Quotes About Guilt

guilt leads to righteous action, but rarely is it the right action.

more guilt, guilt, guilt. That's the Irish condition.

A curse burns bright on crime.

The wicked always finds an excuse for wrongdoing.

A clean conscience is the preserve of those without sufficient imagination.

We feel guilty for all that we have not yet read, but overlook how much better read we already are than Augustine or Dante, thereby ignoring that our problem lies squarely with our manner of absorption rather than with the extent of our consumption.

Sunday evenings had long saddened me, reminders of death, unfinished business, guilt, and loss.

A Course in Miracles doesn't limit psychic self-mutilation to unrequited love. The Course tells us that any illness and any pain, physical or emotional, is our way of holding someone else guilty for hurting us. If we did not blame others, the Course explains, we would never be sick. I

he had never killed anyone before. He still felt the same. The pistol had done the killing, not him. The man had set if off himself, as a consequence of his own idiotic actions.

For something to be a crime there must be both an actus reus and mens rea — that is, a criminal act accompanied by a criminal state of mind.

The dusk reeks of fornication and bad consciences.

Aye, but the hand that had murdered had once pressed the mother's breast into the thirsting mouth, had stolen into the father's hand when they went out into the dark. Aye, but the murderer afraid of death had once been a child afraid of the night.

You shouldn't feel guilty about enjoying something that other people don't. Well, apart from torture, but that's probably the only exception

For what I did, I cannot atone. I can only suffer.

Bred in the doctrine of self-help, individual Canadians seemed tragically willing to accept responsibility for their plight. Some literally died rather than accept relief. Slowly guilt turn to despair and then, as the depth and duration of the Depression exceeded every memory, to deep but unfocused resentment.

Pain and guilt tore through him. His soul was bleeding to death. He stood there, waiting to die. How could he not? But such wounds were not fatal.

The hostility and venomous response the topic of sexual trauma and rape in the military brings up, especially with men from my Era, is revealing. This opposition speaks to their guilt and toward the truth that stays hidden.

I bristled, but tried not to show it. The last thing I wanted today was an argument with Charlotte. She was still furious with me for telling Mary Ella the truth about her surgery—which I admitted to her before Ann Laing had a chance to tell her—and she was never going to let me forget about the beach trip, either. "I'm going to go over to the Harts' house this week to see how they're doing," I said

Catholics have always held that the soul is immeasurably more important than the body. Therefore, one who destroys the faith and grace that are the life of the soul is more guilty than one who merely kills the body. For this reasonable attitude there is surely no reason to apologize.

Anything tastes good when you wash it down with chocolate.

I felt guilty about the broken china; the fallen pot ring; the fancy towels, now ruined; the dinner . . . but most of all, I was worried about Yolanda, who was in excruciating pain from burns. . . . Sean's

Grief was a vicious parasite. It had dug and clawed its way into my heart, feeding off the guilt raging through me. But I'd find a way to exterminate it.

The whelp went home, and went to bed. If he had had any sense of what he had done that night, and had been less of a whelp and more of a brother, he might have turned short on the road, might have gone down to the ill-smelling river that was dyed black, might have gone to bed in it for good and all, and have curtained his head for ever with its filthy waters.

The question of why evil exists is not a theological question, for it assumes that it is possible to go behind the existence forced upon us as sinners. If we could answer it then we would not be sinners. We could make something else responsible...The theological question does not arise about the origin of evil but about the real overcoming of evil on the Cross; it ask for the forgiveness of guilt, for the reconciliation of the fallen world