This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL
There is no prayer so quickly heard as the prayer whereby a man asks to be reconciled with those who are wroth with him. For when he charges himself with the offence, this prayer is immediately answered.
Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL
When a man comes to know that he can fall away from God as a dry leaf falls from a tree, then he knows the power of his soul.
Beginning | Good | Heart | Knowledge | Man | Men | Pride | Purity | Restraint | Soul | Truth | Blessed |
Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL
A man who craves esteem cannot be rid of the causes of grief.
Experience | Knowledge | Little | Man | Receive |
John Chrysostom, fully Saint John Chrysostom
I know my own soul, how feeble and puny it is: I know the magnitude of this ministry, and the great difficulty of the work; for more stormy billows vex the soul of the priest than the gales which disturb the sea.
All things must come to the soul from its roots, from where it is planted.
Blessedness | Enough | Evil | Experience | Fear | Knowledge | Little | Lord | Love | Order | Soul | Trust | Understanding | Will | Words |
Well-ordered self-love is right and natural.
Grant me, O Lord my God, a mind to know you, a heart to seek you, wisdom to find you, conduct pleasing to you, faithful perseverance in waiting for you, and a hope of finally embracing you. Amen.
Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL
When temptation overtakes the deceitful man, he does not have the presence of mind to call upon God, or to expect salvation from Him, since in the days of his ease he stood aloof from God's will.
Change | Commerce | Discipline | Journey | Knowledge | Man | Prayer | Right | Commerce | Blessed |
Knowledge is loved not that any good may come to it but that it may be possessed.
The light of faith makes us see what we believe. For just as, by the habits of the other virtues, man sees what is fitting to him in respect of that habit, so, by the habit of faith, the human mind is directed to assent to such things as are fitting to a right faith, and not to assent to others.
In order for a war to be just, three things are necessary. First, the authority of the sovereign. Secondly, a just cause. Thirdly, a rightful intention.
John Chrysostom, fully Saint John Chrysostom
We follow the ways of wolves, the habits of tigers: or, rather we are worse than they. To them nature has assigned that they should be thus fed, while God has honored us with rational speech and a sense of equity. And yet we are become worse than the wild beast.
Enjoyment | Eternal | God | Grace | Knowledge | Life | Life | Promise | Salvation | Time | World | Worship | God |
It is true you have great reason to distrust yourself; but you have still greater reason to trust in him. If you are inclined to evil, you know that he is incomparably much more inclined to do good, and to do good in and by you. I beg you to make your prayer on this, and during the day to make some elevations of your soul to God, imploring his grace so as to establish you firmly in this principle, so that having cast your eyes on your miseries, you may afterwards ever raise them to his mercies, pausing for a much longer time upon his munificence in your regard than on your own unworthiness in his sight, and much more upon his strength than upon your own weakness, throwing yourself, when you see this, into his fatherly arms in the hope that he will work in you what he asks of you, and that he will bless all you do for his sake. With this, Sir, keep your heart ever ready to receive the peace and joy of the Holy Ghost.
Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust be men of unexceptionable characters. The public cannot be too curious concerning the character of public men.
Aid | Knowledge | People | Surrender | Virtue | Virtue | Will |
Perhaps the day will come when all the things bestowed upon mankind for its benefit and liberation will become corrupted into their very antithesis. Mankind, instead of assuring its members their legitimate rights of development ... will serve them the tear-drenched bread of slaves and the worm-wood of bitterness.... At such time, science, too, will become solely destructive ... will frantically blind itself with its own brightness ....Mankind will vainly exhaust its strength in a blind upsurge of uncurbed desires.
Conscience | Duty | Enlightenment | Father | Knowledge | Mind | Sacred | Training | Child |
Salvador de Madariaga, fully Salvador de Madariaga y Rojo
If, on the contrary, man is above all an eminently living being, every specimen of which is ever new and original, a being strongly influenced by ultra-physical faculties -- spirit, intellect, emotions -- if, in one word, man is a whole that can only be ruled from its own center, medicine, then, will be but an art or a craft to be applied in each case to a concrete individual. And then, rather than 'medicine', there will be medicine-men.