This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
What a strange power there is in silence! How many resolutions are formed, how many sublime conquests effected, during that pause when lips are closed, and the soul secretly feels the eye of her Maker upon her! They are the strong ones of earth who know how to keep silence when it is a pain and grief unto them, and who gives time to their own souls to wax strong against temptation.
Earth | Grief | Pain | Power | Silence | Soul | Temptation | Time |
There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us. 'Tis good to give a stranger a meal, or a night's lodging. 'Tis better to be hospitable to his good meaning and thought, and give courage to a companion. We must be as courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light.
Behavior | Better | Courage | Good | Joy | Light | Man | Meaning | Pain | Thought |
Labor, as well as fasting, serves to mortify and subdue the flesh. Provided the labor you undertake contributes to the glory of God and your own welfare, I would prefer that you should suffer the pain of labor rather than that of fasting.
Roger Babson, fully Roger Ward Babson
Experience has taught me that financial success, job success and happiness in human relations are, in the main, the result of (a) physical well-being; (b) constant effort to develop one's personal assets; (c) setting up and working toward a series of life goals; (d) allowing time for meditation and spiritual regeneration.
Effort | Experience | Goals | Life | Life | Meditation | Success | Time | Happiness |
For all the psychological and physiological conditions which test integrity - fear, desire, hunger, fatigue, disaffection, anger, pain - have little reality in memory or anticipation but rather exist for the most part in the narrow immediacy of the present.
Anger | Anticipation | Desire | Fear | Hunger | Integrity | Little | Memory | Pain | Present | Reality |
Saint Ambrose, born Aurelius Ambrosius NULL
Prayer is the wing wherewith the soul flies to heaven, and meditation the eye wherewith we see God.
God | Heaven | Meditation | Prayer | Soul |
Benjamin Collins Brodie, fully Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie, 1st Baronet
Our minds are so constructed that we can keep the attention fixed on a particular object until we have, as it were, looked all around it; and the mind that possesses this faculty in the highest degree of perfection will take cognizance of relations of which another mind has no perception. It is this, much more than any difference in the abstract power of reasoning, which constitutes the vast difference between the minds of different individuals. This is the history alike of the poetic genius and of the genius of discovery in science. “I keep the subject,” said Sir Isaac Newton, “constantly before me, and wait until the dawnings open by little and little into a full light.” It was thus that after long meditation he was led to the invention of fluxions, and to the anticipation of the modern discovery of the combustibility of the diamond. It was thus that Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood, and that those views were suggested by Davy which laid the foundation of that grand series of experimental researches which terminated in the decomposition of the earths and alkalies.
Abstract | Age | Ambition | Anticipation | Attention | Contentment | Death | Discovery | Disease | Ennui | Failure | Genius | History | Indolence | Intelligence | Invention | Little | Meditation | Men | Mind | Object | Old age | Perfection | Power | Will | Discovery |
One who causes himself pain by abstinence from something he desires is called a sinner.
Abstinence | Pain |
The secret of meditation is to be conscious of each second of your existence and to keep the sun of awareness continually shining - in both the physical and psychological realms, in all circumstances, on each thing that arises.
Awareness | Circumstances | Existence | Meditation | Awareness |
Chopping wood is meditation. Carrying water is meditation. Be mindful 24 hours a day, not just during the one hour you may allot for formal meditation or reading scripture and reciting prayers. Each act must be carried out in mindfulness. Each act is a rite, a ceremony. Raising your cup of tea to your mouth is a rite. does the word “rite” seem too solemn? I use the word in order to jolt you into the realization of the life-and-death matter of awareness.
Awareness | Ceremony | Day | Death | Life | Life | Meditation | Mindfulness | Order | Reading | Scripture |
Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson
You become spiritually rich when you discover the riches of the kingdom within: when you have a consciousness of the oneness of all life; when you experience kinship with nature; when you are open to the buoyant spiritual life of being in tune with the Infinite; when you know the power of meditation and prayer.
Consciousness | Experience | Life | Life | Meditation | Nature | Oneness | Power | Prayer | Riches | Riches |
The least pain in our little finger gives more concern and uneasiness than the destruction of millions of our fellow beings.
One fire burns out another's burning, one pain is lessen'd by another's anguish.
Pain |
The least pain in our little finger gives us more concern and uneasiness, than the destruction of millions of our fellow-beings.
Religion in the deepest sense takes shape as we learn through pain and loss that the creativity we exercise over our lives is finite, a mere participation in a greater creative act.