#Conscience Quotes

“Tis a blushing shame-faced spirit that mutinies in a man's bosom. It fills a man full of obstacles. It made me once restore a purse of gold that (by chance) I found. It beggars any man that keeps it.”

“Conscience is a thousand swords.”

“All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand! Oh, oh, oh!”

“Out, damned spot! out, I say! One: two: why, then 'tis time to do't. Hell is murky!”

“They whose guilt within their bosom lies, imagine every eye beholds their blame.”

“Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.”

“I feel within me a peace above all earthly dignities, a still and quiet conscience.”

“The mind of guilt is full of scorpions.”

“Policy sits above conscience.”

“Love is too young to know what conscience is.”

“The only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong is what is against it.”

“Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is slicked o'er with the pale cast of thought”

“The urging of that word, judgment, hath bred a kind of remorse in me.”

“Therefore it is most expedient for the wise, if Don Worm (his conscience) find no impediment to the contrary, to be the trumpet of his own virtues, as I am to myself.”

“I'll not meddle with it; it is a dangerous thing; it makes a man a coward; a man cannot steal, but it accuseth him; a man cannot swear, but it checks him; a man cannot lie with his neighbor's wife, but it detects him. 'Tis a blushing, shame -faced spirit, that mutinies in a man's bosom ; it fills one full of obstacles; it made me once restore a purse of gold that by chance I found; it beggars any man that keeps it; it is turned out of all towns and cities for a dangerous thing; and every man that means to live well endeavors to trust to himself and live without it.”

“Conscience doth make cowards of us all.”

“My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, And every tongue brings in a several tale, And every tale condemns me for a villain. Perjury, perjury, in the high'st degree; Murder, stern murder in the dir'st degree, Throng to the bar, crying all, 'Guilty!, guilty!”

“Let not our babbling dreams affright our souls;Conscience is but a work that cowards use,Devised at first to keep the strong in awe:Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law!”

“A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace.”

“Between the acting of a dreadful thingAnd the first motion, all the interim isLike a phantasma or a hideous dream.”

“The only guide to a man's conscience, the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions.”

“O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!”

“Guiltiness will speak, though tongues were out of use”

“Out, damned spot! Out, I say!”

“Wherever the invitation of men or your own occasions lead you, speak the very truth, as your life and conscience teach it, and cheer the waiting, fainting hearts of men with new hope and new revelation.”

“O shame, where is thy blush?”

“A little water clears us of this deed.”

“The Play's the Thing, wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.”

“Men must learn now with pity to dispense; For policy sits above conscience.”

“History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. What is the worth of all this? 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 so 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 honor.”

“Forget the laws. If the laws don't make sense, if they run contrary to your conscience, you have to disobey them.”

“Wild liberty breeds iron conscience; natures with great impulses have great resources, and return from far.”

“Conscience is a blushing, shamefaced spirit than mutinies in a man's bosom; it fills one full of obstacles.”

“Besides, they are our outward consciences,And preachers to us all, admonishingThat we should drew us fairly for our end.”

“If a dog will not come to you after having looked you in the face, you should go home and examine your conscience.”

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

“Conscience is but a word that cowards use, devised at first to keep the strong in awe”

“I don't think you can make a lawyer honest by an act of legislature. You've got to work on his conscience. And his lack of conscience is what makes him a lawyer.”

“The color of the king doth come and go,Between his purpose and his conscience,Like heralds 'twixt two dreadful battles set:His passion is so ripe, it needs must break.”

“Government is merely an attempt to express the conscience of everybody, the average conscience of the nation, in the rules that everybody is commanded to obey. That is all it is.”

“Man was destined for society. His morality therefore was to be formed to this object. He was endowed with a sense of right and wrong merely relative to this. This sense is as much a part of his nature as the sense of hearing, seeing, feeling; it is the true foundation of morality... The moral sense, or conscience, is as much a part of man as his leg or arm. It is given to all human beings in a stronger or weaker degree, as force of members is given them in a greater or less degree. It may be strengthened by exercise, as may any particular limb of the body.”

“A wicked conscience mouldeth goblins swift as frenzy thoughts.”

“I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.”

“Or if the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messrs. Fourier's and Bellamy's and Morris's Utopias should all be outdone, and millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torment, what except a specifical and independent sort of emotion can it be which would make us immediately feel, even though an impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain?”

“The worst thing that can happen to a good teacher is to get a bad conscience about her profession because she feels herself hopeless as a psychologist.”

“Thrice is he arm'd that hath his quarrel just, And he but naked, though lock'd up in steel, Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.”

“Things said or done long years ago Or things I did not do or say But thought that I might say or do, Weigh me down, and not a day But something is recalled, My conscience or my vanity appalled.”

“Good men must not obey the laws too well.”

“Knowledge is a weight added to conscience.”

“The sewer is the conscience of the city.”