This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
R. H. Stoddard, fully Richard Henry Stoddard
If there is anything that will endure The eye of God because it still is pure, It is the spirit of a little child, Fresh from His hand, and therefore undefiled. Nearer the gate of Paradise than we, Our children breathe its airs, its angels see; And when they pray God hears their simple prayer, Yea, even sheathes His sword, in judgment bare
Angels | Children | God | Judgment | Little | Paradise | Spirit | Will | God |
Bush and bin Laden are really on the same side: the side of faith and violence against the side of reason and discussion. Both have implacable faith that they are right and the other is evil. Each believes that when he dies he is going to heaven. Each believes that if he could kill the other, his path to paradise in the next world would be even swifter. The delusional next world is welcome to both of them. This world would be a much better place without either of them.
Sharafuddin Ahmad ibn Yahya Maneri, fully Hazrat Makhdum Shaikh Sharafuddin Yahya Maneri
Your worth can be estimated by what you seek. If you seek a dog, your worth is that of a dog. Whoever worship God because he desires heaven is a slave of his own desire. Whoever worships Him out of fear of hell is a slave of hell, for anyone who is afraid of something is a slave of that thing.
Sacha Guitry, fully Alexandre-Pierre Georges "Sacha" Guitry
Our wisdom comes from our experience, and our experience comes from our foolishness.
Paradise |
Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
A person can do other things against his will; but belief is possible only in one who is willing.
Conscience | Good | Paradise | Sabbath |
Saint Francis of Assisi, born Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone NULL
The rule and life of these brothers is this: to live in obedience, in chastity, and without anything of their own, and to follow the teaching and the footprints of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who says: 'If you wish to be perfect go and sell everything you have and give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.' And, 'If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me'. Again, 'If anyone wishes to come to me and does not hate father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple' (Lk. 14:26). And: 'Everyone who has left father or mother, brothers or sisters, wife or children, houses or lands because of me, shall receive a hundredfold and shall possess eternal life' (cf. Mt. 19:29, Mk. 10:29, Lk. 18:30)
Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL
As long as you have feet, run after work, before you are bound with that bond which cannot be loosed again once it is put on. As long as you have hands, stretch them out to Heaven in prayer, before your arms fall from their joints, and though you desire to draw them up, you will not be able. As long as you have fingers, cross yourself in prayer, before death comes loosening the comely strength of their sinews. As long as you have eyes, fill them with tears before that hour when dust will cover your black clothes and your eyes will be fixed in one direction in an unseeing gaze and you will not know it. Yes, fill your eyes with tears as long as your heart is controlled by the power of discernment and before your soul is shaken by her departure from it and the heart is left like a house deserted by its owner.
Love | Paradise | Repentance | World |
Divine Providence is never wanting in things undertaken at its command. Even though the whole world should rise up and destroy us, nothing could happen but what is pleasing to God. The less there is of man in affairs, the more there is of God.
Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir
In spite of so many stubborn lies, at every moment, at every opportunity, the truth comes to light, the truth of life and death, of my solitude and my bond with the world, of my freedom and my servitude, of the insignificance and the sovereign importance of each man and all men. There was Stalingrad and there was Buchenwald, and neither of the two wipes out the other. Since we do not succeed in fleeing it, let us therefore try to look the truth in the face. Let us try to assume our fundamental ambiguity. It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our life that we must draw our strength to live and our reason for acting.
Abstract | Art | Assertion | Death | Doctrine | Earth | Ethics | Evil | Existence | Existentialism | Good | Guarantee | Heaven | Individual | Justify | Life | Life | Love | Man | Men | Need | Paradise | Pride | Reason | Salvation | System | Thinking | Time | Truth | Universe | Weakness | Will | Work | World | Art | Old | Value |
Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir
In horror, in terror, she accepted the metamorphosis — gnat, foam, ant, until death. And it's only the beginning, she thought. She stood motionless, as if it were possible to play tricks with time, possible to stop it from following its course. But her hands stiffened against her quivering lips. When the bells began to sound the hour she let out the first scream.
Absolute | Abstract | Childhood | Contempt | Desire | Fighting | Ideas | Nothing | Order | Paradise | Reality | Suffering | World |
Who's in the next room? - who? I seemed to see somebody in the dawning passing through, unknown to me.
Paradise |
The right of self-government does not comprehend the government of others.
Children | Government | Paradise | Public | Surplus | Will | Government |
With the welfare of the Irish people my heart and feelings are identified, and to. this object, in all its latitude, have my pen and my knowledge of their character been directed. I found them a class unknown in literature, unknown by their own landlords, and unknown by those in whose hands much of their destiny was placed. If I became the historian of their habits and manners, their feelings, their prejudices, their superstitions, and their crimes; if I have attempted to delineate their moral, religious, and physical state, it was because I saw no other person willing to undertake a task which surely must be looked upon as an important one. I had also other motives. I was anxious that those who ought, but did not, understand their character, should know them - [x] not merely for selfish purposes, but that they should teach them to know themselves and appreciate their rights, both moral and civil, as rational men, who owe obedience to law, without the necessity of being slaves either to priest or landlord: such is the position in which I wish to see them. There is little prospect, however, of this. Even since the period in which these stories were written, now so short a time since, a gloomy change has come over them. The pestilent poison of mercenary agitation, joined to the neglect of landlords and the interference of priests, has created a reaction which threatens to trample - and does trample - law, morals, and religion, under foot. How it may end, it is impossible to say; but God grant that it may be for the best!
Earth | Intelligence | Man | Men | Paradise | Power | Security | World |
Dream after dream ensues; and still they dream that they shall still succeed; and still are disappointed.
Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather
Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand -- a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods -- or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values.