This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Many people hold onto a grudge because it offers the illusion of power and a perverse feeling of security. But in fact, we are held hostage by our anger. It is never too late to forgive. But you can forgive too soon. I am especially wary of what I call "saintly forgiveness." Premature forgiveness is common among people who avoid conflict. They're afraid of their own anger and the anger of others. But their forgiveness is false. Their anger goes underground. I define forgiving as letting someone back into your heart. This returns us to a loving state -- and not merely within the relationship -- we feel good about ourselves and the world. True forgiveness isn't easy, but it transforms us significantly. To forgive is to love and to feel worthy of love. In that sense, it is always worthwhile.
Anger | Forgiveness | Good | Illusion | Love | People | Power | Relationship | Forgiveness | Afraid | Forgive |
Rose Macauley, fully Dame Emilie Rose Macaulay
We know one another's faults, virtues, catastrophes, mortifications, triumphs, rivalries, desires, and how long we can each hang by our hands to a bar. We have been banded together under pack codes and tribal laws.
Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
This place is a dream. Only a sleeper considers it real. Then death comes like dawn, and you wake up laughing at what you thought was your grief.
Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.
Saint John of Kronstadt, fully John Il’ich Serguiev, aka Holy Father John of the Kronstadt NULL
When you are in the temple, remember that you are in the living presence of the Lord God, that you stand before His face, before His eyes, in the living presence of the Mother of God, of the holy angels, and of the first-born of the Church that is, our forefathers, the prophets, Apostles, hierarchs, martyrs, reverend Fathers, the righteous, and all the saints. Always have the remembrance and consciousness of this when you are in the temple, and stand with devotion, taking part willingly and with all your heart in the Divine service.
Courage | Heart | Illusion | Lord | Struggle | Weakness | Will | Words |
Shrimad Bhagavatam, or the Bhâgavata Purâna, Śrīmad Bhāgavatam, or Bhāgavata NULL
Sons ought to render service to their father exactly to this extent. One should obey the command of his father or spiritual master with due deference, saying, Yes, sir.
Illusion | Intelligence | Knowledge | Soul | Wife |
Shrimad Bhagavatam, or the Bhâgavata Purâna, Śrīmad Bhāgavatam, or Bhāgavata NULL
Reality is ultimately personal and divine, and therefore it is not surprising that, as the Vedic literature reveals to us, our universe and other universes are managed by great personalities, just as our city, state and country are managed by empowered personalities.
The sages, absorbed in meditation through one-pointedness of mind, discovered the creative power, belonging to the Lord Himself and hidden in its own gunas. That non-dual Lord rules over all those causes-time, the self and the rest.
Illusion |
Rudra is truly one; for the knowers of Brahman do not admit the existence of a second, He alone rules all the worlds by His powers. He dwells as the inner Self of every living being. After having created all the worlds, He, their Protector, takes them back into Himself at the end of time.
Illusion | Individual | Knowledge | Meditation | Self |
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
A sadist is always at the same time a masochist.
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis ... mankind will surmount this neurotic phase, just as so many children grow out of their similar neurosis.
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
Not all men are worthy of love.
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
We are certainly getting ahead if I am Moses, then you are Joshua and will take possession of the promised land of psychiatry, which I shall only be able to glimpse from afar.
Achievement | Better | Cause | Civilization | Death | Duty | Existence | Illusion | Life | Life | Little | Man | Question | Reality | Truth | War | Will |
is a way of becoming so familiar with yourself — with your thoughts, sensations, feelings, behavior patterns, and attitudes — that you get to know yourself more intimately than you ever thought possible. Some teachers describe meditation as the process of making friends with yourself. Instead of turning your attention outward, to other people or the external world, you turn it inward, back on yourself.
Harmony | Illusion | Life | Life | Nature | People | Reality | World |
He hath willed everything that may be for our good, if we perform the condition he hath required; and hath put it upon record, that we may know it and regulate our desires and supplications according to it. If we will not seek him, his immutability cannot be a bar, but our own folly is the cause; and by our neglect we despoil him of this perfection as to us, and either imply that he is not sincere, and means not as he speaks; or that he is as changeable as the wind, sometimes this thing, sometimes that, and not at all to be confided in. If we ask according to his revealed will, the unchangeableness of his nature will assure us of the grant; and what a presumption would it be in a creature dependent upon his sovereign, to ask that which he knows he has declared his will against; since there is no good we can want, but he hath promised to give, upon our sincere and ardent desire for it.
Conquest | Doctrine | Folly | Illusion | Reason | Thought | Weakness | World | Thought |
The human capacity for guilt is such that people can always find ways to blame themselves