Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

Conscience is justice’s best minister; it threatens, promises, rewards, and punishes and keeps all under control; the busy must attend to its remonstrances, the most powerful submit to its reproof, and the angry endure its upbraidings. While conscience is our friend all is peace; but if once offended farewell the tranquil mind.

Character | Conscience | Control | Friend | Justice | Mind | Peace |

Austin Phelps

A disciplined conscience is a man's best friend. It may not be his most amiable, but it is his most faithful monitor.

Character | Conscience | Friend | Man |

Thomas Paine

'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.

Business | Character | Conduct | Conscience | Death | Heart | Little | Principles | Will | Business |

Thomas Paine

I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.

Business | Character | Conscience | Distress | Heart | Little | Love | Man | Principles | Reflection | Smile | Strength | Will | Business |

Richardson Pack or Packe

There is nothing a man can less afford to leave at home than his conscience or his good habits; for it is not to be denied that travel is, in its immediate circumstances, unfavorable to habits of self-discipline, regulation of thought, sobriety of conduct, and dignity of character. Indeed, one of the great lessons of travel is the discovery how much our virtues owe to the support of constant occupation, to the influence of public opinion, and to the force of habit; a discovery very dangerous, if it proceed from an actual yielding to temptations resisted at home, and not from a consciousness of increased power put forth in withstanding them.

Character | Circumstances | Conduct | Conscience | Consciousness | Dignity | Discipline | Discovery | Force | Good | Habit | Influence | Man | Nothing | Occupation | Opinion | Power | Public | Regulation | Self | Thought | Yielding | Discovery |

Publius Syrus

Even when there is no law, there is conscience... An evil conscience is often quiet, but never secure.

Character | Conscience | Evil | Law | Quiet |

Francis Quarles

Every man’s vanity ought to be his greatest shame; and every man’s folly ought to be his greatest secret.

Character | Folly | Man | Shame |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It is only when we haggle with conscience that we have recourse to the subtleties of argument.

Argument | Character | Conscience |

Lillian Smith, fully Lillian Eugenia Smith

Minds broken in two. Hearts broken. Conscience torn from acts. A culture split in a thousand pieces. That is segregation.

Character | Conscience | Culture |

Logan Pearsall Smith

We grow with the years more fragile in body but morally stouter, and can throw off the chill of a bad conscience almost at once.

Body | Character | Conscience |

Richard Sibbes (or Sibbs)

We can do nothing well without joy, and a good conscience which is the ground of joy.

Character | Conscience | Good | Joy | Nothing |

George Sewell

Fear is the tax that conscience pays to guilt.

Character | Conscience | Fear | Guilt |

Samuel Smiles

Good character is human nature in its best form. It is moral order embodied in the individual. Men of character are not only the conscience of society, but in every well governed state they are its best motive power; for it is moral qualities which, in the main, rule the world.

Character | Conscience | Good | Human nature | Individual | Men | Nature | Order | Power | Qualities | Rule | Society | World |

Horace Smith

Every man, like narcissus, becomes enamored of the reflection of himself, only choosing a substance instead of a shadow. This love for any particular woman is self-love at second hand, vanity reflected, compound egotism.

Character | Love | Man | Reflection | Self | Self-love | Woman |