This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Most of our conflicts and difficulties come from trying to deal with the spiritual and practical aspects of our life separately instead of realizing them as parts of one whole. If our practical life is centered on our own interests, cluttered up by possessions, distracted by ambitions, passions, wants and worries, beset by a sense of our own rights and importance, or anxieties for our own future, or longings for our own success, we need not expect that our spiritual life will be a contrast to all this. The soul's house is not built on such a convenient plan; there are few soundproof partitions in it. Only when the conviction - not merely the idea - that the demand of the Spirit, however inconvenient, rules the whole of it, will those objectionable noises die down which have a way of penetrating into the nicely furnished little oratory and drowning all the quieter voices by their din.
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
I came to the conclusion many years ago that almost all crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression.
Those who complain that they make no progress in the life of prayer because they cannot meditate should examine, not their capacity for meditation, but their capacity for suffering and love. For there is a hard and costly element, a deep seriousness, a crucial choice, in all genuine religion.
Dependence | God | Language | Life | Life | Little | Religion | Universe | God |
The offertory is the first essential action of the Liturgy, because in it we make the costly and solemn oblation, under tokens, of our very selves and all our substance; that they may be transformed, quickened, and devoted to the interests of God.
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
I've always been bad. Probably I shall be bad again, punished again. But the worse I am, the more I need God. I can't shut myself out from His mercy. ... Or it may be a private bargain between me and God, that if I give up this one thing I want so much, however bad I am, He won't quite despair of me in the end.
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
The next four weeks of solitary confinement were among the happiest of Paul's life...It was so exhilarating, he found, never to have to make any decision on any subject, to be wholly relieved from the smallest consideration of time, meas, or clothes, to have no anxiety ever about what kind of impression he was making; in fact, to be free.
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
Literature is the right use of language irrespective of the subject or reason of utterance.
Absurd | Distinction | Effort | Excitement | Growth | Ideas | Inevitable | Life | Life | Men | Organic | People | Right | Think |
Evelyn Glennie, fully Evelyn Elizabeth Ann Glennie
Percussion is the most adaptable family of instruments. The biggest challenge is to project percussion in a lyrical way.
Our forefathers left us a free government which is a miracle of faith — strong, durable, marvelously workable. Yet it can remain so only as long as we understand it, believe in it, devote ourselves to it, and, when necessary, fight for it.
Better | Desire | God | Good | Life | Life | Man | Men | Progress | Rights | Sacred | God |
By what sort of experience are we led to the conviction that spirit exists ? On the whole, by searching, painful experience. The rose Religion grows on a thorn-bush, and we must not be afraid to have our fingers lacerated by the thorns if we would pluck the rose.
Tonight I will speak to you about our beloved republic and the inspired agents whom God raised up to establish the foundation upon which our liberty rests. . . . I speak to you as members of the “household of faith,” the Lord’s true church, and remind you of your solemn charge to uphold, sustain, and defend the kingdom of God. The destiny of America was divinely decreed. The events that established our great nation were foreknown to God and revealed to prophets of old. As in an enacted drama, the players who came on the scene were rehearsed and selected for their parts. Their talent, abilities, capacities, and weaknesses were known before they were born.
Abundance | Authority | Body | Books | Man | Mother | Sense | Tenderness |
We had better take our small pain now than our greater loss later. There were souls who wished afterwards that they had stood and fought with Washington and the founding fathers, but they waited too long—they passed up eternal glory. There has never been a greater time than now to stand up against entrenched evil. And while the gentiles established the Constitution, we have a divine mandate to preserve it. But unfortunately today in this freedom struggle, many gentiles are showing greater wisdom in their generation than the children of light.
Attention | Blessings | Evil | Faith | Focus | Freedom | Individual | Life | Life | Principles | Reading | Will | Learn |