This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Though religion... always envelops conduct, the sentiment of religion and the sense of moral value are distinct." - Samuel Alexander
"Law is the embodiment of the moral sentiment of the people." - William Blackstone, fully Sir William Blackstone
"Sentiment and principle are often mistaken for each other, though, in fact, they widely differ. Sentiment is the virtue of ideas; principle the virtue of action. Sentiment has its seat in the had; principle, in the heart. Sentiment suggest fine harangues and subtle distinctions; principle conceives just notions, and performs good actions in consequence of them. Sentiment refines away the simplicity of truth, and the plainness of piety; and "gives us virtue in words, and vice in deeds."" - Hugh Blair
"It is better to inspire the heart with a noble sentiment than to teach the mind a truth of science." - Phillips Brooks
"The ultimate foundation of a free society is the binding tie of cohesive sentiment." - Felix Frankfurter
"Show me the business man or institution not guided by the sentiment and service; by the idea that "he profits most who serves best" and I will show you a man or an outfit that is dead and dying." - B. F. Harris
"Morality is determined by sentiment. It defines virtue to be whatever mental action or quality gives to a spectator the pleasing sentiment of approbation; and vice the contrary." - David Hume
"The People have the right to the Truth as they have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is not right that they be exploited and deceived with false views of life, false characters, false sentiment, false morality, false history, false philosophy, false emotions, false heroism, false notions of self-sacrifice, false views of religion , of duty, of conduct and manners." - Benjamin Franklin "Frank" Norris
"Want of love is a degree of callousness; for love is the perfection of consciousness. We do not love because we do not comprehend, or rather we do not comprehend because we do not love. For love is the ultimate meaning of everything around us. It is not a mere sentiment; it is truth; it is the joy that is at the root of all creation." -
"Reverence is an ennobling sentiment; it is felt to be degrading only by the vulgar mind, which would escape the sense of its own littleness by elevating itself into an antagonist of what is above it. He that has no pleasure in looking up is not fit so much as to look down." - Washington Allston
"In the life of a nation ideas are not the only things of value. Sentiment also is of great value; and the way to foster sentiment in a people, and to develop it in the young, is to have a well-recorded past, and to be familiar with it." - Joseph Anderson, fully Joseph Inslee Anderson
"The hardest sentiment to tolerate is pity, especially when it's deserved. Hatred is a tonic, it vitalizes us, it inspires vengeance, but pity deadens, it makes our weakness weaker." - Honoré de Balzac
"Art itself is essentially ethical; because every true work of art must have a beauty and grandeur cannot be comprehended by the beholder except through the moral sentiment. The eye is only a witness; it is not a judge. The mind judges what the eye reports to it; therefore, whatever elevates the moral sentiment to the contemplation of beauty and grandeur is in itself ethical." - Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
"Public sentiment will come to be, that the man who dies rich dies disgraced." - Andrew Carnegie
"Art neither belongs to religion, nor to ethics; but, like these, it brings us nearer to the Infinite, on of the forms of which it manifests to us. God is the source of all beauty, as of all truth of all religion, of all morality. The most exalted object, therefore, of art is to reveal in its own manner the sentiment of the Infinite." - Victor Cousin
"The bare, uncompromising face of the land is too much for us to behold, and so we clothe it in myth, sentiment, and imposed expectations." - Robert Finch
"Love with men is not a sentiment, but an idea." - Madame Émile de Girardin, Delphine de Girardin, née Gay
"Reason may be the lever, but sentiment gives you the fulcrum and the place to stand on if you want to move the world." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
"So that, upon the whole, there appears not, throughout all nature, any one instance of connexion which is conceivable by us. All events seem entirely loose and separate. One event follows another; but we never can observe any ties between them. They seem conjoined, but never connected. And as we have no idea of any thing which never appeared to our outward sense or inward sentiment, the necessary conclusion seems to be that we have no idea of connexion or power at all, and that these words are absolutely without meaning, when employed either in philosophical reasonings or common life. But there still remains one method of avoiding this conclusion, and one source which we have not yet examined." - David Hume
"Sentiment is the poetry of the imagination." - Alphonse de Lamartine, fully Alphonse Marie Louis de Lamartine
"It is clear that property in itself owes allegiance to no particular form of government, and is bound by no dynastic or legal ties. Its politics may be summed up in a single word: exploitation, or even anarchy. It is the most formidable enemy and most treacherous ally of any form of power. In short, in its relation to the State it is governed by only one principle, one sentiment, one concern: self-interest, or egoism... That is why all governments, all utopias, and all Churches distrust property... We can conclude that property is the greatest existing revolutionary force, with an unequaled capacity for setting itself against authority." - Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
"The opportunity of making happy is more scarce than we imagine; the punishment of missing it is, never to meet with it again; and the use owe make of it leaves us an eternal sentiment of satisfaction or repentance." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
"To feel oppressed by obligation is only to prove that we are incapable of a proper sentiment of gratitude. To receive favors from the unworthy is to admit that our selfishness is superior to our pride." - William Gilmore Simms
"Let us recognize the beauty and power of true enthusiasm; and whatever we may do to enlighten ourselves and others, guard against checking or chilling a single earnest sentiment." - Henry Theodore Tuckerman
"It is that faculty by which we discover and enjoy the beautiful, the picturesque, and the sublime in literature, art, and nature; which recognizes a noble thought, as a virtuous mind welcome a pure sentiment by an involuntary glow of satisfaction. While the principle of perception is inherent in the soul, it requires a certain amount of knowledge to draw out and direct it." - Robert Aris Willmott
"There is poetry and there is beauty in real sympathy; but there is more - there is action. The noblest and most powerful form of sympathy is not merely the responsive tear, the echoed sigh, the answering look; it is the embodiment of the sentiment of actual help." - Octavius Winslow
"We shall not overcome our opponents with reason, but with sentiment." - Eliezer Ben‑Yehuda, born Eliezer Yitzhak Perlman
"Parenting: Affection without sentiment, authority without cruelty, discipline without aggression, humor without ridicule, sacrifice without obligation, companionship without possessiveness." - William E. Blatz, fully William Emet Blatz
"Ultimately our moral sense or conscience becomes a highly complex sentiment – originating in the social instinct, largely guided by the approbation of our fellow men, ruled by reason, self-interest, and in alter times by deep religious feelings, and confirmed by instruction and habit." - Charles Darwin, fully Charles Robert Darwin
"Prayer is religion in act; that is, prayer is real religion. It is prayer that distinguishes the religious phenomenon from such similar or neighboring phenomena as purely moral or aesthetic sentiment." - Louis Auguste Sabatier
"Persecution of a dissenter is always popular I the group which he has abandoned. Toleration of dissent is no sentiment of the masses." - William Graham Sumner
"The exploitation of the weak by the powerful, organized for the purposes of economic gain, buttressed by imposing systems of law, and screened by decorous draperies of virtuous sentiment and resounding rhetoric, has been a permanent feature in the life of most communities that the world has yet seen." -
"I felt the sentiment of Being spread o’er all that moves and all that seemeth still; o’er that, lost beyond the reach of thought and human knowledge, to the human eye invisible, yet liveth to the heart." - William Wordsworth
"Enthusiasm imparts itself magnetically and fuses all into one happy and harmonious unity of feeling and sentiment." - Amos Bronson Alcott
"Nor do we accept as genuine the person not characterized by this blushing bashfulness, this youthfulness of heart, this sensibility to the sentiment of suavity, and self-respect. Modesty is bred of self-reverence. Fine manners are the mantle of fair minds. None are truly great without his ornament." - Amos Bronson Alcott
"Social cohesion demands a creed, or a code of behavior, or a prevailing sentiment, or best, some combination of all three; without something of the kind, a community disintegrates, and becomes subject to a tyrant or a foreign conqueror." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"Patriotism is often understood to mean only a readiness for exceptional sacrifices and actions. Essentially, however, it is the sentiment which, in the relationships of our daily life and under ordinary conditions, habitually recognizes that the community is one’s substantive groundwork and end. It is out of this consciousness, which during life’s daily round stands the test in all circumstances, that there subsequently also arises the readiness for extraordinary exertions. But since men would often rather be magnanimous than law-abiding, they readily persuade themselves that they possess this exceptional patriotism in order to be sparing in the expression of a genuine patriotic sentiment or to excuse their lack of it. If again this genuine patriotism is looked upon as that which may begin of itself and arise from subjective ideas and thoughts, it is being confused with opinion, because so regarded patriotism is deprived of its true ground, objective reality." - Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
"No apparatus of senators, judges, and police can compensate for the want of an internal governing sentiment… No administrative sleight of hand can save us from ourselves." - Herbert Spencer
"No one, it is true, will be able to boast that he knows that he knows there is a God and a future life; for, it he knows this, he is just the man whom I have long wished to find... My conviction is not logical, but moral certainty; and since it rests on subjective grounds (of the moral sentiment), I must not even say: It is morally certain that there is a God, etc., but: I am morally certain, that is, my belief in God and in another world is so interwoven with my moral nature that I am under as little apprehension of having the former torn from me as of losing the latter." - Immanuel Kant
"Law will never be strong or respected unless it has the sentiment of the people behind it." - James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce
"Dogma has been the fundamental principle of my religion... Religion, as mere sentiment, is to me a mockery." - John Henry Newman
"The enormous influence of novelty - the way in which it quickens observation, sharpens sensation, and exalts sentiment - is not half enough taken note of by us, and is to me a very sorrowful matter. And yet, if we try to obtain perpetual change, change itself will become monotonous." - John Ruskin
"Sentiment and nobility and love are immortal... Tenderness and loyalty, and patience, and self-sacrifice, and devotion to duty - these are life’s natural aspirations." - Norman Vincent Peale
"No society can be upheld in happiness and honor without the sentiment of religion." - Pierre-Simon Laplace, Compte de Laplace, Marquis de Laplace
"The Americans have no faith, they rely on the power of a dollar; they are deaf to sentiment." - Ralph Waldo Emerson