This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Sexual revelation in literature, must be tactful and must serve plot" - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved — Judaism, Christianity, Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are, literally, patriarchal — God is the Omnipotent Father — hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male delegates. The sky-god is a jealous god, of course. He requires total obedience from everyone on earth, as he is in place not for just one tribe but for all creation. Those who would reject him must be converted or killed for their own good. Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can truly serve the sky-god's purpose." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"The unfed mind devours itself." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"We do not, of course, write literary criticism at all now. Academe has won the battle in which Wilson fought so fiercely on the other side. Ambitious English teachers now invent systems that have nothing to do with literature or life but everything to do with those games that must be played in order for them to rise in the academic bureaucracy. Their works are empty indeed. But then, their works are not meant to be full. They are to be taught, not read. The long dialogue has broken down. Fortunately, as Flaubert pointed out, the worst thing about the present is the future. One day there will be no... But I have been asked not to give the game away. Meanwhile, I shall drop a single hint: Only construct!" - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"We have ceased to be a nation under law but instead a homeland where the withered Bill of Rights, like a dead trumpet vine, clings to our pseudo-Roman columns." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"When she was running for the Senate, Hillary's psephologists discovered that the one group that really hated her was white, middle-aged men of property. She got the whole thing immediately — I heard she said, "I remind them of their first wife."" - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"I am guilty of believing that the human race can be humanized and enriched in every spiritual inference through the saner and more beneficent processes of peaceful persuasion applied to material problems rather than through wars, riots and bloodshed." - Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
"I do not oppose the insane asylum — but I abhor and condemn the cutthroat system that robs man of his reason, drives him to insanity and makes the lunatic asylum an indispensable adjunct to every civilized community." - Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
"The guns on the walls that surround the prison accurately, though unwittingly, index the true character of the penitentiary in our day." - Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
"These are the gentry who are today wrapped up in the American flag, who shout their claim from the housetops that they are the only patriots, and who have their magnifying glasses in hand, scanning the country for evidence of disloyalty, eager to apply the brand of treason to the men who dare to even whisper their opposition to Junker rule in the United Sates. No wonder Sam Johnson declared that "patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." He must have had this Wall Street gentry in mind, or at least their prototypes, for in every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the people." - Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
"What the workingmen of the country are profoundly interested in is the private ownership of the means of production and distribution, the enslaving and degrading wage-system in which they toil for a pittance at the pleasure of their masters and are bludgeoned, jailed or shot when they protest — this is the central, controlling, vital issue of the hour, and neither of the old party platforms has a word or even a hint about it. As a rule, large capitalists are Republicans and small capitalists are Democrats, but workingmen must remember that they are all capitalists, and that the many small ones, like the fewer large ones, are all politically supporting their class interests, and this is always and everywhere the capitalist class." - Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
"Circumstances rule men and not men rule circumstances." - Euripedes NULL
"Happy is it to place a daughter; yet it pains a father's heart when he delivers to another's house a child, the object of his tender care." - Euripedes NULL
"Of all the evils that infest a state, a tyrant is the greatest; his sole will commands the laws, and lords it over them." - Euripedes NULL
"One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives." - Euripedes NULL
"There is nothing like the sight of an old enemy down on his luck." - Euripedes NULL
"There is one thing alone that stands the brunt of life throughout its length: a quite conscience." - Euripedes NULL
"They say that the eyes of the hosts look to help seekers exiles in the Annex for just one day." - Euripedes NULL
"To die is a debt we must all of us discharge." - Euripedes NULL
"I find but few beards worth taking notice of in the reign of King James the First." - Eustace Budgell
"In short, a private education seems the most natural method for the forming of a virtuous man; a public education for making a man of business. The first would furnish out a good subject for PlatoÂ’s republic, the latter a member for a community overrun with artifice and corruption." - Eustace Budgell
"It is extremely natural for us to desire to see such our thoughts put into the dress of words, without which indeed we can scarce have a clear and distinct idea of them our selves." - Eustace Budgell
"Love and esteem are the first principles of friendship, which always is imperfect where either of these two is wanting." - Eustace Budgell
"The most difficult province in friendship is the letting a man see his faults and errors; which should, if possible, be so contrived that he may perceive our advice is given him not so much to please ourselves as for his own advantage. The reproaches, therefore, of a friend should always be strictly just, and not too frequent." - Eustace Budgell
"Those who have searched into human nature observe that nothing so much shows the nobleness of the soul, as that its felicity consists in action. Every man has such an active principle in him that he will find out something to employ himself upon, in whatever place or state of life he is posted." - Eustace Budgell
"We are generally so much pleased with any little accomplishments, either of body or mind, which have once made us remarkable in the world, that we endeavor to persuade ourselves it is not in the power of time to rob us of them. We are eternally pursuing the same methods which first procured us the applauses of mankind. It is from this notion that an author writes on, though he is come to dotage; without ever considering that his memory is impaired, and that he hath lost that life, and those spirits, which formerly raised his fancy and fired his imagination. The same folly hinders a man from submitting his behavior to his age, and makes Clodius, who was a celebrated dancer at five-and-twenty, still love to hobble in a minuet, though he is past threescore. It is this, in a word, which fills the town with elderly fops and superannuated coquettes." - Eustace Budgell
"A spiritual life is simply a life in which all that we do comes from the centre, where we are anchored in God: a life soaked through and through by a sense of His reality and claim, and self-given to the great movement of his will." - Evelyn Underhill
"If we do not at least try to manifest something of Creative Charity in our dealings with life, whether by action, thought, or prayer, and do it at our own cost -- if we roll up the talent of love in the nice white napkin of piety and put it safely out of the way, sorry that the world is so hungry and thirsty, so sick and so fettered, and leave it at that: then, even that little talent may be taken from us. We may discover at the crucial moment that we are spiritually bankrupt." - Evelyn Underhill
"In my relations with my father, which are difficult and where I'm often met by coolness and indifference, I am constantly tempted to be cold and indifferent. Yet I know that this is a test if I could take it rightly." - Evelyn Underhill
"CORDELIA: I hope I've got a vocation. CHARLES: I don't know what that means. CORDELIA: It means you can be a nun. If you haven't a vocation it's no good however much you want to be; and if you have a vocation, you can't get away from it, however much you hate it." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
"I think to be oversensitive about clichés is like being oversensitive about table manners." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
"My unhealthy affection for my second daughter has waned. Now I despise all my seven children equally." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
"Once you start changing a name, you see, there's no reason ever to stop. One always hears one that sounds better." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
"There is something in the red of a raspberry pie that looks as good to a man as the red in a sheep looks to a wolf." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
"These memories, which are my life--for we possess nothing certainly except the past--were always with me." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
"They are all negroes. And the Fascists wonÂ’t be called black because of their racial pride, so they are called White after the White Russians. And the Bolsheviks want to be called Black because of their racial pride. So when you say black you mean red, and when you mean red you say white and when the party who call themselves blacks say traitors they mean what we call blacks, but what we mean when we say traitors I really couldnÂ’t tell you. But from your point of view it will be quite simple. Lord Copper only wants patriot victories and both sides call themselves patriots, and of course both sides will claim all the victories. But, of course, itÂ’s really a war between Russia and Germany and Italy and Japan who are all against one another on the patriotic side. I hope I make myself plain?" - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
"To know and love one other human being is the root of all wisdom." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
"We schoolmasters must temper discretion with deceit." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
"About two hundred years ago some inspired men walked this land. Not perfect men, but men raised up by the Perfect Man to perform a great work. Foreordained were they to lay the foundation of this republic. Blessed by the Almighty in their struggle for liberty and independence, the power of heaven rested on these founders as they drafted that great document for governing men — the Constitution of the United States. Like the Ten Commandments, the truths on which the Constitution was based were timeless; and also as with the Decalogue — the hand of the Lord was in it. They filled their mission well. From them we were endowed with a legacy of liberty — a constitutional republic." - Ezra Taft Benson
"In the providence of God, governments were intended to be the servants, not the masters of the people. This eternal truth needs to be emphasized and re-emphasized." - Ezra Taft Benson
"That government is best which governs the least, so taught the courageous founders of this nation. This simple declaration is diametrically opposed to the all too common philosophy that the government should protect and support one from the cradle to the grave. The policy of the Founding Fathers has made our people and our nation strong. The opposite leads inevitably to moral decay." - Ezra Taft Benson
"We pay lip service to the principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution without realizing what they are and the danger of ignoring them." - Ezra Taft Benson
"No teacher has ever failed from ignorance. That is empiric professional knowledge. Teachers fail because they cannot `handle the class.' Real education must ultimately be limited to men how INSIST on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding." - Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
"Praying, we usually ask too much. I know I do. Sometimes we even demand. I think I am learning to ask enough for the moment--not for the whole year, utterly veiled in mystery; not even for the week, the month ahead; but just for today. He told us to pray: 'Give us this day our daily bread.' That bread is not only material, it is spiritual; in asking for it, we ask for a sufficiency of strength, courage, hope and light. Enough courage for the step ahead--not for the further miles. Enough strength for the immediate task or ordeal. Enough material gain to enable us to meet our daily obligations. Enough light to see the path--right before our feet." - Faith Baldwin
"A human being is not to be handled as a tool but is to be respected and revered." - Felix Adler
"The frontier of the higher life is everywhere contiguous to the common life, and we can cross the border at any moment. The higher life is as real as the grosser things in which we put our trust. But our eyes must be anointed so that we may see it." - Felix Adler