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
A Priest, like an angel of the Almighty Lord, ought to be above all passions and spiritual disturbances, above all worldly or vain attachments and fears, occasioned by demons; he ought to be entirely in God, to love and fear Him alone. The fear of man means that he does not yet entirely cleave to God.
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 do not like war and I do not like strikes, but I am unwilling to oppose all wars and for the same reason I am unwilling to say that strikes are wrong. Both are right and necessary and should be used when the cause of justice can be retained in no other way.
Absolute | Belief | Cause | Dependence | Learning | Question | Will | Friends |
The formation of unions is the expression on the part of the workers of a feeling which seems to me to be close kindred of the feeling which possessed the men who first battled against the control of political institutions by a few and the exclusion from political expression of the many. If there is any truth at all in democracy, if democracy has any real justification, it is as thoroughly justified in our industrial life as it ever was in our political life. (SG to Newton Baker, Jan. 3, 1923)
Cooperation | Dependence | Indispensable | War |
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
Gayety is to good humor, as animal perfumes to vegetable fragrance: the one overpowers weak spirits, the other recreates and revives them.
Daughter | Dependence | Poverty | Will | Parent |
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
Human life in common is only made possible when a majority comes together which is stronger than any separate individual and which remains united against all separate individuals. The power of this community is then set up as "right" in opposition to the power of the individual, which is condemned as "brute force."
Dependence | Men | Mistake | Model | Parents | People | Will |
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 |
Prophecy is not an art, nor (when it is taken for prediction) a constant vocation, but an extraordinary and temporary employment from God, most often of good men, but sometimes also of the wicked.
I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.
Dependence | Example | Fear | Glory | Government | Labor | Means | People | Precedent | Public | Society | Stewardship | Time | Title | Trust | Society | Government |
Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear... Do not be frightened from this inquiry from any fear of its consequences. If it ends in the belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise...
Man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do.
Dependence | Nature | Sense | Wrong |
The legislative powers of government reach actions only and not opinions.
Dependence | Will |
Our part is to pursue with steadiness what is right, turning neither to right nor left for the intrigues or popular delusions of the day, assured that the public approbation will in the end be with us.
Dependence | Fear | Object | Spirit |
Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, it’s necessary consequence.
Dependence | Rights |
Were I to commence my administration again, the first question I would ask respecting a candidate would be, Does he use ardent spirits?
Argument | Belief | Body | Confidence | Dependence | Evidence | Faith | Fear | God | Hypocrisy | Influence | Lord | Man | Men | Mind | Money | Nothing | Object | Opinion | Plan | Power | Presumption | Principles | Public | Reason | Religion | Rights | Thinking | Trust | Truth | Will | World | God |
God does not demand that every man attain to what is theoretically highest and best. It is better to be a good street sweeper than a bad writer, better to be a good bartender than a bad doctor, and the repentant thief… than the holy ones who had Him nailed to the cross. And yet, abstractly speaking, what is more holy than the priesthood and less holy than the state of a criminal? The dying thief had, perhaps, disobeyed the will of God in many things: but in the most important event of his life He listened and obeyed. The Pharisees had kept the law to the letter and had spent their lives in the pursuit of a most scrupulous perfection. But they were so intent upon perfection as an abstraction that when God manifested His will and His perfection in a concrete and definite way they had no choice but to reject it.
Action | Contemplation | Dependence | Experience | Faith | God | Grace | Knowing | Life | Life | Meaning | Peace | Reason | Salvation | Thought | Trust | God | Contemplation | Thought |