This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
The art of never making a mistake is crucial to motherhood. To be effective and to gain the respect she needs to function, a other must have her children believe she has never engaged in sex, never made a bad decision, never caused her own mother a moment's anxiety, and was never a child.
Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
My theory on housework is, if the item doesn't multiply, smell, catch fire, or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one else cares. Why should you?
Eugene P. Bertin, fully Eugene Peter Bertin
Teaching is leaving a vestige of one self in the development of another. And surely the student is a bank where you can deposit your most precious treasures.
Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
One thing they never tell you about child raising is that for the rest of your life, at the drop of a hat, you are expected to know your child's name and how old he or she is.
Love | Child | Understand |
Technologies that are "bad smart," by contrast, make certain choices and behaviors impossible. Smart gadgets in the latest generation of cars—breathalyzers that can check if we are sober, steering sensors that verify if we are drowsy, facial recognition technologies that confirm we are who we say we are—seek to limit, not to expand, what we can do. This may be an acceptable price to pay in situations where lives are at stake, such as driving, but we must resist any attempt to universalize this logic. The "smart bench"—an art project by designers JooYoun Paek and David Jimison that aims to illustrate the dangers of living in a city that is too smart—cleverly makes this point. Equipped with a timer and sensors, the bench starts tilting after a set time, creating an incline that eventually dumps its occupant. This might appeal to some American mayors, but it is the kind of smart technology that degrades the culture of urbanism—and our dignity.
Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
Never underestimate what it takes to watch someone you love in pain.
Erich Segal, fully Erich Wolf Segal
Part of being a big winner is the ability to be a big loser. There is no paradox involved. It is a distinctly Harvard thing to be able to turn any defeat into victory
Ernest Bramah, born Ernest Brammah Smith
"Excellence," besought Kai Lung, not without misgivings, "how many warriors, each having some actual existence, are there in your never-failing band?" "For all purposes save those of attack and defence there are fifteen score of the best and bravest, as their pay-sheets well attest," was the confident response. "In a strictly literal sense, however, there are no more than can be seen on a mist-enshrouded day with a resolutely closed eye."
Awareness | Body | Death | Dreams | Fate | Knowledge | Man | Nature | Order | Will | World | Fate | Awareness |
Some people are more sensitive to the lie of cultural life, to the illusions of the causa-sui project that others are so thoughtlessly and trustingly caught up in. The neurotic is having trouble with the balance of cultural illusion and natural reality; the possible horrible truth about himself and the world is seeping into his consciousness. The average man is at least secure that the cultural game is the truth, the unshakable, durable truth. He can earn his immortality in and under the dominant immortality ideology, period. It is all so simple and clear-cut. But now the neurotic.
Health | Man | Normality | Order | People | Size | Thinking | World | Trouble |
I have reached far beyond my competence and have probably secured for good a reputation for flamboyant gestures. But the times still crowd me and give me no rest, and I see no way to avoid ambitious synthetic attempts; either we get some kind of grip on the accumulation of thought or we continue to wallow helplessly, to starve amidst plenty. So I gamble with science and write.
Character | Choice | Justification | Order | People | Prison | Reason | Self-esteem | Spirit | Terror | Truth | World | Child |
Why would a person prefer the accusations of guilt, unworthiness, ineptitude - even dishonor and betrayal- to real possibility? This may not seem to be the choice, but it is: complete self effacement, surrender to the others, disavowal of any personal dignity and freedom-on the one hand; and freedom and independence, movement away from the others, extrication of oneself from the binding links of family and social duties-on the other hand. This is the choice that the depressed person actually faces.
Experience | Love | Man | Nature | Order | Understand |
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
Don't you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you're not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you've lived nearly half the time you have to live already?