This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
In his hearth and home, in his palace, upon his soft and comfortable bed, day and night, the flower-girls scatter flower petals; but without the Lord's Name, the body is miserable. Horses, elephants, lances, marching bands, armies, standard bearers, royal attendants and ostentatious displays - without the Lord of the Universe, these undertakings are all useless.
Anxiety | Anxiety | Applause | Envy | Eternal | Ideals | Men | Praise | Self | Society | Society |
Upanishads or The Upanishads NULL
The Self is within all, and it is without all. – Isha Upanishad
Body | Consciousness | Day | Heaven | Light | Mortal | Self | World |
Upanishads or The Upanishads NULL
When the mind is silent, beyond weakness or non-concentration, then it can enter into a world which is far beyond the mind, the highest End. - Maitreya Upanishad
Upanishads or The Upanishads NULL
The self-existent Lord pierced the senses to turn outward. Thus we look to the world outside and see not the Self within us. A sage withdrew his senses from the world of change and, seeking immortality, looked within and beheld the deathless self. – Katha Upanishad
Self |
Upanishads or The Upanishads NULL
The sun that illuminates the pot both within and without is not destroyed with the destruction of the pot; so the Sakshi (witness) that illuminates the body is not destroyed with the destruction of the body. – Atmabodha Upanishad
Our concern is whether we can live with dignity in such a system, whether it serves people rather than people serving it.
Civilization | Era | Individual | Knowledge | Life | Life | Self |
If I have accomplished anything good, then it's mainly because I've been driven by the need to know whether I can accomplish things I'm not sure I have the capacity for.
Day | Difficulty | Indifference | Man | Self | Sense | Silence | Sympathy |
Ridicule may be the evidence of wit or bitterness and may gratify a little mind, or an ungenerous temper, but it is no test of reason or truth.
Benevolence | God | Improvement | Obedience | Self | God |
Thomas R. Kelly, fully Thomas Raymond Kelly
The deepest need of men is not food and clothing and shelter, important as they are. It is God. We have mistaken the nature of poverty, and thought it was economic poverty. No, it is poverty of soul, deprivation of God's recreating, loving peace. Peer into poverty and see if we are really getting down to the deepest needs, in our economic salvation schemes. These are important. But they lie farther along the road, secondary steps toward world reconstruction. The primary step is a holy life, transformed and radiant in the glory of God.
Experience | Joy | Men | Mystical | Obedience | Peace | Power | Self | Soul | Old |
Thomas Szasz, fully Thomas Stephen Szasz
[Growing up] is especially difficult to achieve for a child whose parents do not take him seriously; that is, who do not expect proper behavior from him, do not discipline him, and finally, do not respect him enough to tell him the truth.
Action | Freedom | Responsibility | Self |
Thomas R. Kelly, fully Thomas Raymond Kelly
But self-renunciation means God-possession, the being possessed by God. Out of utter humility and self-forgetfulness comes the thunder of the prophets, "Thus saith the Lord." High station and low are leveled before Him. Be not fooled by the world's power. Imposing institutions of war and imperialism and greed are wholly vulnerable for they, and we, are forever in the hands of a conquering God. These are not cheap and hasty words. The high and noble adventures of faith can in our truest moments be seen as no adventures at all, but certainties. And if we live in complete humility in God we can smile in patient assurance as we work. Will you be wise enough and humble enough to be little fools of God? For who can finally stay His power? Who can resist His persuading love? Truly says Saint Augustine, "There is something in humility which raiseth the heart upward."
Business | Competition | Desire | Discernment | God | Growth | Habit | Humility | Important | Life | Life | Little | Looks | Meekness | Money | Nothing | Obedience | Poverty | Pride | Self | Soul | Superiority | Trifles | Will | Business | God |
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
Politics I conceive to be nothing more than the science of the ordered progress of society along the lines of greatest usefulness and convenience to itself.
Action | Justice | Life | Life | Object | Peace | Principles | Purpose | Purpose | Self | Will | World |
But though I loved you well, I wooed you not; and yet, good faith, I wished myself a man, or that we women had men's privilege of speaking first. Troilus and Cressida, Act iii, Scene 2
In modern eyes, precious though wars may be they must not be waged solely for the sake of the ideal harvest. Only when forced upon one, is a war now thought permissible. It was not thus in ancient times. The earlier men were hunting men, and to hunt a neighboring tribe, kill the males, loot the village and possess the females, was the most profitable, as well as the most exciting, way of living. Thus were the more martial tribes selected, and in chiefs and peoples a pure pugnacity and love of glory came to mingle with the more fundamental appetite for plunder. Modern war is so expensive that we feel trade to be a better avenue to plunder; but modern man inherits all the innate pugnacity and all the love of glory of his ancestors. Showing war's irrationality and horror is of no effect on him. The horrors make the fascination. War is the strong life; it is life in extremis; war taxes are the only ones men never hesitate to pay, as the budgets of all nations show us.
Body | Reputation | Self | Wife |