Quotes About Conscience

Conscience. ... Which is why, Gamache knew, it was vital to be aware of actions in the present. Because the present became the past, and the past grew. And got up, and followed you. And found you ... Who wouldn't be afraid of this?" ? Louise Penny, The Brutal Telling

A peace above all earthly dignities," she quoted. Then turned back to the room. "A still and quiet conscience.

This man had a huge and terrible conscience riding herd on a huge and terrible greed.

The disjoining of deed from will, of practice from theory, is to put asunder what God has joined by an indissoluble sacrament. The soul must be tainted before the action become corrupt; and there is no self-delusion more fatal than that which makes the conscience dreamy with the anodyne of lofty sentiments, while the life is groveling and sensual.

Peter Marin condemns the "inadequacy" of our psychological terminology in describing the magnitude and reality of the "pain of human conscience." As a society, he says, we seem unable to deal with moral pain or guilt.

Here's what I advise any young struggling actress today: The important thing is to develop as a woman first, and a performer second. You wouldn't prostitute yourself to get a part, not if you're in the right mind. You won't be happy, whatever you do, unless you're comfortable with your own conscience.

There is no person so severely punished, as those who subject themselves to the whip of their own remorse.

The first and greatest punishment of the sinner is the conscience of sin.

It makes a great deal of difference whether one wills not to sin or has not the knowledge to sin.

Though the dungeon, the scourge, and the executioner be absent, the guilty mind can apply the goad and scorch with blows.

The authority of the Church was thrown over by the authority of the state. Twenty years only have passed, and the authority of the state is already thrown over by the authority of conscience. ... I fear for those yet unborn, that they are already betrayed. Robbed of the truth we can inherit, they will know their sins as only misery, and their forgiveness they will not know at all because they do not know God. Then at last men will be free of God. Then they will be slaves indeed.

D]oubt, the principle of theoretic freedom, appears to me a crime. … [T]he highest crime is doubt in God, or the doubt that God exists. … [T]hat which I do not trust myself to doubt, … without feeling disturbed in my soul, without incurring guilt; that is no matter of theory, but a matter of conscience[.]

It's a little convenient, isn't it, to say that the reason you did something horrible was because someone else told you to. That doesn't make it any less wrong. No matter how many people are telling you to jump off a bridge, you always have the option to turn around and walk away.

Power isn't doing something terrible to someone who's weaker than you, Reiner. It's having the strength to do something terrible, and choosing not to.

You can keep dividing and dividing and you'll never entirely get rid of the sourness in your stomach that you taste when you think back to the moment you could have said no

There are some things we do because we convince ourselves it would be better for everyone involved. We tell ourselves that it's the right thing to do, the altruistic thing to do. It's far easier than telling ourselves the truth.

You can't buy a clean conscience.

Power isn't doing something terrible to someone who's weaker than you, Reiner. It's having the strength to do something terrible, and choosing not to.

She knew, even at that young age, that you cannot separate good and evil cleanly, that they are conjoined twins sharing a single heart.

Repeat the same action over and over again, and eventually it will feel right. Eventually, there isn't even any guilt.

We all have things that come back to haunt us. Some of us just see them more cleary than others. -Plain Truth

We think ourselves possessed, or, at least, we boast that we are so, of liberty of conscience on all subjects, and of the right of free inquiry and private judgment in all cases, and yet how far are we from these exalted privileges in fact!

Upon common theaters, indeed, the applause of the audience is of more importance to the actors than their own aprobation. But upon the stage of life, while concience claps, let the world hiss! On the contrary if concience disapproves, the loudest applauses of the world are of little value.

Guilt is the only affect I know of that does not diminish with time. Nor does the guilty conscience have any sense of priority or right proportion.