quotations about conscience
Many men carry their conscience like a drawn sword, cutting this way and that, in the world, but sheathe it, and keep it very soft and quiet, when it is turned within, thinking that a sword should not be allowed to cut its own scabbard.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Trust that man in nothing who has not a Conscience in everything.
LAURENCE STERNE
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
A man's conscience can tell him his situation better than seven watchmen in a lofty tower.
BEN SIRA
Sirach 37:14
Why should not Conscience have vacation
As well as other Courts o' th' nation?
Have equal power to adjourn,
Appoint appearance and return?
SAMUEL BUTLER
Hudibras
I'd fired conscience months back, but it was still hanging around, miserable, unshaven, nowhere else to go.
GLEN DUNCAN
Talulla Rising
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.
JEAN FERRIS
Twice Upon a Marigold
We never do anything so secretly, but that it is in the presence of two witnesses: God, and our own conscience.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
And so ought the conscience to be felt and known sacredly and not worn outside or proclaimed wantonly. There are privacies in the soul which willfully to strip naked is no more virtuous than in the body.
JAMES VILA BLAKE
Essays
The wounds of conscience always leave a scar.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
The Moral Sayings of Publilius Syrus
Judge not according to the orthodox standard of a system religious, philosophical, political, but according as things promote, or fail to promote the delicacy, integrity, and authority of Conscience.
LORD ACTON
postscript of letter to Mandell Creighton, Apr. 5, 1887
I never appear in public with a soiled conscience, a tarnished honor, threadbare scruples, or an insult that I haven't washed away.
EDMOND ROSTAND
Cyrano de Bergerac
The happy soul, in whose heart this peace of God hath erected her throne, has firmly resolved with Job, that holy sufferer, that his heart shall not reproach him, with any approven guile, so long as he lives. He goes not about to patch up a fatal peace betwixt his conscience and his lusts; (a very common dreadful mistake;) but if iniquity be in his hand, he puts it far away.
WILLIAM MCEWEN
Select Essays Doctrinal & Practical on a Variety of the Most Important and Interesting Subjects in Divinity
If we neglect conscience, most evils are possible.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Conscience is an exact recorder, that writes every man's history; an inward witness, that will sooner or later speak the whole truth; an impartial judge, whose sentence will acquit or condemn.
JOHN THORNTON
Maxims and Directions for Youth
Conscience was chiefly fear of society, or fear of oneself.
D. H. LAWRENCE
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Conscience is but a word that cowards use,
Devis'd at first to keep the strong in awe;
Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Richard III
Wicked men by specious errors and intoxicating pleasure contrive to lull conscience into a slumber; but when it wakes, its voice is louder than thunder, and its strokes keener than flashes of lightning.
JOHN THORNTON
Maxims and Directions for Youth
Some men are born under the law; their whole life is a continued struggle between the lower principles of their nature and the higher. These are what are called men of principle; each of their best actions is a distinct choice between conflicting motives. One propension would bear them here; another there; a third would hold them still: into the midst the living will goes forth in its power, and selects whichever it holds to be best. The habitual supremacy of conscience in such men gives them an idea that they only exert their will when they do right; when they do wrong they seem to "let their nature go "; they say that "they are hurried away": but, in fact, there is commonly an act of will in both cases ;--only it is weaker when they act ill, because in passably good men, if the better principles are reasonably strong, they conquer; it is only when very faint that they are vanquished.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Notwithstanding, pestilence may surprise even the castle of motive; and it is a strange power (rising up out of the depth which speech cannot explore, nor thought even think of, as the eye cannot see vision) that by conscience we can lay down rules for conscience and train it by good exercise, which is, for aught we know, as if a member of the body, feeling its own weakness, should set itself at exercise to gain strength.
JAMES VILA BLAKE
Essays
Conscience is the magnet of the soul. It has a divine polarity. Amid the tempests of passion, in the dark hours of trial, that only lie just this side of despair, when a host of fierce temptations beleaguer, then consult this Divine Monitor; and though its tiny needle may tremble amid the attractions of earth, yet, if uncorrupted, its polestar will be the throne of God.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts