Conviction

Sourced

• No man ever truly believed, who was not first made sensible of unbelief. True conviction of sin — how difficult it is, when its appearances and modes of life are so fair, when it twines itself so cunningly about, or creeps so insidiously into, our amiable qualities, and sets off its internal disorders by so many outward charms and attractions.
  • Horace Bushnell, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 164.

• It is no certain evidence, that because the conscience feels the weight of sin, the heart is humbled on account of it; that because the conscience approves of the rectitude of the Divine justice, the heart bows to the Divine sovereignty. The most powerful conviction of sin, therefore, is not conclusive evidence of Christian character.
  • Gardiner Spring, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 165.

• To remember that once we were near the salvation of Christ, so near that our right hand might have touched and taken it, and after all that hand was withheld; this is a memory which will enhance remorse forever.
  • William Adams, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 165.

Unsourced

• I like a person who knows his own mind and sticks to it; who sees at once what, in given circumstances, is to be done, and does it.
  • William Hazlitt

• Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies. Courageous, untroubled, mocking and violent - that is what Wisdom wants us to be. Wisdom is a woman, and loves only a warrior.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche