Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

The path of duty I clearly trace, / I stand with conscience face to face, / And all her pleas allow; / Calling and crying the while for grace, - / 'Some other time, and some other place; / Oh, not to-day; not now!

In suffocating the voice of conscience, passion carries with itself a restlessness of the body and the senses: it is the restlessness of the "external man." When the internal man has been reduced to silence, then passion, once it has been given freedom of action, so to speak, exhibits itself as an insistent tendency to satisfy the senses and the body.

Guilt agonizes over trifles, ignores habitual wrongdoing.

My conscience aches but it's going to lose the fight.

You feel the intense desire to do good, to do right thing. At this stage, you also feel helpless.

Guilt is present in the very hesitation, even though the deed be not committed.

Classical tragedy was the war between good and evil. We wanted evil to be defeated and good to be victorious. But the battle in modern tragedy is between good and good. And no matter which side wins, we'll still be heartbroken.

You know, I'm cursed with morals. I was raised a certain way. I wish I wasn't. I wish I was raised by wolves.

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

Everyone has a conflict inside of them - the conflict between what you should do and what you want to do.

Conscience. That stuff can drive you nuts.

The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.

Senator H. Alexander Smith of New Jersey spent the day wrestling with his conscience. He won.

... sufficient conscience to bother him, but not sufficient to keep him straight.

You cannot be at home with something that you feel that is wrong, is not right.

Look, I do spray flies, but I have a really big conscience.

Mine was a trained Presbyterian conscience and knew but the one duty - to hunt and harry its slave upon all pretexts and on all occasions, particularly when there was no sense nor reason in it.

Man, wretched man, whene'er he stoops to sin, Feels, with the act, a strong remorse within.

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.

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!

Blushing, palpitations, a bad conscience--this is what you get if you haven't sinned.

He had been driven hither by the impulse of that Remorse which dogged him everywhere, and whose own sister and closely linked companion was that Cowardice which invariably drew him back, with her tremulous gripe, just when the other impulse had hurried him to the verge of a disclosure.

How awful is that hour when con, science stings.

Guilt has always its horrors and solicitudes; and, to make it yet more shameful and detestable, it is doomed often to stand in awe of those to whom nothing could give influence or weight but their power of betraying.

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.