This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
There is one type of feeling which is above all important to foster in childhood. Children have naturally an abundant faculty for wonder and reverence. There are so many books, so many radio and television hours, so many encyclopedias and, alas, so many teachers whose aim is to import knowledge quickly and easily without any element of that faculty which the Greeks said was the beginning of philosophy – Wonder. It is strange that an age which has discovered so many marvels in the universe should be so conspicuously lacking in the sense of wonder.
Age | Beginning | Books | Childhood | Children | Important | Knowledge | Philosophy | Reverence | Sense | Television | Universe | Wisdom | Wonder |
The figures prove that the absolute easiest way to be poor is to be born out of wedlock to a young woman. If you need a statistic to memorize, try this one: 92.8 percent of all children in black, single female-headed families where the mother is under thirty and did not complete high school, are in poverty.
Absolute | Children | Mother | Need | Poverty | Wisdom | Woman |
R. Hertz, fully Rabbi Joseph Herman Hertz
The Kaddish is not a prayer for the dead, but a mandate for the living... It bids man rise above his sorrow... and fixes his view upon the welfare of mankind. It lifts his hope and vision to a day... when mankind shall at last inhabit the earth as children of the one God and Father, and justice reign supreme in peace.
Children | Day | Earth | Father | God | Hope | Justice | Man | Mankind | Peace | Prayer | Sorrow | Vision | Wisdom | God |
As children we all possess a natural, uninhibited curiosity, a hunger for explanation, which seems to die slowly as we age - suppressed, I suppose, by the high value we place on conformity and by the need not to appear ignorant. It betokens a conviction that somehow science is innately incomprehensible. It precludes reaching deeper, thereby denying the profound truth that understanding enriches experience, that explanation vastly enhances beauty of the natural world in the eye of the beholder.
Age | Beauty | Children | Conformity | Curiosity | Experience | Hunger | Need | Science | Truth | Understanding | Wisdom | World | Beauty | Value |
Some wonder that children should be given to young mothers. But what instruction does the babe bring to the mother! She learns patience, self-control, endurance; her very arm grows strong so that she holds the dear burden longer than the father can.
Children | Control | Endurance | Father | Mother | Patience | Self | Self-control | Wisdom | Wonder | Instruction |
One of the most valuable habits a parent can have is that of explaining. Many parents think their children are too young to understand explanations, yet it is surprising how much a child will absorb if he is given a chance. And even if he does not understand completely, he will at least sense that someone cares enough to explain
Chance | Children | Enough | Parents | Sense | Will | Wisdom | Child | Parent | Think | Understand |
We teach children how to measure, how to weigh. We fail to teach them how to revere, how to sense wonder and awe. The sense of the sublime, the sign of the inward greatness of the human soul and something which is potentially given to all men, is now a rare gift.
Awe | Children | Greatness | Men | Sense | Soul | Teach | Wisdom | Wonder |
Theodore Gottlieb von Hippel the Younger
The soul has, living apart from its corporeal envelope, a profound habitual meditation which prepares it for a future life.
How much that the world calls selfishness is only generosity with narrow walls, a too exclusive solicitude to maintain a wife in luxury, or make one’s children rich.
Children | Generosity | Luxury | Selfishness | Wife | Wisdom | World |
Hitopadesa or The Hitopadesa or Hitopadesha NULL
We teach children how to measure, how to weigh. We fail to teach them how to revere, how to sense wonder and awe. The sense of the sublime, the sign of the inward greatness of the human soul and something which is potentially given to all men, is now a rare gift.
Awe | Children | Greatness | Men | Sense | Soul | Teach | Wisdom | Wonder |
Our children should be fitted for bread-winning, but they should be taught that bread-winning is only a means, not the purpose in life, and that the value of life is to be judged... by the good and the service to God with which it is filled.
Children | God | Good | Life | Life | Means | Purpose | Purpose | Service | Wisdom | God | Value |
The medical profession tells us that there are four conditions which must be met if we are to have any chance of leading a happy life: physical security, social recognition, adventure, emotional security. In today's highly technical and scientific life, these four considerations become increasingly important, but we should add one vital ingredient: love. Love of our fellow man, love for our work, and the conviction that this love insures the future for all of us.
Adventure | Chance | Future | Happy | Important | Life | Life | Love | Man | Security | Wisdom | Work |
John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
Political sovereignty is but a mockery without the means of meeting poverty and illiteracy and disease. Self-determination is but a slogan if the future holds no hope.
Determination | Disease | Future | Hope | Means | Mockery | Poverty | Self | Self-determination | Wisdom |