This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We are building many splendid churches in this country, but we are not providing leaders to run them. I would rather have a wooden church with a splendid parson, than a splendid church with a wooden parson.
There will be trouble if the cobbler starts making pies. (A person should concern himself with his own trade or occupation and should not engage in, or give advice about, other trades or occupations)
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.
Christ and The Church: If he were to apply for a divorce on the grounds of cruelty, adultery and desertion, he would probably get one.
The capacity to give one's attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. Nearly all those who think they have this capacity do not possess it. Warmth of heart, impulsiveness, pity are not enough.
Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle
Now, Watson, said Holmes, as a tall dog-cart dashed up through the gloom, throwing out two golden tunnels of yellow light from its side lanterns. You’ll come with me, won’t you?
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Thérèse de Lisieux, fully Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. born Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin NULL
And do you not think that on their side the great Saints, seeing what they owe to quite little souls, will love them with an incomparable love? Delightful and surprising will be the friendships found there - I am sure of it. The favored companion of an Apostle or a great Doctor of the Church, will perhaps be a young shepherd lad; and a simple little child may be the intimate friend of a Patriarch. Oh! how I long to dwell in that Kingdom of Love...
Thérèse de Lisieux, fully Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. born Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin NULL
My whole strength lies in prayer and sacrifice, these are my invincible arms; they can move hearts far better than words, I know it by experience. I have not the courage to force myself to seek beautiful prayers in books; not knowing which to choose I act as children do who cannot read; I say quite simply to the good God what I want to tell Him, and He always understands me.
Stanley Kunitz, fully Stanley Jasspon Kunitz
Old myths, old gods, old heroes have never died. They are only sleeping at the bottom of our mind, waiting for our call. We have need for them. They represent the wisdom of our race.
Let those be thy choicest companions who have made Christ their chief companion.
The best of men That e'er wore earth about him, was a sufferer A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit, The first true gentleman that ever breath'd.
This principle is old, but true as fate, Kings may love treason, but the traitor hate.
Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
The observations and encounters of a devotee of solitude and silence are at once less distinct and more penetrating than those of the sociable man; his thoughts are weightier, stranger, and never without a tinge of sadness. Images and perceptions which might otherwise be easily dispelled by a glance, a laugh, an exchange of comments, concern him unduly, they sink into mute depths, take on significance, become experiences, adventures, emotions.
Art | Body | Books | Individual | Shame | Youth | Youth | Art |
For now, oh my God, it is to You alone that I can talk, because nobody else will understand. I cannot bring any other man on this earth into the cloud where I dwell in Your light, that is, Your darkness, where I am lost and abashed. I cannot explain to any other man the anguish which is Your joy nor the loss which is the Possession of You, nor the distance from all things which is the arrival in You, nor the death which is the birth in You because I do not know anything about it myself and all I know is that I wish it were over - I wish it were begun.
Ultimately, these cannot be found anywhere except in the ground of our own being. There in the silent depths, there is no more distinction between the ‘I’ and the ‘Not-I’. There is perfect peace, because we are grounded in infinite creative and redemptive Love.
Glory | God | Heaven | Life | Life | Love | Means | Order | Will | World | God |
Willard L. Sperry, fully Willard Learoyd Sperry
This perpetual struggle between the magician and the religionist goes on in the mind and heart and will of every man of us. It goes on until it is rightly resolved, until man reborn into a mature religion ceases to try to coerce his God, and says humbly with Dante, “In thy will is our peace.” Religion, then, is not a matter of turning God to account in the realization of our own desires. Religion is trying to discover what God is about and then offering oneself to the Eternal Goodness, “as a man’s hand is to a man.” “It is not in man,” says a modern thinker, “to make religion what he will have her be, but only to become what religion is making him.” Perhaps, then, it is to save a man from the defeat and disillusionment of childish magic that there stands in our Bible that old story of the temptation of Jesus. Its ramifications and restatements are legion. Thou shalt not use thy God to get thy way. Thou shalt not coerce the Infinite to further the headstrong passing whim of the finite. Thou shalt not break the laws of health and then cajole thy God into working thee a miracle of healing. Thou shalt not let thy mind rot in idleness and then look for a sudden inspiration given by reality. Thou shalt not spend thine all upon the world that passes away and ask thy God at thy latter end to give thee the sudden boon of a credible immortality. Thou shalt not take this attitude at all, using the Most High as an amplifier and emergency device for realizing thy solitary and selfish will. “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” We are being told on all sides that religion is now breaking down, that its beliefs are an outworn delusion, and that all thoughtful men are being liberated into a perfect skepticism. That is not what is happening. What is happening is this, men are discovering again what they have discovered often before and then have forgotten, that magic will not work. But religion as a final attitude and reference of the finite human spirit towards its infinite universe remains and always must remain. It is the disposition of those disciplined natures of whom we say that they are pure in mind and heart and will. The true alternative to the outworn magic of primitive peoples is not the modern magic of persons disciplined in the applied sciences or the “new thought.” It is no solution of the ultimate moral and intellectual problem to trade self-will from the left hand of primitive magic to the right hand of applied science. What matters is a changed disposition and reference in this whole final commerce of man with his universe. Call it pure religion or pure science, the name does not matter. The one thing needful is that temper and disposition towards the will of God which we find in Jesus, Bernard, Pascal and Lister alike.
Control | Distinction | God | Lord | Man | Meaning | Men | Obedience | Religion | Science | Society | Temptation | Time | Universe | World | Society | Trial | God | Temptation |
The following Discourse [on art, by Sir Joshua Reynolds] is particularly Interesting to Blockheads as it endeavors to prove that There is No such thing as Inspiration and that any Man of a plain Understanding may by Thieving from Others become a Mich Angelo.
Every accessory, every instrument of usefulness, the church has now in such a degree and of such excellence as was never known in any other age; and we want but a supreme and glorious baptism of fire to exhibit to the world such a spectacle as would raise ten thousand hallelujahs to the glory of our King.