This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Men insist that they don't mind women succeeding so long as they retain their "femininity". Yet the qualities that men consider "feminine" timidity, submissiveness, obedience, silliness, and self-debasement — are the very qualities best guaranteed to assure the defeat of even the most gifted aspirant.
If there's a single message passed down from each generation of American parents to their children, it is a two-word line: Better Yourself. And if there's a temple of self-betterment in each town, it is the local school. We have worshiped there for some time.
Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL
I have no desire to make windows into men’s souls
Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL
You may have many a wiser prince sitting in this seat, but you never have had, or shall have, any who loves you better.
Sense |
I thought that prattling boys and girls would fill this empty room; that my rich heart would gather flowers From childhood's opening bloom. One child and two green graves are mine, this is God's gift to me; a bleeding, fainting, broken heart— This is my gift to Thee.
Need | Perfection | Reason | Will | Learn | Understand |
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, fully Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward
It is in the comprehension of the physically disabled, or disordered ... that we are behind our age.... sympathy as a fine art is backward in the growth of progress ...
My generation is the first in my species to have put fitness next to godliness on the scale of things. Keeping in shape has become THE imperative of our middle age. The heaviest burden of guilt we carry into our forties is flab. Our sense of failure is measured by the grade on a stress test.
Dawn | Experience | People |
We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives ... not looking for flaws, but for potential.
Experience | Growth |
Americans once expected parents to raise their children in accordance with the dominant cultural messages. Today they are expected to raise their children in opposition to them. Once the chorus of cultural values was full of ministers, teachers, neighbors, leaders. They demanded more conformity, but offered more support. Now the messengers are violent cartoon characters, rappers and celebrities selling sneakers. Parents are considered "responsible" only if they are successful in their resistance. That's what makes child-raising harder. It's not just that American families have less time with their kids; it's that we have to spend more of this time doing battle with our own culture.
People | Sense | Skepticism |
I will not doubt, though sorrows fall like rain, and troubles swarm like bees about a hive; I shall believe the heights for which I strive are only reached by anguish and by pain; and though I groan and tremble with my crosses, I yet shall see, through my severest losses, the greater gain.
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The face of all the world is changed, I think, since first I heard the footsteps of they soul move still, oh, still, beside me.
Ellen Glasgow, fully Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
First I was an idealist (that was early - fools are born, not made, you know); next I was a realist; now I am a pessimist, and, by Jove! if things get much worse I'll become a humorist.
Emil G. Hirsch, fully Emil Gustav Hirsch
Value is given to our little limited lives. Our days are reckoned as movements in the sweep of the centuries. Their faint note belongs to the ocean of song to which worlds and ages have contributed. Our doings help and hinder, spread or retard, the pulsations of the universe's heart. We are a part of the eternities and have a part to play in their orchestrated symphonic movement.
Energy | Philosophy | Sense | Truth |
Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg
God expects but one thing of you, and that is that you should come out of yourself in so far as you are a created being and let God be God in you.
Emil G. Hirsch, fully Emil Gustav Hirsch
Only they have to weep bitter tears who know what has come to them is the result of their foolish conduct, their ignorant way, their want of proper understanding of life and what love means.
Books | Character | Common Sense | Force | Righteousness | Rites | Salvation | Sense | System | World | Happiness |
I was always sweet, at first. Oh, it's so easy to be sweet to people before you love them.
Birth | Ends | Experience | Heart | Men | Parents | Plan | Tenderness | Think |
Some people still hold [the] view that restraints help psychiatric patients feel safe. I've never met a psychiatric patient who agreed.