This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The laughter of man is the contentment of God.
Character | Contentment | God | Laughter | Man |
Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
It is with the desire for peace that wars are waged, even by those who take pleasure in exercising their warlike nature in command and battle. And hence it is obvious that peace is the end sought for by war. For every man seeks peace by waging war, but no man seeks war by making peace... Even wicked men wage war to maintain the peace of their own circle, and wish that, if possible, all men belonged to them, that all men and things might serve but one head, and might, either through love or fear, yield themselves to peace with him!
Battle | Desire | Fear | Love | Man | Men | Nature | Peace | Pleasure | War | Wisdom |
The first and worst of all frauds is the cheat one's self. All sin is easy after that.
From labor, health; from health, contentment springs.
Contentment | Health | Labor | Wisdom |
Bible or The Bible or Holy Bible NULL
Blessed is the man who finds wisdom, the man who gains understanding, for she is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold. She is more precious than rubies; nothing you desire can compare with her.
Better | Desire | Gold | Man | Nothing | Understanding | Wisdom |
The defect of equality is that we only desire it with our superiors.
Bad will be the day for every man when he becomes absolutely contented with the life that he is living, with the thoughts that he is thinking, with the deeds that he is doing, when there is not forever beating at the doors of his soul some great desire to do something larger, which he knows that he was means and made to do because he is still, in spite of it all, the child of God.
Day | Deeds | Desire | God | Life | Life | Man | Means | Soul | Thinking | Will | Wisdom | Deeds | Child |
The best advisers, helpers and friends, always are not those who tell us how to act in special cases, but who give us, out of themselves, the ardent spirit and desire to act right, and leave us then, even through many blunders, to find out what our own form of right action is
Henry Bolingbroke, Henry IV of England
As thou desirest the love of God and man, beware of pride. It is a tumor in the mind, that breaks and ruins all thine actions; a worm in thy treasury, that eats and ruins thine estate. It loves no man, and is beloved of none; it disparages another's virtues by detraction, and thine own vainglory. It is the friend of the flatterer, the mother of envy, the nurse of fury, the sin of devils, and devil of mankind. It hates superiors, scorns inferiors, and owns no equal. In short, till thou hate it, God hate thee.
Devil | Envy | Friend | Fury | God | Hate | Love | Man | Mankind | Mind | Mother | Pride | Sin | Wisdom | God |
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
Ere yet we yearn for what is out of our reach, we are still in the cradle. When wearied out with our yearnings, desire again falls asleep, we are on the death-bed.
Fashion is the science of appearances, and it inspires one with the desire to seem rather than to be.
Richard Francis Burton, fully Sir Richard Francis Burton
Every other sin hath some pleasures annexed to it, or will admit of some excuse, but envy wants both. We should strive against it, for if indulged in it will be to us as a foretaste of hell upon earth.
God made sin possible just as he made all lying wonders possible, but he never made it a fact, never set anything in his plan to harmonize with it. Therefore it enters the world as a forbidden fact against everything that God has ordained.
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 |
All progress is based on a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
Theodore Cuyler, fully Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
Know what your sin is and confess it; but do not imagine that you have approved yourself a penitent by confessing sin in the abstract.