This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"When a man lacks discrimination, his will wanders in all directions, after innumerable aims. Those who lack discrimination may quote the letter of the scripture; but they are really denying its inner truth. They are full of worldly desires and hungry for the rewards of heaven. They use beautiful figures of speech; they teach elaborate rituals, which are supposed to obtain pleasure and power for those who practice them. But, actually, they understand nothing except the law of Karma that chains men to rebirth. Those whose discrimination is stolen away by such talk grow deeply attached to pleasure and power. And so they are unable to develop that one-pointed concentration of the will, which leads a man to absorption in God." - Bhagavad Gītā, simply known as Gita NULL
"Yoga is not a philosophy though its practice will lead the way to a life that is philosophical. It is not a religion and it is not confined to any particular creed or dogma. There is no "instant Nirvana"...or instant ANYthing. One works hard for what one gets out of Yogic studies." - Blanche DeVries Bernard
"The first and last lesson of Yoga is the attitude of mind and heart. The aim of Yoga is to unite mind, body, spirit. The reward of yoga practice is the conversion of physical energy into mind power. The practices give a definite sense of control and raise the levels of consciousness awareness. These practices are not to be done competitively, to exhibit to one's friends, to expand the ego. While each of us, according to our temperament, must find the best mental approach, it should be one of self-surrender. Quiet, but joyful. Concentrated. Never strained. Outer control of the body is a means of regulating the inner functioning." - Blanche DeVries Bernard
"Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practice in himself can willingly believe in another." - Charles Caleb Colton
"To be able under all circumstances to practice five things constitutes perfect virtue; these five are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness, and kindness." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
"There is one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one's life - reciprocity." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
"To be fond of learning is to draw close to wisdom. To practice with vigor is to draw close to benevolence. To know the seen of shame is to draw close to courage. He who knows these three things knows how to cultivate his own character. Knowing how to cultivate his own character, he knows how to govern other men. Knowing how to govern other men, he knows how to govern the world, it states, and its families." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
"Tsze-kung asked, saying, “Is there one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one’s life?” The Master said, “Is not Reciprocity such a word? What you do not want don’t to yourself, do not to others.”" - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
"To be able under all circumstances to practice five things constitutes perfect virtue; these five things are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness and kindness." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
"We are always doing something with a selfish motive. The key is how to practice with no thought of gaining, not seeking or wanting something either from our practice or from what we do or give. So often when we give, it is not real giving. We give something to someone and right away we want something back in return." - Dennis Genpo Merzel, aka Genpo Merzel Roshi
"All happiness [is]… connected with the practice of virtue, which necessarily depends on the knowledge of truth." - Edmund Burke
"Personal interest is often the standard of our belief, as well as of our practice." - Edward Gibbon
"The long fight to save wild beauty represents democracy at its best. It requires citizens to practice the hardest of virtues - self-restraint." - Edwin Way Teale
"Practice yourself, for heaven's sake, in little things; and thence proceed to greater." - Epictetus "the Stoic" NULL
"The art of archery is not an athletic ability mastered more or less through primarily physical practice, but rather a skill with its origin in mental exercise and with its object consisting in mentally hitting the mark. Therefore, the archer is basically aiming himself. Through this, perhaps, he will succeed in hitting the target - his essential self." - Eugen Herrigel
"Habit, my friend, is practice long pursued, that at last becomes man himself." - Evenus or Evenus of Paros, alt. Euenus NULL
"It is not what men eat, but what they digest that makes them strong; Not what we gain, but what we save that makes us rich; Not what we read, but what we remember that makes us learned; Not what we preach or pray, but what we practice and believe that makes us Christians." - Francis Bacon
"Democracy, the practice of self-government, is a covenant among free men to respect the rights and liberties of their fellows." - Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aka FDR
"The consideration that human happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected will always continue to prompt me to promote the progress of the former by inculcating the practice of the latter." - George Washington
"Both houses of Congress have, by their joint Committee, requested me “To recommend to the People of the United States, a Day of Public Thanksgiving and Prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful Hearts the many Signal Favours of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a Form of Government for their Safety and Happiness”... That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks for his kind Care and Protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation; for the signal and manifold Mercies, and the favourable Interpositions of his Providence in the Course & Conclusion of the late War; for the great Degree of Tranquillity, Union, and Plenty, which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational Manner in which we have been enabled to establish Constitutions of Government for our Safety and Happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted; for the civil and religious Liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general, for all the great and various Favours which he hath been pleased to confer upon us... to enable us all, whether in public or private Stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually... to promote the Knowledge and Practice of true Religion and Virtue, and the increase of Science among them and us; and generally to grant unto all mankind such a Degree of temporal Prosperity as He alone knows to be best." - George Washington
"The aggregate happiness of society, which is best promoted by the practice of a virtuous policy, is, or ought to be, the end of all government." - George Washington
"Let us all resolve, first, to attain the grace of silence; second, to deem all fault-finding that does not good a sin, and to resolve, when we are ourselves happy, not to poison the atmosphere for our neighbors by calling upon them to remark every painful and disagreeable feature in their daily life, third, to practice the grace and virtue of praise." - Harriet Beecher Stowe
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; not did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and search out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and if it proved to be mean, when they to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
"There is no such thing as preaching patience into people unless the sermon is so long that they have to practice it while they hear. No man can learn patience except by going out into the hurly-burly world, and taking life just as it blows. Patience is but lying to and riding out the gale." - Henry Ward Beecher
"To become an able and successful man in any profession, three things are necessary, nature, study and practice." - Henry Ward Beecher
"There is no such thing as preaching patience into people, unless the sermon is so long that they have to practice it while they hear." - Henry Ward Beecher
"Preaching is of much avail, but practice is far more effective. A godly life is the strongest argument you can offer to the skeptic. No reproof or denunciation is so potent as the silent influence of a good example." - Hosea Ballou
"There is one inevitable criterion of judgment touching religious faith in doctrinal matters. Can you reduce it to practice? If not, have none of it." - Hosea Ballou
"My heart has opened unto every form: it is a pasture for gazelles, a cloister for Christian monks, a temple for idols, the Ka`ba of the pilgrim, the tablets of the Torah and the book of the Qur’an. I practice the religion of Love." - Ibn `Arabi, full name was Abū 'Abdillāh Muḥammad ibn 'Alī ibn Muḥammad ibn `Arabī
"It is not enough to do what is right, but we should practice it solely on the ground of its being right." - Immanuel Kant
"Without courage, you cannot practice any other virtue. You have to have courage – courage of different kinds: first, intellectual courage, to sort out different values and make up your mind about which is the one which is right for you to follow. You have to have moral courage to stick up to that – no matter what comes in your way, no matter what the obstacle and the opposition is." - Indira Gandhi, fully Indirā Priyadarśinī Gāndhī
"This is the spirit of our practice: love - not attachment, but something much deeper - infusing our awareness, enabling us to open to and accept the truth of each moment; and service that feels our intimate connectedness with all things and responds to the wholeness of life." - Jack Kornfield
"There are too many who reserve both the principles and the practice of the Apostles; they become all things to all men, not to serve others, but themselves; and they try all things only to hold fast that which is bad." - James Bryant Conant
"Learn what a people glory in, and you may learn much of both the theory and practice of their morals." - James Martineau
"Let no one imagine that in owning a recording he has the music. The very practice of music is a celebration that we own nothing." - John Cage, fully John Milton Cage, Jr.
"A recognition of truth and the practice of virtue is the title to security for both the individuals and the whole of mankind." - John of Salisbury NULL
"What is in reality cowardice and faithlessness, we call charity, and consider it the part of benevolence sometimes to forgive men’s evil practice for the sake of their accurate faith, and sometimes to forgive their confessed heresy for the sake of their admirable practice." - John Ruskin
"The test of real and vigorous thinking, the thinking which ascertains truths instead of dreaming dreams, is successful application to practice. Where that purpose does not exist, to give definiteness, precision, and an intelligible meaning to thought, it generates nothing better than the mystical metaphysics of the Pythagoreans or the Vedas." - John Stuart Mill
"Parenting and family life can be a perfect field for mindfulness practice, but it’s not for the weak-hearted, the selfish or lazy, or the hopelessly romantic. Parenting is a mirror that forces you to look at yourself. If you can learn from what you observe you just may have a chance to keep growing yourself." - Jon Kabat-Zinn
"The willingness to harm or hurt comes ultimately out of fear. Non-harming requires that you see your own fears and that you understand them and own them. Owning them means taking responsibility for them. Taking responsibility means not letting fear completely dictate your vision or your view. Only mindfulness completely dictate your vision or your view. Only mindfulness of our own clinging and rejecting, and a willingness to grapple with these mind states, however painful the encounter, can free us from this circle of suffering. Without a daily embodiment in practice, lofty ideals tend to succumb to self-interest." - Jon Kabat-Zinn
"All faces resemble each other, yet how easily we see in each uniqueness, individuality, an identity. How deeply we value these differences... Life on earth is a whole, yet it expresses itself in unique time-bound bodies, microscopic or visible, plant or animal, extinct or living. So there can be no one place to be. There can be no one way to be, no one way to practice, no one way to learn, no one way to love, no one way to grow or to heal, no one way to live, no one way to feel, no one thing to know or be known." - Jon Kabat-Zinn
"Those for whom the belief in immortality is most vivid are the most likely to practice the virtues which have a survival value and the least likely to deviate into either those virtues or those vices which are exclusively human." - Joseph Wood Krutch
"The overcoming of private property means the complete emancipation of all human senses and qualities, but it means this emancipation precisely because these senses and qualities have become human both subjectively and objectively. The eye has become a human eye, just as its object has become a social, human object derived from and for the human being. The senses have therefore become theoreticians immediately in their practice. They try to relate themselves to their subject matter for its own sake, but the subject matter itself is an objective human relation to itself and to the human being, and vice versa. Need or satisfaction have thus lost their egoistic nature, and nature has lost its mere utility by use becoming human use." - Karl Marx
"The painter who draws by practice and judgment of the eye without the use of reason is like the mirror which reproduces within itself all the objects which are set opposite it without knowledge of the same." - Leonardo da Vinci, fully Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
"True wisdom can be attained only through practice." - Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL
"In theory one is aware that the earth revolves, but in practice one does not perceive it, the ground upon which one treads seems not to move, and one can live undisturbed. So it is with Time in one's life." - Marcel Proust, fully Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust
"The best audience for the practice of virtue is the approval of one’s own conscience." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"The whole of virtue consists in its practice." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL