This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
It is more noble by silence to avoid an injury than by argument to overcome it.
François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
The coldness of our love is the silence of our hearts toward God. Without this we may pronounce prayers, but we do not pray; for what shall lead us to mate upon the laws of God, if it be not love of Him who has made these laws? Let our hearts be full of love then, and they will pray.
François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
We cease to pray to God as soon as we cease to love Him, as soon as we cease to thirst for His perfections. The coldness of our love is the silence of our hearts toward God. Without this we may pronounce prayers, but we do not pray; for what shall lead us to mate upon the laws of God if it be not the love of Him who has made these laws? Let our hearts be full of love, then, and they will pray.
Ravi Zacharias, fully Frederick Antony Ravi Kumar Zacharias
Love is a command, not just a feeling. Somehow, in the romantic world of music and theater we have made love to be what it is not. We have so mixed it with beauty and charm and sensuality and contact that we have robbed it of its higher call of cherishing and nurturing.
Franz Werfel, fully Franz Viktor Werfel
Yes, death is strong, but look you, the strongest, Stronger is music than death.
Augustus or Augustus Caesar, fully Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus, NULL
No risk attends the meed that silence brings.
George Szell, originally György Széll, György Endre Szél, or Georg Szell
In music one must think with the heart and feel with the brain.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
We grown-up people think that we appreciate music, but if we realized the sense that an infant has brought with it of appreciating sound and rhythm, we would never boast of knowing music. The infant is music itself.
No one can possibly simulate you or me with a system that is less complex than you or me. The products that we produce may be viewed as a simulation, and while products can endure in ways that our bodies cannot, they can never capture the richness, complexity, or depth of purpose of their creator. Beethoven once remarked that the music he had written was nothing compared with the music he had heard.
Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
Let pessimism once take hold of the mind, and life is all topsy-turvy, all vanity and vexation of spirit. There is no cure for individual or social disorder, except in forgetfulness and annihilation. "Let us eat, drink and be merry," says the pessimist, "for to-morrow we die." If I regarded my life from the point of view of the pessimist, I should be undone. I should seek in vain for the light that does not visit my eyes and the music that does not ring in my ears. I should beg night and day and never be satisfied. I should sit apart in awful solitude, a prey to fear and despair. But since I consider it a duty to myself and to others to be happy, I escape a misery worse than any physical deprivation.
Day | Duty | Fear | Forgetfulness | Individual | Life | Life | Light | Music | Pessimism |
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.
Henry Miller, aka Henry Valentine Miller
We live in the mind, in ideas, in fragments. We no longer drink in the wild outer music of the streets - we remember only.
Music |
Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
I have often thought it would be a blessing if each human being were stricken blind and deaf for a few days at some time during his early adult life. Darkness would make him more appreciative of sight; silence would teach him the joys of sound.
Isak Dinesen, pen name of Baroness Karen Blixen
Who tells a finer tale than any of us? Silence does.
Silence |
Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
I who am blind can give one hint to those who see - one admonition to those who would make full use of the gift of sight: Use your eyes as if tomorrow you would be stricken blind. And the same method can be applied to the other senses. Hear the music of voices, the song of a bird, the mighty strains of an orchestra, as if you would be stricken deaf tomorrow. Touch each object you want to touch as if tomorrow your tactile sense would fail. Smell the perfume of flowers, taste with relish each morsel, as if tomorrow you could never smell and taste again. Make the most of every sense; glory in all facets of pleasure and beauty which the world reveals to you through the several means of contact which Nature provides. But of all the senses, sight must be the most delightful.
Beauty | Glory | Means | Method | Music | Nature | Object | Pleasure | Sense | Taste | Tomorrow | World | Beauty |