This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We degrade life by our follies and vices, and then complain that the unhappiness which is only their accompaniment is self-distrust is the cause of most of our failures. In the assurance of strength there is strength; and they are the weakest, however strong, who have no faith in themselves or their powers.
Cause | Distrust | Faith | Life | Life | Self | Strength | Unhappiness | Wisdom |
The grandest operations, both in nature and in grace, are the most silent and imperceptible. The shallow brook babbles in its passage, and is heard by every one; but the coming on of the seasons is silent and unseen. The storm rages and alarms, but its fury is soon exhausted, and its effects are partial and soon remedied; but the dew, though gentle and unheard, is immense in quantity, and the very life of large portions of the earth. And these are pictures of the operations of the grace in the church and in the soul.
Church | Earth | Fury | Grace | Life | Life | Nature | Soul | Wisdom |
A contemplative life has more the appearance of a life of piety than any other; but it is the divine plan to bring faith into activity and exercise.
The passions and capacities of our nature are foundations of power, happiness and glory; but if we turn them into occasions and sources of self-indulgence, the structure itself falls, and buries everything in its overwhelming desolation.
Desolation | Glory | Indulgence | Nature | Power | Self | Wisdom | Happiness |
Thomas Buxton, fully Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, 1st Baronet
The longer I live, the more I am certain that the difference between men, between the feeble and the powerful, between the great and the insignificant, is energy - invincible determination - a purpose once fixed, and then death or victory.
Death | Determination | Energy | Men | Purpose | Purpose | Wisdom |
Charlie Chaplin, formally Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin
Beauty is an omnipresence of death and loveliness, a smiling sadness that we discern in nature and all things, a mystic communion that the poet feels.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
The true proof of the inherent nobleness of our common nature is in the sympathy it betrays with what is noble whenever crowds are collected. Never believe the world base; if it were so, no society could hold together for a day.
Day | Nature | Society | Sympathy | Wisdom | World | Society |
To keep from gravitating toward genocidal conflict, we must stop demanding perpetual progress. For quiet nonpolitical reasons, governments and politicians cannot achieve the paradise they habitually promise. Political leaders who continue to dangle before their constituents enticing carrots that are becoming unattainable hasten the erosion of faith in political processes. Circumstances have ceased to be what they were when the once-New World’s myth of limitlessness made sense.
Circumstances | Faith | Myth | Paradise | Progress | Promise | Quiet | Sense | Wisdom | World |
Ralph Bunche, fully Ralph Johnson Bunche
There is no problem of human nature which is insoluble.
Human nature | Nature | Wisdom |