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Conscientiousness   Listen
noun
Conscientiousness  n.  The quality of being conscientious; a scrupulous regard to the dictates of conscience.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Conscientiousness" Quotes from Famous Books



... Mr. Dodgson possessed an intense natural appreciation of the beautiful, an abhorrence of all that is coarse and unseemly which might almost be called hyper-refinement, a wonderfully good eye for form, and last, but not least, the most scrupulous conscientiousness about detail. On the other hand his sense of colour was somewhat imperfect, and his hand was almost totally untrained, so that while he had all the enthusiasm of the true artist, his work always had the ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

... nephew's painful conscientiousness and stern performance of duty. What a martyr he made of ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... and moral quality. This was especially notable in Sarah Moore Grimke, the sixth child, who even in her childhood continually surprised her family by her independence, her sturdy love of truth, and her clear sense of justice. Her conscientiousness was such that she never sought to conceal or even excuse anything wrong she did, but accepted submissively whatever punishment or reprimand was inflicted ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney

... neither deny nor attempt to palliate, but I trust her true womanly heart as I trust my own manly honor; and a stern sense of justice to the absent constrains me to vindicate her from Muriel's hasty and unfounded aspersions. So strong is my faith in Salome's conscientiousness, so earnest my friendship for her, that since the receipt of Professor V——'s letter I have determined to go immediately to Europe, and if possible discover her retreat. My sister's adopted child must not and shall not suffer and struggle among ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... who had the bump of conscientiousness largely developed, with a wholesome dread of consequences, besides being grievously timid, felt that he could not hold out long. "Oh, murder!" he groaned to Mark Galloway, next to whom he sat: "let's tell, ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood

... nature, and at once debilitated and excited by disease. Seldom, indeed, have the ambition and perfidy of tyrants produced evils greater than those which were brought on our country by that fatal conscientiousness. A conjuncture singularly auspicious, a conjuncture at which wisdom and justice might perhaps have reconciled races and sects long hostile, and might have made the British islands one truly United Kingdom, was suffered to pass away. The opportunity, once ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... "I see you still play your role of protector. You might tell your charge whether or not I am mistaken as to the probable result of his—ah—artistic conscientiousness." ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright

... is, if, by a marriage with Edward, she saw you on the point of obtaining those worldly advantages, which she supposes that you sought in so dreadful a manner. She is haunted by the idea that Mr. Middleton will leave his fortune to you; and, by a strange mixture of vengeance and conscientiousness, she is really tormented by the belief that she is committing a heinous sin in keeping the truth from him; and the only way which I could find of calming her scruples, was by informing her of the conditions ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton

... if she did not want to presume upon the generosity of her friend, knew that the masculine Alicia would be prepared for any emergency, having both the will and the ability to help her. It was only her extreme conscientiousness that had led her, thus far, to struggle on with her self-imposed burden. The girl had argued that it was not right to call upon others to relieve from that which she had assumed of ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock

... Jersey to live with a 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 affection ...
— Dorothy Dainty at the Mountains • Amy Brooks

... looked sternly at Warrington, as though in some way he might be responsible. I could not help feeling that she had a peculiar sense of conscientiousness about him, that she was just a bit more strict in gauging him than she would have been if he had not been the wealthy young Mr. Warrington whom scores and hundreds of mothers and guardians in society would have welcomed for the sake of ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve

... grew more and more thoughtful as he gazed into the face of his wife, and his mind went over the ground of his church experience. If, only, he was, perhaps, thinking, if only the good God had not given him so sensitive and fine-tempered a spirit of conscientiousness. He almost envied men of coarse, blunt feelings, of common ideals ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon

... 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, talked to the servants and paid long visits to the kitchen and ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc

... here is a faith capable of producing a distinctive type of character. It tends at its best toward an extreme conscientiousness and an always excessive introspection; it creates also a vast and brooding patience. "In countries where reincarnation and karma [the law of Cause and Effect] are taken for granted by every peasant ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins

... papers could not resist the temptation that was offered. "Fancy having to read through all Punch's jokes week after week for years!" exclaimed one. "No wonder we are a hardy race. No wonder the poor man shot himself." Mr. Pincott was a man of great ability, of remarkable erudition, and extreme conscientiousness. Although his bereavement was preying on his mind, he saw the paper out, and did not commit the fatal act until he had sent his usual letter to the Editor, wherewith he would relieve himself of his week's responsibility. "I never met a man with so much information and of so varied a character," ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... 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 ...
— James Lane Allen: A Sketch of his Life and Work • Macmillan Company

... to him what he did not understand, and endeavored in every way to develop and strengthen his mental powers. Alfred was a favorite, and, as such, was always very much indulged; but there was a certain conscientiousness and gentleness of spirit which marked his character even in these early years, and seemed to defend him from the injurious influences which indulgence and extreme attention and care often produce. ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... 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 exaggerating ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq

... openness to conviction, or a willingness to receive after proper proof; not a determination to believe without investigation. He also pointed out to me what I was less prepared to hear, that the charity spoken of does not mean, as I supposed it to express, conscientiousness, but love and good fellowship, in action and speech; in fact, more in accordance with the sense in which the word is commonly understood. This will show you the evil of coming to conclusions on insufficient data. Depend upon it, you must always hear both sides of a story before ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills

... 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 ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington

... 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 ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... when she was in her senior year that her father died. She finished out her laboratory work with lavish conscientiousness, feeling a new tenderness of him in the consciousness that his ideas for her had failed. That hour before his funeral, when she sat beside him alone, stood out as among the very vivid moments of her life. The tragedy of his life seemed that he ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell

... 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 in what coin ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... scarcely necessary to say that few schools have ever been established upon such a basis of conscientiousness and love, and with such adaptability in its conductors, as that at Eagleswood; few have ever held before the pupils so high a moral standard, or urged them on to such noble purposes in life. Children entered there spoiled ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various

... seldom known to smile. He had many of the attributes of greatness, indomitable energy and perseverance, untiring industry, comprehensive grasp of thought and capability of superintending the minutest details. He had, also, a certain fanatic conscientiousness about him, like that which actuated Saul of Tarsus, when, holding the garments of those who stoned the martyr, he "verily thought that he was doing ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... 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 romantic hope, a sanction whose doctrines—unlike ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... were at breakfast, Johnson gave a very earnest recommendation of what he himself practised with the utmost conscientiousness: I mean a strict attention to truth, even in the most minute particulars. 'Accustom your children (said he) constantly to this; if a thing happened at one window, and they, when relating it, say that it happened at another, do not let ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... some weeks, at the end of which time he received the proofs, which he read and re-read with real pleasure before setting himself to correcting them with meticulous care. He performed this task with such conscientiousness, and made so many minor alterations—he changed most of those flighty colons to more conventional semicolons—that the confidential clerk swore terribly when he glanced at the proofs before handing them to a boy, with instructions to remove three-quarters ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton

... fear Dr. Clarke [Footnote: Author of "Sex in Education."] is not so far wrong; but I do not think it is the study—it is the morbid conscientiousness of the girls, who think they must ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell

... sure that when both of you have talked it well over, we can trust you both 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 little speech to make this talking-it-over a walk through a field full of ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet

... 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 side of his life which has little illustration, ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry

... discriminating or observing differences, and another in which resides the power of tracing effects to causes. There are also parts of the brain for the sentimental part of our nature, or the affections, at the head of which stand the moral feelings of benevolence, conscientiousness, and veneration. Through these, man stands in relation to himself, his fellow-men, the external world, and his God; and through these comes most of the happiness of man's life, as well as that which he derives from the contemplation of the world to come, and the cultivation of his ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers

... each of whose works contains almost a human life. In their room and in this, you will find all the contradictory and complementary instruction which one would like to give you. Over there, sobriety, patience, assiduous effort, absolute conscientiousness in the smallest detail; life bowed in all humility, but yet steadfast and fervent; imagination and beauty that do not strive to shine: if you want a proof, look at the great number that remained anonymous! Here, on the contrary, prodigality, exultant love, blood coursing triumphantly through conquered ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc

... labor, payable by the hour. If he happen to have keen 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: ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... the jury commenced. The solicitor very briefly adverted to the leading facts, deprecated any attempt to turn the case into ridicule, admitted that the witness was a man of eccentricity and pedantry, but harmless and inoffensive; a man, evidently, of conscientiousness and respectability; that he had shown himself to be a peaceable man, but when occasion demanded, a brave man; that there was a conspiracy to assassinate him upon no cause except an independence, which was honorable to him, and an attempt to execute the purpose, in pursuance ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various

... 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 ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King

... and an extraordinary development of the spiritual nature. There 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 Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... seemed as if her heart could not love without her touch; but instead of training herself in a little self-control and obedience, she thought it "cross;" and Mamma was no sooner out of sight than her arm was around Kate's waist. Kate struggled at first—it did not suit her honourable conscientiousness; but then Sylvia would begin to cry at the unkindness, say Kate did not love her, that she would not be proud if she was a countess: and Kate gave in, liked the love—of which, poor child! she got so little—and let Sylvia do as she pleased, but never without a sense of disobedience ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge

... 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 ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... 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

... "requires something more than her loving instincts, her ready sympathies. With all her good-will and conscientiousness, mistakes are made. The records of infant mortality offer a melancholy illustration of the necessity of the mother's previous preparation for the care of her children. The first-born die in infancy in much larger proportion than their successors in ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz

... may congratulate you on your recent promotion? You certainly deserve it," Kenwardine remarked with an ironical smile. "I imagine your conscientiousness and energy are unusual, but perhaps at times ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss

... bowl, which had 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 ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers

... 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 the firm, a thing no more ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore

... effectively compressed 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 ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley

... Generally, the temper which would make an admirable artist is humble and observant, capable of taking much interest in little things, and of entertaining itself pleasantly in the dullest circumstances. Suppose, added to these characters, a steady conscientiousness which seeks to do its duty wherever it may be placed, and the power, denied to few artistical minds, of ingenious invention in almost any practical department of human skill, and it can hardly be doubted that the very humility and conscientiousness which ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin

... of course, often, they think they understand, they think they sympathise. Then it is they're most dangerous. Their idea is that you shall do a great lot and get a great lot of money. Their great nobleness and virtue, their exemplary conscientiousness as British females, is in keeping you up to that. My wife makes all my bargains with my publishers for me, and has done so for twenty years. She does it consummately well—that's why I'm really pretty well off. Aren't you the father of their innocent babes, and ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James

... bravery of the soldier, he united the calm and cool penetration of the general and the persevering fortitude of the man, with the daring resolution of youth; with the wild ardour of the warrior, the sober dignity of the prince, the moderation of the sage, and the conscientiousness of the man of honour. Discouraged by no misfortune, he quickly rose again in full vigour from the severest defeats; no obstacles could check his enterprise, no disappointments conquer his indomitable perseverance. His genius, perhaps, soared after ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... 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 of your ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root

... 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. ...
— Wear and Tear - or, Hints for the Overworked • Silas Weir Mitchell

... brushed the wrong way. Reflection warned her that her deliberative intensely sincere pause before she responded to Mr. Romfrey's last demand, might have implied more than her words. She consoled herself with the thought that it was the dainty susceptibility of her conscientiousness which caused these noble qualms, and so deeply does a refined nature esteem the gift, that her pride in it helped her to overlook her moral perturbation. She was consoled, moreover, up to the verge of triumph in her realization of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... 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

... since her debut as a public singer—the highest esteem. She is one of the most conscientious of women in her private walk, conscientious in every relationship and duty and practice that go to make the sum of her daily life. This conscientiousness, involving patience, humility, perseverance, and integrity, has been, we think, the real secret of her success. And no one who has watched her steady rise from poverty to affluence, and from obscurity to fame, will deny ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... a somewhat important omission on the part of De Loo, and gives the measure of his conscientiousness or his capacity as a negotiator. Certainly for the Lord-Treasurer of England to offer, on the part of her Majesty, to bring about the reduction of her allies under the yoke which they had thrown off without her assistance, and this without leave asked of them, and with no provision for the great ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... 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

... busily engaged in looking after his two subordinates as they bustled about in the operations of clearing away. He was a man of whom, if the shape of certain bones and muscles of the face is ever to be taken as a guide to the character, one might safely have predicated conscientiousness in the performance of duties, a thorough knowledge of all that appertained to them, a general desire to live on without troubling his mind about anything which did not concern him. Any person interested in the matter would have assumed ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... Wonder, Comparison, etc. They must act, and they must end, according to the influences of their crania. Thus we find in Randal Leslie the predominant organs of Constructiveness, Secretiveness, Comparison, and Eventuality, while Benevolence, Conscientiousness, Adhesiveness, are utterly nil. Now, to divine how such a man must end, we must first see what is the general composition of the society in which he moves, in short, what other gases are brought into contact with his phlogiston. As ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... of an honorable and public-spirited, as well as an able and patriotic, statesman. If not so astute and sagacious as some who have held the presidency, especially in failing to see where his political principles, if carried out to their logical conclusions, would lead, his conscientiousness and liberality of mind prevented him from falling gravely into error or making any very fatal mistakes. Though far from orthodox,—indeed, a freethinker he may be termed, in matters of religious belief, his personal life was most exemplary, and his relations with his ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.

... 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 and completed, given once and ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... 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 book produced in ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various

... to pray, as he always did before going to sleep, and it was while he was on his knees that he had a waking vision of what might be in the world when once the new discipleship had made its way into the conscience and conscientiousness of Christendom. He was fully conscious of being awake, but no less certainly did it seem to him that he saw certain results with great distinctiveness, partly as realities of the future, partly great longings that they might be realities. And this is what Henry ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon

... neighbours, nearly tumbling down the companion-ladder in their eagerness to be first in the field. They lost no time over the unlovely detail of tucking a corner of their napkins down their necks, and smoothing its folds over their protuberant persons; and they studied the Speise-Karte with a conscientiousness that was worthy of a ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson

... as he did not see me, he was scolding his 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 far ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi

... 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 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... 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 a ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope

... act of highway robbery he was sent to the penitentiary. The reader will observe the general activity of the intellect and the adjacent social sentiments indicated by the translucency, and the general torpor, indicated by the opacity in the regions of Religion, Hope, Reverence, Love, Conscientiousness, Industry, Cheerfulness, Love of Approbation, Sense of Honor, and Self-respect. Secretiveness shows opacity, while Combativeness shows intense activity which extends into ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various

... had the confidence of a people in the discharge of a high judicial duty more than had Joseph H. Lumpkin. His public duties were discharged with the most scrupulous conscientiousness, as were all of those pertaining to his private life and relations. He died in the neighborhood of his birth, and where he had continued to live through his whole life, passing through time with the companions ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... Democratic Society of Lexington, and that he understands Kentucky affairs with regard to national and international complications as no other living man. While questioning me on the subject, he had the manner of one who, from conscientiousness, would further verify facts which he had already tested. But what impressed me even more than his knowledge was his justice; in illustration of which I shall never forget his saying, that the part which Kentucky had taken, or had wished to take, in the Spanish and French conspiracies had caused ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen

... cultivated in England, and this he believes to be the highest compliment which can be paid to a fruit, or indeed to anything else. He found reason to speak well of the influence of the Christian missionaries on the natives, and of the conscientiousness of the latter, ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany

... them for testimony to the veracity of 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

... Jobling bolted abruptly out of the room, and proceeded in his own official department, to impress the lives in waiting with a sense of his keen conscientiousness in the discharge of his duty, and the great difficulty of getting into the Anglo-Bengalee; by feeling their pulses, looking at their tongues, listening at their ribs, poking them in the chest, and so forth; though, if he didn't well know beforehand that whatever kind of lives ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... conscientiousness led him to become acquainted with all the different processes of reproduction so much in vogue, and he was ever anxious to learn all ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... the rubbing, and the ointment used seems uncleanly because of its color and because it is necessary to leave what is not rubbed in on the skin so that it discolors the underwear. The mercurial rub is at its best when it is given by some one else, since few patients have the needed combination of conscientiousness, energy, and determination to carry through a long course. The advantages of the method properly carried out cannot be overestimated. It is entirely possible in a given case of syphilis to accomplish by a sufficient number of inunctions everything that mercury ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes

... came, and there was prepared a good dinner of pork, and the three came ready prepared to curse us." Part of the agreement was that the dinner should follow upon the cursing. But whether it was that the rogues could do nothing until they were fortified with drink, or that a sudden spasm of conscientiousness came upon them, or that they were like superstitious people who with blanched lips loudly protest that they do not believe in ghosts, but decline on principle to walk through a churchyard after dark, these three fellows all ran ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... 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. The glue-pot, ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray

... one's lips, and are thoughtlessly spoken. But, in Mercy's times of conflict with herself, even these were exaggerated in her view to monstrous deceits. She had again and again held long conversations with Mr. Allen on this subject, but he failed to help her. He was a good man, of average conscientiousness and average perception: he literally could not see many of the points which Mercy's keener analysis ferreted out, and sharpened into weapons for her own pain. He thought her ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson

... the five girls who had banded themselves together in the reform that met with such signal failure refused to commit themselves, nevertheless the purpose of their compact, revealed by Mignon's sarcastic tirade at the party, was no longer a secret. Regarding the conscientiousness of their motives, opinions were divided. Certain girls who had a wholesome respect for wealth, personified in Mignon, murmured among themselves that it was a shame she had been so badly treated, while under the Deans' roof. A few still bolder spirits went so far as ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... a sneer, "if Olivia were alive, I dare scarcely have trusted you, could I? But you have nothing to gain by my death, you know; and I have so much faith in you, in your skill, and your honor, and your conscientiousness—if there be any such qualities in the world—that I place myself unfalteringly under your professional care. Shake ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

... the preparations for his union, or rather reunion, with this pale creature in a dogged, unflinching spirit which did credit to his conscientiousness. Nobody would have conceived from his outward demeanour that there was no amatory fire or pulse of romance acting as stimulant to the bustle going on in his gaunt, great house; nothing but three large resolves—one, to make ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... 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 was ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... praises Tennyson for "conscientiousness in the use and choice of words." He should have said "the choice and use of words," for choice must precede use to be of any service. Mr. Hughes says it is of great importance that we should all be as conscientious ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote

... 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

... Greek instead of consulting a translation finds that honesty is translated into his character. If he works out his mathematical problems thoroughly, he not only becomes a mathematician, but becomes a thorough man. It is by constant and conscientious attention to daily duties that thoroughness and conscientiousness and honorableness are imbedded in our ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond

... 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 ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... old Scotch lady, who heard our ghostly foe evil spoken of, remarked that, "If we were all as diligent and conscientious as the Devil, it would be better for us." Now, the buccaneers were certainly models of diligence and conscientiousness in their own industry, which was to torture people till they gave up their goods, and then to run them through the body, and spend the spoils over drink and dice. Except Dampier, who was a clever man, but a poor buccaneer (Mr. Clark Russell has written his life), they were the most hideously ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang

... been the champion of the laity against the clergy, of spiritual and intellectual freedom against the Roman yoke, he could not represent him as a monster of wickedness, trampling on morality for his own selfish ends. Doing full justice to the conscientiousness of Mary Tudor, excusing her more than some think she ought to be excused, he depicted the heroes of her bloody reign not only in Latimer and Ridley, but in the scores and hundreds of lowlier persons who died ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... different way. There was good development in the intellectual, sympathetic, and emotional part of his nature; and this combination made him a popular preacher. There was more than mere animal magnetism needed to account for this; there was intellectual power, but not much firmness or conscientiousness. If he were present, he would probably acknowledge that something had led him on to do whatever he had done in spite of himself. What was very peculiar in the man was his youthfulness. He had been before the world for ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... of honesty, of principle, of conscientiousness, if they were all with one accord to rise against him and ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... imaginative and reflective organs are very large—those, of calculation 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

... experience had consisted in rearing one very sensitive and timid daughter, who needed for her development only an extreme of tenderness, and whose conscientiousness was a law unto herself, stood utterly confounded before the turbulent little spirit to which her loving-kindness had opened so ready an asylum, and she soon discovered that it is one thing to take a human being to bring up, and another to ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... materials at hand were not those from 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

... considered that it was to that maintenance of a policy identified in their eyes with that Protestant ascendency which his supporters took to be both the chief bulwark and one of the most essential parts of the constitution that he owed his position as their member. With a conscientiousness which was rather overstrained, and not quite consistent with the legitimate position of a member of the House of Commons as a representative, and not a delegate, he now conceived that his change of view on the subject made it proper for him ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... Meyer. There is a beautiful theatre there, and the orchestra and the other not very important characters I hope to get from a neighbouring German Court- theatre. In that manner I must try (D.V.) to produce something myself and in my own way which will once more restore freshness and artistic conscientiousness to me. Apart from this, such an undertaking offers me the only possible chance of sustaining my position. It was only by a somewhat frivolous proceeding—the sale of "Tannhauser" to the Josephstadt Theatre at Vienna—that I succeeded in preserving my ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... paddy fields as long as they could see. These people do not work with the fierce energy of the American mechanic, but their workday is from twelve to fourteen hours and, considering these long hours, they show great industry and conscientiousness. ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch

... the afternoon searching for a runner, a Kaffir the colour of night, who would steal through the Boer lines in the dark with a telegram. In my search I lost two hours through the conscientiousness of the 5th Lancers, who arrested me and sent me from pillar to post, just as if I was seeking information at the War Office. At last they took me—the Colonel himself, three privates with rifles and a mounted orderly with a lance—took me to the General Staff, and there the absurdity ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson

... carpet-knight of History. He is honestly conscientious in his use of language, attempting to give the preference to standard phrases and words of classical Greek over corrupt idioms and expressions of a decadent tongue; it is this very conscientiousness, of course, which leads him to adopt so much elaborate syntax from bygone masters of style. Finally,—the point in which, I think, Dio has come nearest to the gloomy Athenian,—something of the matter-of-fact directness of Thukydides is perceptible in ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio

... ocean and the wilderness for the sake of what they believed God's truth. In my opinion, those men were prejudiced and mistaken, and committed great and grievous faults; but there was, at least, a redeeming element in their character—that of high conscientiousness. There was no compromise of truth, no sacrifice to expediency about them; they believed in the invisible, and they acted on that belief. Every where the tone of religious feeling, since that time, has been altered and ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... attention to the censure passed on my 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 cardinals and other divines of ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... 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 ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey

... are the complications of the body; but one has anxious and trying responsibilities all the same, and you have trifled with them. You must not delude yourself. You have many good qualities. You have some courage, much ingenuity, keen interests, and a good deal of conscientiousness; but you have the makings of a dilettante, the readiness to delude yourself that the particular little work you are engaged in is excessively and peculiarly important. You have got the proportion ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson

... me.... In this distressing condition be so kind as to help me to some reading. Of Cooper's I 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 ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham

... sale, exchange, price, payment; 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 the rectitude ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... Samoa—this should be rather a profitable year, as it must be owned it has been rather a busy one. The trouble is, if I miss the December publication, it may take the devil and all of a time to start another syndicate. I am really tempted to curse my conscientiousness. If I hadn't recopied Davie he would now be done and dead and buried; and here I am stuck about the middle, with an immediate publication threatened and the fear before me of having after all to scamp the essential business of the end. At the same time, though I love my Davy, I am a little anxious ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... judged so harshly; the laborious technical training to which the dwellers on the other side of the channel submit themselves so much more readily than the English in any matter of art; the intellectual conscientiousness and refinement due to the pressure of an organised and continuous tradition, and so on. He realised that a good deal of what he said or suggested must naturally be lost upon her. But it was delightful to feel her mind yielding to his, while it stimulated her sympathy and perhaps roused her ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... 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 that she had responded to my ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood

... 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

... fairness all round. How would you like to be paid in clipped coin, that was not full weight? And yet you have no scruple in giving clipped time, and work in short weight. I speak plainly about this, for it is a crying evil of the day. There is everywhere apparent a lack of conscientiousness in the dealings of man with man. We used to do a large trade with our manufactures in Europe and the East, and now we have to a large extent lost it—because we have sent out bad material and sold it as good. It is a common complaint that men do not work now as well as of old in every ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould

... 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 Colman's own words, had stated ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... difficult period of history." "It is 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... 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 highly ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne

... like a martyr—and continued surreptitiously to read and to study whenever and whatever she could; and not even the extreme conscientiousness of a New Mennonite faltered at this filial disobedience. She obeyed her father implicitly, however tyrannical he was, to the point where he bade her suppress and kill all the best that God had given her of ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin

... 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 period. But though ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath

... irreproachably conscientious!... And complacent in the sense of his own conscientiousness, he crushed every one with it, his family, his friends ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... prosperous and comparatively 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, when ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder

... active part in the work of Montreal. She was the daughter of a respectable tradesman, and was now twenty-two years of age. Her portrait has come down to us; and her face is a mirror of frankness, loyalty, and womanly tenderness. Her qualities were those of good sense, conscientiousness, and a warm heart. She had known no miracles, ecstasies, or trances; and though afterwards, when her religious susceptibilities had reached a fuller development, a few such are recorded of her, yet even the Abb Faillon, with the best intentions, ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... occupation increased my income, while it was highly interesting to me. I once accidentally overheard our greatest don say, to my boundless joy, 'That he heard it reported of Silverman that his gift of quiet explanation, his patience, his amiable temper, and his conscientiousness made him the best of coaches.' May my 'gift of quiet explanation' come more seasonably and powerfully to my aid in this present explanation than ...
— George Silverman's Explanation • Charles Dickens

... with it the conviction of sincerity in all he says, possessed of a grace of manner which makes it a pleasure to hear him on any subject, and having such a command of language as to enable him to put his thoughts in the fittest words, he is of course a favorite speaker always. He has a conscientiousness in all he does, which never allows him to treat carelessly any matter, even in an unexpected public speech. There are few men in Cleveland who carry so much weight in speaking, whether it be before a court and jury, or to a general assembly of people. Taking an intelligent interest in all public ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... Lieutenant Viguier who, on April 18, had the pluck to come down to twenty-five meters above the enemy's lines and calmly make his observations; and to so many others who did their duty with the same daring, intelligence, and conscientiousness, to the hundreds of more humble airmen who, while the infantry says the sanguinary mass, throw down from above, like the chorister boys in the corpus Christi procession, the ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux

... better opinion of mankind." The great German historian Niebuhr says of the Emperor, as revealed in this work, "I know of no other man who combined such unaffected kindness, mildness, and humility with such conscientiousness and severity toward himself." Renan declares the book to be "a veritable gospel. It will never grow old, for it asserts no dogma. Though science were to destroy God and the soul, the 'Meditations of Marcus Aurelius' would remain forever young and immortally true." The eminent English critic ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... married. The lady was a Fusilier, Agricola's sister, a person of rare intelligence and beauty, whom, from early childhood, the secret counsels of his seniors had assigned to him. Despite this, he had said he would never marry; he made, he said, no pretensions to severe conscientiousness, or to being better than others, but—as between his Maker and himself—he had forfeited the right to wed, they all knew how. But the Fusiliers had become very angry and Numa, finding strife about to ensue just when without unity he could not bring an undivided clan through the torrent ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... known by her pseudonym of Dora d'Istria,[1] came of the family of the Ghikas, formerly princes of Wallachia, and was born at Bucharest, on the 22nd of January, 1829. Through the care and conscientiousness of her instructor, Mons. Papadopoulos, and her own remarkable capacity, she acquired a very complete and comprehensive education. When but eleven years old, she composed a charming little story, and before she had reached ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams

... Manetho 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. Undoubtedly Manetho loved the man,—but ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... dismounted from 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

... 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 ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope

... company 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 almost to ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge

... said of a man who rose to a high position in the State through his conscientiousness and high principles, that he was at one ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... 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

... ear to that acuteness of perception so indispensable in certain portions of the instrument. It may also be said that no extraordinary talent for music is absolutely necessary, since many of the best tuners are not musicians in any sense of the word. Patience and perseverance, associated with conscientiousness and an insatiable desire to excel, are among the foremost requirements. Having these it only remains to gain a thorough knowledge of every detail of the work; a little practice will bring ...
— Piano Tuning - A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs • J. Cree Fischer

... or like Poe with horror and a lover's 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, the simple sorrows, all "that has ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... shirts and scarify their epidermis with a finer cruelty than their modern successors, and they could, after all that, make the blithest songs, sing the merriest melodies, and quaff the oldest port with an air of jocund conscientiousness, making one slyly like them, however much inclined to dispute the correctness of their theology. And the parsons of the past were also a blithesome set of individuals. They were perhaps rougher than those mild and refined gentlemen who preach now-a-days; but they were straightforward, thorough, ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... easy as might have been expected between two sisters occupying the same room, for Valetta went to bed and to sleep long before Gillian, and the morning toilette was a hurry; besides, Gillian had scruples, partly out of pride and partly out of conscientiousness, about encouraging Valetta in gossip or showing her curiosity about it. Could she make anything out from Kalliope herself? However, fortune favoured her, for she came out of her class only a few steps behind little Maura; and as some of Mr. Edgar's boys were about, the child naturally ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... has carefully 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 ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... blunt interruption that he did NOT know; and when he was entreated at parties or receptions to break through his dietary rules, and for courtesy's sake to accept some delicacy, he would always refuse with the reply that he had "no genius for seeming." But if he carried his conscientiousness to extremes, if he laid down stringent rules for his own governance, he neither set himself up for a model nor did he attempt to force his convictions upon others. He was always tolerant; he knew his own faults, and his own temptations, and ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... Mrs. King felt it to be an arduous duty to call on Mrs. Fitzgerald. That lady, though she respected their conscientiousness, could not help disliking them. They had disturbed her relations with Gerald, by suggesting the idea of another claim upon his affections; and they had offended her pride by introducing the vulgar phantom of a slave son to haunt her imagination. She was continually jealous of ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child

... 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

... 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 ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen

... 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 ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant

... onything for the lodgin's?' queried Teen, who had a singular conscientiousness regarding debt, even ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

... frequently than might have been thought necessary by those upon whose sense the privilege had palled. Tears and sulky faces, and impotent fists doubled fiercely when his back was turned, were the rewards of his conscientiousness; and the boys—and girls too—were glad when working time came round again, and the master went home to help his father ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various

... less amiable character were the feelings that, about this time, dictated the following letter;—a letter which it is impossible to peruse without acknowledging the noble candour and conscientiousness ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore

... of his Grandmother's Courage. His Childish Roguery. His Contest with British Soldiers. His Violent Temper. Conscientiousness in Boyhood. Tricks at School. Going to Mill. Going to Market. Anecdote of General Washington. Pelting the Swallows. Anecdote of the Squirrel and her young ones. The Pet Squirrel. The Pet Crow. Encounter with a Black Snake. Old Mingo the African. Boyish Love for Sarah Tatum. His Mother's ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... I was not to think of the idiot's conscientiousness," he muttered, "then all might have been arranged even yet; but now he knows all, and ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking

... from the Elgin Marbles, and he piously thanks God that he was in existence on their arrival. He spared no pains to ensure that his 'Macbeth' should be perfect in poetry, expression, form and colour, making casts and studies without end. His friends related, as a wonderful specimen of his conscientiousness, that, after having completed the figure of Macbeth, he took it out in order to raise it higher in the picture, believing that this would improve the effect. 'The wonder in ancient Athens would have been if I had suffered him to remain,' he observes. 'Such is the ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... 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 by the writers and expected ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson

... the conscience of Old Testament science"; that his work is characterized "not merely by fine scholarship, critical insight, historical sense, and a religious nature, but also by an incorruptible conscientiousness, and a majestic devotion to the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... love her at all, love her for her tenderness, conscientiousness and delicacy and deem it a pleasure to work for her, and she is one type of ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict

... wool-bale.' When opposed in will or 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 Delavel, as ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne

... provincialisms of "Clerical Life" and "Adam Bede" are sufficiently varied when the scene is shifted in the latest book to the Lincolnshire side of the Humber. But where a greater variation than that between one midland dialect and another is required, "George Eliot's" conscientiousness is very curiously shown. There is in "Mr. Gilfil's Story" a gardener of the name of Bates, who is described as a Yorkshireman, and in "Adam Bede" there is another gardener, Mr. Craig, whose name would naturally indicate ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... get on with any one who had a bump at the top of their heads (meaning conscientiousness). I found that I seldom differed from her, except that she was far too tolerant of stupid people, if they had a grain of ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... 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 ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various

... costs as dear as the reality. So, besides his daily contribution to a 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 every pretension to a literary position. ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... the good principles imbibed upon a mother's knee. Although a villain in almost every sense of the word, there were many redeeming traits in his character, which the reader will be willing to believe, on recalling his expressions of conscientiousness uttered to Maxwell. Family pride is often hereditary, and the reverses and degradations of a lifetime cannot extinguish it. It was so with Vernon. His real name was unknown, even among his most intimate associates. He had early ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton

... spiritual value 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. Peter would be less troubled about his soul if he would take more ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... inexhaustible milch cow. So that the latest defender of the Padres, the learned Father Zephyrin Engelhardt, is probably justified in holding that their riches were all of unworldly metal, and consisted only in "their conscientiousness, industry, economy, and abstemiousness." Such intangible valuables, it may be remarked, if they could be recovered by delving, would certainly not have proved, in the estimation of the delvers, a ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase

... a nightmare cruelty. Yet she was resolved to be just to Mr. Arbuton, she was determined not meanly to condemn him; she confessed to herself, with a glimmer of her wonted humor, that her dress must be an ordeal of peculiar anguish to him, and she half blamed herself for her conscientiousness in wearing it. If she had conceived of any such chance as this, she would perhaps, she thought, have ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells

... 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 to some ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... a thing, of course, as a false conscience and a true conscience. All the false "conscientiousness grows out of the fact that men suppose they stand in certain relationships that do not really exist. Thus they imagined duties that are not duties at all." The virtues which must be practised by rude men, so that ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott

... accuracy, and good faith of their first transcriber. Long before this testimony could be given, Scottish historians who disagreed with Froude's conclusions on many points,—men such as Skelton and Burton—had been profoundly impressed with the care, skill, and conscientiousness with which Froude handled the mass of tangled materials relating to the history ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude



Words linked to "Conscientiousness" :   strictness, punctiliousness, conscientious, unconscientiousness, scrupulousness, meticulosity, carefulness, thoroughness



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