This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
There was an idea started that woke up men out of their stupid indifference but its originator was spoken of as a crank.
Indifference | Men |
Undisturbed calmness of mind is attained by cultivating friendliness toward the happy, compassion for the unhappy, delight in the virtuous, and indifference toward the wicked.
Calmness | Compassion | Happy | Indifference | Mind |
Arthur Ponsonby, 1st Baron Ponsonby of Shulbrede
Anger is not only inevitable, it is necessary. Its absence means indifference - the most disastrous of all human failings.
Absence | Anger | Indifference | Inevitable | Means |
Joy and sorrow are not ideas of the mind but affections of the will, and so they do not lie in the domain of memory. We cannot recall our joys and sorrows; by which I mean we cannot renew them. We can recall only the ideas that accompanied them; and, in particular, the things we were led to say; and these form a gauge of our feelings at the time. Hence our memory of joys and sorrows is always imperfect, and they become a matter of indifference to us as soon as they are over.
Feelings | Ideas | Indifference | Joy | Memory | Mind | Sorrow | Time | Will |
The only kind of dignity which is genuine is that which is not diminished by the indifference of others.
Dignity | Indifference |
Realizing that no simple formulas apply to everyone, we develop the courage to live a unique spiritual life, in our own idiosyncratic way. While archetypal patterns exist to guide seekers, in the West individuals can find their won way within these deeper patterns by honoring their unique backgrounds, temperaments, values and creative capacities... We commit ourselves to passionate action in the world, without becoming overly attached to the success or failure of our endeavors... In spiritual maturity, recognizing that such an attitude of indifference stems from a fear of life, we commit to our spouses, professions, and social action, developing compassion and equanimity through a balanced engagement with life.
Action | Compassion | Courage | Equanimity | Failure | Fear | Indifference | Life | Life | Success | Unique | World | Engagement | Failure |
Wine heightens indifference into love, love into jealousy, and jealousy into madness. It often turns the good-natured man into an idiot, and the choleric into an assassin. It give bitterness to resentment, it makes vanity insupportable, and displays every little spot of the soul in its utmost deformity.
Bitterness | Good | Indifference | Jealousy | Little | Love | Madness | Man | Resentment | Soul |
Desire is half of life; indifference is half of death.
Death | Desire | Indifference | Life | Life |
Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
Courage is nothing less than indifference to hardship and pain.
Courage | Indifference | Nothing | Pain | Hardship |
Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
Beware of an inordinate desire for wealth. Nothing is so revealing of narrowness and littleness of soul than love for money. Conversely, there is nothing more honorable or noble than indifference to money, if one doesn’t have any; or than genuine altruism and well-doing if one does have it.
Altruism | Desire | Indifference | Love | Money | Nothing | Soul | Wealth |
The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
Evil | Good | Indifference | Men | Public |
The great make us feel, first of all, the indifference of circumstances. They call into activity the higher perceptions, and subdue the low habits of comfort and luxury; but the higher perceptions find their objects everywhere; only the low habits need palaces and banquets.
Circumstances | Comfort | Indifference | Luxury | Need |
As to the freedom of the will, a very different account must be given of it as it exists in God and as its exists for us... That idea of good impelled God to choose one thing rather than another... Thus that supreme indifference in God is the supreme proof of his omnipotence. But as to man, since he finds the nature of all goodness and truth already determined by God, and his will cannot bear upon anything else, it is evident that he embraces the true and the good the more willingly and hence the more freely in proportion as he sees the true and the good more clearly, and that he is never indifferent save when he does not know what is the more true or the better, or at least when he does not see clearly enough to prevent him from doubting about it. Thus the indifference which attaches to human liberty is very different from that which belongs to the divine.
Better | Enough | Freedom | God | Good | Indifference | Liberty | Man | Nature | Omnipotence | Truth | Will | God |
Nothing precludes sympathy so much as a perfect indifference to it.
Indifference | Nothing | Sympathy |
If moderation is a fault then indifference is a crime.
Fault | Indifference | Moderation | Moderation | Fault |
Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
It is a matter of perfect indifference where a thing originated; the only question is: "Is it true in and for itself?"
Indifference | Question |
Gilbert Keith "G.K." Chesteron
The truth is that it is our attitude towards children that is right, and our attitude towards grown-up people that is wrong. Our attitude towards our equals in age consists in a servile solemnity, overlying a considerable degree of indifference or disdain. Our attitude towards children consists in a condescending indulgence, overlying an unfathomable respect.
Age | Children | Indifference | People | Truth |