quotations about conscience
It is hardly necessary to point out the function or dwell upon the necessity of conscience in human life. It is fundamental to all that is human in life. Without it men would be brutes; society would be wholly predatory; the only law recognized would be the law of the strongest; the only restraint on cupidity would be self-interest. There could be neither justice nor freedom. Trade would be a perpetual attempt at the spoliation of one's neighbor. Law could be enforced only by fear, and government would be of necessity a despotism. The higher faculties uninfluenced by conscience would rapidly degenerate. Reverence would no longer be paid to the good and the true, but only to the strong and the terrible; religion would become a superstition; God a demon ruling by fear, not by law; punishment a torment inflicted by hate and wrath, not a penalty sanctioned by conscience for disregard of its just and necessary laws; and benevolence itself, unregulated by a sense of right and wrong, would become a mere sentiment, following with its tears the robber as readily as the Messiah to his crucifixion, and strewing its flowers as lavishly on the grave of the felon as on that of the martyr. In history have been seen all these exhibitions, not of the absolute elimination of conscience from human life, for conscience has never been wholly wanting in the most degraded epoch of the most degraded nation, but of its obscuration and its effeminacy.
LYMAN ABBOTT
A Study in Human Nature
O Conscience, into what abyss of fears
And horrors hast thou driven me, out of which
I find no way, from deep to deeper plunged.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost
There is no witness so dreadful, no accuser so terrible as the conscience that dwells in the heart of every man.
POLYBIUS
attributed, Treasury of Spiritual Wisdom
When conscience acquits, who shall condemn?
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
Sir Charles Grandison
Each man's soul is a menagerie where Conscience, the animal-tamer, lives with a collection of wild beasts.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
If one's conscience be dead as a stone, it is as heavy too.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
You kin wash your hands but not your conscience.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
Our consciences are not all of the same pattern.
GEORGE ELIOT
Daniel Deronda
Another doctrine repugnant to civil society, is that whatsoever a man does against his conscience, is sin; and it dependeth on the presumption of making himself judge of good and evil. For a man's conscience and his judgement are the same thing, and as the judgement, so also the conscience may be erroneous.
THOMAS HOBBES
Leviathan
Before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.
HARPER LEE
To Kill a Mockingbird
So may heaven's grace clear away the foam from the conscience, that the river of thy thoughts may roll limpid thenceforth.
DANTE ALIGHIERI
Purgatorio
Let every man be free to act from his own conscience; but let him remember that other people have consciences too; and let not his liberty be so expansive that in its indulgence it jars and crashes against the liberty of others.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
There is only one good. And that is to act according to the dictates of one's conscience.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
All Men Are Mortal
Why should not Conscience have vacation
As well as other Courts o' th' nation?
Have equal power to adjourn,
Appoint appearance and return?
SAMUEL BUTLER
Hudibras
There are not anywhere else so many ways of trickery, so many false lights, so many veils, so many guises, so many illusive deceits, as are practiced in every man's conscience in respect to his motives, thoughts, feelings, conduct, and character.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
A man's conscience can tell him his situation better than seven watchmen in a lofty tower.
BEN SIRA
Sirach 37:14
Conscience is what? It is putting together a moral act and a moral ideal, and measuring the act by the ideal. It is putting this moral act which you do alongside the eternal laws of God, and seeing how it stands by those laws of God.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
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
Conscience is what makes a boy tell his mother before his sister does.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
Trust that man in nothing who has not a Conscience in everything.
LAURENCE STERNE
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman