This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
If man would but realize that he is essentially a spiritual being, that his body is but the vesture of the individualized spirit, that his life is a portion of the great Spring of life which fills the world, he would at once discard the constant fear of ill-health to which he is a prey. The organs of the body are but the visible instruments whereby the spirit expresses itself, the senses are but mediums, and the brain is but a tool, and all the other processes are but messengers to carry out the injunction from the higher center of man, from his mind. Sickness in the body is a symptom of some disturbance in the mind-center ; bodily sickness is the signal of some form of mental depression, conscious or unconscious. It is the spirit in man, therefore, the invisible, the mind, which must be considered first in avoidance and treatment of illness. Spirit cannot be reached through physical channels, it must be reached through divine methods. When one fears the approach of illness, let him commune with the divine in him ; let him, in order to stimulate the flow of health and courage within him deliver himself completely to the care of God. Let him affirm with all sincerity and devotion "I am a divine being, the flow of divine health is circulating through my body," or, "The divine fountain of Health within me is yielding new strength with every hour." The stream of health will then resume its natural route through the body, and the fear of illness, like a phantom at the sight of the sun, will steal away.
Body | Care | Courage | Devotion | Fear | Health | Life | Life | Man | Order | Sincerity | Spirit | Strength | Will | Yielding |
While it is true that scientific results are entirely independent from religious and moral considerations, those individuals to whom we owe the great creative achievements of science were all of them imbued with the truly religious conviction that this universe of ours is something perfect and susceptible to the rational striving for knowledge. If this conviction had not been a strongly emotional one and if those searching for knowledge had not been inspired by Spinoza's Amor Dei Intellectualis, they would hardly have been capable of that untiring devotion which alone enables man to attain his greatest achievements.
Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
The important thing is somehow to cultivate devotion to God and love for Him. What is the use of knowing many things? It is enough to cultivate love of God by following any of the paths. When you have this love, you are sure to attain God.
Devotion | Enough | God | Important | Knowing | Love | Following | God |
Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
One must not cherish any desire whatever. The devotion of a man who has any desire is selfish. But desireless devotion is love for its own sake. You may love me or not, but I love you: this is love for its own sake.
Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
The worldly man's devotion to God is momentary like a drop of water on a redhot frying-pan.
Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
The one essential thing is bhakti, loving devotion to God.
Devotion |
Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
Work, apart from devotion or love of God, is helpless and cannot stand alone.
Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
Householders should go into solitude now and then, to practice spiritual discipline in order to cultivate devotion to God; they should renounce mentally.
Devotion | Discipline | Order | Practice | Solitude |
Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
The mind is like milk. If you keep the mind in the world, which is like water, then the milk and water will get mixed. That is why people keep milk in a quiet place and let it set into curd, and then churn butter from it. Likewise, through spiritual discipline practiced in solitude, churn the butter of knowledge and devotion from the milk of the mind. Then that butter can easily be kept in the water of the world. It will not get mixed with the world. The mind will float detached on the water of the world.
Devotion | Discipline | Knowledge | Mind | People | Quiet | Will |
Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
Those who wish to attain God and progress in religious devotion should particularly guard themselves against the snares of lust and wealth. Otherwise they can never attain perfection.
Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
What is karma yoga? Its aim is to fix one's mind on God by means of work. That is what you are teaching. It consists of breath-control, concentration, meditation, and so on, done in a spirit of detachment. If a householder performs his duties in the world in a spirit of detachment, surrendering the results to God and with devotion to God in his heart, he too may be said to practice karma yoga. Further, if a person performs worship, japa, and other forms of devotion, surrendering the results to God, he may be said to practice karma yoga. Attainment of God alone is the aim of karma yoga.
Attainment | Devotion | God | Means | Mind | Practice | Spirit | World | God |
Rebecca West, pen name of Mrs. Cicily Maxwell Andrews, born Fairfield, aka Dame Rebecca West
Because hypocrisy stinks in the nostrils one is likely to rate it as a more powerful agent for destruction
Raymond Chandler, fully Raymond Thornton Chandler
Hammett was the ace performer.... He is said to have lacked heart; yet the story he himself thought the most of [The Glass Key] is the record of a man's devotion to a friend. He was spare, frugal, hard-boiled, but he did over and over again what only the best writers can ever do at all. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before.
Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr
The inevitable hypocrisy, which is associated with the all the collective activities of the human race, springs chiefly from this source: that individuals have a moral code which makes the actions of collective man an outrage to their conscience. They therefore invent romantic and moral interpretations of the real facts, preferring to obscure rather than reveal the true character of their collective behavior. Sometimes they are as anxious to offer moral justifications for the brutalities from which they suffer as for those which they commit. The fact that the hypocrisy of man's group behavior... expresses itself not only in terms of self-justification but in terms of moral justification of human behavior in general, symbolizes one of the tragedies of the human spirit: its inability to conform its collective life to its individual ideals. As individuals, men believe they ought to love and serve each other and establish justice between each other. As racial, economic and national groups they take for themselves, whatever their power can command.
Behavior | Character | Hypocrisy | Individual | Inevitable | Justice | Justification | Life | Life | Love | Man | Men | Power |
Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr
This insinuation of the interests of the self into even the most ideal enterprises and most universal objectives, envisaged in moments of highest rationality, makes hypocrisy an inevitable by product of all virtuous endeavor.
Hypocrisy | Inevitable | Self |
Robert Blatchford, fully Robert Peel Glanville Blatchford
You remember that from the first the Clarion crowd and the Hardie crowd were out of harmony...I loathe the “top-hatted, frock-coated magnolia-scented” snobocracy as much as you do; but I cannot away with the Keir Hardies and Arthur Hendersons and Ramsay MacDonalds and Bernard Shaws and Maxtons. Not long ago you told me in a letter of some trade union delegates who were smoking cigars and drinking whisky at the House of Commons at the expense of their unions. You liked them not. Nor do I like the Trade Union bigots who have cheated J. H. Thomas of his pension...I am glad the Labour Party is defeated because I believe they would have disrupted the British Empire. I dreaded their childish cosmopolitanism; their foolish faith that we could abolish crime by reducing the police force. ... The England of my affection and devotion is not a country nor a people: it is a tradition, the finest tradition the world has ever produced. The Labour Party do not subscribe to that tradition; do not know it; could not feel it.
Pandurang Shastri Athavale, fully Pandurang Vaijnath Shastri Athavale
Knowledge, Action and Devotion are complementary to each other.
Pandurang Shastri Athavale, fully Pandurang Vaijnath Shastri Athavale
Devotion (Bhakti) includes Sentimental Devotion (Bhav Bhakti) and Devotion through action (Kruti Bhakti).