This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
That which acts for an end unknown to itself, depends upon some overruling wisdom that knows that end. Who should direct them in all those ends, but He that bestowed a being upon them for those ends; who knows what is convenient for their life, security, and propagation of their natures? An exact knowledge is necessary both of what is agreeable to them, and the means whereby they must attain it, which, since it is not inherent in them, is in that wise God who puts those instincts into them, and governs them in the exercise of them to such ends.
Doctrine | Fear | God | Hell | Joy | Nothing | Order | Present | Security | Vengeance | Wishes | God | Afraid | Guilty |
Providence would seem to sleep unless faith and prayer awaken it. The disciples had but little faith in their Master's accounts, yet that little faith awakened him in a storm, and he relieved them. Unbelief doth only discourage God from showing his power in taking our parts.
Care | Doctrine | God | Humor | Little | Love | Means | Meditation | Men | Need | Reason | Revelation | Scripture | Study | Will | God |
Stoics, The Stoics or Stoicism NULL
The universe is change, life is opinion. [Marcus Aurelius]
Any man who tries to excite class hatred, sectional hate, hate of creeds, any kind of hatred in our community, though he may affect to do it in the interest of the class he is addressing, is in the long run with absolute certainly that class's own worst enemy.
Conduct | Doctrine | Efficiency | Fear | Force | Need | Order | People |
In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile...We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.
There is no good reason why we should fear the future, but there is every reason why we should face it seriously, neither hiding from ourselves the gravity of the problems before us nor fearing to approach these problems with the unbending, unflinching purpose to solve them aright.
Mahomet himself, after all that can be said about him, was not a sensual man. We shall err widely if we consider this man as a common voluptuary, intent mainly on base enjoyments, — nay on enjoyments of any kind. His household was of the frugalest; his common diet barley-bread and water: sometimes for months there was not a fire once lighted on his hearth. They record with just pride that he would mend his own shoes, patch his own cloak. A poor, hard-toiling, ill-provided man; careless of what vulgar men toil for
Appetite with an opinion of attaining is called hope; the same without such opinion despair.
Conscience | Doctrine | Good | Judgment | Man | Presumption |
You seem to consider the federal judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions, a very dangerous doctrine, indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have with others the same passions for the party, for power and the privilege of the corps. Their power is the more dangerous, as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves.
I was not sure where I was going, and I could not see what I would do when I got [there]. But you saw further and clearer than I, and you opened the seas before my ship, whose track led me across the waters to a place I had never dreamed of, and which you were even then preparing to be my rescue and my shelter and my home.
Books | Doctrine | Ignorance | Man | Materialism | Teach | Thought | Writing | Thought |
The dread of being open to the ideas of others generally comes from our hidden insecurity about our own convictions. We fear that we may be converted – or perverted – by a pernicious doctrine. On the other hand, if we are mature and objective in our open-mindedness, we may find that viewing things from a basically different perspective – that of our adversary – we discover our own truth in a new light and are able to understand our own ideal more realistically.
Church | Contradiction | Doctrine | Glory | God | Liberty | Light | Love | Man | Nature | Order | Purpose | Purpose | Quiet | Reality | Soul | Spirit | Surrender | Theology | Vision | Will | God |
Though I shall for convenience often speak of two standpoints, the subjective and the objective, and though the various places in which this opposition is found have much in common, the distinction between more subjective and more objective views is really a matter of degree, and it covers a wide spectrum.
Appearance | Attention | Design | Doctrine | Evidence | Evolution | Force | Law | Life | Life | Nothing | Position | Present | Question | Reading | Skepticism | Think |
We ought therefore to suspect that a great mass of information respecting the Bible, and the introduction of it into the world, has been suppressed by the united tyranny of Church and State, for the purpose of keeping people in ignorance, and which ought to be known.
W. J. Dawson. fully William James Dawson
The true gain is always in the struggle, not the prize. What we become must always rank as a far higher question than what we get.
Contention | Discipline | Doctrine | Genius | Indolence | Man | Wisdom | Poem |