Conscience Scruples Quotes

I have a different idea of elegance. I don't dress like a fop, it's true, but my moral grooming is impeccable. I never appear in public with a soiled conscience, a tarnished honor, threadbare scruples, or an insult that I haven't washed away. I'm always immaculately clean, adorned with independence and frankness. I may not cut a stylish figure, but I hold my soul erect. I wear my deeds as ribbons, my wit is sharper then the finest mustache, and when I walk among men I make truths ring like spurs.

However contradictory the coroner's report — whether he pronounces Consumption or Loneliness or Suicide to be the cause of death — isn't it plain how the true artist-seer actually dies? I say that the true artist-seer, the heavenly fool who can and does produce beauty, is mainly dazzled to death by his own scruples, the blinding shapes and colors of his own sacred human conscience.

The rat had no morals, no conscience, no scruples, no consideration, no decency, no milk of rodent kindness, no compunctions, no higher feeling, no friendliness, no anything

I say that the true artist-seer, the heavenly fool who can and does produce beauty, is mainly dazzled to death by his own scruples, the blinding shapes and colors of his own human conscience.

The buzzard has nothing to fault himself with. Scruples are alien to the black panther. Piranhas do not doubt the rightness of their actions. The rattlesnake approves of himself without reservations. The self-critical jackal does not exist. The locust, alligator, trichina, horsefly live as they live and are glad of it. The killer whale's heart weighs one hundred kilos but in other respects it is light. There is nothing more animal-like than a clear conscience on the third planet of the Sun.

If anything, people without conscience tend to believe their way of being in the world is superior to ours. They often speak of the naïveté of other people and their ridiculous scruples, or of their curiosity about why so many people are unwilling to manipulate others, even in the service of their most important ambitions. Or they theorize that all people are the same—unscrupulous, like them—but are dishonestly playacting something mythical called “conscience.” By this latter proposition, the only straightforward and honest people in the world are they themselves. They are being “real” in a society of phonies.

The rat had no morals, no conscience, no scruples, no consideration, no decency, no milk of rodent kindness, no compunctions, no higher feeling, no friendliness, no anything.

I carry my adornments on my soul. I do not dress up like a popinjay; But inwardly, I keep my daintiness. I do not bear with me, by any chance, An insult not yet washed away- a conscience Yellow with unpurged bile- an honor frayed To rags, a set of scruples badly worn. I go caparisoned in gems unseen, Trailing white plumes of freedom, garlanded With my good name- no figure of a man, But a soul clothed in shining armor, hung With deeds for decorations, twirling- thus- A bristling wit, and swinging at my side Courage, and on the stones of this old town Making the sharp truth ring, like golden spurs!

Shadow found himself starting to like Smith. He told himself that liking this man was not a sensible thing to do. He had met people like Smith before, people without consciences, without scruples, without hearts, and they were uniformly as dangerous as they were likeable.

It is a common sentence that Knowledge is power; but who hath duly Considered or set forth the power of Ignorance? Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down. Knowledge, through patient and frugal centuries, enlarges discovery and makes record of it; Ignorance, wanting its day’s dinner, lights a fire with the record, and gives a flavor to its one roast with the burned souls of many generations. Knowledge, instructing the sense, refining and multiplying needs, transforms itself into skill and makes life various with a new six days’ work; comes Ignorance drunk on the seventh, with a firkin of oil and a match and an easy “Let there not be,” and the many-coloured creation is shriveled up in blackness. Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be; whereas Ignorance is a blind giant who, let him but wax unbound, would make it a sport to seize the pillars that hold up the long-wrought fabric of human good, and turn all the places of joy dark as a buried Babylon.

As long as Ophelia had scruples, as long as she acted according to her conscience, as long as she could face up to her reflection every morning, she would belong to no one else but herself.

There were so many who wished to speak. For the movement was without scruples; she rolled towards her goal unconcernedly and deposed the corpses of the drowned in the windings; such was the law of her being. And whosoever could not follow her crooked course was washed on to the bank, for such was her law. The motives of the individual did not matter to her. His conscience did not matter to her, neither did she care what went on in his head and his heart. The Party knew only one crime: to swerve from the course laid out; and only one punishment: death. Death was no mystery in the movement: there was nothing exalted about it: it was the logical solution to political divergences.

I found it hard to imagine that Arthur had ever had moral scruples and something like a conscience, but Henry and Grayson also kept assuring me that their former best friend had once been a really nice guy. Before he fell hopelessly in love with Anabel and then realized that he had been exploited, manipulated, and misused for her purposes. Where would we be if everyone who suffered a bitter disappointment automatically mutated into a criminal?

I cannot forgive myself for what I did. It has long been one of my strictest principles not to interfere with the life of any individual, let alone attempt to shorten it. If an exception were to be made, Dr. Helvitius would surely qualify. It might be argued that, having neither scruples nor conscience, he had no claim upon the conscience of someone else—least of all, his intended victims. But that is a question to be resolved by a judgment higher than mine. In the event, my responsibility toward Vesper outweighed every other consideration. I can state in all honesty: I meant only to wound him. I cannot forgive myself—for missing the villain completely.

For the movement was without scruples; she rolled towards her goal unconcernedly and deposed the corpses of the drowned in the windings of her course. Her course had many twists and windings; such was the law of her being. And whosoever could not follow her crooked course was washed on to the bank, for such was her law. The motives of the individual did not matter to her. His conscience did not matter to her, neither did she care what went on in his head and his heart. The Party knew only one crime: to swerve from the course laid out; and only one punishment: death. Death was no mystery in the movement; there was nothing exalted about it: it was the logical solution to political divergences

Portentous change when History can appear As the cool Advocate of foul device; Reckless audacity extol, and jeer At consciences perplexed with scruples nice! They who bewail not, must abhor, the sneer Born of Conceit, Power's blind Idolater; Or haply sprung from vaunting Cowardice Betrayed by mockery of holy fear. Hath it not long been said the wrath of Man Works not the righteousness of God? Oh bend, 10 Bend, ye Perverse! to judgments from on High, Laws that lay under Heaven's perpetual ban All principles of action that transcend The sacred limits of humanity.

Secondly, these missionaries would gradually, and without creating suspicion or exciting alarm, introduce a rudimentary cleanliness among the nobility, and from them it would work down to the people, if the priests could be kept quiet. This would undermine the Church. I mean would be a step toward that. Next, education—next, freedom—and then she would begin to crumble. It being my conviction that any Established Church is an established crime, an established slave-pen, I had no scruples, but was willing to assail it in any way or with any weapon that promised to hurt it. Why, in my own former day—in remote centuries not yet stirring in the womb of time—there were old Englishmen who imagined that they had been born in a free country: a “free” country with the Corporation Act and the Test still in force in it—timbers propped against men’s liberties and dishonored consciences to shore up an Established Anachronism with.

Edison was not a wholly attractive human being. He didn’t scruple to cheat or lie, and was prepared to steal patents or bribe journalists for favorable coverage. In the words of one of his contemporaries, he had “a vacuum where his conscience ought to be.” But he was enterprising and hardworking and a peerless organizer.

Therefore I permit every man to hold either of these opinions, as he chooses. My one concern at present is to remove all scruples of conscience, so that no one may fear being called a heretic if he believes that real bread and real wine are present on the altar, and that every one may feel at liberty to ponder, hold, and believe either one view or the other without endangering his salvation.

I find it hard to understand how men with some claim to genius—Nietzsche, for instance—can have been such simpletons as to ascribe to it a certain intellectual value, and consequently to deny themselves friendships in which intellectual esteem would have no part. Yes, it has always been a surprise to me to find a man who carried sincerity towards himself to so high a pitch as to cut himself off, by a scruple of conscience, from Wagner’s music, imagining that the truth could ever be attained by the mode of expression, naturally vague and inadequate, which our actions in general and acts of friendship in particular furnish, or that there could be any kind of significance in the fact of one’s leaving one’s work to go and see a friend and shed tears with him on hearing the false report that the Louvre was burned.

Journalism, so far from being in the hands of a priesthood, came to be first a party weapon, and then a commercial speculation, carried on without conscience or scruple, like other commercial speculations. Every newspaper, as Blondet says, is a shop to which people come for opinions of the right shade. If there were a paper for hunchbacks, it would set forth plainly, morning and evening, in its columns, the beauty, the utility, and necessity of deformity.

Like a traveler discovering the almost identical turf-roofed houses and the terraces that may have greeted the eyes of Xenophon or Saint Paul, I discovered still intact after two centuries in the manners of M. de Guermantes, a man of touching kindness and unspeakable inflexibility, a slave to the most petty obligations yet not to the most sacred commitments, the same aberration that typified court life under Louis XIV, which removes scruples of conscience from the domain of the affections and morality and transforms them into questions of pure form.

Don’t roll your eyes. This question may make you “face palm” in amazement at how strange someone else’s conscience might be. That’s typically how someone with a strong conscience reacts when they hear about the scruples of the weak. But to the weak of conscience, these are life-and-death matters. Conscience is always a life-and-death matter since sinning against it is always a sin, and getting used to sinning against conscience in one area will make it easier to sin against conscience in other areas. The strong must not look down on the weak but bear with them (Romans 15:1) and, if opportunity arises, gently help them calibrate their conscience (p. 79).

It is a common sentence that Knowledge is power; but who hath duly Considered or set forth the power of Ignorance? Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down. Knowledge, through patient and frugal centuries, enlarges discovery and makes record of it; Ignorance, wanting its day’s dinner, lights a fire with the record, and gives a flavor to its one roast with the burned souls of many generations. Knowledge, instructing the sense, refining and multiplying needs, transforms itself into skill and makes life various with a new six days’ work; comes Ignorance drunk on the seventh, with a firkin of oil and a match and an easy “Let there not be,” and the many-colored creation is shriveled up in blackness. Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be; whereas Ignorance is a blind giant who, let him but wax unbound, would make it a sport to seize the pillars that hold up the long-wrought fabric of human good, and turn all the places of joy dark as a buried Babylon.

It was a lodging for the kind of people who have no permanent lodging. In all towns, and particularly in seaports, there is always to be found, below the general population, a residue. Lawless characters—so lawless that even the law sometimes cannot get its hands on them—pickers and stealers, tricksters living by their wits, chemists of villainy continually brewing up life in their crucibles; rags of every kind and every way of wearing them; withered fruits of roguery, bankrupt existences, consciences that have declared themselves insolvent; the incompetents of breaking and entering (for the big men of burglary are above all this); journeymen and journeywomen of evil, rascals both male and female; scruples in tatters and out at elbow; scoundrels who have sunk into poverty, evildoers who have had little reward from their work, losers in the social duel, devourers who now go hungry, the low earners of crime, beggars and villains: such are the people who form this residue. Human intelligence is to be found here, but it is bestial. This is the rubbish heap of souls, piled up in a corner and swept from time to time by the broom that is called a police raid. La Jacressarde was a corner of this kind in Saint-Malo.

When once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome. Unclamp, in a word, your intellectual and practical machinery, and let it run free; and the service it will do you will be twice as good. Who are the scholars who get “rattled” in the recitation-room? Those who think of the possibilities of failure and feel the great importance of the act. Who are those who do recite well? Often those who are most indifferent. Their ideas reel themselves out of their memory of their own accord. Why do we hear the complaint so often that social life in New England is either less rich and expressive or more fatiguing than it is in some other parts of the world? To what is the fact, if fact it be, due unless to the overactive conscience of the people, afraid of either saying something too trivial and obvious, or something insincere, or something unworthy of one’s interlocutor, or something in some way or other not adequate to the occasion? How can conversation possibly steer itself through such a sea of responsibilities and inhibitions as this? On the other hand, conversation does flourish and society is refreshing, and neither dull on the one hand nor exhausting from its effort on the other, wherever people forget their scruples and take the brakes off their hearts, and let their tongues wag as automatically and irresponsibly as they will.

It is a common sentence that Knowledge is power, but who hath duly considered or set forth the power of Ignorance? Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down. Knowledge, through patient and frugal centuries, enlarges discovery and makes record of it; Ignorance, wanting its day's dinner, lights a fire with the record, and gives a flavour to its one roast with the burnt souls of many generations. Knowledge, instructing the sense, refining and multiplying needs, transforms itself into skill and makes life various with a new six days' work; comes Ignorance drunk on the seventh, with a firkin of oil and a match and an easy 'Let there not be' - and the many-coloured creation is shrivelled up in blackness. Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be; whereas Ignorance is a blind giant who, let him by wax unbound, would make it a sport to seize the pillars that hold up the long-wrought fabric of human good, and turn all the places of joy dark as a buried Babylon. And looking at life parcel-wise, in the growth of a single lot, who having a practiced vision may not see that Ignorance of the true bond between events, and false conceit of means whereby sequences may be compelled - like that falsity of eyesight which overlooks the gradations of distance, seeing that which is afar off as if it were within a step or a grasp - precipitates the mistaken soul on destruction?

It is a common sentence that Knowledge is power; but who hath duly Considered or set forth the power of Ignorance? Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down. Knowledge, through patient and frugal centuries, enlarges discovery and makes record of it; Ignorance, wanting its day's dinner, lights a fire with the record, and gives a flavor to its one roast with the burned souls of many generations. Knowledge, instructing the sense, refining and multiplying needs, transforms itself into skill and makes life various with a new six days' work; comes Ignorance drunk on the seventh, with a firkin of oil and a match and an easy ‘Let there not be,’ and the many-colored creation is shriveled up in blackness. Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be; whereas Ignorance is a blind giant who, let him but wax unbound, would make it a sport to seize the pillars that hold up the long-wrought fabric of human good, and turn all the places of joy dark as a buried Babylon. And looking at life parcel-wise, in the growth of a single lot, who having a practiced vision may not see that ignorance of the true bond between events, and false conceit of means whereby sequences may be compelled - like that falsity of eyesight which overlooks the gradations of distance, seeing that which is afar off as if it were within a step or a grasp - precipitates the mistaken soul on destruction?

Scrupling to do writings relative to keeping slaves has been a means of sundry small trials to me, in which I have so evidently felt my own will set aside that I think it good to mention a few of them. Tradesmen and retailers of goods, who depend on their business for a living, are naturally inclined to keep the good-will of their customers; nor is it a pleasant thing for young men to be under any necessity to question the judgment or honesty of elderly men, and more especially of such as have a fair reputation. Deep-rooted customs, though wrong, are not easily altered; but it is the duty of all to be firm in that which they certainly know is right for them. A charitable, benevolent man, well acquainted with a negro, may, I believe, under some circumstances, keep him in his family as a servant, on no other motives than the negro's good; but man, as man, knows not what shall be after him, nor hath he any assurance that his children will attain to that perfection in wisdom and goodness necessary rightly to exercise such power; hence it is clear to me, that I ought not to be the scribe where wills are drawn in which some children are made ales masters over others during life. About this time an ancient man of good esteem in the neighborhood came to my house to get his will written. He had young negroes, and I asked him privately how he purposed to dispose of them. He told me; I then said, "I cannot write thy will without breaking my own peace," and respectfully gave him my reasons for it. He signified that he had a choice that I should have written it, but as I could not, consistently with my conscience, he did not desire it, and so he got it written by some other person. A few years after, there being great alterations in his family, he came again to get me to write his will. His negroes were yet young, and his son, to whom he intended to give them, was, since he first spoke to me, from a libertine become a sober young man, and he supposed that I would have been free on that account to write it. We had much friendly talk on the subject, and then deferred it. A few days after he came again and directed their freedom, and I then wrote his will.

You surprise me, she says. Do I? he says. Why? Though I like to surprise you. He lights a cigarette, offers her one; she shakes her head for no. He’s smoking too much. It’s nerves, despite his steady hands. Because you said they fell in love, she says. You’ve sneered at that notion often enough—not realistic, bourgeois superstition, rotten at the core. Sickly sentiment, a high-flown Victorian excuse for honest carnality. Going soft on yourself? Don’t blame me, blame history, he says, smiling. Such things happen. Falling in love has been recorded, or at least those words have. Anyway, I said he was lying. You can’t wiggle out of it that way. The lying was only at first. Then you changed it. Point granted. But there could be a more callous way of looking at it. Looking at what? This falling in love business. Since when is it a business? she says angrily. He smiles. That notion bother you? Too commercial? Your own conscience would flinch, is that what you’re saying? But there’s always a tradeoff, isn’t there? No, she says. There isn’t. Not always. You might say he grabbed what he could get. Why wouldn’t he? He had no scruples, his life was dog eat dog and it always had been. Or you could say they were both young so they didn’t know any better. The young habitually mistake lust for love, they’re infested with idealism of all kinds. And I haven’t said he didn’t kill her afterwards. As I’ve pointed out, he was nothing if not self-interested. So you’ve got cold feet, she says. You’re backing down, you’re chicken. You won’t go all the way. You’re to love as a cock-teaser is to fucking. He laughs, a startled laugh. Is it the coarseness of the words, is he taken aback, has she finally managed that? Restrain your language, young lady. Why should I? You don’t. I’m a bad example. Let’s just say they could indulge themselves—their emotions, if you want to call it that. They could roll around in their emotions—live for the moment, spout poetry out of both ends, burn the candle, drain the cup, howl at the moon. Time was running out on them. They had nothing to lose. He did. Or he certainly thought he did! All right then.She had nothing to lose. He blows out a cloud of smoke. Not like me, she says, I guess you mean. Not like you, darling, he says. Like me. I’m the one with nothing to lose. She says, But you’ve got me. I’m not nothing.

If your church continues in this liberty of conscience, making no scruple to take away what she pleases, soon the Scripture will fail you, and you will have to be satisfied with the Institutes of Calvin, which must indeed have I know not what excellence, since they censure the Scriptures themselves!

The real fun is working up hatred between those who say 'mass' and those who say 'holy communion' when neither party could possibly state the difference between, say, Hooker's doctrine and Thomas Aquinas', in any form which would hold water for five minutes. And all the purely indifferent things—candles and clothes and what not—are an admirable ground for our activities. We have quite removed from men's minds what that pestilent fellow Paul used to teach about food and other unessentials—namely, that the human without scruples should always give in to the human with scruples. You would think they could not fail to see the application. You would expect to find the 'low' churchman genuflecting and crossing himself lest the weak conscience of his 'high' brother should be moved to irreverence, and the 'high' one refraining from these exercises lest he should betray his 'low' brother into idolatry. And so it would have been but for our ceaseless labour. Without that, the variety of usage within the Church of England might have become a positive hotbed of charity and humility.

When the young person in question is an agnostic whose ancestors were Puritans, you get a very regrettable state of mind. The Puritan conscience works on without the Puritan theology—like millstones grinding nothing; like digestive juices working on an empty stomach and producing ulcers. The unhappy youth applies to literature all the scruples, the rigorism, the self-examination, the distrust of pleasure, which his forebears applied to the spiritual life; and perhaps soon all the intolerance and self-righteousness.

Love dictates that you refrain from waving something obnoxious under the nose of a brother with scruples about it. Christ died for him, so you may not do that (Rom. 14:15). At the same time, we need to reject, and reject with godly vehemence, every attempt to bind the consciences of the saints with regard to what they may eat (Col. 2:20–23). We defer to the weaker brothers at lunch, which is not the same thing as letting them teach on this.

Impulsive, sensation-seeking, and incapable of experiencing empathy or guilt, a narcissistic psychopath treats other people as objects of need fulfillment and wish fulfillment. This makes it easy for him to use and abuse them, in his personal relationships and in large-scale actions, without compunction. His lack of conscience renders him blind to higher human values, which allows him to disregard them entirely or treat them instrumentally as means to his ends, the same way he treats people. This dangerous character defect, however, serves him well in the pursuit of power, money, and adulation. Not having the inhibitions and scruples imposed by empathy and conscience, he can easily lie, cheat, manipulate, destroy, and kill if he wants to—or, when powerful enough, order others to do it for him.

He was habitually addicted to making love to ladies, and did so without any scruples of conscience, or any idea that such a practice was amiss. He had no heart to touch himself, and was literally unaware that humanity was subject to such an infliction. He had not thought much about it, but, had he been asked, would have said that ill-treating a lady’s heart meant injuring her promotion in the world. His principles therefore forbade him to pay attention to a girl if he thought any man was present whom it might suit her to marry. In this manner his good nature frequently interfered with his amusement, but he had no other motive in abstaining from the fullest declarations of love to every girl that pleased his eye.

Ramirez: Yes. Serial killers and most killers in general have a dead conscience. Carlo: When you say a dead conscience that means they don’t respond— Ramirez: No morals, no scruples, no conscience. They are ... uh ... they sometimes ... some of them don’t even care if they live or die themselves and they are just the walking dead.

Therefore I permit every man to hold either of these opinions, as he chooses. My one concern at present is to remove all scruples of conscience, so that no one may fear being called a heretic if he believes that real bread and real wine are present on the altar, and that every one may feel at liberty to ponder, hold, and believe either one view or the other without endangering his salvation. However, I shall now set forth my own view.

Psychopaths have no ethics, no scruples, and no conscience. Something inside is gone. They just aren’t capable of those emotions. That’s why killing is so easy for a real psychopath. Society has a lot of problems understanding that.

11.—Let us treat in this last place on a scrupulous conscience, on which it is necessary to have a longer discussion. A scrupulous conscience is that which, on account of a light motive without any rational foundation (for a scruple is an empty perception), he often is afraid of sin where there none is really present

There is the idol, there are the believers, and there I am, and if I had fewer scruples, I could well have been a priest, a necromancer, an exploiter of fears, of the primitive idolatry that one way or another the backward and aggrieved of humankind inevitably seek out. Then the church is built, the mystery embellished with art and craft, then dogma arrives, and no one can raise a voice against it. It’s an easy business. For centuries, priests, in different rites and languages, have sold a slice of heaven with all the comforts included: running water, electric light, television above all, a satisfied conscience, etc. The curious thing is that this domain, where there lives a terrible being by the name of God, has never been seen by anyone. Yet they go on selling it, and the price per cubic meter of heavenly air or divine land keeps rising higher and higher.

why should I refuse to accept it because of my unworthiness? Indeed, it is for this very reason that I cherish all the more his unmerited gift—because I am unworthy!” With that same thought every man ought to fortify his conscience against all qualms and scruples, so that he may lay hold on the promise of Christ with unwavering faith, and take the greatest care to approach the sacrament not trusting in confession, prayer, and preparation, but rather, despairing of all these, with firm confidence in Christ who gives the promise. For, as we have said often enough, the word of promise must reign alone here in pure faith; such faith is the one and only sufficient preparation.

But granting all this, and even granting that the Sanhedrists had been right in their opinion of the character of the disciples, their theft theory is ridiculous. The disciples, even if capable of such a theft, so far as scruples of conscience were concerned, were not in a state of mind to think of it, or to attempt it. They had not spirit left for such a daring action. Sorrow lay like a weight of lead on their hearts, and made them almost as inanimate as the corpse they are supposed to have stolen. Then the motive for the theft is one which could not have influenced them then. Steal the body to propagate a belief in the resurrection! What interest had they in propagating a belief which they did not entertain themselves? "As yet they knew not the Scriptures, that He must rise again from the dead;" nor did they remember aught that their Master had said on this subject before His decease.

Pornography separates flesh from spirit. It destroys the personal modesty that protects human intimacy and that allows men and women to grow in mutual respect. It frees lust from moral scruple and from the control of conscience, and it becomes easily addictive. It isolates those addicted to it. It subverts family life and personal integrity.