"How wonderful that God should endow us with this sensitive yet strong guide we call a conscience! Someone has aptly remarked that 'conscience is a celestial spark which God has put into every man for the purpose of saving his soul.' Certainly it is the instrument which awakens the should to consciousness of sin, spurs a person to make up his mind and adjust, to convict himself of the transgression without soft-pedaling or minimizing the error, to be willing to face facts, meet the issue and pay necessary penalties---and until the person is in this frame of mind he has not begun to repent. To be sorry is an approach, to abandon the act of error is a beginning, but until one's conscience has been sufficiently stirred to cause him to move in the matter, so long as there are excuses and rationalizations, one has hardly begun his approach to forgiveness. This is what Alma meant in telling his son Corianton that 'none but the truly penitent are saved' (Alma 42:24).
(Spencer W. Kimball, Miracle of Forgiveness, pg. 152)
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