This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The purpose of meditation practice is not enlightenment; it is to pay attention even at un-extraordinary times, to be of the present, nothing-but-the-present, to bear this mindfulness of now into each even of ordinary life.
Attention | Enlightenment | Life | Life | Meditation | Mindfulness | Nothing | Practice | Present | Purpose | Purpose | Wisdom |
William Paley, Archdeacon of Saragossa
The Lord’s Prayer, for a succession of solemn thoughts, for fixing the attention upon a few great points, for suitableness to every condition, for sufficiency, for conciseness without obscurity, for the weight and real importance of its petition, is without an equal or a rival.
Attention | Lord | Obscurity | Obscurity | Prayer | Wisdom |
Babe Paley, fully Barbara Cushing "Babe" Mortimer Paley
The common course of things is in favor of happiness. Happiness is the rule, misery the exception. Were the order reversed, our attention would be called to examples of health and competency, instead of disease and want.
Attention | Disease | Health | Order | Rule | Wisdom | Happiness |
A man selects his enemies, his friends make themselves, and from these friends he is apt to suffer.
To be confined by the feet with friends is better than to walk in a garden with strangers.
Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
In times when the passions are beginning to take charge of the conduct of human affairs, one should pay less attention to what men of experience and common sense are thinking than to what is preoccupying the imagination of dreamers.
Attention | Beginning | Common Sense | Conduct | Experience | Imagination | Men | Sense | Thinking | Wisdom |
Curiosity is as much the parent of attention as attention is of memory; therefore the first business of a teacher - first not only in point of time, but of importance - should be to excite not merely a general curiosity on the subject of the study, but a particular curiosity on particular points in that subject. To teach one who has no curiosity to learn is to sow a field without ploughing it.
Attention | Business | Curiosity | Memory | Study | Teach | Time | Wisdom | Business | Learn | Parent | Teacher |