This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"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
"Where the rainbows play in the flying spray," - Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
"It is curious how little interested we are in the sexual desires of those who do not attract us." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"Monotheism is easily the greatest disaster to befall the human race." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"The behavior of President Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to not unnatural suspicions." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"Well, it's been the monopolizing of great wealth, which tends to happen in basically unjust societies and undemocratic societies. We have plenty of would-be democrats, would-be liberals, and would-be progressives. But how do you organize? The Democratic Party is a machine to get votes for its people, none of who should probably be elected to the high offices of state. That's all. The Republican Party is fundamentally crooked and might well be outlawed one of these days. Le Pen, you know, in France, who is an out-and-out fascist, the French have managed in some clever way to contain him. I mean, he's always running for president; his votes never seem to show up. I don't know how they do it, but we've got to do that with the Republican base, the religious right. We don't want them running the country. Nobody does. Certainly not the founding fathers. And I think we have to ride herd on them and make sure they do not seize the state." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"Well, you have to work out what it is. They are a little splinter. They can't summon many voters at any given time. They are a minority of a minority of a minority. They have everybody buffaloed because the great corporations like them and pay money to their candidates for sheriff and senator. And they're playing big-time politics. Yes, indeed. But the average person doesn't like them. You know, any time I want to get applause — and I lecture across America in state after state after state — when I fear things are getting a little low, I always say, “And another thing: Let us tax all the religions,” I bring down the goddamn house with that. And any politician would if he had sense enough to do it. The people don't like their tax exemption." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"What is going on here is a deliberate revision by Current not only of Lincoln but of himself in order to serve the saint in the 1980s as opposed to the saint at earlier times when black were still colored, having only just stopped being Negroes. In colored and Negro days the saint might have wanted them out of the country, as he did. But in the age of Martin Luther King even the most covertly racist of school boards must agree that a saint like Abraham Lincoln could never have wanted a single black person to leave freedomÂ’s land much less braveryÂ’s home. So all the hagiographers are redoing their plaster images and anyone who draws attention to the discrepancy between their own past crudities and their current falsities is a very bad person indeed, and not a scholar, and probably a communist as well." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"Avoid disputes as much as possible. In order to appear easy and well-bred in conversation, you may assure yourself that it requires more wit, as well as more good humour, to improve than to contradict the notions of another: but if you are at any time obliged to enter on an argument, give your reasons with the utmost coolness and modesty, two things which scarce ever fail of making an impression on the hearers. Besides, if you are neither dogmatical, nor show either by your actions or words that you are full of yourself, all will the more heartily rejoice at your victory. Nay, should you be pinched in your argument, you may make your retreat with a very good grace. You were never positive, and are now glad to be better informed. This has made some approve the Socratic way of reasoning, where, while you scarce affirm anything, you can hardly be caught in an absurdity; and though possibly you are endeavouring to bring over another to your opinion, which is firmly fixed, you seem only to desire information from him." - Eustace Budgell
"Her heart was broken perhaps, but it was a small inexpensive organ of local manufacture. In a wider and grander way she felt things had been simplified." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
"ItÂ’s a rather pleasant change when all your life you've had people looking after you, to have someone to look after yourself. Only of course it has to be someone pretty hopeless to need looking after by me." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
"She seemed to say "Look at me. I have done my share. I am beautiful. It is something quite out of the ordinary, this beauty of mine. I am made for delight. But what do I get out of it? Where is my reward?" That was the change in her from ten years ago; that, indeed, was her reward, this haunting, this magical sadness which spoke straight to the heart and struck silence; it was the completion of her beauty."" - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
"You spend the first term at Oxford meeting interesting and exciting people and the rest of your time there avoiding them." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
"I have never known anyone worth a damn who wasn't irascible." - Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
"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 worst mistake I made was that stupid, suburban prejudice of anti-Semitism." - Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
"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
"The peace that passeth understanding is that which comes when the pain is not relieved, which subsists in the midst of the painful situation, suffusing it, which springs out of the pain itself, which shimmers on the crest of the wave of pain, which is the spear of frustration transfigured into the shaft of light. It is upon those we love that we must anchor ourselves spiritually in the last moments. The sense of interconnectedness with them stands out vividly by way of contrast at the very moment when our mortal connection with them is about to be dissolved. And the intertwining of our life with theirs, the living in the life that is in them, is but a part of our living in the infinite manifold of the spiritual life. The thought of this, as apprehended, not in terms of knowledge, but in immediate experience, begets the peace that passeth understanding. And it is upon the bosom of that peace that we can pass safely out of the realm of time and space." - Felix Adler
"The platform of an Ethical Society is itself the altar; the address must be the fire that burns thereon." - Felix Adler
"There is a city to be built, the plan of which we carry in our heads, in our hearts. Countless generations have already toiled at the building of it. The effort to aid in completing it, with us, takes the place of prayer. In this sense we say, "Laborare est orare."" - Felix Adler
"If I had my way, any man guilty of golf would be ineligible for any office of trust in the United States." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"The greatest evil perpetrated is the evil committed by nobodies, that is, by human beings who refuse to be persons" - Hannah Arendt
"Of three things the devil makes a salad: advocate's tongues, notaries' fingers, and a third that shall be nameless." - Italian Proverbs
"War makes robbers, and peace hangs them." - Italian Proverbs
"Weddings and spiritual matters are heaven sent." - Italian Proverbs
"Where there's a will there's a way." - Italian Proverbs
"Who buys land buys war." - Italian Proverbs
"I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning." - J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
"No matter how piercing and appalling his insights, the desolation creeping over his outer world, the lurid lights and shadows of his inner world, the writer must live with hope, work in faith." - J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
"From the fact that there are 400,000 species of beetles on this planet, but only 8,000 species of mammals, he [Haldane] concluded that the Creator, if He exists, has a special preference for beetles." - J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
"After some while Bilbo became impatient. Well, what is it? he said. The answer's not a kettle boiling over, as you seem to think by the noise you are making." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"All the same, I should like it all plain and clear, said he obstinately, putting on his business manner (usually reserved for people who tried to borrow money off him), and doing his best to appear wise and prudent and professional and live up to Gandalf's recommendation. Also I should like to know about risks, out-of-pocket expenses, time required and remuneration, and so forth--by which he meant: What am I going to get out of it ? and am I going to come back alive?" - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"Beautiful she is, sir! Lovely! Sometimes Luke a great tree in flower, sometimes like a white daffadowdilly, small and slender like. Hard as di'monds, soft as moonlight. Warm as sunlight, cold as frost in the stars. Proud and far-off as a snow-mountain, and as merry as any lass I ever saw with daisies in her hair in springtime." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"Come, Mr. Frodo!' he cried. 'I can't carry it for you, but I can carry you and it as well. So up you get! Come on, Mr. Frodo dear! Sam will give you a ride. Just tell him where to go, and he'll go." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"I feel that as long as the Shire lies behind, safe and comfortable, I shall find wandering more bearable: I shall know that somewhere there is a firm foothold, even if my feet cannot stand there again." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"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
"Where the rainbows play in the flying spray," - Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
"It is curious how little interested we are in the sexual desires of those who do not attract us." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"Monotheism is easily the greatest disaster to befall the human race." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"The behavior of President Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to not unnatural suspicions." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"Well, it's been the monopolizing of great wealth, which tends to happen in basically unjust societies and undemocratic societies. We have plenty of would-be democrats, would-be liberals, and would-be progressives. But how do you organize? The Democratic Party is a machine to get votes for its people, none of who should probably be elected to the high offices of state. That's all. The Republican Party is fundamentally crooked and might well be outlawed one of these days. Le Pen, you know, in France, who is an out-and-out fascist, the French have managed in some clever way to contain him. I mean, he's always running for president; his votes never seem to show up. I don't know how they do it, but we've got to do that with the Republican base, the religious right. We don't want them running the country. Nobody does. Certainly not the founding fathers. And I think we have to ride herd on them and make sure they do not seize the state." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"Well, you have to work out what it is. They are a little splinter. They can't summon many voters at any given time. They are a minority of a minority of a minority. They have everybody buffaloed because the great corporations like them and pay money to their candidates for sheriff and senator. And they're playing big-time politics. Yes, indeed. But the average person doesn't like them. You know, any time I want to get applause — and I lecture across America in state after state after state — when I fear things are getting a little low, I always say, “And another thing: Let us tax all the religions,” I bring down the goddamn house with that. And any politician would if he had sense enough to do it. The people don't like their tax exemption." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"What is going on here is a deliberate revision by Current not only of Lincoln but of himself in order to serve the saint in the 1980s as opposed to the saint at earlier times when black were still colored, having only just stopped being Negroes. In colored and Negro days the saint might have wanted them out of the country, as he did. But in the age of Martin Luther King even the most covertly racist of school boards must agree that a saint like Abraham Lincoln could never have wanted a single black person to leave freedomÂ’s land much less braveryÂ’s home. So all the hagiographers are redoing their plaster images and anyone who draws attention to the discrepancy between their own past crudities and their current falsities is a very bad person indeed, and not a scholar, and probably a communist as well." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"Avoid disputes as much as possible. In order to appear easy and well-bred in conversation, you may assure yourself that it requires more wit, as well as more good humour, to improve than to contradict the notions of another: but if you are at any time obliged to enter on an argument, give your reasons with the utmost coolness and modesty, two things which scarce ever fail of making an impression on the hearers. Besides, if you are neither dogmatical, nor show either by your actions or words that you are full of yourself, all will the more heartily rejoice at your victory. Nay, should you be pinched in your argument, you may make your retreat with a very good grace. You were never positive, and are now glad to be better informed. This has made some approve the Socratic way of reasoning, where, while you scarce affirm anything, you can hardly be caught in an absurdity; and though possibly you are endeavouring to bring over another to your opinion, which is firmly fixed, you seem only to desire information from him." - Eustace Budgell
"Her heart was broken perhaps, but it was a small inexpensive organ of local manufacture. In a wider and grander way she felt things had been simplified." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh