Quotes & Sayings About Conscience And Guilt

The power of monsters is their ability to fuse opposites, to merge contraries, to subvert rules, to overthrow cognitive barriers, moral distinction, and ontological categories. Monsters overcome the barrier of time itself. Uniting past and present, demonic and divine, guilt and conscience, predator and prey, parent and child, self and alien, our monsters are our innermost selves. — David D. Gilmore

Conviction of sin is one of the rarest things that ever strikes a man. It is the threshold of an understanding of God. Jesus Christ said that when the Holy Spirit came He would convict of sin, and when the Holy Spirit rouses the conscience and brings him into the presence of God, it is not his relationship with men that bothers him, but his relationship with God. — Oswald Chambers

A conscience free from guilt leads to tranquility of the mind, and only a tranquil mind can see things as they truly are. — Bohdi Sanders

Tolstoy said, 'The antagonism between life and conscience may be removed either by a change of life or by a change of conscience.' Many of us have elected to adjust our consciences rather than our lives. Our powers of rationalization are unlimited. They allow us to live in luxury and indifference while others, whom we could help if we chose to, starve and go to hell. — Randy Alcorn

Make friends with guilt. Guilt is a beautiful emotion that alerts us when something is wrong so that we may achieve peace with our conscience. Without conscience there would be no morality. So we can greet guilt cordially and with acceptance, just as we do all other emotions. After we respond to guilt, it has done its job and we can release it. — Glenn R. Schiraldi

Does changing for the better absolve you of all the wicked shit you did before?
No. March fills my head like a warm glow. Instead you receive the twin delights of guilt and regret. — Ann Aguirre

That's why you have to go and guilt him for all the trouble. It can't be your fault that you lost your memory if he wasn't smart enough to tell you about the wine. — Denny B. Reese

God's answer to your guilty conscience is the death of his Son. Your answer to a guilty conscience is usually something you do, like confessing harder, praying more, reading your Bible, paying more than your tithe in the offering and so on. These actions are what the writer to the Hebrews calls "dead works," the very things your conscience needs to be cleansed from and the very things that eventually get you wrapped up in the black shadow of your own guilt. — John White

Neurotic guilt scans the horizons of the past relentlessly seeking out the most deplorable, hideous, and culpable acts which are least consistent with one's self image. This process is similar to the infinite passion of intensified anxiety for seeking the worst conceivable possibilities in order to alert the whole organism to potential danger. — Thomas C. Oden

Objectification is a critical reason why an abuser tends to get worse over time. As his conscience adapts to one level of cruelty-he builds to the next. By depersonalizing his partner, the abuser protects himself from the natural human emotions of guilt and empathy, so that he can sleep at night with a clear conscience. He distances himself so far from her humanity that her feelings no longer count, or simply cease to exist. — Lundy Bancroft

There was a stricken conscience of public guilt and we all felt that we had been wrong, that something was wrong with that building which we had accepted or the tragedy never would have happened. Moved by this sense of stricken guilt, we banded ourselves together to find a way by law to prevent this kind of disaster. — Frances Perkins

Segregation, as even the segregationists know in their hearts, is morally wrong and sinful. If it weren't, the white South would not be haunted as it is by a deep sense of guilt for what it has done to the Negro - guilt for patronizing him, degrading him, brutalizing him, depersonalizing him, thingifying him; guilt for lying to itself. This is the source of the schizophrenia that the South will suffer until it goes through its crisis of conscience. — Martin Luther King Jr.

The antagonism between life and conscience may be removed in two ways: by a change of life or by a change of conscience. — Leo Tolstoy

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. — Laura Schlessinger

The ancient image of God whispers within every man of everlasting hope; somewhere he will continue to exist. Still he cannot rejoice, for the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world troubles his conscience, frightening him with proofs of guilt and evidences of coming death. So is he ground between the upper millstone of hope and the nether stone of fear. — A.W. Tozer

The members of the functional and socially mobilized under class must, in some very real way, be seen as the architects of their own fate. If not, they could be, however marginally, on the conscience of the comfortable. There could be a disturbing feeling, however fleeting, of unease, even guilt. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Ah, guilt and sorrow had dogged Juan's footsteps too, for he was not a Catholic who could rise refreshed from the cold bath of confession. Yet the banality stood: that the past was irrevocably past. And conscience had been given man to regret it only in so far as that might change the future. For man, every man, Juan seemed to be telling him, even as Mexico, must ceaselessly struggle upward. What was life but a warfare and a stranger's sojourn? — Malcolm Lowry

I was just struggling with my inner vachette and pondering the depths of my own inhumanity. — David Sedaris

Balance is of the essence,' she said. 'That appies to all good, harmonious relationships. Balance in guilt, balance in shame and pangs of conscience. — Jo Nesbo

It was the look on her face when she said it. And how much she meant it. It suddenly made everything seem like it really was. I felt terrible. Just terrible. — Stephen Chbosky

Sometimes all you need is one person with a guilty conscience to come forward and do the right thing. Often, the miracle you need resides inside of yourself, when you humbly ask for forgiveness. — Shannon L. Alder

Feel what it's like to truly starve, and I guarantee that you'll forever think twice before wasting food. — Criss Jami

No disease of the imagination is so difficult to cure, as that which is complicated with the dread of guilt : fancy and conscience then act interchangeably upon us, and so often shift their places, that the illusions of one are not distinguished from the dictates of the other. — E. M. Forster

His remorse was purely physical. Only his body, strained nerves, and cowering flesh were afraid of the drowned man. Conscience played no part in his terrors, and he had not the slightest regret about killing Camille; in his moments of calm, when the spectre was not present, he would have committed the murder over again had he thought his interests required it. — Emile Zola

About one in twenty-five individuals are sociopathic, meaning, essentially, that they do not have a conscience. It is not that this group fails to grasp the difference between good and bad; it is that the distinction fails to limit their behavior. The intellectual difference between right and wrong does not bring on the emotional sirens and flashing blue lights, or the fear of God, that it does for the rest of us. Without the slightest blip of guilt or remorse, one in twenty-five people can do anything at all. — Martha Stout

This feeling of guilt is your conscience calling your attention to the higher road, and your heart wishing you had taken it. — Richelle E. Goodrich

The critical spirit rises up against itself and consumes its form. But instead of coming out of this process greater and purified, it devours itself in a kind of self-cannibalism and takes a morose pleasure in annihilating itself. Hyper-criticism eventuates in self-hatred, leaving behind it only ruins. A new dogma of demolition is born out of the rejection of dogmas. Thus we euro-americans are supposed to have only one obligation: endlessly atoning for what we have inflicted on other parts of humanity. How can we fail to see that this leads us to live off self-denunciation while taking a strange pride in being the worst? Self-denigration is all too clearly a form of indirect self-glorification. Evil can come only from us; other people are motivated by sympathy, good will, candor. This is the paternalism of the guilty conscience: seeing ourselves as the kings of infamy is still a way of staying on the crest of history. — Pascal Bruckner

Guilt upon the conscience, like rust upon iron, both defiles and consumes it, gnawing and creeping into it, as that does which at last eats out the very heart and substance of the metal. — Robert South

My conscience is crosswired with my sweat glands, but there's a short in the system and I break out over things I didn't do, which only makes me look more suspect. — David Sedaris

Conscience is a coward, and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent it seldom has justice enough to accuse. — Oliver Goldsmith

Be this thy brazen bulwark, to keep a clear conscience, and never turn pale with guilt. — Horace

I'm just doing what I have to do. I don't have a choice."
"Yeah, good luck going to bed with a guilt-free conscience with that sorry-ass excuse."
The sour expression evaporated from Mr. Greek's face. His gaze switched back to the computer. "Keep talking and I'll gag you."
"Blow me. — Santino Hassell

When we hold onto the negative in ourselves it comes with endless guilt. We hold onto a lifetime of floating visions and regrets about what we should have done or should have become. Conscience recognizes wrong and tries to atone. But guilt turns into resentment. Conscience brings us closer to each other; guilt drives us apart. Create a new feeling. Every time guilt settles in your stomach, write "I forgive" on a piece of paper. Send it up the chimney, tear it up and flush it, put it in the garbage. Don't eat it. — Jennifer James

A guilty conscience pushed me to try harder - which I did for what seemed like a tremendous amount of wasted time, staring bug-eyed at uncooperative pencils. What was missing? The answer seemed obvious - intense emotional incentive. But at the moment I didn't feel desperate or angry or afraid. Just severely bored out of my mind and guilt-ridden for feeling so mind-numbingly bored."
- from "Phantom's Veil — Richelle E. Goodrich

All this gave way to my first encounter with guilt, which is still something entirely inscrutable to me, as if aliens were sending transmissions from another planet, telling me there is a right and a wrong in the universe. — Donald Miller

Ivanov: Once I worked hard and thought a lot but I never got tired; now I do nothing and think of nothing, but I'm tired in body and spirit. My conscience aches day and night, I feel deeply guilty but I don't understand where I am actually at fault. And add to that my wife's illness, my lack of money, the constant bickering, gossip, unnecessary conversations, that stupid Borkin ... My home has become loathsome to me and I find living there worse than torture. — Anton Chekhov

Know, then," said he, "that I myself am the destiny - the demon, as thou sayest, by whom I am persecuted and destroyed, that my conscience is loaded with guilt, nay, with the stain of a shameful, infamous, and mortal crime, — E.T.A. Hoffmann

The heart of the difference between cheap-grace doctrines of guilt-free existence and the Christian gospel is this: Modern chauvinism desperately avoids the message of guilt by treating it as a regrettable symptom. Christianity listens to the message of guilt by conscientious self-examination. Hedonism winks at sin. Christianity earnestly confesses sin. Secularism assumes it can extricate itself from gross misdeeds. Christianity looks to grace for divine forgiveness. Modern consciousness is its own fumbling attorney before the bar of conscience. Christianity rejoices that God himself has become our attorney. Modernity sees no reason to atone for or make reparation for wrongs. Christianity knows that unatoned sin brings on misery of conscience. Modern naturalism sees no meed for God. Christianity celebrates God's willingness to suffer four our sins and redeem us from guilt. — Thomas C. Oden

The villager, born humbly and bred hard,
Content his wealth, and poverty his guard,
In action simply just, in conscience clear,
By guilt untainted, undisturb'd by fear,
His means but scanty, and his wants but few,
Labor his business, and his pleasure too,
Enjoys more comforts in a single hour
Than ages give the wretch condemn'd to power. — Charles Churchill

But I think I can sincerely declare that I cheerfully submit myself to every odious name for conscience' sake; and from my soul I despise all those whose guilt, malice, or folly has made them my foes. — James Otis

It's not about people believing the story. It's about you knowing and holding it to be true. — Joan Ambu

Much later that night, as he meditated in forgiveness of the day, he wondered at himself. Had not he laughed at cruelty, had not his smile condoned the degradation of another human being? Where was Sa in that? Guilt washed over him. He forced it aside; a true priest of Sa had little use for guilt. It but obscured; if something made a man feel bad then he must determine what about it troubled him, and eliminate that. Simply to suffer the discomforts of guilt did not indicate a man had improved himself, only that he suspected he harbored a fault. He lay still in the darkness and pondered what had made him smile and why. And for the first time in many years, he wondered if his conscience was not too tender, if it had not become a barrier between him and his fellows. "That which separates is not of Sa," he said softly to himself. But he fell asleep before he could remember the source for the quote, or even it if were from scripture at all.
p. 313 — Robin Hobb

These men deceive themselves," said Roger Chillingworth, with somewhat more emphasis than usual, and making a slight gesture with his forefinger. "They fear to take up the shame that rightfully belongs to them. Their love for man, their zeal for God's service - these holy impulses may or may not coexist in their hearts with the evil inmates to which their guilt has unbarred the door, and which must needs propagate a hellish breed within them. But, if they seek to glorify God, let them not lift heavenward their unclean hands! If they would serve their fellowmen, let them do it by making manifest the power and reality of conscience, in constraining them to penitential self-abasement! Would thou have me to believe, O wise and pious friend, that a false show can be better - can be more for God's glory, or man' welfare - than God's own truth? Trust me, such men deceive themselves!" "It — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Whether they knew of didn't know is not the main issue; the main issue is whether a man is innocent because he didn't know. ( ... ) by beating himself on the chest and proclaiming, "My conscience is clear! I did not know! I was a believer!" Isn't his "I did not know I was a believer!" at the very root of his irreparable guilt? — Milan Kundera

Guilt is always a good thing. If I kick you in the groin right now and don't feel guilty about it there's something wrong with me. Something's wrong with my conscience. — Lino Rulli

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. — Selma Fraiberg

When I contemplate the accumulation of guilt and remorse which, like a garbage-can, I carry through life, and which is fed not only by the lightest action but by the most harmless pleasure, I feel Man to be of all living things the most biologically incompetent and ill-organized. Why has he acquired a seventy years life-span only to poison it incurably by the mere being of himself? Why has he thrown Conscience, like a dead rat, to putrefy in the well? — Cyril Connolly

Always be truthful and you will have fewer visits from regret, guilt or fear. — Suzy Kassem

It is only because man believes himself to be free, not because he is free, that he experiences remorse and pricks of conscience. — Friedrich Nietzsche

At home in bed that first night I had patchy, mundane dreams about normal things. It would be nobler and less uncomfortable to write that I tossed sleeplessly. — Darin Strauss

All I could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy I'd been selling out of my dorms room. Or maybe they'd realized I got my Essay on Tom Sawyer from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me read the book. — Rick Riordan

One of the most marvelous things I experienced was that you hold another one's hand in your hand, you feel the pulse, then it becomes slower and slower, then that's it. It's something enormous. Then you still hold that hand, then the nurse comes in, bringing with her the number for the corpse. The nurse wheels her out once more and says: "Come back later." Then you are immediately confronted with life again. You calmly get up and put things in order; in the meantime the nurse comes back and attaches the number to the corpse, you empty the bedside cabinet, the nurse says: "Don't forget the yogurt, you have to take it too." Outside you hear the crows -- it's like a theatrical play.

Then the bad conscience comes. A dead person leaves you with an immense guilt. — Thomas Bernhard

Should the reader exclaim, I was not conscious of the heinousness of sin nor bowed down with a sense of my guilt when Christ saved me. Then we unhesitatingly reply, Either you have never been saved at all, or you were not saved as early as you supposed. True, as the Christian grows in grace he has a clearer realization of what sin is - rebellion against God - and a deeper hatred and sorrow for it; but to think that one may be saved by Christ whose conscience has never been smitten by the Spirit and whose heart has not been made contrite before God, is to imagine something which has no existence whatever in the realm of fact. — Arthur W. Pink

Lacking in conscience and empathy, they take what they want and do as they please, violating social norms and expectations without guilt or remorse. — Jon Ronson

The gospel brings tidings, glad tidings indeed,
To mourners in Zion, who want to be freed,
From sin and Satan, and Mount Sinai's flame,
Good news of salvation, through Jesus the Lamb.

What sweet invitations, the gospel contains,
To men heavy laden, with bondage and chains;
It welcomes the weary, to come and be blessed,
With ease from their burdens, in Jesus to rest.

For every poor mourner, who thirsts for the Lord,
A fountain is opened, in Jesus the Word;
Their poor parched conscience, to cool and to wash,
From guilt and pollution, from dead works and dross.

A robe is provided, their shame now to hide,
In which none are clothed, but Jesus' bride;
Though it be costly, yet is the robe free,
And all Zion's mourners, shall decked with it be. — William Gadsby

God-sent ministry, heeded and bowed to, leads to enlargement and blessing; but the Spirit's testimony rejected increases the guilt of him who hardens himself against it, and makes his condition far worse than before. It is ever the case that light refused makes the darkness all the deeper. Hence the need of a tender conscience, quick to respond to every word from God. — Henry Allen Ironside

A tranquil conscience invites freedom from anguish, sorrow, guilt, shame, and self-condemnation. It provides a foundation for happiness. It is a condition of immense worth. — Richard G. Scott

I accept that all photography is voyeuristic and exploitative, and obviously I live with my own guilt and conscience. It's part of the test and I don't have a problem with it. — Martin Parr

My conflicts of conscience are about the only battles I'm fighting these days, and I'm willing to fight until the end. There is something freeing
about this life, about living out of a single backpack and disappearing into the night. About smelling terrible and never remembering people's names. About never having to say you're sorry. We exist outside of society. We stay up late and sleep even later. We
are bandits, pirates, serial killers. The dregs. Someone should lock us up and never let us out again. But instead, they give us their money, they offer us their beds. We are not
going to pay for the beer. We are not going to be back here for a good, long while. We have prior engagements. We have the money in a duffel bag. We have no shame. Fuck guilt. Back to life. — Pete Wentz

Well, people who acknowledge their faults aren't so angry about them. Oh to be selfish, eh?'
'I think life would be easier if I was selfish.'
'No, it wouldn't. Not really. Those people aren't happy, they'll be on their death beds with little more than a life time of guilt and regret to think about. People like us die with a clear conscience, Flo. That's the best way to be. If you admit to where you go wrong at least you stand a chance of making it better.'
I still wish I was selfish. — Dawn O'Porter

The reputation is not essentially built by earning too much, learning too many things, achieving awards, bagging rewards or catapulting position to the hilt; but by unquestionably staying simple, humble , well grounded and doing nothing that makes own conscience to feel guilt. — Anuj

Yet our common moral knowledge is as real as arithmetic, and probably just as plain. Paradoxically, maddeningly, we appeal to it even to justify wrongdoing; rationalization is the homage paid by sin to guilty knowledge. — J. Budziszewski

Do not pour guilt into someone's psyche, and don't let anyone tamper with your conscience. — Zeina

All the pop psychologists are misleading people about things like guilt and conscience. Guilt is a noble emotion; the person without it is a monster.16 — Paul Pearsall

If all the world hated you and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved of you and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends. — Charlotte Bronte

White people's fear of Black people with guns will never cease to amaze me. Probably it's because they think about what they would do were they in our place. Especially the police, who have done so much dirt to Black people - their guilty conscience tells them to be afraid. When Black people seriously organize and take up arms to fight for our liberation, there will be a lot of white people who will drop dead from no other reason than their own guilt and fear. — Assata Shakur

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. — Judith Viorst

You have a conscience, and a conscience is a valuable attribute, but not if it begins to make you think you were to blame for what is far beyond the scope of your responsibility. — Philip Roth

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. — James P. Comer

This is glorious!' I cried, and then i looked at the sinner by my side. He sat with his head sunk on his breast and said 'Yes', without raising his eyes, as if afraid to see writ large on the clear sky of the offing the reproach of his romantic conscience. — Joseph Conrad

I always understood the idea of the ultimate redeemer, Christ on the cross. But now I was beginning to see that this is something that is carried out in every one of us, that the purity of unearned suffering is a holy and affective thing It affects not only ourselves, but it touches and changes those around us as well. It opens us and those around us to a force beyond ourselves, a force that is right and moral, the force of righteous truth that is at the basis of human conscience. Suffering puts us and those around us in touch with our consciences. It opens and touches our hearts. It makes us feel compassion when we need to and guilt if we must. — John Lewis

In this sense every serious choice has a tragicomic dimension. For it is impossible to be a human being without choosing, and it is impossible to choose without value denials, and it is impossible to deny values without guilt. That is a very simple though, but it forms the core definition of guilt: an awareness of significant value loss for which I know myself to be responsible. Guilt is the self-knowing of moral loss. — Thomas C. Oden

When we evaluate the rightness or wrongness of actions or behavior, we need to ask ourselves if that behavior will edify - build up - ourselves or someone else, or if it will tear down. The question is not what we can get away with, but what is healthy and edifying. When it is all said and done, are we edified spiritually? Have we been built up and strengthened in our relationship with the Lord or with our spouse, or have we been weakened? Do we come away encouraged or discouraged, confident or filled with a sense of guilt or shame? Is our conscience clean? — Myles Munroe

People develop a conscience with or without religion. Our culture teaches murder and cheating are wrong; we don't need religion to know this.
Guilt comes from a different place in our mental experience, a place that is independent of general cultural training and directly related to religious indoctrination. That is why two people may feel guilt about different things while being equally convinced that cheating and murder are wrong. — Darrel Ray

Formerly, a nation that broke the peace, did not trouble to try and prove to the world that it was done solely from higher motives ... Now war has a bad conscience. Now every nation assures us that it is bleeding for a human cause, the fate of which hangs in the balance of its victory ... No nation dares to admit the guilt of blood before the world. — Ellen Key

I mean that there is no way to disarm any man," said Dr. Ferris, "except through guilt. Through that which he himself has accepted as guilt. If a man has ever stolen a dime, you can impose on him the punishment intended for a bank robber and he will take it. He'll bear any form of misery, he'll feel that he deserves no better. If there's not enough guilt in the world, we must create it. If we teach a man that it's evil to look at spring flowers and he believes us and then does it - we'll be able to do whatever we please with him. He won't defend himself. He won't feel he's worth it. He won't fight. But save us from the man who lives up to his own standards. Save us from the man of clean conscience. He's the man who'll beat us." "Are — Ayn Rand

Guilt is our morality shame and guards our conscience. It tells us we have transgressed our values. It moves us to take action and change. Shame warns us not to try to be more or less than human. Shame signals our essential limitations. Shame limits our desire for pleasure and our interest and curiosity. We could not really be free without our shame. There is an anonymous saying, "Of all the masks of freedom, discipline (limits) is the hardest to understand." We cannot be truly free without having limits. Joy is the exhilarating energy that emerges when all our needs are being met. We want to sing, run and jump with joy. The energy of joy signals that all is well. — John Bradshaw