This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The oppressor must have the cooperation of the oppressed, of those he must feel better than. The oppressed and the damned are placed in an inferior position by force of arms, physical strength, and later, by threats of such force. But the long-time maintenance of power over others is secured by psychological manipulation and seduction.
Better | Cooperation | Force | Position | Power | Strength | Time |
Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
There is a force within that gives you life - seek that. In your body there lies a precious jewel - seek that. Oh, wandering Sufi, if you are in search of the greatest treasure, don’t look outside, look within, and seek that.
Most religions are absolutist. Claims to revelation militate against rational argument and compromise. In this sense all religions contain totalitarian possibilities; for totalitarianism, which welds the state into a single body “knit together as one man” is really the religious impulse, the worship of leadership and ideology, the cult of Person or Book, directed towards secular ends.
Argument | Body | Cult | Ends | Impulse | Man | Revelation | Sense | Worship | Leadership |
A scientist had a bird in his hand. He saw that it had life and, wanting to find out in what part of the bird's body its life lay, he began dissecting the bird. The result was that the very life he was in search of disappeared. Those who try to understand the mysteries of the inner life intellectually will meet with similar failure. The life they are looking for will vanish in the analysis.
Words are things. Thoughts are things. Where your thoughts are, you are. When we learn to discipline and control our thoughts and feelings, and use only the positive, constructive words, sent forth with divine love, our body and mind respond to that righteousness – right-use-ness. The right use and selection of words is of vital importance but equally important is the feeling behind those words, for feeling is the motivating power that makes the words live.
Body | Control | Discipline | Feelings | Important | Love | Mind | Power | Right | Righteousness | Words | Learn |
Know thou the soul as riding in a chariot, the body as the chariot. Know thou the intellect as the chariot-driver, and the mind as the reins. The senses, they say, are the horses; the objects of sense, what they range over, the self combined with senses and mind, wise men call `the enjoyer.’ He who has not understanding, whose mind is not constantly held firm – his senses are uncontrolled, like the vicious horses of a chariot-driver.
Body | Men | Mind | Self | Sense | Soul | Understanding | Wise | Intellect |
Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself, it will do more than if you paralyze it by encumbering it with remedies.
In the degree, however, that you come into a vital realization of your oneness with the Infinite Spirit of Life, whence all life in individual form has come and is continually coming, and in the degree that through this realization you open yourself to its divine inflow, you set into operation forces that will sooner or later bring even the physical body into a state of abounding health and strength. For to realize that this Infinite Spirit of Life can from its very nature admit of no disease, and to realize that this, then, is the life in you, by realizing your oneness with it, you can so open yourself to its more abundant entrance that the diseased bodily conditions - effects - will respond to the influences of its all-perfect power, this either quickly or more tardily, depending entirely on yourself.
Body | Disease | Health | Individual | Life | Life | Nature | Oneness | Power | Spirit | Strength | Will |
Smaller than the hundredth part of a tip of hair, the Soul of the living being is capable of infinity. Male is he not nor female nor neuter, but is joined with whatever body he takes as his own.
A body is like lightning, gone in a moment, back to Nothingness. As spring flowers are dead in the fall. Forget about this growing and dying, it is all irrelevant. Life’s motions are like dew on the grass.
Vivekananda, fully Sri or Swami Vivekananda, born Narendra Nath Datta NULL
I do not understand how people declare themselves to be believers in God, and at the same time think that God has handed over to a little body of man all truth, and that they are guardians of the rest of humanity.
Body | God | Humanity | Little | Man | People | Rest | Time | Truth | God | Think | Understand |
Be generous in prosperity, and thankful in adversity. Be fair in thy judgment, and guarded in thy speech. Be a lamp unto those who walk in darkness, and a home to the stranger. Be eyes to the blind, and a guiding light unto the feet of the erring. Be a breath of life to the body of humankind, a dew to the soil of the human heart, and a fruit upon the tree of humility.
Adversity | Body | Darkness | Heart | Humility | Judgment | Life | Life | Light | Prosperity | Speech |