c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
The unrecognized genius—that’s an old story. Have you ever thought of a much worse one—the genius recognized too well? ... That a great many men are poor fools who can’t see the best—that’s nothing. One can’t get angry at that. But do you understand about the men who see it and don’t want it?
— Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
One of the most sincere forms of respect is actually listening to what another has to say
— Manoj Hande
How to stop time: kiss. How to travel in time: read. How to escape time: music
— Manoj Hande
This is what men call genius, just as they call a painted face beauty and a richly attired figure majesty. The confound the brilliance of the firmament with the star-shaped footprints of a duck in the mud.
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Well, the way you'd been, old ladyI could see the fear in your windowsUnder your furry crawling browA silver bow rings up in inchesYou were afraid you'd be the devil's red wifeBut it's alright, God dug your danceAnd would have you young and in his harum
— Don Van Vliet
Every man is a genius, for God exists in all men.
— Theodore Volgoff
There are two kinds of geniuses: the 'ordinary' and the 'magicians'. An ordinary genius is a fellow whom you and I would be just as good as, if we were only many times better. There is no mystery as to how his mind works. Once we understand what they've done, we feel certain that we, too, could have done it. It is different with the magicians. Even after we understand what they have done it is completely dark. Richard Feynman is a magician of the highest calibre. -- Mark Kac
— James Gleick
Novels by serious writers of genius often eventually become best-sellers, but most contemporary best-sellers are written by second-class writers whose psychological brew contains a touch of naïvety, a touch of sentimentality, the story-telling gift, and a mysterious sympathy with the day-dreams of ordinary people.
— Leonard Woolf
Among many other things, genius implies the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple, and to recognize inclusive structural principals.
— C.W. Ceram
When David Markson wrote in June to complain about an author's getting an award he though should have been his, Wallace gently warned him away from the pitfall of envy: "Mostly I try to remember how lucky I am to be able to write, and doubly, triply lucky I am that anyone else is willing to read it, to say nothing of publishing it. I'm no pollyanna - this keeping-the-spirits-up shit is hard work, and I don't often do it well. But I try... Life is good
— D.T. Max, Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace
An intelligent consistency is the foundation of genius.
— Chris Matakas, My Mastery: Learning to Live through Jiu Jitsu
Ordinary people, she said, can see only a little bit. They can't change much or go any higher than they are, but you're a genius. You'll keep going up and up, and see more and more. And each step will reveal worlds you never even knew existed.
— Daniel Keyes
Deep in his heart, he wondered if he was after all worse than this man or the next. He knew that he could sophisticate himself finally into saying that his own weakness was just the result of circumstances and environment; that often when he raged at himself as an egotist something would whisper ingratiatingly: "No. Genius!
— F. Scott Fitzgerald
I was a young, & had deep loves, & my heart would overflow with enthusiasm! And I mingled with the crowd, I mixed with my fellow men, speaking my thought out loud! And they gaped back at me, without understanding. And I withdrew from them, & they said to me: Arrogant one! And from time to time in my solitude, my loves, my repressed enthusiasms broke out into odes, conversation; & my companions laughed and used to point at me as a madman. So I suffered, doubted, cursed, & no one believed me sincere. It’s as if this heart, once so full of strength & love were annihilated.
— Comte de Lautréamont
Genius has less to do with the size of your mind than how open it is.
— Shane Snow, Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success
Life is a very brief candle especially when you burn it at both ends
— Josh Stern, And That's Why I'm Single: What Good Is Having A Lucky Horseshoe Up Your Butt When The Horse Is Still Attached?
Any fool can write a bad advertisement, but it takes a genius to keep his hands off a good one.
— David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising
Genius, as we tend to talk about it today, is some sort of mysterious and combustible substance that burns brightly and burns out. It's the strange gift of poets and pop stars that allows them to produce one wonderful work in their early twenties and then nothing. It is mysterious. It is there. It is gone.
— Mark Forsyth, The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase
And now as if the cleaning and the scrubbing and the scything and the mowing had drowned it there rose that half-heard melody, that intermittent music which the ear half catches but lets fall; a bark, a bleat; irregular, intermittent, yet somehow related; the hum of an insect, the tremor of cut grass, dissevered yet somehow belonging; the jar of a dor beetle, the squeak of a wheel, loud, low, but mysteriously related; which the ear strains to bring together and is always on the verge of harmonising but they are never quite heard, never fully harmonised, and at last, in the evening, one after another the sounds die out, and the harmony falters, and silence falls. With the sunset sharpness was lost, and like mist rising, quiet rose, quiet spread, the wind settled; loosely the world shook itself down to sleep, darkly here without a light to it, save what came green suffused through leaves, or pale on the white flowers by the window.[Lily Briscoe had her bag carried up to the house late one evening in September. Mr. Carmichael came by the same train.]
— Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
There is no any secret to being a genius, all you have to do is be yourself.
— Shawn Lukas
Until that moment she had not really noticed him. Now she felt as though she'd stubbed her toe on a rock, and looked down to find that it was part of a buried city.
— Gillian Bradshaw
I have yet to see a genius or a hero who, if stuck with a burning match, would feel less pain than his undistinguished average brother.
— Ayn Rand
Children inherit their parents' madness.
— Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
Even if he did explain it, no one would believe him because no one would understand him. That's the downside to being a genius - just because you understand something doesn't mean anyone else will.
— Trenton Lee Stewart, The Mysterious Benedict Society
To reclaim our natural power and this birthright of real magic, we must get naked and face ourselves.The truth of Who You Really Are is vast. It is genius. It crackles with electricity and sensuality and other forbidden, dangerous things. You have longed for it all your life. You catch glimpses of it from the corner of your eye. A riff of music reminds you, a surge of ecstasy during sex brings you home, a crisp Autumn wind carries some long forgotten scent which thrills you for inexplicable reasons. A thousand tiny hints show up to seduce you awake and lead you back into your true nature, but they flee when you try to grasp them and leave you wondering if you were just imagining things. You weren’t though. This quality of richness and balance and home is Who You Really Are. That is the kingdom we seek and it waits for us to find it. It wants us to regain our rightful place.
— Jacob Nordby
Universality is the distinguishing mark of genius. There is no such thing as a special genius, a genius for mathematics, or for music, or even for chess, but only a universal genius. The genius is a man who knows everything without having learned it.
— Otto Weininger, Sex & character
The marquis stared at Richard, openly amused. "What a refreshing mind you have, young man," he said. "There really is nothing quite like total ignorance, is there?
— Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere
Why had Ovid lived in Ancient Rome in 20 BCE23 and not Chicago in 2006 CE? Would Ovid still have been Ovid if he had lived in America? No, he wouldn’t have been, because he would have been a Native American or possibly an American Indian or a First Person or an Indigenous Person, and they did not have Latin or any other kind of written language then. So did Ovid matter because he was Ovid or because he lived in Ancient Rome?
— John Green, An Abundance of Katherines
There is no such word as Genius, it is just the combination of hard work and determination.
— Lyza Matociños
If you want to be a genius, it's easy: All you gotta say is, "Everything stinks." Then, you're never wrong. That's how much of a genius I am! That's how I got to where I am today!
— Wilbur J. Cobb
But his own mind was helpless against every moment's headline. He did nothing but leap into the mass of changes and explore them and all the tiny facets so eventually he was completely governed by fears of certainty. He distrusted it in anyone but Nora for there it went to the spine, and yet he attacked it again and again in her, cruelly, hating it, the sure lanes of the probable. Breaking chairs and window glass doors in fury at her certain answers. [15-16]
— Michael Ondaatje, Coming Through Slaughter
The genius. This is a skill to interact with outside environment, or source.
— VicDo
If you want to be a genius, it's easy: All you gotta say is, 'Everything stinks.' Then, you're never wrong.
— Wilbur J. Cobb
When we allow the genius of simple nature to flow through us we become every genius who has ever lived.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.
— Ernst F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: E. F. Schumacher, Appropriate Technology, Globalization, 1973 Oil Crisis, Neoclassical Economics, Simple Living, Buddhist Economics, Decentralization
We’ve all experienced pondering a problem all day long only to find we receive the solution when forgetting about the problem and thinking of something else. When we stop concentrating so hard, we allow our subconscious to flourish, and those who do this more than others are often called geniuses.
— James Morcan, The Orphan Conspiracies: 29 Conspiracy Theories from The Orphan Trilogy
Developing a genius mindset essentially comes down to two things: operating at speed and using the subconscious mind more than the conscious. This intuitive or relaxed approach to study is the polar opposite of traditional and mainstream forms of education.
— James Morcan, The Orphan Conspiracies: 29 Conspiracy Theories from The Orphan Trilogy
Those rare individuals society labels geniuses are almost always freaks of nature and are naturally gifted rather than being diligent students who became geniuses because of their education.
— James Morcan, The Orphan Conspiracies: 29 Conspiracy Theories from The Orphan Trilogy
Wyatt avoided the petty gunfights and headed to a saloon and rigged up a bunch of Molotov cocktails. Her firebombs against members of Tom and Vik's posse had destroyed the scenario's promise of so many wonderful gun duels. She'd killed most of their group, too, and shown everyone that she wasn't getting promoted only because of her programming skills. Her dislike of fighting had paradoxically turned her into a lethal killing machine.
— S.J. Kincaid
Genius is nothing more than an extraordinary manifestation of the body.
— Arthur Cravan
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction.
— Alert Einstein
I say, `Woe to them that have a nose, a real nose,and come to look round the torture-chamber! Aha, aha, aha!
— Gaston Leroux, Phantom of the Opera
Genius is not a retainer to any emperor, or is its material silver, or gold, or marble, except to a trifling extent.
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden
When the wind blows, curtain steps aside; when the genius blows, the intelligent stands aside!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
I wonder if every genius has a touch of madness, does everyone that's normal have a touch or retardation?
— Stanley Victor Paskavich
Cheap, fast and reliable, the definition of vehicle gold.
— Jazmin Bois
The Seeker, The Teacher and The Genius:Knowing is an art; communicating that knowledge is art twice over; but it is only the genius who can use that knowledge.
— R. N. Prasher
Franklin was a thin, pink person who was either a genius or, well, not one. Chances weren't.
— Ben Marcus, Leaving the Sea
Don't wait till tomorrow to achieve your goals, live in the present and look forward to the future. Forget yesterday and start living today.
— Jazmin Bois
Genius could be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way, or even to say a simple thing in a simpler way.
— Charles Bukowski, Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook: Uncollected Stories and Essays, 1944-1990
Fear and self-doubt are the greatest killers of personal genius.
— Ziad K. Abdelnour, Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics
Man can never be more perfect than the sun. The sun burns us with the same light that warms us. The sun has spots (stains). The ungrateful only talk about the spots (stains). The grateful talk about the light.
— José Martí, La edad de oro
Genius too does nothing but learn first how to lay bricks then how to build, and continually seek for material and continually form itself around it.Every activity of man is amazingly complicated, not only that of the genius: but none is a ‘miracle.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Britain wouldn’t have won the war without its eccentric geniuses.
— Sara Sheridan, London Calling
The appearance of Professor Benjamin Peirce, whose long gray hair, straggling grizzled beard and unusually bright eyes sparkling under a soft felt hat, as he walked briskly but rather ungracefully across the college yard, fitted very well with the opinion current among us that we were looking upon a real live genius, who had a touch of the prophet in his make-up.
— William Elwood Byerly
We always look for operators with a combination of guts, passion and genius.
— Ziad K. Abdelnour, Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics
Quick note here: if this crush-slash-swooning stuff is hard for you to stomach; if you’ve never had a similar experience, then you should come to grips with the fact that you’ve got a TV dinner for a heart and might want to consider climbing inside a microwave and turning it on high for at least an hour, which if you do consider only goes to show what kind of idiot you truly are because microwaves are way too small for anyone, let alone you, to climb into.
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Artists are people with a genius for finding a new answer, a new connection, or a new way of getting things done.That would be you.
— Seth Godin, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?
Because I've learned that you can't control what other people are going to think about you. The best you can do in life is not piss yourself off.
— Megan McCafferty, Second Helpings
A genius looks at something that others are stuck on and gets the world unstuck.So the question is: Have you ever done that?
— Seth Godin, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?
And Beauty is a form of Genius - is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Great triumphs of engineering genius—the locomotive, the truss bridge, the steel rail— ... are rather invention than engineering proper.
— Arthur Mellen Wellington
Étant la plus saisissante manifestation de l'art des constructions métalliques par lesquelles nos ingénieurs se sont illustrés en Europe, elle est une des formes les plus frappantes de notre génie national moderne.Being the most striking manifestation of the art of metal structures by which our engineers have shown in Europe, it [the Eiffel Tower] is one of the most striking of our modern national genius.
— Gustave Eiffel
By the time the clever reaches the clouds, the genius is already on the stars.
— Mehmet Murat ildan
It is impossible for a dove to catch a swallow, for a clever man to catch a genius.
— Mehmet Murat ildan
So the whole war is beause we can't talk to each other.
— Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
Nights were so real that days began to seem dreamlike to him
— Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
As the doctor treated the wound, Mazer said, " I don't care how much you eat, Ender, self-cannibalism won't get you out of this school.
— Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
A man who is morally clean, other things being equal, has in every instance, greater agility, greater capacity, and greater endurance by far than the man who is not. While the latter is wasting his creative energies in useless pleasures, as well as in disease producing habits, the former is turning all of his creative energy into ability and genius, and the result is evident.
— Christian D. Larson
Don't make fun of me!" Ender said. "I'm afraid I'm going crazy.
— Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
I'll become exactly the tool you want me to be, said Ender silently, but at least I wont be fooled into it. I'll do it because I choose to, not because you tricked me, you sly bastard.
— Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
It had to be a trick or you couldn't have done it.
— Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
The unrecognized genius-that's one old story. Have you ever thought of a much worse one-the genius recognized too well?
— Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
You don't know what would have happened if I hadn't pushed. Nobody knows. I did it the way I did it, and it worked. Above all, it worked.
— Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
In my dreams," said Ender, "I'm never sure whether I'm really me.
— Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
The clever cannot catch the genius
—  such an attempt is just an act of trying to catch the shadow of a flying bird!
As you see the patterns and meaning emerge in your own personal experience of the world dream, you begin to realize that everything is happening on your behalf, even the obstacles and the challenges that you experiment with. The obstacles and challenges that you find are there to dare you to become vast and wise enough to surmount them. At this stage, it helps to ask yourself: What is the myth I'm living? And what must I do to live it well?
— Carolyn Elliott, Awaken Your Genius: A Seven-Step Path to Freeing Your Creativity and Manifesting Your Dreams
Before you can tame your genius spirit, you have to find her.
— Carolyn Elliott, Awaken Your Genius: A Seven-Step Path to Freeing Your Creativity and Manifesting Your Dreams
In order to start our mythic journey to end our suffering, we need to enter into a real and dynamic dialogue with our hearts. Start by writing a letter to your heart, telling it all that's going on with you now and asking it for guidance.
— Carolyn Elliott, Awaken Your Genius: A Seven-Step Path to Freeing Your Creativity and Manifesting Your Dreams
We begin to become divine by learning to love like the divine loves. And how does the divine love? It loves everyone-including you-freely and without conditions.
— Carolyn Elliott, Awaken Your Genius: A Seven-Step Path to Freeing Your Creativity and Manifesting Your Dreams
People err who think my art comes easily to me. I assure you, dear friend, nobody has devoted so much time and thought to compositions as I. There is not a famous master whose music I have not industriously studied through many times.
— Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
You have a genius for bringing trouble upon yourself
— Georgette Heyer, Sylvester
Yes, it made sense, and was so absurdly simple that it would take a genius to think of it. And, perhaps, someone who did not expect to do it himself.
— Arthur C. Clarke, Rendezvous with Rama
Genius' was a word loosely used by expatriot Americans in Paris and Rome, between the Versailles Peace treaty and the Depression, to cover all varieties of artistic, literary and musical experimentalism. A useful and readable history of the literary Thirties is Geniuses Together by Kay Boyle-Joyce, Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Pound, Eliot and the rest. They all became famous figures but too many of them developed defects of character-ambition, meanness, boastfulness, cowardice or inhumanity-that defrauded their early genius. Experimentalism is a quality alien to genius. It implies doubt, hope, uncertainty, the need for group reassurance; whereas genius works alone, in confidence of a foreknown result. Experiments are useful as a demonstration of how not to write, paint or compose if one's interest lies in durable rather than fashionable results; but since far more self-styled artists are interested in frissons á la mode rather than in truth, it is foolish to protest. Experimentalism means variation on the theme of other people's uncertainties.
— Robert Graves
Genius and insanity are fraternal twins.
— Carl Henegan, Darkness Left Undone
The only guaranteed way to be a genius is to surround yourself with idiots.
— Ziad K. Abdelnour, Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics
A genius is a grownup that remained a kid.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana, The Confessions of a Misfit
In poems, equally as in philosophic disquisitions, genius produces the strongest impressions of novelty while it rescues the most admitted truths from the impotence caused by the very circumstance of their universal admission.
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria Biographia Literaria: Chapters 1-4, 14-22; Prefaces and Essays on Poetry, 1800-181chapters 1-4, 14-22; Prefaces and Essays on Poe
I mean, Tarantino is such a SHMUCK 90 percent of the time. But ten percent of the time, I've seen genius shining off the guy.
— David Foster Wallace
Almost all genius up to now was one-sided—the result of a sickly constitution. One type had too much sense of the external, the other too much inner sense. Seldom could nature achieve a balance between the two—a complete constitution of genius. Often a perfect proportion arose by chance, but this could never endure because it was not comprehended and fixed by the spirit—they remained fortunate moments. The first genius that penetrated itself found here the exemplary germ of an immeasurable world. It made a discovery which must have been the most remarkable in the history of the world—for with it there begins a whole new epoch for humanity—and true history of all kinds becomes possible for the first time at this stage—for the way that had been traversed hitherto now makes up a proper whole that can be entirely elucidated. That point outside the world is given, and now Archimedes can fulfill his promise.
— Novalis, Novalis: Philosophical Writings
If people fully understand you, they will think of you as a normal, if they half understand you, will think of you as a genius, and when they can't understand, will certainly think of you a stupid.
— M.F. Moonzajer
Let us not compare the genius with the clever
—  ocean with the lake!
Clever man is a chicken; it can fly, but a little. Genius, on the other hand, is a migratory bird; it can fly at high altitudes until He disappears on the horizon!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
She will try to find the nice way to exercise intelligence. But intelligence is not ladylike. Intelligence is full of excesses. Rigorous intelligene abhors sentimentality, and women must be sentimental to value the dreadful silliness of the men around them. Morbid intelligence abhors the cheery sunlight of positive thinking and eternal sweetness; and women must be sunlight and cheery and sweet, or the woman could not bribe her way with smiles through a day. Wild intelligence abhors any narrow world; and the world of women must stay narrow, or the woman is an outlaw. No woman could be Nietzsche or Rimbaud without ending up in a whorehouse or lobotomized. Any vital intelligence has passionate questions, aggressive answers; but women cannot be explorers; there can be no Lewis or Clark of the female mind.
— Andrea Dworkin
If it weren't for acid, you might not have an IPod, and you definitely would not have some of the best music in your IPod.
— Bill Maher
Mediocrity is always in a rush
—  but whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing with consideration. For genius is nothing more nor less than doing well what anyone can do badly.
Intelligence and common sense, what makes a person a real genius.
— Wazim Shaw
Philosophy is to the mind of the architect as eyesight to his steps. The Term 'genius' when applied to him simply means a man who understands what others only know about. A poet, artist or architect, necessarily 'understands' in this sense and is likely, if not careful, to have the term 'genius' applied to him; in which case he will no longer be thought human, trustworthy or companionable.  Whatever may be his medium of expression he utters truth with manifest beauty of thought. If he is an architect, his building is natural. In him, philosophy and genius live by each other, but the combination is subject to popular suspicion and appellation 'genius' likely to settle him--so far as the public is concerned.
— Frank Lloyd Wright, A Testament
Genius: Range of mind, power of imagination, and responsiveness of soul: this is genius. The man of genius has a soul with greater range, can therefore be struck by the feelings of all beings, is concerned with everything in nature, and never receives an idea that does not evoke a feeling. Everything stirs him and everything is retained within him.When the soul has been moved by an object itself, it is even more affected by the memory of the object. But in a man of genius imagination goes further: it recalls ideas with a more vivid feeling than it received them, because to these ideas are connected a thousand others more appropriate to arouse the feeling.
— Jean-François de Saint-Lambert
Perhaps if I had made his life more difficult, he would have written less, or less freely. I cannot claim to be the midwife to genius, but if I have not facilitated,I have at least not, as many women might have done, prevented. This is a very small virtue to claim, a very negative achievement to hang my whole life on.
— A.S. Byatt, Possession
It was the quartets of Beethoven (numbers 12,13,14, and 15) which over fifty years, created and expanded the the audience of listeners to the quartets of Beethoven, thus achieving, as all masterpieces do, progress if not in the quality of artists, at least in the company of minds, which is largely composed these days of what was missing when the work appeared: people capable of liking it.
— Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower
Give me a smart idiot over a stupid genius any day.
— Samuel Goldwyn
If the written word has contributed anything at all to our developing species and our half developed culture, it is this: Great writing has been a staff to lean on, a mother to consult, a wisdom to pick up stumbling folly, a strength in weakness and a courage to support sick cowardice.
— John Steinbeck
What a vapid job title our culture gives to those honorable laborers the ancient Egyptians and Sumerians variously called Learned Men of the Magic Library, Scribes of the Double House of Life, Mistresses of the House of Books, or Ordainers of the Universe. 'Librarian' - that mouth-contorting, graceless grind of a word, that dry gulch in the dictionary between 'libido' and 'licentious' - it practically begs you to envision a stoop-shouldered loser, socks mismatched, eyes locked in a permanent squint from reading too much microfiche. If it were up to me, I would abolish the word entirely and turn back to the lexicological wisdom of the ancients, who saw librarians not as feeble sorters and shelvers but as heroic guardians. In Assyrian, Babylonian, and Egyptian cultures alike, those who toiled at the shelves were often bestowed with a proud, even soldierly, title: Keeper of the Books. - p.113
— Miles Harvey, The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime
Genius is always accompanied by enthusiasm.
— Bryant McGill
There is no gap as wide as the one between mediocrity and genius.
— Rutvik Oza
A true genius is my brother, for his ability to measure and adapt his imagination to knowledge is unbounded. He can turn laziness into tactics. He can drop tactics for strategy without anyone or anything realizing it. He can comprehend grand principles of creation effortlessly and flawlessly. His capacity for knowledge surpasses even my own, and it's not because he constantly takes steps forward. It's because he has unconsciously taught himself to understand the principles behind possibility and nothingness. That is a true genius.
— Lionel Suggs
Geniuses are those who have the intelligence, enthusiasm, and endurance to acquire the needed expertise in a broadly valued domain of achievement and who then make contributions to that field that are considered by peers to be both original and highly exemplary.
— Dean Keith Simonton
Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.
— Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time
I went to some classes. Vampire was in the Hair of Magical Magic Creatures. He looked all depressed because Draco had disappeared and he had used to be in love with Draco. He was sucking some blood from a Hufflepuff.
— Tara Gilesbie, My Immortal
A man's genius seems to befriend the more when he reads with open heart, the masterpiece of masterminds, the sagacity of sages, and the ingenious words of geniuses of ages.
— Ogwo David Emenike
If all the world hated you and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved of you and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Atticus, you must be wrong." "How's that?" "Well, most folks seem to think they're right and you're wrong. . ." "They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions," said Atticus, "but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
It is neither right nor safe to go against my conscience.
— Martin Luther
Anybody can be charming if they don't mind faking it, saying all the stupid, obvious, nauseating things that a conscience keeps most people from saying. Happily, I don't have a conscience. I say them.
— Jeff Lindsay, Darkly Dreaming Dexter
There is no witness so dreadful, no accuser so terrible as the conscience that dwells in the heart of every man.
— Polybius
On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, “Is it safe?” Expediency asks the question, “Is it politic?” And Vanity comes along and asks the question, “Is it popular?” But Conscience asks the question, “Is it right?”... The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of convenience, but where he stands in moments of challenge, moments of great crisis and controversy.
— Martin Luther King Jr., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Things only looked wrong when there was someone to see you.
— Anna Godbersen, Rumors
Ceux qui revent eveilles ont conscience de 1000 choses qui echapent a ceux qui ne revent qu'endormis.The one who has day dream are aware of 1000 things that the one who dreams only when he sleeps will never understand.(it sounds better in french, I do what I can with my translation...)
— Edgar Allan Poe
Between the radiant white of a clear conscience and the coal black of a conscience sullied by sin lie many shades of gray--where most of us live our lives. Not perfect but not beyond redemption.
— Sherry L. Hoppe, A Matter of Conscience: Redemption of a Hometown Hero, Bobby Hoppe
Does changing for the better absolve you of all the wicked shit you did b
— Ann Aguirre, Wanderlust
Congratulations. You have met your conscience. In my experience, the world is divided between those who have one and those who don't. And the ones with one are divided into those who will act on their conscience and those who won't. Those who will are, I'm afraid, the smallest category. They will *jeito*. It's Brazilian Portuguese. It means to find a way to get something done, no matter what the obstacles.
— Jean Ferris, Twice Upon a Marigold
RICH I’m lamenting. I’ve lost my innocence.CROMWELL You lost that some time ago. If you’ve only just noticed, it can’t have been very important to you.
— Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons
There's something sad about people going to bed. You can see they don't give a damn whether they're getting what they want out of life or not, you can see they don't even try to understand what we're here for. They just don't care.
— Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of the Night
No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity. But I know none, and therefore am no beast.
— William Shakespeare, Richard III
Don't mistake dramatics for a conscience.
— Louise Penny, A Fatal Grace
A conscience is that still small voice that people won't listen to.
— Carlo Collodi, Pinocchio
What other people may think of the rightness or wrongness is nothing in comparison to my own deep knowledge, my innate conviction that it was wrong.
— Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South
Wounds sustained for the sake of conscience carry their own balsam with the blow.
— Walter Scott, Rob Roy
That's where all of us are standing now, he thought. On the fat kindling of past sins.
— Walter M. Miller Jr.
We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.
— Michel de Montaigne
If a man happen to take it into his head to assassinate with his own hands, or with the sword of justice, those whom he calls heretics, that is, people who think, or perhaps only speak, differently upon a subject which neither party understands, he will be as much inclined to do this at one time as at another. Fanaticism never sleeps: it is never glutted: it is never stopped by philanthropy; for it makes a merit of trampling on philanthropy: it is never stopped by conscience; for it has pressed conscience into its service. Avarice, lust, and vengeance, have piety, benevolence, honour; fanaticism has nothing to oppose it.
— Jeremy Bentham, Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
Good girls hold their heads high by daylight, Their grace and their virtue soaring with kites,While bad girls slink along in their shame-Everyone stares at them, everyone blames.But those bad girls sleep soundly at night,Ne'er do their consciences wake them in a fright,While our good girls toss and they turn-They lay awake for those who will burn.
— Anna Godbersen, Rumors
Man's desire for the approval of his fellows is so strong, his dread of their censure so violent, that he himself has brought his enemy (conscience) within his gates; and it keeps watch over him, vigilant always in the interests of its master to crush any half-formed desire to break away from the herd.
— W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence
A Gentleman's agreement cannot be broken without breaking the person who has entered into it.
— Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Angel's Game
...Man has a tyrant, ignorance. I voted for the demise of that particular tyrant. That particular tyrant has engendered royalty, which is authority based on falsehood, whereas science is authority based on truth. Man should be governed by science alone.""And conscience," added the bishop."It's the same thing. Conscience is the quota of innate science we each have inside us.
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience. But a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience.
— Henry David Thoreau
True patriotism sometimes requires of men to act exactly contrary, at one period, to that which it does at another, and the motive which impels them the desire to do right is precisely the same.
— Robert E. Lee
A standing prick hath no conscience. And if that standing prick is attached to Bruce Robertson then it hath less than no conscience. You can't afford a conscience in this life, that has become a luxury for the rich and a social ball and chain for the rest of us. Even if I wanted one, which I certainly do not, I wouldn't have the faintest idea as how to go about getting one.
— Irvine Welsh, Filth
The preacher who casts a vote for conscience' sake, runs the risk of starving.
— Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain: Volume 1, Reader's Edition
Don't question your conscience so much--it will get out of tune like a strummed piano. Keep it for great occasions.
— Henry James
Conscience defined by the elders,passed on to the next generations.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
I am not for the left or the right, but for what is right over the wrong. I am not an elephant or a donkey, but a lion that stands only with Truth and my conscience.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Always seemed to me, as far as conscience goes, the sweet spot is you either be poor enough you can't afford to have one or rich enough you can afford to hire someone to carry the weight.
— Unknown
Killing Japanese didn’t bother me at that time. It was getting the war over with that bothered me. So I wasn’t worried particularly about how many people we killed in getting the job done… . All war is immoral, and if you let it bother you, you’re not a good soldier.
— Ronald Schaffer, Wings of Judgment: American Bombing in World War II
I almost wish I hadn't any conscience, it's so inconvenient. If I didn't care about doing right, and didn't feel uncomfortable when doing wrong, I should get on capitally. I can't help wishing, sometimes, that father and mother hadn't been so dreadfully particular about such things. -- Jo
— Louisa May Alcott
Some people just needed to be stolen from.
— Eoin Colfer, The Opal Deception
She wondered sometimes if it wasn't all pretense—if, when she shut her eyes and wished restitution upon the whole wounded parade of humanity, she wasn't really wishing away the world that created war and illness so that she might have a world in which there was room to feel sorry for herself.
— Danielle Evans, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self
Listen to your conscience. You have to live with yourself for the rest of your life.
— Frank Sonnenberg, Follow Your Conscience: Make a Difference in Your Life & in the Lives of Others
Follow your conscience. Sleep well.
— Frank Sonnenberg, BookSmart: Hundreds of real-world lessons for success and happiness
Conscience can be silenced through an incessant disobedience
— Sunday Adelaja
Conscious rebukes from doing wrong
— Sunday Adelaja
It depends on the conscience otherwise
—  there is no any difference between the lawyer and a liar except spelling.
The more I examine and observe experience (What else can one do? Build castles?), the more I find that I can only say of consciousness (and in this I find a notable confirmation in the Pali Suttas) that it seems only describable (knowable) “in terms of what it arises dependent upon” (i.e. seeing-cum-seen … mind-knowing-cum-mind, known or mind cum-ideas), that is, negatively as to itself. And so, instead of being said to appear, it should rather be called that negativeness or “decompression of being” which makes the appearance of life, movement, behaviour, etc., and their opposites, possible in things and persons. But while life, etc. cannot be or not be without the cooperation of the negative presence of consciousness, which gives room for them (and itself) to “come to be” in this way (gaining its own peculiar form of negative being, perhaps from them)—the only possible way of being—they are, by ignorance, simultaneously individualized in actual experience. Unindividualized experience cannot, I think, be called experience at all. Thus there appears the positive illusion also of individual consciousness: “illusion” because its individuality is borrowed from the individualness of (1) its percepts, and (2) the body seen as its perceiving instrument.Unindividualized perception cannot, any more, I think, be called perception at all. The supposed individuality of consciousness (without which it is properly inconceivable) is derived from that of its concomitants. This illusory individualization of consciousness, this mirage, manifests itself in the sense both of “my consciousness” and of “consciousness that is not mine” (as e.g. in the sensation of being seen when one fancies or actually finds one is caught, say, peeping through a keyhole, and from which the abstract notion of universal consciousness develops). The example shows that the experience of being seen does not necessarily mean that another’s consciousness is seeing one, as one may have been mistaken in one’s fancy owing to a guilty sense (though the experience was just as real at the time), before one found no one was there. To repeat: my supposed consciousness seems only distinguishable from the supposed consciousness that is not mine on the basis of the particular non-consciousness (i.e. material body, etc.) through which its negativity is manifested and with which it is always and inevitably associated in some way. It is impossible, I think, to overemphasize the importance of this fact.
— Nanamoli Thera
It’s easy to tune out your critics, but difficult to turn off your conscience.
— Frank Sonnenberg, Follow Your Conscience: Make a Difference in Your Life & in the Lives of Others
Majority is not always right. The fact that many people are in support of a wrong thing does not make the thing right. After all, the number of persons who with poor reasoning capacity is higher than those with better reasoning capacity.I don't read or care about majority's stance on a particular issue before expressing mine. I look at issues critically before expressing mine, not minding the reaction of majority.There are more foolish people than there are wise people. People who think deeply and critically are fewer compared to those with poor thinkingI can handle majority but can't handle my conscience
— OMOSOHWOFA CASEY
Donald Trump's secrets are two. - He has mastered the art of persuasion. - He has absolutely no conscience.
— Gizmo, The Puzzled Puppy, What Donald Trump Supporters Need to Know: But Are Too Infatuated to Figure Out
Many consult their reputation
—  but few their conscience.
Majority is not always right. The fact that many people are in support of a wrong thing does not make the thing right. After all, the number of persons with poor reasoning capacity is higher than those with better reasoning capacity.I don't read or care about majority's stance on a particular issue before expressing mine. I look at issues critically before expressing mine, not minding the reaction of majority.There are more foolish people than there are wise people. People who think deeply and critically are fewer compared to those with poor thinkingI can handle majority but can't handle my conscience
— OMOSOHWOFA CASEY
An unused conscience is no conscience at all.
— Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned
Just as the world was quiet when the atrocities of apartheid were being committed, so it was when the farm murders took place. Perhaps the threshold of the world’s conscience was far higher and the murdered had to number in the hundreds of thousands before they were recognized by the international community.
— Dauglas Dauglas, Roses in the Rainbow
I'd rather be an unhappy principled man than a happy person with a lax conscience.
— Jorge P. Guerrero
Your burden is not to clear your conscienceBut to learn how to bear the burdens on your conscience.
— T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party
To cast in my lot with Jekyll, was to die to those appetites which I had long secretly indulged and had of late begun to pamper. To cast it in with Hyde, was to die to a thousand interests and aspirations, and to become, at a blow and forever, despised and friendless. The bargain might appear unequal; but there was still another consideration in the scales; for while Jekyll would suffer smartingly in the fires of abstinence, Hyde would be not even conscious of all that he had lost. Strange as my circumstances were, the terms of this debate are as old and commonplace as man; much the same inducements and alarms cast the die for any tempted and trembling sinner; and it fell out with me, as it falls with so vast a majority of my fellows, that I chose the better part and was found wanting in the strength to keep to it.
— Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
I do not belong to any political party because I am not a party to the wrongs they eventually do.
— Amit Abraham
If I had the remaking of man, he wouldn't have any conscience. It is one of the most disagreeable things connected with a person; and although it certainly does a great deal of good, it cannot be said to pay, in the long run; it would be much better to have less good and more comfort.
— Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
I disliked promises on principle because my conscience made me keep them.
— Robin McKinley
The entire perks that I need are to let me do my job with full honesty to my conscience.
— Amit Abraham
A rationalization a day keeps your conscience at bay.
— Anthony O'Neill, The Dark Side
He has a sellsword's conscience, she realized then. That is to say none at all.
— George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons
What is wrong is wrong and what is right is right. If it is therefore wrong to do what is wrong, then it is absolutely right to do what is right! Do what is right and be right in what you do!
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
On a moonless night a man entered into his neighbour's garden and stole the largest melon he could find and brought it home.He opened it and found it still unripe.Then behold a marvel!The man's conscience woke and smote him with remorse
—  and he repented having stolen the melon.
I almost wish I hadn't any conscience; its so inconvenient. If I didn't care about doing right and didn't feel uncomfortable when doing wrong, I should get on capitally. I can't help wishing sometimes that Father and Mother hadn't been so particular about such things. Ah Joe, instead of wishing that, thank God that Father and Mother were particular and pity from your heart those who have no such guardians to hedge them round with principles that may seem like prison walls to impatient youth, but which will prove sure foundations to build character upon in womanhood.
— Louisa May Alcott
Conscience unlike a beard does not grow overnight, you have it or you don't
— Faisal Khosa
It is the postscript to the war that offers the most revelatory and startling commentary on Dutugemunu's life. Despite his newfound wealth and his peactime luxuries, Dutugemunu wanders gloomily about his palace, too often remembering the carnage he wrought on the battlefield and worried over the deep karmic deficits he has incurred. The elders of the Sangha, the Buddhist clergy, notice this and send a delegation of eight monks to minister to his anguish. 'In truth, venerable sirs,' Dutugemunu tells the monks when they arrive, 'how can there be comfort to me in that I caused the destruction of a great army of myriads of men?''There is no hindrance on the way to heaven because of your acts,' one of the monks assures his king. Slaughtering Tamils is no moral mistake. Only the equivalent of one and a half men died at Dutugemunu's hands, according to the Sangha's official arithmetic, because the Tamils 'were heretical and evil and dies as though they were animals. You will make the Buddha's faith shine in many ways. Therefore, Lord of Men, cast away your mental confusion.'Being thus exhorted, the great king was comforted; his kill rate would never disturb him again. He does, however, recall that, once upon a breakfast, he ate a red-pepper pod without consciously setting aside a portion of it for the Sangha, as was the royal practice. 'For this,' he decides, 'penance must be done by me.' A hierarchy of sin springs into being, in which dishonouring the Sangha by denying it a due share of a red-pepper pod counts as a graver transgression, worthier of penance, than massacring thousands of Tamils on the battlefield.
— Samanth Subramanian, This Divided Island: Stories from the Sri Lankan War
It don't make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person's conscience ain't got no sense, and just goes for him anyway.
— Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Conscience is less an inner voice than the memory of a mother's glance.
— Robert Brault