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Sense of right and wrong   /sɛns əv raɪt ənd rɔŋ/   Listen
Sense of right and wrong

noun
1.
Motivation deriving logically from ethical or moral principles that govern a person's thoughts and actions.  Synonyms: conscience, moral sense, scruples.






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"Sense of right and wrong" Quotes from Famous Books



... back sometime; but he had long been used to borrowing, and the impulse was almost irresistible to borrow whenever he came where he could. Sometimes he returned these loans; oftener he did not. His sense of right and wrong in such matters was not very ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith

... having fairly questioned her conscience yet. What if she laid the letter-case on the table again, and waited until her excitement had all cooled down, and then put the contemplated project soberly on its trial before her own sense of right and wrong? ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins

... "but mind my words, and apply your experience to it afterwards in life, and see if I ain't right. Crime has but two travelling companions. It commences its journey with the scoffer, and ends it with the blasphemer: not that talking irreverently ain't very improper in itself, but it destroys the sense of right and wrong, and prepares the way ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... being, indeed, impossible to deny, that education must concur with natural impulses in making up the moral sentiment. No human being, abandoned entirely to native promptings, is ever found to manifest a sense of right and wrong. As a general rule, the strength of the conscience depends on the care bestowed on its cultivation. Although we have had to recognize primitive distinctions among men as to the readiness to take on moral training, ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain

... sense of right and wrong is correct nearly always. Like you, I've a lot of respect for the black bear, and also for the deer and the buffalo and the panther and the other people of the woods. Do you think the rain ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

... ground of all life, in heaven and in earth. That we might be like God, He clothed us in mortal flesh, and sent us into this world of sense. That we might be like God, He called us, from our infancy, into His Church. That we might be like God, He gave us the divine sense of right and wrong; and more, by the inspiration of His holy spirit, that inward witness, that Light of God, which lightens every man that cometh into the world, He taught us to love the right and hate the wrong. That we might be like God, God ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... that she was attracted by his personality. So the question was, how far his personality accounted for the change that had come over her life? Was it the mere personal influence of the prelate, or an inherent sense of right and wrong that compelled her to send her lovers away and change her life? If it were the mere personal influence of Monsignor, her desire of a pure life would not last, and to attain something that was not natural to her she would ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... before a justice of the peace, to a five-thousand-dollar fee before the Supreme Court of his State, has a long and hard path to climb. Lincoln climbed this path for twenty-five years, with industry, perseverance, patience—above all, with that self-control and keen sense of right and wrong which always clearly traced the dividing line between his duty to his client and his duty to society and truth. His perfect frankness of statement assured him the confidence of judge and jury in every argument. His habit of fully admitting the weak ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay

... and natural order, and a series of words that are distinct and definite in meaning, and you have laid a firm foundation whereon to exercise the higher faculties of reflection and reasoning. Still more is it of paramount importance to educate and bring out the moral faculties, to cultivate the sense of right and wrong, to enlighten and strengthen the young conscience, to teach the love of good, and the hatred of evil, and to strive to bring the whole being under the new commandment of Christ, "that ye love one another." The golden rule, "to do unto others as ye would that they should ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin

... and swiftly, dwelling only upon the swift rush of events that had confused her sense of right and wrong, and upon ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris

... might pity him. Either would be intolerable. She might even justify herself to him, might beat him into submission by sheer force of her beauty and her passion, as she had done once before. He would run no such risk. He felt that he could not sacrifice his sense of right and wrong, could not allow himself to be dragged into the moral chaos in which, it seemed to him now, Miss Goold lived. He was unconscious of any Divine leading, or even of any direct reliance on the obligations of honour. He could not himself have told why he clung with such desperate ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... it astonishingly appeared, who LIKED Happy Fear. These were for the greater part obscure and even darkling in their lives, yet quite demonstrably human beings, able to smile, suffer, leap, run, and to entertain fancies; even to have, according to their degree, a certain rudimentary sense of right and wrong, in spite of which they strongly favored the prisoner's acquittal. Precisely on that account, it was argued, an acquittal would outrage Canaan and lay it open to untold danger: such ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington

... us, I say, who is not like the heathen, dead in trespasses and sins; in every one of us who has a conscience, excusing or else accusing us. There are those—a very few, I hope—who are sunk below that state; who have lost their sense of right and wrong; who only care to fulfil the lusts of the flesh in pleasure, ease, and vanity. There are those in whom the voice of conscience is lead for a while, silenced by self-conceit; who say in their prosperity, like the foolish Laodiceans, 'I am rich, and increased ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... and we cannot avoid asking how it is that, in these few cases 'experience of utility' have left such an overpowering impression, while in others they have left none.... The intuitional theory which I am now advocating explains this by the supposition that there is a feeling—a sense of right and wrong—in our nature antecedent to, and ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... observed how worthless were the animals which his father was offering. His heart at once became filled with Shraddha. There is no one English word which can convey the meaning of this Sanskrit term. It is more than mere faith. It also implies self-reliance, an independent sense of right and wrong, and the courage of one's own conviction. As a boy of tender age, Nachiketas had no right to question his father's action; yet, impelled by the sudden awakening of his higher nature, he could not but reflect: "By merely giving these useless cows, my father cannot gain any merit. If he has vowed ...
— The Upanishads • Swami Paramananda

... although cases can be found, generally of a minor grade, which hold that evil intent is not necessary to the crime. Under the law as generally laid down, insanity is a defense to crime when the insanity is so far advanced as to blot out and obliterate the sense of right and wrong or render the accused unable to choose the right and avoid the wrong. Of course, legal definitions of scientific terms, processes, or things, do not ordinarily show the highest wisdom. It is safe to say that few judges ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow

... nut. Now we come to the highest, the soul of man. For in each one of you there is something eternal, something akin to God himself. The name we give that eternal spirit is the soul. For the protection of our soul God gives us faith, a sense of right and wrong, conscience, the still small voice. He surrounds us with Christian homes, the Church, helpful fellowship, the means of grace. All these things are a protection for ...
— The Children's Six Minutes • Bruce S. Wright

... suspicions were aroused, and her woman's instinct took her further than did Captain Bontnor's sturdy sense of right and wrong. ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman

... world is in need of the assistance of the Christian philanthropist, as it is overspread with the thickest gloom of heathenish ignorance, beneath which the fiends and demons of the abyss seem to be holding their ghastly revels; a country in which all sense of right and wrong is forgotten, and where every man's hand is turned against his fellow to destroy or injure him, where the name of Jesus is scarcely ever mentioned but in blasphemy, and His precepts [are] almost utterly unknown. In this unhappy country the few who are enlightened ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow

... a very dreadful and tormenting thought. It does not torment the mere savage, who has no sense of right and wrong; who follows his own appetites and passions, and has never learnt to say, "I ought," and "I ought not." But it does torment the heathen when they begin to be civilized, and to think; it has tormented them in all ages. It tormented the old Greeks and Romans; it torments some Eastern ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley

... he was sure to be helping, hand to heart; shall I not do likewise? In the finest distinctions between the noble and the base, he decided by his actions with a justness that did honor to the nicety of his sense of right and wrong. In this, too, ...
— Allopathy and Homoeopathy Before the Judgement of Common Sense! • Frederick Hiller

... middle-class respectability. Aesthetics are higher than ethics. They belong to a more spiritual sphere. To discern the beauty of a thing is the finest point to which we can arrive. Even a colour-sense is more important, in the development of the individual, than a sense of right and wrong. Aesthetics, in fact, are to Ethics in the sphere of conscious civilisation, what, in the sphere of the external world, sexual is to natural selection. Ethics, like natural selection, make existence possible. Aesthetics, like sexual selection, make life lovely ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde



Words linked to "Sense of right and wrong" :   ethical motive, moral sense, morality, superego, ethics, small voice, voice of conscience, wee small voice, morals, sense of duty, sense of shame



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