quotations about conscience
He whose conscience thus speaks peace, has something within that renders him superior to all adversity; that charms all fear and sorrow.
WILLIAM MCEWEN
Select Essays Doctrinal & Practical on a Variety of the Most Important and Interesting Subjects in Divinity
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
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
I know thou art religious,
And hast a thing within thee called conscience,
With twenty popish tricks and ceremonies,
Which I have seen thee careful to observe.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Titus Andronicus
The wounds of conscience always leave a scar.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
The Moral Sayings of Publilius Syrus
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
I'd fired conscience months back, but it was still hanging around, miserable, unshaven, nowhere else to go.
GLEN DUNCAN
Talulla Rising
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
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
Conscience was chiefly fear of society, or fear of oneself.
D. H. LAWRENCE
Lady Chatterley's Lover
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
A minority may do for a society what the conscience does for an individual.
JOHN HOWARD YODER
The Priestly Kingdom
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
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
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
Conscience is the only clue which will eternally guide a man clear of all doubts and inconsistencies.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to George Washington, May 10, 1789
Conscience is ... the God dwelling in us.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Conscience is the internal perception of the rejection of a particular wish operating within us.
SIGMUND FREUD
Totem and Taboo
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