This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson
The key to the art of prayer is thought. As we think so we pray. The highest level of prayer is to think God’s thoughts after Him, to attune our lives to love, hope, faith, justice, kindness; to become open channels for the goodness of God. Prayer is quiet meditation about eternal values. It is the mind adventuring in the universe. Prayer moves with the instantaneous speed of thought, through infinite space, to the four corners of the earth, to the depth of the human heart, to the mountaintop of inspiration.
Art | Earth | Eternal | Faith | God | Heart | Hope | Inspiration | Justice | Kindness | Love | Meditation | Mind | Prayer | Quiet | Space | Thought | Universe | Art | Think |
Nothing the Great Mystery placed in the land of the Indian pleased the white man, and nothing escaped his transforming hand. Wherever forests have not been mowed down, wherever the animal is recessed in their quiet protection, wherever the earth is not bereft of four-footed life - that to him is an “unbroken wilderness.” But, because for the Lakota there was no wilderness, because nature was not dangerous but hospitable, not forbidding but friendly, Lakota philosophy was healthy - free from fear and dogmatism. And here I find the great distinction between the faith of the Indian and the white man. Indian faith sought the harmony of man with his surrounding; the other sought the dominance of surrounding. In sharing, in loving all and everything, one people naturally found a due portion of the thing they sought, while, in fearing, the other found need of conquest. For one man the world was full of beauty; for the other it was a place of sin and ugliness to be endured until he went to another world, there to become a creature of wings, half-man and half-bird. Forever one man directed his Mystery to change the world He had made; forever this man pleaded with Him to chastise the wicked ones; and forever he implored his God to send His light to earth. Small wonder this man could not understand the other. But the old Lakota was wise. He knew that man’s heart, away from nature, become hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans, too. So he kept his children close to nature’s softening influence.
Beauty | Change | Children | Conquest | Distinction | Earth | Faith | Fear | God | Harmony | Heart | Influence | Land | Life | Life | Light | Man | Mystery | Nature | Need | Nothing | People | Philosophy | Quiet | Respect | Sin | Wise | Wonder | World | Respect | God | Old | Understand |
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of being and ideal grace. I love thee to the level of every day's Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. I love thee freely, as men strive for right. I love thee purely, as they turn from praise. I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.
Better | Ends | God | Love | Men | Passion | Quiet | Soul | God | Old |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
Moral indignation permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue.
Envy | Hate | Indignation |
Franz Boas, fully Franz Uri Boas
Remember that in every single case in history the process of adaptation has been one of exceeding slowness. Do not look for the impossible, but do not let your path deviate from the quiet and steadfast insistence on full opportunities for your powers.
François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are, the more gentle and quiet we become toward the defects of others.
Defects | Imperfection | Quiet |
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
What really raises one's indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering.
Indignation | Suffering |
H. G. Wells, fully Herbert George Wells
I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had been. It had committed suicide. It had set itself steadfastly towards comfort and ease, a balanced society with security and permanency as its watchword, it had attained its hopes—to come to this at last. Once, life and property must have reached almost absolute safety. The rich had been assured of his wealth and comfort, the toiler assured of his life and work. No doubt in that perfect world there had been no unemployed problem, no social question left unsolved. And a great quiet had followed. It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have to meet a huge variety of needs and dangers.
Absolute | Change | Comfort | Compensation | Doubt | Habit | Harmony | Instinct | Intelligence | Law | Life | Life | Nature | Need | Property | Question | Quiet | Security | Society | Wealth | World | Society | Intellect | Think |
Our lives are full of supposes. Suppose this should happen, or suppose that should happen; what could we do; how could we bear it? But, if we are living in the high tower of the dwelling place of God, all these supposes will drop out of our lives. We shall be quiet from the fear of evil, for no threatenings of evil can penetrate into the high tower of God.
Nothing else is needed to quiet all your fears, but just this, that GOD IS.
I Ching, Book of Changes or Zhouyi NULL
The quiet and solitary man apprehends the inscrutable. He seeks nothing, holds to the mean, and remains free from entanglements.
Helen Schucman, born Helen Cohn
His voice awaits your silence, for His word can not be heard until your mind is quiet for a while.
The seeing commit a strange error. They believe that we know the world only through our eyes. For my part, I discovered that the universe consists of pressure, that every object and every living being reveals itself to us at first by a kind of quiet yet unmistakable pressure that indicates its intention and its form. I even experienced the following wonderful fact: A voice, the voice of a person, permits him to appear in a picture. When the voice of a man reaches me, I immediately perceive his figure, his rhythm, and most of his intentions. Even stones are capable of weighing on us from a distance. So are the outlines of distant mountains, and the sudden depression of a lake at the bottom of a valley.
Depression | Intention | Man | Object | Quiet | Universe | World | Following |
Loud indignation against vice often stands for virtue with bigots.
Indignation | Virtue | Virtue | Vice |