Quotes About Guilt

forgiveness, and only forgiveness, can begin the thaw in the guilty party.

Forgiveness—undeserved, unearned—can cut the cords and let the oppressive burden of guilt roll away.

Forgiveness breaks the cycle of blame and loosens the stranglehold of guilt. It accomplishes these two things through a remarkable linkage, placing the forgiver on the same side as the party who did the wrong.

a man who admits no guilt can accept no forgiveness.

Dr. Paul Tournier expresses this pattern in the language of psychiatry: "God blots out conscious guilt, but He brings to consciousness repressed guilt.

And the worst of it was, Irene could not claim with any certainty that this savage retribution was wrong. She had always thought other people would and should suffer for their callousness, but had never realized that she was as guilty as they and deserved similar treatment.

it's better in fact to be guilty of manslaughter than of fraud about what is fair and just.

It is man who kills, man who creates or suffers injustice; it is no longer man who, having lost all restraint, shares his bed with a corpse. Whoever waits for his neighbor to die in order to take his piece of bread is, albeit guiltless, further from the model of thinking man than the most primitive pigmy or the most vicious sadist.

It was the shame we knew so well, the shame that drowned us after the selections, and every time we had to watch, or submit to, some outrage: the shame that the Germans did not know, that the just man experiences at another man's crime; the feeling of guilt that such a crime should exist, that it should have been introduced irrevocably into the world of things that exist, and that his will for good should have proved too weak or null, and should not have availed in defense.

The institution represented an attempt to shift onto others — specifically, the victims — the burden of guilt, so that they were deprived of even the solace of innocence.

The things I had seen and suffered were burning inside of me; I felt closer to the dead than the living, and felt guilty at being a man, because men had built Auschwitz, and Auschwitz had gulped down millions of human beings, and many of my friends, and a woman who was dear to my heart.

An extreme case of the distortion of the memory of a committed guilty act is found in its suppression. Here, too, the borderline between good and bad faith can be vague; behind the I don't know and I do not remember that one hears in courtrooms there is sometimes the precise intent to lie, but at other times it is a fossilized lie, rigidified in a formula.

Condemnation always leads to guilt-laden discouragement, while conviction—though often painful in pointing out our wrongdoing—still somehow encourages and lifts us, giving us hope to rebuild on.

If I were your enemy, I'd constantly remind you of your past mistakes and poor choices. I'd want to keep you burdened by shame and guilt, in hopes that you'll feel incapacitated by your many failings and see no point in even trying again. I'd work to convince you that you've had your chance and blown it—that your God may be able to forgive some people for some things, but not you . . . not for this.

Again, one of the qualities that makes the gospel so real and so great is that it doesn't eliminate our past but just so thoroughly deals with it. God forgives it. He changes it. He transforms all that mess into this huge mountain of grace that only takes us higher and closer to Him. So now, instead of being a reason for endless shame, guilt, and regret, our past is a reason for endless worship and free-flowing testimony.

I know it's ridiculous to drink skim milk when you're pigging out on a chocolate bar, but I figured, why not cut calories where you can?

I never meant it, he was saying. Never meant it to happen. Can't stand it, seeing her suffer. Must do something, do something... What do I do? What can I do...?

But the guilt is nebulous, not actual, and I'm not on the run from the law. Just from the lawless.

Killing someone isn't like in the movies, something that you shrug off with a quip and a drink. It eats at you, even when the person you kill unquestionably has to die. And there's no way that her feelings about Melvin aren't, at the very deepest level, still complicated.

Someone should pay for their sins. I'll show you Awful, humans. I can't even see what I'm doing. All I know is rage, and panic, and darkness.

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.

The killer walked with a light step that could be achieved only by someone not weighed down with a conscience, and went out into the night's embrace.

To those who lack a conscience, there is no such thing as remorse.

GUILT SPILLS ITSELF IN FEAR OF BEING SPILT