Mary Elizabeth Braddon Quotes

Guilt agonizes over trifles, ignores habitual wrongdoing.

There is a guilty conscience behind every brazen word and act and behind every manifestation of self-righteousness.

If anyone has a conscience it's generally a guilty one.

A man's conscience, like a warning line on the highway, tells him what he shouldn't do - but it does not keep him from doing it.

The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?

Because he KNEW he was doing wrong. He felt the PAIN of his actions'-- 'But he did not amen them,' shows the Sky. 'The rest are worth as much as their pack animals,' I show, 'but worst is the one who knows better and does NOTHING.

The fact is I am guilty of sexual immorality. And I take responsibility for the entire problem. I am a deceiver and a liar. There's a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it for all of my adult life.

Tolstoy said, 'The antagonism between life and conscience may be removed either by a change of life or by a change of conscience.' Many of us have elected to adjust our consciences rather than our lives. Our powers of rationalization are unlimited. They allow us to live in luxury and indifference while others, whom we could help if we chose to, starve and go to hell.

Oh but I'd pay anything to keep my conscience clean.I'm keeping my eyes on the the exit sign. Steady now.

On that road of the informer, it is always night. I cannot ever inform against anyone without feeling something die within me. I inform without pleasure, because it is necessary.

Fear is the mother of morality.

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

I was living a complete lie. But unfortunately, guilt doesn't make you stop.

All the characters in my films are fighting these problems, needing freedom, trying to find a way to cut themselves loose, but failing to rid themselves of conscience, a sense of sin, the whole bag of tricks.

In all secrets there is a kind of guilt, however beautiful or joyful they may be, or for what good end they may be set to serve. Secrecy means evasion, and evasion means a problem to the moral mind.

Conscience. That stuff can drive you nuts.

The trouble when you're doing something illegal is that you know what you're doing. You're lying to your parents, you're lying to your kids. The only person you can't lie to is yourself.

All a man can betray is his conscience.

Instead of playing heroes and righteous people, I'd rather portray characters with problems of conscience who have to lie, to betray, and then have to cope with that. They feel more true to me.

It's a shame I have to hurt people. I'm a nice guy.

I think, don't you, that a girl with any delicacy of feeling couldn't bring herself to marry a man indirectly responsible for her father's death. No matter how much she was in love with him.

A part of me was hoping someone would wake up and hear, so I wouldn't have to live with this lie anymore. But no one woke up and in the silence that followed, I understood the nature of my new curse: I was going to get away with it.

Dread remorse when you are tempted to err, Miss Eyre; remorse is the poison of life.

Every man's conscience is vile and depraved / You cannot depend on it to be your guide when it’s you who must keep it satisfied.