This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The greater the difficulty the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests.
Difficulty | Glory | Reputation |
Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience.
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.
Some men think that the gratification of curiosity is the end of knowledge; some the love of fame; some the pleasure of dispute; some the necessity of supporting themselves by their knowledge; but the real use of all knowledge is this, that we should dedicate that reason which was given us by God to the use and advantage of man.
Curiosity | Dispute | Fame | God | Knowledge | Love | Man | Men | Necessity | Pleasure | Reason | God | Think |
Temperence in all things, including our hopes as well as our fears, is a worthy goal, but it is hardly human to be always temperate. It is far wiser to know how to balance a great sorrow with a great happiness, or a recurrence of dread with a renewal of faith.
Marriage is like a war. There are moments of chivalry and gallantry that attend the victorious advances and strategic retreats, the birth or death of children, the momentary conquest of loneliness, the sacrifice that ennobles him who makes it. But mostly there are the long dull sieges, the waiting, the terror and boredom. Women understand this better than men; they are better able to survive attrition.
Better | Birth | Children | Conquest | Death | Loneliness | Marriage | Men | Sacrifice | Terror | Waiting | War | Understand |
Joy cannot unfold the deepest truths. Cometh white-robed Sorrow stooping and wan, and flingeth wide the door she must not enter.
Any mind that is capable of a real sorrow is capable of good.
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
Did you ever hear of a man who had striven all his life faithfully and singly towards an object, and in no measure obtained it? If a man constantly aspires, is he not elevated? Did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advantage in them - that it was a vain endeavor?
Life | Life | Magnanimity | Man | Object | Sincerity | Truth |
The first pressure of sorrow crushes out from our hearts the best wine; afterwards the constant weight of it brings forth bitterness - the taste and strain from the lees of the vat.
Bitterness | Sorrow | Taste |
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
What is most of our boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit that we know something, which robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance?
God washes the eyes by tears until they can behold the invisible land where tears shall come no more. O love! O affliction! ye are the guides that show us the way through the great airy space where our loved ones walked; and, as hounds easily follow the scent before the dew be risen, so God teaches us, while yet our sorrow is wet, to follow on and find our dear ones in heaven.
Affliction | God | Heaven | Land | Love | Sorrow | Space | Tears | God |
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 |
Tell me not in mournful numbers, life is but an empty dream! For the soul is dead that slumbers, and things are not what they seem. Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; dust thou art, to dust returneth, was not spoken of the soul. Not enjoyment, and not sorrow is our destined end or way; but to act, that each to-morrow find us farther than today... Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act - act in the living Present! Hear within, and God o’erhead. Lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime, and, departing, leave behind us footprints in the sands of time... Let us then, be up and doing, with a heart for any fate; still achieving, still pursuing, learn to labor and to wait.
Art | Enjoyment | Fate | Future | God | Grave | Heart | Labor | Life | Life | Men | Past | Present | Sorrow | Soul | Time | Trust | God | Learn |