This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Jean Grou, fully Jean Nicholas Grou
The chief pang of most trials is not so much the actual suffering itself as our own spirit of resistance to it.
Jean Paul, born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, aka Jean Paul Richter
Every man deems that he has precisely the trials and temptations which are the hardest of all for him to bear; but they are so, because they are the very ones he needs.
Amongst the many trials to which the human mind is subjected, that of holding intercourse, real or imaginary, with the world of spirits: of finding itself alone with a being terrific and awful, whose nature and power are unknown, has been justly considered the most severe.
John Yepes “Saint John of the Cross”
Spiritual persons suffer great trials from the fear of being lost on the road and that God has abandoned them… Their soul was taking pleasure in being in that quietness and ease, instead of working with its faculties.
Old age is not a disease - it is strength and survivorship, triumph over all kinds of vicissitudes and disappointments, trials and illnesses.
Age | Disease | Strength | Trials | Vicissitudes |
We are apt to overlook the hand and heart of God in our afflictions, and to consider them as mere accidents, and unavoidable evils. This view makes them absolute and positive evils, which admit of no remedy or relief. If we view our troubles and trials aside from the divine design and agency in them, we cannot be comforted.
It is not a dream, it is a simple feat of scientific electrical engineering, only expensive — blind, faint-hearted, doubting world! [...] Humanity is not yet sufficiently advanced to be willingly led by the discoverer's keen searching sense. But who knows? Perhaps it is better in this present world of ours that a revolutionary idea or invention instead of being helped and patted, be hampered and ill-treated in its adolescence — by want of means, by selfish interest, pedantry, stupidity and ignorance; that it be attacked and stifled; that it pass through bitter trials and tribulations, through the strife of commercial existence. So do we get our light. So all that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combatted, suppressed — only to emerge all the more powerfully, all the more triumphantly from the struggle. (Tesla at the end of his dream for Wardenclyffe)
Adolescence | Better | Humanity | Invention | Past | Present | Stupidity | Trials | World |
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
Those who are unconquered in spirit are the real successes in life. If you can so train or condition your mind that you are content regardless of what you have or do not have, and if you can stand the challenge of all your trials and remain calm-that is true happiness.
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
From the depths of slumber, As I ascend the spiral stairway of wakefulness, I whisper: God! God! God! Thou art the food, and when I break my fast Of nightly separation from Thee, I taste Thee, and mentally say: God! God! God! No matter where I go, the spotlight of my mind Ever keeps turning on Thee, And in the battle din of activity my silent war-cry is ever: God! God! God! When boisterous storms of trials shriek And worries howl at me, I drown their noises, loudly chanting: God! God! God! When my mind weaves dreams With threads of memories, On that magic cloth I do emboss: God! God! God! Every night, in time of deepest sleep, My peace dreams and calls: Joy! Joy! Joy! And my joy comes singing evermore: God! God! God! In waking, eating, working, dreaming, sleeping, Serving, meditating, chanting, divinely loving, My soul constantly hums, unheard by any: God! God! God!
Art | Battle | Dreams | Joy | Magic | Mind | Peace | Soul | Taste | Time | Trials | Art |
A Calling is not something you know, when young - that's a fallacy we like to pretend exists. A calling is something you grow into over the course of your life, through trials and errors. Most of those who report "a sense of calling" did not discern that calling when young, and it took them a great deal of hard work to turn their initial opportunity into something satisfying.
Fallacy | Opportunity | Sense | Trials | Work |
Trust, therefore, for the overcoming of a difficulty, not to long-continued study after you have once become bewildered, but to repeated trials at intervals.
Robert Updegraff, fully Robert Rawls Updegraff
Someone has well said, "Success is a journey, not a destination." Happiness is to be found along the way, not at the end of the road, for then the journey is over and it is too late. Today, this hour, this minute is the day, the hour, the minute for each of us to sense the fact that life is good, with all of its trials and troubles, and perhaps more interesting because of them.
Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL
When he is brought to nothing, the highest degree of humility, the spiritual union between his soul and God will be effected. The journey does not consist on recreations, experiences and spiritual feelings, but in the living, sensory and spiritual, exterior and interior death of the cross.
Blessings | Lord | Means | Service | Soul | Trials | Troubles | Will |
Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL
A heart full of sorrow on account of its feebleness and impotence regarding outward physical deeds takes the place of all physical works. Deeds of the body performed without sorrow of mind are like a body without a soul.
Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL
These acts of love of the soul are most precious and even one of them is of greater merit and worth than all that the soul has done in its life apart from this transformation. These wounds, which are the fires of God, are the sparks of these tender touches of flame which touch the soul intermittently and proceed from the fire of love, which is not idle, but whose flames strike and wound my soul in its deepest center. The virtues and properties of God, which are perfect in the extreme, war against the habits and properties of the soul, which are imperfect in the extreme, so that the soul has to suffer the existence of two contraries within it. This flame of love makes the soul feel its hardness and aridity. The soul says to God, ‘Perfect me now if it be Thy will.’
Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL
Take God for your spouse and friend and walk with him continually, and you will not sin and will learn to love, and the things you must do will work out prosperously for you.
Ability | Attention | Attentiveness | Cause | Conduct | Contemplation | Desire | Experience | Fear | God | Knowledge | Light | Love | Means | Nothing | Peace | Pleasure | Receive | Rest | Soul | Spirit | Trials | Trust | Will | God | Contemplation |
God gave us faculties for our use; each of them will receive its proper reward. Then do not let us try to charm them to sleep, but permit them to do their work until divinely called to something higher.
Learn to self-conquest, persevere thus for a time, and you will perceive very clearly the advantage which you gain from it. As soon you apply yourself to orison, you will at once feel your senses gather themselves together: they seem like bees which return to the hive and there shut themselves up to work at the making of honey. At the first call of the will, they come back more and more quickly. At last, after countless exercises, of this kind, God disposes them to a state of utter rest and of perfect contemplation.
Devil | Soul | Suffering | Thinking | Thought | Time | Trials | Thought | Understand | Winning |
It is here, my daughters, that love is to be found -- not hidden away in corners but in the midst of occasions of sin. And believe me, although we may more often fail and commit small lapses, our gain will be incomparably the greater.