This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Any mind that is capable of a real sorrow is capable of good.
The first pressure of sorrow crushes out from our hearts the best wine; afterwards the constant weight of it brings forth bitterness - the taste and strain from the lees of the vat.
Bitterness | Sorrow | Taste |
God washes the eyes by tears until they can behold the invisible land where tears shall come no more. O love! O affliction! ye are the guides that show us the way through the great airy space where our loved ones walked; and, as hounds easily follow the scent before the dew be risen, so God teaches us, while yet our sorrow is wet, to follow on and find our dear ones in heaven.
Affliction | God | Heaven | Land | Love | Sorrow | Space | Tears | God |
If God but cares for our inward and eternal life, if by all the experiences of this life He is reducing it and preparing for its disclosure, nothing can befall us but prosperity. Every sorrow shall be but the setting of some luminous jewel of joy. Our very morning shall be but the enamel around the diamond; our very hardships but the metallic rim that holds the opal, glancing with strange interior fires.
Eternal | God | Joy | Life | Life | Nothing | Prosperity | Sorrow | God |
Tell me not in mournful numbers, life is but an empty dream! For the soul is dead that slumbers, and things are not what they seem. Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; dust thou art, to dust returneth, was not spoken of the soul. Not enjoyment, and not sorrow is our destined end or way; but to act, that each to-morrow find us farther than today... Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act - act in the living Present! Hear within, and God o’erhead. Lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime, and, departing, leave behind us footprints in the sands of time... Let us then, be up and doing, with a heart for any fate; still achieving, still pursuing, learn to labor and to wait.
Art | Enjoyment | Fate | Future | God | Grave | Heart | Labor | Life | Life | Men | Past | Present | Sorrow | Soul | Time | Trust | God | Learn |
A certain glorious sorrow must ever mingle with out life; all our actual is transcended by our possible; our visionary faculty is an overmatch for our experience; like the caged bird, we break ourselves against the bars of the finite, with a wing that quivers for the infinite.
Experience | Life | Life | Sorrow |
When I look upon the tombs of the great, every motion of envy dies... I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the frivolous competitions, factions, and debates of mankind.
Beauty is that which attracts your soul, and that which loves to give and not to receive. When you meet Beauty, you feel that the hands deep within your inner self are stretched forth to bring her into the domain of your heart. It is a magnificence combined of sorrow and joy; it is the Unseen which you see, and the Vague which you understand, and the Mute which you hear - it is the Holy of Holies that begins in yourself and ends vastly beyond your earthly imagination.
Beauty | Ends | Heart | Imagination | Joy | Receive | Self | Sorrow | Soul |
Vain are the beliefs and teachings that make man miserable, and false is the good ness that leads him into sorrow and despair, for it is man's purpose to be happy on this earth and lead the way to felicity and preach its gospel wherever he goes. He who does not see the kingdom of heaven in this life will never see it in the coming life. We came not into this life by exile, but we came as innocent creatures of God, to learn how to worship the holy and eternal spirit and seek the hidden secrets within ourselves from the beauty of life.
Beauty | Despair | Earth | Eternal | God | Good | Happy | Heaven | Life | Life | Man | Purpose | Purpose | Sorrow | Spirit | Will | Worship | Beauty | Learn |
Present unhappiness is selfish; past sorrow is compassionate.
Past | Present | Sorrow | Unhappiness |
Solitude has soft, silky hands, but with strong fingers it grasps the heart and makes it ache with sorrow. Solitude is the ally of sorrow as well as a companion of spiritual exaltation.
When either your joy or your sorrow become great the world becomes small.
Marcel Proust, fully Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust
Happiness is salutary for the body, but it is sorrow that develops spiritual strength.
There is a burden of care in getting riches, fear in keeping them, temptation in using them, guilt in abusing them, sorrow in losing them, and a burden of account at last to be given up concerning them.
Care | Fear | Guilt | Riches | Sorrow | Temptation | Temptation |
To know the needs of men and to bear the burden of their sorrow - is the true love of men.