Guilt Quotes - Page 8

Saying sorry doesn't mean there isn't guilt & forgiving doesn't mean that the pain is gone.

In my experience, the biggest reason people struggle to get where they want to be is guilt. Guilt that they have let someone down, and also guilt that they are about to leave someone they love ...behind.

Bethany Brookbank

Feel what it's like to truly starve, and I guarantee that you'll forever think twice before wasting food.

Criss Jami

We turned an anthem into an assignment, a poem into a job description.

Rachel Held Evans

That's all my grandfather was guilty of, fear, faith in his words, but that was a high crime in her eyes. That's all Jack was guilty of that day, but I've lived with him a good while and I believe I understand him. Sometimes it might take an afternoon or evening of being here in this kitchen alone, thinking, but I can usually come to see his reasons through his ways. And half the job of finding peace is finding understanding. Don't you believe it to be so?

Kaye Gibbons

More accurately, on the bed and on the table lay various pieces of what had once been a body.Holmes was leaning with his back against the wall, his countenance deathly white. "The door was open," he said incongruously. "I was passing by, and the door was open.""Holmes," I whispered in horror."The door was open," he said once more, and then buried his face in his hands.

Lyndsay Faye

Many veterans feel guilty because they lived while others died. Some feel ashamed because they didn’t bring all their men home and wonder what they could have done differently to save them. When they get home they wonder if there’s something wrong with them because they find war repugnant but also thrilling. They hate it and miss it.Many of their self-judgments go to extremes. A comrade died because he stepped on an improvised explosive device and his commander feels unrelenting guilt because he didn’t go down a different street. Insurgents used women and children as shields, and soldiers and Marines feel a totalistic black stain on themselves because of an innocent child’s face, killed in the firefight. The self-condemnation can be crippling.The Moral Injury, New York Times. Feb 17, 2015

David Brooks

My mother used to say not sleeping was the sign of a guilty mind. It could have been. There was a lot in my mind to feel guilty about. When you’re drunk and trying to sleep, your thoughts are visited by the ghosts of those deeds whose heat still glows hottest in your personal darkness. Our actions burn much longer than the moments in which they occur. And drunks like me, we hide from the glow of the embers by fueling other fires and hiding within the flames.

Robert E. Dunn

Death abides by no one's rules...it takes what pleases it without consciousness to its decisions. It destroys what it will. It took the pieces of perfection I once knew and shattered them. Now what remains are shards of a dream, drawing blood with every step.

Cassandra Giovanni

When we teach people that suspending moral judgments is a virtue, the necessary outcome is moral horror.

Peter Boghossian

When basic human needs are ignored, rejected, or invalidated by those in roles and positions to appropriately meet them; when the means by which these needs have been previously met are no longer available: and when prior abuse has already left one vulnerable for being exploited further, the stage is set for the possibility these needs will be prostituted. This situation places a survivor who has unmet needs in an incredible dilemma. She can either do without or seek the satisfaction of mobilized needs through some "illegitimate" source that leaves her increasingly divided from herself and ostracized from others.While meeting needs in this way resolves the immediate existential experience of deprivation and abandonment. it produces numerous other difﬁculties. These include experiencing oneself as “bad” or "weak" for having such strong needs; experiencing shame and guilt for relying on “illegitimate” sources of satisfaction: experiencing a loss of self-respect for indulging in activities contrary to personal moral standards of conduct; risking the displeasure and misunderstanding of others important to her; and opening oneself to the continued abuse and victimization of perpetrators who are all too willing to selﬁshly use others for their own pleasure and purposes under the guise of being 'helpful.

J. Jeffrey Means

...guilt is deserved only when the effort to resist evil is never made.

Dean Koontz

The critical spirit rises up against itself and consumes its form. But instead of coming out of this process greater and purified, it devours itself in a kind of self-cannibalism and takes a morose pleasure in annihilating itself. Hyper-criticism eventuates in self-hatred, leaving behind it only ruins. A new dogma of demolition is born out of the rejection of dogmas. Thus we euro-americans are supposed to have only one obligation: endlessly atoning for what we have inflicted on other parts of humanity. How can we fail to see that this leads us to live off self-denunciation while taking a strange pride in being the worst? Self-denigration is all too clearly a form of indirect self-glorification. Evil can come only from us; other people are motivated by sympathy, good will, candor. This is the paternalism of the guilty conscience: seeing ourselves as the kings of infamy is still a way of staying on the crest of history.

Pascal Bruckner

The greater evil who is in-When both in wayward paths are straying? The poor sinner for the painOr he who pays for the sin?

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

[T]his readiness to assume the guilt for the threats to our environment is deceptively reassuring: We like to be guilty since, if we are guilty, it all depends on us. We pull the strings of the catastrophe, so we can also save ourselves simply by changing our lives. What is really hard for us (at least in the West) to accept is that we are reduced to the role of a passive observer who sits and watches what our fate will be. To avoid this impotence, we engage in frantic, obsessive activities. We recycle old paper, we buy organic food, we install long-lasting light bulbs—whatever—just so we can be sure that we are doing something. We make our individual contribution like the soccer fan who supports his team in front of a TV screen at home, shouting and jumping from his seat, in the belief that this will somehow influence the game's outcome.

Slavoj Žižek

There was no way to abandon guilt, no decent way to disown it. All the tangles and knots of bitterness and desperation and fear had to be pitied. No, better, grace had to fall over them.

Marilynne Robinson

A man makes himself hard and inflexible in order to escape his guiltiness. The strange paradox present on every page of the Gospels and which we can verify any day, is that it is not guilt which is the obstacle to grace, as moralism supposes. On the contrary, it is the repression of guilt, self-justification, genuine self-righteousness and smugness which is the obstacle.

Paul Tournier

Nothing cuts the nerve of the desire to pursue holiness as much as a sense of guilt. On the contrary, nothing so motivates us to deal with sin in our lives as does the understanding and application of the two truth that our sins are forgiven and the dominion of sin is broken because of our union with Christ.

Jerry Bridges

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.

James Frey

It's a singular sort of pain, watching the most beautiful creature self-destruct because you weren't able to find the red wire.

Joyce Rachelle

She was half running away from the hall, and she knew that she had done something cataclysmic, and she wanted nothing more than to be swallowed up by the darkness and to disappear forever.

J.K. Rowling

Attitude Is EverythingWe live in a culture that is blind to betrayal and intolerant of emotional pain. In New Age crowds here on the West Coast, where your attitude is considered the sole determinant of the impact an event has on you, it gets even worse.In these New Thought circles, no matter what happens to you, it is assumed that you have created your own reality. Not only have you chosen the event, no matter how horrible, for your personal growth. You also chose how you interpret what happened—as if there are no interpersonal facts, only interpretations.The upshot of this perspective is that your suffering would vanish if only you adopted a more evolved perspective and stopped feeling aggrieved. I was often kindly reminded (and believed it myself), “there are no victims.” How can you be a victim when you are responsible for your circumstances?When you most need validation and support to get through the worst pain of your life, to be confronted with the well-meaning, but quasi-religious fervor of these insidious half-truths can be deeply demoralizing. This kind of advice feeds guilt and shame, inhibits grieving, encourages grandiosity and can drive you to be alone to shield your vulnerability.

Sandra Lee Dennis

The past is but an untraceable footfallIt appears in intervals and pushes us back in time,In those moments of grief and then suddenly vanishes.It’s often dark and ruthless.It baffles our thoughts and seizes our peace of mind.By making us recollect our failures, our buried expectationsAnd our shattered dreams It only gives way to fleeting tears, leaving us with fruitless guilt.It wrecks our present and ruins our futureAnd thus should be left where it is meant to beIt should be left behind …

Chirag Tulsiani

The question shouldn't be, 'Are we guilty about our Colonial past?' it should be, 'Why aren't we more guilty about our corporate present?

Sara Sheridan

Drugs may know how to numb a brain, but the past never forgets to resurface.

Kris Kidd

Stay out of the court of self-judgment, for there is no presumption of innocence.

Robert Brault

Surely a good therapist should produce a Dorian Gray-style portrait from under the couch so the patient can see the person they really are.

Rosamund Lupton

Persons Are Turned against Themselves Evil also turns a person against herself so that self is used against self. The case of the woman who received a dismissal letter from her pastor comes to mind again. The psychological decompensation she suffered was successfully used by her husband to intercede with a psychiatrist of his choosing to commit her to the mental unit of a hospital for an extended involuntary stay, which further worsened her condition. Additional examples abound. Some patients report cults using induced hypnotic states to encourage a subject's dissociated hands and arms to do something hurtful to someone else. In such cases, the subject is encouraged to watch the hand that is hers but not hers (because it is dissociated from her). The end result is often extreme guilt. self-loathing, and distrust of one's self and motives.An incestuous parent may use a child's own natural bodily responses to repeated sexual stimulation to make the point that the child really "wants and enjoys“ what is being forced upon her.

J. Jeffrey Means

one of the central themes associated with developing a sense of authenticity involves inventing plausible narratives of self. For instance, Charles Taylor (1992) argues that the modern desire for authenticity is often prompted by a feeling that our life is shattered and it is difficult, if not impossible, to piece our life together in a meaningful way. He suggests that reclaiming authenticity would entail the provision of a space where we can once again craft coherent narratives that bind our life together.

André Spicer

Why had he committed this terrible sin? Everything in the world was insignificant compared to what he had lost. Everything in the world is insignificant compared to the truth and purity of one small man – even the empire stretching from the Black Sea to the Pacific Ocean, even science itself.Then he realized that it still wasn't too late. He still had the strength to lift up his head, to remain his mother's son.And he wasn't going to try to console himself or justify what he had done. He wanted this mean, cowardly act to stand all his life as a reproach; day and night it would be something to bring him back to himself. No, no, no! He didn't want to strive to be a hero – and then preen himself over his courage.Every hour, every day, year in, year out, he must struggle to be a man, struggle for his right to be pure and kind. He must do this with humility. And if it came to it, he mustn't be afraid even of death; even then he must remain a man.'Well then, we'll see,' he said to himself. 'Maybe I do have enough strength. Your strength, Mother...

Vasily Grossman

Sometimes "No" is the kindest word.

Vironika Tugaleva

(I)f we are going to be kind, let it be out of simple generosity, not because we fear guilt or retribution.

J.M. Coetzee

Feelings of guilt are the worst punishment. You are being punished by yourself.

Debasish Mridha

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.

Randy Alcorn

Now I need to speak directly and with compassion to those who have already pushed open the door of premarital sex. The monster has been released. You've lost your virginity and may have been sexually active for years. Perhaps you've been carrying a load of guilt for doing what you knew was wrong.

James C. Dobson

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.' These men without possessions or power, these strangers on Earth, these sinners, these followers of Jesus, have in their life with him renounced their own dignity, for they are merciful. As if their own needs and their own distress were not enough, they take upon themselves the distress and humiliation of others. They have an irresistible love for the down-trodden, the sick, the wretched, the wronged, the outcast and all who are tortured with anxiety. They go out and seek all who are enmeshed in the toils of sin and guilt. No distress is too great, no sin too appalling for their pity. If any man falls into disgrace, the merciful will sacrifice their own honour to shield him, and take his shame upon themselves.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Just as the room of the Inquisitor in Dr. Talos's play, with its high judicial bench, lurked somewhere at the lowest level of the House Absolute, so we have each of us in the dustiest cellars of our minds a counter at which we strive to repay the debts of the past with the debased currency of the present.

Gene Wolfe

Never be afraid when God brings back your past. Let your memory have its way with you. It is a minister of God bringing its rebuke and sorrow to you.

Oswald Chambers

Changes in the Perception of Self:People who have been traumatized in childhood are often troubled by guilt, shame, and negative feelings about themselves, such as the belief they are unlikable, unlovable, stupid, inept, dirty, worthless, lazy, and so forth. In Complex Dissociative disorders there are typically particular parts that contain these negative feelings about the self while other parts may evaluate themselves quite differently. Alterations among parts thus may result in rather rapid and distinct changes in self perception.

Suzette Boon

Neurotic guilt scans the horizons of the past relentlessly seeking out the most deplorable, hideous, and culpable acts which are least consistent with one's self image. This process is similar to the infinite passion of intensified anxiety for seeking the worst conceivable possibilities in order to alert the whole organism to potential danger.

Thomas C. Oden

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

Bad business should be done without guilt if it is a source of income.

Michael Bassey Johnson

Every morning I look in the mirror and remind myself: "No one owes you sh*t!" In this way, I am never disappointed. Never placing blame.

Brandi L. Bates

That was all he wanted for himself – to give to her. Biff's mouth hardened. He had done nothing wrong but in him he felt a strange guilt. Why? The dark guilt in all men, unreckoned and without a name.

Carson McCullers

The brain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination,made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain,danced like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through moving masks.

Oscar Wilde

Outside it was dark, but not as dark as it was inside of me.

Anna N.

We have an obligation to feel guilty." The words came out of her lips as if she were reciting an elegy. "Guilty. Because we kill the ones we love.

Cristiane Serruya

Mrs. Norris had been talking to her the whole way from Northampton of her wonderful good fortune, and the extraordinary degree of gratitude and good behaviour which it ought to produce, and her consciousness of misery was therefore increased by the idea of its being a wicked thing for her not to be happy.

Jane Austen

There was this movie that I would watch with her all the time, some stupid chick flick, and it had this opening line that would always make her catch her breath. 'I remember it hurt. Looking at her hurt', and I now realize that it was true. Every day I looked at her, it hurt. Hurt so much, because she was dying, and I couldn't help her.

Runaway Bunny

I take it, though,...given the utter lack of change in your demeanor and nearly radiating I-just-slaughtered-a -bunch-of-infant-forest-animals guilt coming from your general direction...the exchange with your female friend went something a trifle short of fantastic.

Anihyr Moonstar

This is my sin for giving in to my own weaknesses. My heart just couldn't keep up with the gigantic gap between dreams and reality. -Jellal Fernandes

Hiro Mashima

She closes her eyes, and I can see the moisture. She’s deep-breathing again, and I notice her hands are clutched around the opposing wrists, nails digging in deep, hard, scratching. Pain to replace pain.

Jasinda Wilder

We are all of us exposed to grief: the people we love die, as we shall ourselves in due course; expectations are disappointed and ambitions are thwarted by circumstance. Finally, there are some who insist upon feeling guilty over the ill they have done or simply on account of the ugliness which they perceive in their own souls. A solution of a kind has been found to this problem in the form of sedatives and anti-depressant drugs, so that many human experiences which used to be accepted as an integral part of human life are now defined and dealt with as medical problems. The widow who grieves for a beloved husband becomes a 'case', as does the man saddened by the recollection of the napalm or high explosives he has dropped on civilian populations. One had thought that guilt was a way, however indirect, in which we might perceive the nature of reality and the laws which govern our human experience; but it is now an illness that can be cured.Death however, remains incurable. Though we might be embarrassed by Victorian death-bed scenes or the practices of mourning among people less sophisticated than ourselves, the fact of death tells us so much about the realities of our condition that to ignore it or try to forget it is to be unaware of the most important thing we need to know about our situation as living creatures. Equally, to witness and participate in the dying of our fellow men and women is to learn what we are and, if we have any wisdom at all, to draw conclusions which must in their way affect our every thought and our every act.

Charles Le Gai Eaton

I felt bad for trying to live a happy, full life, while my heart was buried in a dead man’s chest.

Kristen Hope Mazzola

It happened. It was awful. You aren't perfect. That's all there is. Don't confuse your grief with guilt."We stay in the silence and the loneliness of the otherwise empty dormitory for a few more minutes, and I try to let her words work themselves into me.

Veronica Roth

She had dreams that shamed her in the morning, dreams where Ronan gave her a white powdered cake, yet spoke in Arin's voice. I made this for you, he said. Do you like it?The powder was so fine that she inhaled its sweetness, but always woke before she could taste.

Marie Rutkoski

Your thoughts can torture you-but not the dead. They've moved on.

T.L. Shreffler

Death will paint everything a different shade of remorse. You’ll feel guilty that you’re still breathing.tBut you can’t stop.You’ll feel guilty for wanting to laugh again. tAnd it will be awful the first time that you do. You’ll feel guilty for just about everything at first.And someday, at some point, you’ll start to feel guilty . . . for forgetting to feel guilty.But of all Heaven’s lessons, guilt isn’t one of them. You don’t need to hold on to it. It doesn’t need to be a practice and it shouldn’t be your life. tHeaven would never approve of your guilt.Because Heaven has no regrets.

Tessa Shaffer

A selfish person can still love someone else, can't they? Even when they've hurt them and let them down.

Rosamund Lupton

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.

Tamora Pierce

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Guilt Quotes - Page 8

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