This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Saint John of Kronstadt, fully John Il’ich Serguiev, aka Holy Father John of the Kronstadt NULL
God is nearer to us than any man at every time. He is nearer to me than my raiment, nearer than the air or light, nearer than my wife, father, mother, daughter, son, or friend. I live in Him, soul and body. I breathe in Him, think in Him, feel, consider, intend, speak, undertake, work in Him.
Humility | Impatience | Love | Malice | Pride |
I thank God that you know the art of tearing yourself apart - I mean the way to humble yourself truly by recognizing and realizing your faults. You are right in believing yourself to be as you describe and to be most unsuitable for any kind of duty; it is on this foundation that Our Lord will base the execution of His plans for you.
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
Men have been wise in many different modes; but they have always laughed the same way.
Thérèse de Lisieux, fully Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. born Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin NULL
I had wondered for a long time why God had preferences and why all souls did not receive an equal amount of grace... He set the book of nature before me and I saw that all the flowers He has created are lovely. The splendor of the rose and whiteness of the lily do not rob the little violet of its scent nor the daisy of its simple charm. I realised that if every tiny flower wanted to be a rose, spring would lose its loveliness and there would be no wild flowers to make the meadows gay.
Desire | Fault | Good | Love | Mind | Reason | Truth | Virtue | Virtue | Fault |
Jean Baptiste Lacordaire, fully Jean Baptiste Henri Lacordaire
Receive Jesus today with respect and thanksgiving.
We cannot keep thieves from looking in at our windows, but we need not give them entertainment with open doors.
Men seldom, or rather never for a length of time and deliberately, rebel against anything that does not deserve rebelling against.
Appetite | Good | Government | Virtue | Virtue | Government |
Of all the paths a man could strike into, there is, at any given moment, a best path .. A thing which, here and now, it were of all things wisest for him to do .. To find this path, and walk in it, is the one thing needful for him.
Love is...like a spring coming up out of the ground of our own depths. I am gift. All that I am is something that's given, and given freely. Being doesn't cost anything. There's no price tag, no strings attached.
Destroy | Love | Meaning | Revelation | Time | Truth | Unique | Worth | Understand |
They were in the world and not of it--not because they were saints, but in a different way: because they were artists. The integrity of an artist lifts a man above the level of the world without delivering him from it.
Feelings | God | Impatience | Important | Poverty | Resentment | Time | God |
Tim Gallwey, fully W. Timothy Gallwey
The short answer is that a valid instruction derived from experience can help me if it guides me to my own experiential discovery . . . I believe the best use of technical knowledge is to communicate a hint toward a desired destination. The hint can be delivered verbally or demonstrated in action, but it is best seen as an approximation of a desired goal to be discovered by paying attention . . . and feelings one’s way toward what works for that individual.
They said this mystery never shall cease: The priest promotes war, and the soldier peace.
Love's secret. Never seek to tell thy love, love that never told can be; for the gentle wind doth move silently, invisibly. I told my love, I told my love, I told her all my heart, trembling, cold, in ghastly fears. Ah! She did depart! Soon after she was gone from me, a traveler came by, silently, invisibly: he took her with a sigh.
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, and to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier. This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless, it is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it, I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked, I am mad for it to be in contact with me.
Absence | Generosity | Justification |
Our greatest instrument for understanding the world - introspection. . . . The best way of knowing the inwardness of our neighbors is to know ourselves.
World |