Great Throughts Treasury

"All duties are matter of conscience, with this restriction that a superior obligation suspends the force of an inferior one." - Roger L'Estrange, fully Sir Roger L'Estrange

"We cheat ourselves in order to enjoy a quiet conscience, without possessing virtue." - Madame de Lambert, fully Anne-Thérèse de Marguenat de Courcelles, Marquise de Lambert

"We cheat ourselves in order to enjoy a calm conscience without possessing virtue." - Saint Lambert or Landebertus, aka Lambert of Maastricht NULL

"Conscience is a sacred sanctuary where God alone may enter as judge." - Abbé Hugo Felicite de Lamennais

"A man's vanity tells him what is honor; a man's conscience what is justice." - Walter Savage Landor

"He who has no conscience makes up for it by lacking it." -

"It is the court of last appeal - the enlightened conscience of a free man!" - McIlyar H. Lichliter, fully Name: McIlyar Hamilton

"Civilization is simply applied conscience, and Progress is a widening conscience." - Henry Demarest Lloyd

"Our conscience is a fire within us, and our sins as the fuel; instead of warming, it will scorch us, unless the fuel be removed, or the heat of it allayed by penitential tears." - James Madison Mason

"Conscience is justice’s best minister; it threatens, promises, rewards, and punishes and keeps all under control; the busy must attend to its remonstrances, the most powerful submit to its reproof, and the angry endure its upbraidings. While conscience is our friend all is peace; but if once offended farewell the tranquil mind." - Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

"The laws of conscience, which we say are born of nature, are born of custom. Each man, holding in inward veneration the opinions and the behavior approved and accepted around him, cannot break loose from them without remorse, or apply himself to them without self-satisfaction." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

"All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses." -

"I know of but one remedy against the fear of death that is effectual and that will stand the test of a sick-bed, or of a sound mind - that is, a good life, a clear conscience, an honest heart, and a well-ordered conversation; to carry the thoughts of dying men about us, and so to live before we die as we shall wish we had when we come to it." - Kathleen Norris

"Conscience is the chamber of justice." -

"There is nothing a man can less afford to leave at home than his conscience or his good habits; for it is not to be denied that travel is, in its immediate circumstances, unfavorable to habits of self-discipline, regulation of thought, sobriety of conduct, and dignity of character. Indeed, one of the great lessons of travel is the discovery how much our virtues owe to the support of constant occupation, to the influence of public opinion, and to the force of habit; a discovery very dangerous, if it proceed from an actual yielding to temptations resisted at home, and not from a consciousness of increased power put forth in withstanding them." - Richardson Pack or Packe

"'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death." - Thomas Paine

"I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death." - Thomas Paine

"Never violate the sacredness of your individual self-respect. Be true to your own mind and conscience, your heart and your soul; so only can you be true to God." - Joseph Parker

"Conscience serves us especially to judge of the actions of others." - Jean-Antoine Petit-Senn

"Conscience whispers but interest screams aloud." - Jean-Antoine Petit-Senn

"The most exacting jailer is our own conscience." - Jean-Antoine Petit-Senn

"A disciplined conscience is a man's best friend. It may not be his most amiable, but it is his most faithful monitor." - Austin Phelps

"Lust is an enemy to the purse, a foe to the person, a canker to the mind, a corrosive to the conscience, a weakness of the wit, a besotter of the senses, and finally a mortal bane to all the body." - Pliny the Elder, full name Casus Plinius Secundus NULL

"Even when there is no law, there is conscience... An evil conscience is often quiet, but never secure." - Publius Syrus

"If any speak ill of thee, flee home to thy own conscience, and examine thy heart: if thou be guilty, it is a just correction; if not guilty, it is a fair instruction: make use of both; so shalt thou distill honey out of gall, and out of an open enemy create a secret friend." - Francis Quarles

"Conscience is a thousand witnesses." - Quintilian, fully Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, also Quintillian and Quinctilian NULL

"Listen to your conscience, for you may be listening to God." - J. H. Rhodes, fully John Harold Rhodes

"It is a well-known psychological fact that the conscience of children is formed by the influences that surround them; and that their notions of good and evil are the result of the moral atmosphere they breathe." -

"Responsibility is measured, not by the amount of injury resulting from wrong action, but by the distinctness with which conscience has the opportunity of distinguishing between the right and the wrong." -

"Conscience is the voice of the soul." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"It is only when we haggle with conscience that we have recourse to the subtleties of argument." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"A good conscience fears no witnesses, but a guilty conscience is solicitous even in solitude. If we do nothing but what is honest, let all the world know it; but if otherwise, what does it signify to have nobody else know it so long as I know it myself? Miserable is he who slights that witness!" -

"The foundation of true joy is in the conscience." -

"Where there is a bad conscience, some circumstance or other may provide one with impunity, but never with freedom from anxiety." -

"Fear is the tax that conscience pays to guilt." - George Sewell

"We can do nothing well without joy, and a good conscience which is the ground of joy." - Richard Sibbes (or Sibbs)

"Self-approbation, when founded in truth and a good conscience, is a source of some of the purest joys known to man." - Charles Simmons

"Conscience is that peculiar faculty of the soul which may be called the religious instinct." - Samuel Smiles

"Good character is human nature in its best form. It is moral order embodied in the individual. Men of character are not only the conscience of society, but in every well governed state they are its best motive power; for it is moral qualities which, in the main, rule the world." - Samuel Smiles

"Minds broken in two. Hearts broken. Conscience torn from acts. A culture split in a thousand pieces. That is segregation." - Lillian Smith, fully Lillian Eugenia Smith

"We grow with the years more fragile in body but morally stouter, and can throw off the chill of a bad conscience almost at once." - Logan Pearsall Smith

"Conscience is doubtless sufficient to conduct the coldest character into the road of virtue; but enthusiasm is to conscience what honor is to duty; there is in us a superfluity of soul, which it is sweet to consecrate to the beautiful when the good has been accomplished." -

"The voice of conscience is so delicate that it is easy to stifle it; but it is also so clear that it is impossible to mistake it." -

"Conscience warns us as a friend before it punishes as a judge." - Stanislaw I, born Stanisław Leszczyński, also spelled Stanislaus NULL

"The world will never be in any manner of order or tranquillity until men are firmly convinced that conscience, honor and credit are all in one interest; and that without he concurrence of the former the latter are but impositions upon ourselves and others." - Richard Steele, fully Sir Richard Steele

"Trust that man is nothing who has not a conscience in everything." - Lawrence Sterne, alternatively Laurence Sterne

"Our faults afflict us more than our good deeds console. Pain is ever uppermost in the conscience as in the heart." - Madame Swetchine, fully Anne Sophie Swetchine née Sophia Petrovna Soïmonov or Soymanof

"No man becomes fully evil at once; but suggestion bringeth on indulgence; indulgence, delight; delight, consent; consent, endeavor; endeavor, practice; practice, custom; custom, excuse; excuse, defense; defense, obstinacy; obstinacy, boasting; boasting, a seared conscience and a reprobate mind." - Thomas De Witt Talmage

"Was ever any wicked man free from the stings of a guilty conscience?" - John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury

"Man’s actions proceed from his innate character and the motives acting upon him. What is conscience and the perception of right and wrong in actions that follows from the consciousness of freedom? That is a question for ethics." -