This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
That’s the thing about a human life-there’s no control group, no way to ever know how any of us would have turned out if any variables had been changed.
Silence and solitude are universally recognized spiritual practices, and there are good reasons for this. Learning how to discipline your speech is a way of preventing your energies from spilling out of you through the rupture of your mouth, exhausting you and filling the world with words, words, words instead of serenity, peace and bliss.
Then my mother shocked me. She said, All those things you want from your relationship, Liz? I have always wanted those things, too. In that moment, it was as if my strong mother reached across the table, opened her fist and finally showed me the handful of bullets she'd had to bite over the decades in order to stay happily married (and she is happily married, all considerations weighed) to my father... Continuing with this unprecedented string of intimacies, my mother said, You have to understand how little I was raised to expect that I deserved in life, honey. Remember- I come from a different time and place than you do.
As for keeping the attack dogs from nibbling away your courage? My theory, after decades in this business, is that you only give a few people the right to make you feel rotten. You have a handful of chits to give out, penuriously, to those you trust and respect. You don't give them to just anyone with an e-mail address and an epithet.
Battle | Children | Opposition | Parents | Time |
Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL
I have been aware all the time did my peoples, spread far and wide Throughout every continent and ocean in the world, were united to support me in the task to which i have now finished with dedicated search solemnity.
It is that word 'hunny,' my darlings, that marks the first place in The House at Pooh Corner at which Tonstant Weader fwowed up.
We have before us the ignoble spectacle of men who are sunken in debts and crimes being hailed as innocent, whereas the honor of a man whose life is spotless is being vilely attacked: A society that sinks to that level has fallen into decay.
Devotion | Dignity | Honor | Love | Nothing | Respect | Will | Respect |
In love as in speculation there is much filth; in love also, people think only of their own gratification; yet without love there would be no life, and the world would come to an end.
Despair | Destroy | Effort | Good | Honor | Innocence | Life | Life | Man | Men | Office | Order | People | Public | Society | War | Society |
Well then! it was the end; his ruin was complete. Even if he mended the cables and lit the fires, where would he find men? Another fortnight's strike and he would be bankrupt. And in this certainty of disaster he no longer felt any hatred of the Montsou bandits; he felt that all had a hand in it, that it was a general agelong fault. They were brutes, no doubt, but brutes who could not read, and who were dying of hunger.
General Billot directed the judges in his preliminary remarks, and they proceeded to judgment as they would to battle, unquestioningly. The preconceived opinion they brought to the bench was obviously the following: Dreyfus was found guilty for the crime of treason by a court martial; he therefore is guilty and we, a court martial, cannot declare him innocent. On the other hand, we know that acknowledging Esterhazy's guilt would be tantamount to proclaiming Dreyfus innocent. There was no way for them to escape this rationale.
Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
It's all I have to bring today this and my heart beside this and my heart and all the fields and all the meadows wide be sure to count should I forget someone the sum could tell this and my heart and all the bees which in the clovers dwell.
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
You talk of her mind being unsettled - how the devil could it be otherwise, in her frightful isolation? And that insipid, paltry creature attending her from duty and humanity! From pity and charity. He might as well plant an oak in a flower-pot, and expect it to thrive, as imagine he can restore her to vigour in the soil of his shallow cares!
Served as inspiration for Roger Baldwin, a future founder of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Change | Improvement | Life | Life | Price | Revolution | Struggle | Worth | Loss |
No sacrifice is lost for a great ideal!
Ignorance | Inhumanity | Man | Means | Protest | Revolution | Spirit | System | Wrong |
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.
We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens. We are ready to hang, electrocute, or lynch anyone, who, from economic necessity, will risk his own life in the attempt upon that of some industrial magnate. Yet our hearts swell with pride at the thought that America is becoming the most powerful nation on earth, and that she will eventually plant her iron foot on the necks of all other nations. Such is the logic of patriotism.
Future | Individual | Law | Means | Oppression | Present | Revolution | Parent |