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Guilt Quotes

We are not on our fours, howling in the woods, only because guilt saves us.

So there we have it. I get up in the morning determined to do something approximating to the right t...

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Nick HornbyHow to Be Good

The two main criminals are France and the United States. They owe Haiti enormous reparations because...

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Noam ChomskyImperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World

Conscience is a coward, and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent it seldom has justice...

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There are two kinds of Communists: the arrogant ones, who enter the fray hoping to make men out of t...

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In Europe the rich are refined enough to act as if they're not wealthy. That is how civilized people...

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Guils is the greatest weapon vecause its cuts rarely heal and it aims for the heart

The brain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination,made grotesque by terror, twist...

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Oscar WildeThe Picture of Dorian Gray

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to...

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Picture of Oscar Wilde
Oscar WildeThe Picture of Dorian Gray

Conviction of sin is one of the rarest things that ever strikes a man. It is the threshold of an und...

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God never estimates what we give from impulse. We are given credit for what we determine in our hear...

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Oswald ChambersBiblical Psychology: Christ-Centered Solutions for Daily Problems

Never be afraid when God brings back your past. Let your memory have its way with you. It is a minis...

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Oswald ChambersMy Utmost for His Highest

The weekend break had begun with the usual resentment and had continued with half-repressed ill humo...

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Bosnia is under my skin. It's the place you cannot leave behind. I was obsessed by the nightmare of ...

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The thought burrowed into her heart as darkness fell. It coiled in her guts as she wedged herself am...

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No one else could see all the bodies she’d left behind, but they were there, looking at her. Or mayb...

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Picture of Paolo Bacigalupi
Paolo BacigalupiThe Drowned Cities

The back of my hand to guilt.

P
Patrick O'BrianThe Far Side of the World

No good has ever come from feeling guilty, neither intelligence, policy, nor compassion. The guilty ...

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Guilt cannot, in fact, express itself, except in the indirect language of "captivity" and "infection...

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With guilt there arises indeed a sort of demand which can be called scrupulosity and whose ambiguous...

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Picture of Paul Ricœur
Paul RicœurThe Conflict of Interpretations

He was clearly not the murderer whom Hawksmoor was seeking, but it was generally the innocent who co...

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Guilt -- if there was any guilt -- spread out and diffused itself over everybody and everything. . ....

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You have a conscience, and a conscience is a valuable attribute, but not if it begins to make you th...

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Since her retirement from teaching Miss Beryl's health had in many respects greatly improved, despit...

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I call the discourse of power any discourse that engenders blame, hence guilt, in its recipient.

Once upon a time there was a mother who, in order to become a mother, had agreed to change her name;...

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Defending the truth is not something one does out of a sense of duty or to allay guilt complexes, bu...

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[T]his readiness to assume the guilt for the threats to our environment is deceptively reassuring: W...

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No guilt is forgotten so long as the conscience still knows of it.

I felt Mr Willard had deserted me. I thought he must have planned it all along, but Buddy said No, h...

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I knew I should be grateful to Mrs Guinea, only I couldn't feel a thing. If Mrs Guinea had given me ...

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We had deluded ourselves that perhaps peace might find the Arabs able, unhelped and untaught, to def...

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Her free hand was clenched in a fist. I held still, waiting for her to say something, to tell me she...

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Guilt and misery shrink, by a natural instinct, from public notice: they court privacy and solitude:...

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There is no need for me to curse you -the murderer survives the victim only to learn that it was him...

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Let no guilty man escape if it can be avoided. No personal consideration should stand in the way of...

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After all, the fundamental question of philosophy (like that of psychoanalysis) is the same as the q...

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Umberto EcoPostscript to the Name of the Rose

It seems that the Parisian Oulipo group has recently constructed a matrix of all possible murder-sto...

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Umberto EcoPostscript to the Name of the Rose

To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: t...

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Picture of Ursula K. Le Guin
Ursula K. Le GuinThe Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

Why had he committed this terrible sin? Everything in the world was insignificant compared to what h...

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It happened. It was awful. You aren't perfect. That's all there is. Don't confuse your grief with gu...

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It happened. It was awful. You aren't perfect. That's all there is. Don't confuse your grief with gu...

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Maybe there's more we all could have done, but we just have to let the guilt remind us to do better ...

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I wish I could say I felt guilty for what I did. I don't.

I should have forgiven him.”“Maybe. Maybe there’s more we all could have done,” he says, “but we jus...

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Maybe time would not feel as heavy if I didn't have this guilt - the guilt of knowing the truth and ...

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Grief is not as heavy as guilt, but it takes more away from you.

Those who are ignorant should be taught all you can teach them; society is to blame for not providin...

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His immense self-pity, his demand for sympathy poured and spread itself in pools at their feet, and ...

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It was something quite special, that feeling: an oppressive, hideous constraint as if I were sitting...

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Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.

It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.

The race of mankind would perish did they cease to aid each other. We cannot exist without mutual he...

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Experience had taught me that innocence seldom utters outraged shrikes. Guilt does. Innocence is a m...

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For the last four years of her life, Mother was in a nursing home called Chateins in St. Louis ... [...

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When we played softball, I'd steal second base, feel guilty and go back.

…In the very simplicity of her desire to punish herself appeared egoism in its purest form. Never be...

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People who excuse their faults and claim they didn't deserved to be punished - there are lots of the...

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With integrity, you have nothing to fear, since you have nothing to hide. With integrity, you will d...

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He [Muffat] experienced a sense of pleasure mingled with remorse, the sort of pleasure peculiar to t...

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His remorse was purely physical. Only his body, strained nerves, and cowering flesh were afraid of t...

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We have no need of God to create guilt or to punish. Our fellow men are enough, with our help.

If pimps and thieves were invariably sentenced, all decent people would get to thinking they themsel...

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Freedom, "that terrible word inscribed on the chariot of the storm," is the motivating principle of ...

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Picture of Albert Camus
Albert CamusThe Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt

I couldn't quite understand how an ordinary man's good qualities could become crushing accusations a...

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If I had known they were going to do this, I would have become a shoemaker.

Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behav...

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She had not come to the shopping centre to buy shoes; she had come to buy food, and there was a big ...

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It was a stark choice: shoes or food; beauty or sustenance; the sensible or the self-indulgent. "I'l...

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Picture of Alexander McCall Smith
Alexander McCall SmithTea Time for the Traditionally Built

It was curious how some people had a highly developed sense of guilt, she thought, while others had ...

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Picture of Alexander McCall Smith
Alexander McCall SmithThe No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

Besides the pleasure, there is always remorse, from the indulgence of our passions; and, after all, ...

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When you are guilty, it is not your sins you hate but yourself.

Picture of Anthony de Mello
Anthony de MelloOne Minute Wisdom

Ivanov: Once I worked hard and thought a lot but I never got tired; now I do nothing and think of no...

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Ninety-six per cent of juvenile prostitutes are fugitives from abusive domestic situations; 66 per c...

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I think while all mothers deal with feelings of guilt, working mothers are plagued by guilt on stero...

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I cannot hide my anger to spare you guilt, nor hurt feelings, nor answering anger; for to do so insu...

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Picture of Audre Lorde
Audre LordeSister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one’s own actions or lack of action. If it lea...

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Picture of Audre Lorde
Audre LordeSister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

We are on strike, we, the men of the mind.We are on strike against self-immolation. We are on strike...

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There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on...

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Calvin : There's no problem so awful, that you can't add some guilt to it and make it even worse.

Picture of Bill Watterson
Bill WattersonThe Complete Calvin and Hobbes

What has to do with your ability to fall asleep is not caffeine. It’s having a clean conscience. I h...

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We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. I have heard others, and I have heard myself,...

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No one blames her.""That never matters," said Alec. "Not when you blame yourself.

The kind of submission or resignation that he showed, was that of a man who was tired out. I sometim...

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Let's say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been ...

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There is a noticeable element of the pathological in some current leftist critiques, which I tend to...

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Picture of Christopher Hitchens
Christopher HitchensChristopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror

You can see the same immorality or amorality in the Christian view of guilt and punishment. There ar...

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You don't say 'they all do it' unless you know you've been doing it too.

Picture of Christopher Hitchens
Christopher HitchensThe Quotable Hitchens from Alcohol to Zionism: The Very Best of Christopher Hitchens

[T]hose who willed the means and wished the ends are not absolved from guilt by the refusal of reali...

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My stomach hurts, but if it's guilt or impacted stool, I can't tell. Either way, I'm so full of shit...

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

Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion of death.

It was the Communists, it was the Mexicans, it was the government. And the only people who acknowled...

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Picture of Connie Willis
Connie WillisThe Best of Connie Willis: Award-Winning Stories

Many veterans feel guilty because they lived while others died. Some feel ashamed because they didn’...

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People generally don’t suffer high rates of PTSD after natural disasters. Instead, people suffer fro...

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The victims of PTSD often feel morally tainted by their experiences, unable to recover confidence in...

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People pontificate, "Suicide is selfishness." Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call...

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Anna would like you, he thinks, looking into her face. Anna would like you.

Picture of David Mitchell (author)
David Mitchell (author)The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

My conscience is crosswired with my sweat glands, but there's a short in the system and I break out ...

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Picture of David Sedaris
David SedarisDress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim