This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
José Bergamin, fully José Bergamín Gutiérrez
A belief which leaves no place for doubt is not a belief; it is a superstition.
Belief | Doubt | Superstition |
Marcus Bach, fully James Marcus Bach
In this world within, your world, you are the most important figure. There is a place that no one else can fill There is an influence that no one else can impart. There is a life that no one else can live quite as well as you can live it. What you do with your life within, in terms of self-realization, self-awareness, self-denial and self-expression, is the greatest challenge that can come to you.
Awareness | Challenge | Important | Influence | Life | Life | Self | Self-awareness | Self-denial | Self-realization | World |
Peter Abelard, Latin: Petrus Abaelardus or Abailard; French: Pierre Abélard
Whosoever grows wrathful for any reason against his sufferings has therein departed from the way of the just, because he may not doubt that these things have happened to him by divine dispensation.
Robert E. Carter, fully Robert Edgar Carter
All theories, all values, all reforms, all revolutions, all change, and all actions are built on the shifting sands of custom and opinion, and the winds of doubt and new circumstances and considerations are always blowing, always rising.
Change | Circumstances | Custom | Doubt | Opinion | Theories |
After the day’s struggle there is no freedom like unfettered thoughts, no sound like the music of silence. And though behind you lies a road of dust and heat and discouragement, and before you the challenge and uncertainty of untried paths, in this brief hour you are master of all highways, and the universe nestles in your soul.
Challenge | Day | Freedom | Music | Silence | Soul | Sound | Struggle | Uncertainty | Universe |
Disciplining one’s appetite may be the biggest spiritual challenge many of us will face this side of dying. In a world where the future of the planet depends on how many of us will agree to say not to excessive lifestyles, fasting can teach us that physical satisfaction is not the purpose of life.
Appetite | Challenge | Future | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Teach | Will | World |
Detachment of doctrine from devotion, detachment of reason from reverence, of scrutiny from the sense of the ineffable reduces God as a challenge to a logical hypothesis… God is relevant only when overwhelmingly urgent.
Challenge | Detachment | Devotion | Doctrine | God | Hypothesis | Reason | Reverence | Sense | God |
Despair is due not to failures but to the inability to hear deeply and personally the challenge that confronts us.
A sense of purpose and fulfillment is the single strongest issue flowing out of the quest for meaning… The end of the quest for meaning is the beginning of the journey of faith. Indeed, nothing better illuminates the entire journey of life and faith, and in particular the special challenge of finishing them well, than the issue of purpose.
Beginning | Better | Challenge | Faith | Fulfillment | Journey | Life | Life | Meaning | Nothing | Purpose | Purpose | Sense |
Friedrich von Hügel, formally Baron Friedrich Maria Aloys Franz Karl Freiherr von Hugel
Now there is no doubt that the prayer of quiet, that a certain formless recollection and loving feeding upon the sense and presence of God, as here and now, is a most legitimate prayer.