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.
The principle that guides me ... is to do the right thing so that my conscience does not blame me.
My place is here. I cannot in conscience abandon my work and my girls.
In Hinduism, conscience, reason, and independent thinking have no scope for development.
Harry Dresden: Sometimes I hate having a conscience, and a stupidly thorough sense of honor.
“I have bowed before kings and invaders alike, yet neither ruled my conscience.”
My manager always says that my strength and weakness is the fact that I have no conscience.
Alas ! alas ! too often conscience sleeps,
When pleasure's syren numbers lull its rest.—
A clean conscience might help you to get into heaven. but it won't help your career.