Quotes About Conscience

We shall be call'd purgers, not murderers.

Shame to him whose cruel striking, kills for thoughts of his own liking.

On thee, the troubler of the poor world's peace! The worm of conscience still be-gnaw thy soul! Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou liv'st, And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends!

some good I mean to do, Despite of mine own nature.

What stronger breast-plate than a heart untainted! Thrice is he arm'd, that hath his quarrel just; And he but naked, though lock'd up in steel, Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all...

Now does he feel His secret murders sticking on his hands. Now minutely revolts upbraid his faith-breach. Those he commands move only in command, Nothing in love. Now does he feel his title Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe Upon a dwarfish thief.

For I can raise no money by vile means: By heaven, I had rather coin my heart, And drop my blood for drachmas, than to wring From the hard hands of peasants their vile trash 75By any indirection.

servomechanism in which a moral vacuum had been so successfully sucked clean of every molecule of real qualm or scruple that his own descriptions of the unutterable crimes he perpetrated daily seem often to float outside and apart from evil, phantasms of cretinous innocence. Yet

Everyone, Ross said, seems a little less concerned than I do. Am I more tender-hearted for others or only tender because of my own conscience? We are not–untender, she said. Not so. But maybe we are more–resigned. When a man is condemned to death we accept it, though it's sad to do so. We know we cannot change it. You hoped to change it–so it's more of a–a disappointment. You feel you have failed. We don't feel that because we never hoped to succeed.

What was the matter with him? No sense of humor to leaven life? Must every act be dead serious, a weight upon his head and hands? Loving was a recreation; all the poets sang of its lightness, its levity. Only the dull clod raised barriers of creed or conscience.

I don't like mixing up moralities with mathematics.

Wyclif, who died in 1384, had appealed to the conscience of his age. Baffled, though not silenced, in England, his inspiration stirred a distant and little-known land, and thence disturbed Europe. Students from Prague had come to Oxford, and carried his doctrines, and indeed the manuscripts of his writings, to Bohemia. From this sprang the movement by which the fame of John Huss eclipsed that of his English master and evoked the enduring national consciousness of the Czech people.

The only guide to a man is his conscience, the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions.

When we played softball, I'd steal second base, feel guilty and go back.

Indifference to me equals evil.

Attempts to deescalate the situation did not work, and I guess it's easy for me to say as she was the hurt party, but where she took this rage crossed the line from understandable to unforgivable and then to unconscionable. Not only was it malignant to me but horrendous for poor Dylan, who had just turned seven and was too young to have any perspective.

They asked me my goal in life. I said, to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race and see if it could be mass-produced in plastic.

I deeply believe that leaders, whatever their profession, are wrong to allow distinctions of rank to flourish within their organizations. Living together on equal terms helps people develop deeper bonds and creates a common conscience.

a problem of the soul, a heaviness of the heart, a darkness of the conscience

People have an annoying habit of remembering things they shouldn't.

Bravery raises the moral and social conscience of a society.

Wickedness consists in the very hesitation about an act, even though it be not perpetrated.

Guilt is present in the very hesitation, even though the deed be not committed.