The knife of conscience twisted, and the serpent of guilt writhed under the knife.
Character Quotes
Anyone else on this page has about a third as many entries as Shakespeare. Next come Pope, Milton, James Russell Lowell and Goethe. The sentence worth reading in context is Emerson’s, from The American Scholar (1837): character is higher than intellect, and a great soul will be strong to live as well as strong to think.
Shaw, in Man and Superman (1903), is here for a remark about marriage and morality, which shows how loosely the page’s topic is applied.
Three entries are flagged. Two sayings credited to the Roman mime-writer Publilius Syrus, one about character deciding every man’s fortune and one about doing nothing at once both hastily and prudently, are disputed. A passage credited to Joseph Addison, about imperfection being what complains of the imperfect, is marked misattributed.
Conscience is the internal perception of the rejection of a particular wish operating within us.
No virtue is equal to the good of others and
no vice greater than hurting others.
That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another's. We see so much only as we possess.
Each must in virtue strive for to excel;
That man lives twice that lives the first life well.
He's the smartest guy in Congress, but he insists on voting his conscience instead of party.
Where the roots of private virtue are diseased, the fruit of public probity cannot but be corrupt.
Does anyone believe that there is an international conscience?
Idleness is the mother of all vices, but also of all virtues.