Guilt Quotes - Page 16

• 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 Peltier

  Lying, Voice, Innocence

  Leonard Peltier (2016). “Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance”, p.23, St. Martin's Griffin

  38 Copy quote

  Show source

• Merciful death. How you love your precious guilt

  Anne Rice

  Vampire, Lestat, Merciful

  "Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles". www.imdb.com. 1994.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Guilt starts as a feeling of failure.

  Frank Herbert

  Feelings, Thrive

  Frank Herbert (2012). “Dune: The Gateway Collection”, p.288, Hachette UK

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished. But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, "whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection," and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.

  John Adams

  Law, Ideas, Evil

  "John Adams: Quotes & Facts". Book by Blago Kirov, 2016.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• guilt to motherhood is like grapes to wine

  Fay Weldon

  Wine, Motherhood, Grapes

  9 Copy quote

• My mother was French Protestant, and my father was Italian Catholic, and their union was an excess of God, guilt and sauce.

  Mitch Albom

  Mother, Father, Italian

  "For One More Day". Book by Mitch Albom, September 26, 2006.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When a condition or a problem becomes too great, humans have the protection of not thinking about it. But it goes inward and minces up with a lot of other things already there and what comes out is discontent and uneasiness, guilt and a compulsion to get something--anything--before it is all gone.

  John Steinbeck

  Thinking, Inward, Gone

  John Steinbeck (2008). “The Winter of Our Discontent”, p.150, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are 500 reasons I write for children.... Children read books, not reviews. They don't give a hoot about the critics.... They don't read to free themselves of guilt, to quench their thirst for rebellion, or to get rid of alienation. They still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff.... They don't expect their beloved writer to redeem humanity. Young as they are, they know that it is not in his power. Only the adults have such childish illusions.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Children, Book, Believe

  41 Copy quote

• The dog’s agenda is simple, fathomable, overt: I want. “I want to go out, come in, eat something, lie here, play with that, kiss you. There are no ulterior motives with a dog, no mind games, no second-guessing, no complicated negotiations or bargains, and no guilt trips or grudges if a request is denied.

  Caroline Knapp

  Dog, Lying, Kissing

  Caroline Knapp (2010). “Pack of Two: The Intricate Bond Between People and Dogs”, p.215, Dial Press

  64 Copy quote

  Show source

• Affliction hardens and discourages us because, like a red hot iron, it stamps the soul to its very depths with the scorn, the disgust, and even the self-hatred and sense of guilt that crime logically should produce but actually does not.

  Simone Weil

  Self, Iron, Hatred

  Simone Weil (2009). “Waiting on God (Routledge Revivals)”, p.40, Routledge

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• I love the idea of bringing order out of disorder which is what the mystery is about. I like the way in which it affirms the sanity of human life and exorcises irrational guilts.

  P. D. James

  Order, Ideas, Way

  Interview With Jennifer Reese, www.salon.com. February 26, 1998.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Perhaps his tragedy is that he is the one normal writer left on earth and it is this that adds to his isolation and so to his sense of guilt.

  Malcolm Lowry

  Tragedy, Add, Earth

  "Hear Us O Lord from Heaven Thy Dwelling Place: Stories".

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I say guilt, gentlemen, because it was guilt that motivated her. She has committed no crime, she has merely broken a rigid and time-honored code of our society.

  Harper Lee

  Broken, Gentleman, Our Society

  Horton Foote, Harper Lee (1964). “The screenplay of To kill a mockingbird”

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• People get into a heavy-duty sin and guilt trip, feeling that if things are going wrong, that means that they did something bad and they are being punished. That's not the idea at all. The idea of karma is that you continually get the teachings that you need to open your heart. To the degree that you didn't understand in the past how to stop protecting your soft spot, how to stop armoring your heart, you're given this gift of teachings in the form of your life, to give you everything you need to open further.

  Pema Chodron

  Karma, Buddhist, Teaching

  24 Copy quote

• Maybe the definition of home is the place where you are never forgiven. So you may always belong there, bound by guilt. And maybe the cost of belonging is worth it.

  Gregory Maguire

  Home, Cost, May

  Gregory Maguire (2011). “Wicked”, p.405, Hachette UK

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Believe, Men, Track

  Albert Camus (1964). “The fall, & Exile and the kingdom”, Random House Inc

  42 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's hard for me, a Jew, to stay in the moment. Without the past, where is the guilt? And without the future, where is the dread? And without guilt and dread, who am I?

  Christopher Moore

  Past, Moments, Dread

  4 Copy quote

• Her visits to her former hometown were infrequent and often painful. Pilgrimages fueled by the tepid oxygen of family duty, unease, guilt. The more Esther loved her parents, the more helpless she felt, as they aged, to protect them from harm. A moral coward, she kept her distance.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Distance, Oxygen, Parent

  6 Copy quote

• The state we find ourselves in is sinful quite independent of guilt.

  Franz Kafka

  Independent, States

  7 Copy quote

• A fight is going on inside me," said an old man to his son. "It is a terrible fight between two wolves. One wolf is evil. He is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other wolf is good. he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you." The son thought about it for a minute and then asked, "Which wolf will win?" The old man replied simply, "The one you feed.

  Wendy Mass

  Kindness, Regret, Lying

  32 Copy quote

• never feel guilty about anything shame and guilt are a waste of time just do what you do-- and deal with it

  Kevin Brooks

  Waste, Wasting Time, Shame

  Kevin Brooks (2010). “The Road of the Dead”, p.285, Scholastic Inc.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Pack your bags, we're going on a guilt trip!

  Jimmy Buffett

  Bags, Guilt Trip, Packs

  34 Copy quote

• Your way of life is sinful and wrong," he said fiercely. Thus says a man who admits to worshipping a God who vilifies pleasure, relegates women to roles that are little more than servants and broodmares, though they are the backbone of your church, and seeks to control his worshippers through guilt and fear.

  P. C. Cast

  Men, Religion, Church

  P. C. Cast, Kristin Cast (2007). “Betrayed: A House of Night Novel”, p.13, Macmillan

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• But guilt is guilt. It doesn't go away. It can't be nullified. It can't even be fully understood, I'm certain - it's roots run too deep into private and long-standing karma. About the only thing that saves my neck when I get to feeling this way is that guilt is an imperfect form of knowledge. Just because it isn't perfect doesn't mean that it can't be used. The hard thing to do is to put it to practical use, before it gets around to paralyzing you.

  J. D. Salinger

  Karma, Running, Mean

  5 Copy quote

• I have these guilts about never having read Chaucer but I was talked out of learning Early Anglo-Saxon / Middle English by a friend who had to take it for her Ph.D. They told her to write an essay in Early Anglo-Saxon on any-subject-of-her-own-choosing. “Which is all very well,” she said bitterly, “but the only essay subject you can find enough Early Anglo-Saxon words for is ‘How to Slaughter a Thousand Men in a Mead Hall’.

  Helene Hanff

  Writing, Men, Enough

  5 Copy quote