Quotes About Guilt

The idea of original sin--of guilt with no possibility of innocence, no freedom of choice, no alternatives--inherently militates against self-esteem. The very notion of guilt without volition or responsibility is an assault on reason as well as on morality. Sin is not original, it is originated--like virtue.

If we are willing to take responsibility for that which is within our power, I think that frees us to see clearly that which is not, and to understand, therefore, the limits of our accountability. But if we too often fail to take such responsibility and feel vaguely guilty over our avoidance, the paradox is that in our confusion we often end up blaming ourselves for events beyond our control.

The protection of self-esteem requires a clear understanding of the limits of personal responsibility. Where there is no power, there can be no responsibility, and where there is no responsibility, there can be no reasonable self-reproach. Regret, yes; guilt, no.

Where there is no power, there can be no responsibility, and where there is no responsibility, there can be no reasonable self-reproach. Regret, yes; guilt, no.

Healthy self-esteem is not ashamed to say, when the occasion warrants it, "I was wrong." Denial and defensiveness are characteristics of insecurity, guilt, feelings of inadequacy, and shame.

What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so in exorable as one's self!

The horrible ugliness of this exposure of a sick and guilty heart to the very eye that would gloat over it!

let her cover the mark as she will, the pang of it will always be in her heart

So, to their own unutterable torment, they go about among their fellow-creatures, looking pure as new-fallen snow, while their hearts are all speckled and spotted with iniquity of which they cannot rid themselves.

It came to pass, not long after the scene above recorded, that the Reverend Mr Dimmesdale, at noonday, and entirely unawares, fell into a deep, deep slumber, sitting in his chair, with a large black-letter volume open before him on the table. It must have been a work of vast ability in the somniferous school of literature.

Like all other joys, she rejected it as sin.

The scene was not without a mixture of awe, such as must always invest the spectacle of guilt and shame in a fellow creature, before society shall have grown corrupt enough to smile, instead of shuddering at it.

Like all that pertains to crime, it seemed never to have known a youthful era.

The shame lay in the commission of the sin, and not in the showing of it forth.

Could they be other than the insidious whispers of the bad angel, who would fain have persuaded the struggling woman, as yet only half his victim, that the outward guise of purity was but a lie, and that, if truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a bosom besides Hester Prynne's? Or

Let her cover the mark as she will, the pang of it will be always in her heart.

She knew that her deed had been evil; she could have no faith, therefore, that its result would be for good.

Mine was the first wrong, when I betrayed thy budding youth into a false and unnatural relation with my decay.

Here, she said to herself, had been the scene of her guilt, and here should be the scene of her earthly punishment; and so, perchance, the torture of her daily shame would at length purge her soul, and work out another purity than that which she had lost: more saint-like, because the result of martyrdom.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

This child of its father's guilt and its mother's shame hath come from the hand of God, to work in many ways upon her heart, who pleads so earnestly, and with such bitterness of spirit, the right to keep her. It was meant for a blessing; for the one blessing of her life!

It was the scarlet letter in another form: the scarlet letter endowed with life. The mother herself - as if the red ignominy were so deeply scorched into her brain that all her conceptions assumed its form - had carefully wrought out the similitude, lavishing many hours of morbid ingenuity to create an analogy between the object of her affection and the emblem of her guilt and torture.

They little guessed what deadly purport lurked in those self-condemning words.

More than once, he had cleared his throat, and drawn in the long, deep, and tremulous breath, which, when sent forth again, would come burdened with the black secret of his soul.