This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The only way to do good deeds without being motivated by the need for approval from others is to reach the level of considering praise and insults equal." - Alexander Ziskind Maimon
"Better is one hour of repentance and good deeds in this world than a whole life in the World to Come." - Babylonian Talmud
"We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths; in feelings, not in figures on the dial; we should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives who thinks the most, feels the noblest, acts the best." - Kenneth Eldon Bailey
"Bad will be the day for every man when he becomes absolutely contented with the life that he is living, with the thoughts that he is thinking, with the deeds that he is doing, when there is not forever beating at the doors of his soul some great desire to do something larger, which he knows that he was means and made to do because he is still, in spite of it all, the child of God." - Phillips Brooks
"Consequences are unpitying. Our deeds carry their terrible consequences, quiet apart form any fluctuations that went before - consequences that are hardly ever confined to ourselves." - George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
"Our deeds determine us as much as we determine our deeds." - George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
"In the book of nature, where every emotional, mental and spiritual quality of humanity may find its correspondence and illustrations, flowers represent good affections. As the flower precedes the fruit, and gives notice of its coming, so good thoughts, affections and intentions precede and give promise of deeds in love to others." - Homer Everett
"Lofty words cannot construct an alliance or maintain it; only concrete deeds can do that." - John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
"Every good act is charity. Your smiling in your brother's face, is charity; an exhortation of your fellow-man to virtuous deeds, is equal to alms-giving; your putting a wanderer in the right road, is charity; your removing stones, and thorns, and other obstructions from the road, is charity; your giving water to the thirsty, is charity. A man's true wealth hereafter, is the good he does in this world to his fellow-man. When he dies, people will say, "What property has he left behind him?" but the angels will ask, "What good deeds has he sent before him."" -
"Let him speak of his own deeds, and not of those of his forefathers. High birth is mere accident, and not virtue." - Metastasio, aka Pietro Petastasio, pseudonymn for Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi NULL
"Fellowship is heaven, and lack of fellowship is hell fellowship is life, and lack of fellowship is death and the deeds that ye do upon the earth, it is for fellowship's sake that ye do them." - William Morris
"The meaning of life is to be found in our surroundings and in our relationships... Life is meaningful when we respect the best of tradition while still loving innovation... Life is fulfilling when we marry pride with tolerance, when our deeds and our words are nourished by hope and by realism, when the wisdom of the ages catches the passionate eye of youth. Life on this earth in our time is, above all, a parade of interdependent peoples, interdependent ideas, interdependent solutions. We are all artists of the possible - and dreamers of that which is just now beyond our reach, but may not be tomorrow." - Youssou N’Dour
"Labor! all labor is noble and holy! Let thy great deeds by thy prayer to thy God." - Frances S. Osgood
"Judge not of actions by their mere effect; dive to the centre, and the cause detect; great deeds from meanest springs may take their course, and smallest virtues from a mighty source." - Alexander Pope
"War is, after all, the universal perversion. We are all tainted: if we cannot experience our perversion at first hand we spend our time reading war stories, the pornography of war; or seeing war films, the blue films of war; or titillating our senses with the imagination of great deeds, the masturbation of war." -
"High theory and mere mind-stimulation are secondary; living itself - in the real world, among people - is the essence... I hereby promise to attempt to be a mensh, a decent, caring human being. Neutrality, noncommitment, indifference have no place in life. To be fully human, we are committed to being caring, sensitive, aggressively compassionate people. Our lives are defined by how we act. We are alive because we perform just and righteous deeds, deeds of gentle loving kindness." - Danny Siegel
"Conceal your good deeds as you conceal your evil deeds." - Rābiʻa al-ʻAdawiyya al-Qaysiyya, aka Rabi'a of Basra or Basri, Saint Rabia of Basra
"To see altruism itself as the purpose of human life is confuse means and ends. We need to know whether good deeds are essential for life to be meaningful or whether they just comprise one possible road to fulfillment. Helping others cannot be the purpose of life, because helping others is just a means to an end… Altruism is thus not the source of life’s meaning but is something that living a meaningful life requires." - Julian Baggini
"If men but saw the hand of death impending over their heads, even food would give no joy, much less the deeds that are not right." - Bhoja NULL
"Sad is the day for any man when he becomes absolutely satisfied with the life he is living, the thoughts that he is thinking and the deeds that he is doing; when there ceases to be forever something larger which he seeks and knows he was meant and intended to do." - Phillips Brooks
"The pure and impure stand and fall by their own deeds; no one can purify another." - Dhammapada NULL
"In 1881… “The false and repulsive precept that mankind is perpetually called upon to avenge the sins and errors of the forefathers upon the innocent descendents, has ruled the world far too long, and has blotted the countries of Europe with shameful and abominable deeds, from which we turn away in horror.”" - Ignaz von Döllinger, fully Johann Ignaz von Döllinger
"A covenant is a contract. When two people enter into a covenant, it means that one party undertakes to do certain things provided the other party does certain other things. Thus it is a mutual agreement… If you think only kindly, , optimistic, and constructive thoughts, if you will speak only positive and helpful words at all times, if you will do only good and constructive deeds, you will be fulfilling your side of the great covenant – and in no circumstances could God fail to fulfill His." - Emmet Fox
"Character is distilled out of our daily confrontation with temptation, out of our regular response to the call of duty. It is formed as we learn to cherish principles and to submit to self-discipline. Character is the sum total of all the little decisions, the small deeds, the daily reactions to the choices that confront us. Character is not obtained instantly. We have to mold and hammer and forge ourselves into character. It is a distant goal to which there is no shortcut." - Sidney Greenberg
"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." - Sidney Greenberg
"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." - Sidney Greenberg
"Responsibility . . . requires that a person think, speak and act as if personally accountable to all who may be affected by his or her thoughts, words and deeds… Awareness is important… Am I moving in the right direction? Is my sense of responsibility growing, deepening, becoming sharper and more insistent?.. A sense of responsibility is an attitude, a feeling." - Robert K. Greenleaf
"Out of our beliefs are born deeds. Out of our deeds we form habits; out of our habits grow our character; and on our character we build our destination." - Henry Hancock
"A Jew is asked to take a leap of action rather than a leap of thought: to surpass his needs, to do more than he understands in order to understand more than he does… Through the ecstasy of deeds he learns to be certain of the presence of God." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"Prayer in action; it requires complete mobilization of heart, mind, and soul… For the soul, home is where the prayer is... Prayer calls for self-reflection, for contrition and repentance, examining and readjusting deeds and motivations, for recanting the ugly compulsions we follow, the tyranny of acquisitiveness, hatred, envy, resentment." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"We do not have faith in deeds; we attain faith through deeds." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"Wisdom is not on par with good deeds." - Hillel NULL
"It is only our deeds that reveal who we are." - Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
"I believe in immortality of the soul because I have within me immortal longings. I believe that the state we enter after death is wrought of our own motives, thoughts, and deeds... I carry a magic light in my heart. Faith, the spiritual strong searchlight, illumines the way, and although sinister doubts lurk in the shadow, I walk unafraid towards the Enchanted Wood where the foliage is always green, where joy abides, where nightingales nest and sing, and where life and death are one in the Presence of the Lord." - Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
"Sick or well, blind or seeing, bond or free, we are here for a purpose and however we are situated, we please God better with useful deeds than with many prayers or pious resignation. The temple or church is empty unless the good life fill it. The altar is holy if only it represents the altar of our heart upon which we offer the only sacrifices ever commanded – the love that is stronger than hate and the faith that overcometh doubt." - Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
"A hero… is not a hero until he is recognized as one. This means that the actualization of the hero is a two-way projection. First the hero must project by way of his deeds, his style, his character. When the projection registers, an imaginative process begins to remake the hero to fit as fully as possible the symbolic weight of his image. Legend and myth take over the historical personage, and through either an oral or a written tradition he is reborn in his heroic apotheosis." - Harold Lubin
"Built me a son, O Lord, who will be strong enough to know when he is weak and when he is afraid... whose wishes will not take the place of deeds; a son who will know Thee... whose heart will be clear, whose goal will be high, a son who will master himself before he seeks to master other men." - Douglas MacArthur
"Beautiful ideals, which are creeds, not deeds, are religious window dressing and are meaningless. The test of faith is life." - George Marshall, fully George Catlett Marshall, Jr.
"God does not look at your ledger figures or your wealth; he looks at your deeds." - Muhammad, also spelled Mohammad, Mohammed or Mahomet, full name Muhammad Ibn `Abd Allāh Ibn `Abd al-Muttalib NULL
"According to the Buddha the will is free, effort is worth while, man makes his own fate, deeds have consequences, knowledge is possible, the body is not the real self, and death is not its end." - James Bisset Pratt
"Good deeds are the best prayer." - Serbian Proverbs