John Tillotson Quotes

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

Guilt agonizes over trifles, ignores habitual wrongdoing.

Conscience is its own readiest accuser.

Guilt is glorious when it's well earned.

There is no witness so terrible and no accuser so powerful as conscience which dwells within us.

Was ever any wicked man free from the stings of a guilty conscience?

A good person will feel guilty even before a dog.

Control cannot be called conscience until we are able to take it inside us and make it our own, until--in spite of the fact that the wrongs we have done or imagined will never be punished or known--we nonetheless feel that the clutch in the stomach, that chill upon the soul, that self-inflicted misery called guilt.

A guilty conscience means at least you have one.

His past was fairly blameless; few men could read the rolls of their life with less apprehension; yet he was humbled to the dust by the many ill things he had done, and raised up again into sober and fearful gratitude by the many he had come so near to doing, yet avoided.

There are some things we should feel guilty about, but the guilt feelings should attach to the deed, not to the doer.

There is a sort of man who pays no attention to his good actions, but is tormented by his bad ones. This is the type that most often writes about himself.

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.

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

Everyone performs bad actions... A bad person is someone who does not lament his bad actions.

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

My head has got regrets, but I haven't.

I'm the one who has to look in the mirror, and after a while it begins to eat at you.

Guilt upon the conscience, like rust upon iron, both defiles and consumes it, gnawing and creeping into it, as that does which at last eats out the very heart and substance of the metal.

A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.

If a dog will not come to you after having looked you in the face, you should go home and examine your conscience.

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

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.

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

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