This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
A love that has no silence has no depth. “Methinks the lady doth protest too much.” There are people whose love we instinctively distrust because they are always telling us about it. And perhaps it is simply because God is love, in all the glorious fullness of that word, that we have to be still if we would know him.
Each soul must meet the morning sun, the new, sweet earth, and the Great Silence alone!
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, fully Sir or Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
To get at the transcendent within oneself, one must break through one’s normal self. We must impose silence on our familiar self, if the spirit of God is to become manifest in us. The divine is more deeply in us than we are ourselves.
Don’t judge. Just hear what the person has to say. Thoughtfully consider its meaning for him. When you attend to another’s speech in this way, you may come to recognize the miracle of words. This is sacred listening. To such an ear, story, in all of its forms, is transformed into a melodious language. When the listener is this receptive, both he and the teller are elevated to a new realm of communication. This is the foundation of building trust and safety in any relationship.
Language | Listening | Meaning | Relationship | Sacred | Speech | Story | Trust | Words |
What is it but blasphemy when God is merely my means to an end? That takes its toll. If we turn God into a puppet of our desires (even when that happens by the pious route of prayer) then he shuts up his heaven and we find ourselves thrown back into the silence of our unredeemed life.
Blasphemy | God | Heaven | Life | Life | Means | Pious | Prayer | Silence | God |
Maitri Upanishad or Maitrayaniya Upanishad
Even as fire without fuel finds peace in its resting-place, when thoughts become silence the soul finds peace in its own source.
If we are to be saved from our futility we must recover the faculty of being still: we must make an enclave of silence within our own souls.
Silence |
Poetic knowledge is born in the great silence of scientific knowledge.
If everybody thought before they spoke, the silence would be deafening.
Without free speech no search for truth is possible... no discovery of truth is useful. Better a thousand fold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day, but the denial slays the life of the people.
Abuse | Better | Day | Discovery | Free speech | Life | Life | People | Search | Speech | Truth | Discovery |