This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
When the American poor turn to religion, as most of them do, they turn not to faith in revolution, but to a more radical revolt against faith in their fellow man.
Faith | Man | Religion | Revolution | Wisdom |
In true friendship, the meaning of life gets enfleshed... The meaning of life breaks in upon us with insistence, making us realize that we can never really be separated from someone we love so long as we carry with us always, as if in a little sack, the other person’s heart... Faith and hope lead to the... most thrilling virtue: unconditional love. It encourages us to risk it all with our whole hears open.
Faith | Heart | Hope | Life | Life | Little | Love | Meaning | Risk | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom |
Faith is the revealer of knowledge; it is the office of reason to defend that knowledge and to preserve it pure. Independent knowledge - the knowledge that comes not though faith - whether it be of things earthly or things heavenly, never can be ours.
A religion without mystery must be a religion without God. In dwelling on divine mysteries, keep thy heart humble, thy thoughts reverent, thy soul holy. Let not philosophy be ashamed to be confuted, nor logic to be confounded, nor reason to be surpassed. What thou canst not prove, approve; what thou canst not comprehend, believe; what thou canst believe, admire and love and obey. so shall thine ignorance be satisfied in thy faith, and thy doubt be swallowed up in thy reverence, and thy faith be as influential as sight. Put out thing own candle, and then shalt thou see clearly the sun of righteousness.
Doubt | Faith | God | Heart | Ignorance | Logic | Love | Mystery | Philosophy | Reason | Religion | Reverence | Righteousness | Soul | Wisdom |
Doubt is the disease of this inquisitive, restless age. It is the price we pay for our advanced intelligence and civilization - the dim night of our resplendent day. But as the most beautiful light is born of darkness, so the faith that springs from conflict is often the strongest and the best.
Age | Civilization | Darkness | Day | Disease | Doubt | Faith | Intelligence | Light | Price | Wisdom |
Tertullian, fully Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullian NULL
Every creation is subject to recurrence. Every thing you meet had a previous existence: whatever you have lost will come again. Every thing comes a second time: all things return to a settled position when they have gone away, all things begin when they have ceased to be. They are brought to an end in order that they may come into being: nothing is lost except that it may be recovered. All this revolving order of things, therefore, is evidence of the resurrection of the dead. God ordained it in works before He commanded it in writing, He proclaimed it by strength before he proclaimed it in words. He first sent you nature as teacher, intending to send you prophecy also, in order that having learnt from nature, you may the more easily believe prophecy.
Evidence | Existence | God | Nature | Nothing | Order | Position | Prophecy | Strength | Time | Will | Wisdom | Words | Writing | God |
William M. Watt, fully William Montgomery Watt
Do not put your faith in what statistics say until you have carefully considered what they do not say.
Faith | Statistics | Wisdom |
As the flower is before the fruit, so is faith before good works.
The constants in all religion are the mystery of the universe, the nostalgia of the human spirit for an order beyond the show and flux of things to which it believes itself akin, and the belief that it has evidence of such an order.
Belief | Evidence | Mystery | Order | Religion | Spirit | Universe |
It usually pays much greater dividends to invest in faith rather than in worry.