This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Joseph Runzo and Nancy M. Martin
To study Torah is to touch the mind of God, so study becomes an act not only of knowing God but of devotion to God, and as such it is the most intimate form of love. On the other hand, in practice Torah is embodied in everyday life which is imbued with sacredness through ritualization… both these dimensions of study and ritual Torah is said to increase life, enriching and filling it with meaning, and quite literally lengthening it.
Devotion | God | Knowing | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Mind | Practice | Study | God | Torah |
Joseph Pothier, fully Dom Joseph Pothier
True devotion produces as of itself a song; song, in turn excites devotion, and this reciprocal action augments the value of both, like two mirrors, which, facing each other, multiply the same image even to the profondity, so to speak, of the infinite.
Al Gore, Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr.,
What makes the United States special in the history of nations is our commitment to the rule of law and our carefully constructed system of checks and balances. Our national distrust of concentrated power and our devotion to openness and democracy are what have led us as a people to consistently choose good over evil in our collective aspirations.
Commitment | Democracy | Devotion | Distrust | Evil | Good | History | Law | Nations | Openness | People | Power | Rule | System |
Lack of experience diminishes our power of taking a comprehensive view of the admitted facts. Hence those who dwell in intimate association with nature and its phenomena grow more and more able to formulate, as the foundation of their theories, principles such as to admit of a wide and coherent development: while those whom devotion to abstract discussions has rendered unobservant of the facts are too ready to dogmatize on the basis of a few observations.
Abstract | Association | Devotion | Experience | Nature | Phenomena | Power | Principles | Theories | Association |
Those who seek to satisfy the mind of man by hampering it with ceremonies and music and affecting charity and devotion have lost their original nature.
Dwight Eisenhower, fully Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower
Decency - generosity - cooperation - assistance in trouble - devotion to duty; these are the things that are of greater value than surface appearances and custom.
Cooperation | Custom | Devotion | Duty | Generosity | Trouble | Value |
In politics, religion is now a name; in art, a hypocrisy or affectation.
Affectation | Art | Hypocrisy | Politics | Religion |
Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL
Prayer without devotion is no prayer at all. What then is devotion? One must free his heart from all other thoughts and regard himself as standing in the presence of God.
Mother Teresa, born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu NULL
The word “prayer” is applied to at least four distinct procedures - petition, intercession, adoration, contemplation. Petition is the asking of something for ourselves. Intercession is the asking of something for other people. Adoration is the use of intellect, feeling, will and imagination in making acts of devotion directed towards God in his personal aspect or as incarnated in human form. Contemplation is that condition of alert passivity, in which the soul lays itself open to the divine ground within and without, the immanent and transcendent Godhead.
Contemplation | Devotion | God | Imagination | People | Prayer | Soul | Will | God | Contemplation |
Sentiment and nobility and love are immortal... Tenderness and loyalty, and patience, and self-sacrifice, and devotion to duty - these are life’s natural aspirations.
Devotion | Duty | Life | Life | Love | Loyalty | Loyalty | Nobility | Patience | Sacrifice | Self | Self-sacrifice | Sentiment | Tenderness |
Robert Ingersoll, fully Robert Green "Bob" Ingersoll
The greatest superstition now entertained by public men is that hypocrisy is the royal road to success.
Hypocrisy | Men | Public | Success | Superstition |
Adi Shankara, aka Śaṅkara Bhagavatpādācārya and Ādi Śaṅkarācārya
It is ignorance that causes us to identify ourselves with the body, the ego, the senses, or anything that is not the Atman. He is a wise man who overcomes this ignorance by devotion to the Atman.
Cant is the voluntary overcharging or prolongation of a real sentiment; hypocrisy is the setting up a pretension to a feeling you never had an have no wish for.