This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We live by Faith; but Faith is not the slave of text and legend. Reason’s voice and God’s, Nature’s and Duty’s, never are at odds. What asks our Father of His children, save justice and mercy and humility, a reasonable service of good deeds, pure living, tenderness to human needs, reverence and trust, and prayer for light to see the Master’s footprints in our daily ways? No knotted scourge nor sacrificial knife, but the calm beauty of an ordered life whose very breathing is unworded praise! A life that stands as all true lives have stood firm-rooted in the faith that God is good.
Beauty | Children | Deeds | Duty | Faith | Father | God | Good | Humility | Justice | Life | Life | Light | Mercy | Nature | Praise | Prayer | Reason | Reverence | Service | Tenderness | Trust | Beauty | God |
What we gain without effort does not satisfy like what comes through the sweat of our brow or the work of self-transformation. No berries taste as sweet as those we pick. No insight changes us as deeply as what we discover ourselves. Prayer might help, but walking the endless path of practice is the only way to a deep reward. Sometimes just the path is reward enough.
Effort | Enough | Insight | Practice | Prayer | Reward | Self | Taste | Work |
The influence of prayer on the human mind and body is as demonstrable as that of secreting glands. Its results can be measured in terms of increased physical buoyancy, greater intellectual vigor, moral stamina, and a deeper understanding of the realities underlying human relationships.
Body | Influence | Mind | Prayer | Understanding |
Prayer is not only worship; it is also an invisible emanation of man’s worshipping spirit - the most powerful form of energy that one can generate. The influence of prayer on the human mind and body is as demonstrable as that of secreting glands. It results can be measured in terms of increased physical buoyancy, greater intellectual vigor, moral stamina, and a deeper understanding of the realities underlying human relationships. If you make a habit of sincere prayer, your life will be very noticeably and profoundly altered.
Body | Energy | Habit | Influence | Life | Life | Man | Mind | Prayer | Spirit | Understanding | Will | Worship |
Properly understood, prayer is a mature activity indispensable to the fullest development of personality - the ultimate integration of man’s highest faculties. Only in prayer do we achieve that complete and harmonious assembly of body, mind and spirit which gives the frail human reed its unshakable strength.
Body | Indispensable | Integration | Man | Mind | Personality | Prayer | Spirit | Strength |
Prayer should be regarded as practice of the Presence of God... Man prays not only that God should remember Him, but also that he should remember God... Prayer is an effort of man to reach God, to commune with an invisible being, creator of all things, supreme wisdom, truth, beauty, and strength, father and redeemer of each man.
Beauty | Effort | Father | God | Man | Practice | Prayer | Strength | Truth | Wisdom | God |
True prayer is a way of life; the truest life is literally a way of prayer.
The truth is that you learn the lore of love only when your love is out of reach; and the lore of the blue landscape seen from your mountain-top only when you are struggling up a rock wall on your long ascent; and you learn of God only in the exercise of prayer that remains unanswered. For the one satisfaction that time cannot wither, the one joy that never knows regret, is that which is granted you when your course is run and in the fullness of time it is given you to be, having finished with becoming.
God | Joy | Love | Prayer | Regret | Time | Truth | God | Learn |
True love begins when nothing is looked for in return. And if the habit of prayer is seen to be so important for teaching a man to love his fellow men, this is because no answer is given to his prayers. Your love is based on hatred when you wrap yourself up in a certain man or woman on whom you batten as a stock of food laid by and, like dogs snarling at teach other round their trough, you fall to hating anyone who casts even a glance at your repast. you call it love, this selfish appetite. No sooner is love bestowed on you than (even as in your false friendships) you convert this free gift into servitude and bondage and, from the very moment you are loved, you begin to fancy yourself wronged.
Appetite | Habit | Important | Love | Man | Men | Nothing | Prayer | Servitude | Teach | Woman |
Baal Shem Tov, given name Yisroel ben Eliezer
Each prayer has it own proper meaning and it is therefore the specific key to a door in the Divine Palace, but a broken heart is an axe which opens all the gates.
Augur said, " Give me neither poverty or riches"' and this will ever be the prayer of the wise. Our incomes should be like our shoes: if too small, they will gall and pinch us, but if too large, they will cause us to stumble and to trip. But wealth, after all, is a relative thing, since he that has little, and wants less, is richer than he that has much, but wants more.
Cause | Gall | Little | Poverty | Prayer | Riches | Wants | Wealth | Will | Wise |
François Guizot, fully François Pierre Guillaume Guizot
Prayer is more the mere outburst of the desires or sorrows of the soul, seeking that satisfaction or consolation which it does not find within itself. It is the expression of a faith, instinctive or reflective, obscure or clear, wavering or steadfast, in the existence, the presence, the power and the sympathy of the Being to whom prayer is addressed.
Consolation | Existence | Faith | Power | Prayer | Soul | Sympathy | Wavering |