This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Whenever, in the course of the daily hunt, the hunter comes upon a scene that is strikingly beautiful or sublime - a black thundercloud with the rainbow’s glowing arch above the mountain, a white waterfall in the heart of a green gorge, a vast prairie tinged with the blood-red of the sunset - he pauses for an instant in the attitude of worship. He sees no need for setting apart one day in seven as a holy day, because to him all days are God’s days." - Charles Alexander Eastman, first named Ohiyesa
"Piety and morality are but the same spirit differently manifested. Piety is religion with its face toward God; morality is religion with its face toward the world." - Tyron Edwards
"Quiet and sincere sympathy is often the most welcome and efficient consolation to the afflicted. Said a wise man to one in deep sorrow, "I did not come to comfort you; God only can do that; but I did come to say how deeply and tenderly I feel for you in your affliction."" - Tyron Edwards
"True humility is not an abject, groveling, self-despising spirit; it is but a right estimate of ourselves as God sees us." - Tyron Edwards
"Whatever our place, allotted to us by Providence, that for us is the post of honor and duty. God estimates us not by the position we are in, but by the way in which we fill it." - Tyron Edwards
"“Desiderata" Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly, and listen to others, even to the dull and ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore, be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy." - Max Ehrmann
"We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality." - Albert Einstein
"He that always waits upon God is ready whenever He calls. Neglect not to set your accounts even; he is a happy man who so lives as that death at all times may find him at leisure to die." - Owen Feltham
"Faults will turn to good, provided we use them to our own humiliation, without slackening in the effort to correct ourselves. Discouragement serves no possible purpose; it is simply the despair of wounded self-love. The real way of profiting by the humiliation of one’s own faults is to face them in their true hideousness, without ceasing to hope in God, while hoping nothing from self." - François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
"It is only in beholding and loving God that we can learn forgetfulness of self, measure duly the nothingness which has dazzled us, and accustom ourselves thankfully to decrease beneath that great Majesty which absorbs all things. Love God and you will be humble; love God and you will throw off the love of self; love God and you will love all that He gives you to love for love of Him." - François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
"The best general means to insure the profitable employment of our time is to accustom ourselves to living in continual dependence upon the Spirit of God and His law, receiving, every instant, whatever He is pleased to bestow; consulting Him in every action, and having recourse to Him in our weaker moments when virtue seems to fail." - François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
"There are two principal points of attention necessary for the preservation of this constant spirit of prayer which unites us with God; we must continually seek to cherish it, and we must avoid everything that tends to make us lose it." - François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
"They that know God will be humble; they that know themselves cannot be proud." - John Flavel
"Diligence is the mother of good luck, and God gives all thins to industry. Then plough deep while sluggards sleep, and you shall have corn to sell and to keep." - Benjamin Franklin
"The most acceptable service of God is doing good to man." - Benjamin Franklin
"To God we owe fear and love; to our neighbours justice and character; to our selves prudence and sobriety." - Benjamin Franklin
"Good is all that serves life, evil is all that serves death. Good is reverence for life...and all that enhances life. Evil is all that stifles life, narrows it down, cuts it to pieces... Dostoevsky said, "If there is no God, then anything is possible." I would say that if there is no love, nothing is possible. Man absolutely cannot live by himself... Uniformity and freedom are incompatible. Uniformity and mental health are incompatible." -
"By benevolence man rises to a height where he meets God. Therefore do a good deed before you begin your prayers." - Achai Gaon, known as Ahai of Sabha or Aha of Sabha
"Whatever may be true of men’s creed, nothing is clearer than the fact that the personality and the sovereignty of God are not a large factor in the practical life and thought of our age." - Charles W. Garman
"An undivided heart, which worships God alone, and trusts Him as it should, is raised above anxiety for earthly wants." - John Cunningham Geikie
"He is well along the road to perfect manhood who does not allow the thousand little worries of life to embitter his temper, or disturb his equanimity. An undivided heart which worships God alone, and trust him as it should, is raised above anxiety for earthly wants." - John Cunningham Geikie
"How mighty is the human heart, with all its complicated energies; this living source of all that moves the world! this temple of liberty, this kingdom of heaven, this altar of God, this throne of goodness, so beautiful in holiness, so generous in love!" - Henry Giles
"We love a girl for very different qualities than understanding. We love her for her beauty, her youth, her mirth, her confidingness, her character, with its faults, caprices and God knows what other inexpressible charms; but we do not love her understanding." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"What sort of God would it be who only pushed from without?" - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"A simple heart will love all that is most precious on earth, husband or wife, parent or child, brother or friend, without marring its singleness; external things will have no attraction save inasmuch as they lead souls to Him; all exaggeration or unreality, affection and falsehood must pass away from such a one, as the dews dry up before the sunshine. The single motive is to please God, and hence arises total indifference as to what others say and think, so that words and actions are perfectly simple and natural, as in his sight." - N. Grou
"God’s love is the reason for our creation, a free, gratuitous love, a love without limits... Our duty is to translate this love into acts of solidarity and commitment." - Gustavo Gutiérrez
"Infidelity and faith look both through the perspective glass, but at contrary ends. Infidelity looks through the wrong end of the glass; and, therefore, sees those objects near which are afar off, and makes great things little - diminishing the greatest spiritual blessings, and removing far from us threatened evils. Faith looks at the right end, and brings the blessings that are far off in time close to our eye, and multiplies God’s mercies, which, in a distance, lost their greatness." - Robert Hall
"The proud man hath no God; the envious man hath no neighbor; the angry man hath not himself." - Robert Hall
"What delight will it afford to renew the sweet counsel we have taken together, to recount the toils, the combats, and the labor of the way, and to approach, not the house, but the throne of God, in company, in order to join in the symphonies of heavenly voices, and lose ourselves amidst the splendors and fruitions of the beatific vision." - Robert Hall
"Love, it has been said, flows downward. The love of parents for their children has always been far more powerful than that of children for their parents; and who among the sons of men ever loved God with a thousandth part of the love which Go has manifested to us." - Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare
"Be and continue poor, young man, while others around you grow rich by; fraud and disloyalty; be without place or power, while others beg their way upwards; bear the pain of disappointed hopes, while others gain their by; flattery; forego the gracious pressure of the hand, for which others cringe and crawl. Wrap yourself in your own virtue, and seek a friend and your daily bread. If you have, in such a course, grown gray; with unblenched honor, bless God and die." - Richard Heinzelmann
"Remember that God will not be mocked; that it is the heart of the worshiper which He regards. We are never safe till we love Him with our whole heart whom we pretend to worship." - John Henshaw, fully Bishop John Prentiss Kewley Henshaw
"Our world is a college, events are teachers, happiness is the graduating point, character is the diploma God gives man." - Newell Dwight Hillis
"Belief and unbelief never follow men’s commands. Faith is a gift from God which man can neither give nor take away by promise of rewards or menaces of torture." - Thomas Hobbes
"Moral philosophy is nothing else but the science of what is good and evil in the conversation and society of mankind. God and evil are names that signify our appetites and aversions, which in different tempers, customs and doctrines of men are different." - Thomas Hobbes
"To forgive sin is not an act of injustice, though the punishment have been threatened. Even amongst men, though the promise of good bind the promiser; yet threats, that is to say, promises of evil, bind them not; much less shall they bind God, who is infinitely more merciful than men." - Thomas Hobbes
"God gave every man individuality of constitution, and a chance for achieving individuality of character. He puts special instruments into every man’s hands by which to make himself and achieve his mission." - Josiah Gilbert Holland, also Joshua Gilbert Holland
"God gives every bird its food, but does not throw it into the nest." - Josiah Gilbert Holland, also Joshua Gilbert Holland
"It is better to be a self-made man, filled up according to God’s original pattern, than to be half a man, made after some other man’s pattern." - Josiah Gilbert Holland, also Joshua Gilbert Holland
"The idle man stands outside of God’s plan, outside of the ordained scheme of things; and the truest self-respect, the noblest independence, and the most genuine dignity; are not to be found there." - Josiah Gilbert Holland, also Joshua Gilbert Holland
"Never tell a young person that something can not be done. God may have been waiting for centuries for somebody ignorant enough of the impossible to do that thing." - John Andrew Holmes
"We are here for communion with God who is Love, the One in whose image and likeness each one of us is made. We find this communion by loving as God loves us... The miracle of all miracles is the ability to transform through love the smallest, seemingly insignificant detail of the routine drudgery of everyday existence into paradise; the ability to become ourselves, at each moment, a fresh paradise to those around us, thereby becoming “gods by grace” for those who are “gods” to us. Each person accepts or rejects communion with God in his or her own unique manner... The act of communion comes always as grace. For those who know it, it is not life’s meaning, purpose or goal. It is life itself: God with us making us what God is." - Thomas Hopko
"The more a man denies himself, the more he shall obtain from God." - Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL
"We are created by God for union with Himself... That’s really the meaning of heaven too: fulfillment, wholeness... Though no man has seen God, we have to learn how to love God through loving one another." - Trevor Huddleston
"Consumption, celebrity and the quest for perfection in this world are all subject to the law of diminishing returns: each successive acquisition and achievement will mean less than the one before. Diminishing returns are finally leading to diminished expectations about the promise of finding happiness without caring for our souls. Perhaps we are now ready to reject the hucksters of materialisms that have lured us down so many dead ends, and start again on the road that will lead us back to God." - Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos