This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Many a life has been injured by the constant expectation of death. It is life we have to do with, not death. The best preparation for the night is to work diligently while the day lasts. The best preparation for death is life.
Day | Death | Expectation | Life | Life | Work | Expectation |
Sum up at night what thou hast done by day, and in the morning what thou hast to do; dress and undress thy soul; mark the decay or growth of it. If with thy watch that too be down, then wind up both. Since thou shalt be most surely judged, make thine accounts agree.
Wisdom is the intuitive knowledge of the mind of love and clarity that lies beneath one's ego-driven anxieties and aggressions. Meditation is going into the mind to see this for yourself - over and over again, until it becomes the mind you live in.
The whole history of the Christian life is a series of resurrections… Every time a man finds his heart is troubled, that he is not rejoicing in God, a resurrection must follow; a resurrection out of the night of troubled thought into the gladness of the truth.
God | Heart | History | Life | Life | Man | Thought | Time | Truth | Thought |
Affliction comes to us all not to make us sad, but sober, not to make us sorry, but wise; not to make us despondent, but by its darkness to refresh us, as the night refreshes the day; not to impoverish, but to enrich us, as the plough enriches the field; to multiply our joy, as the seed by planting, is multiplied a thousand-fold.
Affliction | Darkness | Day | Joy | Wise |
Do not run after happiness, but seek to do good, and you will find that happiness will run after you. The day will dawn full of expectation, the night will fall full of repose. This world will seem a very good place, and the world to come a better place still.
Better | Dawn | Day | Expectation | Good | Repose | Will | World | Happiness |
Riches are the pettiest and least worthy gifts which God can give a man. What are they; to God’s word? Yea, to bodily gifts, such as beauty and health, or to the gifts of the mind such as understanding, skill, wisdom? Yet men toil for them day and night and take no rest. Therefore our Lord God commonly gives riches to foolish people to whom He gives nothing else.
Beauty | Day | God | Health | Lord | Man | Men | Mind | Nothing | People | Rest | Riches | Skill | Understanding | Wisdom | Riches | Beauty | God |
Michael Toms and Justine Willis Toms
As you are able to give energy to your passion, purpose will emerge. Clarity of purpose comes from honoring what gives your life meaning. Work has become devoid of meaning because people are asked to follow instructions rather than their creativity. True work is an expression of following our inner voice, heeding the spiritual call, and living your passion.
Creativity | Energy | Life | Life | Meaning | Passion | People | Purpose | Purpose | Will | Work | Following |
Mind and night will meet, though in silence, like forbidden lovers.
The studious class are their own victims; they are thin and pale, their feet are cold, their heads are hot, the night is without sleep, the day a fear of interruption - pallor, squalor, hunger, and egotism. If you come near them and see what conceits they entertain - they are abstractionists, and spend their days and nights in dreaming some dream; in expecting the homage of society to some precious scheme built on a truth, but destitute of proportion in its presentment, of justness in its application, and of all energy of will in the schemer to embody and vitalize it.
Day | Energy | Fear | Hunger | Society | Truth | Will | Society |
Upanishads or The Upanishads NULL
There is a bridge between time and eternity; and this bridge is Atman, the spirit of man. Neither day nor night cross that bridge, nor old age, nor death, nor sorrow. It is this spirit that we must find and know: man must find his own soul. He who has found and knows his soul has found all the worlds, has achieved all his desires.
Age | Day | Death | Eternity | Man | Old age | Sorrow | Soul | Spirit | Time | Old |
T. E. Lawrence, fully Thomas Edward Lawrence, aka Lawrence of Arabia
All men dream; but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds awake to find that it was vanity; But dreamers of day are dangerous men, that they may act their dreams with open eyes to make it possible.
Zohar or The Zohar, literally "Splendor or Radiance" NULL
The soul testifies at night to what the man does by day.