This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Mel Levine, formally Melvin D Levine
All of these individuals may be unaware that the "wiring" of a child's brain simply is not in sync with the demands of the situations at hand. Telling a student "You can do better" doesn't help particularly when he has done his best to no avail. Criticizing him for an inability to complete a particular task in a particular way, similarly, is ineffective -not to mention inappropriate. And humiliating him inadvertently, in private or in public, for circumstances beyond his control is simply hurtful and unnecessary.
Circumstances | Control |
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
When a person is down in the world, an ounce of help is better than a pound of preaching.
Better |
Then isn't this rather all a false funeral? Can't it help you to see that there is something wrong when all the dreams in this house-good or bad-had to depend on something that might never have happened if a man had not died? We always say at home: Accident was at the first and will be at the last a poor tree from which the fruits of life may bloom.
Healthy parenting is nothing if not a process of empowerment. As we help to raise our children's self-esteem, we also increase their personal power. When we encourage them to be confident, self-reliant, self-directed, and responsible individuals, we are giving them power.
Lucy Maud Montgomery, aka Maud or L.M. Montgomery
I can't help flying up on the wings of anticipation. It's as glorious as soaring through a sunset... almost pays for the thud.
Ludwig Feuerbach, fully Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach
Christianity set itself the goal of fulfilling man’s unattainable desires, but for that very reason ignored his attainable desires. By promising man eternal life, it deprived him of temporal life, by teaching him to trust in God’s help it took away his trust in his own powers; by giving him faith in a better life in heaven, it destroyed his faith in a better life on earth and his striving to attain such a life. Christianity gave man what his imagination desires, but for that very reason failed to give him what he really and truly desires.
Better | Earth | Eternal | Faith | Giving | Imagination | Life | Life | Man | Reason | Trust |
Luis Buñuel, fully Luis Buñuel Portolés
I can't help feeling that there is no beauty without hope, struggle, and conquest.
M. C. Richards, fully Mary Caroline Richards
It helps, I think, to consider ourselves on a very long journey; the main thing is to keep to the faith, to endure, to help each other when we stumble or tire, to weep and press on.
Margaret J. Wheatley, aka Meg Wheatley
Someone who is willing to step forward and help is much more courageous than someone who is merely fulfilling the role.
Mahanirvana Tantra, Tantra of the Great Liberation NULL
You have no form, even though with the help of Maya,you take on myriads of forms.
I've tried to teach what I learned all those years in my mother and father's house, all those things I didn't realize I was learning and that I never knew I'd be so grateful for. When you have love and it's proffered every day in a kind of tender, yet stern insistence and even reckless laughter, when it is given to you and you accept it in life as a thing as natural as rain or snow, or the littler of leaves in fall, you can't help but take it for granted. For a bewildered while you incorrectly understand that the world has given you this because it's there in equal measure, everywhere. You never know until it's too late to do anything about it, how sweet the effort is: how lasting the human will to love can be in the breast of people who want to make it for you, who want to give it to you, without calculating what's in it for them, without thinking at all of what it will mean when you grow to full adulthood, see the world as it is, and forget to mention what you have been given. Every day of my grown-up life, I have wanted to do what my parents did. I have wanted to widen the province of love and weaken hate and bitterness in the hearts of my children. And I've done these things because of what I got from my family, all those lovely years when I was growing up, being loved and cherished and, unbeknown to me, and in the best way, honored, for myself.
Bitterness | Day | Effort | Hate | Learning | Life | Life | Love | Mother | Parents | People | Teach | Thinking | Will | World | Understand |
You can’t be of help to everybody! Say the narrow-minded, and help nobody.
A tulip doesn't strive to impress anyone. It doesn't struggle to be different than a rose. It doesn't have to. It is different. And there's room in the garden for every flower. You didn't have to struggle to make your face different than anyone else's on earth. It just is. You are unique because you were created that way. Look at little children in kindergarten. They're all different without trying to be. As long as they're unselfconsciously being themselves, they can't help but shine. It's only later, when children are taught to compete, to strive to be better than others, that their natural light becomes distorted.
If teaching is to be effective with young children, it must assist them to advance on the way to independence. It must initiate them into those kinds of activities which they can perform themselves and which keep them from being a burden to others because of their inabilities. We must help them to learn how to walk without assistance, to run, to go up and down the stairs, to pick up fallen objects, to dress and undress, to wash themselves, to express their needs in a way that is clearly understood, and to attempt to satisfy their desires through their own efforts. All this is part of an education for independence.
Never work just for money or for power. They won't save your soul or help you sleep at night.