This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The old notion that children are the private property of parents dies very slowly. In reality, no parent raises a child alone. How many of us nice middle-class folk could make it without our mortgage reduction? That's a government subsidy of families, yet we resent putting money directly into public housing. We take our deduction for dependent care yet resent putting money directly into child care. Common sense and necessity are beginning to erode old notions of the private invasion of family life, because so many families are in trouble.
Beginning | Care | Children | Common Sense | Family | Government | Money | Necessity | Parents | Property | Public | Sense | Government | Child | Old | Parent |
Martin Tupper, fully Martin Farquhar Tupper
A kingdom is a nest of families, and a family is a small kingdom.
Family |
In every age there has been a stream of popular opinion that has carried all before it, and given a family character, as it were, to the century.
The family is changing not disappearing. We have to broaden our understanding of it, look for the new metaphors.
Family | Understanding |
Mary Kay Ash, fully Mary Kathlyn Wagner Ash
The real success of our personal lives and businesses can best be measured by the relationships we have with the people most dear to us - our family and friends. If we fail in this aspect of our lives, no matter how vast our worldly possessions or how high we climb, we will have achieved very little.
Family | People | Possessions | Success | Will |
You, my Eternal Friend, witness now that I forgive anyone who hurt or upset me or who offended me…May no one be punished because of me. May no one suffer from karmic consequences for hurting or upsetting me. Help me, Eternal Friend, to keep from offending You and others. Help me to be thoughtful and not commit outrage by doing what is evil in Your eyes. Whatever sins I have committed, blot out, please, in Your abundant kindness, and spare me suffering or harm. Help me become aware of the ways I may have unintentionally or intentionally hurt others, and please give me guidance and strength to rectify those hurts and to develop the sensitivity to not continue acting in a hurtful way. Let me forgive others, let me forgive myself, but also let me change in ways that make it easy for me to avoid paths of hurtfulness to others. I seek peace, let me BE peace. I seek justice, let me be just. I seek a world of kindness, let me be kind. I seek a world of generosity, let me be generous with all that I have. I seek a world of sharing, let me share all that I have. I seek a world of giving, let me be giving to all around me. I seek a world of love, let me be loving beyond all reason, beyond all normal expectation, beyond all societal frameworks that tell me how much love is “normal,” beyond all fear that giving too much love will leave me with too little. And let me be open and sensitive to all the love that is already coming to me, the love of people I know, the love that is part of the human condition, the accumulated love of past generations that flows through and is embodied in the language, music, recipes, technology, literature, religions, agriculture, and family heritages that have been passed on to me and to us. Let me pass that love on to the next generations in an even fuller and more explicit way. Source of goodness and love in the universe, let me be alive to all the goodness that surrounds me. And let that awareness of the goodness and love of the universe be my shield and protector. Hear the words of my mouth and may the meditations of my heart find acceptance before You, Eternal Friend, who protects and frees me so that I may fully engage in the work of Tikkun – the healing and transformation of the world social and economic order, the planet, and myself.
Acceptance | Awareness | Change | Consequences | Eternal | Evil | Family | Fear | Giving | Guidance | Heart | Love | Past | People | Strength | Suffering | Universe | Will | Witness | Words | Work | World | Guidance | Awareness | Forgive |
Mitch Albom, fully Mitchell David "Mitch" Albom
Strangers are just family you have yet to come to know.
Family |
O Lord, grant me your love, grant me that I love those who love you; grant me, that I might do the deeds that win your love. Make your love dearer to me than the love of myself, my family and wealth.
We could not guard every water pipeline from being blown up and every tree from being uprooted. We could not prevent every murder of a worker in an orchard or a family in their beds. But it was in our power to set high price for our blood, a price too high for the Arab community, the Arab army, or the Arab governments to think it worth paying. . . It was in our power to cause the Arab governments to renounce 'the policy of strength' toward Israel by turning it into a demonstration of weakness.
Cause | Family | Murder | Policy | Power | Price | Worth | Murder | Think |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
My work will be finished if I succeed in carrying conviction to the human family that every man or woman, however weak in body, is the guardian of his or her self-respect and liberty, and that this defence prevails though the world be against the individual resister.
The roots of such fears which choke love like weeds need repeated examination. Partly they spring from failures in loving within the family and within society; partly, also, from horror of the body and its desires which the Church has done much to encourage. The exaggerated emphasis on the sinfulness of sexual intercourse has led many sensitive people to a terror of any situation where they might lose control. This in turn leads in some cases to a fear of the opposite sex, or a dislike of even the briefest and most casual physical contact. Yet to be comforted, to be assured that we are valuable and important, we need to be touched. We need our hands to be shaken, our cheeks to be kissed, our shoulders to be embraced, with the quick sympathy and affection of friendship or of kinship.
Body | Church | Family | Fear | Love | Need | People | Sympathy | Terror | Friendship |
In any culture, subculture, or family in which belief is valued above thought, and self-surrender is valued above self-expression, and conformity is valued above integrity, those who preserve their self-esteem are likely to be heroic exceptions.
Belief | Conformity | Family | Self-esteem |
Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I
Show me a family of readers, and I will show you the people who move the world.
The term "mensch" literally means a "person" or "man," but it represents a moral ideal for all people, men and women alike. . . . It means being sensitive to other people's needs and seeking out ways to help them. It is acquired by living close to family and extending one's sense of obligation beyond the family to the broader community. In the Jewish culture of Eastern Europe where the term arose, to call someone a mensch was the highest compliment that could be given.
I can worship Nature, and that fulfills my need for miracles and beauty. Art gives a spiritual depth to existence -- I can find worlds bigger and deeper than my own in music, paintings, and books. And from my friends and family I receive the highest benediction, emotional contact, and personal affirmation. I can bow before the works of Man, from buildings to babies, and that fulfills my need for wonder. I can believe in the sanctity of Life, and that becomes the Revealed Word, to live my life as I believe it should be, not as I'm told to by self-appointed guides.
Art | Existence | Family | Life | Life | Miracles | Need | Receive | Worship | Art | Friends |
Today so much rebellion is aimless and demoralizing precisely because children have no values to challenge. Teenage rebellion is a testing process in which young people try out various values in order to make them their own. But during those years of trial, error, embarrassment, a child needs family standards to fall back on, reliable habits of thought and feeling that provide security and protection.
Children | Family | Order | People | Rebellion | Security | Thought | Child | Thought |
Nels F. S. Ferré, fully Nels Fredrick Solomon Ferré
Children can have no better inheritance than believing parents. Religion can become real in the midst of the family as in practically no other way. Many of us have inherited great riches from our parents - the bank account of their personal faith and family prayers.
Better | Faith | Family | Inheritance | Parents | Religion | Riches | Riches |
At rest, however, in the middle of everything is the sun. For, in this most beautiful temple, who would place this lamp in another or better position than that from which it can light up the whole thing at the same time? For, the sun is not inappropriately called by some people the lantern of the universe, its mind by others, and its ruler by still others. The Thrice Greatest labels it a visible god, and Sophocles' Electra, the all-seeing. Thus indeed, as though seated on a royal throne, the sun governs the family of planets revolving around it.
Panchatantra or The Panchatantra NULL
A king is ruined through bad advisers, A Sanyasi through company, A son through over-indulgence, A Brahamin through lack of studies of shastras, A business or a firm through neglect, And a family and character through contact with bad people.
You may try to support your family and friends, but at the time of death all other actions besides the virtuous practices of Dharma activities will have been pointless. So constantly apply yourself to spiritual practices in thought, word, and deed!