Quotes About Guilt

It was thought that the confession of the accused was indispensable to his condemnation, an idea not only unreasonable, but contrary to the most simple good sense in matters of jurisprudence; for if the denial of the accused is not accepted as proof of his innocence, the confession which is torn from him by torture ought to serve still less as proof of his guilt.

only guilt admitted accepts truth.

She had not come to the shopping centre to buy shoes; she had come to buy food, and there was a big difference between shopping for food and shopping for shoes, and that difference concentrated on one word: guilt.

It was curious how some people had a highly developed sense of guilt, she thought, while others had none. Some people would agonise over minor slips or mistakes on their part, while others would feel quite unmoved by their own gross acts of betrayal or dishonesty.

The trouble with having a conscience, she said to herself, is that it never sleeps.

we all have some things we are ashamed of.

It was curious how some people had a highly developed sense of guilt, she thought, while others had none.

If you were a Catholic," said Mr. Woodhouse, "you would have no difficulty with the idea of sitting around and doing nothing. That has never been a problem for Catholicism; it is only the Protestant outlook that makes us feel guilty about not being busy.

It transpired that he was an electricity thief. We would have imagined many things of which he might be guilty—many unspeakable things…

If you wish to discover the guilty person, first find out to whom the crime might be useful.

artificial civilization have originated wants, vices, and false tastes, which occasionally become so powerful as to stifle within us all good feelings, and ultimately to lead us into guilt and wickedness.

If a man has tortured and killed your father, your mother, your sweetheart, in short, one of those beings who leave an eternal emptiness and a perpetually bleeding wound when they are torn from your heart, do you think society has given you sufficient reparation because the blade of the guillotine has passed between the murderer's trapezius and his occipital bone, because the who made you undergo long years of mental and emotional suffering has undergone a few seconds of physical pain?

Guilt, of course, is the predominant theme of Hitchcock's films. It derives not only from the complexities of his own inner life: guilt is also one of the great themes in all art, and especially in contemporary art and literature.

Every one of us who was attracted to the poor had a sense of guilt, of responsibility, a feeling that in some way we were living on the labor of others. The fact that we were born in a certain environment, were enabled to go to school, were endowed with the ability to compete with others and hold our own, that we had few physical disabilities—all these things marked us as the privileged in a way.

No one outside of our family unit would ever guess that away from prying eyes, we were systematically tearing ourselves apart. Away from the outside world, everyone in our family started to fall to pieces, and never really recovered. Even though our times together are always fun and laughter-filled, the closeness we once shared is gone. In its place is guilt, regret, the ability to say the nastiest things and, for the longest minute on earth, mean every word of them

psychologist Wilhelm Reich theorized that the suppression of sexuality was essential to an authoritarian government. Without the imposition of antisexual morality, he believed, people would be free from shame and would trust their own sense of right and wrong. They would be unlikely to march to war against their wishes, or to operate death camps. Perhaps if we were raised without shame and guilt about our desires, we might be freer people in more ways than simply the sexual.

When we blame, we fail to shoulder our part of the burden; we project the responsibility for whatever is wrong onto another, usually to protect ourselves from feeling terribly guilty or anxious. When we blame, we also disempower ourselves – if it's all your fault, then I must be impotent.

Those without a conscience, without a soul, had a huge advantage over those burdened by ethics, self-doubt, and decency, as they were capable of epic displays of betrayal and duplicity, without fear, guilt, or remorse ever entering the picture.

even after he had slipped a knife between your shoulder blades, you would think that this was somehow your fault.

Only Europeans and their descendants remember guilt. So only Europeans and their descendants have continuously to atone for it.

As one of the consequences of the death of God, Friedrich Nietzsche foresaw that people could find themselves stuck in cycles of Christian theology with no way out. Specifically that people would inherit the concepts of guilt, sin and shame but would be without the means of redemption which the Christian religion also offered.

America, as in Australia, such a constant drumbeat of guilt changes a people's natural feelings about their own past. It transforms feelings of patriotism into shame or at the very least into deeply mixed emotions, and troubling effects result from this. A country that believes it has never done any wrong is a country that could do wrong at any time.

Guilt, as the French philosopher Pascal Bruckner has diagnosed it in his book La Tyrannie de la pénitence, has become a moral intoxicant in Western Europe.

The urge to blame is based . . . on the fear of being blamed.