This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Purpose is about developing relationships. Purpose is about bringing attention and intention into the present moment, moving ahead with new ideas, giving and receiving support, volunteering, mentoring, listening to the imagination and intuition, communicating, taking action based on inner direction and hints from the external, being adaptable, taking responsibility and ending the victim stance forever surrendering to the divine will and working with the lessons developing fluidity, tolerance, compassion, and the ability to love.
Ability | Action | Attention | Compassion | Giving | Ideas | Imagination | Intention | Intuition | Listening | Love | Present | Purpose | Purpose | Responsibility | Will | Victim |
The advice of a scholar, whose piles of learning were set on fire by imagination, is never to be forgotten. Proportion an hour's reflection to an hour's reading, and so dispirit the book into the student.
Advice | Imagination | Learning | Reading | Reflection | Scholar | Wisdom |
Love is in the air that I breathe, like oxygen. When I lack it, I feel atrophied, asphyxiated. When I have it, I feel I am growing. And so this growth is linked to others, or to a collective other. If I realize that I do not love you, my faith diminishes, and I breathe less and less of the oxygen of life. When I feel linked to you,in communion with you, there is a current of love that passes between us, and the intensity can multiply. And the more this love grows, the more the faith becomes luminous, the more I feel linked to the collective other. I am speaking of God.
James Baldwin, fully James Arthur Baldwin
Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
It is a man listening through a tornado for the Still Small Voice… a soul standing in awe before the mystery of the Universe… a hungry heart seeking for love… Time flowing into Eternity… IT is a man climbing the altar stairs to God.
Awe | Eternity | God | Heart | Listening | Love | Man | Mystery | Soul | Time | Universe |
Science has brought this danger, but the real problem is in the minds and hearts of men. We will not change the hearts of other men by mechanisms, but by changing our hearts and speaking bravely… When we are clear in heart and mind – only then shall we find courage to surmount the fear which haunts the world.
Change | Courage | Danger | Fear | Heart | Men | Mind | Science | Will | World |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
The outward freedom that we shall attain will only be in exact proportion to the inward freedom to which we may have grown at a given moment. And if this is a correct view of freedom, our chief energy must be concentrated on achieving reform from within.
Greatness is a matter not of size but of quality, and it is within the reach of every one of us. Greatness lies in the faithful performance of whatever duties life places upon us and in the generous performance of the small acts of kindness that God has made possible for us. There is greatness in patient endurance; in unyielding loyalty to a goal; in resistance to the temptation to betray the best we know; in speaking up for the truth when it is assailed; in steadfast adherence to vows given and promises made. God does not ask us to do extraordinary things. He asks us to do ordinary things extraordinarily well.
Endurance | God | Greatness | Kindness | Life | Life | Loyalty | Loyalty | Size | Temptation | Truth | Vows | God | Temptation |
Living life at its best means keeping on speaking terms with my conscience, to do nothing to outrage it or to inflict pain upon it. When my acts do violence to my moral or ethical standards, I sustain a loss for which no pleasure or material gain can compensate me, for I shrink in moral stature. When I keep my friendship with the best in me, I achieve a serenity which cloaks life with gentle beauty.
Beauty | Conscience | Life | Life | Means | Nothing | Pain | Pleasure | Serenity | Friendship | Loss |
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Although the tongue of God is busy speaking through all things, yet in order to speak to the deaf ears of many among us, it is necessary for Him to speak through the lips of man. He has done this all through the history of man, every great teacher of the past having been this guiding Spirit living the life of God in human guise. In other words, their human guise consists of various coats worn by the same person, who appeared to be different in each. Shiva, Buddha, Rama, Krishna, on the other side, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Mohammad on the other; and many more, known or unknown to history, always one and the same person.
God | History | Life | Life | Man | Order | Past | Spirit | Words | God | Teacher |
Thomas R. Kelly, fully Thomas Raymond Kelly
Deep within us all there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking Voice… Life from the Center is a life of unhurried peace and power. It is simple. It is serene. It is amazing. It is radiant.
Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
There is no other way of guarding one’s self against flattery than by letting men understand that they will not offend you by speaking the truth; but when everyone can tell you the truth, you lose their respect. A prudent prince must therefore take a third course, by choosing for his council wise men, and giving these alone full liberty to speak the truth to him, but only of those things that he asks and of nothing else; but he must ask them about everything and hear their opinion, and afterwards deliberate by himself in his own way.
Flattery | Giving | Liberty | Men | Nothing | Opinion | Respect | Self | Truth | Will | Wise | Understand |
A happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found: for a happiness that is diminished by being shared is not big enough to make us happy… True happiness is found in unselfish love, a love which increases in proportion as it is shared.