be fulfilled only through man's subordination. Anarchism is therefore the teacher of the unity of life; not merely in nature, but in man." - Emma Goldman
"‎Civilization has been a continuous struggle of the individual or of groups of individuals against the State and even against society, that is, against the majority subdued and hypnotized by the State and State worship." - Emma Goldman
"Men towering high above such political pygmies, men of refinement, of culture, of ability, are jeered into silence as mollycoddles. It is absurd to claim that ours is the era of individualism. Ours is merely a more poignant repetition of the phenomenon of all history: every effort for progress, for enlightenment, for science, for religious, political, and economic liberty, emanates from the minority, and not from the mass. Today, as ever, the few are misunderstood, hounded, imprisoned, tortured, and killed." - Emma Goldman
"The average mind is slow in grasping a truth, but when the most thoroughly organized, centralized institution, maintained at an excessive national expense, has proven a complete social failure, the dullest must begin to question its right to exist. The time is past when we can be content with our social fabric merely because it is "ordained by divine right," or by the majesty of the law." - Emma Goldman
"The free expression of the hopes and aspirations of a people is the greatest and only safety in a sane society." - Emma Goldman
"The expression 'in one's skin' is not a metaphor for the in-itself; it refers to a recurrence in the dead time or the meanwhile which separates inspiration and expiration, the diastole and systole of the heart beating dully against the walls of one's skin." - Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas
"We could formulate the result of our analyses in the following way: the existence of material things contains in itself a nothingness, a possibility of not-being. This does not mean that things do not exist but that their mode of existing contains precisely the possible negation of itself." - Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas
"While in moral pain one can preserve an attitude of dignity and compunction , and consequently already be free; physical suffering in all its degrees entails the impossibility of detaching oneself from the instant of existence. It is the very irremissibility of being." - Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas