#conscience

The truth is that we were so spiritually and morally bankrupt that we could not even see some of those lines: we stepped over them blindly. Other times we saw the lines alright, but we wanted to cross them. Alcohol gave us the false courage to do it and numbed our conscience as we did. Alcohol was the great enabler, and the great anesthetic. It wasn’t God who was dead. We were. – p. 116 ↗

— Ray A.

#enabler #honesty #courage

You deal with me very frankly, and I thank you for it,' said I. 'I will try on my side to be no less honest. I believe these deep duties may lie upon your lordship; I believe you may have laid them on your conscience when you took the oaths of the high office which you hold. But for me, who am just a plain man--or scarce a man yet--the plain duties must suffice. I can think but of two things, of a poor soul in the immediate and unjust danger of a shameful death, and of the cries and tears of his wife that still tingle in my head. I cannot see beyond, my lord. It's the way I am made. If the country has to fall, it has to fall. And I pray God, if this is wilful blindness, that He may enlighten me before too late. ↗

— Robert Louis Stevenson

#honor #death

Ceux qui revent eveilles ont conscience de 1000 choses qui echapent a ceux qui ne revent qu'endormis. The one who has day dream are aware of 1000 things that the one who dreams only when he sleeps will never understand. (it sounds better in french, I do what I can with my translation...) ↗

— Edgar Allan Poe

#endormi #french #poe #rêve #dreams

The study of law can be disappointing at times, a matter of applying narrow rules and arcane procedure to an uncooperative reality; a sort of glorified accounting that serves to regulate the affairs of those who have power--and that all too often seeks to explain, to those who do not, the ultimate wisdom and justness of their condition. But that's not all the law is. The law is also memory; the law also records a long-running conversation, a nation arguing with its conscience. ↗

— Barack Obama

#justice #law #law-school #society #dreams

Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls. ↗

— Ingmar Bergman

#conscience #dark #deep #deep down #directly

Congratulations. You have met your conscience. In my experience, the world is divided between those who have one and those who don't. And the ones with one are divided into those who will act on their conscience and those who won't. Those who will are, I'm afraid, the smallest category. They will *jeito*. It's Brazilian Portuguese. It means to find a way to get something done, no matter what the obstacles. ↗

— Jean Ferris

#experience

The New England conscience does not stop you from doing what you shouldn't-it just stops you from enjoying it. ↗

— Cleveland Amory

#does #doing #england #enjoying #just

No," said Father. "Just do the best you can and don't let it worry you. In that way you'll have a clear conscience and a tranquil heart. ↗

— Carol Ryrie Brink

#effort #family

Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way. ↗

— Martin Luther King Jr.

#inspirational

Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully. ↗

— Richard Bach

#encouragement #inspiration #life #morality #selfishness