Ethics

"Conscience is a coward, and those faults it has not strength to prevent, it seldom has justice enough to accuse."

"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."

"God is conscience. He is even the atheism of the atheist."

"His mind was destitute of that dread which has been erroneously decried as if it were nothing higher than a man's animal care for his own skin: that awe of the Divine Nemesis which was felt by religious pagans, and, though it took a more positive form under Christianity, is still felt by the mass of mankind simply as a vague fear at anything which is called wrong-doing. Such terror of the unseen is so far above mere sensual cowardice that it will annihilate that cowardice: it is the initial recognition of a moral law restraining desire, and checks the hard bold scrutiny of imperfect thought into obligations which can never be proved to have any sanctity in the abscnce of feeling."

"The still small voice is wanted."

"The range of a fine conscience covers more good and evil than the range of conscience which may be called, roughly, not fine; a conscience, less troubled by the nice discrimination of shades of conduct. A fine conscience is more concerned with essentials; its triumphs are more perfect, if less profitable, in a worldly sense."

"If conscience leads the way, transformation will follow."

"Conscience has the ability to unleash the power of truth and beauty within us, opening the door to a more peaceful world."

"My idea, mamma, is that all our trouble is because there is so little conscience in people. I see through things, mamma, and I understand. If a man has a stolen shirt I see it. A man sits in a tavern and you fancy he is drinking tea and no more, but to me the tea is neither here nor there; I see further, he has no conscience. You can go about the whole day and not meet one man with a conscience. And the whole reason is that they don't know whether there is a God or not."

"She was so charitable and so pitous, She wolde wepe, if that she sawe a mous Caught in a trappe, if it were deed or bledde. Of smale houndes had she, that she fedde With rosted flesh, or milk and wastel-breed. But sore weep she if oon of hem were deed, Or if men smoot it with a yerde smerte: And al was conscience and tendre herte."

"But at sixteen the conscience rarely gnaws So much, as when we call our old debts in At sixty years, and draw the accounts of evil, And find a deuced balance with the devil."

"A quiet conscience makes one so serene! Christians have burnt each other, quite persuaded That all the Apostles would have done as they did."

"Why should not Conscience have vacation As well as other Courts o' th' nation? Have equal power to adjourn, Appoint appearance and return?"

"They have cheveril consciences that will stretch."

"What physic, what chirurgery, what wealth, favor, authority can relieve, bear out, assuage, or expel a troubled conscience? A quiet mind cureth all them, but all they cannot comfort a distressed soul: who can put to silence the voice of desperation?"

"Our conscience, which is a great ledger book, wherein are written all our offenses... grinds our souls with the remembrance of some precedent sins, makes us reflect upon, accuse and condemn ourselves."

"Melancholy and despair, though often, do not always concur; there is much difference: melancholy fears without a cause, this upon great occasion; melancholy is caused by fear and grief, but this torment procures them and all extremity of bitterness.... A good conscience is a continual feast."

"Sin in the conscience, is like Jonah in a ship, which causeth such a tempest, that the conscience is like a troubled sea, whose waters cannot rest, or it is like a mote in the eye, which causeth a perpetual trouble while it is there."

"If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends."

"In all periods of transitional thought and belief the conscience suffers, since its old sanctions have been removed and none other have yet taken their place. It is undermined, without being adequately propped."

"If Man makes Conscience, then being good Is only being worldly wise, And universal brotherhood A comfortable compromise."

"A bad conscience does not necessarily signify a bad character."

"Se tosto grazia risolva le schiume Di vostra conscienza, si che chiaro Per essa scenda della mente il fiume."

"O dignitosa coscienza e netta, Come t' è picciol fallo amaro morso."

"Oh! think what anxious moments pass between The birth of plots, and their last fatal periods, Oh! 'tis a dreadful interval of time, Filled up with horror all, and big with death!"

"Talk of the sublime, the exalted, the eternal, the passionate, of glory, challenge, or majesty fills some of us with bewilderment, discomfort, and embarrassment; others with sour resentment or scornful disbelief. To reinstate such values seems to us like trying to reinstate Ptolemaic astronomy—equally misguided, incomprehensible, and inimical to our perceived interests."

"The characteristic of the really great writer is the ability of his mind to to suddenly leap beyond his ordinary human values, into sudden perception of universal values."

"No art can be judged by purely aesthetic standards, although a painting or a piece of music may appear to give a purely aesthetic pleasure. Aesthetic enjoyment is an intensification of the vital response, and this response forms the basis of all value judgements. The existentialist contends that all values are connected with the problems of human existence, the stature of man, the purpose of life. These values are inherent in all works of art, in addition to their aesthetic values, and are closely connected with them."

"A cynic, a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."

"The essential characteristic of the first half of the twentieth century is the growing weakness, and almost the disappearance, of the idea of value."

"Money does not represent such a value as men have placed upon it. All my money has been invested into experiments with which I have made new discoveries enabling mankind to have a little easier life."

"Nothing at all is to be valued, but life should be sweet. You should not serve things; things should serve you."

"When present, it was considered a loincloth; when lost, it is considered fine clothing."

"Money, with all its colorlessness and indifference, becomes the common denominator of all values; irreparably it hollows out the core of things, their individuality, their specific value, and their incomparability. All things float with equal specific gravity in the constantly moving stream of money. All things lie on the same level and differ from one another only in the size of the area which they cover."

"Money economy has filled the days of so many people with weighing, calculating, with numerical determinations, with a reduction of qualitative values to quantitative ones."

"All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value."

"Natural man is entirely for himself. He is numerical unity, the absolute whole which is relative only to itself or its kind. Civil man is only a fractional unity dependent on the denominator; his value is determined by his relation to the whole, which is the social body."

"The politics of the unpolitical—these are the politics of those who desire to be pure in heart: the politics of men without personal ambition; of those who have not desired wealth or an unequal share of worldly possessions; of those who have always striven, whatever their race or condition, for human values and not for national or sectional interests. For our Western world, Christ is the supreme example of this unselfish devotion to the good of humanity, and the Sermon on the Mount is the source of all the politics of the unpolitical."

"Values exist in a transcendental realm, beyond space and time. They can neither be fought for, nor destroyed."

"We ought not to treat living creatures like shoes or household belongings, which when worn with use we throw away."

"Of my past wanderings the sole fruit is shame,"

"When we speak of values, we speak under the inspiration, and through the optics, of life. Life itself urges us to determine values. Life itself values through us when we determine values."

"We carry faithfully what one gives us to bear, on hard shoulders and over rough mountains. And should we sweat, we are told “Yes, life is a grave burden.” But man is only a grave burden to himself! That is because he carries on his shoulders too much that is alien to him. ... Especially the strong, reverent spirit that would bear much: he loads too many alien grave words and values on himself."

"Let the value of all things be posited newly by you."

"Around the inventors of new values the world revolves: invisibly it revolves. But around the actors revolve people and fame."

"Behold the good and the just! ... Behold the believers of all faiths! Whom do they hate most? The man who breaks their tables of values, the breaker, the lawbreaker. Yet he is the creator."

"Virtue is not a chemical product, as Taine once described it: it is a historic product, like language and literature; and this means that if we cease to care about it, cease to cultivate it, cease to transmit its funded values, a large part of it will become meaningless, like a dead language to which we have lost the key. That, I submit, is what has happened in our own lifetime."

"No philosopher would be willing to accept the idea of philosophy as a way of escape, but might there not be a question of the philosopher being in duty bound to refuse to accept a world, like our real world here, of disorder and crime where the values of the mind and spirit can no longer find a home?"

"Value, therefore, does not stalk about with a label describing what it is."

"τὸ ἐν ἀνθρώποις ὑψηλὸν βδέλυγμα ἐνώπιον τοῦ Θεοῦ."