This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL
My cares and my inquiries are for decency and truth, and in this I am wholly occupied.
The problem in Muslim societies is rooted in authoritarianism, which burdens practically every community, mosque, and family...Muslims continue to suffer because of the abject failure of the religious establishment to live up to the standards of human decency set by Islam.
Daniel Boorstin, fully Daniel Joseph Boorstin
I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress. No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.
Agnostic | Ignorance | Knowledge | Progress | World | Agnostic |
It is for the most part in our skill in manners, and in the observation of time and place and of decency in general that what is called taste consists; and which is in reality no other that a more refined judgment. The cause of a wrong taste is a defect of judgment.
Cause | Judgment | Manners | Observation | Reality | Skill | Taste | Time | Wrong |
No matter how noble the objectives of a government, if it blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds ill will and suspicion - it is an evil government.
Evil | Government | Kindness | Life | Life | Objectives | Suspicion | Will |
Good judgment in our dealings with others consists not in seeing through deceptions and evil intentions but in being able to waken the decency dormant in every person.
Wentworth Dillon, 4th Earl of Roscommon
Immodest words admit no defence, for want of decency is want of sense.
There can be no compromise with war; it cannot be reformed or controlled; cannot be disciplined into decency or codified into common sense.
Chögyam Trungpa, fully Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche
If you are a warrior, decency means that you are not cheating anybody at all. You are not even about to cheat anybody. There is a sense of straightforwardness and simplicity. With setting-sun vision, or vision based on cowardice, straightforwardness is always a problem. If people have some story or news to tell somebody else, first of all they are either excited or disappointed. Then they begin to figure out how to tell their news. They develop a plan, which leads them completely away from simply telling it. By the time a person hears the news, it is not news at all, but opinion. It becomes a message of some kind, rather than fresh, straightforward news. Decency is the absence of strategy. It is of utmost importance to realize that the warrior’s approach should be simple-minded sometimes, very simple and straightforward. That makes it very beautiful: you having nothing up your sleeve; therefore a sense of genuineness comes through. That is decency.
Absence | Means | News | Nothing | People | Sense | Story | Time | Vision |
Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton
If you don't believe in God, all you have to believe in is decency. Decency is very good. Better decent than indecent. But I don't think it's enough.
Muhammed al-Taqī or Muhammad al-Jawād, given name Muhammad ibn ‘Alī ibn Mūsā
Modesty is the decoration of poverty, thanks-giving is the decoration of affluence and wealth. Patience and endurance are the ornaments and decorations of calamities and distress. Humility is the decoration of lineage, and eloquence is the decoration of speech. Committing to memory is the decoration of tradition (hadīth), and bowing the shoulders is the decoration of knowledge. Decency and good morale is the decoration of the mind, and a smiling face is the decoration of munifence and generiosity. Not boasting of doing favours is the decoration of good deeds, and humility is the decoration of service. Spending less is the decoration of contentment, and abondoning the meaningless and unnecessary things is the decoration of abstention and fear of God.
Boasting | Endurance | Fear | Good | Humility | Memory | Patience | Tradition |
Pablo Casals, fully Pau Casals i Defilló
Each person has inside a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated but it takes courage. It takes courage for a person to listen to his own good.
Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
You must be respectful and assenting, but without being servile and abject. You must be frank, but without indiscretion, and close, without being costive. You must keep up dignity of character, without the least pride of birth, or rank. You must be gay, within all the bounds of decency and respect; and grave, without the affectation of wisdom, which does not become the age of twenty. You must be essentially secret, without being dark and mysterious. You must be firm, and even bold, but with great seeming modesty.
Affectation | Age | Dignity | Pride |
Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
Good manners, to those one does not love, are no more a breach of truth, than "your humble servant," at the bottom of a challenge is; they are universally agreed upon, and understand to be things of course. They are necessary guards of the decency and peace of society.
Challenge | Peace | Understand |
The effort necessary to remain uncorrupted in an environment where fear is an integral part of everyday existence is not immediately apparent to those fortunate enough to live in states governed by the rule of law. Just laws do not merely prevent corruption by meting out impartial punishment to offenders. They also help to create a society in which people can fulfill the basic requirements necessary for the preservation of human dignity without recourse to corrupt practices. Where there are no such laws, the burden of upholding the principles of justice and common decency falls on the ordinary people. It is the cumulative effect on their sustained effort and steady endurance which will change a nation where reason and conscience are warped by fear into one where legal rules exist to promote man's desire for harmony and justice while restraining the less desirable destructive traits in his nature.
Change | Conscience | Corruption | Desire | Dignity | Effort | Endurance | Enough | Existence | Fear | Harmony | Justice | People | Principles | Punishment | Reason | Rule | Society | Will | Society |
R. B. Cunninghame Graham, fully Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham
Poverty, many can endure with dignity. Success, how few can carry off, even with decency and without baring their innermost infirmities before the public gaze!
Public |
Our forebears are deserving of tribute for one indisputable reason, if for no other: without them we should not be here. Let us recognize that we are not the ultimate triumph but rather we are beads on a string. Let us behave with decency to the beads that were strung before us and hope modestly that the beads that come after us will not hold us of no account simply because we are dead.