This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Madame Swetchine, fully Anne Sophie Swetchine née Sophia Petrovna Soïmonov or Soymanof
Our faults afflict us more than our good deeds console. Pain is ever uppermost in the conscience as in the heart.
Character | Conscience | Deeds | Good | Heart | Pain | Deeds |
Richard Steele, fully Sir Richard Steele
Each successive generation plunges into the abyss of passion, without the slightest regard to the fatal effects which such conduct has produced upon their predecessors; and lament, when too late, the rashness with which they slighted the advice of experience, and stifled the voice of reason.
Advice | Character | Conduct | Experience | Passion | Rashness | Reason | Regard |
Lawrence Sterne, alternatively Laurence Sterne
Trust that man is nothing who has not a conscience in everything.
Character | Conscience | Man | Nothing | Trust |
No man becomes fully evil at once; but suggestion bringeth on indulgence; indulgence, delight; delight, consent; consent, endeavor; endeavor, practice; practice, custom; custom, excuse; excuse, defense; defense, obstinacy; obstinacy, boasting; boasting, a seared conscience and a reprobate mind.
Boasting | Character | Conscience | Custom | Defense | Evil | Indulgence | Man | Mind | Practice |
Arminius, also known as Armin or Hermann NULL
A good conscience is paradise.
Conscience | Good | Paradise | Wisdom |
Be not content with the commonplace in character anymore than with the commonplace in ambition or intellectual attainment. Do not expect that you will make any lasting or very strong impression on the world through intellectual power without the use of an equal amount of conscience and heart.
Ambition | Attainment | Character | Conscience | Heart | Impression | Power | Will | World | Ambition |
A conscience void of offense, before God and man, is an inheritance for eternity.
Character | Conscience | Eternity | God | Inheritance | Man | Offense | God |
There are those who are fearful to be alone with themselves. They run with the crowd not out of love for others but out of fear to remain alone with themselves, terrified lest they hear the voice of their own spirit, or fearful of remaining alone with their own void.
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
All I have is a voice to undo the folded lie, the romantic lie in the brain of the sensual man-in-the-street and the lie of Authority whose buildings grope the sky: there is no such thing as the State and no one exists alone; hunger allows no choice to the citizen or the police; we must love one another or die.
Spend your time in nothing which you know must be repented of; in nothing on which you might not pray for the blessing of God; in nothing which you could not review with a quiet conscience on your dying bed; in nothing which you might not safely and properly be found doing if death should surprise you in the act.
Conscience | Death | God | Nothing | Quiet | Time | Wisdom |
Misfortune makes of certain souls a vast desert though which rings the voice of God.
God | Misfortune | Wisdom |
The sweetest of all sounds is that of the voice of the woman we love.
The torture of a bad conscience is the hell of a living soul.
Conscience | Hell | Soul | Torture | Wisdom |
It is far more important to me to preserve an unblemished conscience than to compass any object however great.
Conscience | Important | Object | Wisdom |
The voice of the Lord is the voice of common sense, which is shared by all that is.
Common Sense | Lord | Sense | Wisdom |