This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Stephen Sondheim, fully Stephen Joshua Sondheim
One of the hardest things about writing lyrics is to make the lyrics sit on the music in such a way that you're not aware there was a writer there.
Better | Confidence | Opportunity | Rest | Story | Thinking |
He was, like everyone of a strongly erotic disposition, twice as good, twice as much himself when he knew that women liked him, just as many actors find their most ardent vein when they sense that they have cast their spell over the audience, the breathing mass of spectators before them.
Better | Inclination | Lying | People |
To express unafraid and unashamed what one really thinks and feels is one of the great consolations of life.
Individual | Lying | Means | Sense | Unique |
Theodor Herzl, born Benjamin Ze’ev Herzl
If anyone thinks that Jews can steal into the land of their fathers, he is deceiving either himself or others. Nowhere is the coming of Jews so promptly noted as in the historic home of the Jews, for the very reason that it is the historic home.
Lying |
Theodore Dreiser, fully Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser
People in general attach too much importance to words. They are under the illusion that talking effects great results. As a matter of fact, words are, as a rule, the shallowest portion of all the argument. They but dimly represent the great surging feelings and desires which lie behind. When the distraction of the tongue is removed, the heart listens.
Children | Evil | Experience | Fury | Grave | Hope | Insecurity | Knowing | Life | Life | Mortal | Nothing | Parents | Revelation | Sense | Sound | Tenderness | Uncertainty | Understanding | Will |
Theodore Dreiser, fully Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser
The thing that impressed me then as now about New York ... was the sharp, and at the same time immense, contrast it showed between the dull and the shrewd, the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor, the wise and the ignorant.... The strong, or those who ultimately dominated, were so very strong, and the weak so very, very weak — and so very, very many.
Parents |
There can be no fifty-fifty Americanism in this country. There is room here for only 100% Americanism, only for those who are Americans and nothing else.
Confidence | Control | Corruption | Law | People | Will |
A gracious man should be made up all of fire, overcoming and consuming all opposition, as fire does the stubble. All difficulties should be but whetstones to his fortitude.
Confidence | Conscience | Good |
If you love someone but rarely make yourself available to him or her; that is not true love.
The child awakens to a universe. The mind of the child to a world of meaning. Imagination to a world of beauty. Emotions to a world of intimacy. It takes a universe to make a child both in outer form and inner spirit. It takes a universe to educate a child. A universe to fulfill a child.
Beginning | Confidence | Future | Guidance | Life | Life | Present | Reason | Revelation | Understanding | Universe | Guidance |
All true work is sacred. In all true work, were it but true hand work, there is something of divineness. Labor, wide as the earth, has its summit in Heaven.
Another doctrine repugnant to civil society, is that whatsoever a man does against his conscience, is sin; and it dependeth on the presumption of making himself judge of good and evil. For a man's conscience and his judgment are the same thing, and as the judgment, so also the conscience may be erroneous.
Anger | Beginning | Body | Cause | Desire | Dreams | Imagination | Kindness | Lying | Thought | Thought |
I have sometimes asked myself whether my country is the better for my having lived at all? I do not know that it is. I have been the instrument of doing the following things; but they would have been done by others; some of them, perhaps, a little better.
Confidence | Good | Reason | Sense | Afraid |
But this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror.
I do not believe it is for the interest of religion to invite the civil magistrate to direct its exercises, its discipline, or its doctrines; nor of the religious societies, that the General Government should be invested with the power of effecting any uniformity of time or matter among them.
Belief | Change | Confidence | Little | Public |
I own it to be my opinion, that good will arise from the destruction of our credit. I see nothing else which can restrain our disposition to luxury, and to the change of those manners which alone can preserve republican government. As it is impossible to prevent credit, the best way would be to cure its ill effects by giving an instantaneous recovery to the creditor. This would be reducing purchases on credit to purchases for ready money. A man would then see a prison painted on everything he wished, but had not ready money to pay for.
Authority | Confidence | Doubt | Events | Government | Growth | Peace | People | Principles | Public | Safe | Time | Government | Crisis |
It can never be too often repeated, that the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united.
Confidence | Government | Will | Government | Think |
It is left, therefore, to the juries, if they think the permanent judges are under any bias whatever in any cause, to take on themselves to judge the law as well as the fact. They never exercise this power but when they suspect partiality in the judges, and by the exercise of this power they have been the firmest bulwarks of English liberty.
Confidence | Jealousy | Trust |