This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"These two arts associated themselves with that of gesture, their elder sister, and known by the name of Dance. From whence there is reason to conjecture, that some kind of dance, and some kind of music and poetry, might have been observed at all times, and in all nations." - Étienne Bonnot de Condillac
"To produce harmony, the cadences ought not to be placed indifferently. Sometimes the harmony ought to be suspended, and at other times it ought to terminate with a sensible pause. Consequently in a language, whose prosody is perfect, the succession of sounds should be subordinate to the fall of each period, so that the cadences shall be more or less abrupt, and the ear shall not find a final pause, till the mind be entirely satisfied." - Étienne Bonnot de Condillac
"With regard to natural cries, this man shall form them, as soon as he feels the passions to which they belong. However they will not be signs in respect to him the first time; because instead of reviving .his perceptions, they will as yet be no more than consequences of those perceptions." - Étienne Bonnot de Condillac
"The excursion is the same when you go looking for your sorrow as when you go looking for your joy." - Eudora Welty
"God does not want us neurotically dependent on him but willingly trustful in him. And so he weans us. The period of infancy will not be sentimentally extended beyond what is necessary." - Eugene Peterson
"Two biblical designations for people of faith: disciple and pilgrim. Disciple (mathetes) says we are people who spend our lives apprenticed to our master. We are in a growing-learning relationship, always. We donÂ’t learn in a school, but at the work site of the craftsman. We seek not to acquire information about God but skills in faith." - Eugene Peterson
"Why canÂ’t you remember your Shakespeare and forget the third-raters. YouÂ’ll find what youÂ’re trying to say in him- as youÂ’ll find everything else worth saying. 'We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with sleep.'' 'Fine! ThatÂ’s beautiful. But I wasnÂ’t trying to say that. We are such stuff as manure is made on, so letÂ’s drink up and forget it. ThatÂ’s more my idea." - Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
"It is vice to go to bed with someone you are not married to or have someone of your own sex or to get money for having sex with someone who does not appeal to you - incidentally, the basis of half the marriages of my generation." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"Private lives should be no business of the State. The State is bad enough as it is. It cannot educate or medicate or feed the people; it cannot do anything but kill the people. No State like that do we want prying into our private lives." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"Sex is. There is nothing more to be done about it. Sex builds no roads, writes no novels and sex certainly gives no meaning to anything in life but itself." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"The planet Venus, a circle of silver in a green sky, pierced the edge of the evening while the wintry woods darkened about me and in the stillness the regular sound of my footsteps striking the pavement was like a the rhythmic beating of a giant stone heart." - 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
"What is in question is a kind of book reviewing which seems to be more and more popular: the loose putting down of opinions as though they were facts, and the treating of facts as though they were opinions." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"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
"Ten thousand times has the labor movement stumbled and fallen and bruised itself, and risen again; been seized by the throat and choked and clubbed into insensibility; enjoined by courts, assaulted by thugs, charged by the militia, shot down by regulars, traduced by the press, frowned upon by public opinion, deceived by politicians, threatened by priests, repudiated by renegades, preyed upon by grafters, infested by spies, deserted by cowards, betrayed by traitors, bled by leeches, and sold out by leaders, but notwithstanding all this, and all these, it is today the most vital and potential power this planet has ever known, and its historic mission of emancipating the workers of the world from the thraldom of the ages is as certain of ultimate realization as is the setting of the sun." - Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
"If you wish to know what justice is, let injustice pursue you. When you cannot be just because of your nature, be so through your pride." - Eugenio Maria de Hostos (y Bonilla)
"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
"But what has been often urged as a consideration of much more weight, is not only the opinion of the better sort, but the general consent of mankind to this great truth; which I think could not possibly have come to pass, but from one of the three following reasons: either that the idea of a God is innate and co-existent with the mind itself; or that this truth is so very obvious that it is discovered by the first exertion of reason in persons of the most ordinary capacities; or, lastly, that it has been delivered down to us through all ages by a tradition from the first man. The Atheists are equally confounded, to whichever of these three causes we assign it." - Eustace Budgell
"In order to keep that temper which is so difficult, and yet so necessary to preserve, you may please to consider, that nothing can be more unjust or ridiculous, than to be angry with another because he is not of your opinion. The interests, education, and means by which men attain their knowledge, are so very different, that it is impossible they should all think alike; and he has at least as much reason to be angry with you, as you with him. Sometimes, to keep yourself cool, it may be of service to ask yourself fairly, what might have been your opinion, had you all the biasses of education and interest your adversary may possibly have?" - 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
"A large part of my work has been collaborating with composers; I think we've commissioned about 140 pieces now, a lot of them percussion concertos." - Evelyn Glennie, fully Evelyn Elizabeth Ann Glennie
"Percussion is the most adaptable family of instruments. The biggest challenge is to project percussion in a lyrical way." - Evelyn Glennie, fully Evelyn Elizabeth Ann Glennie
"There is no place in my soul, no corner of my character, where God is not." - Evelyn Underhill
"'I couldn't understand why God had made the world at all...' I asked my bishop; he didn't know. He said that he didn't think the point arose as far as my practical duties as a parish priest were concerned." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
"In recognizing God as the source of their rights, the Founding Fathers declared Him to be the ultimate authority for their basis of law. This led them to the conviction that people do not make law but merely acknowledge preexisting law, giving it specific application. The Constitution was conceived to be such an expression of higher law. And when their work was done, James Madison wrote: “It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it a finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution” (The Federalist, no. 37)." - Ezra Taft Benson
"The Founding Fathers, it is true, with superb genius welded together the safeguards of our freedom. It was necessary, however, for them to turn to the scriptures, to religion, to prayer, in order to have this great experiment make sense to them. And so our freedom is God-given. It ante-dates the Founding Fathers. It is my belief that ours is not just another nation, not just a member of a family of nations. It is a great and glorious nation with a divine mission and it has been brought into being under the inspiration of heaven. I thank God for the knowledge which I have regarding the prophetic history and the prophetic future of this land of America. It is my firm belief that the Constitution of the land was established by men whom the God of Heaven raised up unto that very purpose. It is my firm belief, also, that the God of Heaven guided the Founding Fathers in establishing it for His particular purposes. But God’s purpose is to build people of character, not physical monuments to their material accumulations. The founders of this republic had deeply spiritual beliefs. Their concept of man had a solidly religious foundation. They believed “it is not right that any man should be in bondage one to another.” They believed that men were capable of self-government and that it was the job of government to protect freedom and foster private initiative." - Ezra Taft Benson
"The great task of life is to learn the will of the Lord and then do it." - Ezra Taft Benson
"When you are tempted to look elsewhere for greener pastures, just remember someone else is probably looking at yours. And if another pasture looks greener, perhaps it is getting better care and attention. Grass is always greener. . . where it is watered." - Ezra Taft Benson
"The intellect is a very nice whirligig toy, but how people take it seriously is more than I can understand." - Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
"The thing about the Islamic situation is we don't have a church. We don't have an ordained priesthood, which makes it a little complicated. But we do have a tradition of scholarship, and rules of scholarship. It's very much like any field of knowledge." - Feisal Abdul Rauf
"If you desire information on some point of law, you are not likely to ponder over the ponderous tomes of legal writers in order to obtain the knowledge you seek, by your own unaided efforts." - Felix Adler
"In a country of such recent civilization as ours, whose almost limitless treasures of material wealth invite the risks of capital and the industry of labor, it is but natural that material interests should absorb the attention of the people to a degree elsewhere unknown." - Felix Adler
"It has been said that the modern world is divided between the hot and hasty pursuit of affairs in the hours of labor, and the no less eager chase of pleasure in the hours of leisure. But even our pleasures are calculated and business like. We measure our enjoyments by the sum expended. Our salons are often little better than bazaars of fashion." - Felix Adler
"The office of the public teacher is an unenviable and thankless one." - Felix Adler
"To-day, in the estimation of many, science and art are taking the place of religion. But science and art alike are inadequate to build up character and to furnish binding rules of conduct. We need also a clearer understanding of applied ethics, a better insight into the specific duties of life, a finer and a surer moral tact." - Felix Adler
"Out of a great evil often comes a great good." - Italian Proverbs
"Rather have a little one for your friend, than a great one for your enemy." - Italian Proverbs
"The dog that is quarrelsome and not strong, woe to his hide." - Italian Proverbs
"When the head aches all the members languish." - Italian Proverbs
"Who has no children does not know what love is." - Italian Proverbs
"All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, a light from the shadows shall spring; renewed shall be blade that was broken, the crownless again shall be king." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"And here he was, a little halfling from the Shire, a simple hobbit of the quiet countryside, expected to find a way where the great ones could not go, or dared not go. It was an evil fate." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"And lastly there is the oldest and deepest desire, the Great Escape: the Escape from Death. Fairy-stories provide many examples and modes of this.... Fairy-stories are made by men not by fairies. The Human-stories of the elves are doubtless full of the Escape from Deathlessness." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"Better mistrust undeserved than rash words." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"But it does not seem that I can trust anyone, said Frodo. Sam looked at him unhappily. It all depends on what you want, put in Merry. You can trust us to stick with you through thick and thin to the bitter end. And you can trust us to keep any secret of yours closer than you keep it yourself. But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word. We are your friends, Frodo." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger; someone has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them..." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien