This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Life is not easy and comfortable, with nothing ever going wrong as long as you buy the right product. It's not true that if you have the right insurance everything is going to be fine. That's not what it's really like. Terrible things happen. And those are the things we learn from." - Madeleine L’Engle
"One of the most difficult things to learn is to render service without bossing, without making a fuss about it, and without any consciousness of high and low. In the world of spirituality, humility counts at least as much as utility." - Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani
"Awaken from your ignorance and try at least to understand that, in the uncompromisingly Indivisible Oneness, not only is the Avatar God, but also the ant and the sparrow, just as one and all of you are nothing but God. The only apparent difference is in the states of consciousness. The Avatar knows that that which is a sparrow is not a sparrow, whereas the sparrow does not realize this and, being ignorant of its ignorance, identifies itself as a sparrow. Live not in ignorance. Do not waste your precious life-span in differentiating and judging your fellowmen, but learn to long for the love of God. Even in the midst of your worldly activities, live only to find and realize your true identity with your Beloved God." - Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani
"Happiest is he who expects no happiness from others. Love delights and glorifies in giving, not receiving. So learn to love and give, and not to expect anything from others." - Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani
"Live not in ignorance. Do not waste your precious life-span in differentiating and judging your fellow men, but learn to long for the love of God. Even in the midst of your worldly activities, love only to find and realize your true Identity with your Beloved God." - Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani
"Spirituality is not to be learned by flight from the world, or by running away from things, or by turning solitary and going apart from the world. Rather, we must learn an inner solitude wherever or with whomsoever we may be. We must learn to penetrate things and find God there." - Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim
"One must learn an inner solitude, wherever one may be." - Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim
"A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart. We know so many things, but we don't know ourselves! Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox's or bear's, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there." - Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim
"To be sure, this requires effort and love, a careful cultivation of the spiritual life, and a watchful, honest, active oversight of all one's mental attitudes towards things and people. It is not to be learned by world-flight, running away from things, turning solitary and going apart from the world. Rather, one must learn an inner solitude, where or with whomsoever he may be. He must learn to penetrate things and find God there, to get a strong impression of God firmly fixed on his mind. " - Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim
"To be right, a person must do one of two things: either he must learn to have God in his work and hold fast to him there, or he must give up his work altogether. Since, however, we cannot live without activities that are both human and various, we must learn to keep God I everything we do, and whatever the job or place, keep on with him, letting nothing stand in our way." - Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim
"There is much to learn from the technological revolution, as long as we understand its role in our lives and see it as a final step in our dramatic search for unity throughout the universe. After all, developments in science and technology have taught us to be more sensitive to the intangible and the sublime: the forces behind computers, telephones, television, and so on are all invisible, and yet we fully recognize their power and reach. Similarly, we must come to accept that the driving force behind the entire universe is intangible and sublime, and we must come to experience the transcendent and G-dly in every single thing — beginning, of course with ourselves." - Menachem Mendel Schneerson, known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe
"To be sure, this requires effort and love, a careful cultivation of the spiritual life, and a watchful, honest, active oversight of all one's mental attitudes towards things and people. It is not to be learned by world-flight, running away from things, turning solitary and going apart from the world. Rather, one must learn an inner solitude, where or with whomsoever he may be. He must learn to penetrate things and find God there, to get a strong impression of God firmly fixed on his mind." - Menander, aka Menander of Athens NULL
"One of the things I benefited from when I started this business was that I didn’t know anything. I was just instinct with no preconceived notions. This enabled me to learn and change quickly without having to worry about maintaining any kind of status quo, like some of my bigger competitors." - Michael Dell, fully Michael Saul Dell
"I would not be surprised to learn that some branch of our government conspired either actively to promote or passively to allow the attack on 9/11. For those who watched the reactionary political uses made of this tragedy, it’s easy to conjure up a variety of possible conspiratorial motives that would have led the president, the vice president, or some branch of the armed forces or CIA or FBI or other “security” forces to have passively or actively participated in a plot to re-credit militarism and war." - Michael Lerner
"If you learn to appreciate more of what you already have, you will find yourself having more to appreciate." - Michael E. Angier
"There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
"Wise men have more to learn of fools than fools of wise men." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
"We must be as familiar with the functions of our building as with our materials. We must learn what a building can be, what it should be, and also what it must not be." - Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe, born Ludwig Mies
"Each material has its specific characteristics which we must understand if we want to use it... This is no less true of steel and concrete [than of wood, brick, and stone]. We must remember that everything depends on how we use a material, not on the material itself... New Materials are not necessarily superior. Each material is only what we make of it... We must be as familiar with the functions of our buildings as with our materials. We must learn what a building can be, what it should be, and also what it must not be... And just as we acquaint ourselves with materials, just as we must understand functions, so we must become familiar with the psychological and spiritual factors of our day. No cultural activity is possible otherwise; for we are dependent on the spirit of our time." - Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe, born Ludwig Mies
"Learning too soon our limitations, we never learn our powers." - Mignon McLaughlin
"If one has failed to develop curiosity and interest in the early years, it is a good idea to acquire them now, before it is too late to improve the quality of life. To do so is fairly easy in principle, but more difficult in practice. Yet it is sure worth trying. The first step is to develop the habit of doing whatever needs to be done with concentrated attention, with skill rather than inertia. Even the most routine tasks, like washing dishes, dressing, or mowing the lawn become more rewarding if we approach them with the care it would take to make a work of art. The next step is to transfer some psychic energy each day from tasks that we don’t like doing, or from passive leisure, into something we never did before, or something we enjoy doing but don’t do often enough because it seems too much trouble. There are literally millions of potentially interesting things in the world to see, to do, to learn about. But they don’t become actually interesting until we devote attention to them." - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
"People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy." - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
"The solution is to gradually become free of societal rewards and learn how to substitute for them rewards that are under one's own powers. This is not to say that we should abandon every goal endorsed by society; rather, it means that, in addition to or instead of the goals others use to bribe us with, we develop a set of our own." - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
"These examples suggest what one needs to learn to control attention. In principle any skill or discipline one can master on one’s own will serve: meditation and prayer if one is so inclined; exercise, aerobics, martial arts for those who prefer concentrating on physical skills. Any specialization or expertise that one finds enjoyable and where one can improve one’s knowledge over time. The important thing, however, is the attitude toward these disciplines. If one prays in order to be holy, or exercises to develop strong pectoral muscles, or learns to be knowledgeable, then a great deal of the benefit is lost. The important thing is to enjoy the activity for its own sake, and to know that what matters is not the result, but the control one is acquiring over one’s attention." - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
"Love is the law of God. You live that you may learn to love. You love that you may learn to live. No other lesson is required of Man. And what is to love but for the lover to absorb forever the beloved so that the twain be one? And whom, or what, is one to love? Is one to choose a certain leaf upon the Tree of Life and pour upon it all one's heart? What of the branch that bears the leaf? What of the stem that holds the branch? What of the bark that shields the stem? What of the roots that feed the bark, the stem, the branches and the leaves? What of the soil embosoming the roots? What of the Sun,and sea, and air that fertilize the soil? If one small leaf upon a tree be worthy of your love how much more so the entire tree in its entirety? The love that singles out a fraction of the whole foredooms itself to grief. You say But there be leaves and leaves upon a single tree. Some are healthy, some are sick; some are beautiful, some, ugly; some are giants , some are dwarfs. How can we help but pick and choose. I say to you, Out of the paleness of the sick proceeds the freshness of the healthy. " - Mikhail Naimy, also spelled Mikha'il Na'ima
"The truth is, once you learn how to die, you learn how to live." - Mitch Albom, fully Mitchell David "Mitch" Albom
"The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in." - Mitch Albom, fully Mitchell David "Mitch" Albom
"Since everyone was going to die, he could be of great value, right? ... He could be research. A human textbook. 'Study me in my slow and patient demise. Watch what happens to me. Learn with me" - Mitch Albom, fully Mitchell David "Mitch" Albom
"As you grow old, you learn more. If you stayed at twenty-two, you'd always be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It's growth. It's more than the negative that you're going to die, its also the positive that you understand you're going to die, and that you live a better life because of it." - Mitch Albom, fully Mitchell David "Mitch" Albom
"Through it all, despite it all, Eddie privately adored his old man, because sons will adore their fathers through even the worst behaviour. It is how they learn devotion. Before he can devote himself to God or a woman, a boy will devote himself to his father, even foolishly, even beyond explanation." - Mitch Albom, fully Mitchell David "Mitch" Albom
"Thus the village head was the most humane (ren) man in the village. The village head issued an order to the people of the village, stating: “Hearing of good and not good, you amust report it to the district head. What the district head deems right (shi), all must deem right; what the district head deems not (fei), all must deem not. Discard your bad statements and learn the good statements of the district head; discard your bad conduct and learn the good conduct of the district head. Then how could the district be disorderly? Examine what it is that puts the district in order (zhi): It's that the district head is able to unify the morality (yi) of the district, thus the district is in order." - Mozi or Mo-tze, Mocius or Mo-tzu, original name Mo Di, aka Master Mo NULL
"Why not learn by getting down to the actual practice?" - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
"Contemplate the workings of this world, listen to the words of the wise, take all that is good as your own. With this as your base, open your own door to truth. Do not overlook the truth that is right before you. Study how water flows in a valley stream, smoothly and freely between the rocks. Also learn from holy books and wise people. Everything-even mountains, rivers, plants, and trees-should be your teacher." - Morihei Ueshiba
"Do not fail To learn from The pure voice of an Ever-flowing mountain stream Splashing over the rocks." - Morihei Ueshiba
"An old cat will not learn how to dance." - Moroccan Proverbs
"The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in. " - Morrie Schwartz, fully Morris "Morrie" S. Schwartz
"Once you learn how to die, you learn how to live. " - Morrie Schwartz, fully Morris "Morrie" S. Schwartz
"As you grow old, you learn more. If you stayed at twenty-two, you'd always be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It's growth. It's more than the negative that you're going to die, its also the positive that you understand you're going to die, and that you live a better life because of it." - Morrie Schwartz, fully Morris "Morrie" S. Schwartz
"There is no experience like having children. That’s all. There is no substitute for it. If you want to have the experience of having complete responsibility for another human being, and to learn how to love and bond in the deepest way, then you should have children." - Morrie Schwartz, fully Morris "Morrie" S. Schwartz
"A good book can teach you about the world and about yourself. You learn more than how to read better; you also learn more about life. You become wiser. Not just more knowledgeable - books that provide nothing but information can produce that result. But wiser, in the sense that you are more deeply aware of the great and enduring truths of human life." - Mortimer J. Adler, fully Mortimer Jerome Adler
"I begin by asking people to lie on their backs (after the same principle of reducing gravity) and learn to scan themselves. That is, they examine attentively the contact of their bodies with the floor and gradually learn to detect considerable differences – points where the contact is feeble or non-existent and others where it is full and distinct. This training develops awareness of the location of muscles producing weak contact through permanent excessive tension, thus holding parts of the body up off the floor. Some improvement in tension reduction can be achieved through muscular awareness alone, but beyond that no improvement will be carried over into normal live unless people increase their awareness of the skeleton and its orientation." - Moshé Feldenkreis, fully Moshé Pinchas Feldenkrais
"Ordinarily, we learn just enough to function. But our ability to function with a greater range of ease and skill remains to be developed." - Moshé Feldenkreis, fully Moshé Pinchas Feldenkrais
"Our intelligence depends upon the opportunity we take to experience and learn on our own. This self learning leads to full, dynamic living." - Moshé Feldenkreis, fully Moshé Pinchas Feldenkrais
"What you truly learn best will appear to you later as your own discovery." - Moshé Feldenkreis, fully Moshé Pinchas Feldenkrais
"Through awareness we can learn to move with astonishing lightness and freedom-at almost any age-and thereby improve our living circumstances, not only physically...but emotionally, intellectually and spiritually." - Moshé Feldenkreis, fully Moshé Pinchas Feldenkrais
"Learning is the gift of life. A special kind of learning: that of knowing oneself. (People) learn to know ´how´ they are acting and thus are able to do ´what´ they want – the intense living of their unavowed and sometimes declared dreams. " - Moshé Feldenkreis, fully Moshé Pinchas Feldenkrais
"Without patience, we will learn less in life. We will see less. We will feel less. We will hear less. Ironically, rush and more usually mean less." - Mother Teresa, born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu NULL
"She will never learn the most necessary, most difficult and principal thing in music, that is time, because from childhood she has designedly cultivated the habit of ignoring the beat." - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart