Quotes About Guilt

It was also horribly embarrassing, and the fact that none of them knew she could sense their emotions only made it worse. It was as if she stood outside their windows, listening to whispered conversations they'd never meant to share with her, and the fact that she had no choice—that she could no longer not sense the feelings of those about her—only made her feel perversely guilty when she did.

No one but a person who has been guilty himself could read guilt in others so well.

But victimhood was seductive, a release from responsibility and caring. Fear would be transmuted into weary resignation; failure would no longer generate guilt but, instead, would spawn a comforting self-pity.

Recognizing the structure of your psychology doesn't mean you can easily rebuild it. The Chamber of Unreasonable Guilt is part of my mental architecture, and I doubt that I will ever be able to renovate that particular room in this strange castle that is me.

If allowed to be, the heart is self-policing, and a reasonable measure of guilt guards against corruption.

Except that now, for having accused Ravi of an unspecified crime he hadn't committed, I was as good as dead. In years subsequent, when he was in the mood to terrorize me, he would whisper to me, Just wait till we're alone. You're the next goat!

But love flowed into the apology, to coddle and mollify the guilt.

But why think the more reasons there were to sin, the smaller the sin was?

When you are guilty, all you can ask for is a deferral of the judgement. 'Whatever

Some of the things I've done in my life I'm ashamed of.

I, and I only, am to blame for all their sins; I spoiled them. To-day they are as eager for pleasure as they used to be for sugar-plums. When they were little girls I indulged them in every whim. They had a carriage of their own when they were fifteen. They have never been crossed. I am guilty, and not they—but I sinned through love.

You have less pity than the executioner

A bad conscience makes a very good ghost.

Guilt is the very nerve of sorrow

Sin is too great an evil for man to meddle with. His attempts to remove it do but increase it, and his endeavours to approach God in spite of it aggravate his guilt.

Yet I murdered the lighthouse keeper, Botho August, and that is an equal part of how I think about myself.

Herleid tot zijn eenvoudigste vorm komt mijn besluit hierop neer, dat u de gebeurtenis weg hebt willen dringen uit uw bewustzijn. Waarschijnlijk heeft de overigens ongegronde wroeging om het feit, dat u de man niet helpen kon, u parten gespeeld en zich tot een schuldgevoel gefixeerd. Men vergeet echter niet, wat men wil vergeten.

Il n'y a rien de coupable. L'instant n'est pas coupable, c'est seulement de vouloir le retenir qui n'est pas permis. Seul le fait de se cramponner à ce qui ne se laisse pas retenir... (89)

Quem envelhece reconhece que permanecemos constantemente em culpa, através de todas as circunstâncias e combinações da vida; mas em cada homem habita também a sua sorte de inocência; e é esta que o sustenta, sem que ele mesmo saiba como

In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.

young make foolish mistakes when they think they are in love. "You are quite sure he is guilty?" "Reasonably. We have ruled out robbery.

Looking at me, you'd never guess I'd killed three people. It isn't fair.

It's all because of me isn't it? It's all my fault?

How guilt refined the methods of self-torture, threading the beads of detail into an eternal loop, a rosary to be fingered for a lifetime.