This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Fish which always live in the depths of the ocean lose some of their faculties, like the Tibetan hermits who always live in the dark. The ostrich loses his power of flying because he does not use his wings. Therefore do not bury the gifts and talents which have been given to you, but use them, that you may enter into the joy of your Lord.
Children | Joy | Knowing | Little | Love | Mother | Pleasure | Talking | Wants | Trouble | Child | Happiness |
For the first two or three years after my conversion, I used to ask for specific things. Now I ask for God. Supposing there is a tree full of fruits -- you will have to go and buy or beg the fruits from the owner of the tree. Every day you would have to go for one or two fruits. But if you can make the tree your own property, then all the fruits will be your own. In the same way, if God is your own, then all things in Heaven and on earth will be your own, because He is your Father and is everything to you; otherwise you will have to go and ask like a beggar for certain things. When they are used up, you will have to ask again. So ask not for gifts but for the Giver of Gifts: not for life but for the Giver of Life -- then life and the things needed for life will be added unto you.
S.G. Tallentyre, nom de plume for Evelyn Beatrice Hall
In his home-life Turgot remained most frugal and laborious, treating his servants with a benevolence then accounted contemptible, and working out his quiet schemes with an infinite patience and thoroughness. When he was offered the richer Intendancy of Lyons, he would not take it. Here, as he said of himself, though he was 'the compulsory instrument of great evil,' he was doing a little good. Only a little, it might be. But if every man did the little he could — what a different world!
Children | Joy | Life | Life | People | Superstition | Tenderness | Time |
No goal is too high if we climb with care and confidence.
Day | Giving | Joy | Opportunity |
Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
I too have sworn heedlessly and all the time, I have had this most repulsive and death-dealing habit. I’m telling your graces; from the moment I began to serve God, and saw what evil there is in forswearing oneself, I grew very afraid indeed, and out of fear I applied the brakes to this old, old, habit.
Ambition | Anxiety | Anxiety | Attainment | Better | Day | Happy | Heart | Joy | Man | Means | Object | Plenty | Right | Teach | Unhappiness | Ambition | Friends | Happiness | Winning |
Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL
In remaining unattached, a person is unencumbered and free to love all rationally and spiritually, which is the way God wants him to love.
Joy | Object | Understanding | Will |
Saint Maximus the Confessor NULL
Everyone who does not apply himself to the spiritual contemplation of Holy Scripture has, Judaic-wise, also rejected both the natural and the written law; and he is ignorant of the law of grace which confers deification on those who are obedient to it. He who understands the written law in a literal manner does not nourish his soul with the virtues. He who does not grasp the inner principles of created beings fails to feast his intellect on the manifold wisdom of God. And he who is ignorant of the great mystery of the new grace does not rejoice in the hope of future deification. Thus failure to contemplate the written law spiritually results in a dearth (lack, an inadequate supply) of the divine wisdom to be apprehended in the natural law; and this in its turn is followed by a complete ignorance of the deification given by grace according to the new mystery
Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL
The soul refrains from the desire to feel or see anything while it is in this loving awareness. The soul does nothing – only receives what is given. #4. As soon as natural things are driven out of the enamored soul, the divine are naturally and supernaturally infused, since there can be no void in nature.
Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL
The more importance given to any clear apprehensions (visions, locutions, sentiments), natural or supernatural, the less capacity the soul has for entering the abyss of faith, where all else is absorbed.
God | Habit | Heart | Joy | Knowledge | Means | Power | Soul | Will | God |
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux NULL
Believe me, you will find more lessons in the woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you what you cannot learn from masters.
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 |
O my God, what must a soul be like when it is in this state! It longs to be all one tongue with which to praise the Lord. It utters a thousand pious follies, in a continuous endeavor to please Him who thus possesses it.
Art | Comfort | Day | Desire | Effort | Friend | Good | Health | Joy | Life | Life | Love | Nature | Strength | Trust | World | Art | Think |
God aids the valiant...both to you and to me He will give the help needed.
John Chrysostom, fully Saint John Chrysostom
Teach him to sing those psalms which are so full of love of wisdom; as at once concerning chastity or rather, before all, of not companying with the wicked, immediately with the very beginning of the book; (for therefore also it was that that prophet began on this wise, ‘Blessed is the man that hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly; Ps. i. I, and again, ‘I have not say in the council of vanity’; and again, ‘in his sight a wicked doer is contemned, but he honoreth those that fear the Lord, of companying the good, (and these subjects thou wilt find there in abundance,) of restraining the belly, of restraining the hand, of refraining from excess, of not overreaching; that money is nothing nor glory, and other things such like...When in these thou hast led him on from childhood, by little and little thou wilt lead him forward even to the higher things. The Psalms contain things, but the Hymns again have nothing human. When he has been instructed out of the Psalms, he will then know hymns also, as a diviner thing.
Better | Friend | Joy | Light | Love | Poverty | Words | Friends |
John Chrysostom, fully Saint John Chrysostom
Riches are not forbidden, but the pride of them is.
Saint John of Kronstadt, fully John Il’ich Serguiev, aka Holy Father John of the Kronstadt NULL
Our faith, trust, and love are proved and revealed in adversities, that is, in difficult and grievous outward and inward circumstances, during sickness, sorrow, and privations.