Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Conscience

"Conscience is God’s deputy in the soul." - Thomas Adams

"There may be some tenderness in the conscience and yet the will be a very stone; and as long as the will stands out, there is no broken heart." - Richard Alleine

"The test of every religious, political, or educational system is the man which it forms. If it injures the intelligence, it is bad; if it injures the character, it is vicious; if it injures the conscience it is criminal." -

"Conscience is the dictate of reason." -

"A firm faith is the best theology; a good life is the best philosophy, a clear conscience the best law; honesty the best policy, and temperance the best physic." - Arthur Aughey

"So long as there are earnest believers in the world, they will always wish to punish opinions, even if their judgment tells them it is unwise, and their conscience that is wrong." - Walter Bagehot

"Conscience is the mirror of our souls, which represents the errors of our lives in their full shape." - George Bancroft

"Memory is the cabinet of imagination, the treasury of reason, the registry of conscience, and the council-chamber of thought." - Giambattista Basile, aka Giovan Battista Basile

"A guilty conscience is a hell on earth, and points to one beyond." - Francis Beaumont

"In vain we attempt to clear our conscience by affecting to compensate for fraud or cruelty by acts of strict religious homage towards God." - Hugh Blair

"It is a conscience very ill informed that violates the rights of one man, for the convenience of another." - James Boswell

"Conscience is thoroughly well bred and soon leaves off talking to those who do not wish to hear it." - Samuel Butler

"A quiet conscience makes one so serene!" -

"Conviction is the conscience of the mind." -

"Contempt of all outward things that come in competition with duty fulfills the ideal of human greatness. It is sanctioned by conscience, that universal and eternal lawgiver, whose chief principle is, that everything must be yielded up for right." - William Ellery Channing

"Every human being has a work to carry on within, duties to perform abroad, influences to exert, which are peculiarly his, and which no conscience but his own can teach." - William Ellery Channing

"No evil is intolerable but a guilty conscience." - William Ellery Channing

"The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honour." -

"Conscience and covetousness are never to be reconciled; like fire and water they always destroy each other, according tot he predominancy of the element." - Jeremy Collier

"What can be more honorable than to have courage enough to execute the commands of reason and conscience, to maintain the dignity of our nature, and the station assigned us?" - Jeremy Collier

"They talk of a man betraying his country, his friends, his sweetheart. There must be a moral bond first. All a man can betray is his conscience." - Joseph Conrad, born Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski

"Conscience emphasizes the word ought." - Joseph Cook

"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

"A clean and sensitive conscience, a steadfast and scrupulous integrity in small things as well as great, is the most valuable of all possessions, to a nation as to an individual." - Henry Van Dyke, fully Henry Jackson Van Dyke

"The first impulse of conscience is apt to be right; the first impulse of appetite or passion is generally wrong. We should be faithful to the former, but suspicious of the latter." - Tyron Edwards

"Real human progress depends not so much on inventive ingenuity as on conscience." - Albert Einstein

"No man on earth is truly free. All are slaves of money or necessity. Public opinion or fear of prosecution forces each one, against his conscience, to conform." - Euripedes NULL

"A good conscience is never lawless in the worst regulated state, and will provide those laws for itself which the neglect of legislators had forgotten to supply." - Henry Fielding

"Next to temperance, a quiet conscience, a cheerful mind, and active habits, I place early rising as a means of health and happiness." -

"A good conscience is a continual Christmas." - Benjamin Franklin

"Keep Conscience clear, then never fear." - Benjamin Franklin

"God is that indefinable something which we all feel but which we do not know. To me God is truth and love, God is ethics and morality, god is fearlessness, God is the source of light and life and yet He is above and beyond all these. God is conscience. he is even the atheism of the atheist." -

"The seven sins of the world. Wealth without work. Pleasure without conscience. Knowledge without character. Commerce without morality. Science without humanity. Worship without sacrifice. Politics without principle." -

"Sell not your conscience; thus are fetters wrought. What is a Slave but One who can be Bought?" - Arthur Guiterman

"One pang of conscience is worth more than many lashes." - Jose ben Halafta, or Rabbi Yose ben Halafta, aka Rabbi Yossi

"The memory and conscience never did, nor never will, agree about forgiving injuries." - Charles Montagu Halifax, 1st Earl of Halifax, Lord Halifax

"In matters of conscience first thoughts are best; in matters of prudence last thoughts are best." - Robert Hall

"The virtuous mind that ever walks attended by a strong siding champion, conscience." - William Henry Harrison

"A man of integrity will never listen to any plea against conscience." - Henry Home, Lord Kames

"Men are guided less by conscience than by glory; and yet the shortest way to glory is to be guided by conscience." - Henry Home, Lord Kames

"The shortest way to glory is to be guided by conscience." - Henry Home, Lord Kames

"The conscience of every man recognizes courage as the foundation of manliness, and manliness as the perfection of human character." - Thomas Hughes

"Never was the voice of conscience silenced without retribution." - Anna Jameson

"Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits." - Thomas Jefferson

"Wisdom and virtue are by no means sufficient, without the supplemental laws of good-breeding, to secure freedom from degenerating into rudeness, or self-esteem from swelling into insolence. A thousand incivilities may be committed, and a thousand offices neglected, without any remorse of conscience or reproach from reason." -

"[Conscience] is the voice of our ideal self, our complete self, our real self, laying its call upon the will." - Rufus Jones, fully Rufus Matthew Jones

"No guilty man is ever acquitted at the bar of his own conscience." - Juvenal, fully Decimus Junius Juvenalis NULL

"Since human beings have a moral conscience, a spiritual self and a physical self, we can choose among various options. And we are responsible for the consequences of our choices. We can put the common interests of humankind above the conflicts of ideological, racial, religious and national groups. We can bring together thought and feeling, politics and moral values, women and men, the underprivileged and the privileged.... The essence of life is to search for happiness. To realize this end, we must become one with the human family, one with the universe... We should live as if we were to die today. We should die as if we live forever." - Petra Kelly, fully Petra Karin Kelley

"A man could not have anything upon his conscience if God did not exist, for the relationship between the individual and God, the God-relationship, is the conscience, and that is why it is so terrible to have even the least thing upon one’s conscience, because one is immediately conscious of the infinite weight of God." - Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

"Money is a bottomless sea, in which honor, conscience, and truth may be drowned." - Ivan Kozlof, fully Ivan Ivanovich Kozlov