This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
I sought my soul but my soul I could not see. I sought my God but my God eluded me. I sought my brother, and I found all three.
Love is the doorway thru which the human soul passes from selfishness to service and from solitude to kinship with all mankind.
No consenting soul can be made to sin, and so sin is inexcusable.
A.C. Benson, fully Arthur Christopher “A.C.” Benson
Religious worship is only as it were a postern by the side of the great portals of beauty and nobility and truth. One whose heart is filled with a yearning mystery at the sight of the starry heavens, who can adore the splendor of noble actions, courageous deeds, patient affections, who can see and love the beauty so abundantly shed abroad in the world… he can at all these moments draw near to God, and open his soul to the influx of the Divine Spirit.
Beauty | Deeds | God | Heart | Love | Mystery | Nobility | Soul | Spirit | Truth | World | Worship | Beauty |
What man is there whom contact with a great soul will not exalt? A drop of water upon the petal of a lotus glistens with the splendors of the pearl.
A.C. Benson, fully Arthur Christopher “A.C.” Benson
The joy of all mysteries is the certainty which comes from their contemplation, that there are many doors yet for the soul to open on her upward and inward way.
Contemplation | Joy | Soul |
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
No conjunction can possibly occur, however fearful, however tremendous it may appear, from which a man by his own energy may not extricate himself.
Ayn Rand, born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum
Do not let the hero in our soul perish, in the lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it impossible, it's yours.
Bahya ben Joseph ibn Pakuda NULL
He who trusts in God is able to remove his attention from worldly anxieties and devote it entirely to doing what is right. For in the peace of his soul and liberty of his mind, and in the disappearance of his anxieties about worldly matters, he is like an alchemist who knows how to turn tin into silver and silver into gold.
Attention | God | Gold | Liberty | Mind | Peace | Right | Soul | God |
Bahya ben Joseph ibn Pakuda NULL
What is trust? Tranquillity of soul in the one who trusts... Who trusts in God fears no man.
Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without passion, without business, without entertainment, without care. It is then that he recognizes that he is empty, insufficient, dependent, ineffectual. From the depths of the soul now comes at once boredom, gloom, sorrow, chagrin, resentment and despair.
Business | Care | Despair | Entertainment | Gloom | Man | Nothing | Passion | Resentment | Rest | Sorrow | Soul |
Generally we are occupied either with the miseries which now we feel, or with those which threaten; and even when we see ourselves sufficiently secure from the approach of either, still fretfulness, though unwarranted by either present or expected affliction, fails not to spring up from the deep recesses of the heart, where its roots naturally grow, and to fill the soul with its poison.
Affliction | Fretfulness | Heart | Present | Soul |
There is nothing so insupportable to man as to be in entire repose, without passion, occupation, amusement, or application. Then it is that he feels his own nothingness, isolations, insignificance, dependent nature, powerlessness, emptiness. Immediately there issue from his soul ennui, sadness, chagrin, vexation, despair.
Despair | Ennui | Insignificance | Man | Nature | Nothing | Occupation | Passion | Repose | Sadness | Soul |
When malice has reason on its side, it looks forth bravely, and displays that reason in all its luster. When austerity and self-denial have not realized true happiness, and the soul returns to the dictates of nature, the reaction is fearfully extravagant.
Looks | Malice | Nature | Reason | Self | Self-denial | Soul |