GUILT QUOTES
quotations about guilt
I figured out long ago that guilt was like mothers. Everyone in the world had at least one. And it was passed down like a torch to the next generation.
ERMA BOMBECK
Aunt Erma's Cope Book
The guilty think all talk is of themselves.
GEOFFREY CHAUCER
The Canterbury Tales
And then it started like a guilty thing
Upon a fearful summons.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet
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
"On the Danger of Presumptuous Sins", Sermons Preached Upon Several Occasions
Let wickedness escape as it may at the bar, it never fails of doing justice to itself; for every guilty person is his own hangman.
SENECA
Seneca's Morals by Way of Abstract
Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one's own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge. Yet all too often, guilt is just another name for impotence, for defensiveness destructive of communication; it becomes a device to protect ignorance and the continuation of things the way they are, the ultimate protection for changelessness.
AUDRE LORDE
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
Nothing that is obtained through guilt can be permanently profitable.
CICERO
attributed, Day's Collacon
There's no problem so awful, that you can't add some guilt to it and make it even worse.
BILL WATTERSON
The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
Guilt is always present to the mind (of the guilty).
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
To spare the guilty is to injure the innocent.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
The Moral Sayings of Publilius Syrus
Let us not search for the guilty ones only among others, let us speak the bitter truth: we are all guilty ... each and every one of us.
MAXIM GORKY
Untimely Thoughts
Guilt is like a gauge or light on the dashboard. It means that something is wrong.
WADE POWERS
The Covenant Divorce Recovery Leader's Handbook
Guilt is a rope that wears thin.
AYN RAND
Atlas Shrugged
He who flies proves himself guilty.
DANISH PROVERB
Normal guilt is like a sensor: When functioning well, it alerts us to what's ethically correct and guides us toward morally acceptable behavior. Psychopathology arises, not from the human experience of normal guilt, but from neurotic guilt.
JOHN SOMMERS-FLANAGAN
Counseling and Psychotherapy
Innocence is the weakest defense. Innocence has a single voice that can only say over and over again, "I didn't do it." Guilt has a thousand voices, all of them lies.
LEONARD F. PELTIER
Prison Writings
To err is human; but contrition felt for the crime distinguishes the virtuous from the wicked.
VITTORIO ALFIERI
Rosmunda
You wear guilt
Like shackles on your feet
Like a halo in reverse
DEPECHE MODE
"Halo"
No guilt is forgotten so long as the conscience still knows of it.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Beware of Pity
There is no man that is knowingly wicked, but is guilty to himself; and there is no man that carries guilt about him, but he receives a sting into his soul.
JOHN TILLOTSON
Sermons Preach'd Upon Several Occasions