This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Silence illuminates our souls, whispers to our hearts, and brings them together. Silence separates us from ourselves, makes us sail the firmament of spirit, and brings us closer to Heaven; it makes us feel that bodies are no more than prisons and that this world is only a place of exile.
The city as a center where, any day in any year, there may be a fresh encounter with a new talent, a keen mind or a gifted specialist - this is essential to the life of a country. To play this role in our lives a city must have a soul - a university, a great art or music school, a cathedral or a great mosque or temple, a great laboratory or scientific center, as well as the libraries and museums and galleries that bring past and present together. A city must be a place where groups of women and men are seeking and developing the highest things they know.
Art | Day | Life | Life | Men | Mind | Music | Past | Play | Present | Soul | Art |
Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim
The soul that would experience this birth must detach herself from all outward things: within herself completely at one with herself... You must have an exalted mind an a burning heart in which, nevertheless, reign silence and stillness.
Mere knowledge alone will not enable us to solve the profound problems of life... Sympathy is an essential part of a right attitude to the riddles of the universe. You must tune up your heart to catch the music of the spheres.
Heart | Knowledge | Life | Life | Music | Problems | Right | Sympathy | Universe | Will |
Most people will go to their graves with their music still in them.
When a man allows music to play upon him and to pour into his soul through the funnel of his ears those sweet and soft and melancholy airs... and his whole life is passed in warbling and the delights of song, in the first stage of the process the passion or spirit which is in him is tempered like iron, and made useful, instead of brittle and useless. But, if he carries on the softening and soothing process, in the next stage he begins to melt and waste, until he has wasted away his spirit and cut out the sinews of his soul.
Life | Life | Man | Melancholy | Music | Passion | Play | Soul | Spirit | Waste |
He gave man speech, and speech created thought, which is the measure of the universe; and science struck the thrones of earth and heaven, which shook, but fell not; and the harmonious mind poured itself forth in all-prophetic song; and music lifted up the listening spirit until it walked, except from mortal care, Godlike, o’er the clear billows of sweet sound.
Care | Earth | Heaven | Listening | Man | Mind | Mortal | Music | Science | Sound | Speech | Spirit | Thought | Universe |
The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention…. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words.