This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"If Humility is Christianity, you, O Jews! are the true Christians. If your tradition that Man contained in his limbs all animals is true, and they were separated from him by cruel sacrifices, and when compulsory cruel sacrifices had brought Humanity into a Feminine Tabernacle in the loins of Abraham and David, the Lamb of God, the Saviour, became apparent on Earth as the Prophets had fore-told! The return of Israel is a return to mental sacrifice and war. " - William Blake
"Love-Contradictions - As rare to heare as seldome to be seene, It cannot be nor never yet hathe bene That fire should burne with perfecte heate and flame Without some matter for to yealde the same. A straunger case yet true by profe I knowe A man in joy that livethe still in woe: A harder happ who hathe his love at lyste Yet lives in love as he all love had miste: Whoe hathe enougehe, yet thinkes he lives wthout, Lackinge no love yet still he standes in doubte. What discontente to live in suche desyre, To have his will yet ever to requyre." - Edward Dyer, fully Sir Edward Dyer
"How the chimney-sweepers cry every blackening church appalls, and the hapless soldiers sigh runs in blood down palace walls" - William Blake
"A man must be brought up among the Irish peasantry and under the influence of superstition, before he can understand its form and character correctly... But there is no specimen of Irish superstition equal to that which is to be seen at St. Patrick’s Purgatory, in Lough Dearg. A devout Romanist who has not made the pilgrimage to this place can scarcely urge a bold claim to the character of piety." - William Carleton
"Praise your children openly, reprove them secretly." - William Cecil, Lord Burghley, 1st Baron Burghley, also Lord William Cecil Burleigh
"It was every man's duty to do all that lay in his power to leave his country as good as he had found it." - William Cobbett
"Habits of close attention, thinking heads, become more rare as dissipation spreads, till authors hear at length one general cry tickle and entertain us, or we die!" - William Cowper
"I believe no man was ever scolded out of his sins." - William Cowper
"Sin let loose speaks punishment at hand." - William Cowper
"The priest he merry is, and blithe three-quarters of a year, but oh! It cuts him like a scythe when tithing time draws near." - William Cowper
"Which not even critics criticize." - William Cowper
"The sorrow which calls for help and comfort is not the greatest, nor does it come from the depths of the heart." - Wilhelm von Humboldt, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt
"Get this one: There was a time a few years back when a dig at the lawyers at the Bijou Theater was a sure fire laugh, but now the so-called humorists have sensed the distastes in the mouths of the public for such efforts of humor." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
"When an Office Holder, or one that has been found out, can’t think of anything to deliver a speech on, he always falls back on the good old subject, AMERICANISM." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
"With this the [genuine] leader will cause many to turn against him. He will have robbed these many of an object to hold on to, like a bean stalk would feel robbed of comfort if you took away the supporting stick of wood." - Wilhelm Reich
"I and this mystery here we stand." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
"I too but signify at the utmost a little wash'd-up drift, a few sands and dead leaves to gather, gather, and merge myself as part of the sands and drift." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
"Now understand me well. Out of every fruition of success, no matter what, comes forth something to make a new effort necessary." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
"What blurt is this about virtue and about vice? Evil propels me and reform of evil propels me, I stand indifferent, my gait is no fault-finder's or rejecter's gait, I moisten the roots of all that has grown." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
"You may say you are already doing this; you see and hear nothing of worldly ways, you do not employ your bodily senses more than is necessary. If indeed you are doing this you have closed a large window in this image, but you are not yet safe, because you have not closed the hidden openings of your imagination. So if you deliberately allow yourself to consider the vanities of this world, or to think of comfort and ease, then, although your soul may remain in you as far as the bodily senses are concerned, it is in fact being lured away by these vain fancies." - Walter Hilton
"Such discussions help us very little to enjoy what has been well done in art or poetry, to discriminate between what is more and what is less excellent in them, or to use words like beauty, excellence, art, poetry, with a more precise meaning than they would otherwise have." - Walter Pater, fully Walter Horatio Pater
"What is important, then, is not that the critic should possess a correct abstract definition of beauty for the intellect, but a certain kind of temperament, the power of being deeply moved by the presence of beautiful objects." - Walter Pater, fully Walter Horatio Pater
"By distancing the word from the plenum of existence, from a holistic context made up mostly of non-verbal elements, writing enforces verbal precision of a sort unavailable in oral cultures. Context always controls the meaning of a word. In oral utterance, the context always includes much more than words, so that less of the total, precise meaning conveyed by the words need rest in the words themselves." - Walter J. Ong, fully Walter Jackson Ong
"By separating the knower from the known, writing makes possible increasingly articulate introspectivity, opening the psyche as never before not only to the external objective world quite distinct from itself but also to the interior self against whom the objective world is set. Writing makes possible the great introspective religious traditions such as Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. All of these have sacred texts." - Walter J. Ong, fully Walter Jackson Ong
"Homeric and the pre-Homeric Greeks, like oral peoples generally, practiced public speaking with great skill long before their skills were reduced to an "art", that is, to a body of sequentially organized, scientific principles which explained and abetted what verbal persuasion consisted in. Such an "art" is presented in Aristotle"s Art of Rhetoric. Oral cultures, as has been seen, can have no "arts" of this scientifically organized sort. The "art" of rhetoric, though concerned with oral speech, was, like other "arts," the product of writing." - Walter J. Ong, fully Walter Jackson Ong
"Speech is essentially a spoken and heard phenomenon, a matter of voice and ear, an event in the world of sound. Words are sounds. Written words are substitutes for sound and are only marks on a surface until they are converted to sound again, either in the imagination or by actual vocalization. We know this, but we find it almost impossible to grasp its full implications. The spoken word has become entangled with writing and print. When we talk about words, we are seldom sure whether we mean spoken words or written words or printed words or all of these simultaneously." - Walter J. Ong, fully Walter Jackson Ong
"Spoken words are always modifications of a total, existential situation, which always engages the body. Bodily activity beyond mere vocalization is not adventitious or contrived in oral communication, but is natural and even inevitable. In oral verbalization, particularly public verbalization, absolute motionlessness is itself a powerful gesture." - Walter J. Ong, fully Walter Jackson Ong
"There is, indeed, no way for a cry to completely exteriorize itself. A mark made by our hand will remain when we are gone. But when the interior—even the physical, corporeal interior, as well as the spiritual interior of consciousness—from which a cry is emitted ceases to function as an interior, the cry itself has perished. To apprehend what a person has produced in space—a bit of writing, a picture—is not at all to be sure that he is alive. To hear his voice (provided it is not reproduced from a frozen spatial design on a phonograph disc or tape) is to be sure." - Walter J. Ong, fully Walter Jackson Ong
"Yet in a deep sense language, articulated sound, is paramount. Not only communication, but thought itself relates in an altogether special way to sound. We have all heard it said that one picture is worth a thousand words. Yet, if this statement is true, why does it have to be a saying? Because a picture is worth a thousand words only under special conditions—which commonly include a context of words in which the picture is set." - Walter J. Ong, fully Walter Jackson Ong
"We think that we suffer from ingratitude, while in reality we suffer from self-love." - Walter Savage Landor
"Fine apricot cut for roof-beam. Fragrant cogon-grass tie for eaves. Not know ridgepole in cloud. Go make people among rain. Fine apricot was cut for the roof-beam, fragrant cogon-grass tied for the eaves. I know not when the cloud from this house will go to make rain among the people." - Wang Wei, aka Wang Youcheng
"Old age think good quiet. Everything not concern heart. Self attend without great plan. Empty know return old forest. Pine wind blow undo belt. Hill moon light pluck qin. Gentleman ask end open reason. Fisherman song enter riverbank deep. Now in old age, I know the value of silence, the world's affairs no longer stir my heart. Turning to myself, I have no greater plan, all I can do is return to the forest of old. Wind from the pine trees blows my sash undone, the moon shines through the hills; I pluck the qin. You ask me why the world must rise and fall, fishermen sing on the steep banks of the river." - Wang Wei, aka Wang Youcheng
"I wanted the influence. In the end I wasn't very good at being a president. I looked out of the window and thought that the man cutting the lawn actually seemed to have more control over what he was doing." - Warren Bennis, fully Warren Gamaliel Bennis
"Our approach is very much profiting from lack of change rather than from change. With Wrigley chewing gum, it's the lack of change that appeals to me. I don't think it is going to be hurt by the Internet. That's the kind of business I like." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"When friends grow cold, and the converse of intimates languishes into vapid civility and commonplace, books only continue the unaltered countenance of happier days, and cheer us with that true friendship which never deceived hope nor deserted sorrow." - Washington Irving
"Tapping into the essence of originating Spirit, emulating the attributes of the creative force of intention, and manifesting into your life anything that you desire that's consistent with the universal mind..." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
"As I have read the Gospels over the years, the belief has grown in me that Christ did not come to found an organized religion but came instead to found an unorganized one. He seems to have come to carry religion out of the temples into the fields and sheep pastures, onto the roadsides and the banks of the rivers, into the houses of sinners and publicans, into the town and the wilderness, toward the membership of all that is here. Well, you can read and see what you think." - Wendell Berry
"Small creatures die because larger creatures are hungry. How superior to this human confusion of greed and creed, blood and fire." - Wendell Berry
"The people didn't really want to be saints of self-deprivation and hatred of the world. They knew that the world would sooner or later deprive them of all it had given them, but still they liked it." - Wendell Berry
"Defenseless under the night our world in stupor lies; yet, dotted everywhere, ironic points of light flash out wherever the Just exchange their messages: may I, composed like them of Eros and of dust, beleaguered by the same negation and despair, show an affirming flame." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
"Earth, receive an honored guest: William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie emptied of its poetry." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
"He timidly attacked the life he led." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
"A good rotation. A rotation I define as the experiencing of the new beyond the expectation of the experiencing of the new." - Walker Percy
"As life grows more terrible, its literature grows more terrible." - Wallace Stevens
"At the piano, scales, arpeggios and chords, the morning exercises, the afternoon's reading, the night's reflection, that's how to produce a virtuoso." - Wallace Stevens
"Beauty is momentary in the mind, the fitful tracing of a portal; but in the flesh it is immortal. The body dies; the body's beauty lives." - Wallace Stevens
"The idols have seen lots of poverty, snakes and gold and lice, but not the truth." - Wallace Stevens
"Thus by such victory, not by machines but in oppositions to the principle to the principles of machines, has the freedom of states been preserved by the cunning of architects." - Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL