This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
John Chrysostom, fully Saint John Chrysostom
Let the mouth also fast from disgraceful speeches and railings. For what does it profit if we abstain from fish and fowl and yet bite and devour our brothers and sisters? The evil speaker eats the flesh of his brother and bites the body of his neighbor.
Art | Beginning | Care | Children | Desire | Detachment | Discipline | Glory | Love | Need | Nothing | Riches | Teach | Wealth | Will | World | Riches | Instruction | Art | Child | Learn | Think |
Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL
When temptation overtakes the deceitful man, he does not have the presence of mind to call upon God, or to expect salvation from Him, since in the days of his ease he stood aloof from God's will.
Change | Commerce | Discipline | Journey | Knowledge | Man | Prayer | Right | Commerce | Blessed |
Everything I have written seems like straw by comparison with what I have seen and what has been revealed to me.
Conscience | Evil | Judgment | Right | Wise |
Perhaps the day will come when all the things bestowed upon mankind for its benefit and liberation will become corrupted into their very antithesis. Mankind, instead of assuring its members their legitimate rights of development ... will serve them the tear-drenched bread of slaves and the worm-wood of bitterness.... At such time, science, too, will become solely destructive ... will frantically blind itself with its own brightness ....Mankind will vainly exhaust its strength in a blind upsurge of uncurbed desires.
Conscience | Duty | Enlightenment | Father | Knowledge | Mind | Sacred | Training | Child |
Salvador de Madariaga, fully Salvador de Madariaga y Rojo
The arts which need interpretation are the arts of time -- music and poetry -- and not the arts of space -- sculpture and painting.
This will never change, not even if the latest scientific notion that the genesis of all the multitude of organic forms on earth can be traced back to one single, most primitive, primeval form of life should ever appear to be anything more than what it is today, a vague hypothesis still unsupported by fact. Even if this notion were ever to gain complete acceptance by the scientific world, Jewish thought, unlike the reasoning of the high priest of that nation, would nonetheless never summon us to revere a still extant representative of this primal form [an ape] as the supposed ancestor of us all. Rather, Judaism in that case would call upon its adherents to give even greater reverence than ever before to the one, sole God Who, in His boundless creative wisdom and eternal omnipotence, needed to bring into existence no more than one single, amorphous nucleus, and one single law of “adaptation and heredity” in order to bring forth, from what seemed chaos but was in fact a very definite order, the infinite variety of species we know today, each with its unique characteristics that sets it apart from all other creatures.
Apostasy | Conscience | Frivolity | Magic | Sin | Weakness |
Freedom of thought and the right of private judgment, in matters of conscience, driven from every other corner of the earth, direct their course to this happy country as their last asylum.
Conscience | Freedom of thought | Freedom | Happy | Judgment | Right | Thought | Thought |
Sam Ervin, fully Samuel James "Sam" Ervin, Jr.
Murder and theft have been committed since the earliest history of mankind, but that fact has not made murder meritorious or larceny legal.
Books | Choice | Conscience | Deeds | Earth | God | Heart | Lesson | Life | Life | Little | Loneliness | Mankind | Mind | Nature | Prejudice | Solitude | Study | Truth | Will | Words | Deeds | God |
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.
Conscience | Rights |
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
Wit will never make a man rich, but there are places where riches will always make a wit.
Conscience | Freedom | Means | Remorse | Self-esteem | Virtue | Virtue |
The brave man is an inspiration to the weak, and compels them, as it were, to follow him.
Biographies of great, but especially of good men, are most instructive and useful as helps, guides, and incentives to others. Some of the best are almost equivalent to gospels - teaching high living, high thinking, and energetic actions for their own and the world's good.
Discipline | Enjoyment | Industry | Progress | Training | Work |
Progress however, of the best kind, is comparatively slow. Great results cannot be achieved at once; and we must be satisfied to advance in life as we walk, step by step.
Discipline | Nature | Wisdom | Instruction |
Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.
Shunryu Suzuki, also Daisetsu Teitaro or D.T. Suzuki or Suzuki-Roshi
Zen Makes use, to a great extent, of poetical expressions; Zen is wedded to poetry.
I was over four years in different camps with people from 15 nations: Jews, Gentiles, Gypsies, communists. Through this experience, my view on the Holocaust and the whole problem of Nazism is a lot different from Elie Wiesel, who was only six months in camps and only with Jews.
Conscience | Duty |
We know that we are not collectively guilty, so how can we accuse any other nation, no matter what some of its people have done, of being collectively guilty?
Care | Change | Conscience | Forgiveness | Heart | Question | Right | Silence | Time | Will | Forgiveness |
Stanislaw Lec, fully Stanisław Jerzy Lec, born Baron Stanisław Jerzy de Tusch-Letz
Every now and then you meet a man whose ignorance is encyclopedic.
All creatures have received from the Creator their order of being and their beginning, and some their consummation too. But the end of virtue is endless. For the Psalmist says: Of all perfection I have seen the end, but Thy commandment is exceeding spacious and endless. If some good ascetics go from the strength of action to the strength of divine vision, and if love never faileth, and if the Lord will guard the coming in of your fear and the going out of your love, then the end of love will be truly endless. We shall never cease to advance in it, either in the present or in the future life, continually adding light to light. And however strange what I have said may seem to many, nevertheless it shall be said. According to the testimonies we have given, I would say, blessed father, even the spiritual beings [i.e. the angels] do not lack progress; on the contrary, they ever add glory to glory, and knowledge to knowledge.
Conscience | Rule |
Whatever is obtained as a result of long and persistent prayer will remain... Do not refuse a request to pray for the soul of another, even when you yourself lack the gift of prayer. For often the faith of the person making the request will evoke the saving contrition of the one who is offering the prayer.