This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Knowledge is not a shop for profit or sale, but a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator, and the relief of men’s estate.
A young man who doesn’t believe in tomorrow morning is a traitor to himself.
Sum up at night what thou hast done by day, and in the morning what thou hast to do; dress and undress thy soul; mark the decay or growth of it. If with thy watch that too be down, then wind up both. Since thou shalt be most surely judged, make thine accounts agree.
The gravest events dawn with no more noise than the morning star makes in rising. All great developments complete themselves in the world, and modestly wait in silence, praising themselves never, and announcing themselves not at all. We must be sensitive, and sensible, if we would see the beginnings and endings of great things.
If God but cares for our inward and eternal life, if by all the experiences of this life He is reducing it and preparing for its disclosure, nothing can befall us but prosperity. Every sorrow shall be but the setting of some luminous jewel of joy. Our very morning shall be but the enamel around the diamond; our very hardships but the metallic rim that holds the opal, glancing with strange interior fires.
Eternal | God | Joy | Life | Life | Nothing | Prosperity | Sorrow | God |
The childhood shows the man, as the morning shows the day.
John Foster, fully John Watson Foster
What a superlatively grand and consoling idea is that of death! Without this radiant idea - this delightful morning star, indicting that the luminary of eternity is going to rise, life would, to my view, darken into midnight melancholy. The expectation of living here, and living thus always, would be indeed a prospect of overwhelming despair. But thanks to that fatal decree that dooms us to die; thanks to that gospel which opens the vision of an endless life; and thanks above all to that Saviour friend who has promised to conduct the faithful through the sacred trance of death, into scenes of Paradise and everlasting delight.
Conduct | Death | Despair | Eternity | Expectation | Friend | Life | Life | Melancholy | Paradise | Sacred | Vision | Expectation |
With what astonishment and veneration may we look into our own souls, where there are such hidden stores of virtue and knowledge, such inexhaustible sources of perfection. We know not yet what we shall be, nor will it ever enter into the heart to conceive the glory that will be always in reserve for it.
Glory | Heart | Knowledge | Perfection | Reserve | Virtue | Virtue | Will |
The test of real and vigorous thinking, the thinking which ascertains truths instead of dreaming dreams, is successful application to practice. Where that purpose does not exist, to give definiteness, precision, and an intelligible meaning to thought, it generates nothing better than the mystical metaphysics of the Pythagoreans or the Vedas.
Better | Dreams | Meaning | Metaphysics | Mystical | Nothing | Practice | Precision | Purpose | Purpose | Thinking | Thought | Truths |
Lord Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
A light supper, a good night’s sleep, and a fine morning have often made a hero of the same man who, by indigestion, a restless night, and a rainy morning, would have proved a coward.
Good | Hero | Indigestion | Light | Man |
The first thing I remember about the world – and I pray it may be the last – is that I was a stranger in it. This feeling, which everyone has in some degree, and which at once the glory and desolation of homo sapiens, provides the only thread of consistency that I can see in my life.
Consistency | Desolation | Glory | Life | Life | World |
Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
The highest glory is won by the highest virtue.
Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim
There is a spirit in the soul, untouched by time and flesh, flowing from the Spirit, remaining in the Spirit, itself wholly spiritual. In this principle is God, ever verdant, every flowering in all the joy and glory of His actual Self. Sometimes I have called this principle the Tabernacle of the soul, sometimes a spiritual Light, anon I say it is a Spark. But now I say that it is more exalted over this and that than the heavens are exalted above the earth. So now I name it in a nobler fashion... It is free of all names and void of all forms. It is one and simple, as God is one and simple, and no man can in any wise behold it.
Earth | Glory | God | Joy | Light | Man | Self | Soul | Spirit | Time | Wise | God |
Death is not the greatest loss in life... The tragedy of life is in what dies inside a man while he lives - the death of genuine feeling, the death of inspired response, the death of the awareness that makes it possible to feel the pain or the glory of other men in yourself.
Awareness | Death | Glory | Life | Life | Man | Men | Pain | Tragedy | Loss | Awareness |