This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
There is no need for peculiar conditions in order to grow in the spiritual life, for the pressure of God's Spirit is present everywhere and at all times. Our environment itself -- our home and our job -- is the medium through which we experience His molding action and His besetting loveÂ… And this quality of quietness, ordinariness, simplicity, with which the saving action of God enters history, endures from the beginning to the end.
Will |
This, of course, is what religion is about: this adherence to God, this confident dependence on that which is unchanging. This is the more abundant life which, in its own particular language and own particular way, it calls us to live. Because it is our part in the one life in the whole universe of spirits, our share in the great drive towards Reality, the tendency of all life to seek God Who made it for Himself and now incites and guides it, we are already adapted to it. Just as a fish is adapted to life in the sea. This view of our situation fills us with a certain awed and humble gladness. It delivers us from all niggling fuss about ourselves, prevents us from feeling self-important about our own little spiritual adventures; and yet makes them worthwhile as part of one great spiritual adventure.
We must get rid of the pestilent, deadly notion that the amount of things we get through is the standard. The steadiness with which we radiate God is the standard.
Love |
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
I knew what she meant, and in that moment felt as though I had shaken off some of the dust and grit of ten dry years; then and always, however she spoke to me, in half sentences, single words, stock phrases of contemporary jargon, in scarcely perceptible movements of eyes or lips or hands, however inexpressible her thought, however quick and far it had glanced from the matter in hand, however deep it had plunged, as it often did, straight from the surface to the depths, I knew; even that day when I still stood on the extreme verge of love, I knew what she meant.
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
Instead of this absurd division into sexes they ought to class people as static and dynamic.
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
It is easy, retrospectively, to endow one's youth with a false precocity or a false innocence; to tamper with the dates marking one's stature on the edge of the door.
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
Literature is the right use of language irrespective of the subject or reason of utterance.
Absurd | Distinction | Effort | Excitement | Growth | Ideas | Inevitable | Life | Life | Men | Organic | People | Right | Think |
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
Thus strategists hesitate over the map, the few pins and lines of coloured chalk, contemplating a change in the pins and lines, a matter of inches, which outside the room, out of sight of the studious officers, may engulf the past, present and future in ruin or life. She was a symbol to herself then, lacking the life of both child and woman; victory and defeat were changes of pin and line; she knew nothing of war.
Journey |
The proper business of friendship is to inspire life and courage; and a soul thus supported outdoes itself; whereas if it be unexpectedly deprived of these succors it droops and languishes.
Advice | Friend | Man | Friendship |
By the quality of our inner lives I do not mean something characterized by ferocious intensity and strain. I mean rather such a humble and genial devotedness as we find in the most loving of the saints. I mean the quality which makes contagious.. the love of God from you.
Ethics | God | Love | Psychology | Religion | Teach | Thinking | God |
Grace is God himself, his loving energy at work within his church and within our souls.
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
A necklace of pearls on a white neck. We had lost the sense of discovery which had infused the anarchy of our first year. I began to settle down... the old house in the foreground, the rest of the world abandoned and forgotten; a world of its own of peace and love and beauty.
Books | Dirty | Literature |
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
Other nations use "force"; we Britons alone use "Might.
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
Punctuality is the virtue of the bored
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
There will be a prize of half a crown for the longest essay, irrespective of any possible merit.