This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We were making the first step out of the age of chemistry and physics, and into the age of biology.
Age |
Jean Paul, born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, aka Jean Paul Richter
What makes old age so sad is, not that our joys, but that our hopes, cease.
The modern age has been characterized by a Promethean spirit, a restless energy that preys on speed records and shortcuts, unmindful of the past, uncaring of the future, existing only for the moment and the quick fix. The earthly rhythms that characterize a more pastoral way of life have been shunted aside to make room for the fast track of an urbanized existence. Lost in a sea of perpetual technological transition, modern man and woman find themselves increasingly alienated from the ecological choreography of the planet.
Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.
Age | Circumstances | History |
To discover the rules of society that are best suited to nations, there would need to exist a superior intelligence, who could understand the passions of men without feeling any of them, who had no affinity with our nature but knew it to the full, whose happiness was independent of ours, but who would nevertheless make our happiness his concern, who would be content to wait in the fullness of time for a distant glory, and to labor in one age to enjoy the fruits in another. Gods would be needed to give men laws.
Age | Labor | Men | Nature | Need | Society | Time | Society | Happiness | Understand |
Friedrich Schiller, fully Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
Deeper meaning resides in the fairy tales told to me in my childhood than in any truth that is taught in life.
Men, be kind to your fellow-men; this is your first duty, kind to every age and station, kind to all that is not foreign to humanity. What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?
Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.
Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods… Prayer does not come by default. It requires education, training, reflection, contemplation. It is not enough to join others; it is necessary to build a sanctuary within, brick by brick, instants of meditation, moments of devotion. This is particularly true in an age when overwhelming forces seem to conspire at destroying our ability to pray.
John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
We prefer world law in the age of self-determination to world war in the age of mass extermination.
Age | Law | Self-determination | War | World |
Calvin Coolidge, fully John Calvin Coolidge, Jr.
We live an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create the Declaration. Our Declaration created them.
It’s absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to sit in confinement with people of exactly the same age and social class. That system effectively cuts you off from the immense diversity of life and the synergy of variety; indeed it cuts you off from your own past and future, sealing you in a continuous present much the same way television does.
Absurd | Age | Diversity | Life | Life | Past | People | Present | System | Television |
All that makes existence valuable to any one, depends on the enforcement of restraints upon the actions of other people. Some rules of conduct, therefore, must be imposed, by law in the first place, and by opinion on many things which are not fit subjects for the operation of law. What these rules should be, is the principal question in human affairs; but if we except a few of the most obvious cases, it is one of those which least progress has been made in resolving. No two ages, and scarcely any two countries, have decided it alike; and the decision of one age or country is a wonder to another.
Age | Decision | Existence | Law | Opinion | Progress | Question | Wonder |
Among the sentiments of most powerful operation upon the human heart, and most highly honorable to the human character, are those of veneration for our forefathers, and of love for our posterity. They form the connecting links between the selfish and the social passions. By the fundamental principle of Christianity, the happiness of the individual is Later-woven, by innumerable and imperceptible ties, with that of his contemporaries: by the power of filial reverence and parental affection, individual existence is extended beyond the limits of individual life, and the happiness of every age is chained in mutual dependence upon that of every other.
Age | Dependence | Existence | Individual | Love | Power | Reverence | Happiness |
Good teachers don't approach a child of this age with overzealousness or with destructive conscientiousness. They're not drill-masters in the military or floor managers in a production system. They are specialists in opening small packages. They give the string a tug but do it carefully. They don't yet know what's in the box. They don't know if it's breakable.