This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
Here, where I am surrounded by an enormous landscape, which the winds move across as they come from the seas, here I feel that there is no one anywhere who can answer for you those questions and feelings which, in their depths, have a life of their own; for even the most articulate people are unable to help, since what words point to is so very delicate, is almost unsayable. But even so, I think that you will not have to remain without a solution if you trust in Things that are like the ones my eyes are now resting upon. If you trust in Nature, in the small Things that hardly anyone sees and that can so suddenly become huge, immeasurable; if you have this love for what is humble and try very simply, as someone who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier for you, more coherent and somehow more reconciling, not in your conscious mind perhaps, which stays behind, astonished, but in your innermost awareness, awakeness, and knowledge. You are so young, so much before all beginning, and I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
Books | Confidence | Feelings | Heart | Life | Life | Love | Mind | Patience | People | Search | Trust | Will | Words | Think |
Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
If only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful.
Because the medical system does not yet understand the full range of human needs it wounds people - both doctors and patients. It does not recognize the full range of human strengths, either. What is needed for the healing of the medical system is what is needed for the healing of the culture. Because we are wounded in the same way as our institutions, when you are trained by an institution your wounds increase. In our training we are actually rewarded for our woundedness and punished for our wholeness. Medical training at the moment is like a disease. We have to recover from it, and many people never do. I am a recovering physician. The medical system does not trust process. The whole concept of fixing and broken suggests an insensitivity to the process nature of the world. The essential word of process is yet. Yet is seeing with feminine eyes. We are all works in process. That means that judgment is really inappropriate, or premature, because none of us are finished... yet.
Judgment | Means | Nature | People | System | Training | Trust | Understand |
Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
It is clear that we must trust what is difficult; everything alive trusts in it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself any way it can and is spontaneously itself, tries to be itself at all costs and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must trust in what is difficult is a certainty that will never abandon us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be one more reason for us to do it.
Rebecca West, pen name of Mrs. Cicily Maxwell Andrews, born Fairfield, aka Dame Rebecca West
Everyone realizes that one can believe little of what people say about each other. But it is not so widely realized that even less can one trust what people say about themselves.
Ray Kroc, fully Raymond Albert Kroc
We have found out... that we cannot trust some people who are nonconformists... We will make conformists out of them... The organization cannot trust the individual; the individual must trust the organization.
Individual | Organization | People | Trust | Will |
It is a mark of prudence never to place our complete trust in those who have deceived us even once.
The senses deceive from time to time, and it is prudent never to trust wholly those who have deceived us even once.
Richard Cushing, fully Richard James Cushing, aka RIchard Cardinal Cushing
Before it's too late, and time is running out, let us turn from trust in the chain reactions of exploding atoms to faith of the chain reaction of God's love. Love - love of God and fellow men. That is God's formula for peace.
Richard Bach, fully Richard David Bach
But one creature said at last, 'I am tired of clinging. Though I cannot see it with my eyes, I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom.'
Trust |
To a survival machine, another survival machine (which is not its own child or another close relative) is part of its environment, like a rock or a river or a lump of food. It is something that gets in the way, or something that can be exploited. It differs from a rock or a river in one important respect: it is inclined to hit back. This is because it too is a machine that holds its immortal genes in trust for the future, and it too will stop at nothing to preserve them. Natural selection favors genes that control their survival machines in such a way that they make the best use of their environment. This includes making the best use of other survival machines, both of the same and of different species.
Control | Important | Machines | Nothing | Survival | Trust | Will | Child |
Richard L. Evans, fully Richard Louis Evans
Perhaps most of us feel that we could accept death for ourselves and for those we love if it did not often seem to come with such untimeliness. But we rebel when it so little considers our wishes or our readiness. But we may well ask ourselves when would we be willing to part with or to part from those we love? And who is there among us whose judgment we would trust to measure out our lives? Such decisions would be terrible for mere men to make. But fortunately we are spared making them; fortunately they are made by wisdom higher than ours. And when death makes its visitations among us, inconsolable grief and rebellious bitterness should have no place. There must be no quarrel with irrevocable facts. Even when death comes by events which seem unnecessary and avoidable. We must learn to accept what we cannot help.
Bitterness | Death | Events | Grief | Judgment | Little | Love | Men | Trust | Wisdom | Wishes | Learn |
Richard L. Evans, fully Richard Louis Evans
The swift passing of the seasons brings all of us at time to think upon the length of life, as friends and loved ones come and leave, and as we ourselves face always such uncertainties. Not one of us knows how long he will live, how long his loved ones will live. "No one can be ignorant that he must die," said Cicero, "nor be sure that he may not this very day." But beyond all this -- beyond all fretting, worrying, and brooding about the length of life -- there is evidence everywhere to quiet our hearts, to give us peace and faith for the future, and assurances that we can count on. Spring returned again this year. We knew it would -- and it did. And just so surely as all this, life has purpose, plan, and pattern that includes eternal continuance with loved ones waiting. And with all sorrows, loss of loved ones, loneliness, there is this that we may know: That in a universe which runs so well, the Power who runs it well is that same Power who knows each human heart, and quiets and softens sorrow, and gives assurances we so much seek, as each day brings its undisclosed events. We come; we live; we leave. Our loved ones leave -- but we and they live always and forever. Don't fret. Don't doubt. Don't cling to grieving. Don't fight life, or give up, or brood, or be bitter and rebellious, or let go of faith in the future. All of us know loneliness; all of us search ourselves, and ask for answers. Trust Him, who has done so much so well, to do all things well. Trust Him to bring peace and comfort and quietness and assurance to your soul inside. "Once more the Heavenly Power makes all things new." (Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Early Spring"). This you can count on.
Comfort | Day | Eternal | Evidence | Faith | Life | Life | Lord | Peace | Power | Quiet | Search | Soul | Time | Trust | Universe | Will | Loss | Friends | Think |
Richard L. Evans, fully Richard Louis Evans
Indeed, the greatest blessing that can follow the death of those we love is reconciliation. Without it there is no peace. But with it come quiet thoughts and quickened memories. And what else shall a man do except become reconciled? What purpose does he serve by fighting what he cannot touch or by brooding upon what he cannot change? We have to trust the Lord God for so many things, and it is but one thing more to trust him in the issues of life and death, and to accept the fact that his plans and promises and purposes transcend the bounds of this world and of this life. With such faith the years are kind, and peace and reconciliation do come to those who have laid to rest their loved ones - who, even in death, are not far removed from us, and of whom our Father in heaven will be mindful until we meet again even as we are mindful of our own children. Bitter grief without reconciliation serves no good purpose. Death comes to all of us, but so does life everlasting.
Death | Faith | Father | Fighting | God | Good | Grief | Heaven | Life | Life | Lord | Love | Man | Peace | Purpose | Purpose | Quiet | Reconciliation | Rest | Trust | Will | World | God |
Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon
In giving you these tapes, blemishes and all, I am placing my trust in the basic fairness of the American people.
Rinzai, aka Lin- Chi Yi-Sen, Lin-chi I-hsuan, Rinzai Gigen, Venerable Master Lin Chi NULL
Followers of the Way, do not trust yourselves to a companion who is only a phantom and a dream (the body). Sooner or later it will return to impermanence.
Rinzai, aka Lin- Chi Yi-Sen, Lin-chi I-hsuan, Rinzai Gigen, Venerable Master Lin Chi NULL
Just let thinking become calm, and don't seek anymore in the outside. Whatever appears to you, to that direct your awareness; trust that what is just working in you, and there will be nothing anymore about which you had to worry.