This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The moment you can make a very simple discovery, viz., that obligation to God is your privilege, and is not imposed as a burden, your experience will teach you many things - that duty is liberty, that repentance is a release from sorrow, that sacrifice is gain, that humility is dignity, that the truth from that which you hide is a healing element that bathes your disordered life, and that even the penalties and terrors of God are the artillery only to protection to His realm.
Dignity | Discovery | Duty | Experience | God | Humility | Liberty | Life | Life | Obligation | Repentance | Sacrifice | Sorrow | Teach | Truth | Will | Wisdom | God |
If it is a small sacrifice to discontinue the use of wine, do it for the sake of others; if it is a great sacrifice, do it for your own.
Extensive moralizing within the ecological movement has given the public the false impression that they are being asked to make a sacrifice - to show more responsibility, more concern, and a nicer moral standard. But all of that would flow naturally and easily if the self were widened and deepened so that the protection of nature was felt and perceived as protection of our very selves.
Impression | Nature | Public | Responsibility | Sacrifice | Self | Wisdom |
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
The Christian faith is a sacrifice: a sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of the spirit; at the same time, enslavement and self-mockery, self-mutilation.
Confidence | Faith | Freedom | Mockery | Pride | Sacrifice | Self | Self-confidence | Spirit | Time | Wisdom |
William Paley, Archdeacon of Saragossa
No man’s spirits were ever hurt by doing his duty; on the contrary, one good action, one temptation resisted and overcome, one sacrifice of desire or interest, purely for conscience’ sake, will prove a cordial for weak and low spirits, far beyond what either indulgence or diversion or company can do for them.
Action | Conscience | Desire | Diversion | Duty | Good | Indulgence | Man | Sacrifice | Temptation | Will | Wisdom | Temptation |
Reverence for life does not allow the scholar to live for his science alone, even if he is very useful to the community in so doing. Reverence for life does not permit the artist to exist only for his art, even if he gives inspiration to many by its means... Reverence for life demands for all that they should sacrifice a portion of their own lives for others.
Art | Inspiration | Life | Life | Means | Reverence | Sacrifice | Scholar | Science | Wisdom |
We talk about a space race. There is a space race down here on the ground. In this race every human being is superpower and the competition no longer stands a chance. Other species are bound to this or that patch of turf, and this planet. We feel bound to no patch of turn on Earth, bound only for the stars. We sacrifice a marsh, a bay, a park, a lake. We sacrifice a sparrow. We trade one countdown for another.
Chance | Competition | Earth | Race | Sacrifice | Space | Wisdom |
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
God has laid upon man the duty of being free, of safeguarding freedom of spirit, no matter how difficult that may be, or how much sacrifice and suffering it may require.
Duty | Freedom | God | Man | Sacrifice | Spirit | Suffering |
William E. Blatz, fully William Emet Blatz
Parenting: Affection without sentiment, authority without cruelty, discipline without aggression, humor without ridicule, sacrifice without obligation, companionship without possessiveness.
Aggression | Authority | Cruelty | Discipline | Humor | Obligation | Ridicule | Sacrifice | Sentiment | Companionship |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
Self-sacrifice of one innocent man is a million times more potent than the sacrifice of a million men who die in the act of killing others.
Man | Men | Sacrifice | Self | Self-sacrifice |
All of one’s life can be a “reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice” to deity, a sacrifice whose value depends on the quality of life, and this depends on the depth of the devotion to all good things, to all life’s possibilities, neither as mine nor as not mine but as belonging to God’s creatures and thus to God.
F. A. Hayek, fully Friedrich August Hayek or von Hayek
Outside the sphere of individual responsibility there is neither goodness or badness… Only where we ourselves are responsible for our own interests and are free to sacrifice them has our decision moral value.
Decision | Individual | Responsibility | Sacrifice |
Walter Pater, fully Walter Horatio Pater
The ideal of asceticism represents moral effort as essentially sacrifice, the sacrifice of one part of human nature to another, that it may live the more completely in what survives of it.
Asceticism | Effort | Human nature | Nature | Sacrifice | Asceticism |