This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The tyrant should take heed to what he doth, since every victim-carrion turns to use, and drives a chariot, like a god made wroth, against each piled injustice." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"'Tis aye a solemn thing to me to look upon a babe that sleeps-- wearing in its spirit-deeps the unrevealed mystery of its Adam's taint and woe, which, when they revealed lie, will not let it slumber so." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"I can truly say that all the cares and anxieties, the trials and disappointments of my whole life, are light, when balanced with my sufferings in childhood and youth from the theological dogmas which I sincerely believed, and the gloom connected with everything associated with the name of religion." - Elizabeth Cady Stanton
"Let this my discipline stand you in good stead of sorer strokes, never to tempt too far a Prince's patience." - Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL
"I did hope tomorrow we can all, wherever we are, join in expressing our grief at Diana's loss, and gratitude for her all-too-short life. It is a chance to show to the whole world the British nation united in grief and respect." - Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL
"The British constitution has always been puzzling and always will be." - Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL
"But there's this one difference: one is gold put to the use of paving-stones, and the other is tin polished to ape a service of silver. Mine has nothing valuable about it; yet I shall have the merit of making it go as far as such poor stuff can go. His had first-rate qualities, and they are lost, rendered worst than unavailing." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"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
"If you get rid of the four-layered neurotic shield, the armor that covers the characterological lie about life, how can you talk about “enjoying” this Pyrrhic victory? The person gives up something restricting and illusory, it is true, but only to come face to face with something even more awful: genuine despair. Full humanness means full fear and trembling, at least some of the waking day. When you get a person to emerge into life, away from his dependencies, his automatic safety in the cloak of someone else's power, what joy can you promise him with the burden of his aloneness? When you get a person to look at the sun as it bakes down on the daily carnage taking place on earth, the ridiculous accidents, the utter fragility of life, the powerÂlessness of those he thought most powerful—what comfort can you give him from a psychotherapeutic point of view? Luis Buimel likes to introduce a mad dog into his films as counterpoint to the secure daily routine of repressed living. The meaning of his symÂbolism is that no matter what men pretend, they are only one acÂcidental bite away from utter fallibility. The artist disguises the incongruity that is the pulse-beat of madness but he is aware of it. What would the average man do with a full consciousness of abÂsurdity? He has fashioned his character for the precise purpose of putting it between himself and the facts of life; it is his special tour-de-force that allows him to ignore incongruities, to nourish himself on impossibilities, to thrive on blindness. He accomplishes thereby a peculiarly human victory: the ability to be smug about terror. Sartre has called man a "useless passion" because he is so hopelessly bungled, so deluded about his true condition. He wants to be a god with only the equipment of an animal, and so he thrives on fantasies. As Ortega so well put it in the epigraph we have used for this chapter, man uses his ideas for the defense of his existence, to frighten away reality. This is a serious game, the defense of one's existence—how take it away from people and leave them joyous?" - Ernest Becker
"Theology is about God, and God is Spirit … we have accumulated a lot of experience in the Christian community of persons treating theology as a subject in which God is studied in the ways we are taught to study in our schools—acquiring information that we can use, or satisfying our curiosity, or obtaining qualifications for a job or profession. There are, in fact, a lot of people within and outside formal religious settings who talk and write a lot about spirituality, things of the spirit or the soul or higher things, but are not interested in God. There is a wonderful line in T. H. White’s novel of King Arthur (The Once and Future King), in which Guinevere in her old age becomes the abbess of a convent: ‘she was a wonderful theologian but she wasn’t interested in God.’ It happens." - Eugene Peterson
"Why he thought no one would ever buy The Message (boy, was he wrong)." - Eugene Peterson
"If war is right let it be declared by the people. You who have your lives to lose, you certainly above all others have the right to decide the momentous issue of war or peace." - Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
"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
"Men who are wise, good, and honest, who will uphold the Constitution of the United States in the tradition of the Founding Fathers, must be sought for diligently. This is our hope to restore government to its rightful role. I fully believe that we can turn things around in America if we have the determination, the morality, the patriotism, and the spirituality to do so… I further witness that this land — the Americas — must be protected, its Constitution upheld, for this is a land foreordained to be the Zion of our God. He expects us as members of the Church and bearers of His priesthood to do all we can to preserve our liberty." - Ezra Taft Benson
"The Lord raised up the Founding Fathers. He it was who established the Constitution of this land — the greatest document of freedom ever written. This God-inspired Constitution is not outmoded. It is not an outdated “agrarian document” as some of our would-be statesmen, socialists, and fellow travelers of the godless conspiracy would have us believe. It was the Lord God who established the foundation of this nation; and woe be unto those — members of the Supreme Court and others — who would weaken this foundation." - Ezra Taft Benson
"We urge you to do all within your talent and means to build the kingdom of God on Earth. Always strive to sustain, support and do what is best for the kingdom of God." - Ezra Taft Benson
"Like poor immigrants throughout the ages, Jews there adjusted to the jobs no one else would do." - Felipe Fernández-Armesto
"The Infinite, from which comes the impulse that lead us to activity, is not the highest Reason, but higher than reason; not the highest Goodness, but higher than goodness." - Felix Adler
"The right for the right's sake is the motto which everyone should take for his own life. With that as a standard of value we can descend into our hearts, appraise ourselves, and determine in how far we already are moral beings, in how far not yet." - Felix Adler
"And here you will stay, Gandalf the Grey, and rest from journeys. For I am Saruman the Wise, Saruman the Ring-maker, Saruman of Many Colors! I looked then and saw that his robes, which had seemed white, were not so, but were woven of all colors, and if he moved they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"For it is now to us itself ancient; and yet its maker was telling of things already old and weighted with regret, and he expended his art in making keen that touch upon the heart which sorrows have that are both poignant and remote." - 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