This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The devil never tempts us with more success than when he tempts us with a sight of our own good actions.
Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
In democratic countries, however opulent a man is supposed to be, he is almost always discontented with his fortune because he finds that he is less rich than his father was, and he fears that his sons will be less rich than himself. Most rich men in democracies are therefore constantly haunted by the desire of obtaining wealth, and they naturally turn their attention to trade and manufactures, which appear to offer the readiest and most efficient means of success. In this respect they share the instincts of the poor without feeling the same necessities; say, rather, they feel the most imperious of all necessities, that of not sinking in the world.
Attention | Desire | Father | Fortune | Man | Means | Men | Respect | Success | Wealth | Will | World | Respect |
Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.
It is my feeling that Time ripens all things; with Time all things are revealed; Time is the father of truth.
Frank Herbert, formally Franklin Patrick Herbert, Jr.
The child who refuses to travel in the father's harness, this is the symbol of man's most unique capability. "I do not have to be what my father was. I do not have to obey my father's rules or even believe everything he believed. It is my strength as a human that I can make my own choices of what to believe and what not to believe, of what to be and what not to be.
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Life is a well of joy; but for those out of whom an upset stomach speaks, which is the father of melancholy, all wells are poisoned.
Father |
Giordano Bruno, born Filippo Bruno
Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
Here is true immorality: ignorance and stupidity; the devil is nothing but this.
The loss of popular respect for religion is the dry rot of social institutions. The idea of God as the Creator and Father of all mankind is in the moral world, what gravitation is in the natural; it holds all together and causes them to revolve around a common center. Take this away, and men drop apart; there is no such thing as collective humanity, but only separate molecules, with no more cohesion than so many grains of sand.
Father | God | Mankind | Men | Religion | Respect | Respect | Loss | God |
Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL
He will through life be master of himself and a happy man who from day to day can have said, “I have lived”: tomorrow the Father may fill the sky with black clouds or with cloudless sunshine.
Day | Father | Happy | Life | Life | Man | Tomorrow | Will |
Isaac Asimov, born Isaak Yudovich Ozimov
To be sure, the Bible contains the direct words of God. How do we know? The Moral Majority says so. How do they know? They say they know and to doubt it makes you an agent of the Devil or, worse, a Lbr-l Dm-cr-t. And what does the Bible textbook say? Well, among other things it says the earth was created in 4004 BC (Not actually, but a Moral Majority type figured that out three and a half centuries ago, and his word is also accepted as inspired.) The sun was created three days later. The first male was molded out of dirt, and the first female was molded, some time later, out of his rib. As far as the end of the universe is concerned, the Book of Revelation (6:13-14) says: "And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind." … Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly.
Bible | Devil | Doubt | Earth | Force | Heaven | Majority | People | Revelation | Thinking | Time | Universe | Words | Bible |
Hippocrates, fully known as Hippocrates of Cos or Hippokrates of Kos NULL
Science is the father of knowledge, but opinion breeds ignorance.
Joris-Karl "J.K." Huysmans, pseudonym for Charles-Marie-Georges Huysmans
Worshiping the Devil is no more insane than worshiping God...It is precisely at the moment when positivism is at its high-water mark that mysticism stirs into life and the follies of occultism begin.
Jean Grou, fully Jean Nicholas Grou
We must not measure the reality of love by feelings, but by results. Feelings are very delusive. They often depend on mere natural temperament, and the devil wrests them to our hurt. A glowing imagination is apt to seek itself rather than God. But if you are earnest in striving to serve and endure for God's sake, if you persevere amid temptation, dryness, weariness, and desolation, you may rest assured that your love is real.