A good conscience is to the Soul what health is to the body; it preserves a constant ease and serenity within us, and more than countervails all the calamities and afflictions which can possibly befall us.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1713-08-15), The Guardian, No. 135
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Quotations about:
clear conscience
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LUCIUS: Sweet are the slumbers of the virtuous man!
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Cato, Act 5, sc. 4, l. 26 (1713)
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There is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball,
And that is to have either a clear conscience, or none at all.Ogden Nash (1902-1971) American poet
“Inter-Office Memorandum,” I’m a Stranger Here Myself (1938)
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A good conscience is to the Soul what health is to the body; it preserves constant ease and serenity within us; and more than countervails all the calamities and afflictions which can befall us from without.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1713-08-15), The Guardian, No. 135
(Source)
The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together, for it implied — as had been said at Nuremberg over and over again by the defendants and their counsels — that this new type of criminal, who is in actual fact hostis generis humani, commits his crimes under circumstances that make it well-nigh impossible for him to know or to feel that he is doing wrong.
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Epilogue (1963)
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Hostis humani generis (Latin for "enemy of humanity") was an admiralty legal term indicating that slavers, pirates, and terrorists were held beyond legal protection and were a legitimate target of any nation.
The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, martyr
“On Stupidity” (1942)
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Money dishonestly acquired is never worth its cost, while a good conscience never costs as much as it is worth.
Jean-Antoine Petit-Senn (1792-1870) French-Swiss poet
Maxims and Ethical Sentences
There is a sort of gratification in doing good which makes us rejoice in ourselves, and a generous pride that accompanies a good conscience.
[Il y a certes je ne sçay quelle congratulation, de bien faire, qui nous resjouit en nous mesmes, et une fierté genereuse, qui accompagne la bonne conscience.]
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) French essayist
Essays, Book 3, ch. 2 “Of Repentence [Du repentir]” (1586) (3.2) (1595) [tr. Frame (1943)]
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First appeared in the 1588 edition.
(Source (French)). Alternate translations:There is truely I wot not what kinde of congratulation, of well doing, which rejoyceth us in our selves, and a generous jollitie, that accompanieth a good conscience.
[tr. Florio (1603)]There is a kind of I know not what congratulation in well-doing, that gives us an inward Satisfaction, and a certain generous Boldness that accompanies a good Conscience.
[tr. Cotton (1686)]There is a kind of, I know not what, congratulation in well-doing that gives us an inward satisfaction, and a generous boldness that accompanies a good conscience.
[tr. Cotton/Hazlitt (1877)]There is surely I know not what self-gratification in doing well, which rejoices us ourselves, and a noble pride which attends a good conscience.
[tr. Ives (1925)]There is an unutterable delight in acting well which makes us inwardly rejoice; a noble feeling of pride accompanies a good conscience.
[tr. Screech (1987)]
