quotations about conscience
In a world descending into barbarism, having a conscience is like having leprosy; it eats you away.
LINDA BENDER
Animal Wisdom
For conscience may be turned awry, or fall sick in a moral pestilence, like any other faculty.
JAMES VILA BLAKE
Essays
Conscience is the factor which recognizes the inherent and essential distinction between right and wrong, and which impels to the right and dissuades from the wrong. It does not come within the province of this book to discuss either the basis of ethics or its laws; to consider either why some things are wrong and others are right, nor to point out what is wrong and what is right. That belongs to moral science, not to mental science. It must suffice here to say that the distinction between right and wrong is recognized in all peoples, and is one of the first objects of perception in childhood. Standards differ in different races and in different ages. The power of moral discrimination is subject to education both for good and for evil. But the sense of ought is as universal as the sense of beauty. That there is a right and a wrong is as evident to every mind as that there is a wise and a foolish, a beautiful and an ugly, a pleasant and a disagreeable.
LYMAN ABBOTT
A Study in Human Nature
If a kind man stands by his conscience and exhibits truth in his words and actions, he will stand by God regardless of his faith.
SUZY KASSEM
Rise Up and Salute the Sun
Conscience is extinct among us, but it is said to still linger among the more savage tribes of Africa: proof that there is a pressing need for more missionaries.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
A good conscience is to the soul what health is to the body; it preserves a constant ease and serenity within us, and more than countervails all the calamities and afflictions which can possibly befall us.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Guardian, Aug. 15, 1713
O faithful conscience, delicately pure,
How doth a little failing wound thee sore!
DANTE ALIGHIERI
Purgatorio
The wound of conscience is no sear, and Time cools it not with his wing, but merely keeps it open with his scythe.
JOHANN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER
Titan
Points of conscience are to be distinguished from matters of taste or judgment, for not everything which we disapprove must be lifted into a matter of conscience.
JAMES VILA BLAKE
Essays
Nearly everybody yields up his conscience, his practical judgment, into the keeping of others.
LORD ACTON
letter to Mary Gladstone, June 1, 1880
Sin in the conscience, is like Jonah in a ship, which causeth such a tempest, that the conscience is like a troubled sea, whose waters cannot rest, or it is like a mote in the eye, which causeth a perpetual trouble while it is there.
THOMAS BROOKS
A Cabinet of Jewels
I am not conscious of any harm that I have done or wished to any mortal. I bear no malice to any being. To my enemies, if any I have, I am willing to afford assistance; therefore towards man I maintain a conscience void of offense.
ABIGAIL ADAMS
letter to John Adams, April 19, 1764
Conscience is the most sacred of all property.
JAMES MADISON
The National Gazette, Mar. 29, 1792