Guilt Quotes

Sadly, if we are not confident about our choices, we can easily let other peoples' comments make us feel guilty and ruin the joy we need to experience in life through doing the little things that mean a lot to us.

The three most harmful negative emotions are anger, guilt, and fear. And anger is number one. It is also the strongest and most dangerous of all passions.

I feel that if I kept it secret it might grow in my mind (as poisonous things grow in the dark) and take its place with the other terrible thoughts that gnaw me

All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself.

Their guilt made me eloquent because I was not its victim.

You may succeed in making another feel guilty about something by blaming him, but you won't succeed in changing whatever it is about you that is making you unhappy.

O shame, where is thy blush?

Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent, but the tests that have to be applied to them are not, of course, the same in all cases.

We are more pained when one of our friends is guilty of something shameful than when we do it ourselves.

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.

Action and care will in time wear down the strongest frame, but guilt and melancholy are poisons of quick dispatch.

My mother phones daily to ask, "Did you just try to reach me?" When I reply no, she adds, "So, if you're not too busy, call me while I'm still alive," . . . and hangs up.

A little water clears us of this deed.

A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.

What a fate: to be condemned to work for a firm where the slightest negligence at once gave rise to the gravest suspicion! Were all the employees nothing but a bunch of scoundrels, was there not among them one single loyal devoted man who, had he wasted only an hour or so of the firm's time in the morning, was so tormented by conscience as to be driven out of his mind and actually incapable of leaving his bed?

In the end, we would like not to be guilty while at the same time being dispensed of the effort of purifying ourselves. Not enough cynicism and not enough virtue.

I would bear any affliction rather than be burdened with a guilty conscience.

Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.

Not One Tiny Slice of that Guilt will Do Anything to Change a Single Thing in the Past

There may be responsible persons, but there are no guilty ones.

All men alike stand condemned, not by alien codes of ethics, but by their own, and all men therefore are conscious of guilt.

A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.

If the other person injures you, you may forget the injury; but if you injure him you will always remember.

A man should not play the coward to his deeds. He should not repudiate them once he has performed them. Pangs of conscience are indecent.

Prudence reproaches; conscience accuses.

Tremble, thou wretch,That hast within thee undivulged crimesUnwhipped of justice.

I don't believe that the big men, the politicians and capitalists alone, are guilty of war. Oh no, the little man is just as guilty, otherwise the peoples of the world would have risen in revolt long ago!

He that is conscious of a stink in his breeches is [suspicious] of every wrinkle in another's nose.

I have not slept. Between the acting of a dreadful thing And the first motion, all the interim is Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream: The Genius and the mortal instruments Are then in council; and the state of man, Like to a little kingdom, suffers then The nature of an insurrection.

To cut short this question of the law of retaliation, we must note that even in its primitive form it can operate only between two individuals of whom one is absolutely innocent and the other absolutely guilty. The victim, to be sure, is innocent. But can the society that is supposed to represent the victim lay claim to innocence?

Emotional occasions, especially violent ones, are extremely potent in precipitating mental rearrangements. The sudden and explosive ways in which love, jealousy, guilt, fear, remorse, or anger can seize upon one are known to everybody. . . . And emotions that come in this explosive way seldom leave things as they found them.

An uneasy conscience is a hair in the mouth.

All through my boyhood I had a profound conviction that I was no good, that I was wasting my time, wrecking my talents, behaving with monstrous folly and wickedness and ingratitude-and all this, it seemed, was inescapable, because I lived among laws which were absolute, like the law of gravity, but which it was not possible for me to keep.

If he has a conscience he will suffer for his mistake. That will be his punishment-as well as the prison.

Men were considered "free" only so that they might be considered guilty - could be judged and punished: consequently, every act had to be considered as willed, and the origin of every act had to be considered as lying within the consciousness (and thus the most fundamental psychological deception was made the principle of psychology itself).

It's a new day, a new beginning for your new life. With discipline you will be amazed at how much progress you'll be able to make. What have you got to lose except the guilt and fear of the past?

Do as the heavens have done, forget your evil; With them forgive yourself.

O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!

Most of our faults are more pardonable than the means we use to conceal them.

Methought I heard a voice cry 'Sleep no more!Macbeth does murder sleep', the innocent sleep,Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care,The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,Chief nourisher in life's feast...

The mind of guilt is full of scorpions.

Good people end up in Hell because they can't forgive themselves.

The truly just is he who feels half guilty of your misdeeds.

With integrity, you have nothing to fear, since you have nothing to hide. With integrity, you will do the right thing, so you will have no guilt.

Guiltiness will speak, though tongues were out of use

In all the ages, three-fourths of the support of the great charities has been conscience money.

Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.

Guilt is present in the very hesitation, even though the deed be not committed.

We forget our guilt when we have confessed it to another, but the other does not usually forget it.

I kept this to remind me of you trying to brush away the Villa Rossa from your teeth in the morning, swearing and eating aspirin and cursing harlots. Every time I see that glass I think of you trying to clean your conscience with a toothbrush.

In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so.

We are all exceptional cases. We all want to appeal against something! Each of us insists on being innocent at all cost, even if he has to accuse the whole human race and heaven itself.

It is grievous for a man to leave behind him a shadow in his own shape.

Still it cried ‘Sleep no more!’ to all the house: ‘Glamis hath murder’d sleep, and therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more,—Macbeth shall sleep no more!

Alas! it is a fearful thingTo feel another's guilt!

Guilt for being rich, and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn't enough and you have to go and get shot or something.

Unnatural deeds Do breed unnatural troubles: infected minds To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets.

Only that which makes you feel bad after doing is immoral.

It is not a gain that guilt should be wholly forgotten. On the contrary, it is loss and perdition. But it is a gain to win an inner intensity of heart through a deeper and deeper inner sorrowing over guilt.

Innocence does not find near so much protection as guilt.