J. C. Ryle Quotes

The most reckless sinner against his own conscience has always in the background the consolation that he will go on in this course only this time, or only so long, but that at such a time he will amend. We may be assured that we do not stand clear with our own consciences so long as we determine or project, or even hold it possible, at some future time to alter our course of action.

There is a guilty conscience behind every brazen word and act and behind every manifestation of self-righteousness.

I find it significant that, even though contemporary philosophy tends towards forms of determinism, in the wider culture people are deeply into naming, shaming and blaming each other. So we haven't lost that sense of conscience.

Anyone who claims to have an entirely clear conscience is almost certainly a bore.

Playing evil is just not interesting. I don't think anyone who does evil stuff thinks they're doing evil stuff. That's the scary part.

A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.

Man can and does rationalize his sins. He finds reasons for all his weakness, invents excuses that first calm and then deaden his conscience. He blames God, society, education, and environment for his wrong doing.

Men who can hear the Decalogue, and feel To self-reproach.

Between these two, the denying of sins, which we have done, and the bragging of sins, which we have not done, what a space, what a compass is there, for millions of millions of sins!

Everybody is a sinner before God. And I think we magnify it today because we have television, and we have so many other technologies that make what happens in some other part of the world in our living room.

Prudence reproaches; conscience accuses.

Beware! Don't allow yourself to do what you know is wrong, relying on the thought, Later I will repent and ask God's forgiveness.

Men perish with whispering sins-nay, with silent sins, sins that never tell the conscience that they are sins, as often with crying sins; and in hell there shall meet as many men that never thought what was sin, as that spent all their thoughts in the compassing of sin.

Sin we have explain'd away; Unluckily, the sinners stay.

It is quite gratifying to feel guilty if you haven't done anything wrong: how noble! Whereas it is rather hard and certainly depressing to admit guilt and to repent.

Demean thyself more warily in thy study than in the street. If thy public actions have a hundred witnesses, thy private have a thousand. The multitude looks but upon thy actions; thy conscience looks into them: the multitude may chance to excuse thee, if not acquit thee; thy conscience will accuse thee, if not condemn thee.

Our repentances are generally not so much a concern and remorse for the harm we have done, as a fear of the harm we may have brought upon ourselves.

All men of goodwill have this in common - that our works put us to shame.

A man who fears not God, will break all his laws with an easy conscience, but one who is the favorite of heaven, who has been indulged to sit at royal banquets, who knows the eternal love of God to him, cannot bear that there should be any evil way in him that might grieve the Spirit and bring dishonor to the name of Christ. A very little sin, as the world calls it, is a very great sin to a truly awakened Christian.

There may be responsible persons, but there are no guilty ones.

What you are is a man who means to be good, and undo the bad he's done, and that's as good as any man ever gets.

Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.

The greatest incitement to guilt is the hope of sinning with impunity.

Human reason can excuse any evil; that is why it's so important that we don't rely on it.

Let no one flatter himself; of himself he is Satan. Let man take sin, which is his own, and leave righteousness with God.