Compunction Quotes:

The beginning of compunction is the beginning of a new life.

- George Eliot

source: George Eliot (2016). “Felix Holt, The Radical: Top Novelist Focus”, p.132, 谷月社

topic: Life, Literature, Compunction, New Beginning Life

Once you've seen certain things, the moral compunction drives you to act.

- Tom Hiddleston

source: Interview with Benedict Cumberbatch, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 24, 2016.

topic: Moral, Certain, Compunction

Prayer is not eloquence but earnestness.

- Hannah More

source: "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, (p. 458), 1895.

topic: Prayer, Eloquence, Compunction, Inspirational Prayer, Thoughts And Prayers

Men who have been raised violently have every reason to believe it is appropriate for them to control others through violence; they feel no compunction over being violent to women, children, and one another.

- Frank Pittman

topic: Children, Believe, Men, Compunction

Strange indeed is human nature. Here were these men, to whom murder was familiar, who again and again had struck down the father of the family, some man against whom they had no personal feeling, without one thought of compunction or of compassion for his weeping wife or helpless children, and yet the tender or pathetic in music could move them to tears.

- Arthur Conan Doyle

source: Arthur Conan Doyle (2016). “Sherlock Holmes - The Novels: A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of the Four, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Valley of Fear”, p.356, BoD - Books on Demand

topic: Children, Father, Moving, Personal Feelings, Compunction

The English can laugh and at the same time strike you down, without the least compunction. It is the secret of their success as a nation.

- Peter Ackroyd

topic: Laughing, Secret, Strikes, Compunction

It is strange how in some things honest people can be dishonest without the slightest compunction.

- James Weldon Johnson

source: James Weldon Johnson, Sondra K. Wilson (1995). “The Selected Writings of James Weldon Johnson: Social, political, and literary essays”, p.284, Oxford University Press on Demand

topic: People, Strange, Honest, Compunction

When your soul is pricked by compunction and gradually changed, it becomes a fountain flowing with rivers of tears and compunction. If any one of you ever happens to communicate with tears, whether you weep before the Liturgy or in the course of the Divine Liturgy, or at the very time that you receive the Divine Gifts, and does not desire to do this for the rest of his days and nights, it will avail him nothing to have wept merely once. It is not this alone that at once purifies us and makes us worthy; it is daily compunction that does not cease until death.

- Symeon the New Theologian

topic: Christian, Night, Rivers, Compunction, Liturgy

The industrial mind is a mind without compunction; it simply accepts that people, ultimately, will be treated as things and that things, ultimately, will be treated as garbage. (A Defense of the Family Farm, 1986)

- Wendell Berry

topic: People, Mind, Garbage, Family Farms, Compunction

I like not only to be loved, but also to be told I am loved.

- George Eliot

topic: Love, Life, Valentines Day, Marriage And Love Inspirational, Marriage Problems

The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice.

- George Eliot

topic: Inspirational, Motivational, Sympathy, Make The Right Choice, Make The Right Decision

I am not your God. Or if I am, I'm no God you can seek out for deliverance or explanation. I'm the kind of God who would eat you without compunction if I were hungry.

- Ron Currie Jr.

topic: Deliverance, Kind, Hungry, Compunction

Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.

- George Eliot

source: George Eliot (2016). “George Eliot's Life, Complete: Top Novelist Focus”, p.226, 谷月社

topic: Spiritual, Nature, True Friend, Inspirational Animal, Inspirational Dog

If you allow someone like Saddam Hussein to get nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, chemical weapons, biological weapons, how many people is he going to kill with such weapons? He's already demonstrated a willingness to use these weapons. He poison-gassed his own people. He used poison gas and other weapons of mass destruction against his neighbors. This man has no compunction about killing lots and lots of people. So this is a way to save lives and to save the stability and peace of a region of the world that is important to the peace and security of the entire world.

- Al Gore

topic: Men, Mass Destruction, People, Missiles, Chemical Weapons

The rat had no morals, no conscience, no scruples, no consideration, no decency, no milk of rodent kindness, no compunctions, no higher feeling, no friendliness, no anything

- E. B. White

source: E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.170, Cornell University Press

topic: Kindness, Feelings, Rodents, Compunction, Scruples

Adventure is not outside man; it is within.

- George Eliot

topic: Wisdom, Travel, Adventure, Inspirational Adventure, Compunction

It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.

- George Eliot

topic: Inspirational, Rain, Flower, Inspirational Rain, Plant A Tree

The child who is permitted to torment, or destroy, the minutest object in creation, who will wantonly tread upon a worm, or unhumanly pass a pin through the body of a fly, will in all probabiilty, as he increases in years, feel no more compunction at tormenting a fellow-creature, than he did in witnessing the wreathing agonies of a fly.

- Laetitia Pilkington

topic: Bullying, Children, Years, Compunction

As the cleansing ocean closes over bin Laden's carcass, may the earth lie lightly on the countless graves of those he sentenced without compunction to be burned alive or dismembered in the street.

- Christopher Hitchens

topic: Lying, Ocean, Alive, Compunction

I say if black people don't unite and begin to support themselves, their communities and their families, they might as well begin to go out of business as a people. Nobody's going to have any mercy. And nobody's going to have any compunction about making slaves out of them.

- John Henrik Clarke

source: Source: www.ourtimepress.com

topic: People, Support, Community, Black People, Compunction

What is the cause that one is hardened, and another readily moved to compunction? Listen! It springs from the will, in the latter case a good will, in the former an evil one. It springs also from the thoughts, in the former case evil thoughts, in the latter from the opposite; and similarly from actions, in the former case actions contrary to God, in the latter godly ones... it is by free choice of the will that every person either attains compunction and humility, or else becomes hard-hearted and proud.

- Symeon the New Theologian

topic: Christian, Spring, Humility, Hardened, Compunction

Cruelty is no more the cure of crimes than it is the cure of sufferings; compassion, in the first instance, is good for both; I have known it to bring compunction when nothing else would.

- Walter Savage Landor

source: Walter Savage Landor (1856). “Selections from the Writings of Walter Savage Landor”, p.18

topic: Compassion, Suffering, Cuckoos, Compunction

I've spent my entire adult life with the United States as a superpower and one that had no compunction about spending what it took to sustain that position. And it didn't have to look over its shoulder because our economy was so strong.

- Robert M. Gates

source: Source: www.guernicamag.com

topic: Strong, United States, Looks, Compunction

Prayer is not eloquence, but earnestness; not the definition of helplessness, but the feeling of it; not figures of speech, but earnestness of soul.

- Hannah More

topic: Prayer, Feelings, Soul, Praying To God, Inspirational Prayer

Quick question. Does this magical skill with gray matter come with a total lack of compunction for your kind, or is it just you who were born without a conscience? V: I beg your pardon?

- J.R. Ward

source: J.R. Ward (2007). “Lover Unbound: A Novel of the Black Dagger Brotherhood”, p.172, Penguin

topic: Gray Matter, Skills, Brotherhood, Compunction, Lover Unbound

I have never forgotten how the deprivation of work erodes human beings, those not working and those related to them. And from that time on, I loathed an economic that could put a huge part of its workforce on the streets with no compunction.

- Herbert Schiller

source: "Living In The Number One Country". Book by Herbert Schiller, 2000.

topic: Erode, Forgotten, Economic, Workforce, Compunction

If my work is pornography, so what? I don't have any moral compunction about pornography. Any feelings I have about it are purely stylistic... I don't see why it should be excluded as a serious subject.

- David Salle

topic: Feelings, Serious, Moral, Serious Subjects, Compunction