This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Out, you impostors! Quack salving, cheating mountebanks! your skill is to make sound men sick, and sick men kill.
All Religions have this in common, that they are an outrage to common sense for they are pieced together out of a variety of elements, some of which seem so unworthy, sordid and at odds with man’s reason, that any strong and vigorous intelligence laughs at them; but others are so noble, illustrious, miraculous, and mysterious that the intellect can make no sense of them and finds them unpalatable. The human intellect is only capable of tackling mediocre subjects: it disdains petty subjects, and is startled by large ones. There is no reason to be surprised if it finds any religion hard to accept at first, for all are deficient in the mediocre and the commonplace, nor that it should require skill to induce belief. For the strong intellect laughs at religion, while the weak and superstitious mind marvels at it but is easily scandalized by it.
Common Sense | Intelligence | Mind | Reason | Religion | Sense | Skill | Intellect |
Thus, communism violates the sovereignty of the conscience, and equality: the first, by restricting spontaneity of mind and heart, and freedom of thought and action; the second, by placing labor and laziness, skill and stupidity, and even vice and virtue on an equality in point of comfort. For the rest, if property is impossible on account of the desire to accumulate, communism would soon become so through the desire to shirk.
Desire | Equality | Freedom of thought | Freedom | Labor | Mind | Property | Skill | Thought | Virtue | Virtue | Thought | Vice |
Moderate skill in several arts is to be preferred where one cannot attain to perfection in any.
Perfection | Skill |
It is better to excel in any single art than to arrive only at mediocrity in several, so moderate skill in several is to be preferred where one cannot attain to perfection in any.
Art | Better | Mediocrity | Perfection | Skill | Art |
Propertius, fully Sextus Propertius NULL
Let each man pass his days in that wherein his skill is greatest.
Rabbi Akiva, fully Rebbe Akiva ben Yosef NULL
Which is the more beautiful—God’s work or man’s?" "Undoubtedly man's work is the better," was Akiva's reply; "for while nature at God's command supplies us only with the raw material, human skill enables us to elaborate the same according to the requirements of art and good taste."
Ravi Shankar, born Robindro Shaunkor Chowdhury, aka Pandit
How does one put the spiritual significance of music on paper? Music transcends all languages and barriers and is the most beautiful communicative skill one can have. Music makes us all experience different emotions or the Navarasa as we call it. Different types of music, whether it is vocal or instrumental, Eastern or Western, Classical or Pop or folk from any part of the world can all be spiritual if it has the power to stir the soul of a person and transcend time for the moment. It makes one get goose-bumps in the body and mind and equates the highest mental orgasm and the release of grateful tears!
Body | Emotions | Experience | Mind | Music | Power | Skill | Soul | Time | World |
Richard Neustadt, fully Richard Elliott Neustadt
A President's persuasiveness with other men in government depends on something more than his advantages for bargaining. The men he would persuade must be convinced in their own minds that he has skill and will enough to use his advantages. Their judgment of him is a factor in his influence with them.
Enough | Government | Influence | Judgment | Men | Skill | Will | Government |
Moderation, the Golden Mean, the Aristonmetron, is the secret of wisdom and of happiness. But it does not mean embracing an unadventurous mediocrity: rather it is an elaborate balancing-act, a feat of intellectual skill demanding constant vigilance. Its aim is a reconciliation of opposites.
Reconciliation | Skill | Wisdom |
Robert Southwell, also Saint Robert Southwell
Look home - Retirëd thoughts enjoy their own delights, As beauty doth in self-beholding eye ; Man's mind a mirror is of heavenly sights, A brief wherein all marvels summëd lie, Of fairest forms and sweetest shapes the store, Most graceful all, yet thought may grace them more. The mind a creature is, yet can create, To nature's patterns adding higher skill ; Of finest works with better could the state If force of wit had equal power of will. Device of man in working hath no end, What thought can think, another thought can mend. Man's soul of endless beauty image is, Drawn by the work of endless skill and might ; This skillful might gave many sparks of bliss And, to discern this bliss, a native light ; To frame God's image as his worths required His might, his skill, his word and will conspired. All that he had his image should present, All that it should present it could afford, To that he could afford his will was bent, His will was followed with performing word. Let this suffice, by this conceive the rest,— He should, he could, he would, he did, the best.
Beauty | Better | Force | Grace | Light | Man | Mind | Power | Present | Skill | Soul | Thought | Will | Wit | Work | Beauty | Thought |
Jonah Barrington, Sir Jonah Barrington
It's not how old you are, it's how hard you work at it.
Better | Business | Doubt | Focus | Good | Industry | Maxims | Method | Optimism | People | Pessimism | Popularity | Search | Security | Skill | Study | Thought | Time | Will | Business | Think | Thought | Value |
With the advent of people like Jon Kabat-Zinn, who applies it to a medical model, mindfulness has been taken out of an exclusively Eastern context. We teach mindfulness in a Jewish context. We feel it is an authentic interpretation of the traditions of Judaism. Judaism is an evolving civilization, American and modern as well as ancient. The people coming to this retreat at Garrison are either already teaching or preparing to teach mindfulness in a Jewish context. They are coming to deepen their own practice and advance their teaching capacities.
Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
For if a thing is not diminished by being shared with others, it is not rightly owned if it is only owned and not shared.