This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples - those myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses. Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses, only waiting to see us, once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible in our lives is, in its deepest being, something helpless, that wants help from us." - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
"Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love." - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
"What else can I tell you? It seems to me that everything has its proper emphasis; and finally I want to add just one more bit of advice: to keep growing, silently and earnestly, through your whole development; you couldn't disturb it any more violently than by looking outside and waiting for outside answers to questions that only your innermost feeling, in your quietest hour, can perhaps answer." - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
"You must give birth to your images. They are the future waiting to be born. Fear not the strangeness you feel. The future must enter you long before it happens. Just wait for the birth, for the the hour of the new clarity." - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
"Find the best in everybody. Just keep waiting no matter how long it takes. No one is all evil. Everybody has a good side, just keep waiting, it will come out." - Randy Pausch, fully Randolph Frederick "Randy" Pausch
"You will need to find your passion. Don't give up on finding it because then all you're doing is waiting for the Reaper." - Randy Pausch, fully Randolph Frederick "Randy" Pausch
"I wonder how many men, hiding their youngness, rise as I do, Saturday mornings, filled with the hope that Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam and Daffy Duck will be there waiting as our one true always and forever salvation?" - Ray Bradbury, fully Ray Douglas Bradbury
"Our choice is between cynicism and hope. Hope is a decision you make. Hope means believing in spite of the evidence and then waiting for the evidence to change. Be the ones that we have been waiting for." - Jim Wallis
"We are the ones we have been waiting for." - Jim Wallis
"Effective listening is more than simply avoiding the bad habit of interrupting others while they are speaking or finishing their sentences. It's being content to listen to the entire thought of someone rather than waiting impatiently for your chance to respond." - Richard Carlson
"Luck is always waiting for something to turn up. Labor, with keen eyes and strong will, always turns up something. Luck lies in bed and wishes the postman will bring news of a legacy. Labor turns out at six o'clock and with busy pen or ringing hammer, lays the foundation of a competence. Luck whines. Labor whistles. Luck relies on chance, labor on character." - Richard Cobden
"Our real situation is far more unsettling, our problems have much deeper roots, and an adequate response will require far more from us than just waiting for the business cycle to come back around to the " - Richard Heinberg
"It seemed to me that if the lawyers failed to do their duty, they ought to pay people for waiting upon them, instead of making them pay for it." - R. D. Blackmore, fully Richard Doddridge Blackmore
"This is life-and it is passing. What are we waiting for?" - Richard L. Evans, fully Richard Louis Evans
"Open the gate, my love, Arise and open the gate, For my soul is dismayed And sorely afraid And Hagar’s brood mocks my estate. The heart of the hand-maid’s sons Is hateful and haughty grown, And all because of the cry Of Ishmael piercing the sky, Ascending and reaching the Throne. I stumble ’twixt beast and beast, The wild ass swift to slay Has followed my flight From the courts of Night Where crushed of the boar I lay. Alas! for my thick-sealed fate, Ah woe for the days to come! It helps but to pain me That none can explain me, And I, myself, I am dumb." - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
"Because poetry is the language of felt thought and utterance… of admissions and oaths as sacred as life itself, it is evident in an economy by its absence. As long as people are perceived in economic terms alone, poetry (and all the other arts, for that matter) will be regarded as ornamental or irrelevant or simply dispensable… the disregard of poetry will be as fatal to their spiritual lives as the deprivation of oxygen would be to their physical lives. Why? Because poetry tells us who we are, what our surroundings mean to us, and what waits to be discovered beneath the apparent.…It is the language of the heart…It is at the same time the language of the senses." - Samuel J. Hazo, fully Samuel John Hazo
"Stand up, stand up now, Tomlinson, and answer loud and high The good that ye did for the sake of men or ever ye came to die— The good that ye did for the sake of men in little earth so lone! And the naked soul of Tomlinson grew white as a rain-washed bone… Go back to Earth with a lip unsealed—go back with an open eye, And carry my word to the Sons of Men or ever ye come to die: That the sin they do by two and two they must pay for one by one—And the God that you took from a printed book be with you, Tomlinson!" - Rudyard Kipling
"There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled. There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled. You feel it, don't you?" - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
"Gay Liberation? I ain't against it, it's just that there's nothing in it for me." - Bette Davis, Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis
"There are different types of stealing, since stealing is the taking of things belonging to another aginst the owner’s will. This is done either by pure deceit, by violence, or by fraud. If it is done by pure deceit and in secret, then it is called stealing. If it is done by violence, either the violence is done in the open and is called plundering, or it is hidden and it is called a robbery. If the taking of things belonging to another is done by fraud, this can involve an agreement in one of three ways. It can be done with an agreement that is either fraudulent, sinful, or sacrilegious. The first way happens in business and can be done in one of three ways: in weight, or in number, or in measure. Merchants rarely escape committing this sin. If it is done by a sinful agreement, it is called usury, in which that which is sold is public, namely time. If it is done by a sacrilegious agreement, in which things belonging to God are sold, it is called simony. Some people believe that usury is evil because it is prohibited, but clearly it is prohibited because it is evil. In a monetary loan, that which is mine becomes yours. But if you acquire something from that loan by your industry, and I claim anything of that, then I sell time, which is public and cannot be sold lawfully." - Saint Bonaventure, born John of Fidanza Bonaventure
"Grant, O Lord my God, that I may never fall away in success or in failure; that I may not be prideful in prosperity nor dejected in adversity. Let me rejoice only in what unites us and sorrow only in what separates us. May I strive to please no one or fear to displease anyone except Yourself. May I see always the things that are eternal and never those that are only temporal. May I shun any joy that is without You and never seek any that is beside You. O Lord, may I delight in any work I do for You and tire of any rest that is apart from You. My God, let me direct my heart towards You, and in my failings, always repent with a purpose of amendment." - Saint Thomas Aquinas, aka Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis or Doctor Universalis
"Poetry is also the physical self of the poet, and it is impossible to separate the poet from his poetry." - Salvatore Quasimodo
"He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"People who want to understand democracy should spend less time in the library with Aristotle and more time on the buses and in the subway." - Simeon Strunsky
"There is no freedom without justice." - Simon Wiesenthal
"We have to believe in a God who is like the true God in everything except that he does not exist, since we have not reached the point where God exists." - Simone Weil
"I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it - there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones." - Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle
"The universe is a continuous web. Touch it at any point and the whole web quivers. " - Stanley Kunitz, fully Stanley Jasspon Kunitz
"Arthropods and vertebrates share some broad features of general organization - elongated, bilaterally symmetrical bodies, with sensory organs up front, excretory structures in the back, and some form of segmentation along the major axis. But the geometry of major internal organs could hardly be more different... Arthropods concentrate their nervous system on their ventral (belly) side as two major cords running along the bottom surface of the animal. The mouth also opens on the ventral side, with the esophagus passing between the two nerve cords, and the stomach and remainder of the digestive tube running along the body above the nerve cords. In vertebrates, and with maximal contrast, the central nervous system runs along the dorsal (top) surface as a single tube culminating in a bulbous brain at the front end. The entire digestive system then runs along the body axis below the nerve cord." - Stephan Jay Gould
"There is no gene for such unambiguous bits of morphology as your left kneecap or your fingernail. […] Hundreds of genes contribute to the building of most body parts and their action is channeled through a kaleidoscopic series of environmental influences: embryonic and postnatal, internal and external. Parts are not translated genes, and selection doesn't even work directly on parts." - Stephan Jay Gould
"He was welcome everywhere he went, and was well-aware of his inability to tolerate solitude. He felt no inclination to be alone and avoided it as far as possible; he didn't really want to become any better acquainted with himself. He knew that if he wanted to show his talents to best advantage, he needed to strike sparks off other people to fan the flames of warmth and exuberance in his heart. On his own he was frosty, no use to himself at all, like a match left lying in its box." - Stefan Zweig
"The most powerful person is he who is able to do least himself and burden others most with the things for which he lends his name and pockets the credit." - Theodor W. Adorno, born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund
"Liberalism: for every complicated problem there exists both an intellectual and a moral solution and they coincide." - Theodore H. White, fully Theodore Harold White
"Answered prayers cover the field of providential history as flowers cover western prairies." - Theodore Cuyler, fully Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
"Assurance makes most for your comfort, but holiness makes most for God's honor...Assurance is the daughter of holiness...The surest and shortest way to assurance is to wrestle and contend with God for holiness..." - Thomas Brooks
"History shows that the majority of people that have done anything great have passed their youth in seclusion." - Thomas Carlyle
"We have a great regard for old age when it is bottled." - Thomas Dewar, Lord Dewar, fully Thomas Robert "Tommy" Dewar, 1st Baron Dewar
"Her love was entire as a child's, and though warm as summer it was fresh as spring." - Thomas Hardy
"Indeed, he seemed to approach the grave as a hyperbolic curve approaches a straight line -- less directly as he got nearer, till it was doubtful if he would ever reach it at all." - Thomas Hardy
"Let me say this before rain becomes a utility that they can plan and distribute for money. By “they” I mean the people who cannot understand that rain is a festival, who do not appreciate its gratuity, who think that what has no price has no value, that what cannot be sold is not real, so that the only way to make something actual is to place it on the market. The time will come when they will sell you even your rain. At the moment it is still free, and I am in it. I celebrate its gratuity and its meaninglessness. The rain I am in is not like the rain of cities. It fills the wood with an immense and confused sound. It covers the flat roof of the cabin and its porch with insistent and controlled rhythms. And I listen, because it reminds me again and again that the whole world runs by rhythms I have not yet learned to recognize, rhythms that are not those of the engineer. I came up here from the monastery last night, sloshing through the cornfield, said Vespers, and put some oatmeal on the Coleman stove for supper. It boiled over while I was listening to the rain and toasting a piece of bread at the log fire. The night became very dark. The rain surrounded the whole cabin with its enormous virginal myth, a whole world of meaning, of secrecy, of silence, of rumor. Think of it: all that speech pouring down, selling nothing, judging nobody, drenching the thick mulch of dead leaves, soaking the trees, filling the gullies and crannies of the wood with water, washing out the places where men have stripped the hillside! What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest, at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges, and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows! Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it. It will talk as long as it wants, this rain. As long as it talks I am going to listen." - Thomas Merton
"Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without the alternation of sound and silence there would be no rhythm." - Thomas Merton
"We explain the fact that the Milky Way is there by the doctrine of creation, but how do we explain the fact that the Bhagavad Gita is there?" - Wilfred Cantwell Smith
"You know the real world, this so-called real world, is just something you put up with. Like everybody else. I’m in my element when I am a little bit out of this world. Then I’m in the real world – I’m on the beam. Because when I’m falling, I’m doing all right. When I’m slipping, I say: he, this is interesting. It’s when I’m standing upright that bothers me.." - Willem de Kooning
"But all they want to do Is tie the poem to a chair with rope And torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose To find out what it really means." - William Collins
"I have often said in answer to inquiries as to how I got away with kidding some of our public men, that it was because I liked all of them personally, and that if there was no malice in your heart there could be none in your Gags, and I have always said I never met a man I didn’t like." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
"The one that's out always looks the best." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
"This was the road over which Ántonia and I came on that night when we got off the train at Black Hawk and were bedded down in the straw, wondering children, being taken we knew not whither. I had only to close my eyes to hear the rumbling of the wagons in the dark, and to be again overcome by that obliterating strangeness. The feelings of that night were so near that I could reach out and touch them with my hand. I had the sense of coming home to myself, and of having found out what a little circle man’s experience is. For Ántonia and for me, this had been the road of Destiny; had taken us to those early accidents of fortune which predetermined for us all that we can ever be. Now I understood that the same road was to bring us together again. Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past." - Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather
"The incomplete knowledge of a system must be an essential part of every formulation in quantum theory. Quantum theoretical laws must be of a statistical kind.Quantum theoretical laws must be of a statistical kind. To give an example: we know that the radium atom emits alpha-radiation. Quantum theory can give us an indication of the probability that the alpha-particle will leave the nucleus in unit time, but it cannot predict at what precise point in time the emission will occur, for this is uncertain in principle… This state of affairs is best described by saying that all particles are basically nothing but different stationary states of one and the same stuff. Thus even the three basic building-stones have become reduced to a single one. There is only one kind of matter but it can exist in different discrete stationary conditions." - Werner Heisenberg, fully Werner Karl Heisenberg
"First, O songs, for a prelude, lightly strike on the stretch'd tympanum, pride and joy in my city, how she led the rest to arms—how she gave the cue, how at once with lithe limbs, unwaiting a moment, she sprang; (O superb! O Manhattan, my own, my peerless! O strongest you in the hour of danger, in crisis! O truer than steel!) How you sprang! how you threw off the costumes of peace with indifferent hand; how your soft opera-music changed, and the drum and fife were heard in their stead; how you led to the war, (that shall serve for our prelude songs of soldiers,) How Manhattan drum-taps led." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman