This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
You can do anything you think you can. This knowledge is literally the gift of the gods, for through it you can solve every human problem. It should make of you an incurable optimist. It is the open door.
Robert Southwell, also Saint Robert Southwell
Behold the father is his daughter's son, The bird that built the nest is hatched therein, The old of years an hour hath not outrun, Eternal life to live doth now begin, The Word is dumb, the mirth of heaven doth weep, Might feeble is, and force doth faintly creep. O dying souls, behold your living spring; O dazzled eyes, behold your sun of grace; Dull ears, attend what word this Word doth bring; Up, heavy hearts, with joy your joy embrace. From death, from dark, from deafness, from despairs This life, this light, this Word, this joy repairs. Gift better than himself God doth not know; Gift better than his God no man can see. This gift doth here the giver given bestow; Gift to this gift let each receiver be. God is my gift, himself he freely gave me; God's gift am I, and none but God shall have me. Man altered was by sin from man to beast; Beast's food is hay, hay is all mortal flesh. Now God is flesh and lies in manger pressed As hay, the brutest sinner to refresh. O happy field wherein that fodder grew, Whose taste doth us from beasts to men renew.
Better | Father | Force | God | Happy | Heaven | Joy | Life | Life | Man | Men | Mirth | Mortal | Sin | Taste | God | Old |
Down in adoration falling, Lo! the sacred Host we hail; Lo! o'er ancient forms departing, Newer rites of grace prevail; Faith for all defects supplying, Where the feeble senses fail.
Elie Wiesel, fully Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel
That day I encountered the first American soldiers in the Buchenwald concentration camp. I remember them well. Bewildered, disbelieving, they walked around the place, hell on earth, where our destiny had been played out. They looked at us, just liberated, and did not know what to do or say. Survivors snatched from the dark throes of death, we were empty of all hope— too weak, too emaciated to hug them or even speak to them. Like lost children, the American soldiers wept and wept with rage and sadness. And we received their tears as if they were heartrending offerings from a wounded and generous humanity.
Comfort | Day | Deeds | Little | Love | Music | Pity | Right | Smile | Teach | Tears | Will | World | Deeds |
Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, aka Vatican II
Whatever were our opinions about the Council’s various doctrines before its conclusions were promulgated, today our adherence to the decisions of the Council must be wholehearted and without reserve;…. …The council was something very new; not all were prepared to understand and accept it. But now the conciliar doctrines must be seen as belonging to the magisterium of the Church and, indeed be attributed to the breath of the Holy Spirit.
Body | Church | Day | Doctrine | Faith | Life | Life | Man | Mother | Sacred | Truth |
David Hare, fully Sir David Hare
After all those years of being fashionably beaten, theatre is suddenly healthy again.
Good |
Rudolf Steiner, fully Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner
Goethe's thinking was mobile. It followed the whole growth process of the plant and followed how one plant form is a modification of the other. Goethe's thinking was not rigid with inflexible contours; it was a thinking in which the concepts continually metamorphose. Thereby his concepts became, if I may put it this way, intimately adapted to the process that plant nature itself goes through.
Capability | Earth | Impulse | Life | Life | Man | Morality | Receive | Understanding | Will |
Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
ONE ONE ONE - The lamps are different. But the Light is the same. So many garish lamps in the dying brain's lamp shop, Forget about them. Concentrate on essence, concentrate on Light. In lucid bliss, calmly smoking off its own hold fire, The Light streams toward you from all things, all people, all possible permutations of good, evil, thought, passion. The lamps are different, but the Light is the same. One matter, one energy, one Light, one Light-mind, endlessly emanating all things. One turning and burning diamond, one, one, one. Ground yourself, strip yourself down, To blind loving silence. Stay there, until you see you are gazing at the Light With its own ageless eyes.
Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
This love is the rose that blooms forever.
Russell Lynes, fully Joseph Russell Lynes, Jr.
Any real New Yorker is a you-name-it-we-have-it-snob whose heart brims with sympathy for the millions of unfortunates who through misfortune, misguidedness or pure stupidity live anywhere else in the world.
Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
Belatedly I loved thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new, belatedly I loved thee. For see, thou wast within and I was without, and I sought thee out there. Unlovely, I rushed heedlessly among the lovely things thou hast made. Thou wast with me, but I was not with thee. These things kept me far from thee; even though they were not at all unless they were in thee. Thou didst call and cry aloud, and didst force open my deafness. Thou didst gleam and shine, and didst chase away my blindness. Thou didst breathe fragrant odors and I drew in my breath; and now I pant for thee. I tasted, and now I hunger and thirst. Thou didst touch me, and I burned for thy peace.
O eternal Trinity, You are a deep sea in which the more I seek the more I find, and the more I find, the more I seek to know You. You fill us insatiably, because the soul, before the abyss which You are, is always famished; and hungering for You, O eternal Trinity, it desires to behold truth in Your light. As the thirsty hart pants after the fount of living water, so does my soul long to leave this gloomy body and see You as You are, in truth.
Eternal |
Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL
It is better to avoid the passions by the recollection of the virtues than by resisting and arguing with them. For when the passions leave their place and arise for battle, they imprint on the mind images and idols. This warfare has great force, able to weaken the mind and violently perturb and confuse a man's thinking. But if a man acts by the first rule we have mentioned, when the passions are repulsed they leave no trace in the mind.
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 Elizabeth Ann Seton, fully Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton
Take every day as a ring which you must engrave, adorn, and embellish with your actions, to be offered up in the evening at the altar of God.
Heart |
The said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of The United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.
The truth is, all might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they ought.
He who is void of virtuous attachments in private life is, or very soon will be, void of all regard for his country. There is seldom an instance of a man guilty of betraying his country, who had not before lost the feeling of moral obligations in his private connections.
Control | Esteem | Fidelity | Friend | Influence | Justice | Liberty | Man | Men | Nothing | Office | Power | Restraint | Time | Trust | Will | Wise |