This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The man who can really, in living union of the mind and heart, converse with God through nature, finds in the material forms around him, a source of power and happiness inexhaustible, and like the life of angels. The highest life and glory of man is to be alive unto God; and when this grandeur of sensibility to him, and this power of communion with him is carried, as the habit of the soul, into the forms of nature, then the walls of our world are as the gates of heaven.
Angels | Glory | God | Habit | Heart | Heaven | Life | Life | Man | Mind | Nature | Power | Sensibility | Soul | Wisdom | World | God | Happiness |
It is a terrible thought, that nothing is ever forgotten; that not an oath is ever uttered that does not continue to vibrate through all time, in the wide-spreading current of sound; that not a prayer is lisped, that its record is not to be found stamped on the laws of nature by the indelible seal of the Almighty's will.
Nature | Nothing | Prayer | Sound | Thought | Time | Will | Wisdom |
All that happens in the world of nature and man - every war, every peace, every horn of prosperity, every horn of adversity, every election, every death, every life, every success and every failure, all change, all permanence, the perished leer, the unutterable glory of stars - all things speak truth in the thoughtful spirit.
Adversity | Change | Death | Failure | Glory | Life | Life | Man | Nature | Peace | Prosperity | Spirit | Success | Truth | War | Wisdom | World |
It is a terrible thought, that nothing is ever forgotten; that not an oath is ever uttered that does not continue to vibrate through all times, in the wide spreading current of sound; that not a prayer is lisped, that its record is not to be found stamped on the laws of nature by the indelible seal of the Almighty's will.
Nature | Nothing | Prayer | Sound | Thought | Will | Wisdom |
Most of our censure of others is only oblique praise of self, uttered to show the wisdom and superiority of the speaker. It has all the invidiousness of self-praise, and all the ill-desert of falsehood.
Censure | Falsehood | Praise | Self | Self-praise | Superiority | Wisdom |
Randolph S. Foster, fully Randolph Sinks Foster
As we look up into these glorious culminations, how grand life becomes! To be forever with the Lord, and forever changing into His likeness, and, still more, forever depending in the companionship of His thought and bliss, “from glory to glory” - could we desire more?
Desire | Glory | Life | Life | Lord | Thought | Wisdom | Companionship | Thought |
François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
Accustom yourself gradually to carry prayer into all your daily occupations. Speak, move, work, in peace, as if you were in prayer, as indeed you ought to be. Do everything with excitement, by the spirit of grace.
Excitement | Grace | Peace | Prayer | Spirit | Wisdom | Work |
François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
True prayer is only another name for the love of God. Its excellence does not consist in the multitude of our words; for our Father knoweth what things we have need of before we ask Him. The true prayer is that of the heart, and the heart prays only for what it desires. To pray, then, is to desire - but to desire what God would have us desire.
Desire | Excellence | Father | God | Heart | Love | Need | Prayer | Wisdom | Words | Excellence | God |
When you praise someone you call yourself his equal.
R. Hertz, fully Rabbi Joseph Herman Hertz
The Kaddish is not a prayer for the dead, but a mandate for the living... It bids man rise above his sorrow... and fixes his view upon the welfare of mankind. It lifts his hope and vision to a day... when mankind shall at last inhabit the earth as children of the one God and Father, and justice reign supreme in peace.
Children | Day | Earth | Father | God | Hope | Justice | Man | Mankind | Peace | Prayer | Sorrow | Vision | Wisdom | God |
Sometimes prayer is more than a light before us; it is alight within us.
It is interesting to notice how some minds seem almost to create themselves, springing up under every disadvantage, and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles. Nature seems to delight in disappointing the assiduities of art, with which it would rear dullness to maturity; and to glory in the vigor and luxuriance of her chance productions. She scatters the seeds of genius to the winds, and though some may perish among the stony places of the world, and some may be choked by the thorns and brambles of early adversity, yet others will now and then strike root even in the clefts of the rock, struggle bravely up into sunshine, and spread over their sterile birthplace all the beauties of vegetation.
Chance | Genius | Glory | Nature | Struggle | Will | Wisdom |