This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Who will say with confidence that sexual abuse is more permanently damaging to children than threatening them with the eternal and unquenchable fires of hell?
Abuse | Children | Confidence | Eternal | Will |
For if there is anything to one's praise, it is foolish vanity to be gratified at it, and if it is abuse -- why one is always sure to hear of it from one damned good-natured friend or another!
Pity those who nature abuses; never those who abuse nature.
And then, Sir, there is this consideration, that if the abuse be enormous, nature will rise up, and claiming her original rights, overturn a corrupt political system.
Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan
Let us resolve that we will stop spreading dependency and start spreading opportunity; that we will stop spreading bondage and start spreading freedom.
Abuse |
A Bachelor of Arts is one who makes love to a lot of women, and yet has the art to remain a bachelor.
When God created man, he said to him: 'Be it done according to your will', that is, 'I make you free, subject only to myself.'
I beg Our Lord, Monsieur, that we may be able to die to ourselves in order to rise with Him, that he may be the joy of your heart, the end and soul of your actions, and your glory in heaven. This will come to pass if, from now on, we humble ourselves as He humbled Himself, if we renounce our own satisfaction to follow Him by carrying our little crosses, and if we give our lives willingly, as He gave His, for our neighbor whom He loves so much and whom He wants us to love as ourselves.
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
If the man who turnips cries, Cry not when his father dies, 'Tis proof that he had rather Have a turnip than his father.
Sholem Aleichem, pen name of Sholem Yakovf Rabinowitz or Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich
This is an ugly and mean world, and only to spite it we mustn't weep. If you want to know, this is the constant source of my good spirit, of my humor. Not to cry, out of spite, only to laugh out of spite, only to laugh.
Simón Bolívar, fully Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios Ponte y Blanco
A state too expensive in itself, or by virtue of its dependencies, ultimately falls into decay; its free government is transformed into a tyranny; it disregards the principles which it should preserve, and finally degenerates into despotism. The distinguishing characteristic of small republics is stability: the character of large republics is mutability.
Abuse | Balance | Death | Desire | Government | Impulse | Individual | Justice | Little | Man | Order | People | Power | Struggle | System | Weakness | Will | Government |
Sinéad O’Connor, fully Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor
People who express suicidal feelings are least likely to act on them.
Abuse |
From whence it happens, that they which trust to books, do as they that cast up many little sums into a greater, without considering whether those little sums were rightly cast up or not; and at last finding the error visible, and not mistrusting their first grounds, know not which way to clear themselves; but spend time in fluttering over their books, as birds that entering by the chimney, and finding themselves enclosed in a chamber, flutter at the false light of a glass window, for want of wit to consider which way they came in.
Abuse | Belief | Change | Credit | Distinguish | Doubt | Dreams | Evil | Fear | God | Ignorance | Man | Men | Need | Opinion | Past | People | Power | Purpose | Purpose | Reason | Religion | Right | Time | Vision | Wise | God | Think |
In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is easier to acquire wealth and power by this combination than by deserving them, and to effect this, they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer for their purposes.
But this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror.
With nations, as with individuals, our interests soundly calculated, will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties; and history bears witness to the fact, that a just nation is taken on its word, when recourse is had to armaments, and wars to bridle others.
Abuse | Better | Body | Corruption | Human nature | Integrity | Men | Money | Nature | Time | Trust | Will |
The lapse of time and rivers is the same, Both speed their journey with a restless stream; The silent pace, with which they steal away, No wealth can bribe, no prayers persuade to stay; Alike irrevocable both when past, And a wide ocean swallows both at last. Though each resemble each in every part, A difference strikes at length the musing heart; Streams never flow in vain; where streams abound, How laughs the land with various plenty crown’d! But time, that should enrich the nobler mind, Neglected, leaves a dreary waste behind.
That, however, does not render the poetry as a failure or as an irrelevance. It only affirms that alternatives to the lethal reductionism of empire require imagination and courage and staying power. In that ancient world, it was required that old Jerusalem be relinquished and new Jerusalem be undertaken. It is no less required now that there be relinquishing and undertaking. Those who act in this way will do so at the behest of the poets who may eventually be seen as Spirit led.