This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The man who listens is from the outset a spiritual being compared with the person who merely speaks, sees, and grasps. Hearing and taking in are spiritual activities: hearing the unchangeable, the untouchable, the incomprehensible, the constant, the eternal within the Melos. Only someone who listens can also recognize, interpret, think, speak, apprehend and comprehend.
Jonathan Swift, pen names, M.B. Drapier, Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff
The only benefit of flattery is that by hearing what we are not, we may be instructed what we ought to be.
Groucho Marx, Pseudonym for Julius Henry Marx
One of the best hearing aids a man can have is an attentive wife.
People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.
Like an ability or a muscle, hearing your inner wisdom is strengthened by doing it.
It is not [a child’s] hearing of the word, but its accompanying intonation that is understood.
Child |
The blind are more understanding than the deaf because hearing exerts a direct influence on the formation of moral character, which is not immediately true of what is seen. The human soul can also become diffused by way of the eye whereas what is heard results in focus and concentration.
Character | Focus | Influence | Soul | Understanding |
Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
Cultivate unity. You do your hearing, not with your ears, but with your mind; not with your mind, but with your very soul. But let the hearing stop with the ears. Let the working of the mind stop with itself. Then the soul will be a negative existence, passively responsive to externals. In such a negative existence, only Tao can abide. And the negative state is the fasting of the heart.
Perfection of hearing is not hearing others, but oneself. Perfection of vision is not seeing others, but oneself.
Perfection | Vision |
I never sleep in comfort save when I am hearing a sermon or praying to God.