"Conscience" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the common cases of misguided conscience; but a compass may be out of order as well as a conscience, and the needle may point due south if you hold a powerful magnet in that direction. Still the compass, generally speaking, is a true and sure guide, and so is the conscience; and you {509} can trace the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 186, May 21, 1853 • Various
... dollars and a weekly dinner, are quite pork enough for a shilling. No man goeth a warfare on his own charges, and the labourer is worthy of his hire. I do not see how he can justify such wear and tear of his pulmonary leather, for so small a sum, to his conscience. What is a sixpenny razor or a nine-shilling sermon? Neither can be expected to cut—not but his sermons would be very good for the use of glorified saints—but, alas! there are none such in the House of Correction. What is the inspiration of a penny-a-liner? I will ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... and was justified ten minutes later, when Herbert's conscience, troubled and apologetic, reminded him about ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various
... and contradicted each other. Unless, therefore, I am convinced by the testimony of Scripture or by the clearest reasoning, unless I am persuaded by means of the passages I have quoted, and unless they thus render my conscience bound by the Word of God, I cannot and will not retract, for it is unsafe for a Christian to speak against his conscience." And then, looking round on that assembly before which he stood, and which held his life ...
— Count Ulrich of Lindburg - A Tale of the Reformation in Germany • W.H.G. Kingston
... how he tolerated freedom of speech in those who opposed his opinions; and the pleasure that he had when any man showed him anything better; and how religious he was without superstition. Imitate all this, that thou mayest have as good a conscience, when thy last hour comes, as he ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... (Kidd, Savage Childhood, p. 74.) An elaborate and stern social morality, then, long preceded verbally formulated laws; it was a matter of instinct and emotion long before it was a matter of calculation or conscience. The most primitive men acknowledge a duty to their neighbors; and the subsequent advance of social morality has consisted simply in more and more comprehensive answers to the questions, What is my duty? and Who is my neighbor? At first, the neighbor was the fellow tribesman ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... all tonics is physical, out-door labor, particularly in the forest, and it is as well for mind as body. It eliminates what may be morbid, and is healthful for a conscience. Why it is that, under most natural conditions which may exist, the conscience is not so nervously acute, is something for the theologians to decide,—they will decide anything,—but the fact remains. The out-door conscience is strong, but ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... we hoodwink you, you, one of the shining lights of the law?" said she. "For that sum we have secured a maid's conscience and a picture by ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... Mahomet, or Hassan, &c., while in a Christian community he would pass as Michael or Georgy, or by other Greek appellations. The name "linen and cotton" applied to them is expressive of their lukewarmness and time-serving, their religious professions fluctuating according to the dictates not of conscience, but personal interest. It is supposed that about 1500 of these people exist in various parts of Cyprus; they are baptised in the Greek Church, and can thus escape conscription for military service according to Turkish law. The goatherd upon our mountain had been a Turkish servant ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... ye remember well, Are thridding a sequestered lane; And Peter many tricks is trying, And many anodynes applying, To ease his conscience of its ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... commenced the BLACK VOMIT set in. This is generally regarded as a fatal symptom, being almost always the precursor of death. But the fortitude of the captain never for a moment forsook him. He was sustained in that dread hour by a guiltless conscience and a steadfast, deep-rooted, ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... mistake me, my dear madam," said I; "I am quite conscious of my own immunities as a tale teller. But even the mendacious Mr. Fag, in Sheridan's Rivals, assures us that, though he never scruples to tell a lie at his master's command, yet it hurts his conscience to be found out. Now, this is the reason why I avoid in prudence all well known paths of history, where every one can read the finger posts carefully set up to advise them of the right turning; and the very boys and girls, who learn the history of Britain ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... let us pause; Our conscience first shall parley with our laws.— My Lord of Rochester, view you ...
— Sir Thomas More • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... his helpmeet, can do but little here. His faculties are absorbed by other tasks, not more important, but more engrossing and essentially different. The finer tact, the more graceful manner, the quicker wit, the more tender conscience, are all needed here. Every woman in the country has her own share of this work to do. Each individual woman is responsible for the right use of all her own social influences, whether for good or ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... I dare say," said I; "the greatest monster that ever existed, though the worthiest head which the popish system ever had—so his conscience was not always still. I thought it had been seared with a brand ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... stoning the chipmunk, which rather likes the sport, and in watching the bird, to find where its nest is; and he convinces himself that he ought to watch the hawk, lest it pounce upon the chickens, and therefore, with an easy conscience, he spends fifteen minutes in hallooing to that distant bird, and follows it away out of sight over the woods, and then wishes it would come back again. And then a carriage with two horses, and a trunk on behind, goes along the road; and there is a girl in the carriage who looks out at John, who ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and in the liberality of sentiments in those momentous points, the freedom of enquiry, the right of private judgment and the liberty of conscience, of so much importance to be supported in the world, and imparted to all mankind, and which at this hour are in more danger from Great Britain and that intolerant spirit which is secretly fomenting there, than from any other quarter, the ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... know whether it was the reaction from the punch he had drunk, or the sudden shock of Vail's death, or the troubled conscience, or from all three, but when he got into bed he found himself shaking ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... was wakeful. He was estranged from his body. He was distressed by a sense of detachment from the things about him, by a curious intimation of unreality in everything he experienced. And with that went this levity of conscience, a heaviness of soul and a levity of conscience, that could make him talk as though the Creeds did not matter—as ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... doorway of the bank building and listening to the tirade of abuse which he, Roy, hurled at him. "If you want to think I'm a liar you can think so. You can tell them that if you want to. I don't care what you tell them." These words, too, rang in Roy's ears, and burned into his heart and conscience, and he knew that Tom Slade had not deigned to answer these charges and recriminations; would not answer them, any more than the rock of Gibraltar would deign to answer the petulant threats and menaces ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... built upon subterfuges and likely to crumble at the slightest touch. She had maintained it very creditably up to the Christmas vacation, and had argued upon the ultimate ground of moral obligation and the origin of conscience quite as intelligently as though she had previously read what the text-book had to say on the subject. But when they had commenced the study of specific theologies, based upon definite historical facts, ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... a sudden. "Everything is stale for a stale soul. Does he count on that? Senor, you speak well; you have made me a picture of him. He has heard that I have made religion the pillow of my conscience, eh? He folds his hands, eh?—thin, waxen hands, clasping in piety upon his counterpane, eh? He will wear the air of a thin saint and bless me in a beautiful voice? Am I right? ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... a poor, foolish creature, in misery and shame, with guilty conscience and sad heart, tries to forget his sin, to forget his sorrow; but he cannot. He is sick and tired of sin. He is miserable, and he hardly knows why. There is a longing, and craving, and hunger at his heart after something ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... of course. Who was with her? A gentleman, bending low to catch her words, holding her hand in an irresistible pressure. Not Rose, for he was flitting in beyond. Mr. Dudley. And I saw then that Lu's kindness was too great to allow her to repel him angrily; her gentle conscience let her wound no one. Had Rose seen the pantomime? Without doubt. He had been seeking her, and he found her, he thought, in Mr. Dudley's arms. After a while we went in, and, finding all smooth enough, I slipped through ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... such a lady could I weep these tears If this were true? A great queen such as I Having sinn'd this way, straight her conscience sears; ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... replied that somewhat uncertain lady demurely. "Early hours and a good conscience are ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... and mounted behind one of the attendants. He had made up his mind, however, not to accompany the curate of Caracuaro further than the hacienda of San Diego, and to make as short a stay as possible in such suspicious company. But he had scarcely completed this satisfactory arrangement with his conscience, when the burning rays of the sun shining down upon his head, caused a ferment in his brain of so strange a character—that not only did the idea of this insurrection, excited by priests, appear right and natural, but he commenced chanting at the top of his voice a sort of improvised war song, in ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... it to the waves, which are every moment engulfing the human wrecks with which our shores are lined. When the tempest has ceased to rage, and when the last dripping mariner has been safely landed we can, if we wish, with a peaceful conscience dissolve our partnership and renew the discussion of the minor differences, which divide, distract and weaken the human race, ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... what company he kept in the country he left that shaped his hopes and ambitions,—might it not, if the answer were right, be a help to a better mutual understanding between host and guest? For the Mayflower did not hold all who in this world have battled for freedom of home, of hope, and of conscience. The struggle is bigger than that. Every land has its George Washington, its Kosciusko, its William Tell, its Garibaldi, its Kossuth, if there is but one that has a Joan d'Arc. What we want to know of the man ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... Protestants, are the essential characteristics of Papistical communities—that it was not till the hymeneal torch, which brings all faults to light, was fairly illumined for the altar, that the remembrance of a faith so cast into the shade burst upon the conscience of the Parson. The first idea that then occurred to him was the proper and professional one—viz., the conversion of Dr. Riccabocca. He hastened to his study, took down from his shelves long neglected volumes of controversial divinity, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... to bind this kingdom are unconstitutional, illegal, and a grievance;" which resolution was agreed to by the Dungannon volunteers in 1782. At the bottom of the card was an extract from a speech of Mr. Saurin, declaring the union not to be binding on conscience. In addition to the several kinds of members, the Repeal Association comprised officer's, consisting of general inspectors, repeal-wardens, and collectors. Repeal-wardens were appointed by the association on the recommendation of the clergymen of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... therefore, be under any doubt as to his intentions; that, if they had voluntarily deceived themselves, or exposed the lady in situations from which the world was led to make false conclusions, he was not answerable: he felt his conscience at ease—entirely so, as he was convinced that the young lady herself, for whose merit, talents, independence, and generosity of character he professed high respect, esteem, and admiration, had no doubts either of the extent or the nature ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... Fenitchka's conscience scarcely reproached her; but she was tormented at times by the thought of the real cause of the quarrel; and Pavel Petrovitch too looked at her so strangely ... that even when her back was turned, ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... slatterns. Nash turned Aristophanes, and depicted on a little stage a play in which Mr. Punch, tinder very disgraceful circumstances, excused himself for wearing boots by quoting the practice of the pump-room beaux. This seems to have gone to the conscience of Hogs-Norton at last; but what really gave the death-blow to top-boots, as a part of evening dress, was the incident of Nash's going up to a gentleman, who had made his appearance in the ball-room in this unpardonable costume, and remarking, "bowing in an arch manner," that he appeared ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... only by Scotland, the land of his ancestors, not only by Ireland for whom he did so much, and attempted so much more; but also by the people of the two Sicilies, for whose outraged rights he once aroused the conscience of Europe, by the people of the Ionian Islands, whose independence he secured, and by the people of Bulgaria and the Danubian Provinces, in whose cause he enlisted the sympathy of his own native country. Indeed, since the days of Napoleon, no man has lived whose name has travelled so far and so ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... changed. I have tried to be as steady as when mother was here, but I cannot; I whirl with a vague idea of liberty. Did she keep the family conscience? Now that she has gone I ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... & rights; and aboue all things, Gods word, & the Preachers thereof, so much as he is able, practising prayers, comfortable conference, mutuall instruction to edifie, almes, and other works of Charity, and all out of a good conscience. ...
— A New Orchard And Garden • William Lawson
... full of mottoes, of which I shall give a few instances. Of Frederick Barbarosa "his saying was, Qui nescit dissimulare, nescit imperare:" of Justinian "His word was, Summum jus, summa injuria—The rigour of the law may prove injurious to conscience:" of Theodosius II. "His motto was, Tempori parendum—We must fit us (as far as it may be done with a good conscience) to the time wherein we live, with Christian prudence:" of Nerva "His motto sums {622} up his excellencies, Mens bona regnum possidet—My ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... not, mocke not; the body of your discourse is sometime guarded with fragments, and the guardes are but slightly basted on neither, ere you flout old ends any further, examine your conscience, and so I ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... and presenting his kneeling image constantly before the public eye on bags and needle-books, card-racks, pen-wipers, pin-cushions, &c. Even the children of the north are inscribing on their handy work, "May the points of our needles prick the slaveholder's conscience." Some of the reports of these Societies exhibit not only considerable talent, but a deep sense of religious duty, and a determination to persevere through evil as well as good report, until every ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... rare in our day, when the power of public opinion is tyrannical; and it is rarest of all in France, where artists are perhaps more sociable than in other countries. Of all qualities in an artist it is the most precious; for it forms the foundation of his character, and is the guarantee of his conscience and innate strength. So we must not hide it ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... pedler, lecturer on Mesmerism, and daguerreotypist, but "amid all these personal vicissitudes," says Hawthorne, "he had never lost his identity.... He had never violated the innermost man, but had carried his conscience along with him." There speaks the local accent of Puritanism, but the voice insisting upon the moral integrity of the individual is the ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... reputed base, yet you have a better sprinkling; you are sprinkled in the Spirit, that you may be pure from within. The Jews were sprinkled outwardly with the blood of bullocks, but we are sprinkled inwardly in the conscience, so that the heart ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... from the parapet, chin cupped in both palms, bright hair blowing, one shoulder almost hidden under the drooping scarlet nasturtiums pendant from the carved stone urn above; a fair, sweet, youthful creature, young as her guiltless heart, sweet as her conscience, fair as the current ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... other for one embarrassed moment. The day for separation was at hand: Tess would face the lean winter, Teola the burden of a conscience in torment. ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... solemn aspect of this sacred shore Wakes for the misspent past my bitter sighs; 'Pause, wretched man! and turn,' as conscience cries, Pointing the heavenward way where I should soar. But soon another thought gets mastery o'er The first, that so to palter were unwise; E'en now the time, if memory err not, flies, When we should wait our lady-love before. I, for his aim then well I apprehend, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... double answer: in the first place the uttermost caution must be enjoined in using such material; not only in separating fact from baseless tradition of a much later period, but in making large allowance for the heavy strain which a strong feeling of local patriotism, or civism, puts upon the conscience of the author. In the second place it must be remembered that most of such histories, or at least of the monkish or other records from which they derive their source and most of their material, were written to the glory or under the auspices of some dominant noble family or ecclesiastical ...
— The Communes Of Lombardy From The VI. To The X. Century • William Klapp Williams
... nor Mr. Ellsworth's stinging words out of his memory. So he stumbled along through the dark grove, thinking what he should say to the boys and how he should talk to Margaret Ellison so as not to let her suspect his troubled conscience and general feeling of—not exactly ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... and their masters. In the second place, Mr. Durkee would have known that any man connected with the city police—save its honorable mayor, to whose character we would pay all deference—would not for conscience' sake scruple to hang a man for five dollars. We make no exception for color or crime. A qualification might be called for, more adapted to our knowledge of it as it has existed for the last four or five years; but we are informed by those whose lives and fortunes have been spent for the moral ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... crowd, when it is only one I wish to please—one who could be all the world to me. Argue not with me, I am bound by human ties; but did my spirit ever promise to love, or could I consider when forced to bind myself—to take a vow, that at the awful day of judgment I must give an account of. My conscience does not smite me, and that Being who is greater than the internal monitor, may approve of what the world condemns; sensible that in Him I live, could I brave His presence, or hope in solitude to find peace, if I acted ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... man," said Ashmead, drawing a long breath; "didn't I tell you you are a lucky fellow? You have got twenty pounds a week, and that blest boon, 'a conscience void of offense.' You are a happy man. Here's a strong cup of tea for you: just you drink it, and then get up and take the train to the little village. There kindred spirits and fresh delights await you. You are not to adorn Barfordshire any ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... was healing. The illusion would last for days together; then something unexpected would occur, and the love of her heart would reveal itself in bitter out-cry against its wrong. If she could only see Clancy in some light which her veritable God-bestowed conscience could condemn, she believed that her struggle would be much easier; but he always confronted her with his earnest, steady eyes, which said, "I have as true a right to think as I do, as you have to think differently. ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... sanctified in Christ Jesus, do often sin, but it is not proper to call them sinners: But here the Publican calls himself a sinner; and therefore in effect, calls himself an evil tree, one that hath neither good nature, nor that beareth good fruit: one whose body and soul is polluted, whose mind and conscience is defiled: one who hath "walked according to the course of this world, and after the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience." They having their minds at enmity with or against God, and are taken ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... "Your conscience proved rather an expensive luxury that time, didn't it, Mr. Opp?" asked Hinton, who had heard as many versions of the affair as there were citizens in ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... Leibnitz, which, with our present ideas of truth, we cannot regard as unreasonable. But this right of human reason to examine and discuss differs widely from its self-constitution as supreme judge on religious matters, and from the wish to submit God and conscience to its own tribunal, which it declares to be infallible. This, however, has been the case in modern times when Philosophy has openly avowed itself the enemy of Christianity, and when those who were terrified by its rash demands have sought to confound them by the devices of Rationalism—thus ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... was given me one morning of settling this fact beyond all doubt, I own that my main feeling was one of dread. I feared to see this article in my creed destroyed, lest I should lose confidence in the whole. Yet conscience bade me face the matter boldly, for had I not boasted to myself that my one ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... human form, that bears a heart, A wretch, a villain, lost to love and truth, That can, with studied, sly, ensnaring art, Betray sweet Jenny's unsuspecting youth? Curse on his perjured arts! dissembling smooth! Are honor, virtue, conscience, all exiled? Is there no pity, no relenting ruth, Points to the parents fondling o'er their child? Then paints the ruined maid, ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... him, now by his side, now before him, never behind him, looking as eagerly and as anxiously as himself for the lost diamonds. He inwardly cursed his own cowardice, for he thought this apparition was born from his guilty conscience, and he determined to pay ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... he had seen and heard at the islet. Erica saw this, and sternly repeated, "Go and bring back Rolf from the deeps; and then I will cease to hate you. Ah! I see the despair in your face. Such despair never came from any woman's words where there was not a bad conscience to back them." ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... the same province refused to absolve Auditor Don Diego de Viga, unless he would first express I know not what protestations and detestations. The auditor replied that, for what concerned the banishment of the archbishop, his conscience had not given him any uneasiness, because he had understood that he acted in regard to it in accordance with the laws and decrees of our king a sovereign so Catholic as is that of Espana; and that in affairs in which he had felt scruples, and had proceeded according to human judgment, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... excessive attentions towards his wife, which came so late; by that excessive and noisy grief, and by those calculated bursts of sorrow, which are such as Nature does not exhibit. The criminal, whom the public conscience had fixed upon; the man whose frightful combinations have been laid bare, and whose falsehoods, step by step, have been exposed, during the proceedings previous to the trial; the murderer, at whose hands a heart-stricken family, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a truth of life, which, whatever our creed may be, must stare us in the face—the fact that he is a being knowing good but choosing evil, capable of an ideal but habitually falling below it, no mere automaton, but possessed of a spiritual will and an accusing conscience—I ask how else can he be educated, in the true sense of the word, and raised from death unto life except by being made to educe his own results and work out his evil premiss to the bitter end, till he is forced ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... respect,—honour and repute for valour, to be traitor and dastard,—thou couldst love me no more; and marvel you if, when man woos woman to forfeit all that her sex holds highest,—to be in woman what dastard and traitor is in man,—she hears her conscience and her God speak in a louder voice than can come from a human lip? The goods and pomps of the world we are free to sacrifice, and true love heeds and counts them not; but true love cannot sacrifice that which makes up love,—it cannot sacrifice the right to be loved below; ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of party; and it is still more absurd to suppose, that I could have foreseen that you, who then thought as I did concerning the essential objections to the constitution of Pennsylvania, should refuse the appointment of Chief Justice, because you could not, in conscience, take the oath of office; that Mr. Wharton (the first President,) should die; and yet that you should afterwards accept the chair of government. It is, however, incontestibly proved, that the conversation alluded ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... the bars and locks in answer to his conscience, gave his attention to the breakfast. On lifting the covers he found fish, eggs, ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... or sleep is not admitted as a plea. But in the Great Day, wherein the secrets of all hearts shall be laid open, it may be reasonable to think, no one shall be made to answer for what he knows nothing of; but shall receive his doom, his conscience accusing or excusing him. ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... this love is an illusion, if you will. Wise men have protested that vehemently enough in all conscience. But there are two ends to every stickler for his opinion here. Whether you see, in this fleet hour's abandonment to love, the man's spark of divinity flaring in momentary splendor,—a tragic candle, with divinity guttering and half-choked among the drossier particles, and with momentary ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... own honour and conscience sake, take some course to give me satisfaction, to tye my tongue from crying to God and the world for vengeance, for the unwilling dealing I have received, and think not to send me again to my Mother's, where I have stayed this quarter of a year, hoping (for that Mother said you promised) ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... repeated the fellow, slowly, as though considering of the matter; "you don't know how it vould hinjure my conscience to sell the secrets ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... rumsellers down on their knees, one on one side of me, and the other on the other side, and I prayed God to save their souls and smite their business. One of them had a Christian mother, and he seemed to have some conscience left. After I ...
— Men of the Bible • Dwight Moody
... peculiarity—undoubtedly remarkable in one of her sex which is said, and with truth—to possess great approbativeness. She does not apparently desire fame, she does not enjoy being talked about, even in praise. The approval of her own conscience, the consciousness of performing an unique and useful work, seems quite to suffice her. Few women are so self-reliant, self-sustained, self-centered. And in saying this we but echo the sentiments, if not the words, of an eminent divine who, like herself, was during the whole war ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... at a draught, and declared that on his conscience it was the best tap he ever knew in his life, the young man felt his appetite renewed; and it is impossible to say how many different dishes he called for. Only enchantment, he was afterwards heard to declare (though none of his friends ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... be at peace with your conscience? Let your Guardian Angel find you at each moment of the day doing one of these four things which once formed the rule of a saintly life: (1.) praying; (2.) laboring; (3.) striving after holiness; (4.) ...
— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.
... as if God enacted laws for particular circumstances, as men do; especially when the first subsists in such force, that we may assert it to have been at all times and in all countries the rule of conscience for every man of sense ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... reviewed the short hours of intercourse that had passed between us—Eugenie Besancon and myself. I communed with my conscience, asking myself the question, Was I innocent? Had I done aught, either by word, or look, or gesture, to occasion this love?—to produce the first delicate impression, that upon a heart susceptible as hers soon becomes a fixed and vivid picture? Upon ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... which they could pull the nails from my fingers for anything which the ingenuity of orthodoxy can invent. When I saw that report—although I do not know that I ought to tell it—I felt bad. I knew that man's conscience must be rankling like a snake in his bosom, that he had contributed a dollar to the support of a man as bad as I. I wrote him a letter, in which I said: "The Rev. Samuel Robinson, My Dear Sir. In order to relieve your conscience of the stigma of having contributed to the support of an unbeliever ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... punished Pickle at the time for her disrespect, the kind-hearted girl—for she was kind-hearted in spite of her love of mischief—was much more severely punished by her own conscience when, a few days later, she learned why Herr Mueller allowed his curly locks to grow down ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... summon a host of delights to gild the existence of thy votaries; thou cans't buy roses to strew life's rugged pathway—but thou cans't not, O great deity at whose shrine all men kneel, thou cans't not cleanse the polluted soul, still the troubled conscience, or dim the pure surface of unsullied honor. Nor cans't thou purchase me, thou sordid dross. Guns and grappling-irons!" abruptly added the Corporal, abandoning his philosophical strain, and getting into a towering passion,—"would ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... dawn upon Pao-yue that the sash had originally been the property of Hsi Jen, and that he should by rights not have parted with it; but however much he felt his conscience smitten by remorse, he failed to see how he could very well disclose the truth to her. He could therefore only put on a smiling expression and add, "I'll ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... "God loves you," said my friend; "yes, and I love you too. I know how you feel. You want just to be loved. Come, my poor boy, let me love you." And at that appeal this youth, with triple murder on his conscience, melted, and flung his arms round the neck of his visitor, and sobbed out all the story of his sin and shame. O exquisite moment when the heart melts at the touch of love—could all the heaped-up gains of a life of pleasure or ambition yield such felicity as this? For this man's face, rough ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... twenty-four hours." Mrs. Bunker flushed and paled at the thought. She could see him! The letter would be sufficient excuse, the distrust suggested by her husband would give color to her delivering it in person. There was perhaps a brief twinge of conscience in taking this advantage of Zephas' kindness, but the next moment, with that peculiar logic known only to the sex, she made the unfortunate man's suggestion a condonation of her deceit. SHE hadn't asked to go; HE had offered to take her. He had only ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... "My conscience," exclaimed Glenarvan, "I must say I am surprised at such a declaration from the Secretary of a ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... out of ten engaged in his business he was dissatisfied, and like the same nine out of ten, he longed for the chance to take up some other calling which would bring him bread and butter and no accusing pangs of conscience. ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... said, with great emphasis: 'Upon my oath, that is the woman.... I am positive in my conscience, and I am sure that it was no other woman; this is the woman I saw at that blessed time.' Moreover, she gave him her name as the name on the clog of the lost pony. The affair of the pony was just what would impress a man like Pratt, and, on the gipsies' own version, they ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... bitter wind comes which goeth through the souls with ire There is both thirst and hunger fiends with hooks putteth their flesh asunder They fight and curse and each on other wonder with the fight of the devils dreadable There is shame and confusion Rumour of conscience for evil living They curse themself with great crying In smoak and stink they be evermore lying with other ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... done, and how justly I was overtaken by the judgment of Heaven for my wicked leaving my father's house, and abandoning my duty. All the good counsels of my parents, my father's tears and my mother's entreaties, came now fresh into my mind; and my conscience, which was not yet come to the pitch of hardness to which it has since, reproached me with the contempt of advice, and the breach of my duty to ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... is totally corrupted. It is my duty, however, to exhort you to this repentance, though I too well know all exhortations will be vain and fruitless. But liberavi animam meam. I can accuse my own conscience of no neglect; though it is at the same time with the utmost concern I see you travelling on to certain misery in this world, and to as certain damnation ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... published "Life and Letters of Charles Darwin," in which, speaking of his childhood, Mr. Darwin says: "One little event has fixed itself very firmly in my mind, and I hope it has done so from my conscience having been afterward sorely troubled by it. It is curious as showing that apparently I was interested at this early age in the variability of plants! I told another little boy that I could produce variously colored primroses ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... be weakened or hardened by the consciousness of playing a part; and if, hereafter, the unfeeling or thoughtless give you pain, or take the dreadful risk of pushing back a soul emerging from darkness, you will feel the strong support of a good conscience. * ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... yourself! No less could be expected from a Decoud. Alas! our worst fears have been realized," he moaned, affectionately. And again he hugged his god-son. This was indeed the time for men of intellect and conscience to rally round the ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... named O'Meara, who reviews a certain class of publications for me. He is the kind of man you would never expect to meet in this country: a relic of eighteenth-century Grub Street,—a man who reads Latin and Greek, who can quote pages of the Fathers, who has a high ideal of literature and conscience in writing, and withal a victim to the demon whiskey that has dragged him down to the very gutter. His life has been a mystery to me, and some feeling of shame has kept him from ever telling me ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... bountifull and large in distributing the wealth he had greedilie gotten togither, he must needs incur reprehension. But this is so much the lesse to be imputed vnto him as a fault, by how much he was ignorant what (by the rule of equitie and conscience) was requirable in a christian man, or one ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (6 of 8) - The Sixt Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... sky reddened, and gave promise of better weather. We arrived at nearly eight o'clock, and put up at the Palatine Hotel. In the evening I scrawled away at my journal till past ten o'clock; for I have really made it a matter of conscience to keep a tolerably full record of my travels, though conscious that everything good escapes in the process. In the morning we went out and ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... parrot some new things to say. A parrot that can only say 'Polly wants a cracker,' dont amount to anything—what we need is new style parrots that can converse on the topics of the day, and say things original. Well, when Ma got back, I guess her conscience hurt her for the way she had been carrying on in Chicago, and so when she heard the basement of the church was being frescoed, she invited the committee to hold the Wednesday evening prayer meeting ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... Frog, what has he done! On my conscience, if there be an honest, sincere man in the ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... would not permit him to take Ellen along, but that she would be secure of a happy home with his sister during her mother's absence; and to the pressure of argument Captain Montgomery added the weight of authority—insisting on her compliance. Conscience also asked Mrs. Montgomery whether she had a right to neglect any chance of life that was offered her; and at last she yielded to the combined influence of motives no one of which would have had power sufficient to move her, and though with a secret ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... was not strong at spinning sham reasons nor subtle at weaving false conscience; but, to his mind, the very fact that the system had so degraded a man that he could laugh and dance and sing, while other men took his wages, his wife, and homestead, was the crowning argument against the system. Then the political economists beset him, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... Stump and said nothing at all. And quite suddenly conscience told Abner Sawyer that he could not accept without giving. Jimsy had helped him willingly and he had accepted—why he could not for the life of him remember, save that it had something to do with his throat ...
— Jimsy - The Christmas Kid • Leona Dalrymple
... conscious himself that he was acting unkindly and unfairly to them, and that after all they had done for him they had a right to have a say as to his future; but at present his pride was too hurt, he was too sore and humiliated to listen to the whisper of conscience, and his sole thought was to hide himself and to make his ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... spent seven years on a desert islet doing penance for a single sin. They often passed a lifetime on a rock in the midst of the ocean, alone with God, and enjoying no communion but that of their conscience. ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... Dissent with scorn and abhorrence. They would gladly have excluded Nonconformists from any status in the Universities, and opposed any measures intended to conciliate their prejudices or remove their disabilities. Archdeacon Denison, in his sturdy opposition to the 'conscience clause' in Church schools, was a typical representative of the old High Church party. But still more bitter was their animosity against religious Liberalism. Even after the feud with the Evangelicals had developed into ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... A guilty conscience needs no accuser, and, if it had not been for that furtive visit to the clock, Vane would not have looked round to see if he was observed before hurrying up to the church, and entering the tower, for the open door suggested to ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... The spell of the mighty mistress now! When Conscience lulls her sated snake, And Tyrants sleep, let Freedom wake. 30 Breathe low—low The words which, like secret fire, shall flow Through the veins ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... never come back,' said the old woman. 'He is dead. I can hear him howl nights, far away on the hill. He haunts me. Every night, when I put out the light, I can hear him howl out in the forest. 'Tis my tender heart that troubles me. 'Tis a troubled conscience that makes ghosts.' ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... One of the noblest spectacles that earth can show, is that of a community animated with a true and profound faith, in which each man, using his best efforts to communicate his convictions to his brethren, respects the while that which belongs to God in the inviolable asylum of the conscience of others. But woe to the society formed by sophists, in which opinion, benumbed by doubt and indifference, arouses itself only to devote to hatred or to contempt every ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... she stopped. The man was no longer following her. She had been almost self-convinced of an intention to go to Eda's—not quite. Of late her conscience had reproached her about Eda, Janet had neglected her. She told herself she was afraid of Eda's uncanny and somewhat nauseating flair for romance; and to show Eda the new suit, though she would relish her ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... My conscience so disturbed me on the score of this theft, that I hastened to secrete my only remaining piece of gold in the glazier's box; ill-judged, as this appeared to me on reflection. The boy was an apprentice, evidently, and might else, I thought, at the ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... wind enough, in all good conscience. They discovered that before they were out of the bay. It had shifted into the northeast, and the Seamew went roaring away on her course under reefed canvas, heeling over to ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... bitterness of that great, disenchanted, disappointed soul. The desert in which spirits of the stamp of Machiavelli wander is too arid and too aerial for the gross substantial bugbears of the vulgar conscience to inhabit. Moreover, as Varchi says, 'In his conversation Machiavelli was pleasant, serviceable to his friends, a friend of virtuous men, and, in a word, worthy of having received from nature either less genius or ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... hour of danger and suspense his heart yearned over these two lads, his pupils, each a good boy in his own way. He felt that it was a part of his duty to get them safely back to Wareville and their parents, and he meant to fulfill the demands of his conscience. ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the Romish persuasion exposed her, while very young, to impressions in favour of that church, which not being removed by her conferences with some eminent and learned members of the church of England, she followed the dictates of a misguided conscience, and embraced the Romish communion, in which she continued till the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... redundance^; too much, too many; superabundance, superfluity, superfluence^, saturation; nimiety^, transcendency, exuberance, profuseness; profusion &c (plenty) 639; repletion, enough in all conscience, satis superque [Lat.], lion's share; more than enough &c 639; plethora, engorgement, congestion, load, surfeit, sickener^; turgescence &c (expansion) 194 [Obs.]; overdose, overmeasure^, oversupply, overflow; inundation &c (water) 348; avalanche. accumulation &c (store) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence, and, therefore, all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience, and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love and charity ...
— Civil Government of Virginia • William F. Fox
... capable of such a thing; but all the facts are against you. Need I go over them? Let me tell you that if ever a jury knows what Scotland Yard knows and you stand in the dock, no earthly power can save you. If that crime is on your conscience it ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... one day And answer to my claim, That Fate, and that to-day's mistake, Not thou—had been to blame? Some soothe their conscience thus: but thou, wilt surely ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... hadn't even heard of in medical school, though I haven't killed anybody yet. And all the time I remember how I used to wish I might be the only doctor between Siam and sunrise. I'm plenty near enough to that, in all conscience. The only doctor in this town of one hundred thousand, and a district around us so big that I'm afraid to measure it. On one side the next doctor is a good hundred miles away. Now, do you know how I feel? Oh, yes; insufficient until it hurts like the toothache, yet ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... in all conscience. The door was open, and the November wind free to play through the place as it liked. I stood on the threshold, thinking. I had found out nothing about any wolf-bait, excepting the one bottle the Frenchwoman's son might or might not have left there; certainly nothing about Collins ever ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... honorable record for gallant service in the Mexican War, and for useful service in the House of Representatives in Washington. When he located in San Francisco in 1852, an immigrant from the great State of Illinois, he brought new strength to the minority who were in conscience opposed to the growing dominion of the Slave Power. For certain reasons, well understood at the time and which do not concern us here, Col. Baker did not wield the influence which his talents would naturally have secured for him. Yet as the contest deepened, his majestic ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... legal guardian of Ione, was a subtle, crafty, cunning Egyptian, whose conscience was solely of the intellect awed by no moral laws. His great wealth and learning, and his reputation as a magician gave him great power and influence over not only the superstitious worshipers, but also the priesthood of Isis. Shrouding the deceit and vices of ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... without being so; politicians for what we hear from others; we claim to be patriots, but we are only so in words; we wish to be chiefs, but none of us act in a way worthy of a chief.' To this he did not reply. Perhaps his conscience accused him of an act of treachery, since we agreed in the meeting to await your letter. What union can you expect ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... always kept on the safe side of the law, but in the deed he was about to commit there was no compromise to be made with what little conscience he ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... least,—ahem!—well, all must feel That property in thoughts and phrases, The verbal filagree that raises Flat fustian into "oratory," And makes the pulpit place of glory, Such property is not so easy To settle, and a conscience queasy O'er picking pockets, oft remains Quite unperturbed while—picking brains! A Sermon is not minted coin; It you may borrow, buy, purloin, In part or wholly, and yet preach it As your own work. Who'll dare impeach it, This innocent transaction? Not Your "brethren," save, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 21, 1892 • Various
... already drunk too much on his way home, lurched off to the "Blue Dragon," where all his evenings now were spent. But his wife sat over the fire and looked at the grate Dick had laboriously black-leaded that morning, and her thoughts were busy with the past. And her long sleeping conscience was awake, and she heard again the feeble voice of a dying man, "Send this letter to brother Richard at once. We quarrelled before he went off to Ironboro', but he'll come and see to things and take charge of little Dick. And there'll be enough to pay for his upbringing, when all's said and ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis
... assured him earnestly. "That story of yours shows it. You've got The Ledger touch—no, it's more individual than that. But you've got something that's going to stick out even here. Just the same, there'll come a time when you'll have to face the other issue of your job or your—well, your conscience." ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... The time that has pressed down my life like brands of hot iron, and scarred me for ever, has been nothing to you. You have talked of it with no sound of moaning in your voice—no shadow over the brightness of your face; it has left no sense of sin on your conscience, while me it haunts and haunts; and yet I might plead that I was an ignorant child—only I will not plead anything, for God knows all— But this is only one piece ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... "is a romantic character; he has the profile of a Napoleon and the heart of a Mephistopheles. It is said he has at least three crimes on his conscience. But how pale ...
— The Queen Of Spades - 1901 • Alexander Sergeievitch Poushkin
... and then where end we? Life is nothings, I heed him not. But to fail here, is not mere life or death. It is that we become as him, that we henceforward become foul things of the night like him, without heart or conscience, preying on the bodies and the souls of those we love best. To us forever are the gates of heaven shut, for who shall open them to us again? We go on for all time abhorred by all, a blot on the face of God's sunshine, an arrow in the side of Him who died for man. But we are face to face with ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... Diana's younger and less blase shoulders. She had always known the uses he put her to and the convenience she was to him. He might have some latent feelings with regard to the inadvisability of her behavior, he might even have some prickings of conscience on the subject of his upbringing of her, but it was thoughts of his own comfort that were troubling him most. That she knew, and the knowledge was not conducive to any kinder feeling towards him. He always had been and always would be supremely selfish. The whole of their life together ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... "Child, spare your conscience!" she said lightly. "See, let me tell you how it lies with you. Whence come you? From a great house to the southward, where one Hito rules with a rod of fear. What are you? A slave, my dear, and a runaway, ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... love in those honest eyes and answer as her conscience prompted. She was tired, so tired of the struggle, what would she not have given to rest here in the shelter of this perfect love and trust, but it was not ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... Mademoiselle de Cande, the lord's sister, to whom he went in order to learn if it was her desire to confess to him, because monks came so rarely to the castle. The lady was delighted, as would any good Christian have been, at such a chance of clearing out her conscience. Amador requested her to show him her conscience, and she having allowed him to see that which he considered the conscience of old maids, he found it in a bad state, and told her that the sins of women were accomplished there; that ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... burst upon him that he was beloved; a new spirit appeared to dawn within, and midst the deep agony it was to feel he was parting for ever from a being he so dearly loved, there was a glow of approving conscience that nerved him to its endurance. It was this which had enabled him to conquer his irritation at Percy's violence, and the grief it was to feel that Herbert too must doubt him. He esteemed, he loved, was deeply grateful to Mr. Hamilton, and his evident displeasure was ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... conscience, if thou wilt, and canst only understand that term, though it fits my theme but ill. This is my meaning, that consciences, as thou namest them, are many. I have one; thou, Allan, hast another; that black Axe-bearer has a third; the little yellow man a fourth, and so ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... I am not quite certain that my tutor did altogether believe that I had not been smoking," said Edwards, his conscience stirring again a little bit now that he saw the man who had spoken so kindly to him incurring the terrible risk of forfeiting Saurin's esteem through a false imputation of too great credulity. "You see, he's a good-natured chap, and I think he wanted to believe if he could, and as my hair ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... dread was gone. If he could escape now, so he told himself, he would go right back to the States. He had eight thousand pounds in the National Provincial Bank; no one knew that it was there. He could seize it with a clear conscience and take it to Philadelphia. The shadow of Rochester—oh, that was a thing gone forever, dissipated by this actual fact of lost ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... was content—indeed, he preferred to worship from afar. Of his own initiative he would never have met her again. In her presence, with those gray eyes of hers looking at him, tremors ran down his spine, and his conscience, usually a battered and downtrodden wreck, became fiercely aggressive. She filled him with novel emotions, and whether these were pleasant or painful was more than he could say. He had not the gift of analysis where his feelings were concerned. To himself he put ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... been justified in the first part of her reproof; though nothing, probably, could have excused the bitter insult of her final taunt. For that, indeed, holding, as it did, a reproof of her dead sister, her conscience pricked her more than once. But it had no effect on the chaperonage now imposed by her upon her hapless daughter. Never, perhaps, was heavier price paid by two offenders for the folly of a ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... were as partial to their pipes as the men who went out from among them to become country parsons, and to share the country squire's liking for tobacco. Gray wrote to Warton from Cambridge in April 1749 saying: "Time will settle my conscience, time will reconcile me to this languid companion (ennui); we shall smoke, we shall tipple, we shall doze together"—a striking picture of University life in the sleepy days of the eighteenth century. Gray's testimony by no means stands alone. In November ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... was the confidence which he secured, that, month after month, and year after year, he was sent out alone to Westminster Abbey and the various old churches in the neighborhood, to make drawings from the monuments, with no oversight but that of his own taste and his own conscience. And a rich reward we may well suppose his integrity brought him, in the charming solitudes of those old-time sanctuaries. Wandering up and down the consecrated aisles,—eagerly peering through the dim, religious light for the beautiful forms that had leaped from many a teeming brain now turned ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... for Constance Ellsworth now got taste of those bitter waters of life which are withheld from none. There was a sound of a distant shout—the chance call of some drunken reveller—far down the street, a tawdry, unimportant incident, but enough to break a spell, to destroy an illusion, to awaken a conscience for a man, if that phrase be just. Dan Anderson turned to look down the long street of Heart's Desire. It was as though the physical act restored him to another realm, another mental world. He started, and half shivered as his hand dropped to his ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... that passion for antiquity, that progress in philology and criticism, which led to a correct knowledge of the classics, to a fresh taste in poetry, to new systems of thought, to more accurate analysis, and finally to the Lutheran schism and the emancipation of the conscience. Men of science will discourse about the discovery of the solar system by Copernicus and Galileo, the anatomy of Vesalius, and Harvey's theory of the circulation of the blood. The origination of a truly scientific method is the point which interests them most in the Renaissance. The political ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the bent of your inclinations to a certain extent—you have no conception of the quantity of miserable feeling that passes through me in a day—Be serious. Love is not a plaything—and again do not write unless you can do it with a crystal conscience. I would sooner die for want of you than— ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... travel with her, play the hypocrite, with smiles on my lips and hell in my heart,—or thunderstrike her at once with the truth;—what was I to do? To some men the question would, perhaps, have presented few difficulties. But for me, Sir, who am not quite devoid of conscience, whatever you may think,—let me tell you, I'd rather hang by sharp hooks over a roasting fire than be again suspended as I was betwixt two such alternatives, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... she was doing wrong—knew she was not the pure maiden whom Daisy would have chosen—was not worthy to be the bride of Daisy's brother; but she must do something or die, and as she did not care to die, she pledged her hand with no heart in it, and hushing the voice of conscience clamoring so loudly against what she was doing, walked back across the yellow sand, beneath the spring moonlight, to where the carriage waited, and, in comparative silence, was driven to ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... is commonly opposed, by the inferiour judicatures, the plea of conscience. Their conscience tells them, that the people ought to choose their pastor; their conscience tells them, that they ought not to impose upon a congregation a minister ungrateful and unacceptable to his auditors. Conscience is nothing more than a conviction, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... political reaction. I conceal my name because it is the mark for many a revenge. If the lessons of experience were not always wasted from one generation to another I should warn you, young man, never to adopt the sternness of any policy. Not that I regret having done my duty; my conscience is perfectly clear on that score; but the powers of to-day have not that solidarity which formerly bound all governments together as governments, no matter how different they might be; if to-day they reward zealous agents it is because they ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... prophet allied with the wisdom of the philosopher and the calm mental detachment of the man of science. Perhaps another explanation of his genius may be found in his open-mindedness. Truth found ready access to his conscience, and always a warm welcome, and he saw with open eyes where ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... to the Church, and prepare to die, for it behoves thine honour that thou shouldest die, and never hast thou neglected to do aught which thine honour demands." Whereupon, being arrived in the roadstead of Goa, Alfonzo Albuquerque set in order the affairs of his conscience with the Church, caused himself to be clad in the dress of the Order of St. Iago of which he was a commander, and then "on Sunday the 16th of December, an hour before daybreak, he rendered up his soul to God. Thus ended all his labours, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... a happy relief to the aristocrat's conscience, when he possesses one, could he learn from some yet bolder Descartes that common people were nothing but betes-machines, and that only a groundless prejudice had hitherto led us to suppose that life could exist where evidently nothing good ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana |
