"Conscientiousness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... arrangement than Gall, in whose map we see the inventive faculty running into murder, and avarice into music and poetry. Yet even Spurzheim retained avarice in contact with ideality, invention, hope, and conscientiousness. Neither seems to have realized that there is no example in the brain of a single convolution perfectly homogeneous, and even intermingled in its minute structure, suddenly changing its essential functions into something entirely opposite, when there is not the slightest ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... continue to grow? It is hoped that the Great President, while giving due consideration to the maintenance of the dignity of the Central Government, will at the same time allow the local life of the provinces to develop. Ethics, Righteousness, Purity and Conscientiousness are four great principles. When these four principles are neglected, a country dies. If the whole country should come in spirit to be like "concubines and women," weak and open to be coerced and forced along with whomsoever ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... of her conscientiousness we mention a circumstance which took place somewhere about this time. A farmer, who owed my father a considerable sum of money, had been repeatedly importuned for payment, but without effect; and it was at length given up, as a bad debt. One Sabbath morning, while ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... 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 ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... singing, it is more likely to put good thoughts into your head than those lovely singers here; and then, Mr. Perrott is quite a famous man; everybody likes him better than Mr. Burton—you are too scrupulous, Louis. I think, sometimes, you are guilty of over-conscientiousness." ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... stern and exacting critic of his own. He 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 hatred of injustice, ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... the 'authorities' privately pointed out to Mr. Sawyer that there might be such a thing as over-much zeal in the discharge of his duties, and if so I have no doubt he took it in good part. For it was not zeal which actuated him—it was simple conscientiousness, misdirected perhaps by his inexperience. He could not endure hurting any one or anything, and probably his very knowledge of his weakness made him afraid of himself. Be that as it may, no one concerned rejoiced more heartily ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... conversation gives one more the notion of activity, energy, and conscientiousness, than of great ability. I presume you were not able to slip in a question, but, on the other hand, if you had succeeded he would not have heard it. He is in favour of the complete evacuation of Cairo.... He has full confidence in that half of the Egyptian ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... the Niger to the borders of Lake Chad." "Its style," continues he, "is very simple and clear, entirely lacking those literary artifices so much in vogue among the Arabs; and the author displays an unusual conscientiousness, never hesitating to give both versions of a doubtful event."[208] On the whole it is a book of elevated active morals and with its charming combination of fables, marvels and miracles it is well adapted to influence the negraic mind. The work is ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... 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 ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... never seriously believed in the possibility of a previous discovery; but his conscientious nature had prompted him to give it a fair consideration. She was probably right. What he might have thought had she treated it with equal conscientiousness he did not consider. "All right," he said simply. "I reckon ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... speeches were unevasively in defense of the principles of that party. Without discussing the merits of the party or its purposes, we may insist that his adopting them thus openly at the outset of his career was an extremely characteristic act, and marks thus early the scrupulous conscientiousness which shaped every action of his life. The State of Illinois was by a large majority Democratic, hopelessly attached to the person and policy of Jackson. Nowhere had that despotic leader more violent and unscrupulous partisans than there. They were proud of their very servility, ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... the influence of heredity may be said far to outweigh the influence of home training. In all the cases reported, the resemblances were about the same in traits subject to training, and in those not subject to training. Thus industry and conscientiousness and public spirit, which are clearly affected by environment, show no greater resemblance than such practically unmodifiable traits as memory, original sensitiveness to colors, ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... your professional manner as art arbiter, may I say that I can picture to myself easily the sad earnestness with which you now point the thick thumb of your editorial refinement in deprecation of my choicer "rowdyism"? And knowing your analytical conscientiousness, I can even understand the humble comfort you take in Oscar's meek superiority; but, for the life of me, I cannot follow your literary intention when you say that my care of "''Arry,' dead and neglected ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... Church were in popular language convertible terms. And though they were not by any means the sole representatives of the older High Church spirit—for some who were deeply imbued with it took the oath of allegiance with perfect conscientiousness, and without the least demur—yet in them it was chiefly embodied. Professor Blunt remarks with much truth, that to a great extent they carried away with them that regard for primitive times, which with them was destined by degrees almost to expire.[94] ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... 1799, Bonaparte gave him the office of 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 Thuriot had introduced herself to ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... excited my curiosity. Clearly he had unstinted visions of lucrative patronage, dreams, probably, of a piece of coloured ribbon for his button-hole, and a right to try to induce people to call him "Chevalier." He made Coralie a present, handsome enough. I respected the conscientiousness of this act; my friendship was an unlooked-for profit, a bonus on the marriage, and he gave his wife her commission. But he seemed cased in steel against any confidence; he trembled as he poured me out a glass of wine. He had pictured me only as a desirable appendage to a gala performance; it is, ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... thrived physically under this regimen, but I became silent and grave. Miss Jenks seemed constantly on her guard against undue enthusiasm, and abetted by her example I inclined to introspection and over conscientiousness. I picked up pins, and went out of my way to kick orange-peel from the ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... and violent exercise, was something very serious. Outraged human nature rebelled against it; and though they did not admit it in public, there were very few men who did not rush to their water bottles for relief, more or less often, according to the development of their bumps of conscientiousness and obstinacy. To keep to the diet at all strictly involved a very respectable amount of physical endurance. Our successors have found out the unwisdom of this, as of other old superstitions; and that in order to get a ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... careful hunting among his various acquaintances, however, he found at last a place that would exactly suit Selah at a stationer's in Netting Hill; and there he put her—with full confidence that Selah would do the work entrusted to her well and ably, if not from conscientiousness, at least from personal pride, 'which, after all,' Roland soliloquised dreamily, 'is as good a substitute for the genuine article as one can reasonably expect to find ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... 1689. The father of the subject of this sketch was a man of sterling qualities, strong in mind and will, but commanding love as well as respect. The mother was a woman of outward beauty and beauty of soul alike; with high ideals and reverent conscientiousness. Her influence over her boys was life-long. The home was a centre of intelligent intercourse, a sample of the simplicity but earnestness of many of ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various
... and a promise," as Delia described it, bat 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 of ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... customary oaths, to be kept with the customary conscientiousness, were rendered at the Town House, and for a brief moment all ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... lingered lovingly on this theology so well named "natural," on its conscientiousness, its refusal to affirm what it did not prove, on its lack of dogmatic dictums and infallible revelations; yet it gave me the vision of a new sanction whereby man might order his life, a sanction from which was eliminated fear and superstition and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... step, Professor Dowden's grim narrative of seduction and suicide, with its ludicrous testimony to Shelley's "conscientiousness," Arnold says, with honest indignation, "After reading his book, one feels sickened for ever of the subject of irregular relations.... I conclude that an entirely human inflammability, joined to an inhuman ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... pen to Melvina who with blind faith inscribed her name on the crisp white paper in a small cramped hand. Caleb Saunders, the witness Mr. Benton had brought with him, next wrote his name, forming each letter with such conscientiousness that Ellen could hardly wait until the painstaking and elaborate ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... demonstrates practically to the whole world your good faith as a statesman and your broad sympathy as an American; it shows the conscientiousness and the care with which you wish to place before the President and the country the fundamental points ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... of all incident, during which Shears pursued his task with a minute care and a conscientiousness that was exasperated by the memory of that daring onslaught, perpetrated under his eyes, despite his presence and without his being able to prevent its success. He searched the house and garden indefatigably, ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... 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 ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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. Undoubtedly Manetho loved the man,—but ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... another illustration here. He is a sad, striking example of conscientiousness without sufficient knowledge, of earnestness without clear light. He was conscientiously doing the wrong thing, as earnestly as he could, supposing it to be the right thing. John wanted to call down fire from heaven and burn up some people that didn't fit in with their plans.[103] ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... this to Sandford, whom he would have credited, or had his own heart suggested it, he was a man of that rectitude and conscientiousness, that he would have returned immediately to Lord Elmwood, and have strengthened all his favourable opinions of his intended wife—but having no such monitor, he walked on, highly contented, and meeting Miss Woodley, said, with an ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... himself out, took his passage, and executed the necessary deeds as to the estate. It might have been pleasant enough,—this little interval before his voyage,—as the Shands, though rough and coarse, were kind to him and good-humoured, had it not been that a great trouble befell him through over conscientiousness as to a certain matter. After what had passed at Babington House, it was expedient that he should, before he started for New South Wales, give some notice to his relatives there, so that Julia might know that destiny did not intend her to become Mrs. Caldigate ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... length he begins in his reflecting moments to perceive a moral beauty and a fitness in arrangements that had emanated from accidents of convenience, so that finally he generates a sublime pleasure of conscientiousness out of that which originally commenced in the meanest forms of mercenary convenience. A Roman lady of rank, out of mere voluptuous regard to her own comfort, revolted from the harsh clamors of eternal ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... 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, I was in no position ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... Give us these things anywhere, give us lights and gardens and music, give us dances and damsels, give us Congo encampments and "ballons dirigeables," and thither will we troop to make us merry. Ah! but the incurable conscientiousness of the human race insists on pills with its jam. Or is it that it has never yet dawned upon humanity that jam may be taken without pills? There was a time—it lasted seventy thousand ages according to the Chinese manuscript which Elia saw—when mankind ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... He had broken with his fatherland, he had thrown over dynastic laws, he had gone by his will alone, and no red tape. Perhaps there was the solution. He had gone by his conscience. I have said I was convinced of his conscientiousness, and possibly in these strange departures from the code of his fathers he was following a new and internal guide, to the detriment of his own material interests. He had abandoned the essence while retaining the forms of his birth and breeding. At least, this is ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... She looked strange. She had sunk back in her chair. I thought she wuz a-goin' to faint, and she told somebody the next day, "that she did almost lose her conscientiousness." ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... constraint, the tyranny of rhyme and rhythm. How much trouble have the poets and orators of every nation given themselves!—not excepting some of the prose writers of today, in whose ear dwells an inexorable conscientiousness—"for the sake of a folly," as utilitarian bunglers say, and thereby deem themselves wise—"from submission to arbitrary laws," as the anarchists say, and thereby fancy themselves "free," even free-spirited. The singular ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Whilst, consequently, in the inferior or average 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 United States.—On the other hand, with ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... book, in which other French persons had apprised them that there were many foolish things; adding, that they honoured my affectionate intention towards the Church, and my capacity; and had so high an opinion of my candour and conscientiousness that they should leave it to me to make such alterations as were proper in the book, when I reprinted it; among other things, the word fortune. To excuse themselves for what they had said against my book, they instanced works of our time by ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... resolution to continue sinning against the light. 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 still accepts ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... government and morals which prevailed under William. In 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 made up his mind, and as the ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... which a dinner for princes would have been prepared. But what she had was sufficient for the occasion, and this repast for a country gentleman in moderate circumstances and his wife was planned with conscientiousness as well as skill. From the first she had known very well that it would be fatal to her pretensions to prepare for the Tolbridges an expensive and luxurious meal, but she had determined that they should never sit down to any ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... is emphasized by the massiveness of its furniture and the age of its office boy. He is fifty, if he is a day. An exceeding slowness of brain prevented him from rising to a more exalted position, a position to which his quite extraordinary conscientiousness and honesty would have entitled him. That same conscientiousness and honesty prevented him from being superseded by a more juvenile individual, when his age had passed the limit usually accorded to office boys. Imperceptibly almost, he became part and parcel of ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... 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 ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... the public. Even when Ryan had to kill a bully in self-defence (it was a fellow named Kelly, who loved to haunt the coffee-houses, pick quarrels with peaceable citizens, and then half murder them), the world looked on approvingly, and averred that the player had acted with his usual conscientiousness. ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... natural perception and quick wit, these will come into play in their due time and place, but he will not think of them as his chief power; and if he have them not, he may still hope that industry and conscientiousness may enable him to rise in his profession without them. Again in the case of clergymen: that they are sorely tempted to display their eloquence or wit, none who know their own hearts will deny, but then they know this to be a temptation: they never would suppose ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... seemed to be more from some habitual conscientiousness of statement than awkwardness. The man in the ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... host jogs along at a medium pace. Now Brown's personality is a delightful thing. You can't help loving him. His willingness is charming, and his enthusiasm contagious. And Smith's steady persistence and extreme conscientiousness are most admirable. They do us all good. But if, whilst preserving and developing their personalities, we could strip them of their angularities, and get them to walk in step at one steady and regular pace—tramp! tramp! tramp! ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... its particular forms of expression: the heavy frame, so slow and deliberate in movement, so settled in repose; the timid and yet scrutinising eyes; the mannered, yet so personal, voice; the precise, pausing speech, with its urbanity, its almost painful conscientiousness of utterance; the whole outer mask, in short, worn for protection and out of courtesy, yet moulded upon the inner truth of nature like a mask moulded upon the features which it covers. And the books are the man, literally the man in many accents, turns of phrase; and, far more ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... each of them proficient in the accomplishment that had been selected for her. But, as neither of these young ladies had any natural talent, the result was hardly so satisfactory as their fond mother could have desired. They did exactly what they had been taught to do with precision and conscientiousness; no less and no more; and the further result of their entire devotion to one kind of study was, that they could ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... Compare Figs. 48 and 49. One is splendidly broad,—almost decorative,—the other intimate and picturesque. The work of both these men is eminently worthy of study. For the sophisticated simplicity and directness of his method and the almost severe conscientiousness of his drawing, no less than for his masterly knowledge of black and white, no safer guide could be commended to the young architectural pen-man for the study of principles than Mr. Gregg. Architectural illustration in America owes much to his influence and, indeed, he may ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... his steed, and sat himself down by the water in a melancholy posture. It was Sacripant, king of Circassia, one of her lovers, wretched at the thought of having missed her in the camp of King Charles. Angelica loved Sacripant no more than the rest; but, considering him a man of great conscientiousness, she thought he would make her a good protector while on her journey home. She therefore suddenly appeared before him out of the bower, like a goddess of the woods, or Venus ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... for there is the sacred faith of man in man. When we repose perfect confidence in the integrity of another; when we feel that he will not swerve from the right, frank, straightforward, conscientious course, for any temptation; his integrity and conscientiousness are the image of God to us; and when we believe in it, it is as great and generous an act, as when we believe in ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... the Decalogue, are negative in form; but in the Buddhist scriptures a positive moral ideal is inculcated on all, which is grave and attractive in its character, and is sustained by a strong though quiet enthusiasm. We find here a delicate conscientiousness as to the relations to be cultivated with one's fellow-men; the widest toleration is enjoined, a toleration extending to all beings, to all opinions. Hatred is to be repaid by love, life is to be ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... Marcus Aurelius was philosophy enthroned. Without any desire to contest or detract from that compliment, let it be added that he was conscientiousness enthroned. It is his grand and original characteristic that he governed the Roman empire and himself with a constant moral solicitude, ever anxious to realize that ideal of personal virtue and general justice which he had conceived, and to which he aspired. His conception, indeed, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... scalped and made slaves on, yet right whilst them yeller races wuz engaged in it if I could think at all—and of course I don't know how much the seat of thought is situated in the crown of the head and hair and whether the entire citadel would go with the scalp, but if I could think and keep my conscientiousness as I spoze I should, I should have to give in right then and there that it wuz only justice fur the white races to submit to the revenge of the darker complected, thinkin' what ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... people remember a Nottinghamshire poet of an earlier day who fulfilled with much conscientiousness the duties of local laureate. It was the age of Notts's pre-eminence in cricket, and that, with other reasons, inspired the bard to write some verses which opened with the line, "Is there a county to compare with Notts?" The county of Derby was jealous of its neighbour ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various
... even from success; grudged himself all pleasure, if his nature was capable of taking any, which I sometimes wondered; and laid out, upon some deal in wheat or corner in aluminium, the essence of which was little better than highway robbery, treasures of conscientiousness and self-denial. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Creek, Virginia, he was left by the death of his father to the care and guardianship of his mother. "She," says his biographer, "proved herself worthy of the trust. Endowed with plain, direct good sense, thorough conscientiousness, and prompt decision, she governed her family strictly, but kindly, exacting deference while she inspired affection. George, being her eldest son, was thought to be her favorite, yet she never gave him undue preference, ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... him, appalled by her own hesitation. Was it possible, after the words she had just uttered, the exaltation of confession still thrilling her, that she could hesitate? Was it morbid over-conscientiousness in the horror of a broken promise to him that struck ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... felt such misplaced penitence and submission, as they deemed it, beneath contempt; but while Eleanor had pride enough to hold up her head so that no one might suppose her to be disappointed, she felt a strange awe of the conscientiousness that repented when others would only have felt resentment—relief, perhaps, at not again coming into contact with one so unlike other men as ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... only known, he might have put the business of the inspection of the property and the dealing with the servants into other hands, but Pinckney was young and full of energy and business ability; he was full of conscientiousness and the determination to protect his ward's interests; he had scented a rogue in Rafferty, and at this very minute returning to the house with Hennessey, he was declaring his intention to make an overhaul of ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... what he was suffering—Mr. Wayne, I mean. We were all suffering; even Mrs. Wayne, who in her gentle way was generally so hard. Some people thought Mr. Wayne needn't have done it; and I suppose it was just his conscientiousness—because he had such a horror of the thing—that drove him on to it. He thought he mustn't shirk his duty. But that night at the house was awful. We dressed for dinner, and tried to act as if nothing frightful had happened—but it was as if the hangman was sitting ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... 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 differently. She spoke ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... true; he had cheated him, but restitution for that cheat he had provided. But what would become of you, left—in case he died without making restitution—penniless? He knew his brother, as I said; knew his character, respected his honesty, and believed in his conscientiousness and his big heart. So he made his will, and in it, as you know, he appointed Elisha your guardian. He threw his children and their future upon the mercy and generosity of the brother he had wronged. That is his reason, as we surmise ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... fun of his hat; and the cut of his New York coat; and his conscientiousness about his grammar; and his feeble profanity; and his consumingly ludicrous ignorance of ores, shafts, tunnels, and other things which he never saw before, and never felt enough interest in to read about. And all the time that he is thinking what a sad fate it is to be ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... said: "There's nothing in the world the matter with that child. She's as sound as a nut! What she needs is ..."—he looked for a moment at Aunt Frances's thin, anxious face, with the eyebrows drawn together in a knot of conscientiousness, and then he looked at Aunt Harriet's thin, anxious face with the eyebrows drawn up that very same way, and then he glanced at Grace's thin, anxious face peering from the door waiting for his verdict—and then he drew a long breath, shut his ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... very carefully the third edition of the "New Education," and feel impelled, in order to satisfy my conscientiousness, to write a short article relative to the impressions which the reading of the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... see, now, whether you can draw it out of the sheath without hurting yourself." That process having been gone through more than once, Mr. Poulter felt that he had acted with scrupulous conscientiousness, and said, "Well, now, Master Tulliver, if I take the crown-piece, it is to make sure as you'll do ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... complacent in the sense of his own conscientiousness, he crushed every one with it, his family, his ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... to be regretted that his antagonists so seldom reciprocated this magnanimity. There was here, most certainly, a right and a wrong. But it is not easy for man accurately to adjust the balance. God alone can award the issue. The mind is saddened as it wanders amid the labyrinths of conscientiousness and of passion, of pure motives and impure ambition. This is, indeed, a fallen world. The drama of nations is a tragedy. Melancholy is the lot ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... 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
... welfare, as an imperious and solemn duty; and they have devoted their lives to the performance of this duty, with the usual mixture, it is true, of ambition and selfishness, but still, after all, with as much conscientiousness and honesty as the mass of men in the humbler walks of life evince in performing theirs. William of Normandy appears to have been one of this latter class; and in obeying the dictates of his ambition in seeking to gain possession of the ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... clothes, went to the nearest railway, off to London, collected his funds, crossed the water, and did not write one word to Clifford Hall, except a line to Julia. "Left England heart-broken, the victim of two egotists and my sweet Mary's weak conscientiousness. God forgive me, I am angry even with her, but ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... desires. The Bishop seemed to have forgotten the ancient maxim that prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament, and affliction the blessing of the New. These qualities that were going to produce ultimate success—conscientiousness, generosity, modesty, public spirit—they are, after all, as much gifts as any other gifts of intellect and bodily skill. How often has one seen boys who are immodest, idle, frivolous, mean-spirited, and ungenerous attain to the opposite virtues? Not often, I confess. Who ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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 ...
— Facts and Arguments for Darwin • Fritz Muller
... 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 ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... inability to put a work through, this dawdling erudition, this horror of manuscripts, every Oxford man knows them, and feels those temptations which seem to be in the air. Oxford is a discouraging place. College drudgery absorbs the hours of students in proportion to their conscientiousness. They have only the waste odds-and-ends of time for their own labours. They live in an atmosphere of criticism. They collect notes, they wait, they dream; their youth goes by, and the night comes when no man can ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... do, Carl had thought intently of her warning that she did care for clothes, dancing, country clubs. Ruth would have been caressingly surprised had she known the thought and worried conscientiousness he gave to the problem of planning "parties" for her. Ideas were always popping up in the midst of his work, and never giving him rest till he had noted them down on memo.-papers. He carried about, on the backs of envelopes, such notes ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... 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 carry ...
— What Sami Sings with the Birds • Johanna Spyri
... is not a stain on his character, and beg him to leave the court; but he will not be content with enough evidence: he will have you listen to all the evidence that exists in the world. Darwin's industry was enormous. His patience, his perseverance, his conscientiousness reached the human limit. But he never got deeper beneath or higher above his facts than an ordinary man could follow him. He was not conscious of having raised a stupendous issue, because, though it arose instantly, it was not his business. He was conscious of having discovered a process of ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... despoiled from her own stores, were gratefully appreciated by the officers of a remote frontier garrison. Lady Elfrida's health was toasted by the gallant colonel in a speech that was the soul of chivalry. Lord Runnybroke responded, perhaps without the American abandon, but with the steady conscientiousness of an hereditary legislator, but the M. P. summed up a slightly exaggerated but well meaning episode by pointing out that it was on occasions like this that the two nations showed their common ancestry by standing side by side. Only one thing troubled the rosy, excited, ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... 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 beyond her age." ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the most assured of all—together with all the modifications of opposite feeling, rage, jealousy, habitual malice, even love of mischief and comprehension of jest:—the one only moral sentiment wanting being that of responsibility to an Invisible being, or conscientiousness. But where, among brutes, shall we find the slightest trace of the Imaginative faculty, or of that discernment of beauty which our author most inaccurately confounds with it, or of the discipline of memory, grasping this or that circumstance at will, or of the still nobler foresight ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... brother and sister whom she has not known since very early childhood. She is so democratic in her social ideas that many amusing scenes occur, and it is hard for her to understand many things that she must learn. But her good heart carries her through, and her conscientiousness and moral courage win ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... here introduced to the English reader contains an excellent review of this literature, so far as it is represented in the English and German languages. Knowing the author personally, as I have done for many years, I recognize with pleasure in his work all the carefulness of inquiry, and all the conscientiousness of reasoning, which belong to a singularly ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... fear of not being busy; and if they are intelligent and in circumstances of leisure, they have such a sense of their responsibility that they hasten to allot all their time into portions, and leave no hour unprovided for. This is conscientiousness in women, and not restlessness. There is a day for music, a day for painting, a day for the display of tea-gowns, a day for Dante, a day for the Greek drama, a day for the Dumb Animals' Aid Society, a day for the Society ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and what he had determined to do he would do. To such natures reasoning is much like hammering on iron—it only hardens the metal. The minister would tax the colony because the King wished it; and he had neither the strength of mind nor the conscientiousness to resist his sovereign. The Lords stood on their dignity, and would impose the tax if only to show their power. The people considered the whole affair one of pounds shillings, and pence, and could not at all see why they should not wring out the last farthing from ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... a piece of good-fortune which I cannot too highly appreciate, that your studies should have been directed to the most difficult portion of Spanish history, from which you have thus removed for me all the thorns. The conscientiousness and the thoroughness of your researches, the perfect trustworthiness of your conclusions, and the lofty calmness of your judgments, are the precious supports on which I lean; and I have now, for the reign of Philip the Second, a guide whom I shall be ever proud and happy to follow, as I have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... best, with admirable conscientiousness and charity he undertook these tasks. God knows what it must have cost this Intellectual to fulfil precisely all the duties of his ministry, down to the humblest. What he would have liked, above all, was to pass his life in studying the Scriptures and meditating ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... acts of foolish anger which must have recoiled upon himself. In him warm feelings were found in singular combination with a cool head. An unyielding (p. 034) temper and an obstinate courage, an invincible confidence in his own judgment, and a stern conscientiousness carried him through these earlier years of severe trial as they had afterwards to carry him through many more. "The qualities of mind most peculiarly called for," he reflects in the Diary, "are firmness, perseverance, patience, coolness, and forbearance. The prospect is not promising; ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... self will appear to the attentive eye, and one can generally recognize that this impulse is only kept down by some other stronger force, as, for example, extreme sensitiveness to the judgment of others, great conscientiousness, and so on. And however this be, it will be allowed that the ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... of itself would not perhaps have vexed me so much—for I never entertained a very high opinion of feminine conscientiousness or scrupulosity—had she, when accepting me, been frank enough to admit that, whilst she was willing to do so, she entertained no very ardent sentiment of regard for me. But what inflicted an incurable wound alike upon my pride and my love was the fact ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... be a vitalist in biology, out of pure caution and conscientiousness, without sharing those prejudices; and many a speculative philosopher has been free from them who has been a vitalist in metaphysics. Schopenhauer, for instance, observed that the cannon-ball which, ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... lineaments of your fellow passengers. A scoop net of green cloth on a wire springs 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 ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... 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 ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... interests 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the committal may be readily foreseen. Mr. Pennifeather, amid 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." Soon afterward the unhappy wretch received ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... but supported it on the narrowest margin of independence. The girl had grown up in an atmosphere unfavourable to mental development, but she had received a fairly good education, and nature had dowered her with intelligence. A sense of her father's conscientiousness and of his true affection forbade her to criticise openly the principles on which he had directed her life; hence a habit of solitary meditation, which half fostered, yet half opposed, the ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... United States stand upon its strength and credit, maintaining its money, different kinds of money, at a parity with each other. If we will do that I think soon all these clouds will be dissipated and we may go home to our families and friends with a conscientiousness that we have done good work for our ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... waiting, 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 ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... The Bangor Jeffersonian said: "Miss Anthony is far from being an impracticable enthusiast. Dignity, conscientiousness and regard for the highest welfare of her sex, are the impressions which one receives of her. Doubtless all (if any there were) who went to scoff, remained to pray for the success of the doctrine she advocated. Personally she ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... you, Hannah, and I can understand how, with your extreme conscientiousness, you believed it your duty to do as you have done. But this must go no further. To discover Elizabeth Rogers is to confess ourselves the children of a murderer, and this I cannot allow. You have no right to visit father's sin upon Grey, who would be ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... 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, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... it happened, the piece is in the purest Pre-Raphaelite spirit. Ruskin insisted that, while composition was necessarily an affair of the imagination, the figures and accessories of a picture should be copies from the life. In the early days of the Brotherhood there was an ostentatious conscientiousness in observing this rule. We hear a great deal in Rossetti's correspondence about the brick wall at Chiswick which he copied into his picture "Found," and about his anxious search for a white calf for the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... newspaper, which was like the stone of Sisyphus, and which came every Monday, crashing down on to the feather of his pen, Etienne worked for three or four literary magazines. Still, do not be alarmed; he put no artistic conscientiousness into his work. This man of Sancerre had a facility, a carelessness, if you call it so, which ranked him with those writers who are mere scriveners, literary hacks. In Paris, in our day, hack-work cuts a man off from ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... Patrick. There were six knights installed on this occasion, one of the six being Lord Altamont. He had no doubt received his ribbon as a reward for his parliamentary votes, and especially in the matter of the union; yet, from all his conversation upon that question, and from the general conscientiousness of his private life, I am convinced that he acted all along upon patriotic motives, and in obedience to his real views (whether right or wrong) of the Irish interests. One chief reason, indeed, which detained us in Dublin, was ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... rail of our desks. To see how hard every one tried! And what a silence there was! One could hear nothing but the scraping of the pens on the paper. Once some cock-chafers flew in; but nobody took any heed, not even the little ones, who worked away at their pothooks with such enthusiasm and conscientiousness as if feeling there was something French about them. On the roof of the school the pigeons cooed softly, and I thought ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... 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 family there would be one warrior, ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... but with the hesitation of conscientiousness rather than evasion. "That is—you know I WAS. But don't you see, it couldn't be. It wouldn't do, you know. If those clannish neighbors of hers—that Southern set—suspected that Miss Sally was courted by an Englishman, don't ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... me. Nothing bores me (though I be stoned for the confession, I must make it!) more than a woman who is bent on improving her mind, or forming her manners, or moulding her character, or watching her motives, with that deadly-lively conscientiousness that makes so many good people disagreeable. Why can't they consider the lilies, which grow by receiving sun and air and dew from God, and not hopping about over the lots to find the warmest corner or the wettest hollow, to see how much bigger and brighter they can grow? It was real rest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... 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 ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... study. This was beyond and behind the dining-room. Book-shelves towered on all sides, filled with volumes of all sizes, and in nearly all languages, some in exquisitely neat white vellum binding, with Tome One, Tome Two, etcetera, in shining gold on their backs—the products of an age when a conscientiousness could be traced in the perfect finish of all the details of a work external or internal; some in the form of stately folios, suggestive at once both of the solidity and depth of learning possessed ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... said Clifford solemnly, "is unknown to any one, at least," he added with much conscientiousness, "as far as I can learn. Every fellow in the Quarter bows to her and she returns the salute gravely, but no man has ever been known to obtain more than that. Her profession, judging from her music-roll, is that of a pianist. Her residence is in a small and humble street which ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... a 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 ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... public and private attention, our young dramatist continued to work with energy and conscientiousness. But her efforts were forestalled by an event, or rather a condition of the national temper, of which too little notice has been taken by literary historians. The attacks on the stage for its indecency and blasphemy had been flippantly met by the theatrical agents, but they had ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... even to Bessie would or could Lena confide the story of Percy's misdoing and its direful results, longing though she might be for her sympathy and advice. Lena knew Bessie's strict conscientiousness, which was almost equalled by her own, and she knew also Bessie's complete trust in her parents, and how in any trouble her first thought would be to confide in them in full faith that they would be only too ready to lift the ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... boat, and rowing her in sunshine and shade, enjoying her wonder and exultation most benevolently. In a short time he left her to herself, for he had much property, to whose numerous details he attended with rigid conscientiousness, and he had been a student from his youth, and sat almost as much as Dr. Bower in his library, although it was an airier and more heterogeneously fitted-up sanctuary. Leslie was perfectly satisfied; in fact, while the novelty around her was fresh, she preferred to wander about at ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... it darling; I hope we are doing the right thing," and his voice implied a painful sense of conscientiousness. ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... are now as earnest and more numerous: let the same circumstances call them forth and they will be found. A superior civilisation, a clearer understanding of the principles of civil and religious liberty, a more tolerant temper now prevail, but there is as much conscientiousness still; and now as ever, in this and in every land, men, deeply imbued with the principles of Christianity, will be found ready to bear the testimony of the advocate or the confessor, as events demand. The spirit evinced by Lord Brougham pervaded, to a less extent, a large number ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... marked by a quality which may be called conscientiousness or thoroughness. Looking through his memoirs, written many years ago, the subjects of which have since been handled and rehandled by other writers with new knowledge and with new methods at their ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... of Colman's lack of conscientiousness in this matter, a letter he wrote to Mr. Frederick Yates, in 1829, may be cited. A dramatic author, the friend both of Colman and Yates, had bitterly complained of the retrenchments made by the Examiner in a certain play, or, to follow ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... uneventful. The modesty which Professor Forbes truly ascribes to him disinclined him to take a part, as a good many lawyers did, in public affairs, except for a short period before the Revolution, as a member of Parliament; and, together with his prudence and strong conscientiousness, preserved him from mixing in the political and personal intrigues which were then so rife in the country. The same modesty is apparent in his writings in mature life to a tantalising degree. It may not be so conspicuous in his boyish journal, ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... sense of Chance) seems properly to be the occurrence of Opportunity to one who has neither deserved nor knows how to use it. In such hands it commonly turns to ill luck. Moore's Bermudan appointment is an instance of it Wordsworth had a sound common-sense and practical conscientiousness, which enabled him to fil his office as well as Dr. Franklin could have done. A fitter man could not have ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... 'borrowed my theory of universals from Hegel'—a distinct refusal to retract his 'professional warning' based upon these accusations. These were the chief points of my Card, and I note the refusal implied by Dr. Royce's evasive letter. But I decline to accept his plea of 'conscientiousness' in maintaining the accusation as to Hegel. I might as well plead 'conscientiousness' in maintaining an accusation that Dr. Royce assassinated Abraham Lincoln, in face of the evidence that John Wilkes Booth ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... is 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 ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... obtained from Clement XIV. Under his successors the world had an opportunity of comparing the times when Popes like Alexander III. or Innocent IV. governed the Church from their exile, and now, when men of the greatest piety and conscientiousness virtually postponed their duty as head of the Church to their rights as temporal sovereigns, and, like the senators of old, awaited the Gauls upon their throne. There is a lesson not to be forgotten in the contrast between the policy and the fate of the great ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... as she thought 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 ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... patiently. Dozens of costumes passed through her hands. She saw plays come and go. Dresses came to her whose lining bore the mark of world-famous modistes. She hung them away, or refurbished them if necessary with disinterested conscientiousness. Sometimes her caustic comment, as she did so, would have startled the complacency of the erstwhile wearers of the garments. Her knowledge of the stage, its artifices, its pretence, its narrowness, its shams, was widening and deepening. No critic in bone-rimmed glasses and evening clothes was ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... Gervinus, while following Schlegel as to "the bent of Hamlet's mind to reflect upon the nature and consequences of his deed, and by this means to paralyze his active powers," adds to this defect a deplorable conscientiousness, which unfits Hamlet for the great duty of revenge. And Mr. Dowden, while most ably collating these various kinds and degrees of irresolution, concludes that Hamlet is "disqualified for action by his excess of the ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... assurance, the oppression of misery, a sense of the worthlessness of the world's whole economy—each demanding delay, might yet well, all together, affect the man's feeling as mere causes of rather than reasons for hesitation. The conscientiousness of Hamlet stands out the clearer that, throughout, his dislike to his uncle, predisposing him to believe any ill of him, is more than evident. By his incompetent or prejudiced judges, Hamlet's accusations and justifications of himself are equally placed to the discredit of his account. ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... of Khartum, while treachery was rife all around, bound him not to leave them until he could do so "under a Government which would give them some hope of peace." Here again his duty as Governor of the Sudan, or his extreme conscientiousness as a man, held him to his post despite the express recommendations of the British Government. His decision is ever to be regretted; but it redounds to his honour as a Christian and a soldier. At bottom, the misunderstanding ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... others, by public opinion and habits formed through education and training. (3) Self-satisfaction, originating in the agent's own consciousness. It may be a sense of pleasure or feeling of self-approbation: or higher still, the idea of duty for its own sake, commonly called 'conscientiousness.' (4) The ideal of life, the highest imperative of conscience. Here the nobility of life, as a whole, the supreme life-purpose, gives meaning and incentive to each and every action. The ideal of life is not, however, something static ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... 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 ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... is being made and multiplied might succeed in allying the Church and Medicine and the Law, with splendid and lasting effect. But we spend thousands of pounds in estimating correlations between hair colour and conscientiousness, fertility and longevity, stature and the number of domestic servants, and so forth, meanwhile protesting against too hasty attempts to guide public opinion on these refined matters; and this tremendous eugenic reform, which awaits the emergence of some ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... knowing how William regarded her conscientiousness, was uneasy because of a certain recollection. She must get to the bottom of this. She sought Aunt Louise privately. "Aren't you a ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... 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 ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... only, but all her sisters who had suffered for John's advancement, would exact the price of their sacrifices in a consuming jealousy to be first in his favour. She saw it so clearly that she pitied him for what would worry him incessantly and be met by him with a patient conscientiousness. He would never understand—could never understand—on what these jealous sisters ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... without parley, and the pufformance was offered for his entertainment with admirable conscientiousness. True to the Lady Clara caste and training, Roderick's pale, fat face expressed nothing except an impervious superiority and, as he sat, cold and unimpressed upon the front bench, like a large, white lump, it must be said that he made a discouraging audience "to play to." He ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... have ex-Governor Boutwell, of Massachusetts, Secretary of State. The conduct of European affairs requires pure patriotism—that is, conscientiousness of being an American by principle, in the noblest philosophical sense, sound common sense, discretion, simplicity, sobriety of mind, firmness, clear-sightedness. Boutwell would be a Secretary ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... 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 ...
— James Lane Allen: A Sketch of his Life and Work • Macmillan Company
... in thirty fine volumes. After all has been said about self-indulgent mannerisms, moral perversities, phraseological outrages, and the rest, these volumes will remain the noble monument of the industry, originality, conscientiousness, and genius of a noble character, and of an intellectual career that has exercised on many sides the profoundest sort of influence upon English feeling. Men who have long since moved far away from these spiritual latitudes, like those who still find an adequate shelter in them, can hardly ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... to rule well one of the larger States meant strict attention to its affairs and conscientiousness on the part of the ruler; careful husbanding of its resources, with at the same time a tender care for the interests of all classes; and the employing of the masses in the ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... moment, Darling was tempted to do as the captain told him; but the man's love of duty and conscientiousness was strong within him. He knew that the vessel, worth probably a hundred thousand pounds, would certainly go to destruction if left to pursue its course, and how could he, as a humane and honest man, allow that to occur because ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... parts 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 ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... and myself 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 lover? ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... window which overlooked this sylvan aspect, modified if not fashioned by man, a young woman with seeming conscientiousness, told her beads. The apartment, though richly furnished, was in keeping with the devout character of its fair mistress. A brush or aspersorium, used for sprinkling holy water, was leaning against the wall. Upon a table lay an ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... viewing history as the record of intellectual emancipation, while to Comte its deepest interest was as a record of moral and emotional cultivation. If we value in one type of thinker the intellectual conscientiousness, which refrains from perplexing men by propounding problems unless the solution can be set forth also, perhaps we owe no less honour in the thinker of another type to that intellectual self-denial which makes him very careful lest the too rigid projection ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... both sexes. Not much unlike the boy in childhood, there comes a time when in the rapid evolution of puberty the girl becomes for a while more than the equal of the lad, and, owing to her conscientiousness, his moral superior, but at this era of her life she is weighted by periodical disabilities which become needlessly hard to consider in a school meant to be both home and school for both sexes. Finally, there comes a time when the matured man certainly surpasses the woman in ...
— Wear and Tear - or, Hints for the Overworked • Silas Weir Mitchell
... this, meanwhile, John A. Kennedy was unquestionably more sinned against than sinning—made the tool of worse and more unscrupulous men, who used his hard conscientiousness and his narrow bigotry of mind, fostered by too long and too close connection with the lodges of secret societies—to carry out their own designs of despotism, without the nobility to stand between him and his possible sacrifice for obeying ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... I have not made the promises and vows!' she said, as if her stern conscientiousness obtained ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... recovery of their fortunes; but his mother, faithful even in direst poverty to her New England blood, sent him to school, determined that at any sacrifice he should finish his education. But by degrees Mrs. Raymond drifted into another class of work. She became a nurse, and, in a situation where her conscientiousness was invaluable, slowly established a connection that in time kept her constantly busy. She won the regard of an important physician, and not only won it but kept it, and thus little by little found her way into good houses, where she was ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... measure, that the Europeans, after the introduction of Christianity, exploded this principle of the ancients, as frivolous and false; that they spared the lives of the vanquished, not from the sordid motives of avarice, but from a conscientiousness, that homicide could only be justified by necessity; that they introduced an exchange of prisoners, and, by many and wise regulations, deprived war of many ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... 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 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... resentment. The fact, that he was acknowledged and felt by all to be a perfectly just man, is apparent through the whole course of his action in all the affairs of life. His uprightness, freedom from unworthy prejudice, and clear and transparent conscientiousness, appear in all documents, depositions, and records that proceeded from him. He was often called to give evidence in land causes and other trials at law; and his testimony is always straightforward, fair, and lucid. You can tell from the style, temper, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... stories, exaggerates. The President has the average man's virtues of common sense and conscientiousness with rather more than the average man's political skill and the average man's industry or lack of industry. His mentality is not lacking; it is undisciplined, especially in its higher ranges, by hard effort. There is a certain softness about him mentally. It is not an ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... changed only in outward deference to modern usages and conditions. If there had been occasion, Mr. Spurgeon could have led them for any sacrifice to what they believed to be right. I felt the power of that suppressed feeling—I would not say fanaticism, but intense conscientiousness—which occasionally in elections ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... 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 to shift the reader ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... Norway in July, 1910. The dog question was thus as good as solved, since the choice 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
... man in history; for if there is any sublime human virtue it is his. He was certainly the noblest character of his time, and I know no other man who combined such unaffected kindness, mildness, and humility, with such conscientiousness and severity towards himself. We possess innumerable busts of him, for every Roman of his time was anxious to possess his portrait, and if there is anywhere an expression of virtue it is in the ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... big as a suburban villa, and every now and again the furniture gives a comfy little crack or two, like someone practising with a pistol, just to remind me that my great-great-great-grandmother's ghost is sitting in the wardrobe and watching over me with true great-etc.-grandmotherly conscientiousness.... I say, do you ride? There ought to be some rippin' rides round here, if my ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew |
