This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
Evening is the delight of virtuous age; it seems an emblem of the tranquil close of busy life - serene, placid, and mild, with the impress of its great Creator stamped upon it; it spreads its quiet wings over the grave, and seems to promise that all shall be peace beyond it.
Age | Grave | Life | Life | Peace | Promise | Quiet | Wisdom |
The best advisers, helpers and friends, always are not those who tell us how to act in special cases, but who give us, out of themselves, the ardent spirit and desire to act right, and leave us then, even through many blunders, to find out what our own form of right action is
G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Facts as facts do not always create a spirit of reality, because reality is a spirit.
To keep from gravitating toward genocidal conflict, we must stop demanding perpetual progress. For quiet nonpolitical reasons, governments and politicians cannot achieve the paradise they habitually promise. Political leaders who continue to dangle before their constituents enticing carrots that are becoming unattainable hasten the erosion of faith in political processes. Circumstances have ceased to be what they were when the once-New World’s myth of limitlessness made sense.
Circumstances | Faith | Myth | Paradise | Progress | Promise | Quiet | Sense | Wisdom | World |
In every visible Creature there is a Body and a Spirit... or, more Active and more Passive Principle, which may fitly be termed Male and Female, by reason of that Analogy a Husband hath with his Wife. For as the ordinary Generation of Men requires a Conjunction and Co-operation of Male and Female; so also all Generations and Productions whatsoever they be, require an Union, and conformable Operation of those Two Principles, to wit, Spirit and Body; but the Spirit is an Eye or Light beholding its own proper Image, and the Body is a Tenebrosity or Darkness receiving that Image, when the Spirit looks thereinto, as when one sees himself in a Looking-Glass; for certainly he cannot so behold himself in the Transparent Air, nor in any Diaphanous Body, because the reflexion of an Image requires a certain opacity or darkness, which we call a Body: Yet to be a Body is not an Essential property of any Thing; as neither is it a Property of any Thing to be dark; for nothing is so dark that nothing else, neither differs any thing from a Spirit, but in that it is more dark; therefore by how much the thicker and grosser it is become, so much the more remote it is from the degree of Spirit, so that this distinction is only modal and gradual, not essential or substantial.
Body | Darkness | Distinction | Husband | Light | Looks | Men | Nothing | Principles | Property | Reason | Spirit | Wife | Wisdom | Wit |
George B. Cortelyou, fully George Bruce Cortelyou
The greatest asset of any nation is the spirit of its people, and the greatest danger that can menace any nation is the breakdown of that spirit - the will to win and the courage to work.
Courage | Danger | People | Spirit | Will | Wisdom | Work | Danger |
Theodore Cuyler, fully Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
Conversation by the Holy Spirit is a spiritual illumination of the soul. God’s grace lights up the dark heart.
Conversation | God | Grace | Heart | Soul | Spirit | Wisdom |
Despair is the offspring of fear; of laziness, and impatience; it argues a defect of spirit and resolution, and often of honesty too. I would not despair unless I saw my misfortune recorded in the book of fate; and signed and sealed by necessity.
Despair | Fate | Fear | Honesty | Impatience | Laziness | Misfortune | Necessity | Resolution | Spirit | Wisdom | Misfortune |
Bartley Crum, fully Bartley Cavanaugh Crum
I believe, with all my heart, that the Spirit of God is within every man, however mean, ugly, or diseased; and that when we visit indignities upon other men, we are affronting our Creator, and we are also harming ourselves.
Miles Coverdale, also Myles Coverdale
A quiet heart is a continual feast.
I must think forever: would an eternal train of my usual thoughts be either worthy of me or useful to me? I must feel forever: would an eternal reign of my present spirit and desires please or satisfy me? I must act forever: would an eternal course of my habitual conduct bring happiness, or even bear reflection?... Habits are soon assumed; but when we endeavor to strip them off, it is being flayed alive.
Conduct | Eternal | Present | Reflection | Spirit | Wisdom | Think |
George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
Consequences are unpitying. Our deeds carry their terrible consequences, quiet apart form any fluctuations that went before - consequences that are hardly ever confined to ourselves.
Consequences | Deeds | Quiet | Wisdom | Deeds |
François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are, the more gentle and quiet we become towards the defects of others.
Defects | Imperfection | Quiet | Wisdom |
François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
Accustom yourself gradually to carry prayer into all your daily occupations. Speak, move, work, in peace, as if you were in prayer, as indeed you ought to be. Do everything with excitement, by the spirit of grace.
Excitement | Grace | Peace | Prayer | Spirit | Wisdom | Work |
Next to temperance, a quiet conscience, a cheerful mind, and active habits, I place early rising as a means of health and happiness.
The essence of our effort to see that every child has a chance must be to assure each an equal opportunity, not to become equal, but to become different - to realize whatever unique potential of body, mind and spirit he or she possesses.
Body | Chance | Effort | Mind | Opportunity | Spirit | Unique | Wisdom | Child |