This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
The idea of brotherhood redawns upon the world with a broader significance than the narrow association of members in a sect or creed; and thinkers of great soul like Lessing challenge the world to say which is more godlike, the hatred and tooth-and-nail grapple of conflicting religions, or sweet accord and mutual helpfulness. Ancient prejudice of man against his brother-man wavers and retreats before the radiance of a more generous sentiment, which will not sacrifice men to forms, or rob them of the comfort and strength they find in their own beliefs. The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next. Mere tolerance has given place to a sentiment of brotherhood between sincere men of all denominations.
Age | Association | Brotherhood | Challenge | Comfort | Man | Men | Prejudice | Sacrifice | Sentiment | Soul | Strength | Thinkers | Will | World | Association |
J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
Living in an age of advertisement, we are perpetually disillusioned. The perfect life is spread before us every day, but it changes and withers at a touch.
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 |
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 |