This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Henry Suso, aka Amandus or Saint Henry Suso
All creatures have existed eternally in the divine essence, as in their exemplar. So far as they conform to the divine idea, all beings were, before their creation, one thing with the essence of God. (God creates into time what was and is in eternity.” Eternally, all creatures are God in God... So far as they are in God, they are the same life, the same essence, the same power, the same One, and nothing less.
Character | Eternity | God | Life | Life | Nothing | Power | Time | God |
Statius, fully Publius Papinius Statius NULL
Give not reins to your inflamed passions; take time and a little delay; impetuosity manages all things badly.
John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury
Of all parts of wisdom, the practice is the best. Socrates was esteemed the wisest man of his time because he turned his acquired knowledge into morality and aimed at goodness more than greatness.
Character | Greatness | Knowledge | Man | Morality | Practice | Time | Wisdom |
Never teach false modesty. How exquisitely absurd to teach a girl that beauty is of no value, dress of no use! Beauty is of value; her whole prospects and happiness in life may often depend upon a new gown or a becoming bonnet: if she has five grains of common sense she will find this out. The great thing is to teach her their proper value.
Absurd | Beauty | Character | Common Sense | Life | Life | Modesty | Sense | Teach | Will | Beauty | Happiness |
Robert Louis Stevenson, fully Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson
To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labor.
A moral decision is the loneliest thing that exists. Knowledge is shed abroad everywhere. Anybody may dip his cup into that great sea and take out what he can. It is a public appropriation from a public store. But what the man himself must do as a moral being, what ordering he shall make of his life, what allegiance he shall choose, what cause he shall cleave to - this is decided in that solitude where his soul in authentic presence lives with no other companion than the Final Authority which he recognizes as supreme.
Authority | Cause | Character | Decision | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Public | Solitude | Soul |
People generally do not appreciate what they do not suffer for. A thing is held to be cheap if it did not cost dearly.
Temptation rarely comes in working hours. It is in their leisure time that men are made or marred.
Character | Leisure | Men | Temptation | Time |