This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL
The soul of one who serves God always swims in joy, always keeps a holiday, is always in her palace of jubilation, ever singing with fresh ardor and fresh pleasure a new song of joy and love.
Cause | Indulgence | Rest | Soul |
Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL
What is so bitter and vehement as the torment of love? I mean, those who have become conscious that they have sinned against love suffer greater torment from this than from any fear of punishment. For the sorrow caused in the heart by sin against love is more poignant than any torment.
Compassion | Family | Harm | Heart | Mercy | Prayer | Receive | Sorrow | Tears |
Saint Ambrose, born Aurelius Ambrosius NULL
Every man is a liar, and no one is without sin except the one God. It has therefore been held that from man and woman, that is, through the mingling of their bodies, no one is thought to be without defect. But he who is without defect is also without this conception.
Salman Rushdie, fully Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie
Your blasphemy, Salman, can't be forgiven. To set your words against the Words of God.
Size |
Sam Ervin, fully Samuel James "Sam" Ervin, Jr.
The Constitution did not confer upon the President the arbitrary power to suspend any of its provisions. On the contrary it gave him no powers except those expressly stated and those necessarily implied from them. The Constitution was written that way to restrain the President from tyranny.
Good | Government | Indispensable | Justice | Government |
That war transformed me from an ultra-pacifist to one willing to fight and sacrifice with my fellow countrymen in defense of the principle of living our own lives and working out our own destiny; and if there be a mad-man nation still, large or small, which will attempt to repeat that monumental crime I hope that the generations, perhaps yet unborn, of our self-governing civilized nations, may throw themselves with equal vigor in the battle to maintain the fundamental principles of freedom, justice and humanity.
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
The superiority of some men is merely local. - They are great because their associates are little.
Gregory Nazianzen, aka Saint Gregory of Nazianzus or Gregory the Theologian
Concepts create idols; only wonder comprehends [grasps] anything. People kill one another over idols. Wonder makes us fall to our knees.
Attainment | Evil | Nothing | Refinement | Risk | Rule | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Learn |
Ambrose, aka Saint Ambrose, fully Aurelius Ambrosius NULL
Every man is a liar, and no one is without sin except the one God. It has therefore been held that from man and woman, that is, through the mingling of their bodies, no one is thought to be without defect. But he who is without defect is also without this conception.
You cannot discover from the teachings of others the beauty of prayer. Prayer has its own teacher in God, Who 'teaches us knowledge' and grants prayer to those who pray.
Anger | Bitterness | Desire |
It is the black work of an ungodly man or an atheist, that God is not in all his thoughts. What comfort can be had in the being of God without thinking of him with reverence and delight? A God forgotten is as good as no God to us.
If every man had a beginning, every man then was once nothing; he could not then make himself, because nothing cannot be the cause of something; “The Lord he is God; he hath made us, and not we ourselves” (Ps. c. iii.) Whatsoever begun in time was not; and when it was nothing, it had nothing, and could do nothing; and therefore could never give to itself, nor to any other, to be—or to be able to do: for then it gave what it had not, and did what it could not. Since reason must acknowledge a first of every kind, a first man, etc., it must acknowledge him created and made, not by himself: why have not other men since risen up by themselves, not by chance? why hath not chance produced the like in that long time the world hath stood? If we never knew anything give being to itself, how can we imagine anything ever could?
We must remember not to judge any public servant by any one act, and especially should we beware of attacking the men who are merely the occasions and not the causes of disaster.
Chance | Cowardice | Despise | Ends | Evil | Good | Growth | Indulgence | Infamy | Justice | Luxury | Man | Mind | Peace | Public | Regard | Spirit | Will | Worth | Loss |
That even among the most hackneyed and most hardened of malefactors there is still about them a softer part which will give way to the demonstrations of tenderness; that this one ingredient of a better character is still found to survive the dissipation of all the others, that, fallen as a brother may be from the moralities which at one time adorned him, the manifested good will of his fellow-man still carries a charm and an influence along with it; and that, therefore, there lies in this an operation which, as no poverty can vitiate, so no depravity can extinguish.
Chance | Conscience | Indulgence | Law | Mind | Object | Pleasure | Present | Will | Guilty |
There is a set of people whom I cannot bear—the pinks of fashionable propriety,—whose every word is precise, and whose every movement is unexceptionable, but who, though versed in all the categories of polite behaviour, have not a particle of soul or cordiality about them. We allow that their manners may be abundantly correct. There may be eloquence in every gesture, and gracefulness in every position; not a smile out of place, and not a step that would not bear the measurement of the severest scrutiny. This is all very fine: but what I want is the heart and gaiety of social intercourse; the frankness that spreads ease and animation around it; the eye that speaks affability to all, that chases timidity from every bosom, and tells every man in the company to be confident and happy. This is what I conceive to be the virtue of the text, and not the sickening formality of those who walk by rule, and would reduce the whole of human life to a wire-bound system of misery and constraint.
Achievement | Conquest | Deeds | Desire | Emotions | Force | Indulgence | Opposition | Power | Resolution | Virtue | Virtue | Worth | Deeds |
Backlock, a poet blind from his birth, could describe visual objects with accuracy; Professor Sanderson, who was also blind, gave excellent lectures on color, and taught others the theory of ideas which they had and he had not. In the social sphere these gifted ones are mostly women; they can watch a world which they never saw, and estimate forces of which they have only heard. We call it intuition.
A government is republican in proportion as every member composing it has his equal voice in the direction of its concerns, not indeed in person, which would be impracticable beyond the limits of a city or small township, but by representatives chosen by himself and responsible to him at short periods.
Government | Harmony | Indulgence | Reason | Government |