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 (3.2), “Of Repentance [Du Repentir]” (1586) [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)]
Be this your wall of brass — no secret sin,
To pale the cheek and rack the heart within![Hic murus aeneus esto,
nil conscire sibi, nulla pallescere culpa.]Horace (65–8 BC) Roman poet, satirist, soldier, politician [Quintus Horatius Flaccus]
Epistles [Epistularum, Letters], Book 1, ep. 1 “To Maecenas,” l. 60ff (1.1.60-61) (20 BC) [tr. Martin (1881)]
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(Source (Latin)). Other translations:Not to be giltye or war wan at anye falte at all,
A bulwarke that, to beare all bruntes, be that the brasen wall.
[tr. Drant (1567)]Be this a wall of Brass, to have within
No black accuser, harbour no pale sin.
[tr. Fanshawe; ed. Brome (1666)]Be this thy Guard, and this thy strong defence,
A vertuous Heart, and unstain'd Innocence;
Not to be conscious of a shameful sin:
Nor yet look pale for Scarlet Crimes within.
[tr. Creech (1684)]True, conscious Honour is to feel no sin,
He ’s arm'd without that’s innocent within;
Be this thy Screen, and this thy Wall of Brass.
[tr. Pope (1737), ll. 93-95]Be this thy brazen bulwark of defence,
Still to preserve thy conscious innocence,
Nor e'er turn pale with guilt.
[tr. Francis (1747)]Be good, then, and be great;
This be your tower of strength, your throne of state;
To keep your heart unconscious of a sin,
And feel no goadings of remorse within!
[tr. Howes (1845)]Let this be a [man’s] brazen wall, to be conscious of no ill, to turn pale with no guilt.
[tr. Smart/Buckley (1853)]Be this your wall of brass, your coat of mail,
A guileless heart, a cheek no crime turns pale.
[tr. Conington (1874)]Let this be a wall of brass around you -- "Not to be conscious of crime, or of any fault which spreads paleness over the countenance."
[tr. Elgood (1893)]Be this our wall of bronze, to have no guilt at heart, no wrongdoing to turn us pale.
[tr. Fairclough (Loeb) (1926)]And this bronze wall should be ours: to let no shame
Steal across our faces, no guilt steal into our hearts.
[tr. Palmer Bovie (1959)]Make this your barrier of bronze,
that no crime burdens you, no guilt has turned you pale.
[tr. Fuchs (1977)]Let a man stand
Behind this bronze wall:
Never guilty,
Never pale with sin, and fear
Of sin.
[tr. Raffel (1983)]Let this be our defense: not to have any
Wrongdoing on our conscience to worry over.
[tr. Ferry (2001)]So let this be your wall of brass:
to have nothing on your conscience, nothing to give you a guilty pallor.
[tr. Rudd (2005 ed.)]Let that be your wall of bronze,
To be free of guilt, with no wrongs to cause you pallor.
[tr. Kline (2015)]
I desire to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
Speech (1863-09-30) to the Missouri Committee of Seventy
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A committee of seventy "Radical Union Men of Missouri," selected by a state convention, visited Lincoln in the White House, demanding immediate abolition of slavery in the border states, the recruitment of Black soldiers to the Union Army, and that action be taken regarding the factional conflicts (Radicals vs Conservatives) stirred up by the state governor and the US military governor overseeing the state militia. This was Lincoln's concluding remark in reply to the committee's petition.
This was not a prepared speech, so there is no "official" version. These words were later reported by Enos Clarke, one of the committee members, as recorded in Ida Tarbell's The Life of Abraham Lincoln (1895). Tarbell's book was a best-seller, and the quotation is usually given as above.
However, Clarke's report as recorded by Walter Stevens in the Missouri State Historical Society book Lincoln and Missouri (1916) is a bit different:It is my ambition and desire to so administer the affairs of the government while I remain President that if at the end I shall have lost every other friend on earth I shall at least have one friend remaining and that one shall be down inside of me.
The difference between the two may be between different instances across the years of Clarke reporting on Lincoln's comments. Neither Tarbell nor Stevens give notes as to when and where their statements from Clarke derive.
