Guilt Quotes

“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.”
― Albert Camus, The Rebel

“Guilt is a destructive and ultimately pointless emotion”
― Lynn Crilly, Hope with Eating Disorders

“I never cut my neighbor's throat;
My neighbor's gold I never stole;
I never spoiled his house and land;
But God have mercy on my soul!

For I am haunted night and day
By all the deeds I have not done;
O unattempted loveliness!
O costly valor never won!”
― Marguerite Wilkinson

“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, Selected Works

“On Pleasure

Pleasure is a freedom-song,
But it is not freedom.
It is the blossoming of your desires,
But it is not their fruit.
It is a depth calling unto a height,
But it is not the deep nor the high.
It is the caged taking wing,
But it is not space encompassed.
Aye, in very truth, pleasure is a freedom-song.
And I fain would have you sing it with fullness of heart; yet I would
not have you lose your hearts in the singing.

Some of your youth seek pleasure as if it were all, and they are judged
and rebuked.
I would not judge nor rebuke them. I would have them seek.
For they shall find pleasure, but not her alone;
Seven are her sisters, and the least of them is more beautiful than
pleasure.
Have you not heard of the man who was digging in the earth for roots
and found a treasure?

And some of your elders remember pleasures with regret like wrongs
committed in drunkenness.
But regret is the beclouding of the mind and not its chastisement.
They should remember their pleasures with gratitude, as they would
the harvest of a summer.
Yet if it comforts them to regret, let them be comforted.

And there are among you those who are neither young to seek nor old
to remember;
And in their fear of seeking and remembering they shun all pleasures,
lest they neglect the spirit or offend against it.
But even in their foregoing is their pleasure.
And thus they too find a treasure though they dig for roots with quivering
hands.
But tell me, who is he that can offend the spirit?
Shall the nightingale offend the stillness of the night, or the firefly the
stars?
And shall your flame or your smoke burden the wind?
Think you the spirit is a still pool which you can trouble with a staff?

Oftentimes in denying yourself pleasure you do but store the desire in
the recesses of your being.
Who knows but that which seems omitted today, waits for tomorrow?
Even your body knows its heritage and its rightful need and will not
be deceived.
And your body is the harp of your soul,
And it is yours to bring forth sweet music from it or confused sounds.

And now you ask in your heart, “How shall we distinguish that which
is good in pleasure from that which is not good?”
Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the
pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower,
But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee.
For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life,
And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love,
And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure
is a need and an ecstasy.”
― Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

“When psychologists Catherine Caldwell-Harris and Ayse Ayçiçegi compared U.S. and Turkish samples, they found that having "an orientation inconsistent with societal values" is a risk factor for poor mental health. The findings support what the researchers call the personality-culture clash hypothesis: "Psychological adjustment depends on the degree of match between personality and the values of surrounding society." To the extent that introverts feel the need to explain, apologize, or feel guilty about what works best for them, they feel alienated not only from society but from themselves.”
― Laurie Helgoe

“You don't have to beat a woman if you can make her feel guilty.”
― Erica Jong, Fear of Flying

“We gather our arms full of guilt as though it were precious stuff. It must be that we want it that way.”
― John Steinbeck

“The law does not expect a man to be prepared to defend every act of his life which may be suddenly and without notice alleged against him.”
― John Marshall

“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 Firing Line 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.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“She raced for him, propelled by the strength of a thousand regrets.”
― Lisi Harrison, Monster High

“Blame has no purpose, and it is a lousy teacher.”
― John Yokoyama, When Fish Fly: Lessons for Creating a Vital and Energized Workplace from the World Famous Pike Place Fish Market

“Everyone in a decadent society, Lorrain urges, is guilty. Everyone loves masking murder and everyone takes masochistic pleasure in the risk of discovery and punishment.”
― Jennifer Birkett

“We turned an anthem into an assignment, a poem into a job description.”
― Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood

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

- The Consumptive. Belsen 1945”
― Mervyn Peake, Collected Poems

“Don't allow yourself to feel guilty about wanting deep and endless love, amazing sex and opportunities that will change your life. Expect these things - work for them and don't ever stop until they're yours.”
― Jennifer Elisabeth

“No one else could see all the bodies she’d left behind, but they were there, looking at her. Or maybe that was just her, looking at herself, and not liking what she saw. Knowing she could never escape her own judging gaze.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities

“We are all just trying to be holy.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“Peace is a place of unhindered enjoyment of friendship beyond guilt, suspicion, blame of inferiority”
― François Du Toit, The Mirror Bible

“He wished he could relieve himself of his doubts and guilts half as easily.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Storm of Swords

“How much suffering did you lay on yourself before you awakened and recognized that guilt is deadly, and empty, and profitless?”
― Janny Wurts, Traitor's Knot

“In all of our lives, there are days that we wish we could see expunged from the record of our very existence. Perhaps we long for that erasure because a particular day brought us such splintering sorrow that we can scarcely bear to think of it ever again. Or we might wish to blot out an episode forever because we behaved so poorly on that day- we were mortifyingly selfish, or foolish to an extraordinary degree. Or perhaps we injured another person and wish to disremember guilt. Tragically, there are some days in a lifetime when all three of those things happen at once- when we are heartbroken and foolish and unforgivably injurious to others, all at the same time.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, The Signature of All Things

“Hence, it is quite conceivable that even the sense of guilt engendered by civilization is not recognized as such, but remains for the most part unconscious, or manifests itself as an unease, a discontent, for which other motivations are sought. The religions, at least, have never ignored the part that a sense of guilt plays in civilization. Moreover - a point I failed to appreciate earlier - they claim to redeem humanity from this sense of guilt, which they call sin. From the way in which this redemption is achieved in Christianity - through the sacrificial death of one man, who thereby takes upon himself the guilt shared by all - we drew an inference as to what may have been the original occasion for our acquiring this primordial guilt, which also marked the beginning of civilization.”
― Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents

“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.”
― Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys

“The things white folks put people through--my god, cruel in ways I just can't even reconcile. Should be ashamed for a thousand years for all the lynching and raping, using people like goddamn animals."

"Not all white people," Sidney added. "My mother wouldn't have been a part of this. She shouldn't've had to feel shame for something she didn't do."

"Shouldn't she?" Sailor cut eyes at Charlie and then in the rearview mirror at Sidney.
"Feeling what deserves to be felt is the only pathway to understanding. Let's get it straight: white folks did rape and steal and kill, and black folks died by the thousands--was dying all the way up 'til a year ago. Never feeling shame for that, and not allowing us to feel anger over it, means we don't evolve. We just go on repeating evil we can't understand. I'm sure your momma was a nice lady with a good heart, but her not feeling ashamed about all that happened is the same as not feeling anything at all.”
― Cebo Campbell, Sky Full of Elephants

“The existence of guilty sense is so
important in education and religion.”
― Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity

“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, In the Belly of the Beast: Letters From Prison

“We’re animals. No shame, no guilt - no sin…”
― Heather McVea, Turn Darkly

“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, The Quiet American

“Most injuries heal in time, but guilt is a cancer that knows where to hide.”
― RMA Spears