Word Finder - conscience

definition

The moral sense of right and wrong, chiefly as it affects one's own behaviour.

example

Your conscience is your highest authority.

definition

(chiefly fiction) A personification of the moral sense of right and wrong, usually in the form of a person, a being or merely a voice that gives moral lessons and advices.

definition

Consciousness; thinking; awareness, especially self-awareness.

He did the task for the sake of his conscience.

His fine character and conscience earned him universal respect and confidence.

A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.

He told the truth for his conscience's sake.

Did he think she had no conscience about what happened?

And to attain this end, we have the light called conscience that God has implanted in our souls.

Matters of warrants and probable cause escaped his wife's rationale, replaced by her conscience, which stood firmly in charge.

I think most of us go to prayer only from this principle to satisfy a natural conscience.

Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded?

It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience.

The conscience of humanity is the beginning of law making.

All conscience effort to think fled and was replaced by a new instinct, the primal need to feed.

If attempts at suicide are any indication of guilt, this man must have a very uneasy conscience.

Even kids have a conscience.

He had a conscience void of any modern evil thoughts.

So, Count, there never is any negligence in my company, and so my conscience was at ease.

He won't want anyone with a conscience.

According to Vico, law emanates from the conscience of mankind, in whom God has infused a sentiment of justice.

The foe that was advancing in the opposite direction, though without the conscience of a hostile purpose, was the new power of human reason animated with the revived sentiment of classicism.

So absolute became the papal sovereignty over conscience that more than one government took alarm.

They were instinctively aware that the effort was for liberty of action, thought and conscience in the future.

She was their diary, their calendar and their conscience, and they loved her like a sister.

A man of fearless honesty, quick and catholic sympathies, broad culture, and many friends in intellectual and religious circles, he became one of the most influential journalists of the day, his fine character and conscience earning universal respect and confidence.

Sometime in the 40s she got it in her head that they were violating people, and developed a guilty conscience.

Pius might no longer rule over the papal states; but there was consolation in the thought that, within the realm of conscience, his power had increased by leaps and bounds.

The other world, with its imagined heaven and hell, haunted the conscience like a nightmare.

There are certain special uses of the word "conscience."

This new spirit in Italy emancipated human intelligence by the classics; in Germany it emancipated the human conscience by the Bible.

Reckless of political expediency, Sumner moved that the Fugitive Slave Act be forthwith repealed; and for more than three hours he denounced it as a violation of the constitution, an affront to the public conscience, and an offence against the divine law.

The "Burlingame Treaty" recognizes China's right of eminent domain over all her territory, gives China the right to appoint at ports in the United States consuls, "who shall enjoy the same privileges and immunities as those enjoyed by the consuls of Great Britain and Russia"; provides that "citizens of the United States in China of every religious persuasion and Chinese subjects in the United States shall enjoy entire liberty of conscience and shall be exempt from all disability or persecution on account of their religious faith or worship in either country"; and grants certain privileges to citizens of either country residing in the other, the privilege of naturalization, however, being specifically withheld.

The combination of antecedents is somewhat differently given by different writers; but all agree in representing the conscience of any individual as naturally correlated to the interests of the community of which he is a member, and thus a natural ally in enforcing utilitarian rules, or even a valuable guide when utilitarian calculations are difficult and uncertain.

Thus, in his view, not merely natural inclinations towards pleasures, or the desires for selfish happiness, require to be morally resisted; but even the prompting of the individual's conscience, the impulse to do what seems to him right, if it comes into conflict with the common sense of his community.

The act shocked the religious conscience of western Asia; the subsequent murder of Sennacherib was held to be an expiation of it, and his successor Esarhaddon hastened to rebuild the old city, to receive there his crown, and make it his residence during part of the year.

Each of them needed money, but Charles V., pricked by conscience on his death-bed, forbade the levying of the hearth-tax (1380).

And its moral decadence means a decay of conscience.

I feel that I have lost the virginity of my conscience.

The suppression of Roman Catholicism was zealously pursued by Cromwell; the priests were hunted down and imprisoned or exiled to Spain or Barbados, the mass was everywhere forbidden, and the only liberty allowed was that of conscience, the Romanist not being obliged to attend Protestant services.

Inwardly "he took a remorse of conscience and detestation of mind."

As regards moral sentiments generally, the view suggested by Mill is more definitely given by the chief living representative of the associationist school, Alexander Bain; by whom the distinctive characteristics of conscience are traced to " education under government or authority," though prudence, disinterested sympathy and other emotions combine to swell the mass of feeling vaguely denoted by the term moral.

He built all on conscience, as that wherein man stands in direct personal relation with God as moral sovereign, and the seat of a moral individuality which nothing can rightly infringe.

They found a brilliant interpreter in Aeschines, who, after having been a tragic actor and a clerk to the assembly, had entered political life with the advantages of a splendid gift for eloquence, a fine presence, a happy address, a ready wit and a facile conscience.

Conscience, as the subjective expression of the presupposed identity of reason and nature in their bases, guarantees the practicability of our moral vocation.

The Irish bishops remained silent, while in England the " Nonconformist conscience " revolted.

For instance, liberty of conscience, established for the first time in 1869, was reduced to a minimum of toleration for Protestant worship, schools and cemeteries, but with a strict prohibition of propaganda and outward signs of faith.

You must have something pretty ghastly on your conscience to make such a fuss about my trusting you.

Lord Nottingham in 1676 reconciled the ancient theory and the established practice by saying that the conscience which guided the court was not the natural conscience of the man, but the civil and political conscience of the judge.

Astute, ambitious and unrestrained by conscience, Dubois ingratiated himself with his pupil, and, while he gave him formal school lessons, at the same time pandered to his evil passions and encouraged him in their indulgence.

Hitherto, by his own showing, the private life of the young tsar had been unspeakably abominable, but his sensitive conscience (he was naturally religious) induced him, in 1550, to summon a Zemsky Sobor or national assembly, the first of its kind, to which he made a curious public confession of the sins of his youth, and at the same time promised that the realm of Russia (for whose dilapidation he blamed the boyar regents) should henceforth be governed justly and mercifully.

Haggai's reproofs touched the conscience of the Jews, and the book of Zechariah enables us in some measure to follow the course of a religious revival which, starting with the restoration of the temple, did not confine itself to matters of ceremony and ritual worship. On the other hand, Haggai's treatment of his theme, practical and effective as it was for the purpose in hand, moves on a far lower level than the aspirations of the prophet who wrote the closing chapters of Isaiah.

At one of the meetings the father of a newly-born child explained that he could not go outside France to seek a pure baptism and that his conscience would not permit his child to be baptized according to the rites of the Romish Church.