William Congreve Quotes

I don't want to have to compromise my morals in order to make a living.

A man's vanity tells him what is honor, a man's conscience what is justice.

I like to think I have good morals, but I still have a little bit of an edgy side.

For me, respect is important.

I am faithfully devoted to the Republic but will not serve it at the expense of my conscience and my honor.

Men are guided less by conscience than by glory; and yet the shortest way to glory is to be guided by conscience.

Balance the cost of the soul you lost with the dreams you lightly sold.

Honor is a harder master than the law.

Always listen to the voice of your conscience. If your conscience conflicts with your faith, question everything.

Conscience and wealth are not always neighbors.

I have never made it a consideration whether the subject was popular or unpopular, but whether it was right or wrong; for that which is right will become popular, and that which is wrong, though by mistake it may obtain the cry or fashion of the day, will soon lose the power of delusion, and sink into disesteem.

.. every step of the upward way is strewn with wreckage of body, mind, and morals.

If it comes down to your ethics vs. a job, choose ethics. You can always find another job.

A character is defined by the kinds of challenges he cannot walk away from. And by those he has walked away from that cause him remorse.

Give up money, give up fame, give up science, give the earth itself and all it contains, rather than do an immoral act.

To disrespect the masses is moral; to honor them, lawful.

If a man cannot tell what he wants to do, then he must find out what he ought to do. If desire has become complicated, then hold fast to duty.

I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.

I don't really consider this a political issue, I consider it to be a moral issue.

To save our imperiled honor everything must be sacrificed, even virtue.

To sell oneself for thirty pieces of silver is an honest transaction; but to sell oneself to one s own conscience is to abandon mankind.

I am a moralist. I worry.

Conscience makes egotists of us all.

The greatest temptation for the like of us is: to renounce violence, to repent, to make peace with oneself. Most revolutionaries fell before this temptation, from Spartacus to Danton and Dostoevsky; they are the classical form of betrayal of the cause. The temptations of God were always more dangerous for mankind than those of Satan. As long as chaos dominates the world, God is an anachronism; and every compromise with one’s own conscience is perfidy. When the accursed inner voice speaks to you, hold your hands over your ears….

I've often thought that my scruples about stealing books were the only thing that stood in the way of my being a really great scholar.