This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"So grasping is dishonesty, that it is no respecter of persons; it will cheat friends as well as foes; and were it possible, would cheat even God Himself." - George Bancroft
"It is a basic rule of prayer that God will never do for us what we can do for ourselves. Prayer does not do things for us; it enables us to do things for ourselves." - William Barclay
"God gave us memories so that we might have roses in December." - J.M. Barrie, fully Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet
"What a power has Death to awe and hush the voices of this earth! How mute we stand when that presence confronts us, and we look upon the silence he has wrought in a human life! We can only gaze, and bow our heads, and creep with our broken stammering utterances under the shelter of some great word which God has spoken, and in which we see through the history of human sorrow the outstretching and overshadowing of the eternal arms." - W. W. Battershall
"We are what we are; we cannot be truly other than ourselves. We reach perfection not by copying, much less by aiming at originality, by constantly and steadily working out the life which is common to all, according to the character which God has given us." - Anne Baxter
"Spend your time in nothing which you know must be repented of; in nothing on which you might not pray for the blessing of God; in nothing which you could not review with a quiet conscience on your dying bed; in nothing which you might not safely and properly be found doing if death should surprise you in the act." - Richard Baxter
"Soldiers that carry their lives in their hands, should carry the grace of God in their hearts." - Richard Baxter
"If I am faithful to the duties of the present, God will provide for the future." - William Bedell
"God is love, and the object of love: herein lies the whole contribution of mysticism." - Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson
"The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork." - Bible or The Bible or Holy Bible NULL
"A right act strikes a chord that extends through the whole universe, touches all moral intelligence, visits every world, vibrates along its whole extent, and conveys its vibrations to the very bosom of God!" - Thomas Binney
"How can he love God who loves not His works?" - Ludwig Börne, fully Karl Ludwig Börne
"True religion is not a mere doctrine, something that can be taught, but is a way of life. A life in community with God. It must be experienced to be appreciated. A life of service. A living by giving and finding one's own happiness by bringing happiness into the lives of others." - William J. H. Boetcker, fully William John Henry Boetcker
"Providence is the very divine reason which arranges all things, and rests with the supreme disposer of all; while fate is that ordering which is a part of all changeable things, and by means of which Providence binds all things together in their own order. Providence embraces all things equally, however different they may be, even however infinite: when they are assigned to their own places, forms, and times, Fate sets them in an orderly motion; so that this development of the temporal order, unified in the intelligence of the mind of God, is Providence. The working of this unified development in time is called Fate. These are different, but the one hangs upon the other. For this order, which is ruled by Fate, emanates from the directness of Providence." - Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL
"That God is eternal, is agreed by all who possess reason. What then is eternity?... Eternity is the complete and simultaneous possession of endless life in a single whole... God lives ever in an eternal present, his knowledge transcends all movement of time, and abides in the indivisibility of his present; he grasps the past and the future in all their infinite extent, and with his indivisible cognition he contemplates all events as if they were even now taking place." - Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL
"As thou desirest the love of God and man, beware of pride. It is a tumor in the mind, that breaks and ruins all thine actions; a worm in thy treasury, that eats and ruins thine estate. It loves no man, and is beloved of none; it disparages another's virtues by detraction, and thine own vainglory. It is the friend of the flatterer, the mother of envy, the nurse of fury, the sin of devils, and devil of mankind. It hates superiors, scorns inferiors, and owns no equal. In short, till thou hate it, God hate thee." - Henry Bolingbroke, Henry IV of England
"Life is a journey, not a home; a road, not a city of habitation; and the enjoyments and blessings we have are but little inns on the roadside of life, where we may be refreshed for a moment, that we may with new strength press on to the end - to the rest that remaineth for the people of God." - Horatius Bonar
"There is the laughter which is born out of the pure joy of living, the spontaneous expression of health and energy - the secret laughter of the child. This is a gift of God. There is the warm laughter of the kindly soul which heartens the discouraged, gives health to the sick and comfort to the dying... There is, above all, the laughter that comes from the eternal joy of creation, the joy of making the world new, the joy of expressing the inner riches of the soul - laughter that triumphs over pain and hardship in the passion for an enduring ideal, the joy of bringing the light of happiness, of truth and beauty into a dark world. This is divine laughter par excellence." - J. E. Boodin
"Religious addiction is using God, the Church, or a belief system as an escape from reality, in an attempt to find or elevate a sense of self-worth or well-being... It is the ultimate form of co-dependency - feeling worthless in and of ourselves and looking outside for something or someone to tell us we are worthwhile... Recovery means discovering divinity in one's own life." - Leo Booth
"A good thought is a great boon, for which God is to be first thanked, then he who is the first to utter it, and then, in a lesser, but still in a considerable degree, the man who is the first to quote it to us." - Christian Nestell Bovee
"To cultivate a garden is to walk with God." - Christian Nestell Bovee
"In one important respect a man is fortunate in being poor. His responsibility to God is so much the less." - John Christian Bovee
"Security is a false god; begin making sacrifices to it and you are lost." - Paul Bowles
"The cause of freedom is the cause of God." - Samuel Bowles III
"Straight-away the ideas flow in upon me, directly from God, and not only do I see distinct themes in my mind's eye, but they are clothed in the right forms, harmonies, and orchestration. Measure by measure the finished product is revealed to me when I am in those rare, inspired moods." - Johannes Brahms
"Bad will be the day for every man when he becomes absolutely contented with the life that he is living, with the thoughts that he is thinking, with the deeds that he is doing, when there is not forever beating at the doors of his soul some great desire to do something larger, which he knows that he was means and made to do because he is still, in spite of it all, the child of God." - Phillips Brooks
"Let us give thanks to God upon Thanksgiving Day. Nature is beautiful and fellowmen are dear, and duty is close beside us, and God is over us and in us. We want to trust Him with a fuller trust, and so at last to come to that high life where we shall be careful for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let our request be made known unto God”; for that, and that alone, is peace." - Phillips Brooks
"No man has become to true greatness who has not felt in some degree that his life belongs to his race, and that what God gives him he gives him for mankind." - Phillips Brooks
"Prayer is not conquering God’s reluctance, but taking hold of god’s willingness." - Phillips Brooks
"There is no life so humble that, if it be true and genuinely human and obedient to God, it may not hope to shed some of His light. There is no life so meager that the greatest and wisest of us can afford to despise it. We cannot know at what moment it may flash forth with the life of God." - Phillips Brooks
"God hears no more than the heart speaks; and if the heart be dumb, God will certainly be deaf." - Thomas Brooks
"If you would have God hear you when you pray, you must hear Him when he speaks." - Thomas Brooks
"Earth's crammed with Heaven and every common bush afire with God. But only he who sees takes off his shoes." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"If you get simple beauty and nought else, you get about the best thing God invents." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"The very impossibility in which I find myself to prove that God is not, discloses to me His existence." - Jean de La Bruyère
"The groves were God’s first temples." - William Cullen Bryant
"Never think that God's delays are God's denials. Hold on; hold fast; hold out." - Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
"When God will educate a man, He compels him to learn bitter lessons. He sends him to school to the Necessities rather than to the Graces, that by knowing all suffering he may know also the eternal consolations." - Celia Burleigh
"Anxiety is a word of unbelief or unreasoning dread. We have no right to allow it. Full faith in God puts it to rest." - Horace Bushnell
"By His trials, God means to purify us, to take away all our self-confidence, and our trust in each other, and bring us into implicit, humble trust in Himself." - Horace Bushnell
"God made sin possible just as he made all lying wonders possible, but he never made it a fact, never set anything in his plan to harmonize with it. Therefore it enters the world as a forbidden fact against everything that God has ordained." - Horace Bushnell
"Take your duty, and be strong in it, as God will make you strong. The harder it is, the stronger in fact you will be. Understand, also, that the great question her is, not what you will get, but what you will become. The greatest wealth you can ever get will be in yourself. Take your burdens and troubles and losses and wrongs, if come they must and will, as your opportunity, knowing that God has girded you for greater things than these." - Horace Bushnell
"The moment you can make a very simple discovery, viz., that obligation to God is your privilege, and is not imposed as a burden, your experience will teach you many things - that duty is liberty, that repentance is a release from sorrow, that sacrifice is gain, that humility is dignity, that the truth from that which you hide is a healing element that bathes your disordered life, and that even the penalties and terrors of God are the artillery only to protection to His realm." - Horace Bushnell
"Time was invented by Almighty God in order to give ideas a chance." - Nicholas Murray Butler
"An honest God's the noblest work of man." - Samuel Butler
"Thought pure and simple is as near to God as we can get, it is through this that we are linked with God." - Samuel Butler