This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Moshé Feldenkreis, fully Moshé Pinchas Feldenkrais
Make your training a habit. If you choose a convenient time, you will be able to abide by regular exercises. If you make it difficult, you will soon find a-hundred-and-one alternatives instead. Occasionally break the regularity. Do not make your habit a compulsion.
All the principles of heaven and earth are living inside you. Life itself is the truth, and this will never change. Everything in heaven and earth breathes. Breath is the thread that ties creation together. When the myriad variations in the universal breath can be sensed, the individual techniques of the Art of Peace are born.
Art | Earth | Heaven | Individual | Life | Life | Peace | Principles | Will | Art |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
To see the universal and all-pervading Spirit of Truth face to face one must be able to love the meanest of creation as oneself. And a man who aspires after that cannot afford to keep out of any field of life. That is why my devotion to Truth has drawn me into the field of politics; and I can say without the slightest hesitation, and yet in all humility, that those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means. Identification with everything that lives is impossible without self-purification; without self-purification the observance of the law of Ahimsa must remain an empty dream; God can never be realized by one who is not pure of heart. Self-purification therefore must mean purification in all the walks of life. And purification being highly infectious, purification of oneself necessarily leads to the purification of one's surroundings. But the path of self-purification is hard and steep. To attain to perfect purity one has to become absolutely passion-free in thought, speech and action; to rise above the opposing currents of love and hatred, attachment and repulsion. I know that I have not in me as yet that triple purity, in spite of constant ceaseless striving for it. That is why the world's praise fails to move me, indeed it very often stings me. To conquer the subtle passions seems to me to be harder far than the physical conquest of the world by the force of arms. Ever since my return to India I have had experiences of the dormant passions lying hidden within me. The knowledge of them has made me feel humiliated though not defeated. The experiences and experiments have sustained me and given me great joy. But I know that I have still before me a difficult path to traverse. I must reduce myself to zero. So long as a man does not of his own free will put himself last among his fellow creatures, there is no salvation for him. Ahimsa is the farthest limit of humility.
Conquest | Devotion | Force | Free will | God | Knowledge | Law | Love | Lying | Man | Nothing | Politics | Praise | Purity | Religion | Salvation | Speech | Spirit | Truth | Will | World | God |
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart
She will never learn the most necessary, most difficult and principal thing in music, that is time, because from childhood she has designedly cultivated the habit of ignoring the beat.
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
Consciously or unconsciously, every one of us does render some service or another. If we cultivate the habit of doing this service deliberately, our desire for service will steadily grow stronger, and it will make not only for our own happiness, but that of the world at large.
It’s not enough, however, to blame our environmental problems on the obsession with growth. A system of deeply entrenched structures — of which growth is merely a surface manifestation — makes up our society. These structures are beyond moral control, much as the flow of adrenaline is beyond the control of a frightened creature This system has, in effect, the commanding quality of natural law.
Bawa Mahaiyadden, fully Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen
People with wisdom know that it is important to correct their own mistakes, while people without wisdom find it necessary to point out the mistakes of others. People with strong faith know that it is important to clear their own hearts, while those with unsteady faith seek to find fault in the hearts and prayers of others. This becomes a habit in their lives. But those who pray to Allah with faith, determination, and certitude know that the most important thing in life is to surrender their hearts to Allah.
Faith | Fault | Habit | Important | Life | Life | People | Surrender | Wisdom | Fault |
N. Scott Momaday, fully Navarre Scott Momaday
In the white man's world, language, too -- and the way which the white man thinks of it--has undergone a process of change. The white man takes such things as words and literatures for granted, as indeed he must, for nothing in his world is so commonplace. On every side of him there are words by the millions, an unending succession of pamphlets and papers, letters and books, bills and bulletins, commentaries and conversations. He has diluted and multiplied the Word, and words have begun to close in on him. He is sated and insensitive; his regard for language -- for the Word itself -- as an instrument of creation has diminished nearly to the point of no return. It may be that he will perish by the Word.
Muriel Spark, fully Dame Muriel Sarah Camberg Spark
It is difficult for people of advanced years to start remembering they must die. It is best to form the habit while young.
Bawa Mahaiyadden, fully Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen
Like this, in truth man is the seed of God, and He is buried within God, and God contains everything necessary for that seed of God to grow into the Tree of God, which is True Man. And when man comes to the point in his life when this truth of him emerges from within him, and if at that time he realizes, understands, accepts, and joins with that truth of him, then God within him will realize that man now knows "who he is", that he is the seed of God, and that man now knows "where he is", that he is within God, and God is within him, within the wisdom within him, like the apple fruit is hidden within the apple tree that is hidden within the apple seed that is buried within the earth. And that man now knows "what is happening", that God is happening, by first allowing True Man to happen, first allowing True Man to be revealed within the Creation of God, first allowing the Tree of God to be revealed from within the Seed of God, so True Man can then reveal God within the Creation of True Man, so the Tree of God can then reveal the Fruit of God from within the Tree of God. And that man now knows, that God contains everything necessary for that seed of God to grow into the Tree of God, into True Man within the Creation of God, and for the Tree of God to bear fruit, to reveal God within the Creation of True Man. Then out of this mutual awareness, God surrenders to man and man surrenders to God, and True Man is revealed within the Creation of God, within the 18,000 universes within this world, and then God is revealed within the Creation of True Man, within the 99 qualities of God in the next world, and in this way revealing the Oneness of God and True Man, which in truth is God and True Man
God | Life | Life | Man | Oneness | Qualities | Time | Truth | Will | Wisdom | God |
Nahmanides, aka Rabbi Moses ben Naḥman Girondi, Bonastruc ça Porta and by his acronym RaMBaN NULL
Hear, my son, the instruction of your father and don't forsake the teaching of your mother (Mishlei 1:8). Get into the habit of always speaking calmly to everyone. This will prevent you from anger, a serious character flaw which causes people to sin... Once you have distanced yourself from anger, the quality of humility will enter your heart.This radiant quality is the finest of all admirable traits... so that you will succeed in all your ways. Thus you will succeed and merit the World to Come which lies hidden away for the righteous.
Character | Father | Habit | Humility | Merit | Mother | People | Will | World | Instruction |
Bawa Mahaiyadden, fully Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen
Because in truth you have no problems, because in truth you do not exist. Because in truth it is God who exist. Then you will be successful in your life, then your wisdom will reason over your fate, and you will become peaceful in your own ending." And you will become peaceful in God completing what He has already started within you, even before you came to this earth world, which is to reveal True Man within the Creation of God within you, as the Oneness of God and His Creation within you, so True Man can reveal God within the Creation of True Man within you, as the Oneness of True Man and His Creation, and in this way, reveal the "Oneness of God and True Man" within you, which in truth is God and True Man within you.
Earth | God | Man | Oneness | Reason | Truth | Will | Wisdom | God |
Until you have learned to be tolerant with those who do not always agree with you; until you have cultivated the habit of saying some kind word of those whom you do not admire; until you have formed the habit of looking for the good instead of the bad there is in others, you will be neither successful nor happy.
The world has the habit of making room for the man whose actions show that he knows where he is going.
Procrastination is the bad habit of putting off until the day after tomorrow what should have been done the day before yesterday.
Educators may bring upon themselves unnecessary travail by taking a tactless and unjustifiable position about the relation between scientific and religious narratives. We see this, of course, in the conflict concerning creation science. Some educators representing, as they think, the conscience of science act much like those legislators who in 1925 prohibited by law the teaching of evolution in Tennessee. In that case, anti-evolutionists were fearful that a scientific idea would undermine religious belief. Today, pro-evolutionists are fearful that a religious idea will undermine scientific belief. The former had insufficient confidence in religion; the latter insufficient confidence in science. The point is that profound but contradictory ideas may exist side by side, if they are constructed from different materials and methods and have different purposes. Each tells us something important about where we stand in the universe, and it is foolish to insist that they must despise each other.
Confidence | Conscience | Despise | Evolution | Ideas | Important | Law | Position | Science | Will |
Nicholas of Cusa, also Nicholas of Kues and Nicolaus Cusanus NULL
When the habit of inwardly gazing Godward becomes fixed within us we shall be ushered onto a new level of spiritual life more in keeping with the promises of God and the mood of the New Testament. The Triune God will be our dwelling place even while our feet walk the low road of simple duty here among men. We will have found life’s summum bonum indeed.
Nicholas of Cusa, also Nicholas of Kues and Nicolaus Cusanus NULL
You know how the divine Simplicity enfolds all things. Mind is the image of this enfolding Simplicity. If, then, you called this divine Simplicity infinite Mind, it will be the exemplar of our mind. If you called the divine mind the totality of the truth of things, you will call our mind the totality of the assimilation of things, so that it may be a totality of ideas. In the divine Mind conception is the production of things; in our mind conception is the knowledge of things. If the divine Mind is absolute Being, then its conception is the creation of beings; and conception in the human mind is the assimilation of beings.