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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.

Random quote on Character

Most quoted on character:

On this third planet from the sun
among the signs of bestiality
a clear conscience is Number One.

Wisława Szymborska Poems New and Collected (1998)

Fidelity to conscience is inconsistent with retiring modesty. If it be so, let the modesty succumb. It can be only a false modesty which can be thus endangered.

Harriet Martineau

I was very conscience that if you put even your toe on this very sticky piece of paper, then you would be caught on it.

Julia Gillard The Killing Season (2015)

Many love humanity only in order to forget God with a clear conscience.

Nicolás Gómez Dávila Escolios a un Texto Implicito (1977)

I could not deny that my spirit was amorally attracted to this ultimate temptation as my conscience was morally repelled by it.

Norman Spinrad The Void Captain's Tale (1983)

(Mais) la conscience, mon pauvre ami, c’est comme les gants de Suède : ça se porte sale.

François Coppée

In my position I simply can’t afford pangs of conscience. Fortunately, they fade the more power one acquires. It’s an entirely natural process.

Walter Moers The City of Dreaming Books (2004)

Poetry should not merely entertain; it should awaken the conscience of society and provoke reflection on the human condition.

Ebi Yeibo

The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state.

Martin Luther King Jr. Strength to Love (1963)

This crisis is a challenge to our conscience. It puts our committment to a hard test.

Henri of Luxembourg

Forgetfulness, A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscience.

Ambrose Bierce The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.

H. L. Mencken A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

Conscience is better served by a myth.

John Kenneth Galbraith The Age of Uncertainty (1977)

Then there is the man with a conscience, who fights single-handedly against heavy odds in situations that call for a decision.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Letters and Papers from Prison (1967)

I surrendered my moral conscience to the fact that I was a soldier, and therefore a cog in a relatively low position of a great machine.

Otto Ohlendorf

I die for my fatherland. I have a clear conscience. I only did my duty to my country when I tried to oppose the criminal folly of Hitler.

Wilhelm Canaris

“Why the hell are you here?”
“A matter of conscience.”
“Really?” said Locke. “Yours? You keep alluding to its existence. Somehow I’m not convinced.”

Scott Lynch The Republic of Thieves (2013)

In spite of the seeming dangers of our time, we are compelled to speak based on the mandate of our conscience and the disquiet contradictions of our time.

Osita Ogbu

The delight in the herd is more ancient than delight in the I; and as long as the good conscience is identified with the herd, only the bad conscience says: I.

Friedrich Nietzsche

My conscience tells me it is my duty, not merely to proclaim domestic tranquillity but to use every means that I have to insure it.

Gerald Ford Remarks on pardoning Nixon (1974)

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