Wrongdoing Quotes

For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?

Bell Hooks

Forgiveness, Believe, Compassion

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Being wrong is acceptable, but staying wrong is totally unacceptable.

Jack D. Schwager

Motivational, Wise Words, Staying

67 Copy quote
A consciousness of wrongdoing is the first step to salvation...you have to catch yourself doing it before you can correct it.

Seneca the Younger

Firsts, Steps, Action

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On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.

Aldous Huxley

Brave New World, Guilt, Rolling

Aldous Huxley (1950). “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley: Brave new world”

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Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.

Aldous Huxley

Life, Forgiveness, Time

Aldous Huxley (1950). “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley: Brave new world”

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whoever has done a wrong deed and thinks that no one knows it, deceives himself.

Johanna Spyri

Thinking, Done, Deeds

Johanna Spyri (1927). “Heidi”

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For a wrongdoer to be undetected is difficult; and for him to have confidence that his concealment will continue is impossible.

Epicurus

Impossible, Difficult, Have Confidence

Epicurus (1964). “Letters: Principles Doctrines, and Vatican Sayings Translated, with an Introd. and Notes, by Russel M. Geor. Indianapolis Merrill”

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Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about.

Rumi

Love, Friendship, Marriage

Rumi (2014). “'Another city'. a selectionf of poems from the Persian”, p.108, Lulu.com

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Every mind has its particular standard of good and bad, and of right and wrong. This standard is made by what one has experienced through life, by what one has seen or heard; it also depends upon one's belief in a certain religion, one's birth in a certain nation and origin in a certain race. But what can really be called good or bad, right or wrong, is what comforts the mind and what causes it discomfort. It is not true, although it appears so, that it is discomfort that causes wrongdoing. In reality, it is wrongdoing which causes discomfort, and it is right-doing which gives comfort.

Hazrat Inayat Khan

Reality, Race, Giving

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When you feel you cannot do good, at least desist from doing evil.

Sathya Sai Baba

Evil, Feels

FaceBook post by Sri Sathya Sai Baba from Mar 06, 2015

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One of the hardest things in this world is to admit you are wrong. And nothing is more helpful in resolving a situation than its frank admission.

Benjamin Disraeli

Honesty, World, Helpful

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When people treat corruption as a routine part of the process, you have something far worse than wrongdoing or moral failing. You have a political cancer that breeds cynicism about democratic government and infects all of society.

Edward Brooke

Cancer, Government, People

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There is scarcely any man sufficiently clever to appreciate all the evil he does.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Clever, Men, Appreciate

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It takes less time to do a thing right, than it does to explain why you did it wrong.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Inspirational, Funny, Positive

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Violence and wrong enclose all who commit them in their meshes and do mostly recoil on him from whom they begin.

Lucretius

Violence, Mesh, Recoil

Titus Lucretius Carus (1866). “De rerum natura libri sex with nołes and a translation by H. A. J. Munro: II”, p.144

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Conflict follows wrongdoing as surely as flies follow the herd.

Doc Holliday

Cowboy, Conflict, Herds

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If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time.

Aldous Huxley

Brave New World, Tasks, Addresses

Aldous Huxley (1950). “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley: Brave new world”

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Few things accelerate the peace process as much as humbly admitting our own wrongdoing and asking forgiveness.

Lee Strobel

Admitting, Asking, Process

Lee Strobel (2005). “God's Outrageous Claims: Discover What They Mean for You”, p.27, Harper Collins

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Every time we're about to criticize someone for what we think they did wrong, let's first remember to thank them for the things they did right. And to mean it; to sincerely affirm them. Then, if there's still a problem that needs to be shared, it will come from a completely different energy -- and actually be heard!

Marianne Williamson

Mean, Thinking, Being Thankful

FaceBook post by Marianne Williamson from Mar 08, 2013

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To the wrongs that need resistance,
To the right that needs assistance,
To the future in the distance,
Give yourselves.

Carrie Chapman Catt

Honesty, Distance, Integrity

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The sinner sins against himself; the wrongdoer wrongs himself, becoming the worse by his own action.

Marcus Aurelius

Becoming, Action, Sin

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Pity was meant to be a spur that drives joy to help misery. But it can be used the wrong way round. It can be used for a kind of blackmailing. Those who choose misery can hold joy up to ransom, by pity.

C. S. Lewis

Choices, Joy, Ransom

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Some are wandering into forbidden paths because they are seeking popularity with their peers, even to the extent of doing things they know are wrong. They cannot stand criticism or ridicule and will not take a firm stand against wrongdoing.

Nathan Eldon Tanner

Criticism, Path, Peers

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Character is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that's right is to get by, and the only thing that's wrong is to get caught.

J. C. Watts

Integrity, Character, Thinking

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True reconciliation is never cheap, for it is based on forgiveness which is costly. Forgiveness in turn depends on repentance, which has to be based on an acknowledgment of what was done wrong, and therefore on disclosure of the truth. You cannot forgive what you do not know.

Desmond Tutu

Forgiving, Done, Repentance

114 Copy quote