This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
Thou art the God of Gods, and the Lord of Lords, Ruler of beings celestial and terrestrial, For all creatures are Thy witnesses And by the glory of this Thy name, every creature is bound to Thy service. Thou art God, and all things formed are Thy servants and worshippers. Yet is not Thy glory diminished by reason of those that worship aught beside Thee, For the yearning of them all is to draw nigh Thee, But they are like the blind, Setting their faces forward on the King’s highway, Yet still wandering from the path. One sinketh into the well of a pit And another falleth into a snare, But all imagine they have reached their desire, Albeit they have suffered in vain. But Thy servants are as those walking clear-eyed in the straight path, Turning neither to the right nor the left Till they come to the court of the King’s palace. Thou art God, by Thy Godhead sustaining all that hath been formed, And upholding in Thy Unity all creatures. Thou art God, and there is no distinction ’twixt Thy Godhead and Thy Unity, Thy pre-existence and Thy existence, For ’tis all one mystery. And although the name of each be different, "Yet they are all proceeding to one place."
Art | Eternal | Light | Lord | Sin | World | Art | Intellect |
Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
May it please Thee, O Lord my God, To return to me in mercy, And to bring me back to Thee in perfect repentance. O dispose my heart and turn Thine ear to supplication, And open my heart to Thy law, And plant in my thoughts the fear of Thee, And decree for me good decrees, And annul the evil decrees against me, And lead me not into the power of temptation, Nor into the power of contempt, And from all evil chances deliver me, And hide me in Thy shadow until the havoc pass by, And be with my mouth in my meditation, And keep my ways from sin through my tongue, And remember me when Thou rememberest and favourest Thy people, And when Thou rebuildest Thy Temple, That I may behold the bliss of Thy chosen ones, And purify me to seek diligently Thy Sanctuary devastated and ruined, And to cherish its stones and its dust, And the clods of its desolation, And rebuild Thou its wastes!
Affliction | Eternal | Good | Mercy | Past | Pity | Rage | Rest | Reward | Trust | Wickedness | Will | Blessed |
Margaret Fuller, fully Sara Margaret Fuller, Marchese Ossoli
With equal sweetness the commissioned hours Shed light and dew upon both weeds and flowers. The weeds unthankful raise their vile heads high, Flaunting back insult to the gracious sky; While the dear flowers, wht fond humility, Uplift the eyelids of a starry eye In speechless homage, and, from grateful hearts, Perfume that homage all around imparts.
For I was reared in the great city, pent with cloisters dim, and saw naught lovely but the sky and stars. But thou, my babe! Shalt wander like a breeze By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags Of ancient mountains, and beneath the clouds, Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores And mountain crags: so shall thou see and hear The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible Of that eternal language, which thy God Utters, who from eternity doth teach Himself in all, and al things in himself Great universal teacher! He shall mold Thy spirit and by giving , make it ask.
If people who want to make change lack awareness, they can cause side effects that aren’t desirable. Developing our own inner wisdom increases our capacity to see cause and effect, have patience, have more harmony and wisdom in human relationships, and be open to new ways of doing things. There is an Einstein quote about not being able to solve a problem with the mindset that created it.
God | Individual | Means | Religion | Spirituality | Tradition | God |
Rudolf Steiner, fully Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner
Unless we first permeate ourselves with the realization that only through the artistic can we penetrate into the realm of truth, there can be no question of acquiring a real understanding of the supersensible world in accordance with the present age of the conscious soul.
Understanding | World |
Rudolf Steiner, fully Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner
Intuition is for thinking what observation is for percept. Intuition and observation are the sources of our knowledge.
Order | Soul | Understanding |
Wealth is not of necessity a curse, nor poverty a blessing.—Wholesome and easy abundance is better than either extreme; better for our manhood that we have enough for daily comfort; enough for culture, for hospitality, for Christian charity.—More than this may or may not be a blessing.—Certainly it can be a blessing only by being accepted as a trust.
Rudolf Steiner, fully Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner
The nerve system is the only system that has no connection whatever with soul and spirit. Blood, muscles, and so on always have a direct connection with soul and spirit. ... That is the peculiar thing about it. In psychology and physiology you find the following put forward; the organ that acts as a medium for sensation, thinking and the whole soul and spirit element, is the nerve system. But how does it come to be this medium? Only by continually expelling itself from life [Lee: continually dying out], so that it does not offer any obstacles to thinking and sensation, forms no connections with thinking and sensation, and in that place where it is it leaves the human being empty in favour of the soul and spirit, Actually there are hollow spaces for the spirit and soul where the nerves are. Therefore spirit and soul can enter in where these hollow spaces are.
Individual | Nothing | Principles | Wants |
Pleasure is far sweeter as a recreation than a business.
Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
Now I am sober and there's only the hangover and the memory of love.
Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
The intelligent want self-control; children want candy.
Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
People of the world don't look at themselves, and so they blame one another.
Intelligence | Lust | Intellect |
Rupert Sheldrake, fully Alfred Rupert Sheldrake
Now the whole point about machines is they are designed not to be random. When you call up a word processing program on your computer, you don't want it to be different every time you call it up. You want it to stay the same.
For the Lord touched all parts of creation, and freed and undeceived them all from every deceit.
Witness |
Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
For you [God] are infinite and never change. In you 'today' never comes to an end: and yet our 'today' does come to an end in you, because time, as well as everything else, exists in you. If it did not, it would have no means of passing. And since your years never come to an end, for you they are simply 'today'...But you yourself are eternally the same. In your 'today' you will make all that is to exist tomorrow and thereafter, and in your 'today' you have made all that existed yesterday and for ever before.
Darkness | Day | Eternal | Evil | God | Good | Light | Man | Understanding | Wisdom | Loss | God |
S.G. Tallentyre, nom de plume for Evelyn Beatrice Hall
If to be great means to be good, then Denis Diderot was a little man. But if to be great means to do great things in the teeth of great obstacles, then none can refuse him a place in the temple of the Immortals.
Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL
All these sensory means and exercises of the faculties must be left behind and in silence so that God Himself may affect the divine union of the soul. As a result one has to follow this method of disencumbering, emptying, and depriving the faculties of their natural rights and operations to make room for the inflow and illumination of the supernatural. If a person does not turn his eyes from his natural capacity, he will not attain to so lofty a communication; rather he will hinder it. If it is true that the soul must journey by knowing God through what He is not, rather than through what He is, it must journey, insofar as possible, by way of the denial and rejection of natural and supernatural apprehensions. This is our task now with the memory. We must draw it away from its natural props and capacities and raise it above itself (above all distinct knowledge and apprehensible possession) to supreme hope in the incomprehensible God. The annihilation of the memory in regard to all forms (including the five senses) is an absolute requirement for union with God. This union cannot be wrought without a complete separation of the memory from all forms that are not God. In great forgetfulness it is absorbed in a supreme good. Once he has the habit of union he no longer experiences these lapses of memory in matters concerning his moral and natural life. All the operations of the memory and other faculties in this state are divine.
Faith | Love | Progress | Purity | Reason | Sense | Simplicity | Soul | Will | Intellect |
Saint Maximus the Confessor NULL
No, he (The emperor is not a priest) isn't, because he neither stands beside the altar, and after the consecration of the bread elevates it with the words. Holy things for the holy, nor does he baptize, nor perform the rite of anointing, nor does he ordain and make bishops and presbyters and deacons; nor does he anoint churches, nor does he bear the symbols of the priesthood, the omophorion and the Gospel book, [as he bears the symbols] of imperial office, the crown and the purple.
Saint Maximus the Confessor NULL
For by plucking out self-love, which is, as they say, the beginning and mother of all evils, everything that comes from it and after it is plucked out as well. Once this is no more, absolutely no form or trace of evil can any longer subsist. All the forms of virtue are introduced, fulfilling the power of love, which gather together what has been separated, once again fashioning the human being in accordance with a single meaning and mode. It levels off and makes equal any inequality or difference inclination in anything, or rather binds it to that praiseworthy inequality, by which each is so drawn to his neighbor in preference to himself and so honors him before himself, that he is eager to spurn any obstacle in his desire to excel. And for this reason each one willingly frees himself from himself, by separating himself from any thoughts or properties to which he is privately inclined, and is gathered to the one singleness and sameness, in accordance with which nothing is in anyway separated from what is common to all, so that each is in each, and all in all, or rather in God and in others, and they are radiantly established as one, having the one logos of being in themselves, utterly single in nature and inclination. And in this God is understood: in him they are all beheld together and they are bound together and raised to him, as the source and maker. The logos of being of all beings by nature preserves itself pure and inviolate for our attention, who, with conscious zeal through the virtues and the toils that accompany them, have been purified from the passions that rebel against it.
Contemplation | Failure | Future | Grace | Hope | Ignorance | Law | Mystery | Principles | Scripture | Soul | Wisdom | Failure | Contemplation | Intellect |