Quotes About Guilt

What if the worst thing you ever did was something you didn't do?

Kathy's death, and what he'd done to get rid of her body, was an anvil pitched on Dave's shoulders. He knew he could never erase what he'd done. He thought of how Kathy's family would always wonder where she'd gone, and if she was happy.

Fear and guilt are the dark angels that haunt rich men, Khader said to me once. I wasn't sure if that was true, or if he simply wanted it to be true, but I did know from experience that despair and humiliation haunt the poor.

Fear and guilt haunt the rich. Despair and humiliation haunt the poor.

Guilt is the hilt of the knife that we use on ourselves, and love is often the blade; but it's worry that keeps the knife sharp, and worry that gets most of us, in the end.

Ah, my dear friend, I cannot claim it as my own. It was Karla who said it to me the first time, and I have used it ever since. I am guilty of many crimes—of most crimes, to say the truth—but I have never claimed a cleverness that was not my own.' 'Admirable,' I laughed.

Fear and guilt are the dark angels that haunt rich men.

Khaderbhai once said that every virtuous act is inspired by a dark secret. It mightn't be true of everyone, but it was true enough about me. The little good that I've done in the world has always dragged behind it a shadow of dark inspiration... ...When all the guilt and shame for the bad we've done have run their course, it's the good we did that can save us. But then, when salvation speaks, the secrets we kept, and the motives we concealed, creep from their shadows.

I felt defiled by my own health and the money in my pockets. If you feel it at all, it's a lacerating guilt, that first confrontation with the wretched of the earth.

Then the smoulders of shame and guilt flamed into anger, became fist-tightening rage at the unfairness of it: What kind of a government, I thought, what kind of a system allows suffering like this?

What I do know now, and didn't know then is that, in the long run, motive matters more with good deeds than it does with bad. When all the guilt and shame for the bad we've done have run their course, it's the good we did that can save us.

It's a lacerating guilt, that first confrontation with the wretched of the earth.

But reason didn't play a big part in the guilt I'd felt, deep in my heart, since the moment I'd seen his dead face beneath its shroud of snow. Once I'd faced it, I couldn't shake the shame. And somehow, the blame and repining sorrow changed me. I felt the vengeful stone fall from the hating hand that had wanted to throw it. I felt light, as if light itself filled me and lifted me up. And I felt free - free enough to pity Madame Zhou, and even to forgive her.

It's the endlessly thinking about yourself that causes such heart shame.

We start out in identical perfection: bright, reflective, full of sun. The accident of our lives bruises us into dirty individuality. We meet with grief. Our character dulls and tarnishes. We meet with guilt. We know, we know: the price of living is corruption. There isn't as much light as there once was. In the grave we lapse back into undifferentiated sameness

Staring at a world too horrible to comprehend, believing -- by dint of ignorance and innocence -- that beneath this unbearable contract of guilt and blame there is always an older contract that may bind and release in a more salutary way.

What Stieg Larsson was up to - it was the Swedish guilt over World War II. All of our neighbors had the most terrible experiences with the bad forces, but Sweden didn't. I think we use the thrillers in a different way. We never write a thriller like 'Who is the murderer?' The big question in most of our thrillers is... 'Why?'

For better or worse, we live in possible worlds as much as actual ones. We are cursed by that characteristically human guilt and regret about what might have been in the past. But that may be the cost for our ability to hope and plan for what might be in the future.

I sometimes worry that by encouraging so many more people to try their hand at baking through 'The Great British Bake Off,' I'm going to find myself in court one day charged with accelerating the national epidemic of obesity! To which I will plead not guilty. A slice of Victoria sandwich is never going to harm anyone.

I'm a bit of a worrier, to an extreme. I'll crack a joke, then worry if I've offended someone - even when they're laughing. I have a guilt complex, always worrying.

The only thing worse than an active conscience is one that's retroactive.

I hope and trust the infinite, the eternal, and merciful and loving God. I worship Him and feel no guilt in my heart before him for what I am going to do.

If you impose morality on people, they will find ways to circumvent their guilt. They will make offerings to temples - or other places of worship - but also continue doing things that make them feel guilty.

Americans worship creativity the way they worship physical beauty - as a way of enjoying elitism without guilt: God did it.