Octavia E. Butler Quotes

Conscience allows us to do two things: Pass judgment on ourselves; approve or condemn our own conduct.

Guilt is the price we pay willingly for doing what we are going to do anyway.

There is no witness so terrible and no accuser so powerful as conscience which dwells within us.

I think guilt can be good to a small degree, keep you on the right path.

It's my own conscience that gets to me more so than anybody thinking about me. I think too much.

Watch over yourself. Be your own accuser, then your judge; ask yourself grace sometimes, and, if there is need, impose upon yourself some pain.

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

The Boogeyman is your conscience. The Boogeyman is the result of your own bad behavior. I love this Boogeyman.

I'm the one who has to look in the mirror, and after a while it begins to eat at you.

What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!

Just because I don't do bad things doesn't mean I don't have bad thoughts.

Every man is his own law court and punishes himself enough.

I'll not meddle with it; it is a dangerous thing; it makes a man a coward; a man cannot steal, but it accuseth him; a man cannot swear, but it checks him; a man cannot lie with his neighbor's wife, but it detects him. 'Tis a blushing, shame -faced spirit, that mutinies in a man's bosom ; it fills one full of obstacles; it made me once restore a purse of gold that by chance I found; it beggars any man that keeps it; it is turned out of all towns and cities for a dangerous thing; and every man that means to live well endeavors to trust to himself and live without it.

Prudence reproaches; conscience accuses.

Conscience is its own readiest accuser.

I think remorse ought to stop biting the consciences that feed it.

I lost my moral compass and I have done terrible things that I very much regret.

God forgive me if I do wrong in following with ardor the strongest instincts of my nature.

The preacher's sharpest and strongest preaching should be to himself. His most difficult, delicate, laborious, and thorough work must be with himself.

Is it really so difficult to tell a good action from a bad one? I think one usually knows right away or a moment afterward, in a horrid flash of regret.

I'm extremely self-critical. Although I try not to be ridiculous about it, wearing horsehair shirts and all that. It's a private exercise I don't necessarily share with other people.

Anxiety is the beginning of conscience, which is the parent of the soul but is not compatible with innocence.

One lives with so many bad deeds on one's conscience and some good intentions in one's heart.

I have high standards I hold myself to, besides Christianity.

The tension between 'yes' and 'no', between 'I can' and 'I cannot', makes us feel that, in so many instances, human life is an interminable debate with one's self.