This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Symeon the New Theologian, fully Saint Symeon the New Theologian NULL
When a man walks into the sea up to his knees or waist, he can see the water all around him. But when he dives into the water, he can no longer see anything outside, and he knows only that his whole body is in the water. This is what happens to those who plunge into the vision of God.
E. B. White, fully Elwyn Brooks White
I believe television is going to be the test of the modern world, and that in this new opportunity to se beyond the range of our vision we shall discover either a new and unbearable disturbance of the general peace or a saving radiance in the sky. We shall stand or fall by television - of that I am quite sure.
Opportunity | Peace | Television | Vision | Wisdom | World |
History tells us that the pendulum of time is sweeping to extremes of subjectivism, to cults of selfishness and savage irresponsibility. We must bring it back to balance by taking up the burdens of mankind as our own, with an entirely new vision and confidence. And we must do this perhaps as a condition for continued existence itself.
Balance | Confidence | Existence | History | Mankind | Selfishness | Time | Vision |
Grace Helen Yerbury, fully Grace Helen Davies Yerbury
If man's religion is of any importance, it is not just a garment of expression of unity with and security in the professed beliefs of a special group. It is rather an attitude of respect for himself, his God, his fellowman, which underwrites all his activity, which is allowed freedom of expression within the limitations of that respect.
Freedom | God | Man | Religion | Respect | Security | Unity | Wisdom | Respect |
People who lead fulfilling lives generally have found a sense of “home” in what they do. They have a philosophy of life that connects them to a larger vision. They accept that life is a continuing challenge. More often than not, they are able to live according to their own schedules, choosing work that is interesting and complex enough to keep them engaged. They get excited about being effective and about being stretched to learn new things. They have a few good friends who understand their vision and perhaps even share common aspirations. They are not driven by urgency, competition, or the demands of the ego.
Challenge | Competition | Ego | Enough | Good | Life | Life | People | Philosophy | Sense | Vision | Work | Friends | Learn | Understand |
The mystic vision of God, or ecstasy of felt union with Him, is, to those who attain it, an affair of ravishing emotional intensity, of vivid intellectual illumination, and on both of these counts of supreme value.
The temptation of Protestantism has always been to magnify freedom at the expense of unity. The temptation of Roman Catholicism, on the other hand, has been to magnify unity at the expense of freedom.
Freedom | Temptation | Unity | Temptation |
Robert Bridges, fully Robert Seymour Bridges
Music being the universal expression of the mysterious and supernatural, the best that man has ever attained to, is capable of uniting in common devotion minds that are only separated by creeds, and it comforts our hope with a brighter promise of unity than any logic offers.
The universe appears to us in two opposite parts, I and World. We erect this barrier between ourselves and the world as soon as consciousness first dawn on us… Only when we have made the world-content into our thought-content do we begin again to find the unity out of which we have separated ourselves… Our thinking links us to the world; our feeling leads us back into ourselves and thus makes us individuals.
Consciousness | Dawn | Thinking | Thought | Unity | Universe | World |