This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani
Remember that the first step in spirituality is not to speak ill of others. All human beings have weaknesses and faults. Yet they are all God in their being. Until they become Realized, they have their imperfections. Therefore, before trying to find faults in others and speaking ill of them, try to find your own weaknesses and correct those.
God | Spirituality | God |
My notion of spirituality was different than it is now, but even if I'd been the most fundamentalist of believers, I would have assumed that God had better things to do than arbitrarily smite me with shaking palsy.
Better | God | Spirituality | God |
Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr.
I'm so fast that last night I turned off the light switch in my hotel room and was in bed before the room was dark.
Light |
Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr.
Over the years my religion has changed and my spirituality has evolved. Religion and spirituality are very different, but people often confuse the two. Some things cannot be taught, but they can be awakened in the heart. Spirituality is recognizing the divine light that is within us all. It doesn't belong to any particular religion; it belongs to everyone.
Light | People | Religion | Spirituality |
Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
That’s what spirituality is really all about: to live death intensely, to live life intensely; to live both so passionately that nothing is left behind unlived, not even death. If you live life and death totally, you transcend. In that tremendous passion and intensity of life and death, you transcend duality, you transcend the dichotomy, you come to the One. That One is really the truth. You can call it God, you can call it life, you can call it truth, samadhi, ecstasy, or whatsoever you choose.
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
Before you go to bed each night, sit for a short time and review the day. See what you are becoming. Do you like the trend of your life? If not, change it. By self-analysis and constant watching of all your actions and thoughts and moods, you will gradually learn your true nature and how to express if flawlessly.
If you saw a person he has left little time in life, and decided to spend the time sitting next to the bed one of them, watching a man falls asleep, they say that love is what went through, and that injured person a heart attack at this time, the necessary place of quiet just to stay near the man, he say that this love for such a great capacity for growth… If you spend too much time trying to find out what is good or bad about someone else, you'll forget your own soul and end up exhausted and defeated by the energy you have wasted in judging others.
Capacity | Energy | Good | Heart | Little | Love | Man | Quiet | Soul | Time |
When one realizes that one deceives oneself, that one is asleep and one's house is on fire, always, permanently on fire, and that it is only by accident that the fire has not reached one's room at this very moment, when one realizes this, one will want to make efforts to awake and one will not expect any special reward. Since we do not realize that our house is on fire we always expect a special reward. What can one do in sleep? One can only have different dreams -- bad dreams, good dreams, but in the same bed. The dreams may be different, but the bed is the same.
Pitirim A. Sorokin, fully Pitirim Alexandrovich (Alexander) Sorokin
Sensate culture, has these features: The defining cultural principle is that true reality is sensory – only the material world is real. There is no other reality or source of values. This becomes the ubiquitous organizing principle of society. It permeates every aspect of culture and defines the basic mentality. People are unable to think in any other terms. Sensate culture pursues science and technology, but dedicates little creative thought to spirituality or religion. Dominant values are wealth, health, bodily comfort, sensual pleasures, power and fame. Ethics, politics, and economics are utilitarian and hedonistic. All ethical and legal precepts are considered mere man-made conventions, relative and changeable. Art and entertainment emphasize sensory stimulation. In the decadent stages of Sensate culture there is a frenzied emphasis on the new and the shocking (literally, sensationalism). Religious institutions are mere relics of previous epochs, stripped of their original substance, and tending to fundamentalism and exaggerated fideism (the view that faith is not compatible with reason).
Culture | Economics | Entertainment | Faith | Little | People | Power | Reality | Science | Spirituality | Thought | World | Think | Thought |
Peter Ustinov, fully Sir Peter Alexander Ustinov
Sex is a conversation carried out by other means. If you get on well out of bed, half the problems of bed are solved.
Conversation | Problems |
The difference between rising at five and seven o'clock in the morning, for the space of forty years, supposing a man to go to bed at the same hour at night, is nearly equivalent to ten additional years to a man's life.
There is neither spirit nor matter in the world; the stuff of the universe is spirit-matter. No other substance but this could produce the human molecule. I know very well that this idea of spirit-matter is regarded as a hybrid monster, a verbal exorcism of a duality which remains unresolved in its terms. But I remain convinced that the objections made to it arise from the mere fact that few people can make up their minds to abandon an old point of view and take the risk of a new idea. ... Biologists or philosophers cannot conceive a biosphere or noosphere because they are unwilling to abandon a certain narrow conception of individuality. Nevertheless, the step must be taken. For in fact, pure spirituality is as unconceivable as pure materiality. Just as, in a sense, there is no geometrical point, but as many structurally different points as there are methods of deriving them from different figures, so every spirit derives its reality and nature from a particular type of universal synthesis.
Duality | Nature | People | Reality | Risk | Spirit | Spirituality | Universe | Old |
Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav or Breslov, aka Reb Nachman Breslover or Nachman from Uman NULL
Since the evil forces see that the Jewish people are very, very close to the end (to the messiah), and there are Jews nowadays who have tremendous yearning and passion for spirituality and godliness, such a thing that has never occurred in past generations, so the evil forces enter arguments between the tzaddikim, and they establish in the world many false leaders, and even between true tzaddikim the evil forces cause great arguments, until no one knows where truth can be found. Therefore, a person needs to plead very much from Hashem to merit to recognize and come close to the true Tzaddik.
Cause | Evil | Merit | Passion | Past | People | Spirituality | Truth | World |
There is a fundamental paradox here. The less we are attached to life, the more alive we can become. The less we have preferences about life, the more deeply we can experience and participate in life. This is not to say that I don't prefer raisin toast to blueberry muffins. It is to say that I don't prefer raisin toast so much that I am unwilling to get out of bed unless I can have raisin toast, or that the absence of raisin toast ruins the whole day. Embracing life may be more about tasting than it is about either raisin toast or blueberry muffins. More about trusting one's ability to take joy in the newness of the day and what it may bring. More about adventure than having your own way.
Ability | Absence | Adventure | Day | Experience | Joy | Life | Life | Paradox |
Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
Give God the power of attorney. Let Him do whatever He wants. Be like a kitten and cry to Him with a fervent heart. The mother cat puts the kitten wherever she wants to. The kitten doesn't know anything. It is left sometimes on the bed and sometimes near the hearth.
Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
Do your worldly duties with a part of your mind and direct most of it to God. A sadhu should think of God with three quarters of his mind and with one quarter should do his other duties. He should be very alert about spiritual things. The snake is very sensitive in its tail. Its whole body reacts when it is hurt there. Similarly, the whole life of a sadhu is affected when his spirituality is touched.
Body | God | Life | Life | Mind | Spirituality | God | Think |
Randy Pausch, fully Randolph Frederick "Randy" Pausch
We're not going to talk about spirituality and religion. Although I will tell you that I have experienced a deathbed conversion. I just bought a Macintosh.
Spirituality | Will |
Ray Bradbury, fully Ray Douglas Bradbury
I went to bed and woke in the middle of the night thinking I heard someone cry, thinking I myself was weeping, and I felt my face and it was dry.
Thinking |
Ray Bradbury, fully Ray Douglas Bradbury
If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like old faithful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting. I wake early and hear my morning voices leaping around in my head like jumping beans. I get out of bed to trap them before they escape.
Old |
Ray Bradbury, fully Ray Douglas Bradbury
Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together.