"We live in a nightmare of falsehoods, and there are few who are sufficiently awake and aware to see things as they are. Our first duty is to clear away illusions and recover a sense of reality."

"Thanks to the gods! my boy has done his duty."

"By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes his duty against the influence of authority and majorities, custom and opinion. The State is competent to assign duties and draw the line between good and evil only in its immediate sphere. Beyond the limits of things necessary for its well-being, it can only give indirect help to fight the battle of life by promoting the influences which prevail against temptation, — religion, education, and the distribution of wealth."

"When faith and hope fail, as they do sometimes, we must trust charity, which is love in action. We must speculate no more on our duty, but simply do it. When we have done it, however blindly, perhaps Heaven will show us the reason why."

"Submission to duty and God gives the highest energy. He, who has done the greatest work on earth, said that He came down from heaven, not to do His own will, but the will of Him who sent Him, Whoever allies himself with God is armed with all the forces of the invisible world."

"No man living in deliberate violation of his duty, in willful disobedience to God's commands, as taught by conscience, can possibly make progress in acquaintance with the Supreme Being. Vain are all acts of worship in church or in secret, vain are religious reading and conversation, without this instant fidelity."

"Duties are ours; events are God's. This removes an infinite burden from the shoulders of a miserable, tempted, dying creature. On this consideration only, can he securely lay down his head, and close his eyes."

"Our grand business is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand."

"Let him who gropes painfully in darkness or uncertain light, and prays vehemently that the dawn may ripen into day, lay this precept well to heart: "Do the duty which lieth nearest to thee," which thou knowest to be a duty! Thy second duty will already have become clearer."

"Go to your duty, every man, and trust yourself to Christ; for He will give you all supply just as fast as you need it. You will have just as much power as you believe you can have. Be a Christian; throw yourself upon God's work; and get the ability you want in it."

"Take your duty, and be strong in it, as God will make you strong. The harder it is, the stronger in fact you will be. Understand, also, that the great question here is, not what you will get, but what you will become. The greatest wealth you can ever get will be in yourself. Take your burdens and troubles and losses and wrongs, if come they must and will, as your opportunity, knowing that God has girded you for greater things than these."

"Feeble are we? Yes, without God we are nothing. But what, by faith, every man may be, God requires him to be. This is the only Christian idea of duty. Measure obligation by inherent ability! No, my brethren, Christian obligation has a very different measure. It is measured by the power that God will give us, measured by the gifts and possible increments of faith. And what a reckoning will it be for many of us, when Christ summons us to answer before Him under the law, not for what we are, but for what we might have been."

"The moment you can make a very simple discovery; viz., that obligation to God is your privilege, and is not imposed as a burden, your experience will teach you many things, — that duty is liberty, that repentance is a release from sorrow, that sacrifice is gain, that humility is dignity, that the truth from which you hide is a healing element that bathes your disordered life, and that even the penalties and terrors of God are the artillery only of protection to His realm."

"It is not the profession of religion which creates the obligation for the performance of duty; for that existed before any such profession was made. The profession of religion only recognises the obligation."

"Not until the soul is fastened in loving sympathies upon God as its centre, will it sweep the orbit of duty."

"Man not only owes his services but himself to God."

"Who art a light to guide, a rod To check the erring, and reprove."

"Stern Daughter of the Voice of God."

"Give unto me, made lowly wise, The spirit of self-sacrifice; The confidence of reason give; And in the light of truth thy Bondman let me live!"

"It is quite certain that, if from childhood men were to begin to follow the first intimations of conscience, honestly to obey them and carry them out into act, the power of conscience would be so strengthened and improved within them, that it would soon become, what it evidently is intended to be, "a connecting principle between the creature and the Creator.""

"Trust that man in nothing who has not a Conscience in everything."

"The voice of conscience is so delicate that it is easy to stifle it, but it is also so clear that it is impossible to mistake it."

"The confusion of marriage with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other single error."

"I know thou art religious, And hast a thing within thee called conscience, With twenty popish tricks and ceremonies, Which I have seen thee careful to observe."

"Conscience is but a word that cowards use, Devis'd at first to keep the strong in awe; Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law."

"My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, And every tongue brings in a several tale, And every tale condemns me for a villain."

"Soft, I did but dream. O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!"

"'Tis a blushing shamefast spirit that mutinies in a man's bosom; it fills one full of obstacles."

"The worm of conscience still begnaw thy soul! Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou liv'st, And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends!"

"I hate the murderer, love him murdered. The guilt of conscience take thou for thy labour, But neither my good word nor princely favour: With Cain go wander through shades of night, And never show thy head by day nor light."

"Well, my conscience says, "Launcelot, budge not." "Budge," says the fiend: "budge not," says my conscience. "Conscience," say I, "you counsel well." "Fiend," say I, "you counsel well.""

"Better be with the dead, Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace, Than on the torture of the mind to lie In restless ecstacy."

"I know myself now; and I feel within me A peace above all earthly dignities; A still and quiet conscience."

"Now, if you can blush and cry, "guilty," cardinal, You'll show a little honesty."

"They are our outward consciences."

"Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought. And enterprises of great pith and moment, With this regard, their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action."

"The play's the thing, Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king."

"There is no evil which we cannot face or fly from but the consciousness of duty disregarded."

"There is in man a conscience which outlives the sensations, resolutions, and emotions of the hour, and rises above them all."

"Conscience is that peculiar faculty of the soul which may be called the religious instinct."

"We never do evil so effectually as when we are led to do it by a false principle of conscience."

"An old historian says about the Roman armies that marched through a country, burning and destroying every living thing, "They make a solitude, and they call it peace." And so men do with their consciences. They stifle them, sear them, forcibly silence them, somehow or other; and then, when there is a dead stillness in the heart, broken by no voice of either approbation or blame, but doleful, like the unnatural quiet of a deserted city, then they say, "It is peace;" and the man's uncontrolled passions and unbridled desires dwell solitary in the fortress of his own spirit! You may almost attain to that."

"Every one of us, whatever his speculative opinions, knows better than he practices, and recognizes a better law than he obeys."

"Conscience is God's vicegerent in the soul."

"The torture of a bad conscience is the hell of a living soul."

"Be fearful only of thyself, and stand in awe of none more than thine own conscience."

"A good conscience is the palace of Christ; the temple of the Holy Ghost; the paradise of delight; the standing Sabbath of the saints."

"Men who can hear the Decalogue and feel No self-reproach."