This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Saint Francis of Assisi, born Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone NULL
But as for me, I desire this privilege from the Lord, that never may I have any privilege from man, except to do reverence to all, and to convert the world by obedience to the Holy Rule rather by example than by word.
Desire | Esteem | Honor | Lord | Love | Order | Perfection | Practice |
Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL
This dark, loving knowledge, which is faith, serves as a means for the divine union in this life as does the light of glory for the clear vision of God in the next. A person should not store up as treasures these visions, nor have the desire to cling to them. Our journey toward God must proceed through the negation of all. One should remain in emptiness and darkness regarding all creatures. He should base his love and joy on what he neither sees nor feels – that is, upon God who is incomprehensible and transcendent.
Affliction | Contemplation | Darkness | God | Light | Love | Mystical | Order | Perfection | Soul | Wisdom | God | Contemplation |
Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL
This soul is so near to God that it is transformed in the flames of love, wherein Father, Son and Holy Spirit communicate themselves to it. The effect of the living flames is to make the soul live spiritually in God, and experience the life of God. Love is ever throwing out sparks; the effect of life is to wound, that it may enkindle with love and cause delight. God wars against all the imperfect habits of the soul and, purifying the soul with the heat of His flame, He uproots these habits from it and prepares it so that at last He may enter it and be united with it by His sweet, peaceful and glorious love, as is the fire when it has entered the wood. At death the rivers of love of the soul are about to enter the sea. Burning with sweetness. Consuming not but enlightening.
God | Love | Perfection | Soul | Understanding | Will | God | Old |
The pleasure and the movement of the will towards kind things is properly speaking, Love.
Life | Life | Love | Perfection |
Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL
This divine knowledge of God never deals with particular things. This sublime knowledge can be received only by a person who has arrived at union with God, for it is itself that very union. It consists in a certain touch of the divinity produced in the soul, and thus it is God Himself who is experienced and tasted there… This knowledge savors of the divine essence and of eternal life. They are so sensible that they sometimes cause not only the soul but also the body to tremble. Yet at other times with a sudden feeling of spiritual delight and refreshment, and without any trembling, they occur very tranquilly in the spirit. Since this knowledge is imparted to the soul suddenly, without exercise of free will, a person does not have to be concerned about desiring it or not. He should simply remain humble and resigned about it, for God will do His work at the time and in the manner he wishes. God does not bestow these favors on a possessive soul, since He gives them out of a very special love for the recipient. For the individual receiving them is one who loves God with great detachment.
Darkness | Desire | Glory | God | Journey | Joy | Life | Life | Light | Love | Means | Vision | God |
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux NULL
Your actions in passing, pass not away, for every good work is a grain of seed for eternal life.
Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL
The soul goes about the things of God with much greater freedom and satisfaction of the soul than before it entered the dark night of sense. It now very readily finds in its spirit the most serene and loving contemplation and spiritual sweetness without the labor of meditation. This sweetness overflows into their senses more than was usual… since the sense is now purer. But they also endure many frailties and sufferings and weaknesses of the stomach and are fatigued in spirit. After the second night of the spirit: no raptures and no torments of the body because their senses are now neither clouded nor transported.
Death | Desire | Eternal | Life | Life | Love | Memory | Mind | Occupation | Perfection | Pleasure | Refinement | Soul | Strength | Understanding | Will | Old |
John Chrysostom, fully Saint John Chrysostom
If then we have angels, let us be sober, as though we were in the presence of tutors; for there is a demon present also.
Acquaintance | Attention | Earnestness | God | Hurry | Man | Reading | Space | Tomorrow | Will | God |
John Chrysostom, fully Saint John Chrysostom
Feeding the hungry is a greater work than raising the dead.
Abstinence | Beauty | Body | Change | Friend | Sacrifice | Woman | Beauty |
For it is necessary in every practical science to proceed in a composite (i.e. deductive) manner. On the contrary in speculative science, it is necessary to proceed in an analytical manner by breaking down the complex into elementary principles.
Faith has to do with things that are not seen and hope with things that are not at hand.
Good | Harm | Man | Order | Perfection | Punishment | Reason | Soul | Will |
You should not open your mouth except to express gratitude for benefits you have received, and never to mention your discontent.
Salman Rushdie, fully Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie
The novel does not seek to establish a privileged language but it insists upon the freedom to portray and analyze the struggle between the different contestants for such privileges.
Literature | Vision |
Sammy Davis, Jr., born Samuel George "Sammy" Davis Jr.
There's nothing that can match Broadway for stature and dignity.
Sam Walton, fully Samuel Moore "Sam" Walton
Celebrate your successes. Find some humor in your failures. Don't take yourself so seriously. Loosen up, and everybody around you will loosen up. Have fun. Show enthusiasm - always. When all else fails, put on a costume and sing a silly song. Then make everybody else sing with you. Don't do a hula on Wall Street. It's been done. Think up your own stunt. All of this is more important, and more fun, than you think, and it really fools the competition. Why should we take those cornballs at Wal-Mart seriously?
Vision |