Guilt Quotes - Page 10

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

Expiating a sin does not mean doing something opposite to wallow in guilt, but to use that same guilt to achieve full knowledge of the sin. The fault lies more not in having committed certain acts, rather in having carried them out without reaching their intimate knowledge. And this leads to committing a wrong again and again.

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

Love is not the answer, peace is. Throughout my whole life I have experienced and seen others use love as a reason to treat people with unkindness by being controlling, jealous, shouting in anger, and projecting guilt and shame. If you love someone but there is not peace in your heart when you think of that person then your work is not done. Do not stop at love, continue all the way towards the freedom of inner peace. Love starts when peace begins. Without peace love is simply a mask for our insecurity, judgment, and egoic attachments.

My mother may no longer be (if she ever was) a mast to which I can rope myself. But I fear the loss of Lesley. Without her observance, and her sturdy presence, I would feel windblown.

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

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

I have a very hard time getting to rage. I always assume that maybe I've done something wrong and then forgotten about it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I haven’t felt the full weightof the world on my shoulders,and I haven’t experienceda fraction of the painand embarrassment I’ve put out into this great bigwhite world.

Guilt rarely listens to reason ...

The wicked fear the good, because the good are a constant reproach to their consciences. The ungodly like religion in the same way that they like lions, either dead or behind bars; they fear religion when it breaks loose and begins to challenge their consciences.

I am against justice … whenever it is carried out by a mob.

I understand now that the only time black people don't feel guilty is when we've actually done something wrong, because that relieves us of the cognitive dissonance of being black and innocent, and in a way the prospect of going to jail becomes a relief.

With guilt there arises indeed a sort of demand which can be called scrupulosity and whose ambiguous character is extremely interesting. A scrupulous consciousness is a delicate consciousness, a precise consciousness, enamored of increasing perfection... This atomization of the law into a multitude of commandments entails an endless 'juridization' of action and a quasi-obsessional ritualization of daily life... With it we enter into the hell of guilt, such as St. Paul described it: the law itself becomes a source of sin.

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.

There was no echo, no reverberation. If anything the room ate sound. It swallowed her voice, her words, and her eternal, inadequate apology. But not her memories. She would never be rid of those.

Guilt: it comes in so many subtle forms. It's carbon monoxide for the soul.

The redeemed of God who are snatched from the flames by the hand of the Lord are still covered with ashes. We remain streaked with charcoal and blemished with soot. We are redeemed, but not sinless. Satan is quick to call attention to the dirt. He wants us to be more conscious of our sin than of God’s mercy.

We always make the best decision we can based upon what we believe in that moment. When I was growing up, my father and I experienced a lot of tension with each other for many years. He had bipolar disorder and it was very difficult for him. As I got older and went through my transformation of consciousness and really forgave him—and forgave myself and forgave the world—my father started showing up in my awareness as an angel. He got happier and happier and our relationship began to improve. People would say, “Your dadhas really changed a lot,” and I would say, “My mind has really changed.” My father was just reflecting that back. In fact, he came to me one day and said, “David, I’m sorry. I was not a very good father. I didn’t do the things that a good father should do.”I replied, “Nonsense! I don’t believe that for one instant. You did the best you could and I did the best I could. You didn’t let me down and I didn’t let you down. We’re not going to buy into that guilt trip anymore.”He lit up when I said this. His whole demeanor changed and he instantly reflected love back to me. That simple exchange completely rearranged our view of everything that had taken place during those early years. None of it mattered anymore. We had been mistaken about many things because we couldn’t perceive truly while we were going through our time together.

Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.

It was a great fucking time, the short era of disaster euphoria, for nothing enhances pleasures and blocks guilt like a looming cataclysm.

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

A generous donor (who had no doubt lived a life that imperiled his mortal soul) had granted [the Sisters] more than one hundred waterfront acres.

I have moments that aren't too bad, but there's always something I'm struggling with, or feeling guilty about. I just figured I needed to try harder, but I find it difficult to sustain that motivation.

Colour outside the lines, live outside the box. Don’t let anyone tell you what to do, or not. Don’t be afraid, listen to your heart.tHeaven is a state of being – of one-ness, and Hell is a state of being – lost. We simply need to live as we best define ourselves, find our own ways of being who we are in our world. There is no requirement - only freedom of choice. We should not be judged if we are doing what we think best according to our perceptions at any given time.tGuilt should be discarded, moved beyond - what matters is who we choose to be in the next moment, given what we might have learned. We continually create ourselves anew.tForgiving someone is a great way to show love, and forgive yourself too for the hurt you held onto far too long.tTake back the energy you have wasted on these things and reclaim your power to be your next best self.tHonour the past but refresh, expand, renew, fulfill. Heaven is within us, always reachable.

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.

A guilty suffering spirit is more open to grace than an apathetic or smug soul.' - Bread & Wine (day 5)

Only the guilty and the lovers really fear. The first because of what they are, the second for what they might lose.

It is important to recognize guilt as the temporary teacher it is.

Guilty people apologize and also take steps to avoid repetition. Shame, in contrast, is a more global emotion, which can emerge in response to the same kind of wrong act and violation of standards. It may develop earlier in life than guilt-- guilt requires more cognitive sorting capacity-- but above all it emphasizes self-abasement. It is the self that is at fault, not the commission of the act. This creates greater pain and intensity than guilt. A shamed person feels very bad indeed-- but also makes it more difficult to escape.

If all of our sins, bad habits, and poor choices were permanently inked into our skin like tattoos, we would all dress quite modestly.

The weekend break had begun with the usual resentment and had continued with half-repressed ill humour. It was, of course, his fault. He had been more ready to hurt his wife's feelings and deprive his daughter than inconvenience a pub bar full of strangers. He wished there could be one memory of his dead child which wasn't tainted with guilt and regret.

When in court, the primary role of lawyers is not to prove or disprove innocence; unbeknown to almost all lawyers and their clients, it is to save the court time.

Maybe you're starting to move on, my love. But to fully do it, you have to let the guilt go. Gabriel will always be an important part of your life. I don't even want to imagine how difficult it is to move on, but a new love always helps. I can bet you will find it in MacCraig's arms. He may be domineering and commanding, but everyone has flaws.

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?

She made him feel guilty at times. The problem was that she was so honest herself, almost transparent. It seemed criminal to be deceiving her.

Many deeply hidden memories have come flooding back. The important message here though is that it is possible to heal and survive. Everyone has survived their own kind of emotional or mental trauma. We all have our inner fears and misreplaced feelings of guilt.

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

She had not come to the shopping centre to buy shoes; she had come to buy food, and there was a big difference between shopping for food and shopping for shoes, and that difference concentrated on one word: guilt.

There were eleven votes for "guilty." It's not easy for me to raise my hand and send a boy off to die without talking about it first.

Vultures pick the meat clean off a bone. Guilt eats at the marrow, leaving a man hollow.

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

But until that happens -- and however brief a life, it will take a while -- there is a terrible, hateful interlude that belongs to us alone, and during which we have no alternative but to cope with what we have done or omitted to do and to distract or placate our feelings of guilt, and sometimes the only way of achieving this is to increase that guilt, to heap up new guilt to cover the old, to overshadow or blur or minimize it, until finally all guilt has passed and there isn't a soul in the world who can remember what we did, no quick, wicked tongue to talk about it, not even a tremulous finger to point us out as having been the cause of anything.

more guilt, guilt, guilt. That's the Irish condition.

You stupid cow!” He laughed at her behind those icicle eyes. “You really think anyone is better than you? Everyone’s a thief, woman! Waiting for the next terrible thing to do to get ahead of their neighbor. Forty of us around a table weren’t enough to convince you of that?

I, however, have really never been anywhere yet, not because some sins or other could wrap themselves around me there, but because I'd rather sin at home, where God even announces the weather to me in advance on TV, slowly, so that I can write it down, in case it's worth the proper guilt. Sinning is enough, there's no need for surprises as well.

I don't believe in a lot of baggage. It's such a nuisance. Life's too short to fuss with it. And it isn't really necessary

You kill by consent, every time you let something… pervert the balance when you have the power to stop it.

It is quite gratifying to feel guilty if you haven't done anything wrong: how noble! Whereas it is rather hard and certainly depressing to admit guilt and to repent.

...Except when I was alone. I'd hate myself. It's how we feel about ourselves when we're alone that must guide our decisions.

Could feel the reservation wheeling around him, changing shape so that he nearly had to vomit, or hold his arms to his head and scream against it all.

True, nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am, but why will say that I am mad?! The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute.

The existence of guilty sense is soimportant in education and religion.

Guilt can be a good thing. It's the soul's call to action. The indication that... something is wrong. The only way... to rid your heart of it... is to correct your mistakes and keep going... until amends are made.

It is the unspeakable misery of a life so false as his, that it steals the pith and substance out of whatever realities there are around us, and which were meant by Heaven to be the spirit’s joy and nutriment. To the untrue man, the whole universe is false—it is impalpable—it shrinks to nothing within his grasp. And he himself in so far as he shows himself in a false light, becomes a shadow, or, indeed, ceases to exist.

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