prick of conscience
pang of conscience
twinge of conscience

That was in those days, but even then, I had some pricks of conscience.

A prick of conscience accompanied the thought of the cat.

What is the Pricking of Conscience?

It may be asked what it is that disturbs a person when he feels the 'prick of conscience'.

Almost immediately the Sopwith threw her tail up, clearing his forward vision, Michael felt a prick of conscience at his earlier disloyalty.

And it is evidently a prick of conscience in her that has led her to urge me to get a divorce, that she may remarry this man legally.

Still, when you thundered out that stuff about concealing things, I felt a nasty prick of conscience, and I thought I'd like to get it off my mind.'

'The Prick of Conscience Leatherette Sofa', in Pippa Hale (ed.)

Caroline, however, must have felt a prick of conscience, for she went on: 'I mayn't have actually mentioned Liverpool, but I knew he'd try to get away to America.

There are 83 known manuscripts of the work from the late medieval and early Renaissance period, more than any other vernacular literary text with the exception of The Prick of Conscience.

A total of 83 medieval manuscripts of 'The Canterbury Tales' are known to exist, more than any other vernacular medieval literary work except 'The Prick of Conscience'.

Internally there are fifteenth-century hammerbeam roofs and much medieval stained glass, including the Corporal Works of Mercy (derived from Matt 25:31ff) and the "Prick of Conscience" windows.

More manuscript copies of the poem exist than for any other poem of its day except The Prick of Conscience, causing some scholars to give it the medieval equivalent of "best-seller" status.

Anne herself felt a prick of conscience but it only served to increase her mental irritation, and the second reader class remember that lesson yet, as well as the unmerciful infliction of arithmetic that followed.

Unfortunately on these occasions, all too often the prick of conscience, if it has operated at all, is instantly suppressed before it can take control, and it is this which appears to have become the normal response.

She thought it would do her no harm, for she sincerely meant to write nothing of which she would be ashamed, and quieted all pricks of conscience by anticipations of the happy minute when she should show her earnings and laugh over her well-kept secret.

Burgess provided the following explanation of the book's title: "Any reader of Finnegans Wake will see that it is a fusion of Joycesprach, joystick, the prick that brings joy and the prick of conscience or agenbite of inwit."

HUNGER I'VE been a hopeless sinner, but I understand a saint, Their bend of weary knees and their con- tortions long and faint, And the endless pricks of conscience, like a hundred thousand pins, A real perpetual penance for imaginary sins.

Yet there was still another practice that he had often abandoned as improper, and had as often taken up again in spite of the pricks of conscience: this was the keeping of a diary - harmless enough in almost all cases and even benign; but not in that of an intelligence-agent.

The victim of habit, when he has neglected the thing which it was his custom to do, feels a little scratching in the brain, a little irritating something which comes of being out of the rut, and imagines it to be the prick of conscience, the still, small voice that is urging him ever to righteousness.

To further his own ends Naniescu would have plundered and bullied to an unlimited extent, but he would not have robbed and bullied his own kith and kin; whereas this handsome young athlete with the engaging smile did not seem to have the slightest scruple or the least pricking of conscience.