This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Wernher von Braun, fully Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun
For my confirmation, I didn't get a watch and my first pair of long pants, like most Lutheran boys. I got a telescope. My mother thought it would make the best gift.
Design | Law | Necessity | Order | Purpose | Purpose | Universe |
The forces of power, particularly corporate power, are impatient with what is adequate for a coherent community. Because power gains so little from community in the short run, it does not hesitate to destroy community for the long run.
Physical bravery is an animal instinct; moral bravery is a much higher and truer courage.
Justice |
In recent times, more and more human thinking has come to assume that the idea of a universal natural law and the idea of 'God' are pointing to one and the same reality.
Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney
A man should never neglect his family for business.
Not until man is willing to recognize his animal nature - in the good sense of the word - will he create genuine culture.
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love if you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean but I shall be good health to you nonetheless and filter and fibre your blood.
Argument | Custom | God | Knowledge | Little | Men | Mind | Music | Peace | Promise | Spirit | God |
After we have done our best work and vigorously pursued our most passionate modes of reading, the text—and the God featured in the text— remain inscrutable and undomesticated. Partly the reason for that inscrutability and lack of domestication is that the text in its final form is complex and pluralistic, hosting a variety of traditioning and interpreting voices that become normative traditions. More than that, however, the inscrutability and lack of domestication in the text are a consequences of the God attested in these pages who is Holy Other.
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
To be in any form, what is that? (round and round we go, all of us, and ever come back thither,) if nothing lay more develop'd the quahung in it's callous shell were enough. Mine is no callous shell. I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop, they seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me. I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and I am happy, to touch my person to someone else's is about as much as I can stand.
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass, be not afraid of my body.
Better | Body | Fear | Imperfection | Justice | Love | Man | Nothing | Soul | Will | Woman | Understand |
In government offices which are sensitive to the vehemence and passion of mass sentiment public men have no sure tenure. They are in effect perpetual office seekers, always on trial for their political lives, always required to court their restless constituents. They are deprived of their independence. Democratic politicians rarely feel they can afford the luxury of telling the whole truth to the people. And since not telling it, though prudent, is uncomfortable, they find it easier if they themselves do not have to hear too often too much of the sour truth. The men under them who report and collect the news come to realize in their turn that it is safer to be wrong before it has become fashionable to be right.
Walter J. Ong, fully Walter Jackson Ong
Where grapholects exist, "correct" grammar and usage are popularly interpreted as the grammar and usage of the grapholect itself to the exclusion of the grammar and usage of the other dialects.
Machines | Sense | Technology | Television | Thinking | Writing |
In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, at that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee, and where they always prudently shortened sail and implored the protection of St. Nicholas when they crossed, there lies a small market town or rural port, which by some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly known by the name of Tarry Town.
Alms | Angels | Earth | Giving | God | Good | Man | Right | Following | God |
Equanimity is the ability to experience the changes in our lives, circumstances, and feelings and still remain calm, centered and unmoved. The image most often used to illustrate the quality of equanimity is that of a mountain. The mountain sits there as the sun shines on it, the rain drenches it, it is covered with snow and struck by lightning. Through it all, through all the changing conditions, the mountain remains unwavering. As we cultivate equanimity within ourselves, we learn to be more like the mountain, finding that place of strength and courage within ourselves that enables us to withstand the slings and arrows of being human without feeling overwhelmed by fear.
Fear |