This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Act only on that maxim [intention] whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. Act as if the maxim of your action were to become by your will a universal law of nature. Always act so as to treat humanity, whether in yourself or in others, as an end in itself, never merely as a means. Act always as if to bring about, and as a member of, a Kingdom of Ends [that is, an ideal community in which everyone is always moral].
Action | Ends | Humanity | Intention | Law | Means | Nature | Time | Will |
Be more careful of your conscience than of your estate. The latter can be bought and sold; the former never.
Are you not surprised to find how independent of money peace of conscience is, and how much happiness can be condensed in the humblest home? A cottage will not hold the bulky furniture and sumptuous accommodations of a mansion; but if God be there, a cottage will hold as much happiness as might stock a palace.
A good conscience is to the soul what health is to the body; it preserves constant ease and serenity within us, and more than countervails all the calamities and afflictions which can befall us without.
O soul! life is a darkness which ends as in the sunburst of day. The yearning of my heart tells me there is peace in the grave. O soul! if some fool tell you the soul perishes like the body and that which dies never returns, tell him the flower perishes but the seed remains and lies before us as the secret of life everlasting.
Body | Darkness | Day | Ends | Grave | Heart | Life | Life | Peace | Soul |
Beauty is that which attracts your soul, and that which loves to give and not to receive. When you meet Beauty, you feel that the hands deep within your inner self are stretched forth to bring her into the domain of your heart. It is a magnificence combined of sorrow and joy; it is the Unseen which you see, and the Vague which you understand, and the Mute which you hear - it is the Holy of Holies that begins in yourself and ends vastly beyond your earthly imagination.
Beauty | Ends | Heart | Imagination | Joy | Receive | Self | Sorrow | Soul |
The conscience is not automatically infallible; it can easily make mistakes, and it is very difficult to distinguish its voice - the real voice of conscience - from the voice of precipitation, passion, convenience or self-will, or of moral primitiveness.
Conscience | Distinguish | Passion | Self | Will |
Lillian Hellman, fully Lillian Florience "Lily" Hellman
God helps all the children as they move into a time of life they do not understand and must struggle through with precepts they have picked from the garbage can of older people, clinging with the passion of the lost to odds and ends that will mess them up for all time, or hating the trash so much they will waste their future on the hatred.
Children | Ends | Future | God | Life | Life | Passion | People | Struggle | Time | Waste | Will | Understand |
Civilization begins by a magnificent materialization of human purpose; it ends in a purposeless materialism. An empty triumph, which revolts even the self that created it.
Civilization | Ends | Materialism | Purpose | Purpose | Self |
The greatest event in natural history was the birth of conscience in the human mind. That was the moment when man put aside his strongest natural instinct, which was self-interest.
Birth | Conscience | History | Instinct | Man | Mind | Self | Self-interest |
Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock
Although there is nothing so bad for conscience as trifling, there is nothing so good for conscience as trifles. Its certain discipline and development are related to the smallest things. Conscience, like gravitation, takes hold of atoms. Nothing is morally indifferent. Conscience must reign in manners as well as morals, in amusements as well as work. He only who is “faithful in that which is least” is dependable in all the world.
Amusements | Conscience | Discipline | Good | Manners | Nothing | Trifles | Work | World |
To go against one's conscience is neither safe nor right. Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise.
Conscience | Right | Safe |
If conscience smite thee once, it is an admonition; if twice, it is a condemnation... What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!
Conscience | Heart | Self |
Mitch Albom, fully Mitchell David "Mitch" Albom
Love is how you stay alive, even after you're gone ... Death ends a life, not a relationship.
Life is seething before your eyes; corner stands collapse, illusions evaporate, truths come tottering like bombs, elements disintegrate demanding new components, new vices destroy the walls of muteness and rise, species amalgamate, forces are set free from their hiding places, and conscience asks its possessor to take a stand; Hold on… escape… live… die… complicate yourself… renew yourself… There is no other way than to wade into the waves of darkness and to swim to the shore of light.
Conscience | Darkness | Destroy | Life | Life | Light | Truths |