This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Although the tongue of God is busy speaking through all things, yet in order to speak to the deaf ears of many among us, it is necessary for Him to speak through the lips of man. He has done this all through the history of man, every great teacher of the past having been this guiding Spirit living the life of God in human guise. In other words, their human guise consists of various coats worn by the same person, who appeared to be different in each. Shiva, Buddha, Rama, Krishna, on the other side, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Mohammad on the other; and many more, known or unknown to history, always one and the same person.
God | History | Life | Life | Man | Order | Past | Spirit | Words | God | Teacher |
The source of peace is within us; so also the source of war. And the real enemy is within us, and not outside. The source of war is not the existence of nuclear weapons or other arms. It is the minds of human beings who decide to push the button and to use those arms out of hatred, anger or greed.
Requite anger with virtue.
The words of the tongue should have three gatekeepers; Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?
Words |
Humility is the most excellent natural cure for anger in the world, for he, that by daily considering his own infirmities and failings, makes the error of his servant or neighbor to be his own case, and remembers that he daily needs God’s pardon and his brother’s charity, will not be apt to rage at the levities, or misfortunes, or indiscretions of another.
Anger | Charity | Error | God | Humility | Pardon | Rage | Will | World |
All the seven deadly sins are self destroying, morbid appetites, but in their early stages at least, lust and gluttony, avarice and sloth know some gratification, while anger and pride have power, even though that power eventually destroys itself. Envy is impotent, numbed with fear, never ceasing in its appetite, and it knows no gratification, but endless self torment. It has the ugliness of a trapped rat, which gnaws its own foot in an effort to escape.
Anger | Appetite | Avarice | Effort | Envy | Fear | Gluttony | Lust | Power | Pride | Self | Sloth |
Anger is always concerned with individuals... whereas hatred is directed also against classes: we all hate any thief and any informer. Moreover, anger can be cured by time; but hatred cannot.
Since things that are found in the soul are of three kinds - passions, faculties, states of character, virtue must be one of these. By passions I mean appetite, anger, fear, confidence, envy, joy, friendly feeling, hatred, longing, emulation, pity, and in general the feelings that are accompanied by pleasure or pain; by faculties the things in virtue of which we are said to be capable of feeling these, for example, of becoming angry or being pained or feeling pity; by states of character the things in virtue of which we stand well or badly with reference to the passions, for example, with reference to anger we stand badly if we feel it violently or too weakly, and well if we feel it moderately; and similarly with reference to the other passions. Now neither the virtues nor the vices are passions, because we are not called good or bad on the ground of our virtues and our vices, and because we are neither praised nor blamed for our passions (for the man who feels fear or anger is not praised, nor is the man who simply feels anger blamed, but the man who feels it in a certain way), but for our virtues and our vices we are praised or blamed.
Anger | Appetite | Character | Confidence | Envy | Example | Fear | Feelings | Good | Joy | Longing | Man | Pain | Pity | Pleasure | Soul | Virtue | Virtue |
When men hear imitations, even apart from the rhythms and tunes themselves, their feelings move in sympathy. Since then music is a pleasure, and virtue consists in rejoicing and loving and hating aright, there is clearly nothing which we are so much concerned to acquire and to cultivate as the power of forming right judgments and of taking delight in good dispositions and noble actions. Rhythm and melody supply imitations of anger and gentleness, and also of courage and temperance, and of all the qualities contrary to these, and of the other qualities of character, which hardly fall short of the actual affections, as we know form our own experience, for in listening to such strains our souls undergo a change. The habit of feeling pleasure or pain at mere representation is not far removed from the same feeling about realities.
Anger | Change | Character | Courage | Experience | Feelings | Gentleness | Good | Habit | Listening | Melody | Men | Music | Nothing | Pain | Pleasure | Power | Qualities | Right | Sympathy | Virtue | Virtue |
The man who believes firmly that the Creator of the universe loves him and cares infinitely what he dose with his life - this man is automatically freed from much of the self-distrust that afflicts less certain men. Fear, guilt, hostility, anger - these are the emotions that stifle thought and impede action. By reducing or eliminating them, religious faith makes boldness possible, and boldness makes achievement possible.
Achievement | Action | Anger | Boldness | Distrust | Emotions | Faith | Fear | Guilt | Life | Life | Man | Men | Self | Thought | Universe | Thought |
If there is no ego who can feel anger or desire, resentment or frustration? This means that enquiry is not merely a cold investigation but a battle; every path is, in every religion.
Anger | Battle | Desire | Ego | Means | Religion | Resentment |