This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
You are to honor, improve, and perfect the spirit that is within you: you are to prepare it for the kingdom of heaven, to nourish it with the love of God and of virtue, to adorn it with good works, and to make it as holy and heavenly as you can.
Alms | Chastity | God | Heart | Praise | Wills | Work | God |
Reformation If it be the earnest desire and longing of your heart to be merciful as He is merciful; to be full of His unwearied patience, to dwell in His unalterable meekness; if you long to be like Him in universal, impartial love; if you desire to communicate every good to every creature that you are able; if you love and practice everything that is good, righteous, and lovely for its own sake, because it is good, righteous, and lovely; and resist no evil but with goodness; then you have the utmost certainty that the Spirit of God dwells and governs in you.
Would you know who is the greatest saint in the world? It is not he who prays most or fasts most; it is not he who gives most alms or is most eminent for temperance, chastity or justice; but it is he who is always thankful to God, who wills everything that God wills, who receives everything as an instance of God’s goodness and has a heart always ready to praise God for it. Could you therefore work miracles, you could not do more for yourself than by this thankful spirit, for it turns all that it touches into happiness.
Conceit causes more conversation than wit.
A shrewd man has to arrange his interests in order of importance and deal with them one by one; but often our greed upsets this order and makes us run after so many things at once that through over-anxiety to obtain the trivial, we miss the most important.
Few people know death, we only endure it, usually from determination, and even from stupidity and custom; and most men only die because they know not how to prevent dying.
Heat of blood makes young people change their inclinations often, and habit makes old ones keep to theirs a great while.
There are a great many men valued in society who have nothing to recommend them but serviceable vices.
Self-interest | Virtue | Virtue |
We do not regret the loss of our friends by reasons of their merit, but because of our needs and for the good opinion that we believed them to have held of us.
The principal point of cleverness is to know how to value things just as they deserve.
The secret of pleasing in conversation is not to explain too much everything; to say them half and leave a little for divination is a mark of the good opinion we have of others, and nothing flatters their self-love more.
Praise |
The sort of liveliness which increases with age is not far distant from madness.
We should often be ashamed of our finest actions if the world understood all the motives behind them.
There are some people who would never have fallen in love if they had not heard there was such a thing.