This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The pleasure of sin is of short duration… It operates on a law of diminishing returns. The more often it is repeated, the more familiar with its face, the less pleasure sin gives.
Sin is disappointing. Whoever got out of sin half as much pleasure as he expected?
Serving God is the way to gain knowledge of Him. God is the source of life, knowledge – everything – and gaining a close, intimate knowledge of God through our service to Him is the ultimate experience. He is the ultimate mystery – and the ultimate discovery.
Discovery | Experience | God | Knowledge | Life | Life | Mystery | Service | God |
I lose God, I lose the world, I lose myself, if I want only to clutch at things and use them only for my own pleasure or profit.
Jonathan Swift, pen names, M.B. Drapier, Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff
Whosoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.
There is a difference between happiness and enjoyment. Happiness is the result of pursuing a goal. Pursuit of the goal generates an energizing sense of purpose. Enjoyment, on the other hand, is an immediate sensation of pleasure; a person can enjoy a piece of cake, a piece of art, a good joke – it gives pleasure but then passes.
Art | Enjoyment | Good | Pleasure | Purpose | Purpose | Sense | Happiness |
T’ai-p’ing-ching [Classic of the Highest Peace or Book of Supreme Peace] by Yü Chi NULL
Of all the love, kindness and pleasure a man can experience in this world, nothing is more beautiful than the love of a woman. If it is granted him, and the two have a child together, they are fused in a single heart in the child, which is truly the most pleasing thing love and kindness can give, and this will always be a bond between them.
Experience | Heart | Kindness | Love | Man | Nothing | Pleasure | Will | Woman | World | Child |
We live by Faith; but Faith is not the slave of text and legend. Reason’s voice and God’s, Nature’s and Duty’s, never are at odds. What asks our Father of His children, save justice and mercy and humility, a reasonable service of good deeds, pure living, tenderness to human needs, reverence and trust, and prayer for light to see the Master’s footprints in our daily ways? No knotted scourge nor sacrificial knife, but the calm beauty of an ordered life whose very breathing is unworded praise! A life that stands as all true lives have stood firm-rooted in the faith that God is good.
Beauty | Children | Deeds | Duty | Faith | Father | God | Good | Humility | Justice | Life | Life | Light | Mercy | Nature | Praise | Prayer | Reason | Reverence | Service | Tenderness | Trust | Beauty | God |