This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Thought is not sacred, thought is a material process. This is where our difficulty lies. Thought is a movement in time.
F. D. Maurice, fully John Frederick Denison "F.D." Maurice
In a discussion the difficulty lies, not in being able to defend your opinion, but to know it.
Difficulty | Discussion | Opinion | Wisdom |
The basic significance of all difficulty is that it reorients us from the external to the spiritual. the meaning and purpose of the world remain to a large extent inexplicable. but one thing is clear: the purpose of all events is spiritual.
Difficulty | Events | Meaning | Purpose | Purpose | Wisdom | World |
There is no one in the world who cannot arrive without difficulty at the most eminent perfection by fulfilling with love obscure and common duties.
Difficulty | Love | Perfection | World |
Now whether the difficulty is real or whether it is imaginary, the results are the same, you become whatever you think. If God is with you, how can you possibly feel inferior to anyone? You have equal access to all the good that comes from God. You can demonstrate your faith in His ability to give it to you by living His life. So change your thought patterns right now. Make up your mind to beat this feeling by faith in God, and you will. He can who thinks he can!
Ability | Change | Difficulty | Faith | God | Good | Life | Life | Mind | Right | Thought | Will | God | Thought |
Every condition in your life is the out-picturing of a belief in the subconscious. Every ailment, every difficulty that you have, is but the embodiment of a negative idea somewhere in your subconscious, which is actuated by a charge of fear. Prayer wipes out these negative thoughts and then their embodiment must disappear too. The healing must come.
Reuel Howe, fully Reuel Lanphier Howe
Much marriage difficulty and unhappiness are due to the failure of the partners to accept the fact of their finiteness and its meaning. Instead, they hold themselves up to ideals of performance possible only to God.
Difficulty | Failure | God | Ideals | Marriage | Meaning | Unhappiness | Failure |
This is the essence of humanism: we have the privilege and responsibility to consider deep questions and to courageously bear the answers and the difficulty in finding solid answers. In doing so, one can aspire to one’s chosen values, and hopefully find fulfillment in the process.
Difficulty | Fulfillment | Responsibility | Privilege |
The only idea man can affix to the name of God is that of a first cause, the cause of all things. Incomprehensible and difficult as it is for a man to conceive what a first cause is, he arrives at the belief of it from the tenfold greater difficulty of disbelieving it.
Seven common obstacles that people seem to face in living their best lives: (1) Have difficulty putting themselves first. (2) Their schedule does not reflect their priorities. (3) They feel drained by certain people or things. (4) Feel trapped for monetary reasons. (5) Living on adrenalin. (6) Don’t have a supportive community in their life. (7) Their spiritual well-being comes last.
Difficulty | Life | Life | People |
Learning to accede to smaller demands so as not to have to grant larger ones is part of the art of leadership. The difficulty is that narrow concessions may also spread into wide ones.
Art | Difficulty | Learning | Art |
Winston Churchill, fully Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
Hard as it is for us to escape the effects of our own feelings, nobody seems to have difficulty in rejecting the feelings of others as merely subjective and vulnerable to interference from the demons of self-deception and self-delusion.
Delusion | Difficulty | Feelings | Self | Self-deception |
Paul Wellstone, fully Paul David Wellstone
We know what we need to do. We may not know all the answers, but we know enough of them that we have no excuse not to act. Too many focus on the difficulty of the problem merely as a means of evading responsibility.
Difficulty | Enough | Focus | Means | Need | Responsibility |