guilt

Link	Quote	Tags	Author
49ee096	Grief is not as heavy as guilt, but it takes more away from you.	guilt	Veronica Roth
61171d9	All I could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy I'd been selling out of my dorms room. Or maybe they'd realized I got my Essay on Tom Sawyer from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me read the book.	guilt plagiarism	Rick Riordan
4172a0d	"People pontificate, "Suicide is selfishness." Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call in a cowardly assault on the living. Oafs argue this specious line for varying reason: to evade fingers of blame, to impress one's audience with one's mental fiber, to vent anger, or just because one lacks the necessary suffering to sympathize. Cowardice is nothing to do with it - suicide takes considerable courage. Japanese have the right idea. No, what's selfish is to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families, friends, and enemies a bit of soul-searching."	guilt selfishness suffering suicide	David Mitchell
60de911	It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.	guilt innocence judgment justice mercy reasonable-doubt verdict	Voltaire
2a64033	There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.	blame guilt	Oscar Wilde
67609e1	Calvin : There's no problem so awful, that you can't add some guilt to it and make it even worse.	guilt	Bill Watterson
e0a42c0	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.	anger black-feminism feminism guilt oppression	Audre Lorde
9802b67	"He showed the words "chocolate cake" to a group of Americans and recorded their word associations. "Guilt" was the top response. If that strikes you as unexceptional, consider the response of French eaters to the same prompt: "celebration."	chocolate chocolate-cake connotations food french guilt politics semantics word-association	Michael Pollan
08bb5fd	True, nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am, but why will say that I am mad?! The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute.	guilt madness	Edgar Allan Poe
e96c5cc	Because no retreat from the world can mask what is in your face.	guilt remorse sorrow witch	Gregory Maguire
7ff15ac	No guilt is forgotten so long as the conscience still knows of it.	conscience guilt stefan-zweig	Stefan Zweig
7c5ff31	" " J. Michael Haller, Criminal Defense Attorney, Los Angeles, 1962."	clients criminal-law fear guilt innocence justice justice-system responsibility risk	Michael Connelly
c96b4fe	I can learn to live with guilt. I don't care about being good.	choices good guilt life	Holly Black
7794818	It happened. It was awful. You aren't perfect. That's all there is. Don't confuse your grief with guilt.	guilt remortgages	Veronica Roth
12f145e	When she can't bring me to heal with scolding, she bends me to shape with guilt.	guilt women	Libba Bray
a041cd9	"Let's say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says maybe 100,000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter-of-a-million. I'll take 100,000. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98,000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25 years, dying of their teeth. Famine, struggle, bitterness, war, suffering, misery, all of that for 98,000 years. Heaven watches this with complete indifference. And then 2000 years ago, thinks 'That's enough of that. It's time to intervene,' and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Don't lets appeal to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let's go to the desert and have another revelation there. This is nonsense. It can't be believed by a thinking person. Why am I glad this is the case? To get to the point of the wrongness of Christianity, because I think the teachings of Christianity are immoral. The central one is the most immoral of all, and that is the one of vicarious redemption. You can throw your sins onto somebody else, vulgarly known as scapegoating. In fact, originating as scapegoating in the same area, the same desert. I can pay your debt if I love you. I can serve your term in prison if I love you very much. I can volunteer to do that. I can't take your sins away, because I can't abolish your responsibility, and I shouldn't offer to do so. Your responsibility has to stay with you. There's no vicarious redemption. There very probably, in fact, is no redemption at all. It's just a part of wish-thinking, and I don't think wish-thinking is good for people either.	atheism atheist atheist-argument belief christianity-is-immoral christopher-hitchens compulsory crime dawkins debate dictatorship divine-dictatorship eternal-father eternal-punishment ethics evidence fear great-atheist-argument guilt health hitchens hitchslap homo-sapiens human-sacrifice immoral-christianity indifference intellect love love-your-neighbor morality myth reason redemption responsibility richard-dawkins supreme-being totalitarianism truth wishful-thinking	Christopher Hitchens
24e8302	As I lifted the ash dagger, something inside me fractured so completely that there would be no hope of ever repairing it.	guilt hopeless	Sarah J. Maas
3759da6	Tereza's mother never stopped reminding her that being a mother meant sacrificing everything. Her words had the ring of truth, backed as they were by the experience of a woman who had lost everything because of her child. Tereza would listen and believe that being a mother was the highest value in life and that being a mother was a great sacrifice. If a mother was Sacrifice personified, then a daughter was Guilt, with no possibility of redress.	guilt mothers sacrifice	Milan Kundera
2df2f1d	When he says we're forgiven, let's unload the guilt. When he says we're valuable, let's believe him. . . . When he says we're provided for, let's stop worrying. God's efforts are strongest when our efforts are useless	faith guilt inspirational	Max Lucado
6ab8998	She went to the window seat and sat there, sniffling, hating them all, and herself most of all. It was all her fault, everything bad that had happened.	depression guilt	George R.R. Martin
3857a0d	The two main criminals are France and the United States. They owe Haiti enormous reparations because of actions going back hundreds of years. If we could ever get to the stage where somebody could say, 'We're sorry we did it,' that would be nice. But if that just assuages guilt, it's just another crime. To become minimally civilized, we would have to say, 'We carried out and benefited from vicious crimes. A large part of the wealth of France comes from the crimes we committed against Haiti, and the United States gained as well. Therefore we are going to pay reparations to the Haitian people.' Then you will see the beginnings of civilization.	apologies civilisation crime france french-imperialism guilt haiti history imperialism reparations united-states wealth	Noam Chomsky
e7356f8	"Freedom, "that terrible word inscribed on the chariot of the storm," is the motivating principle of all revolutions. Without it, justice seems inconceivable to the rebel's mind. There comes a time, however, when justice demands the suspension of freedom. Then terror, on a grand or small scale, makes its appearance to consummate the revolution. Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being. But one day nostalgia takes up arms and assumes the responsibility of total guilt; in other words, adopts murder and violence."	guilt justice nostalgia rebellion revolution terror	Albert Camus
9b2043a	I was just struggling with my inner vachette and pondering the depths of my own inhumanity.	guilt humor ponder	David Sedaris
af7a205	WHAT ARE THE CONSEQUENCES when we go against our instincts? What are the consequences of not speaking out? What are the consequences of guilt, shame, and doubt?	consequences doubt guilt instinct instincts shame speaking-out voice	Terry Tempest Williams
51d872a	When all this is over, people will try to blame the Germans alone, and the Germans will try to blame the Nazis alone, and the Nazis will try to blame Hitler alone. They will make him bear the sins of the world. But it's not true. You suspected what was happening, and so did I. It was already too late over a year ago. I caused a reporter to lose his job because you told me to. He was deported. The day I did that I made my little contribution to civilization, the only one that matters.	civilization cowardice denunciation deportation evil genocide guilt hitler knowledge nazis personal-responsibility responsibility willful-ignorance	Iain Pears
4119c35	The Homunculi may have started the war, but we were the ones who carried it out.	guilt war	Hiromu Arakawa
e89d4c9	To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of the happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed.	guilt	Ursula K. Le Guin
29a3b4d	I often think of death. True. Suicide is a reasonable option. True. My sins are unpardonable. I stare at the question. My sins are unpardonable. I stare at the question. My sins are unpardonable. I leave it blank.	guilt hopelessness suicide	James Frey
ab46588	Guilt is also a way for us to express to others that we are a person of good conscience. 'I feel really guilty about getting drunk last night,' we say, when in actual fact we feel no guilt whatsoever or, at least, we could to feel no guilt. When people say to me, 'I drank too much last night,' I always reply, 'I drank exactly the right amount.	drinking guilt	Tom Hodgkinson
05301a8	"Her free hand was clenched in a fist. I held still, waiting for her to say something, to tell me she should have never left me here, where her friends might look to me for help. Finally she looked at me. Her eyes were hard, but she'd let no tears fall. "This is where we blame those who are responsible, Cooper, she told me, her voice very soft. "The colemongers, and the bought Dogs at Tradesmen's kennel. We'll leave an offering for him with the Black God when all this is done, and we'll occupy ourselves with tearing these colemongers apart. all right? We put grief aside for now."	bad-news blame dread grief guilt justice response	Tamora Pierce
d97909d	There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for me to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed or enforced nor objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt.	guilt injustice innocence innocent justice law morality morals values	Ayn Rand
55c3c4a	In Europe the rich are refined enough to act as if they're not wealthy. That is how civilized people behave. If you ask me, being cultured and civilized is not about everyone being free and equal; it's about everyone being refined enough to act as if they were. Then no one has to feel guilty.	culture equality guilt refinement rich wealthy	Orhan Pamuk
6cb7db4	You have a conscience, and a conscience is a valuable attribute, but not if it begins to make you think you were to blame for what is far beyond the scope of your responsibility.	guilt	Philip Roth
1a4013e	No one needed to say it, but the room overflowed with that sort of blessing. The combination of loss and abundance. The abundance that has no guilt. The loss that has no fix. The simple tiredness that is not weary. The hope not built on blindness.	beautiful blessing blindness description guilt hope hymn ineffable mood wordless	Aimee Bender
aaa544e	I cannot hide my anger to spare you guilt, nor hurt feelings, nor answering anger; for to do so insults and trivializes all our efforts. 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.	guilt hurt oppression	Audre Lorde
7dfe776	I knew I should be grateful to Mrs Guinea, only I couldn't feel a thing. If Mrs Guinea had given me a ticket to Europe, or a round-the-world cruise, it wouldn't have made one scrap of difference to me, because wherever I sat - on the deck of a ship or a street cafe in Paris or Bangkok - I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.	depression guilt mental-health sour stagnent stale the-bell-jar travel	Sylvia Plath
1703e55	"Far be in from me to dictate how you should assuage your guilt. Do you have a lot of it?" She bit his good shoulder. "You're about to find out." She toppled them both off the bench and onto the mat. "Well, ouch. I take it guilt doesn't bring out your gentler side."	guilt roarke	J.D. Robb
fe91d76	To me, a wicked man who is also eloquent seems the most guilty of them all. He'll cut your throat as bold as brass, because he can dress up murder in handsome words.	guilt medea morality wicked	Euripides
5711d83	"Well, did he do it?" She always asked the irrelevant question. It didn't matter in terms of the strategy of the case whether the defendant "did it" or not. What mattered was the evidence against him -- the proof -- and if and how it could be neutralized. My job was to bury the proof, to color the proof a shade of gray. Gray was the color of reasonable doubt."	criminal-law defense evidence guilt innocence justice justice-system reasonable-doubt	Michael Connelly
42da48b	You can always count on your family to love you. And to betray you. And then to feel guilty about it.	betrayal family guilt guilty love rue	Holly Black
f06f865	"You know what my father said about innocent clients? ... He said the scariest client a lawyer will ever have is an innocent client. Because if you fuck up and he goes to prison, it'll scar you for life ... He said there is no in-between with an innocent client. No negotiation, no plea bargain, no middle ground. There's only one verdict. You have to put an NG up on the scoreboard. There's no other verdict but not guilty." Levin nodded thoughtfully. "The bottom line was my old man was a damn good lawyer and he didn't like having innocent clients," I said. "I'm not sure I do, either." --	criminal-law fear guilt innocence justice justice-system responsibility risk	Michael Connelly
8a6ae1f	Although claiming my true identity as a child of God, I still live as though the God to whom I am returning demands an explanation. I still think about his love as conditional and about home as a place I am not yet fully sure of. While walking home, I keep entertaining doubts about whether I will be truly welcome when I get there. As I look at my spiritual journey, my long and fatiguing trip home, I see how full it is of guilt about the past and worries about the future. I realize my failures and know that I have lost the dignity of my sonship, but I am not yet able to fully believe that where my failings are great, 'grace is always greater.' Still clinging to my sense of worthlessness, I project for myself a place far below that which belongs to the son, (p. 52).	dignity doubts failure failures god grace guilt home identity love son sonship worries worry worthlessness	Henri J.M. Nouwen
39dc88e	"The Christian soul knows it needs Divine Help and therefore turns to Him Who loved us even while we were yet sinners. Examination of conscience, instead of inducing morbidity, thereby becomes an occasion of joy. There are two ways of knowing how good and loving God is. One is by never losing Him, through the preservation of innocence, and the other is by finding Him after one has lost Him. Repentance is not self-regarding, but God-regarding. It is not self-loathing, but God-loving. Christianity bids us accept ourselves as we really are, with all our faults and our failings and our sins. In all other religions, one has to be good to come to God--in Christianity one does not. Christianity might be described as a "come as you are" party. It bids us stop worrying about ourselves, stop concentrating on our faults and our failings, and thrust them upon the Saviour with a firm resolve of amendment. The examination of conscience never induces despair, always hope...Because examination of conscience is done in the light of God's love, it begins with a prayer to the Holy Spirit to illumine our minds. A soul then acts toward the Spirit of God as toward a watchmaker who will fix our watch. We put a watch in his hands because we know he will not force it, and we put our souls in God's hands because we know that if he inspects them regularly they will work as they should...it is true that, the closer we get to God, the more we see our defects. A painting reveals few defects under candlelight, but the sunlight may reveal it as daub. The very good never believe themselves very good, because they are judging themselves by the Ideal. In perfect innocence each soul, like the Apostles at the Last Supper, cries out, "Is it I, Lord" (Matt. 26:22)." --	examination-of-conscience guilt holiness repentance	Fulton J. Sheen
c0be49c	Tolstoy said, 'The antagonism between life and conscience may be removed either by a change of life or by a change of conscience.' Many of us have elected to adjust our consciences rather than our lives. Our powers of rationalization are unlimited. They allow us to live in luxury and indifference while others, whom we could help if we chose to, starve and go to hell.	change compassion conscience conviction guilt hell hunger indifference power rationalization starvation stewardship tolstoy	Randy Alcorn
01bf7ed	He did not care what the end would be, and in his lucid moments overvalued his indifference. The danger, when not seen, has the imperfect vagueness of human thought. The fear grows shadowy; and Imagination, the enemy of men, the father of all terrors, unstimulated, sinks to rest in the dullness of exhausted emotion.	apathy baggage burden danger-to-self depression depressive depressive-thinking dread emotional-pain emotional-plague guilt indifferent look-for-hope look-for-jesus sad sick suicidal suicide why-the-world-needs-jesus	Joseph Conrad
4bdaf3d	"You can see the same immorality or amorality in the Christian view of guilt and punishment. There are only two texts, both of them extreme and mutually contradictory. The Old Testament injunction is the one to exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (it occurs in a passage of perfectly demented detail about the exact rules governing mutual ox-goring; you should look it up in its context (Exodus 21). The second is from the Gospels and says that only those without sin should cast the first stone. The first is a moral basis for capital punishment and other barbarities; the second is so relativistic and "nonjudgmental" that it would not allow the prosecution of Charles Manson. Our few notions of justice have had to evolve despite these absurd codes of ultra vindictiveness and ultracompassion."	christianity compassion guilt immorality justice morality punishment relavitism religion	Christopher Hitchens
f2aeee8	When I picked up the bird and felt its light weight in my hands, I realized that carelessness was a form of cruelty. See, I'd always told myself that because I meant no harm, anything that happened wasn't my fault. At that moment, though, I knew I was wrong. If I hadn't given the female my gun, the bird wouldn't have been shot. I was responsible even though I didn't pull the trigger.	guilt responsible	J.R. Ward
758f624	If you've had the right kind of education, it's amazing how many things you can find to feel guilty about.	guilt	Pete McCarthy
aedfb27	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.	blacks guilt incarceration innocence jail justice justice-system prison race-relations	Paul Beatty
afa47b3	"Those who deny guilt and sin are like the Pharisees of old who thought our Saviour had a "guilt complex" because He accused them of being whited sepulchers--outside clean, inside full of dead men's bones. Those who admit that they are guilty are like the public sinners and the publicans of whom Our Lord said, "Amen, I say to you, that the publicans and the harlots shall go into the Kingdom of God before you" (Matt. 21:31). Those who think they are healthy but have a hidden moral cancer are incurable; the sick who want to be healed have a chance. All denial of guilt keeps people out of the area of love and, by inducing self-righteousness, prevents a cure. The two facts of healing in the physical order are these: A physician cannot heal us unless we put ourselves into his hands, and we will not put ourselves into his hands unless we know that we are sick. In like manner, a sinner's awareness of sin is one requisite for his recovery; the other is his longing for God. When we long for God, we do so not as sinners, but as lovers." --	guilt healing	Fulton J. Sheen
25c8f8c	Il n'est si homme de bien, qu'il mette a l'examen des loix toutes ses actions et pensees, qui ne soit pendable dix fois en sa vie. (There is no man so good that if he placed all his actions and thoughts under the scrutiny of the laws, he would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.)	goodness guilt laws privacy thoughts	Michel de Montaigne
4dc4a38	Gore Vidal, for instance, once languidly told me that one should never miss a chance either to have sex or to appear on television. My efforts to live up to this maxim have mainly resulted in my passing many unglamorous hours on off-peak cable TV. It was actually Vidal's great foe William F. Buckley who launched my part-time television career, by inviting me on to when I was still quite young, and giving me one of the American Right's less towering intellects as my foil. The response to the show made my day, and then my week. Yet almost every time I go to a TV studio, I feel faintly guilty. This is pre-eminently the 'soft' world of dream and illusion and 'perception': it has only a surrogate relationship to the 'hard' world of printed words and written-down concepts to which I've tried to dedicate my life, and that surrogate relationship, while it, too, may be 'verbal,' consists of being glib rather than fluent, fast rather than quick, sharp rather than pointed. It means reveling in the fact that I have a meretricious, want-it-both-ways side. My only excuse is to say that at least I do not pretend that this is not so.	cable-television cable-television-in-the-us conservatism conservatism-in-the-us gore-vidal guilt illusion literature perception sex television united-states william-f-buckley	Christopher Hitchens
857998a	There are two kinds of Communists: the arrogant ones, who enter the fray hoping to make men out of the people and bring progress to the nation; and the innocent ones, who get involved because they believe in equality and justice. The arrogant ones are obsessed with power; they presume to think for everyone; only bad can come of them. But the innocents? The only harm they do is to themselves. But that's all they ever wanted in the first place. They feel so guilty about the suffering of the poor, and are so keen to share it, that they make their lives miserable on purpose.	guilt orhan-pamuk others-suffering snow the-poor	Orhan Pamuk
24ddfc3	The wicked fear the good, because the good are a constant reproach to their consciences. The ungodly like religion in the same way that they like lions, either dead or behind bars; they fear religion when it breaks loose and begins to challenge their consciences.	guilt immorality morality religion shame sin	Fulton J. Sheen
924bca0	[T]hose who willed the means and wished the ends are not absolved from guilt by the refusal of reality to match their schemes.	cyprus-dispute greece guilt henry-kissinger makarios-iii moral-responsibility	Christopher Hitchens
ad4f7c8	Over the lives borne from under the shadow of death there seems to fall the shadow of madness.	blame desperate enemies friends guilt hate immortality lifeboat loneliness love mental-illness mortality society stranded	Joseph Conrad
4c364c2	If seeing her an hour before her last Weak cough into all blackness I could yet Be held by chalk-white walls -	belsen death disease guilt wwii	Mervyn Peake
c77ddc7	There is a noticeable element of the pathological in some current leftist critiques, which I tend to attribute to feelings of guilt allied to feelings of impotence. Not an attractive combination, because it results in self-hatred.	guilt impotence iraq-war leftism pathology psychology self-hatred war-on-terror	Christopher Hitchens
4dbc5b2	Guilt is never to be doubted.	guilt	Franz Kafka
4f9f384	"..the thing about depression. When I feel it deeply, I don't want to let it go. It becomes a comfort. I want to cloak myself under its heavy weight and breathe it into my lungs. I want	feelings guilt trapped	Stephanie Perkins
11c5078	"Oh, Myr," he chokes out. "I hate having to ask this of you..." He glances towards the car again, and I crouch down in the shadows, hoping it's too dark for him to see whether the window is open or closed. The woman pats his arm, cradling her hand against his elbow. "You know I'd do anything for you and Hil," she says. I like her voice. It's throaty and rich. "You'd do anything?" my father repeats numbly. "Even now? After -?" "Even now," the woman says firmly."	asking fear forgiveness guilt help kindness love past request	Margaret Peterson Haddix
900ae89	The Shrink always warned me that carriers stay wracked with lifelong guilt. It's not an uplifting thing having turned lovers into monsters. We feel bad that we haven't turned into monsters ourselves--survivor's guilt, that's called. And we feel a bit stupid that we didn't notice our own symptoms earlier. I mean, I'd been sort of wondering why the Atkins diet was giving me night vision. But that hadn't seemed like something to worry about...	funny guilt humor ombies parasites vampires	Scott Westerfeld
34e0bf7	I lie awake in my bed, clinging to the brightness I have known, fighting back the tide of darkness, the memories of blood and branding and horror, and the legacy of cruelty that runs in my own veins, shaping my own secret vow and wielding it like a brand against the darkness, whispering it to myself, over and over. I will try to be good.	guilt morality	Jacqueline Carey
e01a3c8	You don't say 'they all do it' unless you know you've been doing it too.	guilt politics	Christopher Hitchens
b957959	But what were you supposed to do with that weight? Once it was on you? Just be a man? Just suck it up? Maybe you were. Maybe that was the real test. Maybe that is exactly the thing that made you a man: the ability to function with the worst possible secrets in your brain. Which was why so many grown-up men seemed so ridiculous. They never felt that responsibility. They were untested, unproven; they were boys in grown-up clothes.	depression guilt killing man murder responsibility secret secrets survival	Blake Nelson
1ec1a89	We drove down Corydon avenue towards my mother's apartment. How are you doing, she asked me? Fine, fine, I said. I wanted to tell her that I felt I was dying from rage and that I felt guilty about everything and that when I was a kid I woke up every morning singing, that I couldn't wait to leap out of bed and rush out of the house into the magical kingdom that was my world, that dust made visible in sunbeams gave me real authentic joy, that my sparkly golden banana-seated bike with the very high sissy bar took my breath away, the majesty of it, that it was mine, that there was no freer soul in the world than me at age nine, and that now I wake up every morning reminding myself that control is an illusion, taking deep breaths and counting to ten trying to ward off panic attacks and hoping that my own hands hadn't managed to strangle me while I slept.	guilt nostalgia	Miriam Toews
f24212e	It seems that the Parisian Oulipo group has recently constructed a matrix of all possible murder-story situations and has found that there is still to be written a book in which the murderer is the reader. Moral: there exist obsessive ideas, they are never personal; books talk among themselves, and any true detection should prove that we are the guilty party.	detective-stories guilt paradoxes readership responsibility writing	Umberto Eco
bed81f0	Each dark conjecture came and for a moment settled like a vulture on Bond's shoulder and croaked into his ear that he had been a blind fool.	folly foolishness guilt regret	Ian Fleming
386d442	It was the Communists, it was the Mexicans, it was the government. And the only people who acknowledged their guilt weren't guilty at all.	guilt	Connie Willis
d0ffdd5	He wished he could relieve himself of his doubts and guilts half as easily.	feelings guilt	George R.R. Martin
816f295	How could a woman who had an abortion not feel guilt or some sense of remorse? How could she justify what she'd done? Whom else could she blame when everyone was telling her it's her choice? Without facing the truth and confessing it, how could she be forgiven Who could she be restored? How could she be free?	choices-and-consequences forgiveness guilt	Francine Rivers
a8a3c7e	Death was silence, loss, guilt. And anger. But life led that way, anyway. From birth, it was a slow, long march to the grave. Who said that? She couldn't remember now. But it was true. They were born dying. If they were very lucky, the dying was called aging. They reached toward if as if they were satellites in unstable orbits. And then when they got there, they were just dead. One moment in time separated the living from the ghosts.	death guilt loss silence	Michelle Sagara West
fab102a	Sie wird gebraucht, unsere Schuld, sie rechtfertigt viel im Leben anderer.	guilt truth-of-life	Max Frisch
ce9bf95	Since her retirement from teaching Miss Beryl's health had in many respects greatly improved, despite her advancing years. An eighth-grade classroom was an excellent place to snag whatever was in the air in the way of illness. Also depression, which, Miss Beryl believed, in conjunction with guilt, opened the door to illness. Miss Beryl didn't know any teachers who weren't habitually guilty and depressed--guilty they hadn't accomplished more with their students, depressed that very little more was possible.	guilt illness teaching	Richard Russo
640c8f8	I said. I pushed my left one up, showing four bruises, dark as ink spots. Simon paled. He rubbed his mouth, still staring at my arm. Simon's eyes widened, then he lowered his lids to hide his surprise. Derek's voice preceded him around the corner. I shrank back. I couldn't help it. As I did, a look passed through Derek's eyes. Remorse? Guilt? He blinked it away.	derek didn-t-mean-to guilt hurt mistake simon trouble	Kelley Armstrong
4b0410c	What has been done to you is one thing. Yet to really suffer, to truly be burdened with guilt and shame, such pain always begins not with what has been done to you--but with what you have done. Andre Chevalier	emotional-pain guilt responsibility shame	Nikki Sex
8e189a5	"I don't want anything else bad to happen," she whispered, her voice choked with tears. "I'm so sick to death of bad things happening, of seeing bad things that happened in the past! And I'm guilty of so many things. I'm sorry that I killed Mrs. Matthias and wrecked her stupid greenhouse back in the Eighties and I'm sorry I left you here alone while I went around the world." "I wasn't alone though, I knew you were doing what you wanted to do and that you were still alive, so I wasn't really alone, I knew you were still there somewhere," Alecto told her. His damaged smile and downcast, sorrowful eyes were draped in the shadow of the night, saving Mandy the trouble of seeing."	apart bad crying damaged death eighties friend friendship greenhouse grief guilt hopelessness lonliness love murder omen shadow smile sorrow tears together travel trouble world	Rebecca McNutt
ae23b74	When shame is met with compassion and not received as confirmation of our guilt, we can begin to see how slant a lens it has had us looking through. That awareness lets us step back far enough to see that if we can let it go, we will see ourselves as clean where we once thought we were dirty. We will remember our innocence. We will see how our shame supported a system in which the perpetrators were protected and we bore the brunt of their offense -- first in its actuality, then again in carrying their shame for it. If the method we chose to try to beat out shame was perfectionism, we can relax now, shake the burden off our shoulders, and give ourselves a chance to loosen up and make some errors. Hallelujah! Our freedom will not come from tireless effort and getting it all exactly right.	abuser abusers burdens-of-the-past child-rape child-sexual-abuse false-guilt freedom guilt healing healing-from-abuse healing-insights imperfect incest innocence innocence-lost offense peptrator perfectionism perfectly-imperfect perpetrators recovery recovery-from-abuse sexual-abuse shame survivors	Maureen Brady
66f75f9	"ysh`r lkthyrwn 'n llh kmn fy mkn sry ytSyd lhm l'khT. w'nhm Hlm ykhTy'wn fn s`dth tktml whw ySrkh lhm bzhw: "h qd 'wq`t bk".w'nh mntZr lysqTw fyqwl lhm:"'lm 'ql lk". nhm ynZrwn ly llh wk'nh lky'n lkwny ldhy ytSf blsdy@ wlnkd. wldhy ystmt` b'n yfshl khTTn. wdy'man m yjd lTrq lty yntqdn bh, wywjh bh lthmt ln.wyntqm mn. wlkn llh nfsh yqwl: "l'ny `rft l'fkr lty 'n mftkr bh `nkm, yqwl lrb, 'fkr slm l shr, l'`Tykm akhr@ wrj." (rmy 29:11) l ywjd mn yryd l'fDl wl'SlH lk 'kthr mn llh. l 'Hd y`lm m hw l'fDl lk. wlys hnk mn yj`lk ttmt` bls`d@ lHqyqy@ 'kthr mnh. llh l yrydk 'n tkhf mnh.nh yrydk 'n tsr` lyh, l 'n thrb mnh. fy lwq` ydhkr ln lktb lmqds 365 mr@ 'n llh yqwl :"l tkhf". wHd@ lkl ywm mn 'ym lsn@. fm ldhy tkhf mnh? l 'Hd mn y`rf m ldhy sywjhh khll l`m. lkn ymknn 'n n`rf 'n llh yHbn, w'n llh m`n, w'n llh ln ('y fy Sfn) . n lwHd mn mDfan ly llh ySbH Glby@ fy mwqf. fmn 'yn dhn ynb` khwfn mn llh? hnk mSdrn 'ssyn Dmyr mdhnb, wjhl bTby`@ llh. yqwl lktb lmqds : " l khwf fy lmHb@, bl lmHb@ lkml@ tTrH lkhwf l~ khrj l'n lkhwf lh `dhb. w'm mn khf flm ytkml fy lmHb@" (ywHn l'wly4:18) ldhnb yj`ln nsh`r b`dm l'mn."	guilt love safety أمان خوف ذنب محبة	Rick Warren
38b3956	Why do we feel guilty, even when we've done nothing to bring on illness or death--even when we've done everything possible to prevent it? Suffering feels like punishment, as cultural anthropologists observe; no doubt that's one reason why people still tell the story of Adam and Eve, which interprets suffering that way.	bible death grief guilt illness loss mourning punishment suffering	Elaine Pagels
bec78ff	He was clearly not the murderer whom Hawksmoor was seeking, but it was generally the innocent who confessed: in the course of many enquiries, Hawksmoor had come across those who accused themselves of crimes which they had not committed and who demanded to be taken away before they could do more harm. He was acquainted with such people and recognised them at once - although they were noticeable, perhaps, only for a slight twitch in the eye or the awkward gait with which they moved through the world. And they inhabited small rooms to which Hawksmoor would sometimes be called: rooms with a bed and a chair but nothing besides, rooms where they shut the door and began talking out loud, rooms where they sat all evening and waited for the night, rooms where they experienced blind panic and then rage as they stared at their lives. And sometimes when he saw such people Hawksmoor thought, this is what I will become, I will be like them because I deserve to be like them, and only the smallest accident separates me from them now.	confessions guilt madness mentall-illness	Peter Ackroyd
69ed110	My conscience is crosswired with my sweat glands, but there's a short in the system and I break out over things I didn't do, which only makes me look more suspect.	guilt sweat	David Sedaris
ef9058d	The redeemed of God who are snatched from the flames by the hand of the Lord are still covered with ashes. We remain streaked with charcoal and blemished with soot. We are redeemed, but not sinless. Satan is quick to call attention to the dirt. He wants us to be more conscious of our sin than of God's mercy.	christianity forgiveness grace guilt shame sin	R.C. Sproul
7240f03	When we first begin to take power more directly, after long having kept our relationship to it underground...it is natural that we experience anxiety, even guilt, at putting ourselves first. These feeling let us know we are taking action; they do not need to stop us.	anxiety assertiveness child-sexual-abuse-survivor empowering false-guilt guilt healing healing-insights power survivors	Maureen Brady
9673a85	Shaken by emotional storms, I realized that choosing to feel guilt, however painful, somehow seemed to offer reassurance that such events did not happen at random.... If guilt is the price we pay for the illusion that we have some control over nature, many of us are willing to pay it. I was. To begin to release the weight of guilt, I had to let go of whatever illusion of control it pretended to offer, and acknowledge that pain and death are as natural as birth, woven inseparably into our human nature.	death grief guilt loss mourning nature pain suffering	Elaine Pagels
4fe8f18	Most people are not naturally reflective any more than they are naturally malicious, and the white man prefers to keep the black man at a certain human remove because it is easier for him thus to preserve his simplicity and avoid being called to account for crimes committed by his forefathers, or his neighbors.	blacks guilt race race-relations racism reflection thought thoughtfulness whites	James Baldwin
2cd9014	I have only to glance over my shoulder for all those years to drop away and I see it behind me again, the ravine, rising all green and black through the saplings, a picture that will never leave me.	donna-tartt guilt haunted indelible memory prologue the-secret-history	Donna Tartt
88fa95b	"Mother's intentions were always sound, never muddy; I don't imagine that she troubled herself to feel very guilty. But the Rev. Mr. Merrill was a man who took to wallowing in guilt; his remorse, after all, was all he had to cling to-especially after his scant courage left him, and he was forced to acknowledge that he would never be brave enough to abandon his miserable wife and children for my mother. He would continue to torture himself, of course, with the insistent and self-destructive notion that he loved my mother. I suppose that his "love" of my mother was as intellectually detached from feeling and action as his "belief" was also subject to his immense capacity for remote and unrealistic interpretation. My mother was a healthier animal; when he said he wouldn't leave his family for her, she simply put him out of her mind and went on singing. But as incapable as he was of a heartfelt response to a real situation, the Rev. Mr. Merrill was tirelessly capable of thinking; he pondered and brooded and surmised and second-guessed my mother to death."	guilt remorse thinking	John Irving
f0bf99e	She felt intense disappointment, even a kind of guilt, as if she had missed something, perhaps forever. He had been there, she could have spoken to him. Could she call out now, cry his name? It was impossible.	finality guilt iris-murdoch missed-chances missed-opportunity sad the-green-knight	Iris Murdoch
cc41616	Anger, hatred, and bitterness are lethal poisons. They cause a slow, painful emotional death that only you suffer. Self-destruction will never defeat an enemy or create justice.	bitterness guilt hatred self-destruction	James Patterson
dca1b95	The events that occur in my life are workout situations. They are there for my benefit so I can become strong and gain wisdom and information by working my way through those situations.	addiction-and-recovery addiction-free chris-prentiss chris-prentiss-quotes guilt happiness joy life love pain passages-malibu passages-ventura peace philosophy philosophy-of-life wisdom	Chris Prentiss
98b2e57	Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Jesus always seems to be pairing God's forgiveness of us with our forgiveness of others. But why? Growing up, I thought it was a way of guilting us into forgiving others, like Jesus was saying, Hey, I died for you and you can't even be nice to your little brother? As though God can get us to do the right thing if God can just make us feel bad about how much we owe God. But that is not the God I see in Jesus Christ. That is a manipulative mother.	guilt manipulation religion	Nadia Bolz-Weber
087ddfb	Guilt is a strong motivator, sometimes even stronger than love.	brothers family fantasy guilt portal-fantasy young-adult young-adult-fantasy	Cornelia Funke
3fff438	"Geraldine keeps her eyes trained on him as she slowly reaches into her purse, wrapping her fingers around her gun. "...Callo, I'm so sorry that your life ended up this way," she sighs as she gets out of her side of the car, her feet burning from the cold as her high heels sink into the fallen snow. "Aren't you scared?" "I'm you, Geraldine... I fell into the same trap as you, anyway," Callo answers. His large eyes are shining with tears, but he doesn't seem afraid in the least. "...The dead don't feel anything, you know... not even guilt or regret. So, what is there to be afraid of?"	apology dead death depressed depression die dying emotion eyes fear forlorn forlornness friend friendship guilt gun high-heels kill lonliness mental-illness purse regret revolver tears trap usurer	Rebecca McNutt
a72de62	We may believe that anxiety and fear don't concern us because we avoid experiencing them. We may keep the scope of our lives narrow and familiar, opting for sameness and safety. We may not even know that we are scared of success, failure, rejection, criticism, conflict, competition, intimacy, or adventure, because we rarely test the limits of our competence and creativity. We avoid anxiety by avoiding risk and change. Our challenge: To be willing to become more anxious, via embracing new situations and stepping more fully into our lives.	brave fear guilt psychology self-improvement shame	Harriet Lerner
1453138	If there is any fruitless mental torment which is greater than that of jealousy it is perhaps remorse. Even the pains of loss may be less searching; and often of course these agonies combine, as now they did for me. I say remorse not repentance. I doubt if I have ever experienced repentance in a pure form; perhaps it does not exist in a pure form. Remorse contains guilt, but helpless hopeless guilt which knows of no cure for the painful bite.	guilt iris-murdoch jealousy remorse repentance the-sea-the-sea torment	Iris Murdoch
d981e5b	"Euere Schuld, Deichgraf!" schrie eine Stimme aus dem Haufen."	guilt ignorance mobs prejudice responsibility	Theodor Storm
59bad1b	"It was a stark choice: shoes or food; beauty or sustenance; the sensible or the self-indulgent. "I'll take the shoes," she said firmly." --	guilt shoes shopping	Alexander McCall Smith
b68fb29	If you're being tormented by guilt or feelings of failure in this area, confess your thoughts to God, pray about it, put it in God's hands, and then stand up and proclaim the truth!	god guilt inspiration parent truth	Stormie Omartian
a6dc658	"You're an asshole, you know that, Haller?" I nodded and headed back to the door. "When I need to be."	guilt	Michael Connelly
67e768a	"Elwood said, "It's against the law." State law, but also Elwood's. If everyone looked the other way, then everybody was in on it. If he looked the other way, he was as implicated as the rest. That's how he saw it, how he'd always seen things."	complicity guilt law morality right wrong	Colson Whitehead
be7036a	When a man admits guilt we have to believe him. We cannot set ourselves to proving to him that he is wrong. Otherwise the law courts would never function.	guilt law	Hilary Mantel
3a0d63a	I had told him I was searching for my keys, that's what had taken me so long in the car, and I squeezed him tighter, as if I could crush my little lie.	guilt lie make-up	Mitch Albom
9958679	Farkli hisseden, farkli hassasiyetlere sahip ve farkindaligi guclenmis baska bir insan haline geldigimi biliyorum. Daha iyi bir insan oldugumu iddia edecek cesaretim yok elbette, ama daha mutlu bir insan oldugumu biliyorum, cunku o buz gibi donuk hayatim icin yeni bir anlam buldum, yasamin kendisinden baska bir sozcukle aciklayamayacagim bir anlam. Ait oldugum kesimin normlarini ve kaliplarini bos buldugum icin artik ne kendimden ne de baskalarindan utaniyorum. Onur, suc, gunah gibi kavramlar bir anda soguk, metalsi bir tini kazandi, bunlari dehsete kapilmadan telaffuz edemiyorum artik.	guilt happiness honour life life-lessons sin	Stefan Zweig
f6145c9	But it's a lot easier to blame someone else than accept blame for your own failings.	blaming failure guilt	Jacqueline Carey

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

Veronica Roth

61171d9

All I could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy I'd been selling out of my dorms room. Or maybe they'd realized I got my Essay on Tom Sawyer from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me read the book.

guilt plagiarism

Rick Riordan

4172a0d

"People pontificate, "Suicide is selfishness." Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call in a cowardly assault on the living. Oafs argue this specious line for varying reason: to evade fingers of blame, to impress one's audience with one's mental fiber, to vent anger, or just because one lacks the necessary suffering to sympathize. Cowardice is nothing to do with it - suicide takes considerable courage. Japanese have the right idea. No, what's selfish is to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families, friends, and enemies a bit of soul-searching."

guilt selfishness suffering suicide

David Mitchell

60de911

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

guilt innocence judgment justice mercy reasonable-doubt verdict

Voltaire

2a64033

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.

blame guilt

Oscar Wilde

67609e1

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

guilt

Bill Watterson

e0a42c0

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.

anger black-feminism feminism guilt oppression

Audre Lorde

9802b67

"He showed the words "chocolate cake" to a group of Americans and recorded their word associations. "Guilt" was the top response. If that strikes you as unexceptional, consider the response of French eaters to the same prompt: "celebration."

chocolate chocolate-cake connotations food french guilt politics semantics word-association

Michael Pollan

08bb5fd

True, nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am, but why will say that I am mad?! The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute.

guilt madness

Edgar Allan Poe

e96c5cc

Because no retreat from the world can mask what is in your face.

guilt remorse sorrow witch

Gregory Maguire

7ff15ac

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

conscience guilt stefan-zweig

Stefan Zweig

7c5ff31

" " J. Michael Haller, Criminal Defense Attorney, Los Angeles, 1962."

clients criminal-law fear guilt innocence justice justice-system responsibility risk

Michael Connelly

c96b4fe

I can learn to live with guilt. I don't care about being good.

choices good guilt life

Holly Black

7794818

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

guilt remortgages

Veronica Roth

12f145e

When she can't bring me to heal with scolding, she bends me to shape with guilt.

guilt women

Libba Bray

a041cd9

"Let's say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says maybe 100,000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter-of-a-million. I'll take 100,000. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98,000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25 years, dying of their teeth. Famine, struggle, bitterness, war, suffering, misery, all of that for 98,000 years. Heaven watches this with complete indifference. And then 2000 years ago, thinks 'That's enough of that. It's time to intervene,' and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Don't lets appeal to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let's go to the desert and have another revelation there. This is nonsense. It can't be believed by a thinking person. Why am I glad this is the case? To get to the point of the wrongness of Christianity, because I think the teachings of Christianity are immoral. The central one is the most immoral of all, and that is the one of vicarious redemption. You can throw your sins onto somebody else, vulgarly known as scapegoating. In fact, originating as scapegoating in the same area, the same desert. I can pay your debt if I love you. I can serve your term in prison if I love you very much. I can volunteer to do that. I can't take your sins away, because I can't abolish your responsibility, and I shouldn't offer to do so. Your responsibility has to stay with you. There's no vicarious redemption. There very probably, in fact, is no redemption at all. It's just a part of wish-thinking, and I don't think wish-thinking is good for people either.

atheism atheist atheist-argument belief christianity-is-immoral christopher-hitchens compulsory crime dawkins debate dictatorship divine-dictatorship eternal-father eternal-punishment ethics evidence fear great-atheist-argument guilt health hitchens hitchslap homo-sapiens human-sacrifice immoral-christianity indifference intellect love love-your-neighbor morality myth reason redemption responsibility richard-dawkins supreme-being totalitarianism truth wishful-thinking

Christopher Hitchens

24e8302

As I lifted the ash dagger, something inside me fractured so completely that there would be no hope of ever repairing it.

guilt hopeless

Sarah J. Maas

3759da6

Tereza's mother never stopped reminding her that being a mother meant sacrificing everything. Her words had the ring of truth, backed as they were by the experience of a woman who had lost everything because of her child. Tereza would listen and believe that being a mother was the highest value in life and that being a mother was a great sacrifice. If a mother was Sacrifice personified, then a daughter was Guilt, with no possibility of redress.

guilt mothers sacrifice

Milan Kundera

2df2f1d

When he says we're forgiven, let's unload the guilt. When he says we're valuable, let's believe him. . . . When he says we're provided for, let's stop worrying. God's efforts are strongest when our efforts are useless

faith guilt inspirational

Max Lucado

6ab8998

She went to the window seat and sat there, sniffling, hating them all, and herself most of all. It was all her fault, everything bad that had happened.

depression guilt

George R.R. Martin

3857a0d

The two main criminals are France and the United States. They owe Haiti enormous reparations because of actions going back hundreds of years. If we could ever get to the stage where somebody could say, 'We're sorry we did it,' that would be nice. But if that just assuages guilt, it's just another crime. To become minimally civilized, we would have to say, 'We carried out and benefited from vicious crimes. A large part of the wealth of France comes from the crimes we committed against Haiti, and the United States gained as well. Therefore we are going to pay reparations to the Haitian people.' Then you will see the beginnings of civilization.

apologies civilisation crime france french-imperialism guilt haiti history imperialism reparations united-states wealth

Noam Chomsky

e7356f8

"Freedom, "that terrible word inscribed on the chariot of the storm," is the motivating principle of all revolutions. Without it, justice seems inconceivable to the rebel's mind. There comes a time, however, when justice demands the suspension of freedom. Then terror, on a grand or small scale, makes its appearance to consummate the revolution. Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being. But one day nostalgia takes up arms and assumes the responsibility of total guilt; in other words, adopts murder and violence."

guilt justice nostalgia rebellion revolution terror

Albert Camus

9b2043a

I was just struggling with my inner vachette and pondering the depths of my own inhumanity.

guilt humor ponder

David Sedaris

af7a205

WHAT ARE THE CONSEQUENCES when we go against our instincts? What are the consequences of not speaking out? What are the consequences of guilt, shame, and doubt?

consequences doubt guilt instinct instincts shame speaking-out voice

Terry Tempest Williams

51d872a

When all this is over, people will try to blame the Germans alone, and the Germans will try to blame the Nazis alone, and the Nazis will try to blame Hitler alone. They will make him bear the sins of the world. But it's not true. You suspected what was happening, and so did I. It was already too late over a year ago. I caused a reporter to lose his job because you told me to. He was deported. The day I did that I made my little contribution to civilization, the only one that matters.

civilization cowardice denunciation deportation evil genocide guilt hitler knowledge nazis personal-responsibility responsibility willful-ignorance

Iain Pears

4119c35

The Homunculi may have started the war, but we were the ones who carried it out.

guilt war

Hiromu Arakawa

e89d4c9

To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of the happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed.

guilt

Ursula K. Le Guin

29a3b4d

I often think of death. True. Suicide is a reasonable option. True. My sins are unpardonable. I stare at the question. My sins are unpardonable. I stare at the question. My sins are unpardonable. I leave it blank.

guilt hopelessness suicide

James Frey

ab46588

Guilt is also a way for us to express to others that we are a person of good conscience. 'I feel really guilty about getting drunk last night,' we say, when in actual fact we feel no guilt whatsoever or, at least, we could to feel no guilt. When people say to me, 'I drank too much last night,' I always reply, 'I drank exactly the right amount.

drinking guilt

Tom Hodgkinson

05301a8

"Her free hand was clenched in a fist. I held still, waiting for her to say something, to tell me she should have never left me here, where her friends might look to me for help. Finally she looked at me. Her eyes were hard, but she'd let no tears fall. "This is where we blame those who are responsible, Cooper, she told me, her voice very soft. "The colemongers, and the bought Dogs at Tradesmen's kennel. We'll leave an offering for him with the Black God when all this is done, and we'll occupy ourselves with tearing these colemongers apart. all right? We put grief aside for now."

bad-news blame dread grief guilt justice response

Tamora Pierce

d97909d

There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for me to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed or enforced nor objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt.

guilt injustice innocence innocent justice law morality morals values

Ayn Rand

55c3c4a

In Europe the rich are refined enough to act as if they're not wealthy. That is how civilized people behave. If you ask me, being cultured and civilized is not about everyone being free and equal; it's about everyone being refined enough to act as if they were. Then no one has to feel guilty.

culture equality guilt refinement rich wealthy

Orhan Pamuk

6cb7db4

You have a conscience, and a conscience is a valuable attribute, but not if it begins to make you think you were to blame for what is far beyond the scope of your responsibility.

guilt

Philip Roth

1a4013e

No one needed to say it, but the room overflowed with that sort of blessing. The combination of loss and abundance. The abundance that has no guilt. The loss that has no fix. The simple tiredness that is not weary. The hope not built on blindness.

beautiful blessing blindness description guilt hope hymn ineffable mood wordless

Aimee Bender

aaa544e

I cannot hide my anger to spare you guilt, nor hurt feelings, nor answering anger; for to do so insults and trivializes all our efforts. 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.

guilt hurt oppression

Audre Lorde

7dfe776

I knew I should be grateful to Mrs Guinea, only I couldn't feel a thing. If Mrs Guinea had given me a ticket to Europe, or a round-the-world cruise, it wouldn't have made one scrap of difference to me, because wherever I sat - on the deck of a ship or a street cafe in Paris or Bangkok - I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.

depression guilt mental-health sour stagnent stale the-bell-jar travel

Sylvia Plath

1703e55

"Far be in from me to dictate how you should assuage your guilt. Do you have a lot of it?" She bit his good shoulder. "You're about to find out." She toppled them both off the bench and onto the mat. "Well, ouch. I take it guilt doesn't bring out your gentler side."

guilt roarke

J.D. Robb

fe91d76

To me, a wicked man who is also eloquent seems the most guilty of them all. He'll cut your throat as bold as brass, because he can dress up murder in handsome words.

guilt medea morality wicked

Euripides

5711d83

"Well, did he do it?" She always asked the irrelevant question. It didn't matter in terms of the strategy of the case whether the defendant "did it" or not. What mattered was the evidence against him -- the proof -- and if and how it could be neutralized. My job was to bury the proof, to color the proof a shade of gray. Gray was the color of reasonable doubt."

criminal-law defense evidence guilt innocence justice justice-system reasonable-doubt

Michael Connelly

42da48b

You can always count on your family to love you. And to betray you. And then to feel guilty about it.

betrayal family guilt guilty love rue

Holly Black

f06f865

"You know what my father said about innocent clients? ... He said the scariest client a lawyer will ever have is an innocent client. Because if you fuck up and he goes to prison, it'll scar you for life ... He said there is no in-between with an innocent client. No negotiation, no plea bargain, no middle ground. There's only one verdict. You have to put an NG up on the scoreboard. There's no other verdict but not guilty." Levin nodded thoughtfully. "The bottom line was my old man was a damn good lawyer and he didn't like having innocent clients," I said. "I'm not sure I do, either." --

criminal-law fear guilt innocence justice justice-system responsibility risk

Michael Connelly

8a6ae1f

Although claiming my true identity as a child of God, I still live as though the God to whom I am returning demands an explanation. I still think about his love as conditional and about home as a place I am not yet fully sure of. While walking home, I keep entertaining doubts about whether I will be truly welcome when I get there. As I look at my spiritual journey, my long and fatiguing trip home, I see how full it is of guilt about the past and worries about the future. I realize my failures and know that I have lost the dignity of my sonship, but I am not yet able to fully believe that where my failings are great, 'grace is always greater.' Still clinging to my sense of worthlessness, I project for myself a place far below that which belongs to the son, (p. 52).

dignity doubts failure failures god grace guilt home identity love son sonship worries worry worthlessness

Henri J.M. Nouwen

39dc88e

"The Christian soul knows it needs Divine Help and therefore turns to Him Who loved us even while we were yet sinners. Examination of conscience, instead of inducing morbidity, thereby becomes an occasion of joy. There are two ways of knowing how good and loving God is. One is by never losing Him, through the preservation of innocence, and the other is by finding Him after one has lost Him. Repentance is not self-regarding, but God-regarding. It is not self-loathing, but God-loving. Christianity bids us accept ourselves as we really are, with all our faults and our failings and our sins. In all other religions, one has to be good to come to God--in Christianity one does not. Christianity might be described as a "come as you are" party. It bids us stop worrying about ourselves, stop concentrating on our faults and our failings, and thrust them upon the Saviour with a firm resolve of amendment. The examination of conscience never induces despair, always hope...Because examination of conscience is done in the light of God's love, it begins with a prayer to the Holy Spirit to illumine our minds. A soul then acts toward the Spirit of God as toward a watchmaker who will fix our watch. We put a watch in his hands because we know he will not force it, and we put our souls in God's hands because we know that if he inspects them regularly they will work as they should...it is true that, the closer we get to God, the more we see our defects. A painting reveals few defects under candlelight, but the sunlight may reveal it as daub. The very good never believe themselves very good, because they are judging themselves by the Ideal. In perfect innocence each soul, like the Apostles at the Last Supper, cries out, "Is it I, Lord" (Matt. 26:22)." --

examination-of-conscience guilt holiness repentance

Fulton J. Sheen

c0be49c

Tolstoy said, 'The antagonism between life and conscience may be removed either by a change of life or by a change of conscience.' Many of us have elected to adjust our consciences rather than our lives. Our powers of rationalization are unlimited. They allow us to live in luxury and indifference while others, whom we could help if we chose to, starve and go to hell.

change compassion conscience conviction guilt hell hunger indifference power rationalization starvation stewardship tolstoy

Randy Alcorn

01bf7ed

He did not care what the end would be, and in his lucid moments overvalued his indifference. The danger, when not seen, has the imperfect vagueness of human thought. The fear grows shadowy; and Imagination, the enemy of men, the father of all terrors, unstimulated, sinks to rest in the dullness of exhausted emotion.

apathy baggage burden danger-to-self depression depressive depressive-thinking dread emotional-pain emotional-plague guilt indifferent look-for-hope look-for-jesus sad sick suicidal suicide why-the-world-needs-jesus

Joseph Conrad

4bdaf3d

"You can see the same immorality or amorality in the Christian view of guilt and punishment. There are only two texts, both of them extreme and mutually contradictory. The Old Testament injunction is the one to exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (it occurs in a passage of perfectly demented detail about the exact rules governing mutual ox-goring; you should look it up in its context (Exodus 21). The second is from the Gospels and says that only those without sin should cast the first stone. The first is a moral basis for capital punishment and other barbarities; the second is so relativistic and "nonjudgmental" that it would not allow the prosecution of Charles Manson. Our few notions of justice have had to evolve despite these absurd codes of ultra vindictiveness and ultracompassion."

christianity compassion guilt immorality justice morality punishment relavitism religion

Christopher Hitchens

f2aeee8

When I picked up the bird and felt its light weight in my hands, I realized that carelessness was a form of cruelty. See, I'd always told myself that because I meant no harm, anything that happened wasn't my fault. At that moment, though, I knew I was wrong. If I hadn't given the female my gun, the bird wouldn't have been shot. I was responsible even though I didn't pull the trigger.

guilt responsible

J.R. Ward

758f624

If you've had the right kind of education, it's amazing how many things you can find to feel guilty about.

guilt

Pete McCarthy

aedfb27

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.

blacks guilt incarceration innocence jail justice justice-system prison race-relations

Paul Beatty

afa47b3

"Those who deny guilt and sin are like the Pharisees of old who thought our Saviour had a "guilt complex" because He accused them of being whited sepulchers--outside clean, inside full of dead men's bones. Those who admit that they are guilty are like the public sinners and the publicans of whom Our Lord said, "Amen, I say to you, that the publicans and the harlots shall go into the Kingdom of God before you" (Matt. 21:31). Those who think they are healthy but have a hidden moral cancer are incurable; the sick who want to be healed have a chance. All denial of guilt keeps people out of the area of love and, by inducing self-righteousness, prevents a cure. The two facts of healing in the physical order are these: A physician cannot heal us unless we put ourselves into his hands, and we will not put ourselves into his hands unless we know that we are sick. In like manner, a sinner's awareness of sin is one requisite for his recovery; the other is his longing for God. When we long for God, we do so not as sinners, but as lovers." --

guilt healing

Fulton J. Sheen

25c8f8c

Il n'est si homme de bien, qu'il mette a l'examen des loix toutes ses actions et pensees, qui ne soit pendable dix fois en sa vie. (There is no man so good that if he placed all his actions and thoughts under the scrutiny of the laws, he would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.)

goodness guilt laws privacy thoughts

Michel de Montaigne

4dc4a38

Gore Vidal, for instance, once languidly told me that one should never miss a chance either to have sex or to appear on television. My efforts to live up to this maxim have mainly resulted in my passing many unglamorous hours on off-peak cable TV. It was actually Vidal's great foe William F. Buckley who launched my part-time television career, by inviting me on to when I was still quite young, and giving me one of the American Right's less towering intellects as my foil. The response to the show made my day, and then my week. Yet almost every time I go to a TV studio, I feel faintly guilty. This is pre-eminently the 'soft' world of dream and illusion and 'perception': it has only a surrogate relationship to the 'hard' world of printed words and written-down concepts to which I've tried to dedicate my life, and that surrogate relationship, while it, too, may be 'verbal,' consists of being glib rather than fluent, fast rather than quick, sharp rather than pointed. It means reveling in the fact that I have a meretricious, want-it-both-ways side. My only excuse is to say that at least I do not pretend that this is not so.

cable-television cable-television-in-the-us conservatism conservatism-in-the-us gore-vidal guilt illusion literature perception sex television united-states william-f-buckley

Christopher Hitchens

857998a

There are two kinds of Communists: the arrogant ones, who enter the fray hoping to make men out of the people and bring progress to the nation; and the innocent ones, who get involved because they believe in equality and justice. The arrogant ones are obsessed with power; they presume to think for everyone; only bad can come of them. But the innocents? The only harm they do is to themselves. But that's all they ever wanted in the first place. They feel so guilty about the suffering of the poor, and are so keen to share it, that they make their lives miserable on purpose.

guilt orhan-pamuk others-suffering snow the-poor

Orhan Pamuk

24ddfc3

The wicked fear the good, because the good are a constant reproach to their consciences. The ungodly like religion in the same way that they like lions, either dead or behind bars; they fear religion when it breaks loose and begins to challenge their consciences.

guilt immorality morality religion shame sin

Fulton J. Sheen

924bca0

[T]hose who willed the means and wished the ends are not absolved from guilt by the refusal of reality to match their schemes.

cyprus-dispute greece guilt henry-kissinger makarios-iii moral-responsibility

Christopher Hitchens

ad4f7c8

Over the lives borne from under the shadow of death there seems to fall the shadow of madness.

blame desperate enemies friends guilt hate immortality lifeboat loneliness love mental-illness mortality society stranded

Joseph Conrad

4c364c2

If seeing her an hour before her last Weak cough into all blackness I could yet Be held by chalk-white walls -

belsen death disease guilt wwii

Mervyn Peake

c77ddc7

There is a noticeable element of the pathological in some current leftist critiques, which I tend to attribute to feelings of guilt allied to feelings of impotence. Not an attractive combination, because it results in self-hatred.

guilt impotence iraq-war leftism pathology psychology self-hatred war-on-terror

Christopher Hitchens

4dbc5b2

Guilt is never to be doubted.

guilt

Franz Kafka

4f9f384

"..the thing about depression. When I feel it deeply, I don't want to let it go. It becomes a comfort. I want to cloak myself under its heavy weight and breathe it into my lungs. I want

feelings guilt trapped

Stephanie Perkins

11c5078

"Oh, Myr," he chokes out. "I hate having to ask this of you..." He glances towards the car again, and I crouch down in the shadows, hoping it's too dark for him to see whether the window is open or closed. The woman pats his arm, cradling her hand against his elbow. "You know I'd do anything for you and Hil," she says. I like her voice. It's throaty and rich. "You'd do anything?" my father repeats numbly. "Even now? After -?" "Even now," the woman says firmly."

asking fear forgiveness guilt help kindness love past request

Margaret Peterson Haddix

900ae89

The Shrink always warned me that carriers stay wracked with lifelong guilt. It's not an uplifting thing having turned lovers into monsters. We feel bad that we haven't turned into monsters ourselves--survivor's guilt, that's called. And we feel a bit stupid that we didn't notice our own symptoms earlier. I mean, I'd been sort of wondering why the Atkins diet was giving me night vision. But that hadn't seemed like something to worry about...

funny guilt humor ombies parasites vampires

Scott Westerfeld

34e0bf7

I lie awake in my bed, clinging to the brightness I have known, fighting back the tide of darkness, the memories of blood and branding and horror, and the legacy of cruelty that runs in my own veins, shaping my own secret vow and wielding it like a brand against the darkness, whispering it to myself, over and over. I will try to be good.

guilt morality

Jacqueline Carey

e01a3c8

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

guilt politics

Christopher Hitchens

b957959

But what were you supposed to do with that weight? Once it was on you? Just be a man? Just suck it up? Maybe you were. Maybe that was the real test. Maybe that is exactly the thing that made you a man: the ability to function with the worst possible secrets in your brain. Which was why so many grown-up men seemed so ridiculous. They never felt that responsibility. They were untested, unproven; they were boys in grown-up clothes.

depression guilt killing man murder responsibility secret secrets survival

Blake Nelson

1ec1a89

We drove down Corydon avenue towards my mother's apartment. How are you doing, she asked me? Fine, fine, I said. I wanted to tell her that I felt I was dying from rage and that I felt guilty about everything and that when I was a kid I woke up every morning singing, that I couldn't wait to leap out of bed and rush out of the house into the magical kingdom that was my world, that dust made visible in sunbeams gave me real authentic joy, that my sparkly golden banana-seated bike with the very high sissy bar took my breath away, the majesty of it, that it was mine, that there was no freer soul in the world than me at age nine, and that now I wake up every morning reminding myself that control is an illusion, taking deep breaths and counting to ten trying to ward off panic attacks and hoping that my own hands hadn't managed to strangle me while I slept.

guilt nostalgia

Miriam Toews

f24212e

It seems that the Parisian Oulipo group has recently constructed a matrix of all possible murder-story situations and has found that there is still to be written a book in which the murderer is the reader. Moral: there exist obsessive ideas, they are never personal; books talk among themselves, and any true detection should prove that we are the guilty party.

detective-stories guilt paradoxes readership responsibility writing

Umberto Eco

bed81f0

Each dark conjecture came and for a moment settled like a vulture on Bond's shoulder and croaked into his ear that he had been a blind fool.

folly foolishness guilt regret

Ian Fleming

386d442

It was the Communists, it was the Mexicans, it was the government. And the only people who acknowledged their guilt weren't guilty at all.

guilt

Connie Willis

d0ffdd5

He wished he could relieve himself of his doubts and guilts half as easily.

feelings guilt

George R.R. Martin

816f295

How could a woman who had an abortion not feel guilt or some sense of remorse? How could she justify what she'd done? Whom else could she blame when everyone was telling her it's her choice? Without facing the truth and confessing it, how could she be forgiven Who could she be restored? How could she be free?

choices-and-consequences forgiveness guilt

Francine Rivers

a8a3c7e

Death was silence, loss, guilt. And anger. But life led that way, anyway. From birth, it was a slow, long march to the grave. Who said that? She couldn't remember now. But it was true. They were born dying. If they were very lucky, the dying was called aging. They reached toward if as if they were satellites in unstable orbits. And then when they got there, they were just dead. One moment in time separated the living from the ghosts.

death guilt loss silence

Michelle Sagara West

fab102a

Sie wird gebraucht, unsere Schuld, sie rechtfertigt viel im Leben anderer.

guilt truth-of-life

Max Frisch

ce9bf95

Since her retirement from teaching Miss Beryl's health had in many respects greatly improved, despite her advancing years. An eighth-grade classroom was an excellent place to snag whatever was in the air in the way of illness. Also depression, which, Miss Beryl believed, in conjunction with guilt, opened the door to illness. Miss Beryl didn't know any teachers who weren't habitually guilty and depressed--guilty they hadn't accomplished more with their students, depressed that very little more was possible.

guilt illness teaching

Richard Russo

640c8f8

I said. I pushed my left one up, showing four bruises, dark as ink spots. Simon paled. He rubbed his mouth, still staring at my arm. Simon's eyes widened, then he lowered his lids to hide his surprise. Derek's voice preceded him around the corner. I shrank back. I couldn't help it. As I did, a look passed through Derek's eyes. Remorse? Guilt? He blinked it away.

derek didn-t-mean-to guilt hurt mistake simon trouble

Kelley Armstrong

4b0410c

What has been done to you is one thing. Yet to really suffer, to truly be burdened with guilt and shame, such pain always begins not with what has been done to you--but with what you have done. Andre Chevalier

emotional-pain guilt responsibility shame

Nikki Sex

8e189a5

"I don't want anything else bad to happen," she whispered, her voice choked with tears. "I'm so sick to death of bad things happening, of seeing bad things that happened in the past! And I'm guilty of so many things. I'm sorry that I killed Mrs. Matthias and wrecked her stupid greenhouse back in the Eighties and I'm sorry I left you here alone while I went around the world." "I wasn't alone though, I knew you were doing what you wanted to do and that you were still alive, so I wasn't really alone, I knew you were still there somewhere," Alecto told her. His damaged smile and downcast, sorrowful eyes were draped in the shadow of the night, saving Mandy the trouble of seeing."

apart bad crying damaged death eighties friend friendship greenhouse grief guilt hopelessness lonliness love murder omen shadow smile sorrow tears together travel trouble world

Rebecca McNutt

ae23b74

When shame is met with compassion and not received as confirmation of our guilt, we can begin to see how slant a lens it has had us looking through. That awareness lets us step back far enough to see that if we can let it go, we will see ourselves as clean where we once thought we were dirty. We will remember our innocence. We will see how our shame supported a system in which the perpetrators were protected and we bore the brunt of their offense -- first in its actuality, then again in carrying their shame for it. If the method we chose to try to beat out shame was perfectionism, we can relax now, shake the burden off our shoulders, and give ourselves a chance to loosen up and make some errors. Hallelujah! Our freedom will not come from tireless effort and getting it all exactly right.

abuser abusers burdens-of-the-past child-rape child-sexual-abuse false-guilt freedom guilt healing healing-from-abuse healing-insights imperfect incest innocence innocence-lost offense peptrator perfectionism perfectly-imperfect perpetrators recovery recovery-from-abuse sexual-abuse shame survivors

Maureen Brady

66f75f9

"ysh`r lkthyrwn 'n llh kmn fy mkn sry ytSyd lhm l'khT. w'nhm Hlm ykhTy'wn fn s`dth tktml whw ySrkh lhm bzhw: "h qd 'wq`t bk".w'nh mntZr lysqTw fyqwl lhm:"'lm 'ql lk". nhm ynZrwn ly llh wk'nh lky'n lkwny ldhy ytSf blsdy@ wlnkd. wldhy ystmt` b'n yfshl khTTn. wdy'man m yjd lTrq lty yntqdn bh, wywjh bh lthmt ln.wyntqm mn. wlkn llh nfsh yqwl: "l'ny `rft l'fkr lty 'n mftkr bh `nkm, yqwl lrb, 'fkr slm l shr, l'`Tykm akhr@ wrj." (rmy 29:11) l ywjd mn yryd l'fDl wl'SlH lk 'kthr mn llh. l 'Hd y`lm m hw l'fDl lk. wlys hnk mn yj`lk ttmt` bls`d@ lHqyqy@ 'kthr mnh. llh l yrydk 'n tkhf mnh.nh yrydk 'n tsr` lyh, l 'n thrb mnh. fy lwq` ydhkr ln lktb lmqds 365 mr@ 'n llh yqwl :"l tkhf". wHd@ lkl ywm mn 'ym lsn@. fm ldhy tkhf mnh? l 'Hd mn y`rf m ldhy sywjhh khll l`m. lkn ymknn 'n n`rf 'n llh yHbn, w'n llh m`n, w'n llh ln ('y fy Sfn) . n lwHd mn mDfan ly llh ySbH Glby@ fy mwqf. fmn 'yn dhn ynb` khwfn mn llh? hnk mSdrn 'ssyn Dmyr mdhnb, wjhl bTby`@ llh. yqwl lktb lmqds : " l khwf fy lmHb@, bl lmHb@ lkml@ tTrH lkhwf l~ khrj l'n lkhwf lh `dhb. w'm mn khf flm ytkml fy lmHb@" (ywHn l'wly4:18) ldhnb yj`ln nsh`r b`dm l'mn."

guilt love safety أمان خوف ذنب محبة

Rick Warren

38b3956

Why do we feel guilty, even when we've done nothing to bring on illness or death--even when we've done everything possible to prevent it? Suffering feels like punishment, as cultural anthropologists observe; no doubt that's one reason why people still tell the story of Adam and Eve, which interprets suffering that way.

bible death grief guilt illness loss mourning punishment suffering

Elaine Pagels

bec78ff

He was clearly not the murderer whom Hawksmoor was seeking, but it was generally the innocent who confessed: in the course of many enquiries, Hawksmoor had come across those who accused themselves of crimes which they had not committed and who demanded to be taken away before they could do more harm. He was acquainted with such people and recognised them at once - although they were noticeable, perhaps, only for a slight twitch in the eye or the awkward gait with which they moved through the world. And they inhabited small rooms to which Hawksmoor would sometimes be called: rooms with a bed and a chair but nothing besides, rooms where they shut the door and began talking out loud, rooms where they sat all evening and waited for the night, rooms where they experienced blind panic and then rage as they stared at their lives. And sometimes when he saw such people Hawksmoor thought, this is what I will become, I will be like them because I deserve to be like them, and only the smallest accident separates me from them now.

confessions guilt madness mentall-illness

Peter Ackroyd

69ed110

My conscience is crosswired with my sweat glands, but there's a short in the system and I break out over things I didn't do, which only makes me look more suspect.

guilt sweat

David Sedaris

ef9058d

The redeemed of God who are snatched from the flames by the hand of the Lord are still covered with ashes. We remain streaked with charcoal and blemished with soot. We are redeemed, but not sinless. Satan is quick to call attention to the dirt. He wants us to be more conscious of our sin than of God's mercy.

christianity forgiveness grace guilt shame sin

R.C. Sproul

7240f03

When we first begin to take power more directly, after long having kept our relationship to it underground...it is natural that we experience anxiety, even guilt, at putting ourselves first. These feeling let us know we are taking action; they do not need to stop us.

anxiety assertiveness child-sexual-abuse-survivor empowering false-guilt guilt healing healing-insights power survivors

Maureen Brady

9673a85

Shaken by emotional storms, I realized that choosing to feel guilt, however painful, somehow seemed to offer reassurance that such events did not happen at random.... If guilt is the price we pay for the illusion that we have some control over nature, many of us are willing to pay it. I was. To begin to release the weight of guilt, I had to let go of whatever illusion of control it pretended to offer, and acknowledge that pain and death are as natural as birth, woven inseparably into our human nature.

death grief guilt loss mourning nature pain suffering

Elaine Pagels

4fe8f18

Most people are not naturally reflective any more than they are naturally malicious, and the white man prefers to keep the black man at a certain human remove because it is easier for him thus to preserve his simplicity and avoid being called to account for crimes committed by his forefathers, or his neighbors.

blacks guilt race race-relations racism reflection thought thoughtfulness whites

James Baldwin

2cd9014

I have only to glance over my shoulder for all those years to drop away and I see it behind me again, the ravine, rising all green and black through the saplings, a picture that will never leave me.

donna-tartt guilt haunted indelible memory prologue the-secret-history

Donna Tartt

88fa95b

"Mother's intentions were always sound, never muddy; I don't imagine that she troubled herself to feel very guilty. But the Rev. Mr. Merrill was a man who took to wallowing in guilt; his remorse, after all, was all he had to cling to-especially after his scant courage left him, and he was forced to acknowledge that he would never be brave enough to abandon his miserable wife and children for my mother. He would continue to torture himself, of course, with the insistent and self-destructive notion that he loved my mother. I suppose that his "love" of my mother was as intellectually detached from feeling and action as his "belief" was also subject to his immense capacity for remote and unrealistic interpretation. My mother was a healthier animal; when he said he wouldn't leave his family for her, she simply put him out of her mind and went on singing. But as incapable as he was of a heartfelt response to a real situation, the Rev. Mr. Merrill was tirelessly capable of thinking; he pondered and brooded and surmised and second-guessed my mother to death."

guilt remorse thinking

John Irving

f0bf99e

She felt intense disappointment, even a kind of guilt, as if she had missed something, perhaps forever. He had been there, she could have spoken to him. Could she call out now, cry his name? It was impossible.

finality guilt iris-murdoch missed-chances missed-opportunity sad the-green-knight

Iris Murdoch

cc41616

Anger, hatred, and bitterness are lethal poisons. They cause a slow, painful emotional death that only you suffer. Self-destruction will never defeat an enemy or create justice.

bitterness guilt hatred self-destruction

James Patterson

dca1b95

The events that occur in my life are workout situations. They are there for my benefit so I can become strong and gain wisdom and information by working my way through those situations.

addiction-and-recovery addiction-free chris-prentiss chris-prentiss-quotes guilt happiness joy life love pain passages-malibu passages-ventura peace philosophy philosophy-of-life wisdom

Chris Prentiss

98b2e57

Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Jesus always seems to be pairing God's forgiveness of us with our forgiveness of others. But why? Growing up, I thought it was a way of guilting us into forgiving others, like Jesus was saying, Hey, I died for you and you can't even be nice to your little brother? As though God can get us to do the right thing if God can just make us feel bad about how much we owe God. But that is not the God I see in Jesus Christ. That is a manipulative mother.

guilt manipulation religion

Nadia Bolz-Weber

087ddfb

Guilt is a strong motivator, sometimes even stronger than love.

brothers family fantasy guilt portal-fantasy young-adult young-adult-fantasy

Cornelia Funke

3fff438

"Geraldine keeps her eyes trained on him as she slowly reaches into her purse, wrapping her fingers around her gun. "...Callo, I'm so sorry that your life ended up this way," she sighs as she gets out of her side of the car, her feet burning from the cold as her high heels sink into the fallen snow. "Aren't you scared?" "I'm you, Geraldine... I fell into the same trap as you, anyway," Callo answers. His large eyes are shining with tears, but he doesn't seem afraid in the least. "...The dead don't feel anything, you know... not even guilt or regret. So, what is there to be afraid of?"

apology dead death depressed depression die dying emotion eyes fear forlorn forlornness friend friendship guilt gun high-heels kill lonliness mental-illness purse regret revolver tears trap usurer

Rebecca McNutt

a72de62

We may believe that anxiety and fear don't concern us because we avoid experiencing them. We may keep the scope of our lives narrow and familiar, opting for sameness and safety. We may not even know that we are scared of success, failure, rejection, criticism, conflict, competition, intimacy, or adventure, because we rarely test the limits of our competence and creativity. We avoid anxiety by avoiding risk and change. Our challenge: To be willing to become more anxious, via embracing new situations and stepping more fully into our lives.

brave fear guilt psychology self-improvement shame

Harriet Lerner

1453138

If there is any fruitless mental torment which is greater than that of jealousy it is perhaps remorse. Even the pains of loss may be less searching; and often of course these agonies combine, as now they did for me. I say remorse not repentance. I doubt if I have ever experienced repentance in a pure form; perhaps it does not exist in a pure form. Remorse contains guilt, but helpless hopeless guilt which knows of no cure for the painful bite.

guilt iris-murdoch jealousy remorse repentance the-sea-the-sea torment

Iris Murdoch

d981e5b

"Euere Schuld, Deichgraf!" schrie eine Stimme aus dem Haufen."

guilt ignorance mobs prejudice responsibility

Theodor Storm

59bad1b

"It was a stark choice: shoes or food; beauty or sustenance; the sensible or the self-indulgent. "I'll take the shoes," she said firmly." --

guilt shoes shopping

Alexander McCall Smith

b68fb29

If you're being tormented by guilt or feelings of failure in this area, confess your thoughts to God, pray about it, put it in God's hands, and then stand up and proclaim the truth!

god guilt inspiration parent truth

Stormie Omartian

a6dc658

"You're an asshole, you know that, Haller?" I nodded and headed back to the door. "When I need to be."

guilt

Michael Connelly

67e768a

"Elwood said, "It's against the law." State law, but also Elwood's. If everyone looked the other way, then everybody was in on it. If he looked the other way, he was as implicated as the rest. That's how he saw it, how he'd always seen things."

complicity guilt law morality right wrong

Colson Whitehead

be7036a

When a man admits guilt we have to believe him. We cannot set ourselves to proving to him that he is wrong. Otherwise the law courts would never function.

guilt law

Hilary Mantel

3a0d63a

I had told him I was searching for my keys, that's what had taken me so long in the car, and I squeezed him tighter, as if I could crush my little lie.

guilt lie make-up

Mitch Albom

9958679

Farkli hisseden, farkli hassasiyetlere sahip ve farkindaligi guclenmis baska bir insan haline geldigimi biliyorum. Daha iyi bir insan oldugumu iddia edecek cesaretim yok elbette, ama daha mutlu bir insan oldugumu biliyorum, cunku o buz gibi donuk hayatim icin yeni bir anlam buldum, yasamin kendisinden baska bir sozcukle aciklayamayacagim bir anlam. Ait oldugum kesimin normlarini ve kaliplarini bos buldugum icin artik ne kendimden ne de baskalarindan utaniyorum. Onur, suc, gunah gibi kavramlar bir anda soguk, metalsi bir tini kazandi, bunlari dehsete kapilmadan telaffuz edemiyorum artik.

guilt happiness honour life life-lessons sin

Stefan Zweig

f6145c9

But it's a lot easier to blame someone else than accept blame for your own failings.

blaming failure guilt

Jacqueline Carey