This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Most men and women lead lives at the worst so painful, at the best so monotonous, poor, and limited, that the urge to escape and the longing to transcend themselves, if only for a few moments, is and always has been one of the principal appetites of the soul.
Alphonse de Lamartine, fully Alphonse Marie Louis de Lamartine
The reason that women are so much more sociable than men is because they act more from the heart than the intellect.
C. Wright Mills, fully Charles Wright Mills
Our criteria for judging institutions should always include the quality of the men and women they develop and select.
Men |
Doris Lessing, fully Doris May Lessing, born Doris May Tayler
Women are the cowards they are because they have been semi-slaves for so long. The number of women prepared to stand up for what they really think, feel, experience, with a man they are in love with is still very small.
Experience | Love | Man |
Doris Lessing, fully Doris May Lessing, born Doris May Tayler
But there is no doubt that to attempt a novel of ideas is to give oneself a handicap: the parochialism of our culture is intense. For instance, decade after decade bright young men and women emerge from their universities able to say proudly: 'Of course I know nothing about German literature.' It is the mode. The Victorians knew everything about German literature, but were able with a clear conscience not to know much about the French.
Conscience | Culture | Doubt | Ideas | Literature | Men | Nothing |
Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen
Intimacies between women often go backwards, beginning in revelations and ending in small talk without the loss of esteem.
We don`t really know who woman is. She remains in that precise place within man where darkness begins. Talking about women means talking about the darkest part of ourselves, the undeveloped part, the true mystery within. In the beginning, I believe man was complete and androgynous-both male and female, or neither, like angels. Then came the division, and Eve was taken from him. So the problem for man is to reunite himself with the other half of his being, to find the woman who is right for him-right be she is simply a projection, a mirror of himself. A man can`t become whole or free until he has set woman free-his woman. It`s his responsibility, not hers. He can`t be complete, truly alive until he makes her his sexual companion, and not a slave of libidinous acts or a saint with a halo.
Darkness | Man | Means | Mystery | Right | Talking | Woman |
Men and women who turn their lives over to God will discover that He can make a lot more out of their lives than they can. He can deepen their joys, expand their vision, quicken their minds, strengthen their muscles, lift their spirits, multiply their blessings, increase their opportunities, comfort their souls, and pour out peace.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.
Already all of us must have heard about the people who call themselves the Fundamentalists. Their apparent intention is to drive out of the evangelical churches men and women of liberal opinions. I speak of them the more freely because there are no two denominations more affected by them than the Baptist and the Presbyterian. We should not identify the Fundamentalists with the conservatives. All Fundamentalists are conservatives, but not all conservatives are Fundamentalists. The best conservatives can often give lessons to the liberals in true liberality of spirit, but the Fundamentalist program is essentially illiberal and intolerant.
There is the past and its continuing horrors: violence, war, prejudices against those who are different, outrageous monopolization of the good earth's wealth by a few, political power in the hands of liars and murderers, the building of prisons instead of schools, the poisoning of the press and the entire culture by money. It is easy to become discouraged observing this, especially since this is what the press and television insist that we look at, and nothing more. But there is also the bubbling of change under the surface of obedience: the growing revulsion against endless wars, the insistence of women all over the world that they will no longer tolerate abuse and subordination… There is civil disobedience against the military machine, protest against police brutality directed especially at people of color.
Abuse | Brutality | Change | Civil disobedience | Culture | Disobedience | Good | Nothing | Past | People | Power | Protest | Television | Wealth | Will | World |
In sum, thought and reflection have been rendered thoroughly pointless by the circumstances in which modern men and women live and act.
Circumstances | Men | Reflection | Thought | Thought |
The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done.
There are men and women who make the world better just by being the kind of people they are. They have the gift of kindness or courage or loyalty or integrity. It really matters very little whether they are behind the wheel of a truck or running a business or bringing up a family. The teach the truth by living it.
Better | Business | Courage | Kindness | Little | Loyalty | Loyalty | Men | People | Teach | Truth | World | Business |
John Cheever, fully John William Cheever
For me a page of good prose is where one hears the rain. A page of good prose is when one hears the noise of battle.... A page of good prose seems to me the most serious dialogue that well-informed and intelligent men and women carry on today in their endeavor to make sure that the fires of this planet burn peaceably.
John Fowles, fully John Robert Fowles
Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because it is the one thing that stops women laughing at them.
John L. Lewis, fully John Llewellyn Lewis
Labor, like Israel, has many sorrows. Its women weep for their fallen and they lament for the future of the children of the race. It ill behooves one who has supped at labor's table and who has been sheltered in labor's house to curse with equal fervor and fine impartiality both labor and its adversaries when they become locked in deadly embrace.
Children | Future | Impartiality | Labor |
Josiah Gilbert Holland, also Joshua Gilbert Holland
We often wonder that certain men and women are left by God to the commission of sins that shock us. We wonder how, under the temptation of a single hour, they fall from the very heights of virtue and of honor into sin and shame. The fact is that there are no such falls as these, or there are next to none. These men and women are those who have dallied with temptation - have exposed themselves to the influence of it, and have been weakened and corrupted by it.
God | Honor | Influence | Men | Sin | Temptation | Virtue | Virtue | Wonder | God | Temptation |
It is now well known that women are biologically somewhat less lateralized in brain function than men. This means simply that psychological functions in women are not localized into one or the other hemisphere of the brain to the same degree as in men. Mental abilities in women are more spread over both hemispheres. Even by age six, for example, a boy can recognize objects in his left hand by feel alone better than in his right hand. In girls both hands are equal. This shows that haptic recognition (as it is called) has already been primarily localized in the right hemisphere in boys but not in girls. And it is common knowledge that elderly men with a stroke or hemorrhage in the left hemisphere are more speechless than elderly women with a similar diagnosis.