Definition of "conscience" []

• The awareness of a moral or ethical aspect to one's conduct together with the urge to prefer right over wrong: Let your conscience be your guide. (noun)
• A source of moral or ethical judgment or pronouncement: a document that serves as the nation's conscience. (noun)
• Conformity to one's own sense of right conduct: a person of unflagging conscience. (noun)
• The part of the superego in psychoanalysis that judges the ethical nature of one's actions and thoughts and then transmits such determinations to the ego for consideration. (noun)
• Obsolete Consciousness. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• ""I know that Elise has a conscience that will hold her fast to duty," said Benigna, but she did not speak hopefully: she spoke deliberately, however, thinking that these words _conscience_ and _duty_ might arrest the minister's attention, and that he would perhaps, by some means, throw light upon questions which were constantly becoming more perplexing to her."
• ""accuse," and how universally it does so, abundant testimony of Christian missionaries shows; and conscience can "excuse," which is the method that guilty thoughts invariably suggest; but _conscience cannot justify_."
• "In Scripture, the word conscience is the Greek word suneidesis, which means “co-perception”—that is, “accompanying moral consciousness and awareness.”"