Conscience Quotes - Page 40

• A man can bear a world's contempt when he has that within which says he's worthy. When he contemns himself, there burns the hell.

  Alexander Smith

  Men, World, Bears

  Alexander Smith (1856). “Poems ... Third edition”, p.149

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• Whatever guilt is perpetrated by some evil prompting, is grievous to the author of the crime. This is the first punishment of guilt that no one who is guilty is acquitted at the judgment seat of his own conscience.

  Juvenal

  Punishment, Evil, Guilt

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, p. 345-46, Satires, XIII, line 1, 1922.

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• Good sense, good health, good conscience, and good fame,--all these belong to virtue, and all prove that virtue has a title to your love.

  William Cowper

  Titles, Virtue, Fame

  William Cowper, Robert Southey (1854). “The Works: Comprising His Poems, Correspondence and Translations : in Eight Volumes. ¬The poetical works, Vol. 1”, p.119

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• Phychical pain is more easily borne than physical; and if I had my choice between a bad conscience and a bad tooth, I should choose the former.

  Heinrich Heine

  Pain, Choices, Teeth

  Heinrich Heine (1873). “Scintillations from the Prose Works of Heinrich Heine: I. Florentine Nights. II. Excerpts”, p.175

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• Charity has always been a expression of the guilty consciences of a ruling class.

  Doris Lessing

  Class, Expression, Charity

  Doris Lessing, Doris May Lessing (1977). “A proper marriage”

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• In mortals there is a care for trifles which proceeds from love and conscience, and is most holy; and a care for trifles which comes of idleness and frivolity, and is most base. And so, also, there is a gravity proceeding from thought, which is most noble; and a gravity proceeding from dulness and mere incapability of enjoyment, which is most base.

  John Ruskin

  Care, Noble, Holy

  John Ruskin (1867). “Precious Thoughts: Moral and Religious. Gathered from the Works of John Ruskin, A. M.”, p.302

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• Over and over again, people had to disobey lawful authority to follow the voice of their conscience. This obedience to God and disobedience to the State has, over and over again, happened throughout history. It is time again to cry out against our 'leaders,' to question (since it is not for us to say that they are evil) whether or not they are sane.

  Dorothy Day

  Voice, People, Evil

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• perhaps all this modern ferment of what's known as 'social conscience' or 'civic responsibility' isn't a result of the sense of duty, but of the old, old craving for beauty.

  Dorothy Canfield Fisher

  Beauty, Responsibility, Modern

  Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1915). “The Bent Twig”

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• The path of duty I clearly trace, / I stand with conscience face to face, / And all her pleas allow; / Calling and crying the while for grace, - / 'Some other time, and some other place; / Oh, not to-day; not now!

  Alice Cary

  Grace, Calling, Path

  Alice Cary, Phoebe Cary, Mary Clemmer (1876). “The Poetical Works of Alice and Phoebe Cary”, p.168

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• The desire to please those we admire and respect often cripples conscience.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Desire, Cripples, Admire

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Harriot (Stanton). Blatch (Mrs) (1922). “Elizabeth Cady Stanton as revealed in her letters, diary and reminiscences”

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• Images anesthetize. An event known through photographs certainly becomes more real than it would have been if one had never seen the photographs ... But after repeated exposure to images it also becomes less real. ... 'concerned' photography has done at least as much to deaden conscience as to arouse it.

  Susan Sontag

  Photography, Real, Events

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• What I cannot live with may not bother another man's conscience. The result is that conscience will stand against conscience.

  Hannah Arendt

  Men, May, Results

  Hannah Arendt (1972). “Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics; Civil Disobedience; On Violence; Thoughts on Politics and Revolution”, p.74, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Toleration is not the opposite of intoleration, but it is the counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms. The one assumes to itself the right of withholding liberty of conscience, and the other of granting it. The one is the pope, armed with fire and fagot, and the other is the pope selling or granting indulgences.

  Thomas Paine

  Fire, Opposites, Religion

  Thomas Paine (1859). “Complete Works”, p.89

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• The successful truck gardener can never go out to dinner in the summer or spend a week end away, because his conscience tells him he has to be at home eating up his corn or packaging his beans for the freezer.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Summer, Home, Successful

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• That's what a conscience is made of, scar tissue ... Little strips and pieces of remorse sewn together year by year until they formed a distinctive pattern, a design for living.

  Margaret Millar

  Years, Design, Together

  Margaret Millar (2017). “Do Evil in Return”, p.73, Soho Press

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• There are some women in whom conscience is so strongly developed that it leaves little room for anything else. Love is scarcely felt before duty rushes to encase it, anger impossible because one must always be calm and see both sides, pity evaporates in expedients, even grief is felt as a sort of bruised sense of injury, a resentment that one should have grief forced upon one when one has always acted for the best.

  Sylvia Townsend Warner

  Grief, Love Is, Should Have

  Sylvia Townsend Warner (2011). “Selected Stories”, p.246, Hachette UK

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• When aroused the American conscience is a powerful force for reform.

  Coretta Scott King

  Powerful, Reform, Force

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• There is seemingly no biological benefit to acting with conscience; if there were, only moral individuals would survive and procreate. Sadly, we know that's not true. The benefit of conscience is that you won't suffer guilt (private) or shame (public), and that by your own self-imposed definition, you are a moral human, a special kind of animal who takes unique pride in elevating him/herself above the termites.

  Laura Schlessinger

  Pride, Unique, Animal

  Dr. Laura Schlessinger (2009). “How Could You Do That?!: Abdication of Character, Courage, Consci”, p.25, Harper Collins

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• It is often easier to justify one's self to others than to respond to the secret doubts that arise in one's own bosom.

  Margaret Oliphant

  Self, Doubt, Secret

  Margaret Oliphant Oliphant (1880). “He that will not when he may”

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• a social conscience is not incompatible with profit.

  Anita Roddick

  Social, Profit

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• Virtue consists in doing our duty in the several relations we sustain, in respect to ourselves, to our fellowmen, and to God, as known from reason, conscience, and revelation.

  Archibald Alexander

  Virtue, Reason, Revelations

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• The real transgression occurs when religion wants government to tell citizens how to live uniquely personal parts of their lives. The failure of Prohibition proves the futility of such an attempt when a majority or even a substantial minority happens to disagree. Some questions may be inherently individual ones, or people may be sharply divided about whether they are. In such cases, like Prohibition and abortion, the proper role of religion is to appeal to the conscience of the individual, not the coercive power of the state.

  Edward Kennedy

  Real, Government, People

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• Spend your time in nothing which you know must be repented of; in nothing on which you might not pray for the blessing of God; in nothing which you could not review with a quiet conscience on your dying bed; in nothing which you might not safely and properly be found doing if death should surprise you in the act.

  Richard Baxter

  Blessing, Dying, Bed

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• [On power:] Some people really have almost a disdain for that word. They feel it is alien to conscience. Power for power's sake, no. But the positive use of power for positive purposes is very important. You have to understand that. You've got to have a seat at the policy table if you want to make a difference.

  Elizabeth Dole

  Differences, People, Important

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• Few things are as bad as a guilty conscience.

  Buchi Emecheta

  Guilty Conscience, Guilty

  Buchi Emecheta (1994). “The Joys of Motherhood”, p.165, Heinemann

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