This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Whatever difference there may appear to be in men’s fortunes, there is still a certain compensation of good and ill in all, that makes them equal.
Character | Compensation | Good | Men |
All advantages are attended with disadvantages. A universal compensation prevails in all conditions of being and existence.
Character | Compensation | Existence |
We enter our studies, and enjoy a society which we alone can bring together. We raise no jealousy by conversing with one in preference to another; we give no offense to the most illustrious by questioning him as long as we will, and leaving him as abruptly. Diversity of opinion raises no tumult in our presence: each interlocutor stands before us, speaks or is silence, and we adjourn or decide the business at our leisure.
Business | Character | Diversity | Jealousy | Leisure | Offense | Opinion | Preference | Silence | Society | Will | Society | Business |
Fulton Sheen, fully Archbishop Fulton John Sheen
An overemphasis on temporal security is a compensation for a loss of the sense of eternal security.
Character | Compensation | Eternal | Security | Sense | Loss |
It is some compensation for great evils that they enforce great lessons.
Compensation | Wisdom |
Whatever difference there may appear to be in man's fortunes, there is still a certain compensation of good and ill in all, that makes them equal.
Compensation | Good | Man | Wisdom |
F. Scott Fitzgerald, fully Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald
The compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter. In the best sense one stays young.
Real goodness does not attach itself merely to this life - it points to another world. Political or professional reputation cannot last forever, but a conscience void of offense before God and man is an inheritance for eternity.
Conscience | Eternity | God | Inheritance | Life | Life | Man | Offense | Reputation | Wisdom | World | God |
Young “Savage” Seminarians NULL
You tell us that baptism is absolutely necessary to go to heaven. If there were a man so good that he had never offended God, and if he died without baptism, would he go to hell, never having given any offense to God? If he goes to hell, then God must not love all good people, since He throws one into the fire. You teach us that God existed before the creation of heaven and earth. If He did, where did He live, since there was neither heaven nor earth? You say that the angels were created n the beginning of the world, and that those who disobeyed were cast into hell. How can that be so, since you say the angels sinned before earth’s creation, and hell is in the depths of the earth? You declare that those who go to hell do not come out of it, and yet you relate stories of the damned who have appeared in the world - how is that to be understood. Ah, how I would like to kill devils, since they do so much harm! But if they are made like men and some are even among men, do they still feel the fire of hell? Why is it that they do not repent for having offended God? If they did repent, would not God be merciful to them? If Our Lord has suffered for all sinners, why do not they receive pardon from him? You say that the virgin, mother of Jesus Christ, is not God, and that she has never offended God. You also say that her Son has redeemed all men, and atoned for all; but if she has done nothing wrong, her son could not redeem her nor atone for her.
Angels | Beginning | Earth | God | Good | Harm | Heaven | Hell | Kill | Lord | Love | Man | Men | Mother | Nothing | Offense | Pardon | People | Receive | Teach | Wisdom | World | Wrong | God |
We are rewarded not for our good deeds but by our good deeds. The reward for doing good is becoming a better human being. The greatest compensation for any good deed is simply to have done it.
Is there then no reward for living a life of rectitude and uprightness? There is, indeed. We are rewarded not for our good deeds but by our good deeds. The reward for doing good is becoming a better human being. The greatest compensation for any good deed is simply to have done it.
Better | Compensation | Deeds | Good | Life | Life | Reward | Deeds |
If it be true that men of strong imaginations are usually dogmatists - and I am inclined to think it is so - it ought to follow that men of weak imaginations are the refers; in which case we should have some compensation for stupidity. But it unfortunately happens that no dogmatist is more obstinate or less open to conviction than a fool.
Compensation | Men | Stupidity | Think |
To establish the principles of the Declaration of Independence, we are going to need to go outside the law, to stop obeying the laws that demand killing or that allocate wealth the way it has been done, or that put people in jail for petty technical offense and keep other people out of jail for enormous crimes.
There is a deeper fact in the soul than compensation, to wit, its own nature. The soul is not a compensation but a life. The soul is. Under all this running sea of circumstance, whose waters ebb and flow with perfect balance, lies the aboriginal abyss of real Being. Existence, or God, is not a relation or a part, but the whole. Being is the vast affirmative, excluding negation, self-balanced, and swallowing up all relations, parts, and times within itself.
Balance | Compensation | Existence | God | Life | Life | Nature | Self | Soul | Wit |
When any one has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it.
One of the first laws against air pollution came in 1300 when King Edward I decreed the death penalty for burning of coal. At least one execution for that offense is recorded. But economics triumphed over health considerations, and air pollution became an appalling problem in England.
H. G. Wells, fully Herbert George Wells
I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had been. It had committed suicide. It had set itself steadfastly towards comfort and ease, a balanced society with security and permanency as its watchword, it had attained its hopes—to come to this at last. Once, life and property must have reached almost absolute safety. The rich had been assured of his wealth and comfort, the toiler assured of his life and work. No doubt in that perfect world there had been no unemployed problem, no social question left unsolved. And a great quiet had followed. It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have to meet a huge variety of needs and dangers.
Absolute | Change | Comfort | Compensation | Doubt | Habit | Harmony | Instinct | Intelligence | Law | Life | Life | Nature | Need | Property | Question | Quiet | Security | Society | Wealth | World | Society | Intellect | Think |
It is an inherent weakness of religion not to take offense at the segregation of God, to forget that the true sanctuary has no walls... It has often done more to canonize prejudices than to wrestle for truth; to petrify the sacred than to sanctify the secular. Yet the task of religion is to be a challenge to the stabilization of values.