This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The worst type of sin, in fact the only “mortal sin” which has enslaved man for the greater part of history, is the institutionalized sin. Under the institution, vice appears to be, or is actually turned into, virtue. Apathy toward evil is thus engendered; recognition of sin becomes totally effaced; sinful institutions become absolutized, almost idolized, and sin becomes absolutely moral.
Apathy | Evil | History | Man | Mortal | Sin | Virtue | Virtue | Vice |
Douglas Meeks, also M. Douglas Meeks
Does God work? This is a crucial question, for the denigration of work and the degradation of the worker in both antiquity and modernity are supported by the view that the gods do not have to work. That is what makes them gods.
The life that conquers is the life that moves with a steady resolution and persistence toward a predetermined goal. Those who succeed are those who have thoroughly learned the immense importance of plan in life, and the tragic brevity of time.
Life | Life | Persistence | Plan | Resolution | Time | Brevity |
Just as virtue is its own reward, so is vice its own punishment.
Punishment | Reward | Virtue | Virtue | Vice |
Our senses will not admit anything extreme. Too much noise confuses us, too much light dazzles us, too great distance or nearness prevents vision, too great prolixity or brevity weakens an argument, too much pleasure gives pain, too much accordance annoys.
Argument | Extreme | Light | Noise | Pain | Pleasure | Vision | Will | Brevity |
Those whom we call ancients were in truth new in every respect, and actually formed the childhood of man; and since we have added to their knowledge the experience of the succeeding centuries, it is in ourselves that that antiquity can be found which we revere in others.
Antiquity | Childhood | Experience | Knowledge | Man | Respect | Truth |
In an age remarkable for good reasoning and bad conduct, for sound rules and corrupt manners, when virtue fills our heads, but vice our hearts; when those who would fain persuade us that they are quite sure of heaven, appear in no greater hurry to go there than other folks, but put on the livery of the best master only to serve the worst; in an age when modesty herself is more ashamed of detection than delinquency; when independence of principle consists in having no principle on which to depend; and free thinking, not in thinking freely, but in being free from thinking; in an age when patriots will hold anything except their tongues; keep anything except their word; and lose nothing patiently except their character; to improve such an age must be difficult; to instruct it dangerous; and he stands no chance of amending it who cannot at the same time amuse it.
Age | Chance | Character | Conduct | Detection | Good | Heaven | Hurry | Manners | Modesty | Nothing | Sound | Thinking | Time | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Vice |
He that has energy enough in his constitution to root out a vice should go a little further, and try to plant a virtue in its place; otherwise he will have his labor to renew. A strong soil that has produced weeds may be made to produce wheat with far less difficulty than it would cost to make it produce nothing.
Cost | Difficulty | Energy | Enough | Labor | Little | Nothing | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Vice |
Taste and elegance, though they are reckoned only among the small and secondary morals, yet are of no mean importance in the regulation of life. A moral taste is not of force to turn vice into virtue; but it recommends virtue with something like the blandishments of pleasure.
Elegance | Force | Life | Life | Pleasure | Regulation | Taste | Virtue | Virtue | Vice |
It will be found a work of no small difficulty to dispossess a vice from the heart, where long possession begins to plead prescription.
Difficulty | Heart | Will | Work | Vice |