This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Philosophers play with the word, like a child with a doll.... It does not mean that everything in life is relative. " - Albert Einstein
"Success = 1 part work + 1 part play + 1 part keep your mouth shut. " - Albert Einstein
"To read a novel or see a play was to drink life through a straw " - Quentin Crisp, born Denis Charles Pratt
"The point is to develop the childlike inclination for play and the childlike desire for recognition and to guide the child over to important fields for society. Such a school demands from the teacher that he be a kind of artist in his province." - Albert Einstein
"When the number of factors coming into play in a phenomenological complex is too large scientific method in most cases fails. One need only think of the weather, in which case the prediction even for a few days ahead is impossible." - Albert Einstein
"Doubtless the free play of initiative, competition between buyers and sellers, would be unthinkable if human nature had not been sullied by the Fall. The individual would give of his best in the interests of others without hope of recompense, without concern for his own interests." - Raymond Aron, fully Raymond-Claude-Ferdinand Aron
"To suggest that war can prevent war is a base play on words and a despicable form of warmongering. The objective of any who sincerely believe in peace clearly must be to exhaust every honorable recourse in the effort to save the peace. The world has had ample evidence that war begets only conditions that beget further war." - Ralph Bunche, fully Ralph Johnson Bunche
"It is no small irony that in the age of ‘technological man’ people actually play a greater role in ecosystems than ever. For example, H. sapiens has long been the most successful terrestrial carnivore ever to have walked the earth and, during the 20th Century, humans became the most voracious predator in the world’s oceans. Remarkably, considering our unchallenged status as top carnivore, we are also the dominant herbivore in grasslands and forests all over the planet, particularly if we consider the demands of ‘industrial metabolism’ (Rees 2003a, Fowler and Hobbs 2003). And human impacts transcend biology, earth scientists assert that economic activity has become the most significant geological force altering the face of the planet and climatologists agree that we are now actually beginning to affect global climate." - William Rees and Mathis Wackernagel
"An honest appraisal of the respective pleasures derived from theater and cinema, at least as to what is less intellectual and more direct about them, forces us to admit that the delight we experience at the end of a play has a more uplifting, a nobler, one might perhaps say a more moral, effect than the satisfaction which follows a good film. We seem to come away with a better conscience. " - René Bazin, fully René François Nicolas Marie Bazin
"America is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain. It's 'winner take nothing' that is the great truth of our country or of any country. Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat. Our fate is to become one, and yet many -- This in not prophecy, but description." - Ralph Ellison, fully Ralph Waldo Ellison
"Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear." - Ralph Ellison, fully Ralph Waldo Ellison
"Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat." - Ralph Ellison, fully Ralph Waldo Ellison
"A man does not feel restless for God until all his worldly desires are satisfied. He does not remember the Mother of the Universe until his share of the enjoyment of 'woman and gold' is completed. A child absorbed in play does not seek his mother. But after his play is over, he says, 'Mother! I must go to my mother.'" - Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
"Just as you practice much in order to sing, dance, and play on instruments, so one should practice the art of fixing the mind on God. One should practice regularly such disciplines as worship, japa, and meditation." - Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
"Little children play with dolls in the outer room just as they like, without any care of fear or restraint; but as soon as their mother comes in, they throw aside their dolls and run to her crying, Mamma, mamma. You too, are now playing in this material world, infatuated with the dolls of wealth, honor, fame, etc., If however, you once see your Divine Mother, you will not afterwards find pleasure in all these. Throwing them all aside, you will run to her." - Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
"The 'ego of a child' is not attached to anything. The child is beyond the three gunas; he is not under the control of any of them. One moment you find him angry; the next moment it is all over. One moment you see him building his play house; the next moment he forgets all about it. Now you see him love his playmates; but if they are out of his sight a few days he forgets all about them. A child is not under the control of any of the gunas" - Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
"Never make a decision until you have to. He'd also warn me that even if I was in a position of strength, whether at work or in a relationship, I had to play fair. Just because you're in the driver's seat, doesn't mean you have to run people over." - Randy Pausch, fully Randolph Frederick "Randy" Pausch
"We can escape the commonplace only by manipulating it, controlling it, thrusting it into our dreams or surrendering it to the free play of our subjectivity." - Raoul Vaneigem
"Therefore, let us be patient, patient; and let God our Father teach His own lesson, His own way. Let us try to learn it well and quickly; but do not let us fancy that He will ring the school-bell, and send us to play before our lesson is learnt." - Charles Kingsley
"Other people think they know what you are: glamour, sex, money, power, love. It may be a press agent dream which has nothing to do with you, maybe it's something you don't even like, but that's what they think you are. People rush at you from all sides, they think they're going to get these things if they touch you. It's scary, so you build walls around yourself, thick glass walls while you're trying to think, trying to catch your breath. You know who you are inside, but people outside see something different. You can choose to become the image, and let go of who you are, or continue as you are and feel phony when you play the image." - Richard Bach, fully Richard David Bach
"We don`t need our belief in limits to live, [...] we need `em to play the game!" - Richard Bach, fully Richard David Bach
"The analogy between telescope and eye, between watch and living organism, is false. All appearances to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics, albeit deployed in a very special way. A true watchmaker has foresight: he designs his cogs and springs, and plans their interconnections, with a future purpose in his mind's eye. Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind's eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker." - Richard Dawkins
"It is odd, but on the infrequent occasions when I have been called upon in a formal place to play the bongo drums, the introducer never seems to find it necessary to mention that I also do theoretical physics." - Richard Feynman, fully Richard Phillips Feynman
"On the infrequent occasions when I have been called upon in a formal place to play the bongo drums, the introducer never seems to find it necessary to mention that I also do theoretical physics." - Richard Feynman, fully Richard Phillips Feynman
"Perspective is that part of a poem, novel, or play which a writer never puts directly upon paper. It is that fixed point in intellectual space where a writer stands to view the struggles, hopes, and sufferings of his people. There are times when he may stand too close and the result is a blurred vision. Or he may stand too far away and the result is a neglect of important things." - Richard Wright, fully Richard Nathaniel Wright
"They hate because they fear, and they fear because they feel that the deepest feelings of their lives are being assaulted and outraged. And they do not know why; they are powerless pawns in a blind play of social forces." - Richard Wright, fully Richard Nathaniel Wright
"I have no wife or children, good or bad, to provide for; a mere spectator of other men's fortunes and adventures, and how they play their parts; which, methinks, are diversely presented unto me, as from, a common theatre or scene." - Robert Burton
"First, we've got to get over the fact that it's Lanier. We have to play the game, play hard and handle their pressure. We want to try to prevent (high-scoring Bulldogs junior guard R.L.) Horton from getting on a run. Lanier is so balanced and athletic, though, that it's kind of pick your poison with them." - Robert Byrd, fully Robert Carlyle Byrd
"Our subconscious minds have no sense of humor, play no jokes and cannot tell the difference between reality and an imagined thought or image. What we continually think about eventually will manifest in our lives." - Robert Collier
"Only where love and need are one, And the work is play for mortal stakes Is the deed ever truly done For Heaven and the future's sakes." - Robert Frost
"But yield who will to their separation, My object in living is to unite My avocation and my vocation As my two eyes make one in sight. Only where love and need are one, And the work is play for mortal stakes, Is the deed ever really done For Heaven and the future's sakes." - Robert Frost
"My object in living is to unite My avocation and my vocation As my two eyes make one in sight. Only where love and need are one, And the work is play for mortal stakes, Is the deed ever really done For Heaven and the future's sakes. " - Robert Frost
"These are the things I learned (in Kindergarten): 1. Share everything. 2. Play fair. 3. Don't hit people. 4. Put thngs back where you found them. 5. CLEAN UP YOUR OWN MESS. 6. Don't take things that aren't yours. 7. Say you're SORRY when you HURT somebody. 8. Wash your hands before you eat. 9. Flush. 10. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. 11. Live a balanced life - learn some and drink some and draw some and paint some and sing and dance and play and work everyday some. 12. Take a nap every afternoon. 13. When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together. 14. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Stryrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that. 15. Goldfish and hamster and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we. 16. And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first workd you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK." - Robert Fulghum, fully Robert Lee Fulghum
"A Faint Music - Maybe you need to write a poem about grace. When everything broken is broken, and everything dead is dead, and the hero has looked into the mirror with complete contempt, and the heroine has studied her face and its defects remorselessly, and the pain they thought might, as a token of their earnestness, release them from themselves has lost its novelty and not released them, and they have begun to think, kindly and distantly, watching the others go about their days— likes and dislikes, reasons, habits, fears— that self-love is the one weedy stalk of every human blossoming, and understood, therefore, why they had been, all their lives, in such a fury to defend it, and that no one— except some almost inconceivable saint in his pool of poverty and silence—can escape this violent, automatic life’s companion ever, maybe then, ordinary light, faint music under things, a hovering like grace appears. As in the story a friend told once about the time he tried to kill himself. His girl had left him. Bees in the heart, then scorpions, maggots, and then ash. He climbed onto the jumping girder of the bridge, the bay side, a blue, lucid afternoon. And in the salt air he thought about the word “seafood,” that there was something faintly ridiculous about it. No one said “landfood.” He thought it was degrading to the rainbow perch he’d reeled in gleaming from the cliffs, the black rockbass, scales like polished carbon, in beds of kelp along the coast—and he realized that the reason for the word was crabs, or mussels, clams. Otherwise the restaurants could just put “fish” up on their signs, and when he woke—he’d slept for hours, curled up on the girder like a child—the sun was going down and he felt a little better, and afraid. He put on the jacket he’d used for a pillow, climbed over the railing carefully, and drove home to an empty house. There was a pair of her lemon yellow panties hanging on a doorknob. He studied them. Much-washed. A faint russet in the crotch that made him sick with rage and grief. He knew more or less where she was. A flat somewhere on Russian Hill. They’d have just finished making love. She’d have tears in her eyes and touch his jawbone gratefully. “God,” she’d say, “you are so good for me.” Winking lights, a foggy view downhill toward the harbor and the bay. “You’re sad,” he’d say. “Yes.” “Thinking about Nick?” “Yes,” she’d say and cry. “I tried so hard,” sobbing now, “I really tried so hard.” And then he’d hold her for a while— Guatemalan weavings from his fieldwork on the wall— and then they’d fuck again, and she would cry some more, and go to sleep. And he, he would play that scene once only, once and a half, and tell himself that he was going to carry it for a very long time and that there was nothing he could do but carry it. He went out onto the porch, and listened to the forest in the summer dark, madrone bark cracking and curling as the cold came up. It’s not the story though, not the friend leaning toward you, saying “And then I realized—,” which is the part of stories one never quite believes. I had the idea that the world’s so full of pain it must sometimes make a kind of singing. And that the sequence helps, as much as order helps— First an ego, and then pain, and then the singing." - Robert Hass, aka The Bard of Berkeley
"My Library - Like prim Professor of a College I primed my shelves with books of knowledge; And now I stand before them dumb, Just like a child that sucks its thumb, And stares forlorn and turns away, With dolls or painted bricks to play. They glour at me, my tomes of learning. You dolt! they jibe; you undiscerning Moronic oaf, you make a fuss, With highbrow swank selecting us; Saying: I'll read you all some day' - And now you yawn and turn away. Unwanted wait we with our store Of facts and philosophic lore; The scholarship of all the ages Snug packed within our uncut pages; The mystery of all mankind In part revealed - but you are blind. You have no time to read, you tell us; Oh, do not think that we are jealous Of all the trash that wins your favour, The flimsy fiction that you savour: We only beg that sometimes you Will spare us just an hour or two. For all the minds that went to make us Are dust if folk like you forsake us, And they can only live again By virtue of your kindling brain; In magic print they packed their best: Come - try their wisdom to digest… Said I: Alas! I am not able; I lay my cards upon the table, And with deep shame and blame avow I am too old to read you now; So I will lock you in glass cases And shun your sad, reproachful faces. My library is noble planned, Yet in it desolate I stand; And though my thousand books I prize, Feeling a witling in their eyes, I turn from them in weariness To wallow in the Daily Press. For, oh, I never, never will The noble field of knowledge till: I pattern words with artful tricks, As children play with painted bricks, And realize with futile woe, Nothing I know - nor want to know. My library has windowed nooks; And so I turn from arid books To vastitude of sea and sky, And like a child content am I With peak and plain and brook and tree, Crying: Behold! the books for me: Nature, be thou my Library! " - Robert Service, fully Robert William Service
"We engage in an act of poetic meaning-making forewarned and forearmed. The warning is necessary: readers will have to roll up their sleeves and collaborate meaningfully with the poet to make the poem. Hence, the poet needs to play fair: leave the right margins unjustified and lots of white space around the piece. That signifies" Poem: Beware. Reader, if you are not willing to do your part, turn the page." Poems omit, hint, and sometimes -- as Plato remarked -- they may even lie. The reader has to accept that the writer is not exactly playing fair. But the reader has been fairly warned and should know what is expected and be willing to provide it, as the poet took special pains to provide something worth struggling with. The two thus form co-contractors, bound to work together to make the poem." - Robin Lakoff, fully Robin Tolmach Lakoff
"To Thee, O living God, my being yearns, For Thee my soul consumes, my spirit burns. Within Thy chosen people’s hearts Thy glory Inhabits, be they babes or fathers hoary, To bind Thy chosen to Thy chariot wheels. And with the radiance that Thee conceals I fill my heart and make for my delight A lampstand set beside me in the night. The wisest weary them to comprehend Thy mystery, then how should I ascend The secret of Thy glorious shrine to tell? Thy shining semblance is unsearchable. Then let my craving to my own soul turn To find the wealth divine for which I yearn. For Wisdom’s house is as of sapphires builded, Her pavement as with gold of Ophir gilded. Within the body is her hidden lair, Like a young lion she is couchant there. She is my bliss and joy in lamentation, She is my thinking cap of meditation. What man dare all her beauty’s praises sum, Or be to her perfections wholly dumb? Answer her swiftly, God of grace above, For she is sick with longing for Thy love. "Gently, dear damsel, sip salvation’s water, For thou, most dazzling maiden, art My daughter."" - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
"Nations are many, but Earth is one; Beings are many, but Breath is one; Stars are many, but Sky is one; Oceans are many, but Water is one; Religions are many, but God is one; Jewels are many, but Gold is one; Appearances are many, but Reality is One." - Sathya Sai Baba, fully Sri Sathya Sai Baba
"We cannot diminish the value of one category of human life -- the unborn -- without diminishing the value of all human life . . . there is no cause more important." - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan
"What is our task in the question of peace? It does not consist merely in vigorously demonstrating at all times the love of peace of the Social Democrats; but first and foremost our task is to make clear to the masses of people the nature of militarism and sharply and clearly to bring out the differences in principle between the standpoint of the Social Democrats and that of the bourgeois peace enthusiasts." - Rosa Luxemburg, aka Rosalia Luxemburg, "Bloody Rosa"
"Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees That half a proper gardener's work is done upon his knees, So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray For the Glory of the Garden, that it may not pass away! And the Glory of the Garden, it shall never pass away!" - Rudyard Kipling
"Creditors have better memories than debtors." - Russian Proverbs
"Do not praise your wife before seven years." - Russian Proverbs
"Why, being dead, do you rely on yourself? You were able to die of your own accord; you cannot come back to life of your own accord. We were able to sin by ourselves, and we are still able to, nor shall we ever not be able to. Let our hope be in nothing but in God. Let us send up our sighs to him; as for ourselves, let us strive with our wills to earn merit by our prayers." - Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
"The saints rejoiced at injuries and persecutions, because in forgiving them they had something to present to God when they prayed to Him." - Saint Teresa of Ávila, aka Saint Teresa of Jesus, baptized as Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada NULL
"The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas - uncertainty, progress, change - into crimes." - Salman Rushdie, fully Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie
"When thought becomes excessively painful, action is the finest remedy." - Salman Rushdie, fully Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie
"To put one’s trust in God is only a longer way of saying that one will chance it." - Samuel Butler
"We shall never get people whose time is money to take much interest in atoms." - Samuel Butler