Guilt Quotes

In an extroverted society, the difference between an introvert and an extrovert is that an introvert is often unconsciously deemed guilty until proven innocent.

~ Criss Jami

It has always seemed that a fear of judgment is the mark of guilt and the burden of insecurity.

~ Criss Jami

Guilt and rage, hatred and fear were pathways to weakness and clumsy choices.

~ Jonathan Maberry

The most judgmental people are often those who complain most about being judged. The ones not complaining will look as though they're the ones doing the judging.

~ Criss Jami

This is glorious!' I cried, and then i looked at the sinner by my side. He sat with his head sunk on his breast and said 'Yes', without raising his eyes, as if afraid to see writ large on the clear sky of the offing the reproach of his romantic conscience.

~ Joseph Conrad

The weekend break had begun with the usual resentment and had continued with half-repressed ill humour. It was, of course, his fault. He had been more ready to hurt his wife's feelings and deprive his daughter than inconvenience a pub bar full of strangers. He wished there could be one memory of his dead child which wasn't tainted with guilt and regret.

~ P.d. James

Life is full of challenges. In the end, it's getting up that pulls us through the dark days. So we can admire the sunset.

~ Azelene Williams

Life is full of challenges. In the end it's getting up that pulls us through the dark day's. So that we can admire the sunset

~ Azelene Williams

Mamá had always made it clear she believed girls who got raped deserved it. I hadn't done any of the things she said “bad” girls did, though. I didn't parade myself around in sluttish clothes and make untoward advances. But Mamá had been wrong about everything else so far, so maybe she'd been wrong about that, too. Maybe it didn't matter whether you were bad or good, prudish or wanton: maybe just being female was enough, for some men. Maybe, like so much else, it was only about control. But then why do I feel so guilty?

~ Nenia Campbell

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.

~ Harriet Lerner

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?

~ Rebecca Mcnutt

The feelings of guilt takes away self-confidence, reduces self-esteem welcomes fear, confusion, disappointment, depression etc.

~ Sunday Adelaja

The skeletons of the past must not hold back the dream of a new life, even though fear and regret, guilt and remorse may unsettle us during the effort to give our future a new home. (“Into a new life”)

~ Erik Pevernagie

I have too much doubt. It’s the bastard child of fear. I hate fear. So doubt sidles up next to determination in my heart. It doesn’t outweigh it. They coexist.

~ Kim Holden

We tend to deny our humanity because in accepting the fullness of it, we would need to confess how little we’ve done with it.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

After reading Burgum, [Patricia Highsmith] wrote in her cahier that, like Kafka, she felt she was a pessimist, unable to formulate a system in which an individual could believe in God, government or self. Again like Kafka, she looked into the great abyss which separated the spiritual and the material and saw the terrifying emptiness, the hollowness, at the heart of every man, a sense of alienation she felt compelled to explore in her fiction. As her next hero, she would take an architect, 'a young man whose authority is art and therefore himself,' who when he murders, 'feels no guilt or even fear when he thinks of legal retribution'. The more she read of Kafka the more she felt afraid as she came to realise, 'I am so similar to him.

~ Andrew Wilson

I didn't need his criticism. I carried enough guilt on my own. I had done everything wrong. I had the highest marks in school but couldn't master common sense.

~ Ruta Sepetys

I have moments that aren't too bad, but there's always something I'm struggling with, or feeling guilty about. I just figured I needed to try harder, but I find it difficult to sustain that motivation.

~ William Paul Young

Guilt is motherfucker,... it takes everything motivation, aspiration and soul. (Kill Game 2015)

~ Deyth Banger

Was it you or I who stumbled first? It does not matter. The one of us who finds the strength to get up first, must help the other.

~ Vera Nazarian

Yes you have returnedAnd things are as they wereBut this you cannot hide,A part of you has died.

~ Joyce Rachelle

Don't be sorry;Don't you cry.It's enoughThat you tried.I love you,And that won't change.It's not your faultThings worked out this way

~ Margo T. Rose

Peace is a place of unhindered enjoyment of friendship beyond guilt, suspicion, blame of inferiority

~ François Du Toit

Guilty feelings about clothes are totally unnecessary. A lot of people earn their living by making clothes, so you should never feel bad.

~ Karl Lagerfeld

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

~ Albert Einstein

On the ration cards of Nazi Germany, there was no listing for punishment, but everyone had to take their turn. For some it was death in a foreign country during the war. For others it was poverty and guilt when the war was over, when six million discoveries were made throughout Europe.

~ Markus Zusak

We had deluded ourselves that perhaps peace might find the Arabs able, unhelped and untaught, to defend themselves with paper tools. Meanwhile we glozed our fraud by conducting their necessary war purely and cheaply. But now this gloss had gone from me. Chargeable against my conceit were the causeless, ineffectual deaths of Hesa. My will had gone and I feared to be alone, lest the winds of circumstance, or power, or lust, blow my empty soul away.

~ T.e. Lawrence

For Achilles, the death of Patroclus pushed him into a fury, but it was not only grief that drove him. It was also a sense of shame and guilt because he had not been there to protect his friend. Sometimes men in combat feel this sort of survivor’s guilt even though, realistically, they could have done nothing to prevent their comrade’s death.

~ Nel Noddings

Worry only about what you control. The rest is war.

~ Matthew J. Hefti

On the whole the modern world has been conditioned to have a chip on its shoulder against devoutly religious people. I disagree with this in some instances - particularly in, believe it or not, matters of integrity. Deep down I often rather believe the man who honestly thinks - or better yet even, prefers - that he has an omnipotent Judge breathing down his neck, holding his every word and his every move accountable, than the man who much like his modern peers, and ironically enough, claims or wishes to bask in complete independence. As it appears actually, the former is more free of guilt than the latter.

~ Criss Jami

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.

~ Maureen Brady

Here is a man whose life and actions the world has already condemned - yet whose enormous fortune...has already brought him acquittal!

~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

Whew,' he said, 'I'm glad that's over, Thomas. I've been feeling awfully bad about it.' It was only too evident that he no longer did.

~ Graham Greene

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.

~ Michael Pollan

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

~ Christopher Hitchens

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

~ Libba Bray

You don't have to beat a woman if you can make her feel guilty.

~ Erica Jong

Guilt cannot change you, it can only hint that there’s something worth your effort to change.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

The guilt you felt when you were smiling and others were suffering, the guilt you felt when you were petty with friends and impatient with your parents, when you were rude to your teachers and didn’t stand up for strangers, that guilt is marvellous. It proves that you are human, that you want to be better. Thank this guilt for teaching you, for making you aware. And now endeavour to better yourself. It is a lifelong work to become the person we want to be.

~ Kamand Kojouri

Looks sure can be deceiving: not every ‘ugly’ person is a ‘bad’ person (or is guilty of whatever it is that they are accused of).

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana