This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
It is far more important to me to preserve an unblemished conscience than to compass any object however great.
Conscience | Important | Object | Wisdom |
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
There is a time in the lives of most of us when, despondent of all joy in an earthly future, and tortured by conflicts between inclination and duty, we transfer all the passion and fervor of our troubled souls to enthusiastic yearnings for the divine love, looking to its mercy, and taking thence the only hopes that can cheer - the only strength that can sustain us.
Duty | Future | Inclination | Joy | Love | Mercy | Passion | Strength | Time | Wisdom | Yearnings |
Louis-Ferdinand Céline, pen name Louis-Ferdinand Destouches
For the poor of this world, two major ways of expiring are available: either by the absolute indifference of your fellow-men in peace-time, or by the homicidal passion of these same when war breaks out.
Absolute | Indifference | Men | Passion | Peace | Time | War | Wisdom | World |
God hides some ideal in every human soul. At some time in our life we feel a trembling, fearful longing to do some good thing. Life finds its noblest spring of excellence in this hidden impulse to do our best.
Excellence | God | Good | Impulse | Life | Life | Longing | Soul | Time | Wisdom | Excellence |
There exists a passion for comprehension, just as there exists a passion for music. That passion is rather common in children but gets lost in most people later on. Without this passion, there would be neither mathematics nor natural science.
Children | Mathematics | Music | Passion | People | Wisdom |
Diogenes Laërtius, aka "Diogenes the Cynic"
An animal's first impulse is self-preservation.
Impulse | Self | Self-preservation | Wisdom |
Sinful and forbidden pleasures are like poisoned bread; they may satisfy appetite for the moment, but there is death in them at the end.
Georges Duhamel, Pen name Denis Thevenin
What distinguishes man from his innocent brothers, the animals... is not language, nor reason, nor even civilization... it is man's enormous appetite for suffering.
Appetite | Civilization | Language | Man | Reason | Suffering | Wisdom |
We live in a spelling bee culture where the demand is factual accuracy and everybody overlooks the absence of art or meaning in what's said. Too many people sent letters to Nero telling him he was fingering his fiddle wrong. This passion for data is a way of avoiding coming to terms with things.
Absence | Accuracy | Art | Culture | Meaning | Passion | People | Wisdom | Wrong | Art |
Meyrick Goulburn, fully Edward Meyrick Goulburn
Send your audience away with a desire for, and an impulse toward spiritual improvement, or your preaching will be a failure.
He that acts unjustly is the worst rebel to himself; and though now ambition’s trumpet and drum of power may drown the sound, yet conscience with one day speak loudly to him.
Do your duty, and don’t swerve from it. Do that which your conscience tells you to be right, and leave the consequences to God.
Conscience | Consequences | Duty | God | Right | Wisdom |