Alexandre Vinet: Conscience

Alexandre Vinet was Swiss theologian. Explore interesting quotes on conscience.
Alexandre Vinet: 14 quotes2 likes

“We feel the necessity of deceiving ourselves, of even grossly deceiving ourselves, and of believing, when we are doing wrong, that we are doing right. When we do not succeed in reaching such persuasion, merely by sounding our own reason and conscience, we look about for something or some person to aid us in the attempt.”

Alexandre Vinet

Evangelical Meditations (1858)

“The light of conscience … enters the eyes of the soul, as the light of the sun enters the eyes of the body; and to open the former requires no greater effort than to open the latter.”

Alexandre Vinet

Evangelical Meditations (1858)

“A conscience that is only sluggish, may submit to truth when it happens to meet with it: but a conscience under the seductions of passion, will not submit to it without great difficulty, and will devise some pretext, some expedient, for resisting the voice of truth that openly rebukes it.”

Alexandre Vinet

Evangelical Meditations (1858)

“Among the English, we see on one side an exhibition of grossness and impudence in wickedness, and on the other, we admire their strictness and lofty eminence in that which is good. In that country, interest and conscience measure every thing. There is nothing intermediate between the two motives.In France, on the contrary, the gap between interest and conscience is admirably filled by honour. … In its origin, honour had for its office to take the place of conscience. Where it was deficient, honour presented itself the heir, the distant relation of conscience. … But honour itself is becoming weak. … If this progress continues, it will end by being extinguished. But which will then become the heir of honour? Will it be interest or conscience?”

Alexandre Vinet

History of French Literature in the Eighteenth Century (1854), pp. 366-367.