This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The body dies but the spirit is not entombed." - Dhammapada NULL
"The universal and the transcendent Cause of all things is neither without life, nor without reason and intelligence; nor is he a body, nor has he form or shape, quality, quantity or weight; nor has he any localized, visible or tangible existence… He suffers no change, corruption, division, privation or flux; none of these things can either be identified with or attributed to him." - Dionysus NULL
"Whether on the floor of Congress or in the boardrooms of corporate America or in the corridors of a big city hospital, there is no body of professional expertise and no anthology of case studies which can supplant the force of character which provides both a sense of direction and a means of fulfillment. It asks, now what you want to be, but who you want to be." - Elizabeth Dole, fully Mary Elizabeth Alexander Hanford "Liddy" Dole
"The present moment is never intolerable. It is always what is coming in five minutes or five days that makes people despair. The Law of Life is to live in the present, and this applies to both time and place. Keep your attention to the present moment, and in the place where your body is now." - Emmet Fox
"The player of the inner game comes to value the art of relaxed concentration above all other skills; he discovers a true basis for self-confidence; and he learns that the secret to winning any game lies in not trying too hard. He aims at the kind of spontaneous performance which occurs only when the mind is calm and seems at one with the body, which finds its own surprising ways to surpass its own limits again and again." - Tim Gallwey, fully W. Timothy Gallwey
"It is impossible to realize perfect Truth so long as we are imprisoned in this mortal frame. We can only visualize it in out imagination. We cannot, through the instrumentality of this ephemeral body, see face to face Truth, which is eternal. That is why one has ultimately to fall back on faith." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
"The human soul is no more than a spark of the divine in us, which upon death returns to reunite with God as the original source of its being, than is the body." - Simon Greenberg
"The liturgy does not say “I” but “We,”… The liturgy is not celebrated by the individual, but by the body of the faithful." - Romano Guardini
"Prayer is for the soul what nourishment is for the body." - Judah Halevi, also Yehuda Halevi or ha-Levi
"Zen meditation does not mean sitting and thinking. On the contrary, it means acting with as little thought as possible. The fencing master trained his pupil to guard against every attack with the same immediate, instinctive rapidity with which our eyelid closes over our eye when something threatens it. His work is aimed at breaking down the wall between thought and act, at completely fusing body and senses and mind so that they might all work together rapidly and effortlessly." - Gilbert Arthur Highet
"The world stands for the body, but the symphony stands for the spirit." - Hildegard of Bingen, also known as Saint Hildegard and Sibyl of the Rhine NULL
"The soul needs a physical body here… but when… the body is no longer an adequate instrument through which the soul may function, it lays the present body aside and continues to function through a more subtle one." - Ernest Shurtleff Holmes
"Giving about two [hours], every day, to exercise; for health must not be sacrificed to learning. A strong body makes a strong mind." - Thomas Jefferson
"Prayer is a way of increasing our sensitivity to the spiritual aspects of life. From this point of view, it is very much like exercise. A man’s muscles become responsive by training... The soul is stretched and enlarged by prayer just as the body is stretched and enlarged by physical exercise... Prayer is a way of aspiration. It is a way of lifting ourselves, of getting a higher look, of transcending self. For when a man looks at life only from inside himself, or only from within the walls of his home, or profession, seeing the world as though it were all in terms of his special interests, then he is “too full of himself to have any room for God.” But in prayer, he... relates his own little life and his own little needs and life of humanity. He lifts himself up by prayer, and achieves a high spiritual stature." - Robert I. Kahn
"The Master gives himself up to whatever the moment brings. He knows that he is going to die, and he has nothing left to hold on to: no illusion in his mind, no resistances in his body. He doesn’t think about his actions; they flow from the core of his being. He holds nothing back from life; therefore he is ready for death, as a man is ready for sleep after a good day’s work." - Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
"Unless the mind, body and spirit are equally developed and fully integrated, no [wisdom] can be sustained. This is why extremist religions and ideologies do not bear fruit." - Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
"Segregation in the church violates something that is basic in the nature of the church. How can a church exclude from “the church of God” those who are children of God? How can it, as “the body of Christ,” withhold the privilege of worship from those who have been brought into union with Christ." - T. B. Maston, fully Thomas Buford Maston
"The body is mortal but the changeless Spirit within is immortal. It pervades the universe and is indestructible. No one has the power to change the changeless." - Bibhuti Mazumder
"Truth, not in distinct and clear-cut definitions but in the limpid obscurity of a single intuition that unites all dogmas in one simple Light, shining into the soul directly from God’s eternity, without the medium of created concept, without the intervention of symbols or of language or the likeness of material things. Here the Truth is One Whom we not only know and possess but by Whom we are known and possessed. Here theology ceases to be a body of abstractions and becomes a Living Reality Who is God Himself." - Thomas Merton
"If the union of man and woman is the fruit of a love that is given in purity, generosity and fidelity, then the body itself is spiritualized in the service of a love that ennobles it, and, with God’s blessing, sanctifies." - Jean Mouroux
"The role of art is to express through the body the mystery of a soul. Through the body - that is to say by way of all the signs - visual, audible, mobile." - Jean Mouroux
"The great majority of us are required to live a life of constant, systematic duplicity. Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, if you grovel before what you dislike and rejoice at what brings you nothing but misfortune. Our nervous system isn’t just fiction, it’s a part of our fortune. Our nervous system isn’t just a fiction, it’s a part of our physical body, and our soul exists in space and is inside us, like the teeth in our mouth. It can’t be forever violated with impunity." - Boris Pasternak, fully Boris Leonidovich Pasternak
"According to the Buddha the will is free, effort is worth while, man makes his own fate, deeds have consequences, knowledge is possible, the body is not the real self, and death is not its end." - James Bisset Pratt
"The soul cannot be understood as an aggregate of many parts, for everywhere it is apprehended as being other than the body, being that which measures and of one form. It is that which says in the body, `I know this.’" - Ramanuja, aka Śrī Ramanuja, Śrī Ramanujacharya, Ethirajar (Yatiraja), Emberumannar, Lakshmana Muni NULL
"There is a force within that gives you life - seek that. In your body there lies a precious jewel - seek that. Oh, wandering Sufi, if you are in search of the greatest treasure, don’t look outside, look within, and seek that." - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
"Most religions are absolutist. Claims to revelation militate against rational argument and compromise. In this sense all religions contain totalitarian possibilities; for totalitarianism, which welds the state into a single body “knit together as one man” is really the religious impulse, the worship of leadership and ideology, the cult of Person or Book, directed towards secular ends." - Malise Ruthven
"Prayer is the constant feeling (the recognition) of our infirmity or spiritual poverty, the sanctification of the soul, the foretaste of future blessedness, the angelic bliss, the heavenly rain, refreshing, watering, and fertilizing the ground of the soul, the power and strength of the soul and body, the purifying and freshening of the mental air, the enlightenment of the countenance, the joy of spirit, the golden link, uniting the creature to the Creator." - John Sergieff of Cronstadt, aka Saint John of Kronstadt, born John Iliytch Sergieff
"A scientist had a bird in his hand. He saw that it had life and, wanting to find out in what part of the bird's body its life lay, he began dissecting the bird. The result was that the very life he was in search of disappeared. Those who try to understand the mysteries of the inner life intellectually will meet with similar failure. The life they are looking for will vanish in the analysis." - Sadhu Sundar Singh
"Words are things. Thoughts are things. Where your thoughts are, you are. When we learn to discipline and control our thoughts and feelings, and use only the positive, constructive words, sent forth with divine love, our body and mind respond to that righteousness – right-use-ness. The right use and selection of words is of vital importance but equally important is the feeling behind those words, for feeling is the motivating power that makes the words live." - Baird T. Spalding
"Body and spirit are twins: God only knows which is which." - Algernon Swinburne, fully Algernon Charles Swinburne
"Every man recognizes within himself a free and rational spirit, independent of his body. This spirit is what we call God." - Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
"Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself, it will do more than if you paralyze it by encumbering it with remedies." - Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
"“God is well and so are you.” You must awaken to the knowledge of your real being. When this awakening comes, you will have, and you will see that you have the power to determine what conditions are externalized in your body. You must recognize, you must realize yourself, as one with Infinite Spirit. God’s will is then your will; your will is God’s will, and “with God all things are possible.” When we are able to do away with all sense of separateness by living continually in the realization of his oneness, not only will our bodily ills and weaknesses vanish, but all limitations along all lines." - Ralph Waldo Trine
"In the degree, however, that you come into a vital realization of your oneness with the Infinite Spirit of Life, whence all life in individual form has come and is continually coming, and in the degree that through this realization you open yourself to its divine inflow, you set into operation forces that will sooner or later bring even the physical body into a state of abounding health and strength. For to realize that this Infinite Spirit of Life can from its very nature admit of no disease, and to realize that this, then, is the life in you, by realizing your oneness with it, you can so open yourself to its more abundant entrance that the diseased bodily conditions - effects - will respond to the influences of its all-perfect power, this either quickly or more tardily, depending entirely on yourself." - Ralph Waldo Trine
"Many will receive great help, and many will be entirely healed by a practice somewhat after the following nature: Wit a mind at peace, and with a heart going out in love to all, go into the quiet of your own interior self, holding the thought - I am one with the Infinite Spirit of Life, the life of my life. I then as spirit, I a spiritual being, can in my own real nature admit of no disease. I now open my body, in w2hich disease has obtained a foothold, I open it fully to the inflowing tide of this Infinite Life, and it now, even now, is pouring in and coursing through my body, and the healing process is going on. Realize this so fully that you begin to feel a quickening and a warming glow imparted by the life forces to the body. Believe the healing process is going on. Believe it, and hold continually to it. Many people greatly desire a certain thing but expect something else. They have greater faith in the power of evil than in the power of good, and hence they remain ill." - Ralph Waldo Trine
"It is the mind that makes the body." - Sojourner Truth, born Isabella Baumfree
"Heaven is my Father, the earth my mother, and even a tiny creature such as myself finds an intimate place in their midst. In everything that moves throughout the universe, I see my own body, and in everything that governs the universe, my own soul. All men are my brethren, and all things my companions." - Zhang Zai, also Chang Tsai
"In everything that moves through the universe, I see my own body, and in everything that governs the universe, my own soul." - Zhang Zai, also Chang Tsai
"Know thou the soul as riding in a chariot, the body as the chariot. Know thou the intellect as the chariot-driver, and the mind as the reins. The senses, they say, are the horses; the objects of sense, what they range over, the self combined with senses and mind, wise men call `the enjoyer.’ He who has not understanding, whose mind is not constantly held firm – his senses are uncontrolled, like the vicious horses of a chariot-driver." - Katha Upanishad
"Smaller than the hundredth part of a tip of hair, the Soul of the living being is capable of infinity. Male is he not nor female nor neuter, but is joined with whatever body he takes as his own." - Shvetashvatara Upanishad
"A body is like lightning, gone in a moment, back to Nothingness. As spring flowers are dead in the fall. Forget about this growing and dying, it is all irrelevant. Life’s motions are like dew on the grass." - Van-Hanh NULL
"I do not understand how people declare themselves to be believers in God, and at the same time think that God has handed over to a little body of man all truth, and that they are guardians of the rest of humanity." - Vivekananda, fully Sri or Swami Vivekananda, born Narendra Nath Datta NULL