This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The certainty of a God giving meaning to life far surpasses in attractiveness the ability to behave badly with impunity. The choice would not be hard to make. But there is no choice and that is where the bitterness comes in. The absurd does not liberate; it binds. It does not authorize all actions. Everything is permitted does not mean that nothing is forbidden. The absurd merely confers an equivalence on the consequences of those actions.
Ability | Absurd | Bitterness | Choice | Consequences | Giving | God | Life | Life | Meaning | Nothing | God |
It is difficult to keep quiet if you have nothing to do.
The best remedy for disturbances is to let them run their course, for so they quiet down.
Quiet |
Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things, I am tempted to think there are no little things.
Consequences | Little | Think |
Charles Dickens, fully Charles John Huffam Dickens
When the dust of evening had come on, and not a sound disturbed the sacred stillness of the place, when the bright moon poured in her light on tomb and monument, on pillar, wall, and arch, and most of all (it seemed to them) upon her quiet grave - in that calm time, when all outward things and inward thoughts teem with assurances of immortality, and worldly hopes and fears are humbled in the dust before them, then, with tranquil and submissive hearts they turned away, and left the child with God.
God | Grave | Immortality | Light | Quiet | Sacred | Sound | Time | Child |
Forgiveness breaks the chain of causality because he who ‘forgives’ you - out of love - takes upon himself the consequences of what you have done. Forgiveness, therefore, always entails a sacrifice. The price you must pay for your own liberation through another’s sacrifice, is that you in turn must be willing to liberate in the same way, irrespective of the consequences yourself.
Consequences | Forgiveness | Love | Price | Sacrifice |
Forgiveness breaks the chain of causality because he who forgives you -- out of love--takes upon himself the consequences of what you have done. Forgiveness, therefore, always entails a sacrifice.
Consequences | Forgiveness | Love | Sacrifice |
Terrible consequences there will always be when the mean vices attempt to mimic the grand passions. Great men will never do great mischief but for some great end.
Consequences | Men | Will |
You need not do anything. Remain sitting at your table and listen. You need not even listen, just wait. And you need not even wait. Just become quiet and still and solitary and the world will offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
It is not true that the relations between the sexes are of the same order with the rest of man’s instincts. They have social consequences which place them in a class apart.
Consequences | Man | Order | Rest |
You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.
Human race | Patriotism | Quiet | Race | World |
Henry Kissinger, fully Henry Alfred Kissinger
History is not, of course, a cookbook offering pretested recipes. It teaches by analogy, not by maxims. It can illuminate the consequences of actions in comparable situations, yet each generation must discover for itself what situations are in fact comparable.
Consequences | History | Maxims |
Harry Browne, fully Harry Edson Browne
Everyone will experience the consequences of his own acts. If his acts are right, he will get good consequences; if they are not, he will suffer for it.
Consequences | Experience | Good | Right | Will |
Love is but a prelude to life, an overture in which the theme of the impending work is exquisitely hinted at, but which remains nevertheless only a symbol and a promise. What is to follow, if all goes well, begins presently to appear. Passion settles down into possession, courtship into partnership, pleasure into habit. A child, half mystery and half plaything, comes to show us what we have done and to make its consequences perpetual. We see that by indulging our inclination we have woven about us a net from which we cannot escape: our choices, bearing fruit, begin to manifest our destiny. That life which once seemed to spread out infinitely before us is narrowed to one mortal career. We learn that in morals the infinite is a chimera, and that in accomplishing anything definite a man renounces everything else. He sails henceforth for one point of the compass.
Consequences | Destiny | Habit | Inclination | Life | Life | Love | Man | Mortal | Mystery | Passion | Pleasure | Promise | Work | Learn |
Henry Kissinger, fully Henry Alfred Kissinger
Leaders are responsible not for running public opinion polls but for the consequences of their action.
Action | Consequences | Opinion | Public |
It is the function of parents to see that their children habitually experience the true consequences of their conduct.
Children | Conduct | Consequences | Experience | Parents |
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.
Desperation | Men | Quiet | Resignation |