This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The peace of God is peace within ourselves. The unrest of human life comes largely from our being torn asunder by contending impulses. Conscience pulls this way, passion that. Desire says, “Do this”; reason, judgment, prudence say “It is your peril if you do!” One desire fights against another. And so the man is rent asunder. There must be the harmonizing of all the being if there is to be real rest of spirit.
Conscience | Desire | God | Judgment | Life | Life | Man | Passion | Peace | Peril | Prudence | Prudence | Reason | Rest | Spirit | God |
Happiness comes from the fulfillment of our physical, mental, and spiritual needs. It comes from the virtues and of being useful to others. It comes from forgiveness, charity, and all the noble acts that activate peace of mind and trigger joy. Happiness is not a commercial commodity available for buying or selling.
Charity | Forgiveness | Fulfillment | Joy | Mind | Peace | Happiness |
Work to simplify the heart, that being immovable and at peace from any invading vain phantasms, thou mayest always stand fast in the Lord within thee, to that degree as if thy soul had already entered the always present now of eternity.
Nahuatl Wise Men including Nezahualcoyotl NULL
One day we must go, one night we will descend into the region of mystery. Here, we only come to know ourselves; only in passing are we here on earth. In peace and pleasure let us spend our lives; come let us enjoy ourselves. Let not the angry do so; the earth is vast indeed! Would that one lived forever; would that one were not to die!
Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, fully Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Molke
Eternal peace is a dream, and not even a beautiful one. War is a part of God’s world order. In it are developed the noblest virtues of man: courage and abnegation, dutifulness and self-sacrifice. Without war the world would sink into materialism.
Courage | Eternal | God | Man | Materialism | Order | Peace | Sacrifice | Self | Self-sacrifice | War | World |
Pope Pius X, aka Saint Pope Pius X and Pope of the Eucharist, born Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto NULL
It is absurd to seek peace while rejecting God. For where God is left out, justice is left out, and where justice is lacking there can be no hope of peace.
Pope Paul VI, born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini NULL
Peace cannot be limited to a mere absence of war, the result of an ever precarious balance of forces. No, peace is something built up day after day, in the pursuit of an order intended by God, which implies a more perfect form of justice among men and women.
Absence | Balance | Day | God | Justice | Men | Order | Peace | War |
The existentialist insight, in part, is that meaning is something we give to life. We do not find meaning so much as throw ourselves at it. The Zen insight, in part, is that worrying about meaning may itself make life less meaningful than it might have been. Part of the virtue of the Zen attitude lies in learning to not need to be busy: learning there is joy and meaning and peace in simply being mindful, not needing to change or be changed. Let the moment mean what it will.
Change | Insight | Joy | Learning | Life | Life | Meaning | Need | Peace | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Zen |
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
Call a thing immoral or ugly, soul-destroying or a degradation of man, a peril to the peace of the world or to the well-being of future generations; as long as you have not shown it to be “uneconomic” you have not really questioned its right to exist, grow, and prosper.
Future | Man | Peace | Peril | Right | Soul | Ugly | World |
Luigi Sturzo, fully Don Luigi Sturzo
Peace is essentially a moral fact, and only subordinately a political fact as a means to the end; peace is above all an act of reconciliation.
Means | Peace | Reconciliation |
We will never comprehend why the infinite will, in order to realize its completion, requires the incomplete, or how evil can result in good. No forced attempt to reason out these events can give us peace of God. There is a different way, a way born from inward experience. We may not have been given the privilege of understanding how events are expressing the will of God. But one thing we do know, and on that knowledge all else depends – the will of God is directed only toward one thing: the spiritual.
Events | Evil | Experience | God | Good | Knowledge | Order | Peace | Reason | Understanding | Will | God | Privilege |
Desmond Tutu, fully Desmond Mpilo Tutu
Stability and peace in our land will not come from the barrel of a gun, because peace without justice is an impossibility.
Impossibility | Justice | Land | Peace | Will |
Obert C. Tanner, fully Obert Clark Tanner
Humanity is in a precarious balance between the forces of violence and the forces of peace. It is by no means clear at this time which of these forces will prevail. We do not ask, however, whether religion will not become an aid to the forces of peace or cooperation.
Aid | Balance | Cooperation | Humanity | Means | Peace | Religion | Time | Will |