Guilt Quotes

Sometimes I doubt that anyone with a philosophical turn of mind is fit to judge anyone. He never comprehends the concept of guilt.

~ Jack Henry Abbott

Mercy is a contingency plan, devised by the guilty in the eventuality that they are caught. Justice is the domain of the just. - Richard Rahl

~ Terry Goodkind

If the system turns away from the abuses inflicted on the guilty, then who can be next but the innocents?

~ Michael Connelly

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

~ Anthony De Mello

We’re animals. No shame, no guilt - no sin…

~ Heather Mcvea

His sins seemed to be so few that he was alarmed and groped anxiously for more, knowing he could not be without guilt.

~ Morley Callaghan

I lay on my side with my head on the pillows and looked out of the window; the blue of the sky was so clear it almost hurt. I felt it come again. I didn't cry much, just a few tears rolling down, wetting my eyes. I wondered about the cause. My thoughts lay embedded in sinews and skin, beyond my reach. Those of you who believe yourselves to be clean, without sin, without guilt, may cast the first stone. I saw myself under a heap of stones.

~ Hanne Ørstavik

We are equal by fault, but never equal in acceptance.

~ Anthony Liccione

The heart of the difference between cheap-grace doctrines of guilt-free existence and the Christian gospel is this: Modern chauvinism desperately avoids the message of guilt by treating it as a regrettable symptom. Christianity listens to the message of guilt by conscientious self-examination. Hedonism winks at sin. Christianity earnestly confesses sin. Secularism assumes it can extricate itself from gross misdeeds. Christianity looks to grace for divine forgiveness. Modern consciousness is its own fumbling attorney before the bar of conscience. Christianity rejoices that God himself has become our attorney. Modernity sees no reason to atone for or make reparation for wrongs. Christianity knows that unatoned sin brings on misery of conscience. Modern naturalism sees no need for God. Christianity celebrates God's willingness to suffer for our sins and redeem us from guilt.

~ Thomas C. Oden

Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,Guiltie of dust and sin.

~ George Herbert

People who excuse their faults and claim they didn't deserved to be punished - there are lots of them. But those who don't excuse their faults and admit they didn't deserve to be spared - they are few.

~ Zhuangzi

You stupid cow!” He laughed at her behind those icicle eyes. “You really think anyone is better than you? Everyone’s a thief, woman! Waiting for the next terrible thing to do to get ahead of their neighbor. Forty of us around a table weren’t enough to convince you of that?

~ Devon Trevarrow Flaherty

Guilt, fear, sin, doubt. Guilt, fear, sin, doubt. Guilt, fear, sin, doubt. That’s what religion is all about.

~ Stanley Victor Paskavich

I, however, have really never been anywhere yet, not because some sins or other could wrap themselves around me there, but because I'd rather sin at home, where God even announces the weather to me in advance on TV, slowly, so that I can write it down, in case it's worth the proper guilt. Sinning is enough, there's no need for surprises as well.

~ Elfriede Jelinek

Conviction of sin is one of the rarest things that ever strikes a man. It is the threshold of an understanding of God. Jesus Christ said that when the Holy Spirit came He would convict of sin, and when the Holy Spirit rouses the conscience and brings him into the presence of God, it is not his relationship with men that bothers him, but his relationship with God.

~ Oswald Chambers

We are all guilty of sin, error, and moments of sheer stupidity; none of us should be casting stones. The occasional arced pebble might be overlooked.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Comfort came in and stood with an appearance of guilt and shame. Her head bent, her eyes soaked with tears, her hands and legs, vibrating like a guiter string as perspiration covered her entire body, she felt like disappearing into the thin air, maybe to another mind creating world.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

Expiating a sin does not mean doing something opposite to wallow in guilt, but to use that same guilt to achieve full knowledge of the sin. The fault lies more not in having committed certain acts, rather in having carried them out without reaching their intimate knowledge. And this leads to committing a wrong again and again.

~ Massimo Marino

Buck Barrow, brother of Clyde Barrow (Bonnie & Clyde) was once asked Where are you wanted by the law? Barrow replied, Wherever I've been. What a picture of our own guilt. We cannot escape our sinfulness because it follows us everywhere. Neither can we escape the mercy of God that is always there.

~ William Branks

Repentance means turning from as much as you know of your sin to give as much as you know of yourself to as much as you know of your God, and as our knowledge grows at these three points so our practice of repentance has to be enlarged.

~ J.i. Packer

He [Muffat] experienced a sense of pleasure mingled with remorse, the sort of pleasure peculiar to those Catholics whom the fear of hell spurs on to commit sin.

~ Émile Zola

You see, sex for Jews is not such a terrible sin. It's just one more physical sport we're gonna stink at.

~ Jaffe Cohen

Very harmful effects can follow accepting the philosophy which denies personal guilt or sin and thereby makes everyone nice. By denying sin, the nice people make a cure impossible. Sin is most serious, and the tragedy is deepened by the denial that we are sinners…The really unforgiveable sin is the denial of sin, because, by its nature, there is now nothing to be forgiven. By refusing to admit to personal guilt, the nice people are made into scandalmongers, gossips, talebearers, and supercritics, for they must project their real if unrecognized guilt to others. This, again, gives them a new illusion of goodness: the increase of faultfinding is in direct ratio and proportion to the denial of sin.

~ Fulton J. Sheen

Henri held herself as if only her arms could keep her pieced together, and I saw that behind all her fake control—throwing herself at a teacher, carving our dad out of her heart—was something fragile. I wish we’d seen it sooner—my dad and Mr. Flynn, they had a responsibility to see it, to do better. Those moments were my sister spinning out.


~ Jessica Taylor

Look, I don't know who has been telling you over the years that you aren't worthy of love and happiness, but they're idiots. We all deserve it. And if people get hurt along the way, that's life. We've all been hurt. Doesn't that make love more crucial to our lives?

~ Karina Halle

I get up and pace the room, as if I can leave my guilt behind me. But it tracks me as I walk, an ugly shadow made by myself.

~ Rosamund Lupton

It seems The Adversary needs neither their guilt nor their request, but simply their return. In other words, since repentance is the process whereby guilt is turned into gratitude, He doesn’t mind if they skip a step and go directly to gratitude.

~ Geoffrey Wood

Gratitude, not guilt, as motivation is always His starting point, thus guilt as a motivation leads nowhere.

~ Geoffrey Wood

When Gregory says, ‘Are they guilty?’ he means, ‘Did they do it?’ But when he says, ‘Are they guilty?’ he means, ‘Did the court find them so?’ The lawyer’s world is entire unto itself, the human pared away.

~ Hilary Mantel

He felt weighted down by guilt and regret for what might have been his last words to all of them.

~ Karen Ann Wirtz

Squandering time is a luxury of profligate youth, when the years are to us as dollars are to billionaires. Doing the same thing in middle age just makes you nervous, not with vague puritan guilt but the more urgent worry that you're running out of time, a deadline you can feel in your cells.

~ Tim Kreider

Sometimes all you need is one person with a guilty conscience to come forward and do the right thing. Often, the miracle you need resides inside of yourself, when you humbly ask for forgiveness.

~ Shannon L. Alder

The kind of submission or resignation that he showed, was that of a man who was tired out. I sometimes derived an impression, from his manner or from a whispered word or two which escaped him, that he pondered over the question whether he might have a better man under better circumstances. But he never justified himself by a hint tending that way, or tried to bend the past out of its eternal shape.It happened on two or three occasions in my presence, that his desperate reputation was alluded to by one or other of the people in attendance on him. A smile crossed his face then, and he turned his eyes on me with a trustful look, as if he were confident that I had seen some small redeeming touch in him, even so long ago as when I was a little child. As to all the rest, he was humble and contrite, and I never knew him complain.

~ Charles Dickens

...the gospel has an answer to both pride and guilt.

~ John Piper

They are an American Delegation who are doing a tour of the region to apologize for the crusades', said Arafat. Then he, and his guest, burst out laughing. They both knew that America had little or no involvement in the wars of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. But Arafat, at any rate, was happy to indulge the affliction of anyone who believed they had and use it to his own political advantage.

~ Douglas Murray

Vultures pick the meat clean off a bone. Guilt eats at the marrow, leaving a man hollow.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

A pang of guilt, like a blaring siren, should never be ignored.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

This feeling of guilt is your conscience calling your attention to the higher road, and your heart wishing you had taken it.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Consider guilt like a street sign that warns of rough roads ahead if you don’t make a u-turn.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

If all of our sins, bad habits, and poor choices were permanently inked into our skin like tattoos, we would all dress quite modestly.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich