Best conscience & self Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

Source: Two Sermons Preached Before the Twenty-eighth Congregational Society in Boston: On the 14th and 21st of November, 1852, on Leaving Their Old and Entering a New Place of Worship

“Self-interest is the most ingenious and persuasive of all the agents that deceive our consciences, while by means of it our unhappy and stubborn prejudices operate in their greatest force.”

Mean Self Force Interest Conscience Prejudice Unhappy Agents Deceiving Stubborn Self Interest Ingenious Persuasive

Author:William C. Bryant

“Nothing, that is say no one, can be such an inexorable tour-conductor as one's own conscience or sense of duty, if one allows either the upper hand: the self-bullying that goes on in the name of sight-seeing is grievous.”

Ifs Self Hands Names Seeing Duty Goes On Travel Conscience Sight Bullying Conductor Inexorable Upper Hand

Author:Elizabeth Bowen

“One self-approving hour whole years outweighs.”

Years Self Whole Hours Conscience Self-examination Whole Year Approving

Book:An essay on man. Enlarged and improved by the author. With notes, critical and explanatory

Source: An essay on man. Enlarged and improved by the author. With notes, critical and explanatory

“Self-understanding rather than self-condemnation is the way to inner peace and mature conscience.”

Way Self Understanding Conscience Inner Peace Mature Condemnation Self Understanding

Author:Joshua L. Liebman

“There is seemingly no biological benefit to acting with conscience; if there were, only moral individuals would survive and procreate. Sadly, we know that's not true. The benefit of conscience is that you won't suffer guilt (private) or shame (public), and that by your own self-imposed definition, you are a moral human, a special kind of animal who takes unique pride in elevating him/herself above the termites.”

Source: How Could You Do That?!: Abdication of Character, Courage, Consci

“It is often easier to justify one's self to others than to respond to the secret doubts that arise in one's own bosom.”

Self Secret Doubt Easier Conscience Arise Justify Bosoms

Book:He that will not when he may

Source: He that will not when he may

“One should arrive at leading one's conscience to a state of development so that it becomes the voice of a better and higher self, of which the ordinary self is a servant.”

Should Self States Voice Development Higher Ordinary Conscience Servant Higher Self

Author:Vincent Van Gogh

“The most stupendous system of organized robbery known has been that of the church towards woman, a robbery that has not only taken her self-respect but all rights of person; the fruits of her own industry; her opportunities of education; the exercise of her judgment, her own conscience, her own will.”

Persons Has Beens Self Religion Opportunity Church Known Taken Rights Industry Exercise Judgment Conscience Fruit Organized Self Respect Robbery

Book:Woman, church and state: a historical account of the status of woman through the Christian ages, with reminiscences of the matriarchate

Source: Woman, church and state: a historical account of the status of woman through the Christian ages, with reminiscences of the matriarchate

“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.”

Source: The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With Murphy's Essay

“The fatuous idea that a person can be holy by himself denies God the pleasure of saving sinners. God must therefore first take the sledge-hammer of the Law in His fists and smash the beast of self-righteousness and its brood of self-confidence, self wisdom, and self-help. When the conscience has been thoroughly frightened by the Law it welcomes the Gospel of grace with its message of a Savior Who came-not to break the bruised reed nor to quench the smoking flax-but to preach glad tidings to the poor, to heal the broken-hearted, and to grant forgiveness of sins to all the captives.”

“Control cannot be called conscience until we are able to take it inside us and make it our own, until--in spite of the fact that the wrongs we have done or imagined will never be punished or known--we nonetheless feel that the clutch in the stomach, that chill upon the soul, that self-inflicted misery called guilt.”

Feels Soul Self Done Facts Able Known Conscience Guilt Misery Spite Stomach Chill Clutch Self Inflicted

Book:Necessary Losses: The Loves Illusions Dependencies and Impossible Ex

Source: Necessary Losses: The Loves Illusions Dependencies and Impossible Ex

“Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility. Nothing adds such dignity to character as the recognition of one's self-sovereignty; the right to an equal place, everywhere conceded--a place earned by personal merit, not an artificial attainment by inheritance, wealth, family and position.”

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

Men Self Joy Known Source Conscience

Author:Charles Simmons

“While criticism or fear of punishment may restrain us from doing wrong, it does not make us wish to do right. Disregarding this simple fact is the great error into which parents and educators fall when they rely on these negative means of correction. The only effective discipline is self-discipline, motivated by the inner desire to act meritoriously in order to do well in one's own eyes, according to one's own values, so that one may feel good about oneself may "have a good conscience.”

“Each man's private conscience ought to be a nice little self-registering thermometer: he ought to carry his moral code incorruptibly and explicitly within himself, and not care what the world thinks. The mass of human beings, however, are not made that way; and many people have been saved from crime or sin by the simple dislike of doing things they would not like to confess.”

People Thinking Men World Way Humans Littles Has Beens Made Self Care Human Beings Sin Simple Moral Nice Crime Ought Morality Mass Conscience Saved Code Dislike Moral Code Thermometers

Book:Modes and Morals

Source: Modes and Morals

“As blacks, we need not be afraid that encouraging moral development, a conscience and guilt will prevent social action. Black children without the ability to feel a normal amount of guilt will victimize their parents, relatives and community first. They are unlikely to be involved in social action to improve the black community. Their self-centered personalities will cause them to look out for themselves without concern for others, black or white.”

“Conscience is the moralized form of self-absorption.”

Self Form Conscience Absorption Self Absorption

Author:Mason Cooley

“The experience of a sense of guilt for wrong-doing is necessary for the development of self-control. The guilt feelings will laterserve as a warning signal which the child can produce himself when an impulse to repeat the naughty act comes over him. When the child can produce his on warning signals, independent of the actual presence of the adult, he is on the way to developing a conscience.”

Way Children Self Feelings Produce Development Conscience Adults Independent Guilt Developing Impulse Repeats Warning Self Control Signals Naughty Guilt Feelings

Author:Selma Fraiberg

“An older child, one who possesses a conscience, will be troubled with self-reproaches and feelings of shame for his naughtiness, even if he is not discovered. But our two-year-olds and our three-year- olds experience guilt feelings only when they feel or anticipate disapproval from the outside. In doing this, they have taken the first steps toward the goal of conscience, but there is a long way ahead before the policeman outside becomes the policeman inside.”

“Macbeth's self-justifications were feeble - and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb too. The imagination and the spiritual strength of Shakespeare's evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology.”

Littles Self Spiritual Imagination Conscience Ideology Dozen Justification Corpses Lambs Spiritual Strength Self Justification

Author:Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

“The great ideas of the West - rationalism, self-criticism, the disinterested search for truth, the separation of church and state, the rule of law, equality before the law, freedom of conscience, thought, and expression, human rights, and liberal democracy- quite an achievement, surely, for any civilization- - remain the best, and perhaps the only, means for all people, no matter of what race or creed, to reach their full potential and live in freedom.”

Source: Virgins? What Virgins?: And Other Essays

“Worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of mind with His truth; the purifying of imagination by His Beauty; the opening of the heart to His love; the surrender of will to His purpose - and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centeredness which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin.”

Source: Readings in St. John's Gospel ...

“A good soldier is a blind, heartless, soulless, murderous machine. He is not a man. His is not a brute, for brutes kill only in self defense. All that is human in him, all that is divine in him, all that constitutes the man has been sworn away when he took the enlistment roll. His mind, his conscience, aye, his very soul, are in the keeping of his officer. No man can fall lower than a soldier-it is a depth beneath which we cannot go.”

Men Mind Humans Has Beens War Soul Self Fall Divine He Man Conscience Machines Blind Depth Soldier Defense Officers Anti War Brutes Self Defense Heartless Soulless Good Soldiers

Author:Jack London

“But the Bible says that the unreached will be judged on a quite different basis than those who have heard the gospel. God will judge the unreached on the basis of their response to His self-revelation in nature and conscience. The Bible says that from the created order alone, all persons can know that a Creator God exists and that God has implanted His moral law in the hearts of all persons so that they are held morally accountable to God (Rom. 1.20; 2.14-15). The Bible promises salvation to anyone who responds affirmatively to this self-revelation of God”

“Fasting is, first and foremost, an exercise for identifying and managing adversity in all its forms. With faith, in full conscience, fasting calls women and men to an extra degree of self-awareness.”

Men Firsts Self Form Awareness Exercise Degrees Conscience Men And Women Adversity Self Awareness Extras Fasting Identifying

Author:Tariq Ramadan

“There is always the temptation in life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for years on end. It is all so self conscience, so apparently moral...But I won't have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous...more extravagant and bright. We are...raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus.”

World Should Years Ends Self Moral Journey Dangerous Conscience Temptation Meals Tomatoes Extravagant Cain Wilder Lazarus

Author:Annie Dillard

“I must congratulate myself, in passing, for never having lost the ability to examine my conscience, never having lost the gift of finding myself wanting & defective. Why fear the criticism of others when you, yourself, are first out of the critical gate? If self-denigration is the race I am the winner, even before the starting gun. Collect the bets.”

Ifs Firsts Self Lost Ability Race Findings Gun Conscience Criticism Starting Critical Passing Passings Winner Gates Defective Finding Myself Criticism Of Others

Book:Teacher Man: A Memoir

Source: Teacher Man: A Memoir

“She quoted a dead playwright and called me a bullet with nothing but a future. She understood my lack of self-pity. She knew why I despised everything that might restrict my forward momentum. She knew that bullets have no conscience. They speed past things and miss their marks as often as they hit them.”

Self Might Past Missing Understood Conscience Mark Speed Pity Bullets Momentum Playwright Despised Self Pity Forward Momentum

Author:James Ellroy

“Our too-young and too-new America, lusty because it is lonely, aggressive because it is afraid, insists upon seeing the world in terms of good and bad, the holy and the evil, the high and the low, the white and the black; our America is frightened of fact, of history, of processes, of necessity. It hugs the easy way of damning those whom it cannot understand, of excluding those who look different, and it salves its conscience with a self-draped cloak of righteousness”

Source: American Hunger

“What moralists describe as the mysteries of the human heart are solely the deceiving thoughts, the spontaneous impulses of self-regard. The sudden changes in character, about which so much has been said, are instinctive calculations for the furtherance of our own pleasures. Seeing himself now in his fine clothes, his new gloves and shoes, Eugène de Rastignac forgot his noble resolve. Youth, when it swerves toward wrong, dares not look in the mirror of conscience; maturity has already seen itself there. That is the whole difference between the two phases of life.”

“I keep trying to forget, but I must remember. And gather the scattered continents of a self, once whole. Before they plant flags and boundary my destiny. Push down the watered mountains that blemish this soiled soul before the valleys of my conscience get the best of me. I'll need a passport just to simply reach the rest of me. A vaccination for a lesser god's bleak history.”

Needs Trying Soul Self Whole Remember Forget Destiny Mountain Conscience Plant Boundaries Valleys Flags Continents Keep Trying Bleak Passports My Destiny Best Of Me Vaccinations

Author:Saul Williams

“I realize how depraved it was to instill false guilt in an innocent child's conscience, causing a distorted image of life, God, & self, leaving little if any feeling of personal worth.”

Ifs Children Littles Self Feelings Realizing Conscience Guilt Leaving Innocent Instill Depraved Innocent Children Personal Worth

Author:Mary Griffith

“The more truthful I am with myself and others, the more my conscience is clear and tranquil. Thus, I can more thoroughly and unequivocally inhabit the present moment and accept everything that happens without fear, knowing that what goes around comes around (the law of karma). Ethical morality and self-discipline represent the good ground, or stable basis. Mindful awareness is the skillful and efficacious grow-path, or way. Wisdom and compassion constitute the fruit, or result. This is the essence of Buddhism [...]”

“One is happy as a result of one's own efforts, once one knows of the necessary ingredients of happiness-simple tastes, a certain degree of courage, self-denial to a point, love of work, and, above all, a clear conscience. Happiness is no vague dream, of that I now feel certain.”

Knows Feels Self Dream Happiness Certain Simple Results Effort Clear Taste Degrees Conscience Denial Sand Ingredients Vague Self-denial Clear Conscience Simple Happiness

Author:George Sand

“The statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.”

Source: The Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated Edition): Novels, Short Stories, Memoir, Travel Books, Letters, Biography, Articles & Speeches: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn, Life on the Mississippi, Yankee in King Arthur's Court…

“In addition to self-awareness, imagination and conscience, it is the fourth human endowment - independent will - that really makes effective self-management possible. It is the ability to make decisions and choices and to act in accordance with them. It is the ability to act rather than to be acted upon, to proactively carry out the program we have developed through the other three endowments. Empowerment comes from learning how to use this great endowment in the decisions we make every day.”