This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Redemption, eternal life, divinity, humanity, propitiation, incarnation, judgment, Satan, heaven and hell—all these beliefs have been so materialized and coarsened, that with a strange irony they present to us the spectacle of things having a profound meaning and yet carnally interpreted. Christian boldness and Christian liberty must be reconquered; it is the church which is heretical, the church whose sight is troubled and her heart timid. Whether we will or no, there is an esoteric doctrine, there is a relative revelation; each man enters into God so much as God enters into him, or as Angelus, I think, said, "the eye by which I see God is the same eye by which He sees me."
Boldness | Church | Eternal | God | Heart | Heaven | Irony | Liberty | Man | Meaning | Present | Will | God |
In the conduct of life, habits count for more than maxims, because habit is a living maxim, becomes flesh and instinct. To reform one's maxims is nothing: it is but to change the title of the book. To learn new habits is everything, for it is to reach the substance of life. Life is but a tissue of habits.
Change | Conduct | Habit | Life | Life | Maxims | Reform | Title | Learn |
Hold a picture of yourself long and steadily enough in your mind's eye and you will be drawn toward it. Picture yourself vividly as defeated and that alone will make victory impossible. Picture yourself vividly as winning, and that alone will contribute immeasurably to success. Do not picture yourself as anything and you will drift like a derelict.
I ask no one who may read this book to accept my views. I ask him to think for himself. Whoever, laying aside prejudice and self-interest, will honestly and carefully make up his own mind as to the causes and the cure of the social evils that are so apparent, does, in that, the most important thing in his power toward their removal. This primary obligation devolves upon us individually, as citizens and as men. Whatever else we may be able to do, this must come first. For "if the blind lead the blind, they both shall fall into the ditch." Social reform is not to be secured by noise and shouting; by complaints and denunciation; by the formation of parties, or the making of revolutions; but by the awakening of thought and the progress of ideas. Until there be correct thought, there cannot be right action; and when there is correct thought, right action will follow. Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
Action | Awakening | Important | Mind | Noise | Obligation | Power | Prejudice | Progress | Reform | Right | Thought | Will | Think | Thought |
Don't forget that the only two things people read in a story are the first and last sentences. Give them blood in the eye on the first one.
One of the supreme hours of human experience arrives when a man gets his eye on something concerning which he is persuaded that is the eternal truth.
Eternal | Experience | Man |
Social reform is not to be secured by noise and shouting; by complaints and denunciation; by the formation of parties, or the making of revolutions; but by the awakening of thought and the progress of ideas. Until there be correct thought, there cannot be right action; and when there is correct thought, right action will follow.
Action | Awakening | Noise | Progress | Reform | Right | Thought | Will | Thought |
Dada Vaswani, born Jashan Pahalraj Vaswani
The man who is eager to reform himself has no time or inclination to criticise others.
Inclination | Man | Reform | Time |
Love implies great freedom—not to do what you like. But love comes only when the mind is very quiet, disinterested, not self-centered. These are not ideals. If you have no love, do what you will—go after all the gods on earth, do all the social activities, try to reform the poor, the politics, write books, write poems—you are a dead human being. And without love your problems will increase, multiply endlessly. And with love, do what you will, there is no risk; there is no conflict. Then love is the essence of virtue. And a mind that is not in a state of love is not a religious mind at all. And it is only the religious mind that is freed from problems, and that knows the beauty of love and truth.
Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
An eye is meant to see things. The soul is here for its own joy. A head has one use: For loving a true love. Feet: To chase after. Love is for vanishing into the sky. The mind, for learning what men have done and tried to do. Mysteries are not to be solved: The eye goes blind when it only wants to see why. A lover is always accused of something. But when he finds his love, whatever was lost in the looking comes back completely changed.
Joanna Macy, fully Joanna Rogers Macy
Then self-consciousness arose and gave us distance on our world. We needed that distance in order to make decisions and strategies, in order to measure, judge and to monitor our judgments. With the emergence of free-will, the fall out of the Garden of Eden, the second movement began -- the lonely and heroic journey of the ego. Nowadays, yearning to reclaim a sense of wholeness, some of us tend to disparage that movement of separation from nature, but it brought us great gains for which we can be grateful. The distanced and observing eye brought us tools of science, and a priceless view of the vast, orderly intricacy of our world. The recognition of our individuality brought us trial by jury and the Bill of Rights.
Individuality | Journey | Order | Sense | Trial |
Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.
Half-uttered praise is to the curious mind, as to the eye half-veiled beauty is, more precious than the whole.
John Wayne, “The Duke,” born Marion Robert Morrison
A man deserves a second chance, but keep an eye on him.
Man |
John Yepes “Saint John of the Cross”
The soul that is clouded by the desires is darkened in the understanding and allows neither the sun of natural reason nor that of the supernatural Wisdom of God to shine upon it and illumine it clearly... At the same time, when the soul is darkened in the understanding, it is benumbed also in the will, and the memory becomes dull and disordered in its dire operation. The intellect cannot get the illumination of God’s wisdom, the will cannot get the love of God, and the memory cannot get God’s image... Darkness and coarseness will always be with a soul until its appetites are extinguished. The appetites are like a cataract on the eye or specks of dust in it; until removed they obstruct vision... The affections and appetites deprive them of a treasure of divine light... Any appetite, even one that is but slightly imperfect, stains and defiles the soul.
Darkness | God | Love | Memory | Reason | Soul | Understanding | Will | Wisdom | God | Intellect |
To the spiritual eye space is frozen time, and all things are petrified events.
Space |
The eye searches for shapes. It searches for a beginning, a middle, and an end.
John Henry Newman, aka Cardinal Newman and Blessed John Henry Newman
Everyone who breathes, high and low, educated and ignorant, young and old, man and woman, has a mission, has a work. We are not sent into this world for nothing; we are not born at random; we are not here, that we may go to bed at night, and get up in the morning, toil for our bread, eat and drink, laugh and joke, sin when we have a mind, and reform when we are tired of sinning, rear a family and die. God sees every one of us; He creates every soul, . . . for a purpose.
A fair face without a fair soul is like a glass eye that shines and sees nothing.
Soul |
Those who, from the desire of our perfection, have the keenest eye for our faults generally compensate for it by taking a higher view of our merits than we deserve.
Desire |