This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Without knowledge there is no meditation, without meditation there is no knowledge: he who has knowledge and meditation is near unto Nirvana.
Character | Knowledge | Meditation |
The art of meditation may be exercised at all hours, and in all places; and men of genius, in their walks at table, and amidst assemblies, turning the eye of the mind inwards, can form an artificial solitude; retired amidst a crowd, calm amidst distraction, and wise amidst folly.
Art | Folly | Genius | Meditation | Men | Mind | Solitude | Wisdom | Wise | Art |
Reading makes a full man, meditation a profound man, discourse a clear man.
Man | Meditation | Reading | Wisdom |
Theodore Gottlieb von Hippel the Younger
The soul has, living apart from its corporeal envelope, a profound habitual meditation which prepares it for a future life.
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 |
Modern man seems to be afraid of silence. We are conditioned by radio and television on which every minute must be filled with talking, or some kind of sound. We are stimulated by the American philosophy of keeping on the move all the time - busy, busy, busy. This tends to make us shallow. A person's life can be deepened tremendously by periods of silence, used in the constructive ways of meditation and prayer. Great personalities have spent much time in the silence of life.
Life | Life | Man | Meditation | Philosophy | Prayer | Silence | Sound | Talking | Television | Time | Wisdom | Afraid |
Silence and meditation are the rungs on which one climbs to the Higher Worlds.
Meditation | Silence | Wisdom |
Meditation is the tongue of the soul and the language of our spirit; and our wandering thoughts in prayer are but the neglects of meditation and recessions from that duty; according as we neglect meditation, so are our prayers imperfect, meditation being the soul of prayer and the intention of our spirit.
Duty | Intention | Language | Meditation | Neglect | Prayer | Soul | Spirit | Wisdom |
If meditation is aimed at curing an illness the practicer should forget all about the thought of curing it, and if it is for improving health he should forget all about the idea of improvement, because when mind and objects are forgotten everything will be void and the result thus achieved will be the proper one... If the thoughts of curing an illness and of improving health are clung to the mind will be stirred and no result can be expected.
Health | Improvement | Meditation | Mind | Thought | Will | Wisdom | Thought |
A little knowledge leads the mind from God. Unripe thinkers use their learning to authenticate their doubts. While unbelief has its own dogma, more peremptory than the inquisitor's, patient meditation brings the scholar back to humbleness. He learns that the grandest truths appear slowly.
Dogma | God | Knowledge | Learning | Little | Meditation | Mind | Scholar | Thinkers | Unbelief | Wisdom | Truths |
Zen meditation does not mean sitting and thinking. On the contrary, it means acting with as little thought as possible. The fencing master trained his pupil to guard against every attack with the same immediate, instinctive rapidity with which our eyelid closes over our eye when something threatens it. His work is aimed at breaking down the wall between thought and act, at completely fusing body and senses and mind so that they might all work together rapidly and effortlessly.
Body | Little | Means | Meditation | Mind | Thinking | Thought | Work | Zen | Thought |
Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman
Transcendent, mystical, and spiritual experiences have a real biological component. The neurological changes that occur during meditation disrupt the normal processes of the brain – perceptually, emotionally, and linguistically – in ways that make the experience indescribable, awe-inspiring, unifying, and indelibly real. In fact, the intensity of such experiences often gives the practitioner a sense that a different or higher level of reality exists beyond our everyday perceptions of the world.
Awe | Experience | Meditation | Mystical | Reality | Sense | World |
Pope Pius X, aka Saint Pope Pius X and Pope of the Eucharist, born Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto NULL
It is of primary importance that a certain space of time be allotted daily to meditation on eternal things. No priest can omit this without serious manifestation of negligence and without a grave loss to his soul.
Meditation, because it is free of dogma, of historical commitments and narrow prejudices, because it is practiced for the most part silently and thereby secretly, and because it is practiced by some members of all religions - meditation is a channel for seekers of all faiths or no faith, a river into which many streams can freely flow.
Dogma | Faith | Meditation |
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
I have brought myself by long meditation to the conviction that a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and that nothing can resist a will which will stake even existence upon its fulfillment.
Existence | Fulfillment | Meditation | Nothing | Purpose | Purpose | Will |
Bahya ben Joseph ibn Pakuda NULL
Words are the shell, meditation the kernel. Words are the body of prayer, and meditation its spirit.
Body | Meditation | Prayer | Spirit | Words |