This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Arthur Helps, fully Sir Arthur Helps
The accomplished hypocrite does not exercise his skill upon every possible occasion for the sake of acquiring facility in the use of his instruments. In all unimportant matters, who is more just, more upright, more candid, more honorable?
Silence |
The man who seeks a quid pro quo from God builds on uncertainty, whereas the man who considers himself a debtor will receive sudden and unexpected riches.
Statius, fully Publius Papinius Statius NULL
The whole world is a man's birthplace.
Providence would seem to sleep unless faith and prayer awaken it. The disciples had but little faith in their Master's accounts, yet that little faith awakened him in a storm, and he relieved them. Unbelief doth only discourage God from showing his power in taking our parts.
Care | Doctrine | God | Humor | Little | Love | Means | Meditation | Men | Need | Reason | Revelation | Scripture | Study | Will | God |
All lovers live by longing, and endure: summon a vision and declare it pure.
A summer breeze can be very refreshing; but if we try to put it in a tin can so we can have it entirely to ourselves, the breeze will die. Our beloved is the same. He is like a breeze, a cloud, a flower. If you imprison him in a tin can, he will die. Yet many people do just that. They rob their loved one of his liberty, until he can no longer be himself. They live to satisfy themselves and use their loved one to help them fulfill that. That is not loving; it is destroying.
Meditation | Necessity | Time | Friends |
Every thought you produce, anything you say, any action you do, it bears your signature.
Meditation | World |
Be not anxious about thy provision for old age, for by all appearance thou wilt never see it. It is more than probable thou wilt be sooner at thy journey's end. The body is weak; it is even stepping down to salute corruption as its mother, ere it has well entered the hall of the world: thy tabernacle pins seem to be drawing out by little and little already. Courage then, O my soul; ere long the devil, and the world, and the flesh shall be bruised underthy feet; and thou shalt be received into eternal mansions. But though the Lord should lengthen out thy days to old age, he that brought thee into life will not forsake thee then either. If he give thee life, he will give thee meat. Keep a loose hold of the world then; contemn it if thou wouldst be a fisher of men..
Change | Force | God | Means | Silence | Submission | Will | God |
Mindful breathing is the vehicle that you use to go back to your true home where you meet the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. Mindful breathing brings you home--it generates the energy of mindfulness in you. Mindfulness is the substance of a Buddha.
Means | Meditation | Right |
In modern society most of us don't want to be in touch with ourselves; we want to be in touch with other things like religion, sports, politics, a book - we want to forget ourselves. Anytime we have leisure, we want to invite something else to enter us, opening ourselves to the television and telling the television to come and colonize us.
To think in terms of either pessimism or optimism oversimplifies the truth. The problem is to see reality as it is. A pessimistic attitude can never create the calm and serene smile which blossoms on the lips of Bodhisattvas and all those who obtain the way.
We should be treated with great respect, great affection and compassion. It is very important to treat our bodies with the utmost respect, with understanding, with compassion. If you know how to treat your body and your feelings with such respect, you will also be able to treat another person with the same respect and that is how we build peace.
Leisure | Meditation | Need | Practice | Will |
This was not the very finest quality of weaving with gold thread, of the kind that was being produced for the leading courts of the day by the Brussels workshops. Rather, it reflects the sort of medium-quality tapestries that the Florence workshops were producing at this time for use in the Medici palaces. Still, the pride they must have felt, knowing this would be destined to go to Como. Tapestry was such an important part of the theatrical presentation of the day. It was the whole stage set against which the formal side of life was acted out.
Silence |
At bottom, it is the Poet's first gift, as it is all men's, that he have intellect enough. He will be a Poet if he have: a Poet in word; or failing that, perhaps still better, a Poet in act. Whether he write at all; and if so, whether in prose or in verse, will depend on accidents: who knows on what extremely trivial accidents, — perhaps on his having had a singing-master, on his being taught to sing in his boyhood! But the faculty which enables him to discern the inner heart of things, and the harmony that dwells there (for whatsoever exists has a harmony in the heart of it, or it would not hold together and exist), is not the result of habits or accidents, but the gift of Nature herself; the primary outfit for a Heroic Man in what sort soever. To the Poet, as to every other, we say first of all, See. If you cannot do that, it is of no use to keep stringing rhymes together, jingling sensibilities against each other, and name yourself a Poet; there is no hope for you. If you can, there is, in prose or verse, in action or speculation, all manner of hope. The crabbed old Schoolmaster used to ask, when they brought him a new pupil, 'But are ye sure he's not a dunce?' Why, really one might ask the same thing, in regard to every man proposed for whatsoever function; and consider it as the one inquiry needful: Are ye sure he's.
What a wretched thing is all fame! A renown of the highest sort endures, say, for two thousand years. And then? Why, then, a fathomless eternity swallows it. Work for eternity; not the meagre rhetorical eternity of the periodical critics, but for the real eternity wherein dwelleth the Divine.
Silence |
Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.
Silence |
Unity, agreement, is always silent or soft-voiced; it is only discord that loudly proclaims itself.