This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
William Temple, fully Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet
The heart of Religion is not an opinion about God, such as philosophy might reach as the conclusion of an argument; it is a personal relation with God.
William Temple, fully Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet
One great gain that the scientific use of the comparative method of religion has brought us is the duty of genuine reverence for other men’s beliefs... Whatever thoughts any human soul is seeking to live by, deserve the reverence of every other human soul.
Thomas Brackett Reed, aka Czar Reed
The truth survives, the untruth perishes. Men have but little capacity for the recognition of truth at first sight, and of a hundred things which seem plausible, it is fortunate if one be true. Hence it is well that all things should be held at arm’s length and stand the scrutiny of our prejudices and interests, of our religion and our skepticism.
Thomas Erskine, aka Thomas Erskine of Linlathen
All religion is in the change from He to Thou. It is a mere abstraction as long as it is He. Only with the Thou we know God.
Nature teaches us to love our friends, but religion our enemies.
Difference of religion breeds more quarrels than difference of politics.
Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant
So I say that civilizations begin with religion and stoicism: they end with skepticism and unbelief, and the undisciplined pursuit of individual pleasure. A civilization is born stoic and dies epicurean.
Civilization | Individual | Pleasure | Religion | Skepticism | Stoic | Unbelief |
The heart has its own reasons... The heart is a mystery - not a puzzle that can’t be solved, but a mystery in the religious sense: unfathomable, beyond manipulation, showing traces of the finger of God at work... Everything associated with the heart - relationship, emotion, passion - can only be grasped and appreciated with the tools of religion and poetry.
God | Heart | Mystery | Passion | Poetry | Relationship | Religion | Sense | Work | God |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reasoning.
Benjamin Cardozo, fully Benjamin Nathan Cardozo
The submergence of self in the pursuit of an ideal, the readiness to spend oneself without measure, prodigally, almost ecstatically, for something intuitively apprehended as great and noble, spend oneself one knows not why - some of us like to believe that this is what religion means.