This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Maximus of Tyre, fully Cassius Maximus Tyrius NULL
Moral worth, not prayer, determines the bestowal of blessings by the gods. The factors governing the things men pray for are: Providence, Fate, Chance, Skill. Providence is unaffected by prayer. Fate is unaffected by prayer. Chance is unaffected by prayer. Prayer is superfluous to the workings of human skill. Petitionary prayer is superfluous in all circumstances. True (philosophical) prayer is of a different kind: witness Socrates and Pythagoras.
Maximus of Tyre, fully Cassius Maximus Tyrius NULL
Amid so much war and contest and variety of opinion, you will find one consenting conviction in every land, that there is one God, the King and Father of all.
Art | Father | Memory | Object | Time | Words | Art | Understand |
Article 8 - The United Nations shall place no restrictions on the eligibility of men and women to participate in any capacity and under conditions of equality in its principal and subsidiary organs.
Aggression | Attainment | Conformity | Distinction | Justice | Nations | Peace | Principles | Problems | Respect | Rights | Self-determination | Suppression | Respect |
These repeated forgeries and falsifications create a well-founded suspicion that all the cases spoken of concerning the person called Jesus Christ are made cases, on purpose to lug in, and that very clumsily, some broken sentences from the Old Testament.
Ambition | Avarice | Balance | Courage | Good | Heart | Man | Order | People | Power | Property | Will | World | Ambition |
When it shall be said in any country in the world my poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want; the taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I am a friend of its happiness: When these things can be said, there may that country boast its Constitution and its Government
Song From The Persian - Ah, sad are they who know not love, But, far from passion's tears and smiles, Drift down a moonless sea, beyond The silvery coasts of fairy isles. And sadder they whose longing lips Kiss empty air, and never touch The dear warm mouth of those they love -- Waiting, wasting, suffering much. But clear as amber, fine as musk, Is life to those who, pilgrim-wise, Move hand in hand from dawn to dusk, Each morning nearer Paradise. Ah, not for them shall angels pray! They stand in everlasting light, They walk in Allah's smile by day, And slumber in his heart by night.
William Henley, fully William Ernest Henley
Margaritae Sorori - A late lark twitters from the quiet skies: And from the west, Where the sun, his day's work ended, Lingers as in content, There falls on the old, gray city An influence luminous and serene, A shining peace. The smoke ascends In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires Shine and are changed. In the valley Shadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun, Closing his benediction, Sinks, and the darkening air Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night-- Night with her train of stars And her great gift of sleep. So be my passing! My task accomplish'd and the long day done, My wages taken, and in my heart Some late lark singing, Let me be gather'd to the quiet west, The sundown splendid and serene, Death.
Chance | Heart | Man | Praise | Pride | Search | Sound | Worth | Loss |
In the second petition (which is, Thy kingdom come) we pray, That Satan's kingdom may be destroyed; and that the kingdom of grace may be advanced, ourselves and others brought into it, and kept in it; and that the kingdom of glory may be hastened.
Willard L. Sperry, fully Willard Learoyd Sperry
Have a daily, inaccessible fixed period of study: I agree that this is a must. However, ministers must be accessible most of the time, so the inaccessibility factor would have to be carefully planned and not abused. Some would seclude themselves in private study to the neglect of their congregations, but a minister must have uninterrupted time for study. One’s time in the Word is as precious as one’s duty to a fellow saint.
Acquaintance | Reading |
In the third petition (which is, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven) we pray, That God, by his grace, would make us able and willing to know, obey, and submit to his will in all things, as the angels do in heaven.
W. Ian Thomas, fully Walter Ian Thomas
Make sure it is God's trumpet you are blowing- if it is only yours it won't wake the dead, it will simply disturb the neighbours.
Capacity | Consequences | Life | Life | Little | Understand |
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 |
Man is homo religiosus, by 'nature' religious: as much as he needs food to eat or air to breathe, he needs a faith for living.
Ethics | Experience | Materialism | People | Politics | Will | Words | Wrong |
W. J. Dawson. fully William James Dawson
Inspirations - Sometimes, I know not why, nor how, nor whence, A change comes over me, and then the task Of common life slips from me. Would you ask What power is this which bids the world go hence? Who knows? I only feel a faint perfume Steal through the rooms of life; a saddened sense Of something lost; a music as of brooks That babble to the sea; pathetic looks Of closing eyes that in a darkened room Once dwelt on mine: I feel the general doom Creep nearer, and with God I stand alone. O mystic sense of sudden quickening! Hope’s lark-song rings, or life’s deep undertone Wails through my heart--and then I needs must sing.
There are times when minds need to turn to simple things. Perhaps for a few of these nights all of us might do well to leave the briefcases at the office and to read again the pages of the Bible, and to re-read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. We might do well to stay home a few days and walk over the fields, or to stand in the shelter of the barn door and reflect upon the relentless and yet benevolent forces of Mother Nature. The laws of nature are relentless. They can never be disobeyed without exacting a penalty. Yet they are benevolent, for when they are understood and obeyed, nature yields up the abundance that blesses those who understand and obey.
Children | Freedom | Good | Happy | Honor | Industry | Labor | Land | Liberty | Magic | Men | Miracles | People | Work | World |
At no time have I ever thought of myself as anything other than a Christian. At no time have I ever supposed that God could not adequately reach out to me, to challenge and to comfort, in my own Christian faith and community. Yet at no time have I ever supposed that God could not also reach out to other persons in their traditions and communities as fully and as satisfyingly as he has to me in mine. At no time have I ever felt I would be justified in seeking to uproot an adherent of another tradition from his faithful following of that tradition. My Christianity—including my sense of Christian ministry—has commanded that I be open to learn from the faith of others.
Wally Armstrong and Ken Blanchard
Many of us spend our whole lives pursuing illusive things such as wealth, power, and status. These things are not bad, but if we make them the focal point of our existence, we will end up missing the greatest joys of life. When we base our sense of value and worth on our performance and the opinions of others, we live on a perpetual roller coaster. If our performance is good and people affirm us, we feel great. But, if we are struggling to meet our goals and others begin to look down on us . . . you know what happens. We begin to feel bad about who we are.
Joy | Self-worth | Will |
Willard Quine, fully Willard Van Orman Quine
Students of the heavens are separable into astronomers and astrologers as readily as the minor domestic ruminants into sheep and goats, but the separation of philosophers into sages and cranks seems to be more sensitive to frames of reference.
Comfort | Distinction |
The Schoolboy - I love to rise in a summer morn When the birds sing on every tree; The distant huntsman winds his horn, And the skylark sings with me. O! what sweet company. But to go to school in a summer morn, O! it drives all joy away; Under a cruel eye outworn, The little ones spend the day In sighing and dismay. Ah! then at times I drooping sit, And spend many an anxious hour, Nor in my book can I take delight, Nor sit in learning’s bower, Worn thro’ with the dreary shower. How can the bird that is born for joy Sit in a cage and sing? How can a child, when fears annoy, But droop his tender wing, And forget his youthful spring? O! father and mother, if buds are nipp’d And blossoms blown away, And if the tender plants are stripp’d Of their joy in the springing day, By sorrow and care’s dismay, How shall the summer arise in joy, Or the summer fruits appear? Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy, Or bless the mellowing year, When the blasts of winter appear?
Darkness | Dread | Father | Jealousy | Light | Love | Youth | Youth |