This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
You cannot discover from the teachings of others the beauty of prayer. Prayer has its own teacher in God, Who 'teaches us knowledge' and grants prayer to those who pray.
Anger | Bitterness | Desire |
There are many ways of piety and perdition. That is why it often happens that a way that is unsuitable for one just fits another; and the intention of both is acceptable to the Lord.
Confidence | Forgiveness | Friend | Glory | God | Praise | Prayer | Receive | Work | Forgiveness | God |
Stendhal, pen name of Marie Henn Beyle or Marie-Henri Beyle NULL
The man of genius is he and he alone who finds such joy in his art that he will work at it come hell or high water.
Man witnesseth to a God in the operations and reflections of conscience. Their thoughts are accusing or excusing. An inward comfort attends good actions, and an inward torment follows bad ones; for there is in every man’s conscience fear of punishment and hope of reward: there is, therefore, a sense of some superior judge, which hath the power both of rewarding and punishing. If man were his supreme rule, what need he fear punishment, since no man would inflict any evil or torment on himself; nor can any man be said to reward himself, for all rewards refer to another, to whom the action is pleasing, and is a conferring some good a man had not before; if an action be done by a subject or servant, with hopes of reward, it cannot be imagined that he expects a reward from himself, but from the prince or person whom he eyes in that action, and for whose sake he doth it.
Action | Distinction | Distinguish | Evil | Good | Law | Man | Men | Practice | Praise | Principles | Rebuke | Rule | Will |
Hence is the ground for the immutability of God. As he is incapable of changing his resolves, because of his infinite wisdom, so he is incapable of being forced to any change, because of his infinite power. Being almighty, he can be no more changed from power to weakness, than, being all-wise, he can be changed from wisdom to folly, or, being omniscient, from knowledge to ignorance. He cannot be altered in his purposes, because of his wisdom; nor in the manner and method of his actions, because of his infinite strength. Men, indeed, when their designs are laid deepest and their purposes stand firmest, yet are forced to stand still, or change the manner of the execution of their resolves, by reason of some outward accidents that obstruct them in their course; for, having not wisdom to foresee future hindrances, they have not power to prevent them, or strength to remove them, when they unexpectedly interpose themselves between their desire and performance; but no created power has strength enough to be a bar against God. By the same act of his will that he resolves a thing, he can puff away any impediments that seem to rise up against him. He that wants no means to effect his purposes cannot be checked by anything that riseth up to stand in his way; heaven, earth, sea, the deepest places are too weak to resist his will.
Desire | Folly | Good | Means | Nature | Neglect | Perfection | Presumption | Will |
A few years ago the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved goldfish bowls. The measure's sponsor explained the measure in part by saying that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality. But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality? Might not we ourselves also be inside some big goldfish bowl and have our vision distorted by an enormous lens? The goldfish's picture of reality is different from ours, but can we be sure it is less real?
Glory | God | Knowledge | Lord | Praise | Reason | Sense | Soul | Spirit | Worship | God |
When we believe that we ought to be satisfied, rather than God glorified, we set God below ourselves, imagine that He should submit His own honor to our advantage; we make ourselves more glorious than God, as though we were not made for Him, but He made for us; this is to have a very low esteem of the majesty of God.
Blessings | Change | Dependence | Desire | Discovery | Father | Giving | God | Industry | Influence | Light | Man | Means | Prayer | Promise | Receive | Wisdom | Discovery | God |
Evolution has ensured that our brains just aren't equipped to visualise 11 dimensions directly. However, from a purely mathematical point of view it's just as easy to think in 11 dimensions, as it is to think in three or four.
Dawn | Desire | Enough | Events | Justification | Knowledge | Nothing | Order | People | Understanding | Universe |
History doth not reckon twenty professed atheists in all ages in the compass of the whole world: and we have not the name of any one absolute atheist upon record in Scripture: yet it is questioned, whether any of them, noted in history with that infamous name, were downright deniers of the existence of God, but rather because they disparaged the deities commonly worshipped by the nations where they lived, as being of a clearer reason to discern that those qualities, vulgarly attributed to their gods, as lust and luxury, wantonness and quarrels, were unworthy of the nature of a god.
Change | Desire | Enough | Future | Knowledge | Means | Method | Power | Reason | Strength | Wants | Will | Wisdom |
Without the heart it is no worship; it is a stage play; an acting a part without being that person really which is acted by us: a hypocrite, in the notion of the world, is a stage-player. We may as well say a man may believe with his body, as worship God only with his body. Faith is a great ingredient in worship; and it is “with the heart man believes unto righteousness.” We may be truly said to worship God, though we want perfection; but we cannot be said to worship him if we want sincerity; a statue upon a tomb, with eyes and hands lifted up, offers as good and true a service; it wants only a voice, the gestures and postures are the same; nay, the service is better; it is not a mockery; it represents all that it can be framed to; but to worship without our spirits, is a presenting God with a picture, an echo, voice, and nothing else; a compliment; a mere lie; a “compassing him about with lies.”
Desire | Faith | Growth | Humility | Receive | Sincerity | Value |
So a fool is one that hath lost his wisdom and right notion of God and divine things which were communicated to man by creation; one dead in sin, yet one not so much void of rational faculties as of grace in those faculties, not one that wants reason, but abuses his reason. In Scripture the word signifies foolish.
Desire | God | Good | Love | Man | Mind | Object | Order | Sense | Wisdom | God |
Stephen Vizinczey, born István Vizinczey
I had affairs with a few girls of my own age, and they taught me that no girl, however intelligent and war-hearted, can possibly know or feel half as much at twenty as she will at thirty-five.
There is no sense to a sacrifice after you come to feel that it is a sacrifice.