This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa
Beauty in a good woman is like fire at a distance or a sharp sword; the one does not burn, or the other wound, those who come not too close.
Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa
The reputation of a woman may be compared to a mirror, shining and bright, but liable to be sullied by every breath that comes near it.
Reputation | Woman |
Woman is the future of man. That means that the world which was once formed in man's image will now be transformed to the image of woman. The more technical and mechanical, cold and metallic it becomes, the more it will need the kind of warmth that only the woman can give it. If we want to save the world, we must adapt to the woman, let ourselves be led by the woman, let ourselves be penetrated by the Ewigweiblich, the eternally feminine!
A beautiful woman delights the eye; a wise woman, the understanding; a pure one, the soul.
The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body.The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?
The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful... Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.
It seemed to me an error in reasoning for a man to isolate a woman he loves from all the circumstances in which he met her and in which she lives, to try, with dogged inner concentration, to purify her of everything that is not her self, which is to say also of the story that they lived through together and that gives their ove its shape. After all, what I love in a woman is not what she is in and for herself, but the side of herself she turns toward me, what she is for me. I love her as a character in our common love story.
Character | Circumstances | Error | Love | Man | Story | Woman |
Mikhail Bakunin, fully Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin
The instinct to command others, in its primitive essence, is a carnivorous, altogether bestial and savage instinct. Under the influence of the mental development of man, it takes on a somewhat more ideal form and becomes somewhat ennobled, presenting itself as the instrument of reason and the devoted servant of that abstraction, or political fiction, which is called the public good. But in its essence it remains just as baneful, and it becomes even more so when, with the application of science, it extends its scope and intensifies the power of its action. If there is a devil in history, it is this power principle.
Mitch Albom, fully Mitchell David "Mitch" Albom
You have peace," the old woman said, "when you make it with yourself.
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
It is the duty of every cultured man or woman to read sympathetically the scriptures of the world. If we are to respect others' religions as we would have them respect our own, a friendly study of the world's religions is a sacred duty.
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man could not be. If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman. Who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman?
Future | Heart | Injustice | Injustice | Law | Man | Strength | Woman |
Mortimer Collins, fully Edward James Mortimer Collins
A man's as old as he's feeling, A woman as old as she looks.
A man cannot in honour be exculpated, who, though the word Love never pass his lips, by such methods defrauds a woman of her heart!
Nancy Reagan, born Anne Frances Robbins
A woman is like a tea bag, you can not tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.
Woman |
Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I
A great reserve and severity of manners are necessary for the command of those who are older than ourselves.