Guilt - Quotes

Every guilty person is his own hangman. - Seneca

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. - Simon Mawer

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

Guilt is always present to the mind (of the guilty). - Edward Counsel

Guilt is anger directed at ourselves – at what we did or did not do. - Peter Mcwilliams 

Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion of death. - Coco Chanel

Guilt is the source of sorrows; 'tis the fiend, the avenging fiend that follows us behind with whips and stings. - Nicholas Rowe

Guilt upon the conscience, like rust upon iron, both defiles and consumes it, gnawing and creeping into it, as that does which at last eats out the very heart and substance of the metal. - Bishop Robert South

He who flees from trial confesses his guilt. - Publilius Syrus

He who helps the guilty, shares the crime. - Publilius Syrus

Innocence is the weakest defense. Innocence has a single voice that can only say over and over again, "I didn't do it." Guilt has a thousand voices, all of them lies. - Leonard F. Peltier

It is only too easy to compel a sensitive human being to feel guilty about anything. - Morton Irving Seiden

No guilt is forgotten so long as the conscience still knows of it. - Stefan Zweig

No love or pity, pardon or excuse should soften the sharp pang of reparation for the guilty man. - Louisa May ALcott

None seem to bear the imputation of supposed guilt with greater intolerance than such as are, on other occasions, obviously culpable of vice or crime. - Norman MacDonald

Nothing is more wretched than the mind of a man conscious of guilt. - Titus Maccius Plautus

Shame is closely related to guilt, but there is a key qualitative difference. No audience is needed for feelings of guilt, no one else need know, for the guilty person is his own judge. Not so for shame. The humiliation of shame requires disapproval or ridicule by others. If no one ever learns of a misdeed there will be no shame, but there still might be guilt. Of course, there may be both. The distinction between shame and guilt is very important, since these two emotions may tear a person in opposite directions. The wish to relieve guilt may motivate a confession, but the wish to avoid the humiliation of shame may prevent it. - Paul Ekman

The difference between guilt and shame is very clear – in theory. We feel guilty for what we do. We feel shame for what we are. - Lewis B. Smedes

The guilty think all talk is of themselves. - Geoffrey Chaucer

The hands of the guilty don't necessarily tremble; only in stories does a dropped glass betray agitation. Tension is more often shown in the studied action. - Graham Greene

The problem with guilt is that it cements you to the past. - Kevin Leman

The worst guilt is to accept an unearned guilt. - Ayn Rand

To spare the guilty is to injure the innocent. - Publilius Syrus

Women are raised to feel guilty if they don't do everything they should do. Men are more likely to feel guilty if they do something they shouldn't. - Georgia Witkin-Lanoil