This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Some persons follow the dictates of their conscience only in the same sense in which a coachman may be said to follow the horses he is driving.
Conscience | Sense |
A man keeps a good conscience in relation to others when he makes it appear that he can deny himself to do them good. The consciences of others shall think thus; "Such a man regards my good more than his own; he seeks not advantage to himself; he lives so that the world may see he is in good earnest; he speaks well and then makes it good by his life." Now if our care be so to walk, we shall then approve ourselves to the consciences of all mankind.
Natural men labor to quiet all checks of conscience by sensuality; men are loath to know themselves as they are; they are of the devil's mind, they would not be tormented before their time; such men when they are alone, are afraid of themselves.
Conscience | Labor | Men | Quiet | Afraid |
When statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties they lead their country by a short route to chaos.
Conscience | Public |
Who born so poor, Of intellect so mean, as not to know What seem'd the best; and knowing not to do? As not to know what God and conscience bade, And what they bade not able to obey?'
Conscience | God | Knowing | God | Intellect |
I cannot recall what I started to tell you, but at least I can say how night-long I have lain under the stars and Heard mountains moan in their sleep. By daylight, They remember nothing, and go about their lawful occasions Of not going anywhere except in slow disintegration. At night They remember, however, that there is something they cannot remember. So moan.Their's is the perfected pain of conscience that Of forgetting the crime, and I hope you have not suffered it. I have.
Conscience | Hope | Pain |
Robert Ingersoll, fully Robert Green "Bob" Ingersoll
What is blasphemy? I will give you a definition; I will give you my thought upon this subject. What is real blasphemy? To live on the unpaid labor of other men — that is blasphemy. To enslave your fellow-man, to put chains upon his body — that is blasphemy. To enslave the minds of men, to put manacles upon the brain, padlocks upon the lips — that is blasphemy. To deny what you believe to be true, to admit to be true what you believe to be a lie — that is blasphemy. To strike the weak and unprotected, in order that you may gain the applause of the ignorant and superstitious mob — that is blasphemy. To persecute the intelligent few, at the command of the ignorant many — that is blasphemy. To forge chains, to build dungeons, for your honest fellow-men — that is blasphemy. To pollute the souls of children with the dogma of eternal pain — that is blasphemy. To violate your conscience — that is blasphemy. The jury that gives an unjust verdict, and the judge who pronounces an unjust sentence, are blasphemers. The man who bows to public opinion against his better judgment and against his honest conviction, is a blasphemer. Why should we fear our fellow-men? Why should not each human being have the right, so far as thought and its expression are concerned, of all the world? What harm can come from an honest interchange of thought?
Applause | Better | Body | Children | Conscience | Dogma | Eternal | Fear | Harm | Judgment | Labor | Man | Men | Mob | Opinion | Order | Pain | Public | Thought | Will | Thought |
Robert Southwell, also Saint Robert Southwell
My conscience is my crown, Contented thoughts my rest; My heart is happy in itself, My bliss is in my breast... Enough I reckon wealth; A mean the surest lot, That lies too high for base contempt, Too low for envy's shot... I feel no care of coin, Well-doing is my wealth; My mind to me an empire is, While grace affordeth health... rise by others' fall I deem a losing gain; All states with others' ruins built To ruin run amain... Fortune smiles, I smile to think How quickly she will frown.
Care | Conscience | Fortune | Grace | Happy | Heart | Mind | Smile | Will |
Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan
The Soviet leaders reserve unto themselves the right to commit any crime, to lie, to cheat and that the only morality they recognize is what will further their cause.
Conscience | Size |
Rose Macauley, fully Dame Emilie Rose Macaulay
He felt about books as doctors feel about medicines, or managers about plays - cynical, but hopeful.
Conscience | Wrong |
When a girl marries, she exchanges the attention of many men for the inattention of one.
Action | Conscience | Man |
Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
A person can do other things against his will; but belief is possible only in one who is willing.
Conscience | Good | Paradise | Sabbath |
Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
Every sin is a greater injury to him who does it than to him who suffers it.
Conscience | Day | Hope | Mercy |
Everything I have written seems like straw by comparison with what I have seen and what has been revealed to me.
Conscience | Evil | Judgment | Right | Wise |
Perhaps the day will come when all the things bestowed upon mankind for its benefit and liberation will become corrupted into their very antithesis. Mankind, instead of assuring its members their legitimate rights of development ... will serve them the tear-drenched bread of slaves and the worm-wood of bitterness.... At such time, science, too, will become solely destructive ... will frantically blind itself with its own brightness ....Mankind will vainly exhaust its strength in a blind upsurge of uncurbed desires.
Conscience | Duty | Enlightenment | Father | Knowledge | Mind | Sacred | Training | Child |
Salvador de Madariaga, fully Salvador de Madariaga y Rojo
The arts which need interpretation are the arts of time -- music and poetry -- and not the arts of space -- sculpture and painting.
This will never change, not even if the latest scientific notion that the genesis of all the multitude of organic forms on earth can be traced back to one single, most primitive, primeval form of life should ever appear to be anything more than what it is today, a vague hypothesis still unsupported by fact. Even if this notion were ever to gain complete acceptance by the scientific world, Jewish thought, unlike the reasoning of the high priest of that nation, would nonetheless never summon us to revere a still extant representative of this primal form [an ape] as the supposed ancestor of us all. Rather, Judaism in that case would call upon its adherents to give even greater reverence than ever before to the one, sole God Who, in His boundless creative wisdom and eternal omnipotence, needed to bring into existence no more than one single, amorphous nucleus, and one single law of “adaptation and heredity” in order to bring forth, from what seemed chaos but was in fact a very definite order, the infinite variety of species we know today, each with its unique characteristics that sets it apart from all other creatures.
Apostasy | Conscience | Frivolity | Magic | Sin | Weakness |
Freedom of thought and the right of private judgment, in matters of conscience, driven from every other corner of the earth, direct their course to this happy country as their last asylum.
Conscience | Freedom of thought | Freedom | Happy | Judgment | Right | Thought | Thought |
Sam Ervin, fully Samuel James "Sam" Ervin, Jr.
Murder and theft have been committed since the earliest history of mankind, but that fact has not made murder meritorious or larceny legal.
Books | Choice | Conscience | Deeds | Earth | God | Heart | Lesson | Life | Life | Little | Loneliness | Mankind | Mind | Nature | Prejudice | Solitude | Study | Truth | Will | Words | Deeds | God |
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.
Conscience | Rights |