This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
The cause of the breakdowns of civilizations is not to be found in loss of command over the human environment, as measured by the encroachment of alien human forces... The most that an alien enemy has achieved has been to give an expiring suicide his coup de grace.
When Abraham Lincoln was a young man he ran for the Legislature in Illinois and was badly swamped. Next he entered business, failed and spent seventeen years of his life paying up the debts of a worthless partner. He was in love with a beautiful young woman to whom he became engagedand then, she died. Later he married a woman who was a constant burden to him. Entering politics again, he was badly defeated for Congress. He failed to get an appointment to the U.S. Land Office. He was badly defeated for the U.S. Senate. In 1856 he became a candidate for the Vice-Presidency and was again defeated. In 1858 he was defeated by Douglas. One failure after another, bad failures, great setbacks. In the face of all this he eventually became one of the country's greatest men, if not the greatest. When you think of a series of setbacks like this, doesn't it make you feel small to become discouraged, just because you think that you're having a hard time in life?
Business | Failure | Land | Life | Life | Love | Man | Men | Office | Politics | Time | Woman | Failure | Think |
Reason command us far more imperiously than a master; in disobeying the former, fools.
Reason |
The author, however, who has thought more than he has read, read more than he has written, and written more than he has published, if he does not command success, has at least deserved it.
If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.
Wealth |
Society considers the sex experiences of a man as attributes of his general development, while similar experiences in the life of a woman are looked upon as a terrible calamity, a loss of honor and of all that is good an noble in a human being.
Calamity | Good | Honor | Life | Life | Man | Society | Woman | Loss |
How shall I be able to rule over others, that have not full power and command of myself?
Love of country is like love of a woman - he loves her best who seeks to bestow on her the highest good.
The happiness of the human race in this world does not consist in our being devoid of passions, but in our learning to command them.
Human race | Learning | Race | World | Happiness |
If a boy is not trained to endure and to bear trouble, he will grow up a girl; and a boy that is a girl has all a girl’s weakness without any of her regal qualities. A woman made out of a woman is God’s noblest work; a woman made out of a man is His meanest.
Henry Kissinger, fully Henry Alfred Kissinger
One of the paradoxical lessons of the nuclear age is that at the moment when we are acquiring an unparalleled command over nature, we are forced to realize as never before that the problems of survival will have to be solved above all in the minds of men. In this task the fate of the mammoth and the dinosaur may serve as a warning that brute strength does not always supply the mechanism in the struggle for survival.
Age | Fate | Men | Nature | Problems | Strength | Struggle | Survival | Warning | Will | Fate |
No woman has ever told the truth of her life. The autobiographies of most famous women are a series of accounts of the outward existence, of petty details and anecdotes which give no realization of their real life. For the great moments of joy or agony they remain strangely silent.
Agony | Existence | Famous | Joy | Life | Life | Truth | Woman |