Quotes About Guilt

It is human nature to hate the man whom you have hurt.

To cut short the question of the law of retaliation, we must note that even in its primitive form it can operate only between two individuals of whom one is absolutely innocent, and the other absolutely guilty. The victim, to be sure, is innocent. But can the society that is supposed to represent the victim lay claim to innocence?

It seems to me that everyone on this planet whom I know or have worked with is suffering from self-hatred and guilt to one degree or another. The more self-hatred and guilt we have, the less our lives work. The less self-hatred and guilt we have, the better our lives work, on all levels.

When one person makes an accusation, check to be sure he himself is not the guilty one. Sometimes it is those whose case is weak who make the most clamour.

I saw my parents as gods whose every wish must be obeyed or I would suffer the penalty of anguish and guilt.

But I think I can sincerely declare that I cheerfully submit myself to every odious name for conscience' sake; and from my soul I despise all those whose guilt, malice, or folly has made them my foes.

I don't want to forgive myself. That's why I hate psychoanalysis I think if you're guilty of something you should live with it. Get rid of it - how can you get rid of a real guilt? I think people should live with it, face up to it.

Why not, when it can be done without exposure or expense, let me rescue some of America's miserable children from vice and guilt?

I am sadly afraid that I must have done some wicked thing.

It's so easy to be wicked without knowing it, isn't it?

Writers are always writing about infidelity. It's so dramatic. The wickedness of it, the secrecy, the complications, the finding that you thought you were one person but you're also this other person. The innocent life and the guilty life. My God, it's just full of stuff for a writer. I doubt it will ever go out of fashion.

Wickedness is its own punishment.

A lot of widows feel that they have betrayed their spouse by continuing to live. It's deranged thinking. I know that, but that doesn't stop you feeling it.

I come from Chicago and am a child of Irish Catholic parents who were able to wield guilt like a Ginsu knife.

I grew up Catholic and still feel a lot of Catholic guilt. But my wife is not religious so we're not raising our daughters religiously.

I regret hurting my wife and my child and abandoning them. I regret the pain I caused them.

I told my wife, when I go up to the garage and I wash my Cobra, I feel like I'm cheating on her.

My searing desire to atone for having survived helps me resist the temptations to join the world of lies.

It is better that ten guilty escape than one innocent suffer.

We tend to think that people are more to blame for their acts than for their omissions.

He incurs a fearful amount of guilt who in the least promotes the aim of the Evil One by trampling upon a tender conscience in a child.

I actually want to hold on to where I came from, and also I want to be at this bar in Brooklyn, even if I'm not drinking at all. What does that tension look like? It's less an attack on the parents and more an interrogation of personal guilt, personal responsibility. That's my internal dialogue.

My son was about five or six months old, and he was ill, and I was sent to New York to interview three people back to back. I got home, and I saw my baby. He had been very ill, and he was on three kinds of antibiotics. I'd been away for eight days. I looked at him and thought, 'What am I doing? I'm a terrible mother and a terrible journalist.'

I mean, I felt terrible. And in the beginning, I mean, I was completely devastated. I mean, can you imagine the kind of guilt that you would feel, and the responsibility?