This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"A child needs your love most when he deserves it least" - Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
"A friend doesn't go on a diet because you are fat." - Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
"But some emotions don't make a lot of noise. It's hard to hear pride. Caring is real faint - like a heartbeat. And pure love why, some days it's so quiet, you don't even know it's there." - Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
"I remember thinking how often we look, but never see ... we listen, but never hear ... we exist, but never feel. We take our relationships for granted. A house is only a place. It has no life of its own. It needs human voices, activity and laughter to come alive." - Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
"One thing they never tell you about child raising is that for the rest of your life, at the drop of a hat, you are expected to know your child's name and how old he or she is." - Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
"Onion rings in the car cushions do not improve with time." - Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
"Raising a family wasn't something I put on my resumé, but I have to ask myself, would I apply for the same job again?" - Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
"When God was creating fathers, He started with a tall frame. An angel nearby said, What kind of father is that? If you" - Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
"An animal who gets his feeling of worth symbolically has to minutely compare himself to those around him, to make sure he doesn't come off second-best. Sibling rivalry is a critical problem that reflects the basic human condition: it is not that children are vicious, selfish, or domineering. It is that they so openly express man's tragic destiny: he must desÂperately justify himself as an object of primary value in the uniÂverse; he must stand out, be a hero, make the biggest possible conÂtribution to world life, show that he counts more than anything or anyone else." - Ernest Becker
"And so, the question for the science of mental health must beÂcome an absolutely new and revolutionary one, yet one that reÂflects the essence of the human condition: On what level of illusion does one live? We will see the import of this at the close of this chapter, but right now we must remind ourselves that when we talk about the need for illusion we are not being cynical. True, there is a great deal of falseness and self-deception in the cultural causa-sui project, but there is also the necessity of this project. Man needs a "second" world, a world of humanly created meaning, a new reality that he can live, dramatize, nourish himself in. "Illusion" means creative play at its highest level. Cultural illusion is a necessary ideology of self-justification, a heroic dimension that is life itself to the symbolic animal. To lose the security of heroic cultural illusion is to die—that is what "deculturation" of primitives means and what it does. It kills them or reduces them to the animal level of chronic fighting and fornication. Life becomes possible only in a continual alcoholic stupor. Many of the older American Indians were relieved when the Big Chiefs in Ottawa and Washington took control and prevented them from warring and feuding. It was a relief from the constant anxiety of death for their loved ones, if not for themselves. But they also knew, with a heavy heart, that this eclipse of their traditional hero-systems at the same time left them as good as dead." - Ernest Becker
"I have reached far beyond my competence and have probably secured for good a reputation for flamboyant gestures. But the times still crowd me and give me no rest, and I see no way to avoid ambitious synthetic attempts; either we get some kind of grip on the accumulation of thought or we continue to wallow helplessly, to starve amidst plenty. So I gamble with science and write." - Ernest Becker
"Not everyone is as honest as Freud was when he said that he cured the miseries of the neurotic only to open him up to the normal misery of life." - Ernest Becker
"Along the way, I had the opportunity to pass through the dominions of the United Fruit, convincing me once again of just how terrible these capitalist octopuses are. I have sworn before a picture of the old and mourned comrade Stalin that I won't rest until I see these capitalist octopuses annihilated." - Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara
"The child is vibrationally receiving your fears, your beliefs, even without your spoken word. If you want to do that which is of greatest value for your child, give thought only to that which you want, and your child will receive only those wanted thoughts." - Ester and Jerry Hicks
"The discipline that we would like you to exercise is to make a decision that nothing is more important than that you feel good, and that you are going to find thoughts that feel better." - Ester and Jerry Hicks
"Man is after money, but money is after his soul." - Estonian Proverbs
"One who plants grapes by the road side, and one who marries a pretty woman, share the same problem." - Ethiopian Proverbs
"Without stopping to be sorry for her head he crammed kisses in her mouth, and she wound her arms up around his own drenched head and returned him kiss for kiss." - Eudora Welty
"The fog was where I wanted to be. Halfway down the path you can’t see this house. You’d never know it was here. Or any of the other places down the avenue. I couldn’t see but a few feet ahead. I didn’t meet a soul. Everything looked and sounded unreal. Nothing was what it is. That’s what I wanted—to be alone with myself in another world where truth is untrue and life can hide from itself. Out beyond the harbor, where the road runs along the beach, I even lost the feeling of being on land. The fog and the sea seemed part of each other. It was like walking on the bottom of the sea. As if I had drowned long ago. As if I was the ghost belonging to the fog, and the fog was the ghost of the sea. It felt damned peaceful to be nothing more than a ghost within a ghost." - Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
"Intellectual darkness is essential to industrial slavery." - Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
"To know and love one other human being is the root of all wisdom." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
"A good name is still to be preferred over great riches. Especially it is to be preferred to the appearance of riches, acquired with nothing down and nothing to pay for 2 months." - Ezra Taft Benson
"As we cleanse the inner vessel, there will have to be changes made in our own personal lives, in our families, and in the Church. The proud do not change to improve, but defend their position by rationalizing. Repentance means change, and it takes a humble person to change. But we can do it." - Ezra Taft Benson
"If a man does not control his temper, it is a sad admission that he is not in control of his thoughts. He then becomes a victim of his own passions and emotions, which lead him to actions that are totally unfit for civilized behavior, let alone behavior for a priesthood holder." - Ezra Taft Benson
"I should consent to breed under pressure, if I were convinced in any way of the reasonableness of reproducing the species. But my nerves and the nerves of any woman I could live with three months, would produce only a victim... lacking in impulse, a mere bundle of discriminations. If I were wealthy I might subsidize a stud of young peasants, or a tribal group in Tahiti." - Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
"The modern artist must live by craft and violence. His gods are violent gods. Those artists, so called, whose work does not show this strife, are uninteresting." - Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
"I see now how things even up, how they are squared away, and how they balance under the law of love and justice. No year of life is emotionally, spiritually or even materially, all drought or all rainfall; nor is it all sun. The road turns a little every day, and one day there's a sudden twist we didn't dream was there, and for every loss there is somewhere a gain, for every grief a happiness, for every deprivation a giving." - Faith Baldwin
"This is not a debate about abortion. This is about a fundamental right to make choices about our sexuality -- without the encroachment of a president, the Supreme Court, and certainly without the encroachment of politicians!" - Faye Wattleton
"The heart, like the stomach, wants a varied diet." - Gustave Flaubert
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"I grew up in those years when the Old West was passing and the New West was emerging. It was a time when we still heard echoes and already saw shadows, on moonlit nights when the coyotes yapped on the hilltops, and on hot summer afternoons when mirages shimmered, dust devils spun across the flats, and towering cumulus clouds sailed like galleons across the vast blueness of the sky. Echoes of remembrance of what men once did there, and visions of what they would do together." - Hal Borland, formally Harold Glen Borland
"Trouble shared is trouble halved." - Italian Proverbs
"All's well that ends better." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"And as the captains gazed south to the Land of Mordor, it seemed to them that, black against the pall of cloud, there rose a huge shape of shadow, impenetrable, lightning-crowned, filling all the sky. Enormous it reared above the world, and stretched out towards them a vast threatening hand, terrible but impotent: for even as it leaned over them, a great wind took it, and it was all blown away, and passed; and then a hush fell." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"And why not? Surely you don't disbelieve the prophecies just because you helped them come about. You don't really suppose do you that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck? Just for your sole benefit? You're a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I'm quite fond of you. But you are really just a little fellow, in a wide world after all." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"Aragorn threw back his cloak. The elven-sheath glittered as he grasped it, and the bright blade of And£ril shone like a sudden flame as he swept it out. 'Elendil!' he cried. 'I am Aragorn, son of Arathorn, and am called Elessar, the Elfstone, D£nadan, the heir of Isildur Elendil's son of Gondor. Here is the Sword that was Broken and is forged again! Will you aid me or thwart me? Choose swiftly!" - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"At least for a while the road must be trod, but it will be very hard. And neither strength nor wisdom will carry us far upon it. This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"At length the Lady Galadriel released them from her eyes, and she smiled. ?Do not let your hearts be troubled,? she said. ?Tonight you shall sleep in peace.? Then they sighed and felt suddenly weary, as those who have been questioned long and deeply, though no words had been spoken openly." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"Bilbo almost stopped breathing, and went stiff himself. He was desperate. He must get away, out of this horrible darkness, while he had any strength left. He must fight. He must stab the foul thing, put its eyes out, kill it. It meant to kill him. No, not a fair fight. He was invisible now. Gollum had no sword. Gollum had not actually threatened to kill him, or tried yet. And he was miserable, alone, lost. A sudden understanding, a pity mixed with horror, welled up in Bilbo?s heart: a glimpse of endless unmarked days without light or hope of betterment, hard stone, cold fish, sneaking and whispering." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien