Arnold J. Toynbee Quotes

Anxiety is the beginning of conscience, which is the parent of the soul but is not compatible with innocence.

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone may be looking.

He knew that conscience was chiefly fear of society or fear of oneself.

I have moments that aren't too bad, but there's always something I'm struggling with, or feeling guilty about. I just figured I needed to try harder, but I find it difficult to sustain that motivation.

Conscience doth make cowards of us all.

I am lazy, but for some reason, I am so paranoid that I end up working hard.

Sometimes I think I'm the craziest person on the planet.

Ever since I was a little girl, I've worried too much. It always bothers me because sometimes you end up worrying more about the worry and you are not resolving things that are right there in front of you. I have been like that all my life, and it's hard to change.

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

We can only write well about our sins because it is too difficult to recall a virtuous act or even whether it was the result of good or evil motives.

Conscience. That stuff can drive you nuts.

Conscience: something that feels terrible when everything else feels well.

It's my own conscience that gets to me more so than anybody thinking about me. I think too much.

Many people weigh the guilt, they will feel against the pleasure of the forbidden action they want to take.

Always listen to the voice of your conscience. If your conscience conflicts with your faith, question everything.

Guilt agonizes over trifles, ignores habitual wrongdoing.

Oh, Conscience! Conscience! man's most faithful friend, Him canst thou comfort, ease, relieve, defend; But if he will thy friendly checks forego, Thou art, oh! woe for me, his deadliest foe!

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.

Whom conscience, ne'er asleep, Wounds with incessant strokes, not loud, but deep.

What anxiety means is it's as though the world is knocking at your door, and you need to create, you need to make something, you need to do something. I think anxiety, for people who have found their own heart and their own souls, for them it is a stimulus toward creativity, toward courage. It's what makes us human beings.

A guilty conscience means at least you have one.

I've sort of prided myself on playing characters with conscience. The first way I go about creating a character is looking at that area of conscience. What have they done, and what has it cost.

It is better to have a sore than a seared conscience.

You cannot do wrong and feel right. It is impossible!

A man's conscience, like a warning line on the highway, tells him what he shouldn't do - but it does not keep him from doing it.