This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We criticize mothers for closeness. We criticize fathers for distance. How many of us have expected less from our fathers and appreciated what they gave us more? How many of us always let them off the hook?
Forgiveness | Love | People | Forgiveness |
But you will imagine that it is best that He should at once enable you to see clearly. If it is, you may be sure He will do it. He never makes mistakes. But He often deals far differently with His disciples. He lets them grope their way in the dark until they fully learn how blind they are, how helpless, how absolutely in need of Him. What His methods will be with you I cannot foretell. But you may be sure that He never works in an arbitrary way. He has a reason for everything He does. You may not understand why He leads you now in this way and now in that, but you may, nay, you must believe that perfection is stamped on His every act.
The world [in 2003] seemed to divide between international fundamentalists who want to keep women veiled and Internet spammers who want to unveil them on your computer screen.
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 |
Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL
You lawyers are so nice and precise in shifting and scanning every word and letter that many times you stand more upon form than matter, upon syllables than the sense of the law.
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 regard this novel as a work without redeeming social value, unless it can be recycled as a cardboard box.
Woman's reproductive organs are far older than man's and far more highly evolved. Even in the lowest mammals, as well as in woman, the ovaries, uterus, vagina, etc., are similar, indicating that the female reproductive system was one of the first things perfected by nature. On the other hand, the male reproductive organs, the testicles and the penis, vary as much among species and through the course of evolution as does the shape of the foot — from hoof to paw. Apparently, then, the male penis evolved to suit the vagina, not the vagina to suit the penis.
Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL
It seems incredible, and I love them no less; and I can say that I would rather die than see any diminution of it on one side or the other.
Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL
To what greater inspiration and counsel can we turn than to the imperishable truth to be found in this treasure house, the Bible?
Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL
In remembering the appalling suffering of war on both sides, we recognise how precious is the peace we have built in Europe since 1945.
Enthusiasm | Inspiration | People | Work | Leadership |
Asexual reproduction by females, parthenogenesis, is not only possible but it still occurs here and there in the modern world, perhaps as an atavistic survival of the once only means of reproduction in an all-female world.
Earth | Man | Power | Religion | System | Will | Woman | Wonder | World | Old |
God's acre was her garden-spot, she said; She sat there often, of the Summer days, little and slim and sweet, among the dead, her hair a fable in the leveled rays.
If you wear a short enough skirt, the party will come to you.
All my life, I have lived with the feeling that I have been kept from my true place. If the expression "metaphysical exile" had no meaning, my existence alone would afford it one.
I'll think about something else. I'll just sit quietly. If I could sit still. If I could sit still, maybe I could read. Oh, all the books are about people who love each other, truly and sweetly. What do they want to write about that for? Don't they know it isn't true? Don't they know it's a lie, it's a God-damned lie? What do they have to tell about that for, when they know how it hurts?