But a man who believes in something else than his own greed, has necessarily a conscience or standard to which he more or less adapts himself.
 George Eliot, Middlemarch (1872). copy citation

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Author George Eliot
Source Middlemarch
Topic greed conscience
Date 1872
Language English
Reference
Note
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/files/145/145-h/145-h.htm

Context

“This implicit reasoning is essentially no more peculiar to evangelical belief than the use of wide phrases for narrow motives is peculiar to Englishmen. There is no general doctrine which is not capable of eating out our morality if unchecked by the deep-seated habit of direct fellow-feeling with individual fellow-men. But a man who believes in something else than his own greed, has necessarily a conscience or standard to which he more or less adapts himself. Bulstrode’s standard had been his serviceableness to God’s cause: “I am sinful and nought—a vessel to be consecrated by use—but use me!”—had been the mould into which he had constrained his immense need of being something important and predominating.” source