This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
All things that we ordained festival Turn from their office to black funeral-- Our instruments to melancholy bells, Our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast; Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change; Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse; And all things change them to the contrary.
Spirit |
As for that ravenous tiger, Tamora, no funeral rite, nor man in mourning weeds, no mournful bell shall ring her burial; but throw her forth to beasts and birds to prey. Her life was beastly and devoid of pity, and being dead, let birds on he take pity! [See justice done on Aaron, that damned Moor, by whom our heavy haps had their beginning. Then, afterwards, to order well the state, that like events may ne'er it ruinate.] Titus Andronicus, Act v, Scene 3
Beware instinct—the lion will not touch the true prince. Instinct is a great matter.
Bid me run and I will strive with things impossible. Julius Caesar, Act ii, Scene 1
But the strong base and building of my love is as the very centre of the earth, drawing all things to it.
Cold indeed, and labor lost: then farewell heat, and welcome frost!
Brutus had rather be a villager than to repute himself a son of Rome under these hard conditions as this time is like to lay upon us.
Come the three corners of the world in arms, And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue, If England to itself do rest but true. King John. Act v. Sc. 7.
Spirit |
They, therefore, who are hasty in their devotions and think a little will do, are strangers both to the nature of devotion and the nature of man; they do not know that they are to learn to pray, and that prayer is to be learnt as they learn other things, by frequency, constancy, and perseverance.
Each of these foregoing states has its time, its variety of workings, its trials, temptations, and purifications, which can only be known by experience in the passage through them. The one only and infallible way to go safely through all the difficulties, trials, temptations, dryness, or opposition of our own evil tempers is this: It is to expect nothing from ourselves, to trust to nothing in ourselves, but in everything to expect and depend upon God for relief. Keep fast hold of this thread, and then let your way be what it will -- darkness, temptation, or the rebellion of nature -- you will be led through it all, to an union with God: for nothing hurts us in any state but an expectation of something in it and from it, which we should only expect from God.
Receive every day as a resurrection from death, as a new enjoyment of life; meet every rising sun with such sentiments of God's goodness, as if you had seen it, and all things, new-created upon your account: and under the sense of so great a blessing, let your joyful heart praise and magnify so good and glorious a Creator.
Caution | Conversation | God | Good | Light | Means | Meditation | Nothing | Prayer | Soul | Spirit | Will | Wills | God |
There is a grace in wild variety surpassing rule and order.
Inconvenient | Love | Spirit | Temper |
Now since our eternal state is as certainly ours, as our present state; since we are as certainly to live forever, as we now live at all; it is plain, that we cannot judge of the value of any particular time, as to us, but by comparing it to that eternal duration, for which we are created.
Blame | Care | Earnestness | God | Love | Man | Men | Mind | Nothing | Spirit | Wise | God |
Covetousness, pride, and envy are not three different things, but only three different names for the restless workings of one and the same will or desire. Wrath, which is a fourth birth from these three, can have no existence till one or all of these three are contradicted, or have something done to them that is contrary to their will. These four properties generate their own torment. They have no outward cause, nor any inward power of altering themselves. And therefore all self or nature must be in this state until some supernatural good comes into it, or gets a birth in it. Whilst man indeed lives among the vanities of time, his covetousness, envy, pride, and wrath may be in a tolerable state, may hold him to a mixture of peace and trouble; they may have at times their gratifications as well as their torments. But when death has put an end to the vanity of all earthly cheats, the soul that is not born again of the Supernatural Word and Spirit of God, must find itself unavoidably devoured and shut up in its own insatiable, unchangeable, self-tormenting covetousness, envy, pride, and wrath.
Desire | God | Heart | Inspiration | Man | Nothing | Prayer | Spirit | Words | God | Old |
Though the light and comfort of the outward world keeps even the worst men from any constant strong sensibility of that wrathful, fiery, dark and self-tormenting nature that is the very essence of every fallen unregenerate soul, yet every man in the world has more or less frequent and strong intimations given him that so it is with him in the inmost ground of his soul. How many inventions are some people forced to have recourse to in order to keep off a certain inward uneasiness, which they are afraid of and know not whence it comes? Alas, it is because there is a fallen spirit, a dark, aching fire, within them, which has never had its proper relief and is trying to discover itself and calling out for help at every cessation of worldly joy.
Devotion | Means | Piety | Spirit | Temper | Wisdom | World |