Guilt Quotes - Page 5

Guilt is a useless feeling. It's never enough to make you change direction--only enough to make you useless.

Conscience is what makes a boy tell his mother before his sister does.

When we played softball, I'd steal second base, feel guilty and go back.

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.

Ursula K Le Guin

Your job today is to pass gas. You do that and we can start feeding you liquids. No fart, no food.

Khaled Hosseini

He could deal with his guilt all by himself. Guilt didn't add up to love, an emotion she was done with forever.

Susan Elizabeth Phillips

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.

Rick Riordan

Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.

Voltaire

You can't stay young forever. Being young is a privilege. God knows, how many of them in their death bed wished to be young again and they regretted all the things they should have and should not have done.

Diyar Harraz

There is no need for me to curse you -the murderer survives the victim only to learn that it was himself that he longed to be rid of. Hatred is self-hatred.

Thornton Wilder

Guilt is a useless feeling. It's never enough to make you change direction- only enough to paralyze you and make you... well, useless.

Daniel Nayeri

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.

Peter Ackroyd

It takes more courage to be yourself than to live in the prison of ego with feelings of guilt. It takes a lot more courage to be happy than to be unhappy.

Human Angels

In Revenge, as in life, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. In the end the guilty always fall.

Emily Thorne

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?

Terry Tempest Williams

Guilt is never to be doubted.

Franz Kafka

Sometimes to escape the noise of haunting memories, you need your best friends hand in your own, to help erase the sound and fill you with a sense of peace, even if it’s temporary.

Andrea Michelle

Once upon a time there was a mother who, in order to become a mother, had agreed to change her name; who set herself the task of falling in love with her husband bit-by-bit, but who could n ever manage to love one part, the part, curiously enough, which made possible her motherhood; whose feet were hobbled by verrucas and whose shoulders were stooped beneath the accumulating guilts of the world; whose husband's unlovable organ failed to recover from the effects of a freeze; and who, like her husband, finally succumbed to the mysteries of telephones, spending long minutes listening to the words of wrong-number callers . . . shortly after my tenth birthday (when I had recovered from the fever which has recently returned to plague me after an interval of nearly twenty-one years), Amina Sinai resumed her recent practice of leaving suddenly, and always immediately after a wrong number, on urgent shopping trips.

Salman Rushdie

For the last four years of her life, Mother was in a nursing home called Chateins in St. Louis ... [S]ix months before she died I sent a Mother's Day card. There was a horrible, mushy poem in it. I remember feeling "vaguely guilty.

William S Burroughs

Part of the problem was that I couldn't seem to get past the fact that I hadn't tried to escape from Kas. Even in France, when he'd left me on my own for several days, I'd carried on working [as a prostitute] and doing all the things he'd told me to d. And although I knew that it was because of the fear he'd so carefully and deliberately instilled in me, I still felt as though I'd somehow colluded in what had happened to me - despite knowing, deep down, that nothing could have been further from the truth.

Sophie Hayes

To show resentment at a reproach is to acknowledge that one may have deserved it.

Tacitus

But I rather thought--I mean, I heard you'd killed Balder the Fair.""I never did," snapped Loki crossly. "Well, no one ever proved I did. What happened to the presumption of innocence? Besides, he was supposed to be invulnerable. Was it my fault that he wasn't?

Joanne Harris

His remorse was purely physical. Only his body, strained nerves, and cowering flesh were afraid of the drowned man. Conscience played no part in his terrors, and he had not the slightest regret about killing Camille; in his moments of calm, when the spectre was not present, he would have committed the murder over again had he thought his interests required it.

Émile Zola

When silence greeted her question, she looked at Caine—for that was how he saw himself in that moment and in all the moments after: his brother’s murderer.

V.S. Carnes

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

Sometimes people feel they need to control everything, as if they could! Matters of life and death are out of your hands. The more you come to realize this, the harder you try to prove that you can control SOMETHING, anything. All you can really control is your response to what happens. You cannot control matters of life or death and because of this you are not accountable. You cannot be held liable for anything that you have no power over. Guilt, shame and blame make no sense when circumstances are beyond your control.

Kate McGahan

I always ended up doing things I didn’t want to do today just so I didn’t regret not doing them tomorrow.

Hilary Grossman

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.

Miriam Toews

The more she laughs, the more he ups the ante with his clowning. By the time he finishes he will have run through all the secret mysteries of laughter that human beings have ever understood, mobilizing everything at his disposal. There is no way for him to know how guilty it makes his mother feel, seeing such a young child go to such lengths just to wring a bit of apparent happiness from her, or that her laughter will all eventually run out.

Han Kang

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

Gregory Maguire

Because any guilt the sizeof a speck of dust, or shame,can crush even the best of men,in mountains of weight

Phil Volatile

Any anger I feel vanishes. What is left cannot be described. It is guilt piled onto emptiness and set afire.

Bryan Reardon

My guilt is an ocean for me to drown in.

Nicola Yoon

Because even if you buried yourself in guilt, you can't go back and change what happened.

Katherine Fleet

12 Things To Ditch For A Great DayBlameGuiltWorryRegretResentmentEntitlementSelf-pityLazinessNegative attitudeFear of embarrassmentUrge to one-up othersYour comfort zone

Charles F. Glassman

Explanations are ghosts of guilt, shadows of sympathy, and I have no use for them.

Jessica Dawson

There are two kinds of guilt: the kind that drowns you until you’re useless, and the kind that fires your soul to purpose.

Sabaa Tahir

When your out of space, your out of place at the same time.

Auliq-Ice

Your mistakes are to help you develop your purpose, not shame and guilt.

Sue Fitzmaurice

Everyone makes mistakes, Jenna. Everyone has regrets and guilt for things they should have done differently in their lives. Shit happens, and we do the best we can at the time. You can't blame yourself forever.

Lara Adrian

After each dream, Frankie woke with a start, soaked in tears. But she found no relief in the peaceful silence of her room, because there everything was real. And the guilt was too immense to bear. Each time she opened her eyes, she'd quickly shut them. And wish that she had woken up for the very last time.

Lisi Harrison

There are some debts that can't be paid with money.

Steven J. Carroll

I'm starting to understand that attempting to be perfect has been the goal of my life. Our lives. Attempting to be this fault-free, smiling person in this loving, happy family that fits so perfectly in this pretty, inoffensive little town. What was so bad about that goal after all? Only that I couldn't do it. That I let everybody down. I've been so down about it, so depressed thinking about all the balls I was trying to juggle that I've dropped, and now the cogs are turning toward total apathy toward it all, everything and all I can think about is that I am a shell of a human being. I'm a pushover. I'm to blame.

Abigail Tarttelin

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. André Chevalier

Nikki Sex

Holding one's self responsible is a critical feature in stigma and in the generation of shame since violation of standards, rules, and goals are insufficient in its elicitation unless responsibility can be placed on the self. Stigma may differ from other elicitors of shame and guilt, in part because it is a social appearance factor. The degree to which the stigma is socially apparent is the degree to which one must negotiate the issue of blame, not only for one's self but between one's self and the other who is witness to the stigma. Stigmatization is a much more powerful elicitor of shame and guilt in that it requires a negotiation not only between one's self and one's attributions, but between one's self and the attributions of others.

Michael Lewis

I'm not interested in anybody's guilt. Guilt is a luxury that we can no longer afford. I know you didn't do it, and I didn't do it either, but I am responsible for it because I am a man and a citizen of this country and you are responsible for it, too, for the very same reason... Anyone who is trying to be conscious must begin to dismiss the vocabulary which we've used so long to cover it up, to lie about the way things are.

James Baldwin

Guilt -- if there was any guilt -- spread out and diffused itself over everybody and everything. . . . Perhaps at some point in time, at some spot in the world, a moment of responsibility existed.

Philip K Dick

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.

Hilary Mantel

I once was a stranger to grace and to God,I knew not my danger, and felt not my load;Though friends spoke in rapture of Christ on the tree,Jehovah Tsidkenu was nothing to me.I oft read with pleasure, to sooth or engage,Isaiah’s wild measure and John’s simple page;But e’en when they pictured the blood sprinkled treeJehovah Tsidkenu seemed nothing to me.Like tears from the daughters of Zion that roll,I wept when the waters went over His soul;Yet thought not that my sins had nailed to the treeJehovah Tsidkenu—’twas nothing to me.When free grace awoke me, by light from on high,Then legal fears shook me, I trembled to die;No refuge, no safety in self could I see—Jehovah Tsidkenu my Saviour must be.My terrors all vanished before the sweet Name;My guilty fears banished, with boldness I cameTo drink at the fountain, life giving and free—Jehovah Tsidkenu is all things to me.Jehovah Tsidkenu! my treasure and boast,Jehovah Tsidkenu! I ne’er can be lost;In Thee I shall conquer by flood and by field,My cable, my anchor, my breast-plate and shield! Even treading the valley, the shadow of death,This “watchword” shall rally my faltering breath;For while from life’s fever my God sets me free,Jehovah Tsidkenu, my death song shall be.

Robert Murray McCheyne

At home in bed that first night I had patchy, mundane dreams about normal things. It would be nobler and less uncomfortable to write that I tossed sleeplessly.

Darin Strauss

I touched curiosity,I kissed sin, I felt regret,And I was forgiven.But life won't let me forget.

J.A. ANUM

When my mother would tell me that she wanted me to have something because she as a child had never had it, I wanted, or I partly wanted, to give it back. All my life I continued to feel that bliss for me would have to imply my mother's deprivation or sacrifice. I don't think it would have occurred to her what a double emotion I felt. I could hardly bear my pleasure for the guilt. There is no wonder that a passion for independence sprang up in me at the earliest age. It took me a long time to manage the independence, (but) I have never managed to handle the guilt. In the act and the course of writing stories, these are the two springs, one bright, one dark, that feed the stream.

Eudora Welty

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.

Milan Kundera

God does not regret saving you. There is no sin which you commit which is beyond the cross of Christ.

Matt Chandler

For too many women in America are becoming sick with exhaustion and stress as they try to do things that can't be -- shouldn't be -- done. Too many are eaten up by resentment toward their husbands, who are not subject to the same heartless pressures. Too many are becoming anxious and depressed because they are overwhelmed and disappointed. Too many are letting their lives be poisoned by guilt because their expectations can't be met, and because there is an enormous cognitive dissonance between what they know to be right for themselves and what they're told is right for their children. Too many feel out of control.

Judith Warner

If someone wants to be in your life they will find you. If they don't they will find an excuse.

Shannon L. Alder

If you survive, you've got to live with the guilt, and that's more difficult than looking someone in the eye and pulling the trigger. Trust me. I've done both.

Sara Grant

Guilt's just your ego's way of tricking you into thinking that you're making moral progress. Don't fall for it, my dear.

Elizabeth Gilbert

The burdens I carry on my back are in direct correlation to the weight of my ego.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

...stars are dying all the time. Some explode. Some collapse and cave in on themselves. Those ones become black holes. Others get sucked up inside of them just for getting too close. Guilty by association. Prosecuted for proximity.

Kris Kidd

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Guilt Quotes - Page 5

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