This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Whoever would be a teacher of men let him begin by teaching himself before teaching others; and let him teach by example before teaching by word. For he who teaches himself and rectifies his own ways is more deserving of respect and reverence than he who would teach others and rectify their ways.
Example | Men | Respect | Reverence | Teach | Respect | Teacher |
Pythagoras, aka Pythagoras of Samos or Pythagoras the Samian NULL
Let a man use great reverence and manners to himself.
Pythagoras, aka Pythagoras of Samos or Pythagoras the Samian NULL
Above all things reverence thy Self. [Respect yourself above all.]
I should not say that where fear is there is also reverence… but where reverence is, there is fear.
William Temple, fully Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet
One great gain that the scientific use of the comparative method of religion has brought us is the duty of genuine reverence for other men’s beliefs... Whatever thoughts any human soul is seeking to live by, deserve the reverence of every other human soul.
We need harmony, we need peace. Peace is based on respect for life, the spirit of reverence for life. Not only do we have to respect the lives of human beings, but we have to respect the lives of animals, vegetables, and minerals. Rocks can be alive. A rock can be destroyed. The earth also. The destruction of our health by pollution of the air and water is linked to the destruction of the minerals. The way we farm, the way we deal with our garbage, all these things are related to each other.
Earth | Harmony | Health | Life | Life | Need | Peace | Respect | Reverence | Spirit | Respect |
Taste, if it mean anything but a paltry connoisseurship, must mean a general susceptibility to truth and nobleness, a sense to discern, and a heart to love and reverence all beauty, order, goodness, wheresoever, or in whatsoever forms and accompaniments, they are to be seen. This surely implies as its chief condition, a finely-gifted mind, purified into harmony with itself, into keenness and justness of vision; above all, kindled into love and generous admiration.
Admiration | Beauty | Harmony | Heart | Love | Mind | Order | Reverence | Sense | Taste | Truth | Vision |
Does not every true man feel that he is himself made higher by doing reverence to what is really above him?
Timothy Dwight, fully Timothy Dwight IV
It is impossible for the mind which is not totally destitute of piety to behold the piety to behold the sublime, the awful, the amazing works of creation and providence - the heavens with their luminaries, the mountains, the ocean, the storm, the earthquake, the volcano, the circuit of the seasons, and the revolutions of empires - without marking them all the mighty hand of god, and feeling strong emotions of reverence toward the Author of these stupendous works.
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
A man who is to educate really well, and is to make the young grow and develop into their full stature, must be filled through and through with the spirit of reverence. It is reverence towards others that is lacking in those who advocate machine-made cast-iron systems.
From Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit, there came a great unifying life force that flowed in and through all things - the flowers of the plains, blowing winds, rocks, trees, birds, animals - and was the same force that had been breathed into the first man. Thus all things were kindred, and were brought together by the same Great Mystery. Kinship with all creatures of the earth, sky, and water was a real and active principle. In the animal and bird world there existed a brotherly feeling that kept the Lakota safe among them. And so close did some of the Lakotas come to their feathered and furred friends that in true brotherhood they spoke a common tongue. The animals had rights - the right of man’s protection, the right to live, the right to multiply, and the right to freedom, and the right to man’s indebtedness - and in recognition of these rights the Lakota never enslaved an animal, and spared all life that was not needed for food and clothing. This concept of life and its relations was humanizing, and gave to the Lakota an abiding love. It filled his being with the joy and mystery of living; it gave him reverence for all life; it made a place for all things in the scheme of existence with equal importance to all. The Lakota could despise no creature, for all were of one blood, made by the same hand, and filled with the essence of the Great Mystery. In spirit, the Lakota were humble and meek. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” - this was true for the Lakota, and from the earth they inherited secrets long since forgotten. Their religion was sane, natural, and human.
Brotherhood | Despise | Earth | Existence | Force | Freedom | Joy | Life | Life | Love | Man | Mystery | Religion | Reverence | Right | Rights | Safe | Spirit | World | Friends |
We have rudiments of reverence for the human body, but we consider as nothing the rape of the human mind.
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Let the young soul look back upon its life and ask: What up to now have you truly loved, what has raised up your soul, what ruled it and at the same time made it happy? Line up these objects of reverence before you, and perhaps by their sequence they will yield to you a basic law of your true self. Compare them and see how they form a ladder on which you have so far climbed up toward yourself.
Reverence is an attitude of honoring life. Reverence automatically brings forth patience. Reverence permits non-judgemental justice. Reverence is a perception of the soul.
Perception | Reverence |
The purpose of our journey on this precious Earth is now to align our personalities with our souls. It is to create harmony, cooperation, sharing, and reverence for Life. It is to grow spiritually. This is our new evolutionary pathway. The old pathway - pursuing the ability to manipulate and control - no longer works. It now produces only violence and destruction.
Ability | Control | Earth | Journey | Purpose | Purpose | Reverence | Old |
George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
I wish to use my last hours of ease and strength in telling the strange story of my experience. I have never fully unbosomed myself to any human being; I have never been encouraged to trust much in the sympathy of my fellow-men. But we have all a chance of meeting with some pity, some tenderness, some charity, when we are dead: it is the living only who cannot be forgiven — the living only from whom men's indulgence and reverence are held off, like the rain by the hard east wind. While the heart beats, bruise it — it is your only opportunity; while the eye can still turn towards you with moist, timid entreaty, freeze it with an icy unanswering gaze; while the ear, that delicate messenger to the inmost sanctuary of the soul, can still take in the tones of kindness, put it off with hard civility, or sneering compliment, or envious affectation of indifference; while the creative brain can still throb with the sense of injustice, with the yearning for brotherly recognition — make haste — oppress it with your ill-considered judgements, your trivial comparisons, your careless misrepresentations.
Affectation | Chance | Haste | Heart | Indulgence | Reverence | Sense | Story | Strength | Sympathy | Trust |