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Sympathy vs Conscience - What's the difference?

sympathy | conscience |

As nouns the difference between sympathy and conscience

is that sympathy is a feeling of pity or sorrow for the suffering or distress of another; compassion while conscience is the moral sense of right and wrong, chiefly as it affects one's own behaviour.

sympathy

Noun

(sympathies)
  • A feeling of pity or sorrow for the suffering or distress of another; compassion.
  • The ability to share the feelings of another.
  • A mutual relationship between people or things such that they are correspondingly affected by any condition.
  • * 1997 , Chris Horrocks, Introducing Foucault'', page 67, ''The Renaissance Episteme (Totem Books, Icon Books; ISBN 1840460865)
  • 'Sympathy' likened anything to anything else in universal attraction, e.g. the fate of men to the course of the planets.
  • Tendency towards or approval of the aims of a movement.
  • Usage notes

    * Used similarly to empathy, interchangeably in looser usage. In stricter usage, (term) is stronger and more intimate, while sympathy is weaker and more distant; see .

    Antonyms

    * contempt (context-dependent)

    Derived terms

    * (l) * (l) * (l), (l)

    conscience

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • The moral sense of right and wrong, chiefly as it affects one's own behaviour.
  • * 1949 , , as quoted by Virgil Henshaw in Albert Einstein: Philosopher Scientist ,
  • Never do anything against conscience , even if the state demands it.
  • * 1951 , (Isaac Asimov), publication), part V: “The Merchant Princes”, chapter 14, page 175, ¶ 7
  • [“]Twer is not a friend of mine testifying against me reluctantly and for conscience ’ sake, as the prosecution would have you believe. He is a spy, performing his paid job.[”]
  • * {{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham), title=(The China Governess)
  • , chapter=18 citation , passage=‘Then the father has a great fight with his terrible conscience ,’ said Munday with granite seriousness. ‘Should he make a row with the police […]? Or should he say nothing about it and condone brutality for fear of appearing in the newspapers?}}
  • (chiefly fiction) A personification of the moral sense of right and wrong, usually in the form of a person, a being or merely a voice that gives moral lessons and advices.
  • (obsolete) Consciousness; thinking; awareness, especially self-awareness.
  • * 1603 , (William Shakespeare), (Hamlet) , act 3, scene 1,
  • Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
    And thus the native hue of resolution
    Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.

    Usage notes

    * Adjectives often used with "conscience": good, bad, guilty. * Phrases: To make conscience of, To make a matter of conscience, to act according to the dictates of conscience concerning (any matter), or to scruple to act contrary to its dictates.

    Derived terms

    * consciencelike * conscience money * conscience vote * conscientious * make conscience * pang of conscience

    See also

    * synteresis