Scruples Quotes - Page 3

• Piety sometimes gives birth to scruples, and faith to superstition, when they are not directed by wisdom and knowledge.

  Lord Acton

  Giving, Superstitions, Birth

  John Emerich Edward Dalberg, Lord Acton (2016). “The History of Freedom (and other Essays)”, p.296, Jazzybee Verlag

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• The tourist debauches the great monuments of antiquity, a comic figure, always inapt in his comments, incongruous in his appearance; ...avarice and deceit attack him at every step; the shops that he patronizes are full of forgeries... But we need feel no scruple or twinge of uncertainty; 'we' are travelers and cosmopolitans; the tourist is the other fellow.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Tourists, Deceit, Needs

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• Thrift is care and scruple in the spending of one's means. It is not a virtue and it requires neither skill nor talent.

  Immanuel Kant

  Mean, Skills, Care

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• One could plausibly argue that it is for quite sound reasons that the whole capacity for sexual ecstasy is inaccessible to most people - given that sexuality is something, like nuclear energy, which may prove amenable to domestication through scruple, but then again may not.

  Susan Sontag

  People, May, Energy

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• However contradictory the coroner's report — whether he pronounces Consumption or Loneliness or Suicide to be the cause of death — isn't it plain how the true artist-seer actually dies? I say that the true artist-seer, the heavenly fool who can and does produce beauty, is mainly dazzled to death by his own scruples, the blinding shapes and colors of his own sacred human conscience.

  J. D. Salinger

  Suicide, Loneliness, Artist

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• We spoil ourselves with scruples long as things go well.

  Aeschylus

  Long, Wells, Spoil

  Aeschylus (1984). “The Oresteia: Agamemnon; The Libation Bearers; The Eumenides”, p.127, Penguin

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• I do not scruple to employ mendacity and a fictitious appearance of female incompetence when the occasion demands it.

  Barbara Mertz

  Female, Demand, Appearance

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• This surface good-nature which captivates a new acquaintance and is no bar to treachery, which knows no scruple and is never at fault for an excuse, which makes an outcry at the wound which it condones, is one of the most distinctive features of the journalist. This camaraderie (the word is a stroke of genius) corrodes the noblest minds; it eats into their pride like rust, kills the germ of great deeds, and lends a sanction to moral cowardice.

  Honore de Balzac

  Work, Pride, Mind

  "A Daughter of Eve". Book by Honoré de Balzac, 1839.

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• I'm a very smart guy. I haven't a feeling or a scruple in the world. All I have the itch for is money. I am so money greedy that for twenty-five bucks a day and expenses, mostly gasoline and whisky, I do my thinking myself, what there is of it; I risk my whole future, the hatred of the cops . . . I dodge bullets and eat saps, and say thank you very much, if you have any more trouble, I hope you'll think of me, I'll just leave one of my cards in case anything comes up.

  Raymond Chandler

  Smart, Thinking, Hatred

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• History knows no scruples and no hesitation. Inert and unnering flows towards her goal. History knows herway. She makes no mistakes.

  Arthur Koestler

  Mistake, Goal, Flow

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• Though I never scruple a lie to serve my Master, it hurts one's conscience to be found out!

  Richard Brinsley Sheridan

  Hurt, Lying, Masters

  Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1775). “The Rivals: A Comedy. As it is Acted at the Theatre Royal in Covent-Garden”, p.32

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• The terrible predicament of a beautiful girl is that only an experienced womanizer, someone cynical and without scruple, feels up to the challenge. More often than not, she will lose her virginity to some filthy lowlife in what proves to be the first step in an irrevocable decline.

  Michel Houellebecq

  Beautiful, Girl, Cynical

  Michel Houellebecq (2001). “The Elementary Particles”, p.61, Vintage

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• Anatole France frankly advised, "When a thing has been said and said well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it." Yes, indeed, but do more. Copy many well-said things. Pierce them together. Assimilate them. Make the process of reading them a way to form the mind and shape the soul. As anthologies can never be complete, we will never exhaust the ways quotations can enrich our lives.

  Gary Saul Morson

  Reading, Soul, Mind

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• To invent without scruple a new principle to every new phenomenon, instead of adapting it to the old; to overload our hypothesis with a variety of this kind, are certain proofs that none of these principles is the just one, and that we only desire, by a number of falsehoods, to cover our ignorance of the truth.

  David Hume

  Truth, Ignorance, Numbers

  David Hume (2003). “A Treatise of Human Nature”, p.201, Courier Corporation

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• History knows no scruples and no hesitation. Inert and unerring, she flows towards her goal. At every bend in her course she leaves the mud which she carries and the corpses of the drowned.

  Arthur Koestler

  Goal, Mud, Flow

  Arthur Koestler (2015). “Darkness at Noon”, p.43, Simon and Schuster

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• Underlying all your choices, particularly subject matter and the way you represent it, should be your own personal scruples, the standards and rules that you voluntarily set for yourself, and which you may change or abandon whenever you choose - without explanation to anyone.

  Richard Schmid

  Choices, May, Matter

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• Here I beg you to observe in passing that the scruples that prevented ancient writers from using arithmetical terms in geometry, and which can only be a consequence of their inability to perceive clearly the relation between these two subjects, introduced much obscurity and confusion into their explanations.

  Rene Descartes

  Two, Confusion, Experience

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• Many man's scruples lie almost wholly about obedience to authority and compliance with indifferent customs, but very seldom about the dangers of disobedience and unpeaceableness and rending in pieces the Church of Christ by needless separations and endless divisions.

  John Tillotson

  Peace, Lying, Men

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• A man who is furnished with arguments from the mint, will convince his antagonist much sooner than one who draws them from reason and philosophy. - Gold is a wonderful clearer of the understanding; it dissipates every doubt and scruple in an instant; accommodates itself to the meanest capacities; silences the loud and clamorous, and cringes over the most obstinate and inflexible. - Philip of Macedon was a man of most invincible reason this way. He refuted by it all the wisdom of Athens; confounded their statesmen; struck their orators dumb; and at length argued them out of all their liberties.

  Joseph Addison

  Wisdom, Philosophy, Men

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• I don't like persuaded sitters. I never could paint a cat if the cat had any scruples, religious, superstitious, or otherwise, about sitting.

  William Morris Hunt

  Religious, Cat, Sitting

  William Morris Hunt (1908). “Hunt”

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• I assure you very explicitly, that in my opinion the conscientious scruples of all men should be treated with great delicacy and tenderness: and it is my wish and desire, that the laws may always be extensively accommodated to them, as a due regard for the protection and essential interests of the nation may justify and permit.

  George Washington

  Men, Law, Wish

  George Washington (1837). “Speeches and messages to Congress, proclamations, and addresses”, p.169

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• A man renowned for repartee will seldom scruple to make free with friendship's finest feeling, will thrust a dagger at your breast, and say he wounded you in jest, by way of balm for healing.

  William Cowper

  Healing, Men, Feelings

  William Cowper, James Thomson (1832). “The Works of Cowper and Thompson: Including Many Letters and Poems Never Before Published in this Country. With a New and Interesting Memoir of the Life of Thomson”, p.136

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• The third group [of society] are those irresponsible and reckless ones having little regard for the consequences of their acts, or whose religious scruples prevent their exercising control over their numbers. Many of this group are diseased, feeble-minded, and are of the pauper element dependent upon the normal and fit members of society for their support. There is no doubt in the minds of all thinking people that the procreation of this group should be stopped.

  Margaret Sanger

  Religious, Exercise, Thinking

  The Morality of Birth Control, delivered 18 November 1921, Park Theatre, NY

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• Scruples, temptations, and fears, and cutting perplexities of the heart, are often the lot of the most excellent persons.

  Thomas a Kempis

  Fear, Heart, Cutting

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• The conduct of a man, who studies philosophy in this careless manner, is more truly sceptical than that of any one, who feeling inhimself an inclination to it, is yet so over-whelm'd with doubts and scruples, as totally to reject it. A true sceptic will be diffident of his philosophical doubts, as well as of his philosophical conviction; and will never refuse any innocent satisfaction, which offers itself, upon account of either of them.

  David Hume

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Men

  David Hume (2012). “A Treatise of Human Nature”, p.221, Courier Corporation

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