This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The great Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things they most wanted in life. If any item on the list clashes with any other item, Rumi warned, you are destined for unhappiness. Better to live a life of single-pointed focus, he taught. But what about the benefits of living harmoniously among extremes? What if you could somehow create an expansive enough life that you could synchronize seemingly incongruous opposites into a worldview that excludes nothing?
Yet what keeps me from dissolving right now into a complete fairy-tale shimmer is this solid truth, a truth which has veritably built my bones over the last few years--I was not rescued by a prince; I was the administrator of my own rescue.
Better | Depression | Dreams | Important | Integrity | Marriage | Men | Mother | Relationship | Sense | Ugly | Talent |
As a girl my temper often got out of bounds. But one day when I became angry at a friend over some trivial matter, my mother said to me, Elizabeth, anyone who angers you conquers you.
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The year's at the Spring And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hillside's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn: God's in his Heaven - All's right with the world!
I thought that the chief thing to be done in order to equal boys was to be learned and courageous. So I decided to study Greek and learn to manage a horse.
Men say we are ever cruel to each other. Let us end this ignoble record and henceforth stand by womanhood. If Victoria Woodhull must be crucified, let men drive the spikes and plait the crown of thorns.
Church | Government | Men | Office | Public | Will | Government |
There’s a trick to the 'graceful exit.' It begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, or a relationship is over — and let it go. It means leaving what’s over without denying its validity or its past importance to our lives. It involves a sense of future, a belief that every exit line is an entry, that we are moving up, rather than out.
Surely the immutable laws of the universe can teach more impressive and exalted lessons than the holy books of all the religions on earth.
The idea of feminine authority is so deeply embedded in the human subconscious that even after all these centuries of father-right the young child instinctively regards the mother as the supreme authority. He looks upon the father as equal with himself, equally subject to the woman's rule. Children have to be taught to love, honor, and respect the father, a task usually assumed by the mother.
Beginning | Man | Men | Method | Need | Society | Woman | Society |
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, fully Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward
Out of my discomforts, which were small enough, grew one thing for which I have all my life been grateful, the formation of fixed habits of work.
Men never fail to dwell on maternity as a disqualification for the possession of many civil and political rights. Suggest the idea of women having a voice in making laws and administering the Government in the halls of legislation, in Congress, or the British Parliament, and men will declaim at once on the disabilities of maternity in a sneering contemptuous way, as if the office of motherhood was undignified and did not comport with the highest public offices in church and state. It is vain that we point them to Queen Victoria, who has carefully reared a large family, while considering and signing...
Bible | Despair | Enough | Fear | Punishment | Bible | Understand |
The religious superstitions of women perpetuate their bondage more than all other adverse influences.
Slavery |
In the biotech revolution, it is the human body, not iron or steel or plastic, that's at the source. Are the biocapitalists going to be allowed to dig without consent into our genetic codes, then market them?
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The world goes whispering to its own, "This anguish pierces to the bone;" and tender friends go sighing round, "What love can ever cure this wound?" My days go on, my days go on.
Worth |
Dress loose, take a great deal of exercise , and be particular about your diet and sleep sound enough, the body has a great effect on the mind.
Time | Understand |
With age come the inner, the higher life. Who would be forever young, to dwell always in externals?
Authority | Will | Understand |