This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Men are admitted into Heaven not because they have curbed and governed their Passions or have no Passions, but because they have Cultivated their Understandings.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
When some one sorrow, that is yet reparable, gets hold of your mind like a monomania, when you think, because Heaven has denied you this or that on which you had set your heart, that all your life must be a blank, oh, then diet yourself well on biography - the biography of good and great men.
Diet | Good | Heart | Heaven | Life | Life | Men | Mind | Sorrow | Wisdom |
Why fear tomorrow, timid heart? Why tread the future's way? We only need to do our part Today, dear child, today. The past is written! Close the book On pages sad and gay; Within the future do not look, But live today-today. "Tis this one hour that God has given; His now we must obey; And it will make our earth his heaven To live today-today.
Earth | Fear | Future | God | Heart | Heaven | Need | Past | Will | Wisdom | God |
All finite things have their roots in the infinite, and if you wish to understand life at all, you cannot tear out its context. And that context, astounding even to bodily eyes, is the heaven of stars and the incredible procession of the great galaxies.
Heaven | Life | Life | Wisdom | Understand |
It is not true that there are no enjoyments in the ways of sin; there are, many and various. But the great and radical defect of them all is, that they are transitory and insubstantial, at war with reason and conscience, and always leave a sting behind... They may and often do satisfy us for a moment; but it is death in the end. It is the bread of heaven and the water of life that can so satisfy that we shall hunger no more and thirst no more forever.
Conscience | Death | Heaven | Hunger | Life | Life | Reason | Sin | War | Wisdom |
That person lives in hell who gets what he desires too soon. Whether he finds his happiness in wealth, power, fame or women, or in a combination of all, that happiness will be meaningless if it robs him of his desire. Heaven is a country through which we are permitted to search eagerly and with hope for what we want.
Desire | Fame | Heaven | Hell | Hope | Power | Search | Wealth | Will | Wisdom | Happiness |
True religion is not what men see and admire; it is what God sees and loves... The cheerful consecration of all the powers of the soul; the worship which rising above all outward forms, ascends to God in the sweetest, dearest communion - a worship often too deep for utterance, and than which the highest heaven knows nothing more sublime.
Consecration | God | Heaven | Men | Nothing | Religion | Soul | Wisdom | Worship | God |
The mere observing of a thing is no use whatsoever. Observing turns into beholding, beholding to thinking, thinking into establishing connections, so that one may say that every attentive glance we cast on the world is an act of theorizing. However, this ought to be done consciously, with self-criticism, with freedom, and, to use a daring word, with irony.
Criticism | Daring | Freedom | Irony | Self | Thinking | Wisdom | World |
Twin-sister of natural and revealed religion, and of heavenly birth, science will never belie her celestial origin, nor cease to sympathize with all that emanates from the same pure home. Human ignorance and prejudice may for a time seem to have divorced what God has joined together; but human ignorance and prejudice shall at length pass away, and then science and religion shall be seen blending their parti-colored rays into one beautiful bow of light, linking heaven to earth and earth to heaven.
Birth | Earth | God | Heaven | Ignorance | Light | Prejudice | Religion | Science | Time | Will | Wisdom | God |