This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world.
Day | Eternal | Meaning | Mystery | Sabbath | Time | Tyranny | World |
A possibility of continuing progress is opened up by the fact that in learning one act, methods are developed good for use in other situations. Still more important is the fact that the human being acquires a habit of learning. He learns to learn.
John Steinbeck, fully John Ernst Steinbeck
Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.
Good | Individual | Mind | Nothing | Spirit |
How shall I a habit break? As you did that habit make, As you gathered, you must lose; As you yielded, now refuse, Thread by thread the strands we twist Till they bind us neck and wrist, Thread by thread the patient hand Must untwine ere free we stand.
Habit |
Although it's admirable to be ambitious and hard-working, it's more desirable to be smart-working. The key to becoming a more efficient leader isn't checking off all the items on your to-do list each day. It's in forming the habit of prioritizing your time so that you are accomplishing your most important goals in an efficient manner.
Joni Mitchell, born Roberta Joan Anderson
The more decadent a culture gets, the more they have a need for what they don't have at all, which is innocence, so you end up with kiddie porn and a perverse obsession with youth.
The habit of ignoring our present moments in favor of others yet to come leads directly to a pervasive lack of awareness of the web of life in which we are embedded. This includes a lack of awareness and understanding of our own mind and how it influences our perceptions and our actions. It severely limits our perspective on what it means to be a person and how we are connected to each other and the world around us. Religion has traditionally been the domain of such fundamental inquiries within a spiritual framework, but mindfulness has little to do with religion, except in the most fundamental meaning of the word, as an attempt to appreciate the deep mystery of being alive and to acknowledge being vitally connected to all that exists.
Awareness | Habit | Life | Life | Little | Meaning | Means | Mind | Mindfulness | Mystery | Present | Religion | Understanding | World | Awareness |
Art is not an imitation nor an ethnological curiosity staged for tourists. Only when an artist realizes perfectly which is his right and proper function in the social body, and sees with his own eyes, feels with his own heart and thinks with his own mind, will appear a new art on the American continent, the creation of a new race.
Credit creation [is] the monetary complement of innovation. This relation…is at the bottom of all the problems of money and credit.
For me, the principal fact of life is the free mind. For good and evil, man is a free creative spirit. This produces the very queer world we live in, a world in continuous creation and therefore continuous change and insecurity. A perpetually new and lively world, but a dangerous one, full of tragedy and injustice. A world in everlasting conflict between the new idea and the old allegiances, new arts and new inventions against the old establishment.
Katherine Mansfield, pseudonymn of Kathleen Beauchamp, Mrs. J. M. Murry
Life never becomes a habit to me. It's always a marvel.
Habit |
Leland Stanford, fully Amasa Leland Stanford
Many writers upon the science of political economy have declared that it is the duty of a nation first to encourage the creation of wealth; and second, to direct and control its distribution. All such theories are delusive.
Lloyd George, fully David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor
Liberty is not merely a privilege to be conferred; it is a habit to be acquired.
John Dalberg-Acton, Lord Acton, fully John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton
There is not a more perilous or immoral habit of mind than the sanctifying of success.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
Man is arrogant in proportion to his ignorance. Man’s natural tendency is to egotism. Man, in his infancy of knowledge, thinks that all creation was formed for him.
Infancy |