This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL
The eternal tide flows hid in Living Bread. That with its Heavenly Life too be fed.
Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL
The soul of one who serves God always swims in joy, always keeps a holiday, is always in her palace of jubilation, ever singing with fresh ardor and fresh pleasure a new song of joy and love.
Cause | Indulgence | Rest | Soul |
Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL
Take God for your spouse and friend and walk with him continually, and you will not sin and will learn to love, and the things you must do will work out prosperously for you.
Ability | Attention | Attentiveness | Cause | Conduct | Contemplation | Desire | Experience | Fear | God | Knowledge | Light | Love | Means | Nothing | Peace | Pleasure | Receive | Rest | Soul | Spirit | Trials | Trust | Will | God | Contemplation |
Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL
This divine knowledge of God never deals with particular things. This sublime knowledge can be received only by a person who has arrived at union with God, for it is itself that very union. It consists in a certain touch of the divinity produced in the soul, and thus it is God Himself who is experienced and tasted there… This knowledge savors of the divine essence and of eternal life. They are so sensible that they sometimes cause not only the soul but also the body to tremble. Yet at other times with a sudden feeling of spiritual delight and refreshment, and without any trembling, they occur very tranquilly in the spirit. Since this knowledge is imparted to the soul suddenly, without exercise of free will, a person does not have to be concerned about desiring it or not. He should simply remain humble and resigned about it, for God will do His work at the time and in the manner he wishes. God does not bestow these favors on a possessive soul, since He gives them out of a very special love for the recipient. For the individual receiving them is one who loves God with great detachment.
Darkness | Desire | Glory | God | Journey | Joy | Life | Life | Light | Love | Means | Vision | God |
Shunryu Suzuki, also Daisetsu Teitaro or D.T. Suzuki or Suzuki-Roshi
If you can just appreciate each thing, one by one, then you will have pure gratitude. Even though you observe just one flower, that one flower includes everything
Absolute | Belief | Eternal | Insight | Life | Life | Logic | Man | Nature | Reason | Thinking | Zen |
Simcha Zissel of Kelm, fully Rabbi imcha Zissel Ziv Broida, aka the Elder of Kelm
The person who can feel joy because he is not ill or injured lives a happy life.
Entertainment | Majority | People | Sadness |
Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir
You're unique like all other women.
Theodor Herzl, born Benjamin Ze’ev Herzl
It goes without saying that the Jewish people can have no other goal than Palestine and that, whatever the fate of the proposition may be, our attitude toward the land of our fathers is and shall remain unchangeable.
If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything.
The grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference
Heart | Means | Right | Spirit | Understanding |
We too often forget that faith is a matter of questioning and struggle before it becomes one of certitude and peace. You have to doubt and reject everything else in order to believe firmly in Christ, and after you have begun to believe, your faith itself must be tested and purified. Christianity is not merely a set of forgone conclusions. Faith tends to be defeated by the burning presence of God in mystery, and seeks refuge from him, flying to comfortable social forms and safe convictions in which purification is no longer an inner battle but a matter of outward gesture.
There is in us an instinct for newness, for renewal, for a liberation of creative power. We seek to awaken in ourselves a force that really changes our lives from within. And yet the same instinct tells us that this change is a recovery of that which is deepest, most original, most personal in ourselves. To be born again is not to become somebody else, but to become ourselves.
When we live superficially … we are always outside ourselves, never quite ‘with’ ourselves, always divided and pulled in many directions … we find ourselves doing many things that we do not really want to do, saying things we do not really mean, needing things we do not really need, exhausting ourselves for what we secretly realize to be worthless and without meaning in our lives.
Chance | Children | Land | Love | Purity | Quiet | Rest | Vision | Old |
Wang Yang-Ming or Yangming, aka Wang Shouren or Wang Shou-jen, courtesy name Bo'an
Knowledge is the beginning of practice; doing is the completion of knowing.
Events | Life | Life | Mind | Nothing | Principles | World | Following |
Since grief only aggravates your loss, grieve not for what is past.
How does one stand to behold the sublime, to confront the mockers, the mickey mockers and plated pairs?
Mortal |
The day of the sun is like the day of a king. It is a promenade in the morning, a sitting on the throne at noon, a pageant in the evening.
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
Auto de Fe: An act of faith. A dainty feast offered to the Divinity from time to time, and which consisted of roasting, in great pomp, the bodies of Jews or heretics for the salvation of their souls and the edification of the lookers-on.