This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.
Morality... must have the more power over the human heart the more purely it is exhibited. Whence it follows that, if the law of morality and the image of holiness and virtue are to exercise any influence at all on our souls, they can do so only so far as they are laid to heart in their purity as motives, unmixed with any view to prosperity, for it is in suffering that they display themselves most nobly.
Display | Heart | Influence | Law | Morality | Motives | Power | Prosperity | Purity | Suffering | Virtue | Virtue |
I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections, and the truth of imagination.
Heart | Imagination | Nothing | Truth |
I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart’s affections, and the truth of Imagination. What the Imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth - whether it existed before or not, for I have the same idea of all our passions as of Love: they are all, in their sublime, creative of essential Beauty... The Imagination may be compared to Adam’s dream - he awoke and found it truth.
Beauty | Heart | Imagination | Love | Nothing | Truth | Beauty |
I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's affections., the truth of Imagination. What the Imagination seizes as Beauty must be the truth- whether it existed before or not,- for I have the same idea of all our passions as of Love: they are all, in their sublime, creative of essential Beauty.
Beauty | Heart | Imagination | Love | Nothing | Truth | Beauty |
I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections and the truth of imagination – what the imagination seizes as being must be truth – whether it existed before or not.
Heart | Imagination | Nothing | Truth |
Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock
Salvation is the only real success... God’s holiness is expressed in His love. Therefore love is wholeness, and to love is to fulfill - to fill full - God’s law, and be right all round. Learn then to love God and your brother and all things great and small. Life is our “chance of learning love.”
Chance | God | Law | Learning | Life | Life | Love | Right | Salvation | Success | Wholeness | God | Learn |
There is no rung of being on which we cannot find the holiness of God everywhere and at all times.
We do ourselves wrong, and too meanly estimate the holiness about us, when we deem that any act or enjoyment good in itself, is not good to do religiously.
William Temple, fully Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet
To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God.
Beauty | Conscience | God | Heart | Imagination | Love | Mind | Purpose | Purpose | Truth | Will | Worship | Beauty |
Perpetual inspiration is as necessary to the life of goodness, holiness and happiness as perpetual respiration is necessary to animal life.
Inspiration | Life | Life | Happiness |
The Church is not a tribe for the improvement in holiness of people who think it would be pleasant to be holy, a means to the integration of character for those who cannot bear their conflicts. It is a statement of the divine intention for humanity.
Character | Church | Improvement | Integration | Intention | Means | People | Think |
Henry Beston, born Henry Beston Sheahan
Our civilization has fallen out of touch with night. With lights, we drive the holiness and beauty of night back to the forests and the sea; the little villages, the crossroads even, will have none of it. Are modern folk, perhaps, afraid of night? Do they fear that vast serenity, the mystery of infinite space, the austerity of stars?
Beauty | Civilization | Fear | Little | Mystery | Will | Beauty | Afraid |
John Ruysbroeck or The Blessed John of Ruysbroeck, originally Jan van Ruusbroek
The measure of your holiness is proportionate to the goodness of your will.
The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world.
Day | Eternal | Meaning | Mystery | Sabbath | Time | Tyranny | World |
The wisdom, teaching, and counsel of the Bible are not in conflict with the ultimate attainments of the human mind, but, rather, well ahead of our attitudes… Its aim is not to record history but rather to record the encounter of the divine and the human on the level of concrete living. Incomparably more important than all the beauty or wisdom that it bestows upon our lives is the way it opens to man an understanding of what God means, of attaining holiness through justice, through simplicity of soul, through choice. Above all it never ceases to proclaim that worship of God without justice to man is an abomination; that while man'’ problem is God, God’s problem is man.
Beauty | Bible | Counsel | God | History | Important | Justice | Man | Simplicity | Understanding | Wisdom | Worship | Counsel | Beauty | God | Bible |
Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
He who is great must make humility his base. He who is high must make holiness his foundation.
Humility |
Max Planck, fully Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck
The worship of god is thus symbolically manifested in a systematic summarization of mythological tradition (Überlieferung) and in obedience of solemn ritual habits ... The holiness (Heiligkeit) of incomprehensible deity is transferred to the holiness of comprehensible symbols ... A work of art has its meaning essentially in itself ... A religious symbol, on the contrary, points always above itself, its value is never exhausted in itself ... a winged angel was considered from ancient times to be the most beautiful symbol of god's servant and messenger. Nowadays we will find among anatomically educated believers some, which are prevented by their scientifically educated imagination from considering such physiological impossibility beautiful, despite their best efforts. This circumstance, however, does not cause the slightes harm to their religious attitudes ... But the overestimation of the importance of religious symbols is threatened still by another – much more serious – danger from the side of the movement of atheists (Gottlosenbewegung). One of the most favorite methods of this movement, aiming at undermining of every genuine religiosity, is to direct its attacks against traditional (alteingebürgerten) religious customs and ridiculing or dishonoring them as obsolete institutions. With such attacks against symbols they hope to hit the religion itself, and they have the easier task (Spiel) the stranger and more striking such views and customs look. Many a religious soul (religiöse Seele) has fallen pray to such a tactics. There is no better defense against such peril than to realize that religious symbol ... does never represent an abolute value but is always only a more or less imperfect reference to something higher which is not directly accessible to our senses.
Art | Better | Cause | Danger | Defense | God | Harm | Hope | Imagination | Impossibility | Meaning | Obedience | Peril | Religion | Soul | Tradition | Will | Work | Worship | Danger | Art | God | Value |