This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
What is threatened today is moral liberty, conscience, respect for the soul, the very nobility of man. To defend the soul, its interests, its rights, its dignity, is the most pressing duty for whoever sees the danger.
Conscience | Danger | Dignity | Duty | Liberty | Man | Nobility | Respect | Rights | Soul | Respect |
Nationalism has two fatal charms for its devotees: it presupposes local self-sufficiency, which is a pleasant and desirable condition, and it suggests, very subtly, a certain personal superiority by reason of one's belonging to a place which is definable and familiar, as against a place which is strange, remote.
Reason | Self | Self-sufficiency | Superiority | Wisdom |
God has laid upon man the duty of being free, of safeguarding freedom of spirit, no matter how difficult that may be, or how much sacrifice and suffering it may require.
Duty | Freedom | God | Man | Sacrifice | Spirit | Suffering |
Man’s greatest duty is to love God: that is the first commandment. The second is to love his neighbor. And it is possible for two creatures to love one another only because God exists and is their common Father – it is the divine image and likeness that is loveable in our fellow-men.
There is probably no direct way to get in touch with our inner selves or to seek out satisfaction and happiness. It’s best to live by sound principles – honesty, courage, liberty, and love – and then to await what unfolds. When, inevitably, we go astray for a time, we must return, once again, to living by the principles we cherish. The formula isn’t all that difficult to understand; applying it is the work of a lifetime.
Courage | Honesty | Liberty | Love | Principles | Sound | Time | Work |
By happiness we are to understand the internal satisfaction of the soul, arising from the possession of good; and by good, whatever is suitable or agreeable to man for his preservation, perfection, convenience, or pleasure.
Good | Man | Perfection | Pleasure | Soul | Happiness | Understand |
There is not any memory with less satisfaction than the memory of some temptation we resisted.
Memory | Temptation | Temptation |
In the end the quest in all religions seems to be for supremely enduring satisfaction either in this life or beyond.
Let no one forget his own duty for the sake of another’s, however great; let a man after he has discovered his own duty, be always attentive to his duty.
What is important and of greatest significance is that an ideal of final truth is always before use and that the search for truth is acknowledged by all men as a duty not imposed from outside but born from within. The search for final truth rests with each individual personality and rendering the partial interpretations of our experience fundamentally consistent with one another. It is this fact that justifies the use of the word `God’ to designate the all embracing personality in whose existence ultimate reality exists.
Duty | Existence | Experience | God | Important | Individual | Men | Personality | Reality | Search | Truth |
If our conscience tells us that we ought to perform a particular act, it is our moral duty to perform it.
Conscience | Duty |
Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.
Cooperation | Duty | Evil | Good |
In my humble opinion, non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.
Cooperation | Duty | Evil | Good | Opinion |
Disciplining one’s appetite may be the biggest spiritual challenge many of us will face this side of dying. In a world where the future of the planet depends on how many of us will agree to say not to excessive lifestyles, fasting can teach us that physical satisfaction is not the purpose of life.
Appetite | Challenge | Future | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Teach | Will | World |