This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
And those who come together in the night and are entwined in rocking delight do an earnest work and gather sweetnesses, gather depth and strength for the song of some coming poet, who will arise to speak of ecstasies beyond telling.
Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.
Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away... and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast.... be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.... and don't expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.
Beginning | Change | Faith | Happy | Life | Life | Love | Pain | Solitude | Space | Strength | Afraid |
Richard Chenevix, fully Richard Chenevix Trench, Archbishop of Dublin
Why, therefore, should we do ourselves this wrong, Or others--that we are not always strong-- That we are sometimes overborne with care-- That we should ever weak or heartless be, Anxious or troubled--when with us is prayer, And joy and strength and courage are with Thee?
The healing of our present woundedness may lie in recognizing and reclaiming the capacity we have to heal each other, the enormous power in the simplest of human relationships: the strength of a touch, the blessing of forgiveness, the grace of someone else taking you just as you are and finding in you an unsuspected goodness. Everyone alive has suffered. It is the wisdom gained from our wounds and from our own experiences of suffering that makes us able to heal. Becoming expert has turned out to be less important than remembering and trusting the wholeness in myself and everyone else. Expertise cures, but wounded people can best be healed by other wounded people. Only other wounded people can understand what is needed, for the healing of suffering is compassion, not expertise.
Capacity | Grace | Important | People | Power | Present | Strength | Suffering | Wholeness | Wisdom | Understand |
“Let’s all do it,” said Mr. Watts. “Close your eyes and silently recite your name.” The sound of my name took me to a place deep inside my head. I already knew that words could take you into a new world, but I didn’t know that on the strength of one word spoken for my ears only I would find myself in a room that no one else knew about. “Another thing,” Mr. Watts said. “No one in the history of your short lives has used the same voice as you with which to say your name. This is yours. Your special gift that no one can ever take from you.”
Meaning may become a very practical matter for those of us who do difficult work or lead difficult lives. Meaning is strength. Physicians often seek their strength in competence. Indeed, competence and expertise are two of the most respected qualities in the medical subculture, as well as in our society. But important as they are, they are not sufficient to fully sustain us
Competence | Important | Meaning | Qualities | Strength | Work |
Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
His gaze has from the passing of the bars grown so tired, that it holds nothing anymore. It seems to him there are a thousand bars and behind a thousand bars no world. The supple pace of powerful soft strides, turning in the very smallest circle, is like a dance of strength around a center in which a great will stands numbed. Only sometimes the curtain of the pupils soundlessly slides up --. Then an image enters, glides through the limbs' taut stillness, dives into the heart and dies.
Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love; the more they give, the more they possess of that precious nourishing love from which flowers and children have their strength and which could help all human beings if they would take it without doubting.
Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
If you feel proud, let it be in the thought that you are the servant of God, the son of God. Great men have the nature of a child. They are always a child before Him; so they are free from pride. All their strength is of God and not their own. It belongs to Him and comes from Him.
God | Men | Nature | Strength | Thought | God | Child | Thought |
Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
Suppose a man becomes pure by chanting the holy name of God, but immediately afterwards commits many sins. He has no strength of mind. He doesn't take a vow not to repeat his sins.
The millions of human beings who were shot, tortured, starved, treated like animals and made the object of a conspiracy of ridicule, can sleep in peace in their communal graves, for at least the struggle in which they died has enabled their descendants, isolated in their air-conditioned apartments, to believe, on the strength of their daily dose of television, that they are happy and free. The Communards went down, fighting to the last, so that you too could qualify for a Caribbean cruise.
Conspiracy | Fighting | Happy | Object | Peace | Strength | Struggle |
Being forced to work, and forced to do your best, will breed in you temperance and self-control, diligence and strength of will, cheerfulness and content, and a hundred virtues which the idle will never know.
Cheerfulness | Diligence | Strength | Will |
Pandurang Shastri Athavale, fully Pandurang Vaijnath Shastri Athavale
It is essential that in a society, divine thoughts and power should co-exist. Simple Faith, not backed by material forces, is weak and Strength without touch of Divinity is monstrous.
Pandurang Shastri Athavale, fully Pandurang Vaijnath Shastri Athavale
The strength of Truth lies in Love and the strength of Love lies in Truth.
Richard Chenevix, fully Richard Chenevix Trench, Archbishop of Dublin
We kneel, how weak; we rise, how full of power! Why, therefore, should we do ourselves this wrong, Or others--that we are not always strong, That we are ever overborne with care, That we should ever weak or heartless be, Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer, And joy and strength and courage are with Thee?
Faith makes all evil good to us, and all good better; unbelief makes all good evil, and all evil worse. Faith laughs at the shaking of the spear; unbelief trembles at the shaking of a leaf, unbelief starves the soul; faith finds food in famine, and a table in the wilderness. In the greatest danger, faith says, "I have a great God." When outward strength is broken, faith rests on the promises. In the midst of sorrow, faith draws the sting out of every trouble, and takes out the bitterness from every affliction.
Richard Jefferies, fully John Richard Jefferies
I cannot leave it; I must stay under the old tree in the midst of the long grass, the luxury of the leaves, and the song in the very air. I seem as if I could feel all the glowing life the sunshine gives and the south wind calls to being. The endless grass, the endless leaves, the immense strength of the oak expanding, the unalloyed joy of finch and blackbird; from them all I receive a little. Each gives me something of the pure joy they gather for themselves... The exceeding beauty of the earth, in her splendor of life, yields a new thought with every petal. The hours when the mind is absorbed by beauty are the only hours when we really live... These are the only hours that are not wasted -- these hours that absorb the soul and fill it with beauty. This is real life, and all else is illusion, or mere endurance. Does this reverie of flowers and waterfall and song form an ideal, a human ideal, in the mind? It does; much the same ideal that Phidias sculptured of man and woman filled with a godlike sense of the violet fields of Greece, beautiful beyond thought, calm as my turtle-dove before the lurid lightning of the unknown. To be beautiful and to be calm, without mental fear, is the ideal of nature. If I cannot achieve it, at least I can think it.
Beauty | Joy | Life | Life | Luxury | Man | Mind | Receive | Sense | Soul | Strength | Thought | Woman | Beauty | Old | Think | Thought |
The whole point of religious faith, its strength and chief glory, is that it does not depend on rational justification. The rest of us are expected to defend our prejudices. But ask a religious person to justify their faith and you infringe 'religious liberty'.
Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon
Economic power is not the same as strength of national character. Our country may be rich in goods, but we are poor in spirit.