Quotes About Guilt

I grew up outside of Seattle, and have lived here my whole life, and I think that there is a culture of questioning, and guilt. Almost an "anti-ambition." Like, an awareness, and then a subsequent guilt. But sometimes that progressive, liberal guilt is really obnoxious, too - in some ways, I think it's better to just own it. It's weird, that actually, the acknowledgement of privilege or the enactment of guilt can be as obnoxious as anything else. It's a never-ending rabbit hole. We're really in a rabbit hole right now, with this conversation. We're just spiraling down into the void.

People feel guilty. And guilt is stymieing. Guilt immobilizes. Guilt closes the air ducts and the veins, and makes people ignorant.

I believe in guilt. There's not enough guilt around these days for my taste.

When it comes to money, if you have it, you may feel that you don't deserve it—guilt. If you don't have it, you may feel that you should have it—guilt.

Anyone who's been poor and gets rich is stalked by guilt and fear. Guilt because you know it isn't fair, that life hasn't changed for everyone

Catholics have guilt and Jews have guilt, fine. But mothers can trump them all.

Guilt doesn't help. What should fill in for it? Remorse. Remorse is when you feel bad about what you did. Guilt is when you feel bad about who you are.

There's Catholic guilt about things, then there's the guilt of being the youngest of 10, so when nice things happen to you, you're not really allowed to enjoy them.

If a hungry lion suddenly appeared, you'd be terrified. So terrified you'd probably run away. Great, fear's doing its job. But you might get so afraid that you lock up and can't move. This would be very bad. Guilt's the same. It can prevent you from fixing the situation, make you feel so bad you can't function at 100% and even lead to more guilt-provoking bad behavior.

Grief and guilt. A powerful combination. Guilt like a liquid, a thin liquor, seeping everywhere, informing everything, saturating the whole-corrosive, like seawater, scented with the rich stench of ordure and corruption, and carrying with it hard, abrasive shards of grief.

The experience of a sense of guilt for wrong-doing is necessary for the development of self-control. The guilt feelings will laterserve as a warning signal which the child can produce himself when an impulse to repeat the naughty act comes over him. When the child can produce his on warning signals, independent of the actual presence of the adult, he is on the way to developing a conscience.

I remember as a child of eight being told by a young friend that I had killed Christ. That was news to me. It's a common experience for the Jewish young. Should later generations of Germans be burdened with the guilt arising from the profound inhumanity of their ancestors? Revenge may be sweet, but guilt is non-transferable. Still, hatreds survive with the persistence of cockroaches.

I suffer from Irish-Catholic guilt. Guilt is a good reality check. It keeps that ‘do what makes you happy’ thing in check.

It was a good script [Something New]. We have not seen an interracial issue dealt with from a black woman and white man's perspective in this way. And, usually, it's a black man, white woman. I loved the fact that it wasn't about the couple being against the world or the couple against the family. I loved the fact that it was her dealing with her own prejudices that came up, her own guilt, her own shame and embarrassment about what her peers thought.

Guilt is a gift from Allah warning you that what you are doing is violating your soul

When we evaluate the rightness or wrongness of actions or behavior, we need to ask ourselves if that behavior will edify—build up—ourselves or someone else, or if it will tear down. The question is not what we can get away with, but what is healthy and edifying. When it is all said and done, are we edified spiritually? Have we been built up and strengthened in our relationship with the Lord or with our spouse, or have we been weakened? Do we come away encouraged or discouraged, confident or filled with a sense of guilt or shame? Is our conscience clean?

Guilt is the mafia of the mind.

We routinely leave our small children in day care among strangers. At the same time, in our guilt we evince paranoia about strangers and foster fear in children.

Satan will try to use our memory of any previous guilt to lure us back...We must be ever vigilant to avoid his enticements

For socialists, not just the wealth, but the guilt must be redistributed.

I grew up as a Mormon, and that had more of an impact on my values than my beliefs. I'm afraid I will always feel the weight of a lie. I'm very hard on myself anyway. Religious guilt carries over too. You can't really misbehave without feeling badly about it. At least, I can't.

I read Butterfly’s Child in one day, totally hooked. It is a captivating novel of love, guilt, sin, justice—and how all these things are, in time, transformed surprisingly and inevitably.

A land of levity is a land of guilt.

Compared to other parents, remarried parents seem more desirous of their child's approval, more alert to the child's emotional state, and more sensitive in their parent-child relations. Perhaps this is the result of heightened empathy for the child's suffering, perhaps it is a guilt reaction; in either case, it gives the child a potent weapon--the power to disrupt the new household and come between parent and the new spouse.

Today, let's set our minds and hearts on feeling more thankful for what we are than guilty for what we're not. Let's cut the threads of guilt with grace.

It is rather hard and certainly depressing to admit guilt and to repent

In my food world, there is no fear or guilt, only joy and balance. So no ingredient is ever off-limits. Rather, all of the recipes here follow my Usually-Sometimes-Rarely philosophy. Notice there is no Never.

Only the Lord Jesus can redeem the soul that is steeped in guilt and shame. This baggage weighs us down until we accept Jesus' gift-the gift that liberates souls from sin's power.

The enemy has always been able to point the finger of suspicion and/or guilt to Black leaders that they are enriching themselves at the expense of the people.

White people's fear of Black people with guns will never cease to amaze me. Probably it's because they think about what they would do were they in our place. Especially the police, who have done so much dirt to Black people - their guilty conscience tells them to be afraid. When Black people seriously organize and take up arms to fight for our liberation, there will be a lot of white people who will drop dead from no other reason than their own guilt and fear.

Guilt simply says that you are a sinner. And the feeling of shame simply shows you that you need not be a sinner, that you are meant to be a saint. If you are a sinner it is only because of your unconsciousness; you are not a sinner because the society follows a certain morality and you are not following it.

Righteous ends, thus approved, absolve of guilt the most violent means.

There is unspeakable joy... for the person who knows release from guilt and the relief of forgiveness.

I used to feel guilty about spending morning hours working on a book; about fleeing to the brook in the afternoon. It took several summers of being totally frazzled by September to make me realize that this was a false guilt. I'm much more use to family and friends when I'm not physically and spiritually depleted than when I spend my energies as though they were unlimited. They are not. The time at the typewriter and the time at the brook refresh me and put me into a more workable perspective.

I don't associate work with feelings of satisfaction. Rather, guilt, frustration, and resentment of people who write better than I do.

Where all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing.

The corniest movie ever made about the white man's need to lose his identity and assuage racial, political, sexual and historical guilt.

Since our awareness of others is considered our duty, the price we pay when things go wrong is guilt and self-hatred. And things always go wrong. We respond with apologies; we continue to apologize long after the event is forgotten - and even if it had no causal relation to anything we did to begin with.

Are we bereft of citizenship because we are mothers, wives and daughters of a mighty people? Have women no country--no interests staked in public weal--no liabilities in common peril--no partnership in a nation's guilt and shame?

Guilt can interfere with our desires to move forward, to heal properly and to become a person who has the mental health and means of proper recompense.

You said to me once that you weren’t what I dreamed of. You were right. You surpass everything I dreamed of. Even the rot in you that’s caused you to do shameful things. Some men let the rot and guilt fester into something ugly beyond words. Few men can turn it into worth and substance. If you’re gods’ blessed for no other reason, it’s for that.

There is no such thing as collective guilt.

I was just a kid. I think I stole a candy bar. I remember feeling so terrible. It was the worst shock. I was probably 7. That's my least favorite feeling: guilt.

Each human being has his or her own sexual identity and should be able to exercise that identity without guilt as long as they do not force that sexual identity on others.

Religion is a complex and often contradictory force in our world. It fosters hope and comfort but also doubt and guilt. It creates both community and exclusion. It brings societies together around shared belief and tears them apart through war. However, what unites the faithful, whatever their religion, is the unshakeable force of generosity.

Your worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God's grace. And your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God's grace.Pharisee-type believers unconsciously think they have earned God's blessing through their behavior. Guilt-laden believers are quite sure they have forfeited God's blessing through their lack of discipline or their disobedience. Both have forgotten the meaning of grace because they have moved away from the gospel and have slipped into a performance relationship with God.

I have the freedom of seeing it [churches and paintings of saints] with a non-Catholic eye without the guilt.

Sixty thousand blacks are annually embarked from the coast of Guinea, never to return to their native country; but they are embarked in chains: and this constant emigration, which, in the space of two centuries, might have furnished armies to overrun the globe, accuses the guilt of Europe and the weakness of Africa.