This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another
It matters not where you live, or what rank of life you hold, the evil or the blessing will reach you all. The far and the near, the home counties and the back, the rich and the poor, will suffer or rejoice alike. The heart that feels not now is dead; the blood of his children will curse his cowardice, who shrinks back at a time when a little might have saved the whole, and made them happy. I love the man that can smile in trouble, That can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death. My own line of reasoning is to myself as straight and clear as a ray of light. Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder; but if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my property, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are in it, and to bind me in all cases whatsoever to his absolute will, am I to suffer it? What signifies it to me, whether he who does it is a king or a common man; my countryman or not my countryman; whether it be done by an individual villain, or an army of them? If we reason to the root of things we shall find no difference; neither can any just cause be assigned why we should punish in the one case and pardon in the other. Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man.
Invention depends altogether upon execution or organization; as that is right or wrong so is the invention perfect or imperfect.
Conscience | Ideas | Man |
Invention flags, his brain goes muddy, and black despair succeeds brown study.
Wilhelm von Humboldt, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt
We have not the remotest realistic inkling of a consciousness which is not self-consciousness.
Conscience | Injustice | Injustice | Religion | Sense | Guilty |
Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
Personally, I have always felt that the best doctor in the world is the Veterinarian. He can't ask his patients what is the matter...he's just got to know.
Conscience | Work | Think |
Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
Just been talking today out here to all the Senators investigating these stock swindles and overcapitalizations. There has been hundreds of millions lost. There ought to be some form of guardianship for people that buy all this junk. Education won't do it. (The buyers are) the ones we have educated up till they are just smart enough to fall for everything that comes along.
Association | Conscience | Work | Association | Think |
Our faults and sins seem all the bigger when they are seen by the world against the excessively self-righteous picture that is our official version of ourselves.
Change | Conscience | Eternal | Means |
By a kind of fashionable discipline, the eye is taught to brighten, the lip to smile, and the whole countenance to emanate with the semblance of friendly welcome, while the bosom is unwarmed by a single spark of genuine kindness and good-will.
Conscience | Grave | Love | Past |
W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky
The period of Catholic ascendancy was on the whole one of the most deplorable in the history of the human mind.... The spirit that shrinks from enquiry as sinful and deems a state of doubt a state of guilt, is the most enduring disease that can afflict the mind of man. Not till the education of Europe passed from the monasteries to the universities, not till Mohammedan science, and clasical free thought, and industrial independence broke the sceptre of the Church, did the intellectual revival of Europe begin.
Agitation | Authority | Change | Church | Conscience | Controversy | Doctrine | Enthusiasm | Force | Language | Light | Men | Method | Peace | Principles | Reason | Religion | Right | Sense | Spirit | Theology | Will |
Politic man ordained imagination as the fateful sin. Grandmother and her basketful of pears must be the crux for our compendia.
Conscience | Law | Moral law |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Just like a man grieving because he has recently lost in his dreams some thing that he had never had in reality, or hoping that tomorrow he would dream that he found it again. That is how mathematics is created; it has its fatal flaw.
Character | Conscience | Emotions | Family | History | Individual | Magic | Mind | Work | World |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
The color of one's creed, neckties, eyes, thoughts, manners, speech, is sure to meet somewhere in time of space with a fatal objection from a mob that hates that particular tone. And the more brilliant, the more unusual the man, the nearer he is to the stake. Stranger always rhymes with danger. The meek prophet, the enchanter in his cave, the indignant artist, the nonconforming little schoolboy, all share in the same sacred danger. And this being so, let us bless them, let us bless the freak; for in the natural evolution of things, the ape would perhaps never have become man had not a freak appeared in the family.
Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh
Someday death will take us to another star.
Conscience | Good |
Zoroaster, aka Zarathustra or Zarathushtra Spitama NULL
Suffer no anxiety, for he who is a sufferer of anxiety becomes regardless of enjoyment of the world and the spirit, and contraction happens to his body and soul.
Agony | Conscience | Deeds | Judgment | Soul | Truth | Deeds |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.
Cause | Conscience | Dedication | Surrender | Will | Happiness | Think |
Follow 'this' path... it is easily accessible and the cart can move freely on it.... treading on which the brave ones do not get vanquished and which also provides better prospects for earning wealth.
Conscience | Love | Will | World |