"Conscientiousness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... everything described; to the extent that, at the mention of a vile smell, it shall be blown into the reader's nostrils, and corking-pins attack the comfortable seat of him simultaneously with a development of surprises. 'Thither your conscientiousness leads.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... few words of Preface I wish to express, first and foremost, my appreciation of the extreme care and conscientiousness with which La Mara has prepared these volumes. In a spirit of no less reverence I have endeavored, in the English translation, to adhere as closely as possible to all the minute characteristics that add expression to Liszt's letters: punctuation has, of necessity, undergone ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... manly assurance of his voice; her eyes dwelt with unspeakable joy upon his strong, bronzed features, his full thick blond beard, and the vigorous proportions of his frame. Many and many a time during his absence had she wondered how he would look if he ever came back, and with that minute conscientiousness which, as it were, pervaded her whole character, she had held herself responsible before God for his fate, prayed for him, and trembled lest evil powers should gain the ascendency ...
— A Good-For-Nothing - 1876 • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... hot water in the bathroom. She proceeded, with no want of experience or skill, to make herself beautiful for her lover: the lover who had seemed over a gulf from her this afternoon, and now what worlds away.... And if the rites were done somewhat hurriedly perforce, there was no lack of conscientiousness here. She, who had said that she had never paid her way through life, could only pay ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... mean ability, no paltry knowledge of youthful human nature. Over their Sunday dinners, the girls discussed his sermons with increasing vigour. The echoes of these discussions, coming to Brenton's ears, set him to preaching with increasing conscientiousness. However, there still was salvation for him; it was his sermons that he took so much in earnest, and not ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... been put in the garret with some cracked crockery. This he took along when sent on his daily errand for milk for the family, and, having a penny or two in his pocket, he told Mrs. Burton about his kitten, and asked if she would not sell him some every day. Pleased with the conscientiousness which prompted the boy to buy food for his favourite rather than take a crumb from his employers without their permission, she told him he might keep his pennies, for she would give him a little milk every day for his cat. "But, Billy dear," she added, "you ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... after being taught to read and write, was apprenticed to a shoemaker. His time was divided between reading his Bible, going to church, making shoes, and taking care of the cow. But in that boy's heart there were as deep a conscientiousness, imperturbable patience, purity of soul, and love of God as can be found in a like period of spiritual dearth. Having reproved his master one day, he was dispatched on his apprentice-pilgrimage somewhat sooner than he had anticipated. ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... them contrary to their judgment. Strange if this, which is so much insisted on as the policy of our Church, be right, that she cannot get a single man, of all she sends out to China, to think so. Can it be that the Missionary work is so subversive of right reason, or of correct judgment, or of conscientiousness, that all become ...
— History and Ecclesiastical Relations of the Churches of the Presbyterial Order at Amoy, China • J. V. N. Talmage
... the loud execrations of all Rattleborough, was brought to trial at the next criminal sessions, when the chain of circumstantial evidence (strengthened as it was by some additional damning facts, which Mr. Goodfellow's sensitive conscientiousness forbade him to withhold from the court) was considered so unbroken and so thoroughly conclusive, that the jury, without leaving their seats, returned an immediate verdict of "Guilty of murder in the first degree." ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... David Laing's beautiful edition of his works published in 1834, and by good Dr. Irving's intelligent and admirable compacted "History of Scottish Poetry," published the other day. Irving's work, if deficient somewhat in fluency and grace of style, is characterised by conscientiousness of statement and by the ripest knowledge. Yet, despite the researches of these competent writers, of the events of the poet's life not much is known. He was born about 1460, and from an unquotable allusion in one of his poems, he is ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... a thing which is inexplicable to me. I can only account for it on the ground that she had known him so long, and had been so accustomed to his obsequiousness and apparent conscientiousness, that her usual penetration was at fault. I think she trusted him, as I would have done, partly because there was no other, and partly out ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... command there are many things which he does not see. The general-in-chief, even a division commander, can only escape this failing by great activity, moved by strict conscientiousness and aided by clairvoyance. This failing extends to those about him, to his heads of services. These men live well, sleep well; the same must be true of all! They have picked, well-conditioned horses; the roads are excellent! They are never sick; the doctors must be ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... of a clerk bound to the Courts of Inquiry. Gentil sold the release given by Louise de Savoie to Semblancay; a War Office clerk sold the plan of the Russian campaign to Czernitchef; and these traitors were more or less rich. The prospect of a post in the Palais and professional conscientiousness are enough to make a judge's clerk a successful rival of the tomb—for the tomb has betrayed many secrets since chemistry ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... heed to what she says. Her morbid conscientiousness runs away with her. I tell you the plain truth, as man to man, without any hysterics—I kissed her of my own free will—your daughter, sir. And I am here now to stand by my act. If she will forgive my—my tardiness—as you know, ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... any more. So, also, were her ideas with regard to most matters of practical life,—such as housekeeping in all its branches, and the various political relations of her native village. And, underlying all, deeper than anything else, higher and broader, lay the strongest principle of her being—conscientiousness. Nowhere is conscience so dominant and all-absorbing as with New England women. It is the granite formation, which lies deepest, and rises out, even to the tops of ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... achieved such feats in the way of polkas, mazurkas, hornpipes, and Scotch reels as filled my instructor and myself with pride)—in addition to this, I was closeted twice a week with a very serious and earnest drawing-master, who taught me with infinite conscientiousness, and sighed heavily over the efforts which I submitted to him. The captains, who were my champions and abettors in all things, might take in their large hands a drawing of mine and the copy by the master which had been my model, and say, one to ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... covered with blisters. The manager was in despair; but Mme. Malibran, quietly stepping to the mirror, cut off the blisters with a pair of scissors, and sang as usual. Such was the indomitable courage of the woman that she was always faithful to her obligations, come what might; a conscientiousness which was afterward the immediate cause ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... something wrong about the Christianity of such men. Their over-conscientiousness seems to create a wholly wrong sense of proportion, an exaggerated sense of the significance of their own actions and characters which is as far removed as can be from the childlike humility which Christ taught. The truth seems to be that we lay far too much stress on conscience, ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... that the accusations against Byron, with respect to Keats, did not deserve a notice? If we have noticed them, it has been merely to show, that the French critic should have judged matters in this instance with greater conscientiousness and reflection. ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... when she saw the thoroughness with which Miss Blake did even the least important thing she had the grace to be ashamed and to determine on a better course in the future. But before she really settled down to a stricter habit of conscientiousness something happened that gave her more of an impulse than a course ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... his guest that all Sami's words were correct and besides gave a description of Old Mary Ann, her fidelity and conscientiousness, so that the gentleman was very glad to have such good news to ...
— What Sami Sings with the Birds • Johanna Spyri
... that can arise," said he at length, and with slow difficulty, as if not fully convinced. "I have watched Ruth, and I believe she is pure and truthful; and the very sorrow and penitence she has felt—the very suffering she has gone through—has given her a thoughtful conscientiousness ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... comparatively youthful female companion in a frightful bass voice, and in the very worst kind of language. They also summoned an armless boy and his mother. I saw that Ivan Fedotitch was in great straits, on account of his conscientiousness, for me knew that whatever was given would immediately pass to his tavern. But I had to get rid of my thirty-two rubles, so I insisted; and in one way and another, and half wrongfully to boot, we assigned and distributed them. Those who received them were mostly well dressed, and we had not ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... to come to a most reasonable decision." She breathes heavily and moves with her appurtenance to the door, secure as an ostrich in the belief that Oliver thinks her impartial, even affectionate. Her conscientiousness gives her a good deal of applause for leaving the two young people so soon when they have all one evening and another morning to be together—but subconsciously she knows that she has done her best by her recent ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... spent under the spell of such surroundings, we are not surprised to learn that Kant was of a singularly grave, gentle and quiet demeanour, which in old age tended to deepen into austerity and increased conscientiousness, were that possible, in the fulfilment of his duties. With the simple words, "It is the time," his servant Lampe called him every morning at five minutes to five, and never to the end, according to the testimony of his servant, was the summons disobeyed. In the thirty-four years of ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... the least like your dear papa," Miss Quiney made haste to assure him; "but a quite low class of person, and, I should say, connected rather with the Excise. You must remember that all this happened in the East, a long time ago." Poor soul! the conscientiousness of her conscience (so to speak) had come to rest upon turning such corners genteelly, and had grown so expert at it that she scarcely breathed a sigh of relief. The child bent his head over the book. His eyes were hidden from her, and she never guessed ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Wallace on Dec. 22, 1857 (Ibid. Vol. II. page 109.), in which he says "You ask whether I shall discuss 'man.' I think I shall avoid the whole subject, as so surrounded with prejudices; though I fully admit that it is the highest and most interesting problem for the naturalist." But his conscientiousness compelled him to state briefly his opinion on the subject in the "Origin of Species" in 1859. Nevertheless he did not escape reproaches for having been so reticent. This is unmistakably apparent from a letter to ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... who has known what he wanted to do and has done it. We are glad that Gilbert White made pastoral calls on his outdoor parishioners,—the birds, the toads, the turtles, the snails, and the earthworms,—although we often wonder if he evinced a like conscientiousness toward his human parishioners; we are glad that Thoreau left the manufacture of lead pencils to become, as Emerson jocosely complained, "the leader of a huckleberry party",—glad because these were the things their natures called them to do, and in so doing they best enriched ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... boarded and clothed for some years by his friend, Hon. W. Butler, at Springfield, and that, when in power, he refused to exercise his patronage in favour of his friend. On that occasion, his biographer tells us, that he considered his patronage a solemn trust. We give him credit for a conscientiousness above the ordinary level of his species on this as well as on other subjects. But his sense of the solemn character of his trust, though it prevented him from giving a petty place to the old friend who had helped him in the day of his need, did not prevent him, as President, from sometimes ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... He knew that his own contumacy in this respect would land his soul in perdition, and he deliberately let it go at that. Brave old Rory! Never does erratic man appear to such advantage as when his own intuitive moral sense rigorously overbears a conscientiousness warped by some fallacy which he ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... have read the "Last of the Mohicans," the "Spy," the "Pilot," and the "Pioneers." If you have anything else of his I entreat you to leave it with Frau von Bogner at the Coffee-house. My brother, who is conscientiousness itself, will bring it to me in the most conscientious way. Or anything ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... the right while doing the wrong is not usually accepted as proof of his serious conscientiousness. The real nature of Germany's view of her 'responsibilities toward the neutral States' may, however, be learned on authority which cannot be disputed by reference to the English ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... compiled a lot of most interesting matter, which he has edited with care and conscientiousness, and the result is a volume which every lover of Kipling can ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... contradicted in her opinion, she smiled resignedly, and, if it appeared due to her dignity, sulked for a period. Yet generally she was 'the evenest-tempered woman that ever a well-meaning husband found it difficult to get on with.' A pattern of order and conscientiousness, 'governed by principles that were as correct as her manners and costume, and as firmly established as the everlasting hills,' she might have made an admirable wife for a clergyman, but was totally unsuited to ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... view,—nay, had publicly criticised some of Mr. Mill's positions in a very undisguised manner. Evidently, along with his own unswerving allegiance to truth, there was in Mr. Mill an unusual power of appreciating in others a like conscientiousness, and so of suppressing any feeling of irritation produced by difference,—suppressing it, not in appearance only, but in reality, and that, too, under ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... identical words each one speaks of his strong faith, his strict veracity, and his intense devotion to duty. One of his old friends said to me the other day: "Nothing would tempt Clark away from what he thought right; his conscientiousness was unbounded." ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... carving the name on the beam," which has been transferred to half the play-bills in town, is overloaded with accessories, as the first plate; but they are much better arranged than in the last-named engraving, and do not injure the effect of the principal figure. Remark, too, the conscientiousness of the artist, and that shrewd pervading idea of FORM which is one of his principal characteristics. Jack is surrounded by all sorts of implements of his profession; he stands on a regular carpenter's table: away in the shadow under it lie shavings and a couple of carpenter's hampers. ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... back over the light to cover it when you want to sleep: Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. The toilet room is Spartan in its simplicity, and the amount of water in the tanks depends upon the conscientiousness of a naked heathen of the lowest caste, who walks over the roofs of the cars and is supposed to fill them from a pig skin suspended on his back. You furnish your own towel and the most untidy stranger in the compartment usually wants to borrow it, having forgotten ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... was this leaven of weakness in the man, she wondered, which had so suddenly broken him down? He had only to hold on his way and he would be Prime Minister in a year. And at the moment of trial he had crumpled up like a piece of false metal. A wave of false sentiment, a maniacal hyper-conscientiousness, had been sufficient to sap the very strength from his bones. And then—there was this other woman. Was she to let him go without an effort? He might recover his sanity. It was perhaps a mere nervous breakdown, which had made him the prey of strange fancies. She spoke to him ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... gentlemen, the head of the wolf: combativeness enormously developed, alimentiveness large, while conscientiousness is entirely wanting. On the other hand, look at this cranium. Here combativeness is a nullity—absolutely wanting—while the fullness of the sentimental organs indicate at once the mild and peaceful disposition of ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... artist comprehends it, and uncompromising determination to express it as perfectly as he has the power,—a feeling which never permits him to think whether his work be graceful, but whether it be just; so that his tremulous and almost fearful conscientiousness—tremulous with desire to see all, and fearful lest some line should wander by a hair's breadth from its fullest expressiveness—makes him lose sight entirely of grace and repose. No form that has the appearance of being painfully ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... had here embalmed his foster-father: through long hours had he labored at his hateful task, with curious zest and conscientiousness. As regarded the strange place of sepulture, the Egyptian had perhaps imagined a symbolic fitness in enclosing his human immortal in the empty shell of time. Over this matter of Hiero Glyphic's death and burial, however, must ever brood a cloud of mystery. ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... other words, he found himself nominally primate of England and metropolitan of the great province of Canterbury, but in reality with neither power nor influence. Such a condition of things was intolerable to a man of Anselm's conscientiousness, and he had evidently been for some time coming to the conclusion that he must personally seek the advice of the head of the Church as to his conduct in such a difficult situation. He had now definitely ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... bigger thief than A—. But B— has no bump at all over Acquisitiveness. Negative fact; goes against Phrenology. Not a bit of it. Don't you see how small Conscientiousness is? That's ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... paper to any scientific society. Arago, after a characteristic lament that Brinkley should have forsaken the pursuit of science for the temporal and spiritual attractions of a bishopric, pays a tribute to the conscientiousness of the quondam astronomer, who would not even allow a telescope to be brought into the palace lest his mind should be distracted ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... weak. He may make a poet or a painter, or you may make a sojer of him, though worse men than him's good enough for that—but a bad merchant, a lazy lawyer, and a miserable mathematician. He has wit and conscientiousness, so ye mustn't think of making a ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the candidates, who, of course, undergo many severe examinations before they are proposed. Anyone who fails to get proposed may practise medicine, but as the public knows that the most skilful are always chosen with the utmost conscientiousness conceivable, this liberty to practise is of no value. Anyone who thus fails to get proposed, and has neither the energy nor the patience to attempt to wipe off his disgrace at the next opportunity, simply hangs his medical vocation on a nail and turns ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... the Revolutionary fathers, Otis was not at heart a rebel, or from the outset disloyal to the Crown in its administration of the affairs of the Colonies. His occupancy of the Crown post of Advocate-General and his own well-known integrity and conscientiousness forbid that idea, not to speak of his pride in the fact that his ancestors were English and for generations had held high judicial offices and militia appointments in the gift of the King and the ministry of the ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... transformation occurs within the brood-pouch, which is constructed in the same way as in Mysis, is not known.* (* A trustworthy English Naturalist, Goodsir, described the brood-pouch and eggs of Cuma as early as 1843. Kroyer, whose painstaking care and conscientiousness is recognised with wonder by every one who has met him on a common field of work, confirmed Goodsir's statements in 1846, and, as above mentioned, took out of the brood-pouch embryos advanced in development and resembling their parents. By this the question ...
— Facts and Arguments for Darwin • Fritz Muller
... two chief reasons why Mr. Allen seems to me one of the first of our novelists to day. He is most exquisitely alive to the fine spirit of comedy. He has a prose style of wonderful beauty, conscientiousness and simplicity.... He has the inexorable conscience of the artist, he always gives us his best; and that best is a style of great purity and felicity and sweetness, a style without strain and yet with an enviable aptness for the sudden inevitable word.... And yet that care, that ...
— James Lane Allen: A Sketch of his Life and Work • Macmillan Company
... weavers, and almost as important, were the dyers who prepared the thread for use. The conscientiousness of their work cries out for recognition when the threads they dyed are almost unaltered in colour after five hundred years of exposure to their enemies, light and air. Dye stuffs were precious in those days, ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... pathetic story of Zeph' was never quite completed, the dying author indicated what remained to be told in the few unwritten chapters, and it comes to us, therefore, not as a curious fragment, but as an all but finished work. There is something most tender and sad in the supreme artistic conscientiousness of one who could give such an illustration of fidelity and so emphasize the nobility of labor from her death-bed. These things that bring back the gracious spirit from whose loss the heart of the reading world is still ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... conditions of life, the incentive is self-interest, with him the grand motive is pride. Now, amongst the deeper feelings of man there is none which is more adapted for transformation into probity, patriotism, and conscientiousness; for the first requisite of the high-spirited man is self-respect, and, to obtain that, he is induced to deserve it. Compare, from this point of view, the gentry and nobility of England with the "politicians" of the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... spoiled his cricket. Therefore he had to content himself with knocking up centuries in college matches, and an annual performance among the Seniors. It was rumoured that Grayson—always a just youth, too— would have given him his blue, had not Verinder's conscientiousness been more than Roman. My own belief is that the distinction was never offered, and that Verinder liked his friend all the better for it. At the same time the disappointment of what at that time of life was a serious ambition may account for a trace of acidity which began, before he left college, ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... element, the human heart in its own original right, as in the well-known incident of the workhouse child who was so strangely drawn to him. Of the humane actions, however, of which any record remains, none is so honorable as his considerateness, generosity, and conscientiousness in his correspondence with Delia Bacon, whom he endured and befriended with infinite patience and delicacy; the letters which he wrote to her show his character in a very noble light, and bring out one ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... is undone if lowly origin be asserted is seen in those comments which unsentimental people so often pass on their more sentimental acquaintances. Alfred believes in immortality so strongly because his temperament is so emotional. Fanny's extraordinary conscientiousness is merely a matter of overinstigated nerves. William's melancholy about the universe is due to bad digestion—probably his liver is torpid. Eliza's delight in her church is a symptom of her hysterical constitution. ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... Christiania, and furthermore it was of course to be published. One of my faithful and trusting friends undertook to prepare a handsome and legible copy of my uncorrected draft, a task which he performed with such a degree of conscientiousness that he did not omit even a single one of the innumerable dashes which I in the heat of composition had liberally interspersed throughout wherever the exact phrase did not for the moment occur to me. The second of my friends, whose name I here mention since he is no ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... married, with young families. The youngest daughter was much away from home, and a second was living in Constantinople, but three others lived with their father and mother. Bessie, the eldest of the whole family, was a woman of rigid honor and conscientiousness, but poverty and the struggle to keep out of debt had soured her, and "Aunt Bessie" was an object of dread, not of love. One story of her early life will best tell her character. She was engaged to a young clergyman, and one day when Bessie was at church he preached a sermon ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... was placed in the most expert hands. I was personally acquainted with Inspector Daugaard-Jensen from former dealings with him, and knew that whatever he undertook would be performed with the greatest conscientiousness. The administration of the Royal Greenland Trading Company gave permission for the dogs to be conveyed free of charge on board the Hans ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... firmness. His brow was prominent, the centre of the forehead flat, the upper part retreating, which, in conjunction with his slightly Roman nose, gave him an interesting appearance. The crown of his head was remarkably high, in the regions of the phrenological organs of firmness, conscientiousness, self-esteem, indicating a stern will, unswerving integrity, and marvellous self-possession. He walked rapidly with a firm and elastic tread. He was somewhat like John Baptist, taciturn in habits, usually wrapped in meditation. He was rather meteoric in his movements, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... with all the exigencies of both city and country practice which have brought to him the ripe experience of what would be called a "physician's life-time." His success has been, in part, due to his honesty, kindliness and conscientiousness, as well as to his thorough training and natural adaptability to ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... ever-present influence in his life, and was practically manifested in his daily walk and conversation. As we contemplate the fifty-four years which made up the measure of his earthly span, we cannot fail to be impressed by its uniform consistency, its thorough conscientiousness, its devotion to high and noble objects. It is a grand thing to acquire a famous name, but it is a much grander thing to live a pure and noble life; and in estimating the character of Robert Baldwin it should ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... journey in the footsteps, as it were, of Mrs. Gaskell reveals to us the remarkable conscientiousness with which she set about her task. It would have been possible, with so much fame behind her, to have secured an equal success, and certainly an equal pecuniary reward, had she merely written a brief monograph with such material as ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... owned this to himself. He had not nerve for great ventures. It made him sick to think of one or two transactions, out of which he might have come triumphant as others had done, only that his courage had failed to carry him through to the end. He needed more courage, and less conscientiousness, he liked to add in his thoughts, and perhaps he was not altogether without warrant in doing so. At any rate, something had come between him and success where other men ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... resolved to thrash Planchet provisionally; which he did with the conscientiousness that d'Artagnan carried into everything. After having well beaten him, he forbade him to leave his service without his permission. "For," added he, "the future cannot fail to mend; I inevitably look for ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... statue, he was rather puzzled what he should do about measuring the face, which he always did for portrait sculpture with a pair of compasses. All these difficulties were at last smoothed over; and Gibson was also permitted to drape the queen's statue in Greek costume, for in his artistic conscientiousness he absolutely refused to degrade sculpture by representing women in the fashionable gown of the day, or men in swallow-tail coats and ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... right with her property," she said, "and it is not for us to question it. She was conscientiousness itself. You will have to excuse my listening to any criticism you may feel inclined to make ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... however, a less criminal, though hardly less dangerous condition of mind; which, though not failing in its more urgent duties, fails in the finer conscientiousness which regulates the degree, and directs the choice, of amusement, at those times when amusement is allowable. The most frequent error in this respect is the want of reverence in approaching subjects of importance or sacredness, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... with a new and subduing sensation very present to her mind: a sense of something missed out of her own life, a sense of having failed in the duty that had once been given her to do. Hitherto she had been buoyed up by a certain confidence in her own conscientiousness and power of judgment, as most rather narrow-minded women are; but it now occurred to her that she might have been wrong—not only in a few details, as she had consented to admit—but wrong from beginning to end. She had marred not only her own ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... that would qualify him for the post! In this, to acquit oneself tolerably, some acquaintance with the language, customs, and habits of thought of the population is everywhere else held to be of prime importance,—native conscientiousness and honesty of ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... his share of Bengal's greatest gift— imagination, but he has allowed it to be overshadowed and nearly killed by an exotic conscientiousness. Just look at the worship of Durga which Bengal has carried to such heights. That is one of her greatest achievements. I can swear that Durga is a political goddess and was conceived as the image of the Shakti of patriotism ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... judge of the criminal tribunal, and in 1804 made him a Commander of his Legion of Honour. He is now one of our Emperor's most faithful subjects and most sincere Christians. Such is now his tender conscientiousness, that he was among those who were the first to be married again by some Cardinal to their present wives, to whom they had formerly been united only by the municipality. This new marriage, however, took place before Madame ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... was at the adjacent village of Logport, in the capacity of housemaid to a trader's wife, who, joining some little culture to considerable conscientiousness, attempted to instruct her charge. But the Princess proved an unsatisfactory pupil to even so liberal a teacher. She accepted the alphabet with great good-humor, but always as a pleasing and recurring novelty, in which all interest expired at the completion of each lesson. She found a ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... his earlier years he had sought to destroy. Spencer's attitude toward religion was in his earlier work one of more pronounced antagonism or, at least, of more complete agnosticism than in later days he found requisite to the maintenance of his scientific freedom and conscientiousness. Both of these men represent the effort to construe the world, including man, from the point of view of the natural and also of the social sciences, and to define the place of religion in that view of the world which is thus set forth. ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... when he hurried across to Ireland and got up late, and went on picnics with other ecclesiastics in straw hats, and joined in cheerful songs in the evening. He was a priest, with perfectly defined duties, and of admirable punctuality and conscientiousness in doing them. He disliked the English quite extraordinarily; but his sense of duty was such that they never suspected it; and his flock of Saxons adored him as people only can adore a brisk, businesslike man with a large heart and peremptory ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... life and refused to recognize the boundaries between the various parts of existence, between the arts, and between reality and unreality. Hoffmann, with all his North German power of reasoning and his zeal and conscientiousness in public office, was emphatically that Romanticist associated with the night-sides of literature and life. There is something uncanny both in the man and his writings. His power of putting the scene of his most unreal stories in the midst of well-known places, his ability ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... friend, I never shall be angry with your conscientiousness, though I ) do not promise never to scold it, as you know I think you sometimes carry it too far; and how pleasant to have a friend to scold on such grounds! I see all your delicacy in what you call your double treachery, and your kind desire of connecting two of ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... interesting facts of a changeable life with well-disguised fiction; and it may be doubted if he always knew himself which part of some of his favorite "yarns" were truths, and which were due, as a phrenologist would say, "to language and imaginativeness large, insufficiently balanced by conscientiousness." ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... criterion of family and parentage is insufficient; for, sad as it may seem, the children of really excellent parents are often so derelict in duty, so lacking in conscientiousness, so idle and aimless and frivolous that their companionship should be dreaded for susceptible young people especially for young girls. One thing is very certain: that in these days young people, when out of sight of their parents, often act and talk in a way which ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... had a lofty sense of his personal duty and responsibility; and if ever, or in anything, he fell short of his self-prescribed standard he would, so to say, whip himself with cords. From his boyhood he was distinguished by an extreme conscientiousness. "His chastity of honour felt a stain like a wound." To him conscience was to be reverenced and obeyed as "God's most intimate presence in the soul, and His most perfect image in the world." He had a passionate ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... sudden inspiration, entirely contrariwise—everyone lives his life in idleness, slovenliness, and a measureless disorder—chaos and squalor reign in his matrimonial and sexual relations—a naive absence of conscientiousness distinguishes his work; in public affairs he shows an irrepressible inclination towards despotism, and an utter absence of consideration towards his fellow-creatures; and his attitude towards the authorities of the State is marked at times by a proud defiance, and at others (individually ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... himself entirely to the task of publishing the notes of his travels. The meagre account which has been given here will serve to show how extensive these notes were. But the extreme conscientiousness of the explorer prevented him from publishing anything which was not complete, and he was bent on placing his work in advance of the recognized boundaries of knowledge at that date. Even the mere classification of the vast quantity of material which he had collected during his ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... usually the property of elderly maiden ladies. The unction with which he detailed the several contents, when fully confided to him, would have seemed satirical in another person, but on his part was pure conscientiousness. He would not let so much as a thimble, or a piece of wax, or a portable tooth, or any amiable vanity in the way of tonsorial device, escape him. I have heard Mr. Newman spoken of as "that horrid man." ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... that the prayer itself, and the desire from which it proceeded, might, perhaps, constitute a species of disloyalty to the only parents she seemed ever to have known. To this feeling her great love and strong conscientiousness gave birth. Yet she could neither repress her desire nor ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... the folk of whom Miss Somerville writes with "that indomitable family pride that is an asset of immense value in the history of a country." They "took all things in their stride without introspection or hesitation. Their unflinching conscientiousness, their violent church-going (I speak of the sisters), were accompanied by a whole-souled love of a spree and a wonderful gift for a row." I can corroborate her details, especially the last. All those that I recall had some talent for feuds; at least, in every ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... and affections; and so on to my favourite mood of an holy terror for all action and all inaction equally - a sort of shuddering revulsion from the necessary responsibilities of life. We must not be too scrupulous of others, or we shall die. Conscientiousness is a sort of moral opium; an excitant in small doses, perhaps, but at ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to Mrs. Lawrence's cheek. She liked the prospect of screwing an extra twopence out of one of her boarders, but she hated having the fact so clearly pointed out to her. There were times when she found Miss Bunting's conscientiousness something ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... painful conscientiousness and stern performance of duty. What a martyr he made of ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... appear to have astonished the author even more than the book itself has astonished the reading world Coming as the new presentation does from a naturalist of acknowledged character and ability and marked by a conscientiousness and candor which have not always been reciprocated we have thought it simply right to set forth the doctrine as fairly and as favorably as we could There are plenty to decry it and the whole theory is widely exposed ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... original fashion—Bersenyev's father brought him, while still a boy, to Moscow immediately after his mother's death, and at once himself undertook his education. He prepared himself for each lesson, exerted himself with extraordinary conscientiousness and absolute lack of success: he was a dreamer, a bookworm, and a mystic; he spoke in a dull, hesitating voice, used obscure and roundabout expressions, metaphorical by preference, and was shy even ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... is a perfect literature of their biographies, all alike in their essentials; the same "disinclination to the usual amusements of childhood"; the same remarkable sensibility; the same docility; the same conscientiousness; in short, an almost uniform character, marked by beautiful traits, which we look at with a painful admiration. It will be found that most of these children are the subjects of some constitutional unfitness for living, the most frequent of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... obvious and magnify the remote, and throughout the negotiations the hand of Great Britain was weakened, as her adversary had doubtless calculated that it would be, by an earnest but fussy and faddy minority. Idealism and a morbid, restless conscientiousness are two of the most dangerous evils from which a modern progressive State has ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... had implied that there would undoubtedly be good news and congratulations awaiting him. This did not mean that the board intended to slight its duty and fail to consider the matter of the incurables with due conscientiousness—the board was as strong for conscience as for conservation. It merely went to show that the fate of Ward C had been preordained from the beginning; and that the President felt wholly justified in requesting the presence of the Senior Surgeon at the ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... you have written? And made a hundred mistakes? In that case we are just where we were before. I appreciate that an eighteen-year-old Princess has to consider history, posterity and so forth—but this conscientiousness will be your ruin. The King will continue to make a slave of you, the Queen to treat you as a child. You are the victim of the conflict between two characters who both perhaps desire what is best for you, but who are so totally different that you will never know whom or which ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... attempting to foresee the future of the love-story; being, for the moment, quite persuaded that James is at sea, and the minister about to ruin himself. We think that Mary will labour to be in love with the self-devoted man, under her mother's influence, and from that hyper-conscientiousness so common with good girls; but we don't wish her to succeed. Then what is to become of her older ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... good his shortcomings. The gymnasial course is a completed phase of training. It aims at giving the pupil all the general knowledge that he requires previous to his professional studies. What is lost or overlooked in the gymnasium cannot be acquired at the university. Hence the peculiar conscientiousness of the German teacher, his almost painful anxiety to make sure that his pupils master every subject, his unwillingness to let them go before they are "ripe." With us the change from school to college is not an abrupt transition, like that from gymnasium to university. The college course, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... despair at death, struck any tragic note. No tragedy was written, no love-poetry, no novel of passion. No literature is so maiden-pure. It is by refinement rather than power that it is most distinguished, by taste and cultivation, by conscientiousness in art, in poetic and stylistic craft; it is romance retrospectively seen in the national past, or conjured out of foreign lands by reminiscent imagination, or symbolically created out of fantasy; and this is supplemented by poetry of the domestic affections, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... (Veneration or Theosophy), and BENEVOLENCE are so well located and described by both Gall and Spurzheim as to need but little comment at present. The four superior organs on the median line, and the organ of CONSCIENTIOUSNESS were more correctly located and described than any other large ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... Twain's greater interest was now all in the type-machine, and certainly he had no money to put into any other venture. His next letter to Goodman is illuminating—the urgency of his need for funds opposed to that conscientiousness which was one of the most positive forces of Mark Twain's body spiritual. The Mr. Arnot of this letter was ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... patience, severe conscientiousness, and imperturbable frigidity in a style that was pure, though somewhat prolix, that History of Florence, virtually a history of Italy, which from its first appearance was hailed as a classic and has ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... as yet existed, but that the dangerous experiment has been made of enfranchising the vast proportion of crime, intemperance, immorality and dishonesty, and barring absolutely from the suffrage the great proportion of temperance, morality, religion and conscientiousness; that, in other words, the worst elements have been put into the ballot-box and the best elements kept out. This fatal mistake is even now beginning to dawn upon the minds of those who have cherished an ideal of the grandeur of a republic, and they dimly see that in woman lies the highest promise ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... through the woods; an' he'd tell all about what he saw; the 'purple sunsets,' an' 'dancin' leaves,' an' the merry little brooks hurryin' down the hillside,' till you could jest SEE the place he was talkin' about. But now—now he's comin' to full conscientiousness, the doctor says; an' he don't talk of anything only—only the dark. ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... securely upon those below it, and braced and nested in by the sheer skill of the mason. The art of the dry wall is the ancient heritage of New England and speaks not only of the sincerity and the conscientiousness of the old Puritan spirit but strikes the higher note of beauty. Many of the older walls I know are worth going far to see, for they exhibit a rare sense of form and proportion, and are sometimes set in the landscape with a skill that only the Master-Artist himself could exceed. Those old, ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... apparently, everywhere they went, as he had been before. It need hardly be said, though, that such an idea never occurred to Bob's mother, who knew well how Dick had risked his life to save her son's; the thought, really, was entirely due to the old sailor's ultra conscientiousness! ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson |
