Damaged Conscience Quotes

The conscience leads a person away from that which is harmful, and toward what is beneficial. Nerve endings in a person's fingers help prevent their fingers from getting seared; however, if those endings are damaged and a person has no sensitivity to heat, their fingers could catch on fire without the person being aware. In the same way a person's conscience can be seared so that it has no more sensitivity. ~ Henry Hon

Just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?
Monsters are variations from the accepted normal to a greater or a less degree. As a child may be born without an arm, so one may be born without kindness or the potential of conscience. A man who loses his arms in an accident has a great struggle to adjust himself to the lack, but one born without arms suffers only from people who find him strange. Having never had arms, he cannot miss them. To a monster the norm must seem monstrous, since everyone is normal to himself. To the inner monster it must be even more obscure, since he has no visible thing to compare with others. To a criminal, honesty is foolish. You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous. ~ John Steinbeck

The tourists had money and we needed it; they only asked in return to be lied to and deceived and told that single most important thing, that they were safe, that their sense of security - national, individual, spiritual - wasn't a bad joke being played on them by a bored and capricious destiny. To be told that there was no connection between then and now, that they didn't need to wear a black armband or have a bad conscience about their power and their wealth and everybody else's lack of it; to feel rotten that no-one could or would explain why the wealth of a few seemed so curiously dependent on the misery of the many. We kindly pretended that it was about buying and selling chairs, about them asking questions about price and heritage, and us replying in like manner.

But it wasn't about price and heritage, it wasn't about that at all.

The tourists had insistent, unspoken questions and we just had to answer as best we could, with forged furniture. They were really asking, 'Are we safe?' and we were really replying, 'No, but a barricade of useless goods may help block the view.' And because hubris is not just an ancient Greek word but a human sense so deep-seated we might better regard it as an unerring instinct, they were also wanting to know, 'If it is our fault, then will we suffer?' and we were really replying, 'Yes, and slowly, but a fake chair may make us both feel better about it. ~ Richard Flanagan

A pivotal spiritual attribute is that of self-mastery-th e strength to place reason over appetite. Self-mastery builds a strong conscience. And your conscience determines your moral responses in difficult, tempting, and trying situations. ~ Russell M. Nelson

Moral people are the most revengeful of mankind, they employ their morality as the best and most subtle weapon of vengeance. They are not satisfied with simply despising and condemning their neighbour themselves, they want the condemnation to be universal and supreme: that is, that all men should rise as one against the condemned, and that even the offender's own conscience shall be against him. Then only are they fully satisfied and reassured. Nothing on earth but morality could lead to such wonderful results. ~ Lev Shestov

I can stand before God with a clear conscience about doing my job. But I truly, deeply hated the evil that woman possessed. I hate it to this day. ~ Chris Kyle

The man said that a portion of track just up into the mountain pass had been damaged by a rockslide early that morning, and they had shut down the whole system for maybe as long as the rest of the summer. The man shook his head, incredulous, disgusted, but also delighted in the way that people are often delighted by bad news, or the opportunity to discuss bad news that does not immediately affect them. ~ Amanda Coplin

Because their lack of conscience prevents them from blushing - ~ Christopher Hitchens

A great business has to have a conscience. You have to know who you are and who you are not. ~ Howard Schultz

Behold, I am become a reproach to thy holy name, by serving any ambition and the sins of others; which though I did by the persuasion of other men, yet my own conscience did cheek and upbraid me in it. ~ William Laud

In Paradise, as always: that which causes the sin and that which recognizes it for what it is are one. The clear conscience is Evil, which is so entirely victorious that it does not any longer consider the leap from left to right necessary. ~ Franz Kafka

The real satisfaction which praise can afford, is when what is repeated aloud agrees with the whispers of conscience, by showing us that we have not endeavored to deserve well in vain. ~ Samuel Johnson

He took the tin out of my hand and said, 'We're all damaged, in a way. But it's nothing that can't be fixed. You just have to kick out the dents from the inside. ~ Heather Smith

In cultures where asceticism developed and was practiced, people knew that one can suffocate when every option is a readily available one. Without self-limitation, without fixed boundaries - like those given in creation between day and night, summer and winter, being young and growing old-life loses its humanness. Asceticism means to renounce at least for periods of time the options that present themselves . . .

In rich societies, the fundamental idea of sacrifice is highly suspect; it contradicts the basic constitution of the world of affluence. Sacrifice, as well as those who are to do the sacrificing have indeed been much abused. Even so, voluntary sacrifice, freely renouncing status, and limiting career or other options available to oneself can consolidate one's capacity for happiness.

This seems very apparent to me in ecological resistance movements. No one can feel at home in a world that has to be bought and used up. We ourselves as well as the environment are damaged by consumerism; it dulls the senses so that people no longer know how to smell, taste, feel, and see. ~ Dorothee Solle

I can't in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building. ~ Edward Snowden

In the matter of learned skills, memory comes to a fork in the road. Down one branch are the it's-like-riding-a-bicycle skills; things which, once learned, are almost never forgotten. But the creative, ever-changing forebrain skills have to be practiced almost daily, and they are easily damaged or destroyed. ~ Stephen King

damaged bow," Renard said. "Agreed. ~ John R. Monteith

How wonderful that God should endow us with this sensitive yet strong guide we call a conscience! Someone has aptly re-marked that conscience is a celestial spark which God has put into every man for the purpose of saving his soul. ~ Spencer W. Kimball

I've always been curious about people's psychedelic experiences, and I kind of had this assumption that I was going to have some kind of crazy mindblowing psychedelia thing happening, but actually, it was very quiet, and I didn't have any hallucinations at all. Nothing changed, except that suddenly I could hear the voice of my conscience, which I didn't ever think of as being a real voice. And ever since having that experience, I've had that voice in my head and followed it occasionally. ~ Larkin Grimm

There is nothing evil save that which perverts the mind and shackles the conscience. ~ Saint Ambrose

A bettre preest, I trowe that nowher noon is. He wayted after no pompe and reverence, 525 Ne maked him a spyced conscience, But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve, He taughte, and first he folwed it him-selve. ~ Geoffrey Chaucer

She was damaged goods. Spoiled meat. ~ V. Theia

The benefits of a pure conscience comprise some of the greatest blessings of the Christian life. ~ John F. MacArthur Jr.

Reason often makes mistakes, but conscience never does. ~ Josh Billings

This is what we love in friends. We love to the point that human conscience feels guilty if we do not love the person who is loving us, and if that love is not returned - without demanding any physical response other than the marks of affectionate good will. ~ Augustine Of Hippo

If Makar Denisych was just a clerk or a junior manager, then no one would have dared talk to him in such a condescending, casual tone, but he is a 'writer', and a talentless mediocrity!
People like Mr Bubentsov do not understand anything about art and are not very interested in it, but whenever they happen to come across talentless mediocrities they are pitiless and implacable, They are ready to forgive anyone, but not Makar, that eccentric loser with manuscripts lying in his trunk. The gardener damaged the old rubber plant, and ruined lots of expensive plants, and the general does nothing and goes on spending money like water; Mr Bubentsov only got down to work once a month when he was a magistrate, then stammered, muddled up the laws, and spoke a lot of rubbish, but all this is forgiven and not noticed; but there is no way that anyone can pass by the talentless Makar, who writes passable poetry and stories, without saying something offensive. No one cares that the general's sister-in-law slaps the maids' cheeks, and swears like a trooper when she is playing cards, that the priest's wife never pays up when she loses, and the landowner Flyugin stole a a dog from the landower Sivobrazov, but the fact that Our Province returned a bad story to Makar recently is know to the whole district and has provoked mockery, long conversations and indignation, while Makar Denisych is already being referred to as old Makarka.
If someone does not write the way required, they never ~ Anton Chekhov

I was made, by the law, a criminal, not because of what I had done, but because of what I stood for, because of what I thought, because of my conscience ... If I had my time over I would do the same again. So would any man who dares call himself a man. ~ Nelson Mandela

Hypocrisy has its place in the ages of strong belief: in which even when one is compelled to exhibit a different belief one does not abandon the belief on already has. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may. ~ Joseph Smith Jr.

By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more. ~ Albert Camus

We never do evil so fully and cheerfully as when we do it out of conscience. ~ Blaise Pascal

Fidelity to conscience is inconsistent with retiring modesty. If it be so, let the modesty succumb. It can be only a false modesty which can be thus endangered. ~ Harriet Martineau

The following year the house was substantially remodeled, and the conservatory removed. As the walls of the now crumbling wall were being torn down, one of the workmen chanced upon a small leatherbound book that had apparently been concealed behind a loose brick or in a crevice in the wall. By this time Emily Dickinson was a household name in Amherst. It happened that this carpenter was a lover of poetry- and hers in particular- and when he opened the little book and realized that that he had found her diary, he was "seized with a violent trembling," as he later told his grandson. Both electrified and terrified by the discovery, he hid the book in his lunch bucket until the workday ended and then took it home. He told himself that after he had read and savored every page, he would turn the diary over to someone who would know how to best share it with the public. But as he read, he fell more and more deeply under the poet's spell and began to imagine that he was her confidant. He convinced himself that in his new role he was no longer obliged to give up the diary. Finally, having brushed away the light taps of conscience, he hid the book at the back of an oak chest in his bedroom, from which he would draw it out periodically over the course of the next sixty-four years until he had virtually memorized its contents. Even his family never knew of its existence.

Shortly before his death in 1980 at the age of eighty-nine, the old man finally showed his most prized po ~ Jamie Fuller

I congratulate you," said he, in the tone which one uses for a reprimand. "You did not vote for the death of the king, after all."

The old member of the Convention did not appear to notice the bitter meaning underlying the words "after all." He replied. The smile had quite disappeared from his face.

"Do not congratulate me too much, sir. I did vote for the death of the tyrant."

It was the tone of austerity answering the tone of severity.

"What do you mean to say?" resumed the Bishop.

"I mean to say that man has a tyrant,--ignorance. I voted for the death of that tyrant. That tyrant engendered royalty, which is authority falsely understood, while science is authority rightly understood. Man should be governed only by science."

"And conscience," added the Bishop.

"It is the same thing. Conscience is the quantity of innate science which we have within us. ~ Victor Hugo

Our conscience is our salvation. Our questioning of everything, of right and wrong, of action and consequence, is what defines our purpose. ~ R.A. Salvatore

Clever modern man is so witless that he thinks moral silence and empty conscience are an advantage. ~ Michael Leunig

Where are your clothes?" Callie asked, noting he wore very little underneath his "borrowed" kirtle. Very little except for that warm, tawny flesh she found so delectable.
"The brambles caught him," Angus answered. "That's how we found him. There's shreds of English clothing from hither to yon."
Callie felt weak at the news of how close her husband had come to being seriously injured. "Are you truly unharmed?"
"A bit scratched and bruised, but nothing other than my ego is seriously damaged." Sin grinned playfully. "See now why I always travel with a sword? One never knows when a raging bull is likely to come storming down the street."
-Callie, Angus, & Sin ~ Kinley MacGregor

I do not have a hero complex. I have always been attracted to strong, independent women. I like a girl who has her shit together. No strings. Simple. Confident. But the way she nearly sighed the word 'broken'--as if it was her sole identifier, as if it's branded on her somehow, as if admitting this has cost her dearly, shamed her--just killed me a little bit. I want to save her. I want to be her hero. I want to make her see she is so much more than her damaged past. ~ Cheryl McIntyre

Regrets are as personal as fingerprints. ~ Margaret Culkin Banning

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

How many dead bodies does it take for an assassin to grow a conscience? ~ J.A. Huss