This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
E. W. Howe, fully Edgar Watson Howe
Instead of loving your enemies, treat your friends a little better.
Dmitri Shostakovich, fully Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich
There can be no music without ideology. The old composers, whether they knew it or not, were upholding a political theory. Most of them, of course, were bolstering the rule of the upper classes. Only Beethoven was a forerunner of the revolutionary movement. If you read his letters, you will see how often he wrote to his friends that he wished to give new ideas to the public and rouse it to revolt against its masters.
Let us examine more closely the significance of this vague word, reality. It may have several meanings, according to the different points of view which one takes. We may regard it as embodied in the physical world, the world of land and sea, of sky and trees, of sunshine and of storm. The real therefore will be to us that which we can touch and see, smell and taste, as one will say, "I know that is real for I can see it with my eyes." Seeing is believing, and the testimony of the senses is the superior court of appeal in controverted questions. But the world of reality may be regarded from quite a different point of view, as the world of consciousness, the mind of man, the experiences of the inner self, the Ego. Here is a world of phenomena interrelated and reciprocally dependent. It is a realm of ideas, of memory images, of fancy, of will, and of desire. The verities in this world cannot be seen, or measured, or weighed, and yet we do not hesitate to speak of them as realities; they are real as the love of friends is real, or the anger of a foe. The passion of a Romeo, the will of a Napoleon, the genius of a Goethe ... these are realities.
Anger | Consciousness | Desire | Ego | Genius | Ideas | Land | Love | Man | Memory | Mind | Passion | Phenomena | Reality | Regard | Self | Taste | Will | World | Friends |
To sum up, what has been our policy? We looked for and found friends all throughout the world.
Friends |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
How many parents experience the child's reactions in terms of his being obedient, of giving them pleasure, of being a care to them, and so forth, instead of perceiving or even being interested in what the child feels for and by himself?
Care | Experience | Giving | Parents | Child |
We do not so much need the help of our friends as the confidence of their help in need.
Confidence | Need | Friends |
The best time to make friends is before you need them.
François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
Do not make best friends with a melancholy sad soul. They always are heavily loaded, and you must bear half.
Melancholy | Friends |
George Gurdjieff, fully George Ivanovich Gurdjieff
If you want to lose your faith, make friends with a priest.
Friends |
George Sand, pen name for Amandine Lucte Aurore Dupin, Baronne Dudevant
Admiration and familiarity are strangers.
Haim Ginott, fully Haim G. Ginott, orignially Ginzburg
While parents possess the original key to their offspring's experience, teachers have a spare key. They, too, can open or close the minds and hearts of children.
Parents |
You never really know your friends from your enemies until the ice breaks.
Friends |
Religious education in the true sense is to encourage the child to understand his own relationship to people, to things and to nature. There is no existence without relationship; and without self-knowledge, all relationship, with the one and with the many, brings conflict and sorrow. Of course, to explain this fully to a child is impossible; but if the educator and the parents deeply grasp the full significance of relationship, then by their attitude, conduct and speech they will surely be able to convey to the child, without too many words and explanations, the meaning of a spiritual life.
Conduct | Education | Existence | Meaning | Parents | Relationship | Sense | Speech | Will | Words | Child | Understand |
What seems venerable by an accumulation of changes is reduced to familiarity when we come seriously to consider it solely in connection with time.
If familiarity can breed contempt, certainly Art–or what is currently taken for it–has been brought to its lowest stage of intimacy. The people have been harassed with Art in every guise, and vexed with many methods as to its endurance. They have been told how they shall love Art, and live with it. Their homes have been invaded, their walls covered with paper, their very dress taken to task–until, roused at last, bewildered and filled with the doubts and discomforts of senseless suggestion, they resent such intrustion, and cast forth the false prophets, who have brought the very name of the beautiful into disrepute, and derision upon themselves.
Art | Familiarity | Love | People | Art |