This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Whoever interrupts the conversation of others to make a display of his fund of knowledge, makes notorious his own stock of ignorance.
Patience |
Salt, when dissolved in water, may disappear, but it does not cease to exist. We can be sure of its presence by tasting the water. Likewise, the indwelling Christ, though unseen, will be made evident to others from the love which he imparts to us.
Saint Francis of Assisi, born Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone NULL
We have been called to heal wounds, to unite what has fallen apart, and to bring home those who have lost their way.
Saint Francis of Assisi, born Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone NULL
Where there is discord may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. Where there is despair, may we bring hope.
Anger | Charity | Enemy | Excess | Fear | Lord | Mercy | Patience | Peace | Poverty | Wisdom |
Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL
Like a blind man he must lean on dark faith, accept it for his guide and light, and rest on nothing of what he understands, tastes, feels, or imagines. To reach the supernatural bounds a person must depart from his natural bounds and leave self far off in respect to his interior and exterior limits in order to mount from a low state to the highest.
God | Knowledge | Patience | Practice | Purity | Soul | Strength | Thought | God | Thought |
Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL
These acts of love of the soul are most precious and even one of them is of greater merit and worth than all that the soul has done in its life apart from this transformation. These wounds, which are the fires of God, are the sparks of these tender touches of flame which touch the soul intermittently and proceed from the fire of love, which is not idle, but whose flames strike and wound my soul in its deepest center. The virtues and properties of God, which are perfect in the extreme, war against the habits and properties of the soul, which are imperfect in the extreme, so that the soul has to suffer the existence of two contraries within it. This flame of love makes the soul feel its hardness and aridity. The soul says to God, ‘Perfect me now if it be Thy will.’
Let us not lower our eyes without humiliating at the same time the heart; let not others think we want the last place without truly desiring it.
John Chrysostom, fully Saint John Chrysostom
Happiness can only be achieved by looking inward & learning to enjoy whatever life has and this requires transforming greed into gratitude.
Abundance | Age | Cheerfulness | Consolation | Despise | Love | Means | Patience | Sacred | World |
Let the crux of the matter be this: strive to move forward on the spiritual path. . . it simply is not possible that a soul who has come this far would stop growing. Love is never idle.
There is a vast difference between an Apostolic life and the solitude of the Carthusians. The latter is truly very holy but is not suited to those whom God has called to the former, which is in itself more excellent.
I beg Our Lord, Monsieur, that we may be able to die to ourselves in order to rise with Him, that he may be the joy of your heart, the end and soul of your actions, and your glory in heaven. This will come to pass if, from now on, we humble ourselves as He humbled Himself, if we renounce our own satisfaction to follow Him by carrying our little crosses, and if we give our lives willingly, as He gave His, for our neighbor whom He loves so much and whom He wants us to love as ourselves.
Well! bon Dieu! what better opportunity awaits you to suffer something for God? I certainly see none. In the name of God, Monsieur, let us not be so little attached to God's service that we yield to a useless fear which may cause us to abandon the task He has given us.
It will be most pleasing to Our Lord if you husband your strength in order to serve Him better.
Gentleness | Patience | Will |
An obstinate man does not hold opinions, but they hold him; for when he is once possest with an error it is like a devil, only cast out with great difficulty. Whatsoever he lays hold on, like a drowning man, he never loses, though it do but help to sink him the sooner. His ignorance is abrupt and inaccessible, impregnable both by art and nature, and will hold out to the last, though it has nothing but rubbish to defend.
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery there never is any recourse to the mention of it.
Patience |
Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle
'Good morning, madam’, said Holmes, cheerily. 'My name is Sherlock Holmes. This is my intimate friend and associate, Dr. Watson, before whom you can speak as freely as before myself.’
When the highest promises are made, God expects they should be put in suit; our Savior joins the promise and the petition together; the promise to encourage the petition, and the petition to enjoy the promise: he doth not say perhaps it shall be given, but it shall, that is, it certainly shall; your heavenly Father is unchangeably willing to give you those things. We must depend upon his immutability for the thing, and submit to his wisdom for the time. Prayer is an acknowledgment of our dependence upon God; which dependence could have no firm foundation without unchangeableness. Prayer doth not desire any change in God, but is offered to God that he would confer those things which he hath immutably willed to communicate; but he willed them not without prayer as the means of bestowing them. The light of the sun is ordered for our comfort, for the discovery of visible things, for the ripening of the fruits of the earth; but withal it is required that we use our faculty of seeing, that we employ our industry in sowing and planting, and expose our fruits to the view of the sun; that they may receive the influence of it. If a man shuts his eyes, and complains that the sun is changed into darkness, it would be ridiculous; the sun is not changed, but we alter ourselves; nor is God changed in not giving us the blessings he hath promised, because he hath promised in the way of a due address to him, and opening our souls to receive his influence, and to this, his immutability is the greatest encouragement.
If every man had a beginning, every man then was once nothing; he could not then make himself, because nothing cannot be the cause of something; “The Lord he is God; he hath made us, and not we ourselves” (Ps. c. iii.) Whatsoever begun in time was not; and when it was nothing, it had nothing, and could do nothing; and therefore could never give to itself, nor to any other, to be—or to be able to do: for then it gave what it had not, and did what it could not. Since reason must acknowledge a first of every kind, a first man, etc., it must acknowledge him created and made, not by himself: why have not other men since risen up by themselves, not by chance? why hath not chance produced the like in that long time the world hath stood? If we never knew anything give being to itself, how can we imagine anything ever could?
There is no sense to a sacrifice after you come to feel that it is a sacrifice.