This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Hitopadesa or The Hitopadesa or Hitopadesha NULL
We teach children how to measure, how to weigh. We fail to teach them how to revere, how to sense wonder and awe. The sense of the sublime, the sign of the inward greatness of the human soul and something which is potentially given to all men, is now a rare gift.
Awe | Children | Greatness | Men | Sense | Soul | Teach | Wisdom | Wonder |
Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla
No time exists other than now... So now is all you have and all you ever will have... Why not begin doing the best you can right where you are?... Trust the process of growth. Trust God. Pay attention to the details of your life, doing your very best with each challenge that presents itself... The past is the raw material of the present, but the past is not a blueprint for the present... Begin where you are. Do what you can. Even a small effort to change, to grow, to improve, will bring astonishing results... You can choose to build on what you were, but you are not what you were. You can focus on what you will be, but you are not what you will be. What you are is what you are right now - the inheritor of all of God’s gifts.
Attention | Challenge | Change | Effort | Focus | God | Growth | Life | Life | Past | Present | Right | Time | Trust | Will | Wisdom |
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost. Now put foundations under them.
A little rebellion now and then... is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.
I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in the punishment of rebellions as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.
Good | Government | Health | Little | Observation | People | Punishment | Rebellion | Rights | Sound | Truth | Wisdom | World |
A wise man will select his books, for he would not wish to class them all under the sacred name of friends. Some can be accepted only as acquaintances. The best books of all kinds are taken to the heart, and cherished as his most precious possessions. Others to be chatted with for a time, to spend a few pleasant hours with and laid aside, but not forgotten.
Books | Heart | Man | Possessions | Sacred | Time | Will | Wisdom | Wise |
The purpose of meditation practice is not enlightenment; it is to pay attention even at un-extraordinary times, to be of the present, nothing-but-the-present, to bear this mindfulness of now into each even of ordinary life.
Attention | Enlightenment | Life | Life | Meditation | Mindfulness | Nothing | Practice | Present | Purpose | Purpose | Wisdom |
Solitary reading will enable a man to stuff himself with information, but without conversation, his mind will become like a pond without an outlet - a mass of unhealthy stagnature. It is not enough to harvest knowledge by study; the wind of talk must winnow it, and blow away the chaff; then will the clear, bright grains of wisdom be garnered, for our own use or that of others.
Conversation | Enough | Knowledge | Man | Mind | Reading | Study | Will | Wisdom |
I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method for settling international disputes.