St. Vincent Quotes

All the characters in my films are fighting these problems, needing freedom, trying to find a way to cut themselves loose, but failing to rid themselves of conscience, a sense of sin, the whole bag of tricks.

Conscience gets a lot of credit that really belongs to cowardice.

Guilt agonizes over trifles, ignores habitual wrongdoing.

The great theatre for virtue is conscience.

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

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

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

While conscience is our friend, all is at peace; however once it is offended, farewell to a tranquil mind.

Fear is the mother of morality.

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.

Conscience. That stuff can drive you nuts.

I can tell you that good people do bad things.

As I heard out people who had done others wrong, I'd often wonder how a human allows his or her better judgement to override their conscience. When I share these feelings with my friends, they say, 'Everyone isn't like you.' But I think it's easy to assert your better feelings and not allow the darker side to dominate your personality.

Conscience is a man's compass, and though the needle sometimes deviates, though one often perceives irregularities in directing one's course by it, still one must try to follow its direction.

The Anglo-Saxon conscience does not prevent the Anglo-Saxon from sinning, it merely prevents him from enjoying his sin.

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.

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

Guilt soon learns to lie.

Sin and shame ever go together; he that would be freed from the last must be sure to shun the company of the first.

Where I cannot be moral, my power is gone.

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

Wickedness is always easier than virtue; for it takes the short cut to everything.

A good man with a good conscience doesn't walk so fast.

Reason often makes mistakes, but conscience never does.

In day-to-day life, you have stimulus to behave unethically, but in the long term, it always pays off to be ethical.