This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Every man has obligation which belong to his station. Duties extend beyond obligations, and direct the affections, desires, and intentions, as well as the actions.
Character | Man | Obligation |
Sharing is the great and imperative need of our time. An unshared life is not living. He who shares does not lessen but greatens his life, especially if sharing be done not formally nor conventionally, but rather with such heartiness as springs out of an understanding of the meaning of the religion of sharing.
Character | Life | Life | Meaning | Need | Religion | Time | Understanding |
J.M. Barrie, fully Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet
One's religion is whatever he is most interested in.
Clive Bell, fully Arthur Clive Heward Bell
Art and Religion are, then, two roads by which men escape from circumstance to ecstasy. Between aesthetic and religious rapture there is a family alliance. Art and Religion are means similar states of mind.
Aesthetic | Art | Ecstasy | Family | Means | Men | Mind | Religion | Wisdom | Art | Circumstance |
It is not the profession of religion which creates the obligation for the performance of duty; for that existed before any such profession was made. The profession of religion only recognizes the obligation.
Duty | Obligation | Religion | Wisdom |
Pearl S. Buck, fully Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu
Science and religion, religion and science, put it as I may, they are two sides of the same glass, through which we see darkly until these two, focusing together, reveal the truth.
William J. H. Boetcker, fully William John Henry Boetcker
True religion is not a mere doctrine, something that can be taught, but is a way of life. A life in community with God. It must be experienced to be appreciated. A life of service. A living by giving and finding one's own happiness by bringing happiness into the lives of others.
Doctrine | Giving | God | Life | Life | Religion | Service | Wisdom | Happiness |
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
Revenge is a common passion; it is the sun of the uninstructed. The savage deems it noble; but the religion of Christ, which is the sublime civilizer, emphatically condemns it. Why? Because religion ever seeks to ennoble man; and nothing so debases him as revenge.
The moment you can make a very simple discovery, viz., that obligation to God is your privilege, and is not imposed as a burden, your experience will teach you many things - that duty is liberty, that repentance is a release from sorrow, that sacrifice is gain, that humility is dignity, that the truth from that which you hide is a healing element that bathes your disordered life, and that even the penalties and terrors of God are the artillery only to protection to His realm.
Dignity | Discovery | Duty | Experience | God | Humility | Liberty | Life | Life | Obligation | Repentance | Sacrifice | Sorrow | Teach | Truth | Will | Wisdom | God |
G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton
It is the test of a good religion whether you can make a joke about it.
Religion is not a perpetual moping over good books. Religion is not even prayer, praise, holy ordinances, these are necessary to religion - no man can be religious without them. But religion is mainly and chiefly the glorifying of god amid the duties and trials of the world; the guiding of our course amid adverse winds and currents of temptation by the sunlight of duty and the compass of Divine truth, the bearing up manfully, wisely, courageously, for the honor of Christ, our great Leader in the conflict of life.
Books | Duty | God | Good | Honor | Life | Life | Man | Praise | Prayer | Religion | Temptation | Trials | Truth | Wisdom | World | God | Leader | Temptation |
I extend the circle of real religion very widely. Many men fear God, and love God, and have sincere desire to serve him, whose views of religious truth are very imperfect, and in some points utterly false. But may not many such persons have a state of heart acceptable before God?
Desire | Fear | God | Heart | Love | Men | Religion | Truth | Wisdom |