Quotes About Guilt

He had striven to put a cheat upon himself by making the avowal of a guilty conscience, but had gained only one other sin, and a self-acknowledged shame, without the momentary relief of being self-deceived. He had spoken the very truth, and transformed it into the veriest falsehood.

Unknown to all but Hester Prynne, and possessing the lock and key of her silence, he chose to withdraw his name from the roll of mankind, and, as regarded his former ties and interests, to vanish out of life as completely as if he indeed lay at the bottom of the ocean, whither rumor had long ago consigned him.

We have wronged each other, answered he. "Mine was the first wrong, when I betrayed thy budding youth into a false and unnatural relation with my decay.

I said, but now, that there could be no good event for him, or thee, or me, who are here wandering together in this gloomy maze of evil, and stumbling, at every step, over the guilt wherewith we have strewn our path.

The scarlet letter had not done its office.

Tell him he has murdered me! Tell him that I'll haunt him!

This feeble and most sensitive of spirits could do neither, yet continually did one thing or another, which intertwined, in the same inextricable knot, the agony of heaven-defying guilt and vain repentance.

By the sympathy of your human hearts for sin, ye shall scent out all the places — whether in church, bed-chamber, street, field, or forest — where crime has been committed, and shall exult to behold the whole earth one stain of guilt, one mighty blood-spot.

Could it be true? She clutched the child so fiercely to her breast, that it sent forth a cry; she turned her eyes downward at the scarlet letter, and even touched it with her finger, to assure herself that the infant and the shame were real. Yes! — these were her realities, — all else had vanished!

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne

So something that never should have happened did, all because of my thoughts and actions. A clear-cut cause-and-effect relationship. I was the one who caused it, and I should probably get the death penalty. Or maybe what I should say is I'm the one who pronounced the death sentence on myself

Everyone needs someone to blame.

We tried to be good parents . . . but there's a point at which you give up trying." "No, there's not," Connor tells her. Then he turns to go, leaving them with the worst punishment of all: having to live with themselves.

Guilt is easy, innocence is hard.

And as I see it, they're all innocents. Even the guilty. Everyone is guilty of something, and everyone still harbors a memory of childhood inno- cence, no matter how many layers of life wrap around it. Humanity is inno- cent; humanity is guilty, and both states are undeniably true.

Guilt is the idiot cousin of remorse," Scythe Faraday had been fond of saying.

he other classes were much needed distractions from the Stress of the assignment and when his parents found out, which of course they did, they called him in a controlled panic. All their regret and guilt at sending him to a boarding school overflowed along with their fear for his life. He had to console them and tell them it was going to be okay. He's the one who's life may have been in jeopardy and yet he had to console them.

Everyone is guilty of something, and everyone still harbors a memory of childhood innocence, no matter how many layers of life wrap around it.

E, a meu ver, todos são inocentes. Mesmo os culpados. Todo mundo é culpado de alguma coisa e todo mundo ainda guarda uma memória da inocência da infância, não importa quantas camadas de vida a cubram. A humanidade é inocente; a humanidade é culpada; ambas as afirmações são inegavelmente verdadeiras.

Guilt is the idiot cousin of remorse.

We must, by law, keep a record of the innocents we kill. And as I see it, they're all innocents. Even the guilty. Everyone is guilty of something, and everyone still harbors a memory of childhood innocence, no matter how many layers of life wrap around it. Humanity is innocent; humanity is guilty, and both states are undeniably true. We must, by law, keep a record.

Humanity is innocent; humanity is guilty, and both states are undeniably true.

You may be responsible for your actions," Pastor Dan says, but it's not your fault you weren't emotionally prepared for life out there in the real world. That was my fault—and the fault of everyone who raised you to be a tithe. We're as guilty as the people who pumped that poison into your blood.