Conscience Quotes - Page 19

• I would bear any affliction rather than be burdened with a guilty conscience.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Affliction, Bears, Guilty Conscience

  Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1988). “Spurgeon at His Best: Over 2200 Striking Quotations from the World's Most Exhaustive and Widely-read Sermon Series”, Baker Publishing Group

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• A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the
  great sense, and men, serve the state with their conscience also,
  and so necessarily resist it for the most part, and they are
  commonly treated as enemies by it.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Hero, Men, Enemy

  Henry David Thoreau, Nancy L. Rosenblum (1996). “Thoreau: Political Writings”, p.3, Cambridge University Press

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• For the longest time, marriage has had a guilty conscience about itself. Should we believe it?--Yes, we should believe it.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Marriage, Believe, Guilty Conscience

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• Laughter means: taking a mischievous delight in someone else's uneasiness, but with a good conscience.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Laughter, Mean, Delight

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• Not to be cowardly when it comes to our own actions! Not to leave them in the lurch!--The sting of conscience is indecent.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Action, Cowardly, Remorse

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• A thoroughbred business man cannot enter heartily upon the business of life without first looking into his accounts.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Life, Business, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2007). “My Thoughts Are Murder to the State: Thoreau's Essays on Political Philosophy”, p.121, David M Gross

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• We over-estimate the conscience of our friend. His goodness seems better than our goodness, his nature finer, his temptations less. Everything that is his,--his name, his form, his dress, books, and instruments,--fancy enhances. Our own thought sounds new and larger from his mouth.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Friendship, Book, Names

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.90

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• To hell, allegiance! vows, to the blackest devil!
  Conscience, and grace, to the profoundest pit!
  I dare damnation: To this point I stand,--
  That both the worlds I give to negligence,
  Let come what comes; only I'll be reveng'd.

  William Shakespeare

  Revenge, Giving, Grace

  William Shakespeare, James Boswell, Alexander Pope, Richard Farmer, Samuel Johnson (1821). “The Plays and Poems of William Shakspeare”, p.435

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• Conscience is the moralized form of self-absorption.

  Mason Cooley

  Self, Form, Absorption

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• To our strongest impulse, to the tyrant in us, not only our reason but also our conscience yields.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Yield, Tyrants, Reason

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• I must conclude that Conscience, if that be the name of it, was not given us for no purpose, or for a hindrance. However flattering order and expediency may look, it is but the repose of a lethargy, and we will choose rather to be awake, though it be stormy, and maintain ourselves on this earth, and in this life, as we may, without signing our death-warrant. Let us see if we cannot stay here, where He has put us, on his own conditions. Does not his law reach as far as his light? The expedients of the nations clash with one another: only the absolutely right is expedient for all.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Integrity, Light, Order

  Henry David Thoreau (1906). “The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: A week on the Concord and Merrimack rivers”

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• Will mankind never learn that policy is not morality,--that it never secures any moral right, but considers merely what is expedient? chooses the available candidate,--who is invariably the devil,--and what right have his constituents to be surprised, because the devil does not behave like an angel of light? What is wanted is men, not of policy, but of probity,--who recognize a higher law than the Constitution, or the decision of the majority.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Angel, Men, Light

  Henry David Thoreau (2000). “Walden and Other Writings: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.718, Modern Library

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• The trail of the serpent reaches into all the lucrative professions and practices of man. Each has its own wrongs. Each finds a tender and very intelligent conscience a disqualification for success. Each requires of the practitioner a certain shutting of the eyes, a certain dapperness and compliance, an acceptance of customs, a sequestration from the sentiments of generosity and love, a compromise of private opinion and lofty integrity.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Integrity, Work, Eye

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.238

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• Wild liberty develops iron conscience. Want of liberty, by strengthening law and decorum, stupefies conscience.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Freedom, Law, Iron

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Ernest Spiller, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Joseph Slater, Jean Ferguson Carr (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays, second series”, p.124, Harvard University Press

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• Sulky labor, and the labor of sorrow are little worth: if you could only shed tranquility over the conscience and infuse joy into the soul, you would do more to make the man a thorough worker than if you could lend him the force of Hercules, or the hundred arms of Briareus.

  William Wilberforce

  Men, Joy, Soul

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• The business of the philosopher is well done if he succeeds in raising genuine doubt.

  Morris Raphael Cohen

  Doubt, Done, Succeed

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• 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". Book by Simone de Beauvoir, p. 181, 1946.

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• One would love nonetheless to know how to be a man, how to be a woman before God, in the mirror of one's own conscience, in the looks of those who surround us. One would wish to find the strength to beautify one's thoughts and to purify one's heart. It is everyone's hope and expectation to live in serenity and to plod along in transparency: the palms of the hands patiently directed towards heaven, at the heart of all this modernity.

  Tariq Ramadan

  Heart, Men, Mirrors

  Tariq Ramadan (2009). “Islam, the West and the Challenges of Modernity”, p.19, Kube Publishing Ltd

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• It might be added that corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their ‘personhood’ often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of ‘We the People’ by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.

  John Paul Stevens

  People, Feelings, Desire

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• There are times when you have to obey a call which is the highest of all, i.e. the voice of conscience even though such obedience may cost many a bitter tear, and even more, separation from friends, from family, from the state, to which you may belong, from all that you have held as dear as life itself. For this obedience is the law of our being.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Law, Voice, Tears

  Mahatma Gandhi, Anand T. Hingorani, Ganga Anand Hingorani (1985). “The Encyclopaedia of Gandhian Thoughts”

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• Pardon, we beseech Thee, all our offences of omission and commission; and grant that in all our thoughts, words, and actions, we may conform to Thy known will manifested in our consciences, and in the revelations of Jesus Christ our Saviour.

  Timothy Pickering

  Jesus, Omission, May

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• In hell, sinners shall forever lay all the blame on their own wills. Hell is a rational torment by conscience.

  Richard Baxter

  Forever, Blame, Hell

  "The Saint's Everlasting Rest: Or a Treatise of the Blessed State of the Saints in Their Enjoyment of God in Heaven". Book by Richard Baxter. Chapter: "The People Who Receive the Saints' Rest", 1650.

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• It is as hard a thing to maintain a sound understanding, a tender conscience, a lively, gracious, heavenly spirit, and an upright life in the midst of contention, as to keep your candle lighted in the greatest storms.

  Richard Baxter

  Understanding, Storm, Sound

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• It is one thing to have sin alarmed only by convictions, and another to have it crucified by converting grace. Many, because they have been troubled in conscience for their sins, think well of their case, miserably mistaking conviction for conversion.

  Joseph Alleine

  Thinking, Grace, Sin

  Joseph Alleine (1824). “An Alarm to Unconverted Sinners”, p.97

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• We take nothing to the grave with us, but a good or evil conscience... It is true, terrors of conscience cast us down; and yet without terrors of conscience we cannot be raised up again.

  Samuel Rutherford

  Evil, Down And, Graves

  Samuel Rutherford (1818). “Joshua redivivus, or, three hundred and fifty-two religious letters: to which is added a testimony to the convenanted work of Reformation between 1638 and 1649”, p.273

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