The Guilt Quotes

#1. Guilt kept me going. It was impossible not to blame myself for what had happened, but even guilt was a comfort. It was a human feeling, a sign that I was still attached to the same world that other men lived in.

Paul Auster

#2. The beauty of life is, while we cannot undo what is done, we can see it, understand it, learn from it and change. So that every new moment is spent not in regret, guilt, fear or anger, but in wisdom, understanding and love.

Jennifer Edwards

#3. If you survive, you've got to live with the guilt, and that's more difficult than looking someone in the eye and pulling the trigger. Trust me. I've done both.

Sara Grant

#4. I'm an Episcopal, which is Catholic Lite. It's like same religion, half the guilt.

Robin Williams

#5. Guilt is not a healthy emotion. It rots you from the inside out, turns you bitter.

Blair Richmond

#6. When you need to set boundaries . . . They are the kind [of people] who work their way into people's homes and win the confidence of vulnerable women who are burdened with the guilt of sin and controlled by various desires. 2 TIMOTHY 3:6

Beth Moore

#7. The actions driven by fear and guilt are not an antidote to lukewarm, selfish, comfortable living. I hope you realize that the answer is love.

Francis Chan

#8. One unconsciously takes it for granted that doer and sufferer think and feel alike, and according to this supposition we measure the guilt of the one by the pain of the other.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#9. It was the first time I had ever felt guilt at finding a man attractive.

Tabitha McGowan

#10. Their guilt plus their repentance should have equalled forgiveness. But they don't feel forgiven, so they failed, which makes them feel guilty, which was why they repented in the first place, so they're stuck right where they started: Guilty.

Geoffrey Wood

#11. In the case of 'The Housewives,' I call the 'Housewives' sociology of the rich. I think it's just fun to watch. It's guilt-free gossiping that you can have. It's like the modern-day soap opera, in my mind.

Andy Cohen

#12. Believe me, religions are on the wrong track the moment they moralize and fulminate commandments. God is not needed to create guilt or to punish. Our fellow men suffice, aided by ourselves.

Albert Camus

#13. Sometimes the guilty one is not the person who has committed the crime, but the person who has created the possibility for it to be committed.

Cristiane Serruya

#14. In my experience, the biggest reason people struggle to get where they want to be is guilt. Guilt that they have let someone down, and also guilt that they are about to leave someone they love ...behind.

Bethany Brookbank

#15. In former days, everyone found the assumption of innocence so easy; today we find fatally easy the assumption of guilt.

Carolyn Heilbrun

#16. Vultures pick the meat clean off a bone. Guilt eats at the marrow, leaving a man hollow.

Richelle E. Goodrich

#17. From the very moment of Kanga's appearance the pastoral playground is overshadowed by doubt and guilt, for the all-too-loving anima-Woman has pitched her temple here!

Frederick C. Crews

#18. Guilt is present in the very hesitation, even though the deed be not committed.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

#19. If I were ever to go mad it would be on Thanksgiving Day, that day of guilt and grace when the family hangs upon you like an ax over a sacrificial victim, like the oven's heat on that poor bird.

Francine Du Plessix Gray

#20. The old days were slower. People buttered their bread without guilt and sat down to dinner en famille.

Laurie Colwin

#21. The scariest thing in my life is the first morning of production on all my movies. It's the fear of failing, the loss of face, and a sense of guilt that everybody puts their faith in you and not coming through.

Tony Scott

#22. Look, I don't know who has been telling you over the years that you aren't worthy of love and happiness, but they're idiots. We all deserve it. And if people get hurt along the way, that's life. We've all been hurt. Doesn't that make love more crucial to our lives?

Karina Halle

#23. Such things as anguish, woe, affliction, guilt, feelings of awfulness, and utter wretchedness, the bread and butter of Days of Yore and Russians, sadly have very little staying power in these lickety-split Modern Times.

Marisha Pessl

#24. You may experience waves of disbelief after each memory you retrieve. Whether as a phase or waves, the disbelief is usually accompanied by massive self-hate and guilt. 'How can I even think such a thing? I must really be warped,' you tell yourself.

Renee Fredrickson

#25. A god come to earth ought to do nothing whatever but wrong: to take upon oneself, not the punishment, but the guilt - only that would be godlike.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#26. I had a Christian upbringing - it was all about sin and guilt. I was very happy just kissing people. I was like the make-out queen - not even second base.

Mira Sorvino

#27. He had lived to please himself instead of God all those years, giving little more than lip service to His holy laws. And now when Zechariah cried out to God, his numberless sins swallowed up his prayers before they reached heaven. His guilt filled the yawning gulf between him and God.

Lynn Austin

#28. OK, she's dead and you feel guilty, and feeling guilt isn't something you enjoy. Too bad. Get used to it. Why the hell should you escape guilt? It's part of being human. Or hadn't you noticed?

P.D. James

#29. I was so tired of fighting. Tired of hurting. Tired of the guilt that never released me, and the regrets that could not be changed. I didn't want this life. They're were only so many times I could hear that I should never have been born, before I wished it to be true.

Rebecca Donovan

#30. Guilt can make you doubt yourself at the very moment when you need to proceed with certainty.

Joseph Bruchac

#31. Guilt takes away the energy and strength and reduces a person's productivity

Sunday Adelaja

#32. God Who delivers us from the guilt of sin through faith in Jesus Christ, is able to deliver the believer from the power of sin as well.

J. Edwin Orr

#33. But I rather thought
I mean, I heard you'd killed Balder the Fair."
"I never did," snapped Loki crossly. "Well, no one ever proved I did. What happened to the presumption of innocence? Besides, he was supposed to be invulnerable. Was it my fault that he wasn't?

Joanne Harris

#34. Presumptions of guilt or innocence may sometimes be strengthened or weakened by the place of birth and kind of education and associates a man has grown up with, and good character may at times interpose, and justly save, under suspicion, one who is accused of crime on slight circumstances.

Levi Woodbury

#35. The Indian criminal justice system was a market like garbage, Abdul now understood. Innocence and guilt could be bought and sold like a kilo of polyurethane bags.

Katherine Boo

#36. The men were making too much noise, laughing, joking, to cover her terrible accusing silence below. She made the empty rooms roar with accusation and shake down a fine dust go guilt that was sucked in their nostrils as they plunged about.

Ray Bradbury

#37. Guilt upon the conscience, like rust upon iron, both defiles and consumes it, gnawing and creeping into it, as that does which at last eats out the very heart and substance of the metal.

Robert South

#38. When we teach people that suspending moral judgments is a virtue, the necessary outcome is moral horror.

Peter Boghossian

#39. As me old granny used to say before they carried her home to glory, there's three parts to a good sermon. First The Hook, then lay on The Guilt, then you deliver The Sting. I'll be sending the collection plate round shortly.

Andre The BFG

#40. I wanted to write about women and their work, and about valuing the work we, as women, choose to do. Too many women I knew disparaged their work. Many working mothers thought they ought to be home with their children instead, so they carried around too much guilt to enjoy much job satisfaction.

Jennifer Chiaverini

#41. If he has a weakness, it's that he's a moral being. Where possible, he'll do the right thing, the just thing, and if he does wrong he'll bear the guilt of it.

John Connolly

#42. Not One Tiny Slice of that Guilt will Do Anything to Change a Single Thing in the Past

Wayne Dyer

#43. Conscious virtue is the only solid foundation of all happiness; for riches, power, rank, or whatever, in the common acceptation ofthe word, is supposed to constitute happiness, will never quiet, much less cure, the inward pangs of guilt.

Lord Chesterfield

#44. There was no way to abandon guilt, no decent way to disown it. All the tangles and knots of bitterness and desperation and fear had to be pitied. No, better, grace had to fall over them.

Marilynne Robinson

#45. It isn't actually a question of guilt or innocence, is it? It's a matter of what the jury believes, once we've told them what evidence there is on either side. Given the proper evidence, we could probably convict God. Without it, Lucifer himself would walk free!

Charles Todd

#46. Guilt accretes. It builds and builds, whittling stairways and spires in the heart until a person can carry a city of hopelessness inside them.
My guilt was building a universe.

Roshani Chokshi

#47. Guilt: it comes in so many subtle forms. It's carbon monoxide for the soul.

Sandra Vischer

#48. Your pain and anger will pass, but the guilt would remain with you for always.

Dodie Smith

#49. I didn't want to try to kill myself, didn't want the blood and the hysterical parents and the guilt, any of it. But sometimes I liked the idea of simply not having to be here anymore, not having to deal with my life. As if death could be just an extended vacation.

Leila Sales

#50. The treason of which I stand convicted loses all its guilt, has been sanctified as a duty, and will be ennobled as a sacrifice.

Thomas Francis Meagher

#51. What do you feel like you SHOULD be doing instead of writing? IF you have an answer, then you have guilt. The "should" of life are always linked to guilt.

Andi Cumbo-Floyd

#52. I have only ever known Guilt to have one weakness, one not easily given and not easily found: Forgiveness ... In truth, Guilt's strength lies not in the failure of others to grant us forgiveness, but in our failure to forgive ourselves.

Kelseyleigh Reber

#53. Mind chatter: a clatter of left-brain rains of doubt, worry, guilt, shame in a thunderstorm of fear. Forgive the chatter, clear your mind.

Soul Dancer

#54. The shadows along the streets were personal, and, every passing day, they seemed to grow longer and hungrier

Katherine McIntyre

#55. Climbing the economic ladder has been very hard for me; I still feel a great deal of guilt towards those I left behind.

Elena Ferrante

#56. Pain in the present is experienced as hurt. Pain in the past is remembered as anger. Pain in the future is perceived as anxiety. Unexpressed anger, redirected against yourself and held within, is called guilt. The depletion of energy that occurs when anger is redirected inward creates depression.

Deepak Chopra

#57. This is what I mean by becoming religious: no guilt, no ego, no trip of any kind ... just being herenow ... being with the trees and the birds and the rivers and the mountains and the stars.

Rajneesh

#58. The reputation is not essentially built by earning too much, learning too many things, achieving awards, bagging rewards or catapulting position to the hilt; but by unquestionably staying simple, humble , well grounded and doing nothing that makes own conscience to feel guilt.

Anuj

#59. Guilt is like a sore, endlessly fascinating, and the guilty party feels compelled to examine it and pick at it, so that it never really heals.

Stephen King

#60. Pain and guilt can't be taken away with the wave of a magic wand. They're the things that we carry with us, they're the things that make us what we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don't want my pain taken away, I need my pain!

William Shatner

#61. I had concluded when I was the prosecutor that I would vote against the death penalty if I were in the legislature but that I could ask for it when I was satisfied as to guilt.

Janet Reno

#62. Maybe time would not feel as heavy if I didn't have this guilt - the guilt of knowing the truth and stuffing it down where no one can see it.

Veronica Roth

#63. In the West we are driven by an extreme form of guilt
if you are not seen to be working like a dog, you're perceived as being slothful.

Tahir Shah

#64. Guts and Guilt run side by side. We have guts. We try to break the barriers and drop the drawbacks. We do what we could. Why do we feel guilty if everything goes wrong? It's not that we didn't try, is it?

Bhavik Sarkhedi

#65. It's exhausting, the energy it takes to unknow a truth.

Chuck Palahniuk

#66. guilt. The first announcement of Oswald as the lone assassin,

Barry Ernest

#67. Does changing for the better absolve you of all the wicked shit you did before?
No. March fills my head like a warm glow. Instead you receive the twin delights of guilt and regret.

Ann Aguirre

#68. If the love object is divine perfection, then one's own self is elevated by joining one's destiny to it ... All our guilt, fear, and even our mortality itself can be purged in a perfect consummation with perfection itself.

Ernest Becker

#69. Guilt is a poisonous illusion. Many languages don't even have a word for guilt. Sure, we all feel it. But we also get to decide if we're going to let guilt bring us down or not. Acknowledge the feelings, and then give yourself permission to let them go.

Kris Carr

#70. Unlike the millions who casually masturbate in solitude while looking at girlie pictures in Playboy and similar magazines, the massage man preferred an accomplice, an attendant lady of respectable appearance who would help him reduce the guilt and loneliness of this most lonely act of love.

Gay Talese

#71. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time, and be the one who ended up in that accident, completely dead ... but you know what? It wouldn't change anything. All I can do now that they're dead is to go through the actions of living without really living, and hope it improves someday.

Rebecca McNutt

#72. I release all feelings of worry and guilt. Throughout life, the two most futile emotions are guilt for what has been done and worry about what might be done.

Wayne Dyer

#73. You'll get through this. The way I see it, young women give mistakes too much power. It's not our mistakes that bring us down, but the guilt about our mistakes. It's the guilt that leads to more mistakes, bigger mistakes.

Ina Zajac

#74. Balance is of the essence,' she said. 'That appies to all good, harmonious relationships. Balance in guilt, balance in shame and pangs of conscience.

Jo Nesbo

#75. The denominational world tries to pressure its members to focus on the birth of Christ, but in doing so layers of guilt are imposed, and competition gets complicated as one Christmas program tries to outdo the other.

John Clayton

#76. We live in a society that shuns guilt, hardly knows it. It is drummed into us: "Don't feel guilty." No one wants to pay the price of reconciliation, of atonement, of forgiveness.

Robert Dykstra

#77. A tardy vengeance shares the tyrant's guilt.

Edward Young

#78. Know, then," said he, "that I myself am the destiny - the demon, as thou sayest, by whom I am persecuted and destroyed, that my conscience is loaded with guilt, nay, with the stain of a shameful, infamous, and mortal crime,

E.T.A. Hoffmann

#79. Guilt is the major motivating force in my life.

Linda Barnes

#80. We see our sins reflected everywhere: in the pallor of our intimates' faces, in the scratching of tree branches against windows, in the strange movements of everyday objects. These may be messages from God or tricks of the eye, but in neither case are we permitted to ignore them.

Anna Godbersen

#81. Cruel with guilt, and daring with despair, the midnight murderer bursts the faithless bar; invades the sacred hour of silent rest and leaves, unseen, a dagger in your breast.

Samuel Johnson

#82. Grief and guilt. A powerful combination. Guilt like a liquid, a thin liquor, seeping everywhere, informing everything, saturating the whole-corrosive, like seawater, scented with the rich stench of ordure and corruption, and carrying with it hard, abrasive shards of grief.

Simon Mawer

#83. I wouldn't be me without the guilt.

Cassie Graham

#84. Above all, I regret that scientific experiments-some of them mine-should have produced such a terrible weapon as the hydrogen bomb. Regret, with all my soul, but not guilt.

Harold Urey

#85. See how ye Pharisee in the Temple stands,
And justifies himself with lifted hands.
Whilst ye poor publican with downcast eyes,
Conscious of guilt to God for mercy cries.

John Bunyan

#86. There is no need for me to curse you -the murderer survives the victim only to learn that it was himself that he longed to be rid of. Hatred is self-hatred.

Thornton Wilder

#87. When the history of guilt is written, parents who refuse their children money will be right up there in the Top Ten.

Erma Bombeck

#88. I understand now that the only time black people don't feel guilty is when we've actually done something wrong, because that relieves us of the cognitive dissonance of being black and innocent, and in a way the prospect of going to jail becomes a relief.

Paul Beatty

#89. There is no grace: there is no guilt: This is the Law: DO WHAT THOU WILT!

Aleister Crowley

#90. And I know I'm supposed to feel guilty for wanting people to buy my books ... and books in general? Novels and poetry, they belong to the realm of art. How dirty of us to try to hawk art! But, after a decade of hand-wringing and apologies, I can't quite muster the guilt anymore.

Julianna Baggott

#91. Religion is evolving to survive but is losing the battle in many regions, largely because of the Internet. Sexual information is far more available now, which interferes with religion's ability to use sexual guilt to perpetuate.

Darrel Ray

#92. The things that churned inside Daredevil were deeply religious, somewhat guilt-driven traces of the messianic, with his powers being a compensation for and driven by the vulnerability of being blind. Green Arrow is not driven by dark forces.

Ann Nocenti

#93. To be "unhistorical" is the Promethean sin, and in this sense the modern man is sinful. A higher level of consciousness is like a burden of guilt!

C. G. Jung

#94. Running a marathon with a backpack is tough and may hinder you from winning the race. Don't let the baggage from your past - heavy with fear, guilt, and anger - slow you down.

Maddy Malhotra

#95. In a world without a redeemer only clarity was the answer to guilt. He would make it all clear to himself, shirking nothing, and then he would decide.

Iris Murdoch

#96. They wanted to 'radiofy' what I was doing. I was also in a position where I was compromised. I was much younger and maybe it is because I am Irish but there was a guilt factor when the record company pays you a lot of money, you feel obliged.

Damien Rice

#97. I was just lying there, swimming in my own shame and guilt, when this still small voice whispered into the depths of my soul: I love you. I desire you. I delight in you. I saw you were going to that before I went to the cross, and I still went.

Jefferson Bethke

#98. There's an idea that the human body is somehow evil and bad and there are parts of it that are especially evil and bad, and we should be ashamed. Fear, guilt and shame are built into the attitude toward sex and the body. It's reflected in these prohibitions and these taboos that we have.

George Carlin

#99. Cheap thrill: moral outrage revels in its own innocence and in the guilt of the wicked Others.

Mason Cooley

#100. The more sinful and guilty a person tends to feel, the less chance there is that he will be a happy, healthy, or law-abiding citizen. He will become a compulsive wrong-doer.

Albert Ellis