William Congreve Quotes

Guilt is a timorous thing ere perpetration; despair alone makes guilty men be bold.

Conscience doth make cowards of us all.

I don't think any of us know how we would react until we were put in a situation where we have to do something bad or do something good. I think I'd like to believe I'd act like a decent human being, but I'm realistic to know I don't know.

Everybody is grappling with their own moral compass, and that needle, like any needle, can't just stick. It's always floating a little bit, and depending on where you're standing, it's hard to read.

Guilt agonizes over trifles, ignores habitual wrongdoing.

Guilt and no guilt: these were the worst things. The only thing worse than the guilt was the fear of getting caught.

My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, And every tongue brings in a several tale, And every tale condemns me for a villain. Perjury, perjury, in the high'st degree; Murder, stern murder in the dir'st degree, Throng to the bar, crying all, 'Guilty!, guilty!

Guilt once harbored in the conscious breast, intimidates the brave, degrades the great.

The urging of that word, judgment, hath bred a kind of remorse in me.

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

If anyone has a conscience it's generally a guilty one.

I more than suspect that he is deeply conscious of being in the wrong, -- that he feels the blood of this Mexican war, like the blood of Abel, is crying to Heaven against him.... He is a bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man.

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

All a man can betray is his conscience.

I just felt sick. I was actually executing people. I knew it was wrong, and I should have voted against it. But I didn’t.

Unless the character is suffering from tremendous self doubt or pangs of conscience, you have to get morally behind the character and their values.

We feel guilty for what we do. We feel shame for what we are.

Though I never scruple a lie to serve my Master, it hurts one's conscience to be found out!

I also felt guilty about the three pens I'd stolen, but only for a second. And since there was no convenient way to give them back, I stole a bottle of ink before I left.

In the end, we would like not to be guilty while at the same time being dispensed of the effort of purifying ourselves. Not enough cynicism and not enough virtue.

I'm a good person. In most ways. But I'm beginning to think that being a good person in most ways doesn't count for anything very much, if you're a bad person in one way.

Conscience is a just but weak judge. Weakness leaves it powerless to execute its judgment.

An injurious truth has no merit over an injurious lie. Neither should ever be uttered. The man who speaks an injurious truth, lest his soul be not saved if he do otherwise, should reflect that that sort of a soul is not strictly worth saving.

...guilt leads to righteous action, but rarely is it the right action.

How awful is that hour when con, science stings.