c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
The thought burrowed into her heart as darkness fell. It coiled in her guts as she wedged herself amongst the boughs of a tree to sleep. And in the morning, it woke with her and clung to her back, riding on her shoulders as she climbed down, hungry and exhausted from nightmares.
— Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities
trust me, Anita, if you get dead, especially if he blames himself in any way, he will be a force of destruction looking for a place to be aimed. And he's blamed himself for introducing you to Olaf here from the get-go. If Olaf did to you what he's done to some of his other victims, Edward would drown the world in blood to erase those images.
— Laurell K. Hamilton
He is talking to people in Toronto, trying to find out if I am guilty; but he won't find it out that way. He doesn't understand yet that guilt comes to you not from the things you've done, but from the things that other have done for you.
— Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace
This guilt is a joke, and it’s exhausting to watch you martyr yourself.
— Ann Aguirre, Aftermath
I couldn't begin to tell you what terrible trigger for such insanity lies deep in my sub-conscious. Though no doubt some would say that, indeed, it may be some demon of conscience. A deeply buried guilt for some unforgivable depravity. Then again, perhaps not.
— Angel Rosa
You're making yourself too important. Guilt comes from feeling we're at the center of the universe. We're not.
— Gloria Whelan, See What I See
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.
— Sid Fleischman, The Entertainer and the Dybbuk
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.
— Kristin Hannah, Summer Island
Guilt is basically one of my superpowers. It’s been programmed into me from the moment I was old enough to know what it was.
— Paula Stokes, Hidden Pieces
Dalgliesh was too experienced to assume that fear implied guilt
—  it was often the most innocent who were the most terrified.
Guilt loves the passive.
— Jonathan Price, Put That in Writing
Although your decision to die is firm, your decision to become a god has caused you to suffer. You suffered, wondering why you couldn't cure Magdalia's illness, wondering why you weren't capable of saving her. All you wanted to do was protect your only sister, wasn't that it? Not in heaven, but here on Earth. You wanted to make Lady Maldaria happy more than anything else, didn't you? And so now, to avoid the guilt of your loved one dying at your expense, you're willing to die yourself. You've already come to this realization. You know you aren't god. You're just a fragile human being who's capable of feeling pain and having doubts. Go back to being an ordinary man and start all over again for the sake of those who look up to you."-Kenshin
— Nobuhiro Watsuki
Behjet eased the horse forward again. "The harvest is failing. There will be no crop at all if this rain doesn't stop - not even hay."The rain. The rain she'd been so grateful for, the rain that concealed the warping of her shadow. It was going to kill people.
— Erin Bow, Plain Kate
You're an asshole, you know that, Haller?"I nodded and headed back to the door."When I need to be.
— Michael Connelly, The Gods of Guilt
Just because you act a little guilty doesn't mean you're innocent.
— Charlie Chan
But there are some born to do penance by nature. Maybe they lift the load for some of us who take it quite comfortably that we're humankind, and not angels.
— Ellis Peters, The Confession of Brother Haluin
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.
— Peter N. Stearns, Shame: A Brief History
Blame and English SpeakersIn the same article, Boroditsky notes that in English, we’ll often say that someone broke a vase even if it was an accident, but Spanish and Japanese speakers tend to say that the vase broke itself. Boroditsky describes a study by her student Caitlin Fausey in which English speakers were much more likely to remember who accidentally popped balloons, broke eggs, or spilled drinks in a video than Spanish or Japanese speakers. (Guilt alert!) Not only that, Boroditsky argues, but there’s a correlation between a focus on agents in English and our criminal-justice bent toward punishing transgressors rather than restituting victims.
— Jessica Gross
Most injuries heal in time, but guilt is a cancer that knows where to hide.
— RMA Spears
My mother is a certainty. I can count on the watercolour pain in her voice when she calls to say she hasn't heard from me in months. The precarious laughter as she comes from the kitchen, when I finally do appear on her doorstep, the laughter that says I might be a chickadee that's alighted unexpectedly on her thumb.
— Trevor Cole, Hope Makes Love
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.
— Trevor Cole, Hope Makes Love
Redemption was asking too much, but he could hope. Something told him he’d still be seeking absolution when he took his last breath on some distant day.
— Kelly Moran, Redemption
The problem with guilt was not how it attacks the present, but how it stained the past. Hindsight was a blemish on memory.
— Roshani Chokshi, A Crown of Wishes
Somehow the sting of guilt was always more acute when there was a risk that she might get caught.
— Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree
We are not punished for our sins, we are punished by them. We can't live with guilt for the whole of our lives..
— Susan Hill, Mrs de Winter
The back of my hand to guilt.
— Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World
She was one of six people accused of the murder, five of hom took pleas; to had internalised their guilt so deeply that, aven after being freed, they still had vivid memories of committing the crime.
— The New Yorker Magazine
The ending to this scene, I know it. Sirix will fail to return and Serena will still continue to wait. Even though this is repeated multiple times, Sirix will still fail to return. Even though this is repeated multiple times, Serena will still have to wait. I know....History won't change.
— Mizuho Kusanagi, NG Life, Volume 9
There is a good guilt and a bad guilt... the good one Leeds us to ask for forgiveness the bad Leeds us to hide from God.
— Chuck Bridges
If we want to be able to pick up the pieces of our lives and go on living, we have to get over the irrationalfeeling that every misfortune is our fault, the direct result of our mistakes or misbehavior. We are really not that powerful. Not everythingthat happens in the world is our doin
— Harold S. Kushner, When Bad Things Happen to Good People
Lo!" said Percivale, "those I had slain were not put to silence. I heard their breath speak out of the lips of others; I saw their looks mock out of the eyes of others; the life that was gone from their bodies was but draughted to enliven fresh matter. In every ray of light, in every gust that blew, the life of the dead moved to confound me. Ah, Saint, the things they had uttered were black and heavy; I could not bear them.
— Clemence Housman, The Life of Sir Aglovale de Galis
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.
— Javier Marías
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.
— Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
Guilt is what makes you accountable.
— Roshani Chokshi, The Star-Touched Queen
Our society cultivates guilt feelings in women such that many of us still feel guilty if we are anything less than an emotional service station to others.
— Harriet Lerner, The Dance Of Anger: A Woman's Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships
Never under estimate the power of guilt, in the end it will find its way to destroy you. The more you try to turn your back on it, the easier it is for it to stab you in the back.
— Kabelo Mabona
I'm never going to 'not come' because of you. You're my friend."I finally turn around so I can reassure her some more, but I freeze. Guilt stabs me deeply.She's crying.It's not full-out bawling, but in the little light available I see two wet trails slowly dripping from sorrowful eyes."Ivy?"Her wet eyes close as she slumps forward, her shoulders shuddering.
— Colleen Boyd, Swamp Angel
Anna would like you, he thinks, looking into her face. Anna would like you.
— David Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
We are not on our fours, howling in the woods, only because guilt saves us.
— Nelson Rodrigues
Henry...your father was a brave man."He continued attacking the metal with a sledgehammer, brutally hacking at the anvil. She wasn't sure he had heard her. Then, he stopped short, the hammer hanging heavy in the air, the fire snapping in front of him."I was close enough to smell it," he seethed, not turning. "But I was afraid. I hid fro
— Sarah Blakley-Cartwright, Red Riding Hood
But some mistakes can never be righted and the guilt eats away at the soul. Of all the emotions we have, I have learnt that guilt is the most corrosive. Anger passes quickly, and hatred mellows with age and learning, but guilt endures.
— Danny Scheinmann, Random Acts Of Heroic Love
And guilt is heavy, like an anchor holding me in place and hindering any and all advancement.
— Kim Holden, So Much More
Intentions are nothing
— Cassandra Clare, Lady Midnight
All my life I have felt events to be the result of my own sins.
— Jane Gardam
But guilt isn't smart. It isn't logical. It doesn't only live in the places it belongs.
— Ally Carter, See How They Run
Hey, S.T.," Sydney says finally. I don't budge. She nudges me with her elbow. "You want to know something?"I still can't look up. But I nod."It's not your fault either." She says this like it's not big deal. Like it's nothing.But it's everything.
— Patricia McCormick, Cut
We have no need of God to create guilt or to punish. Our fellow men are enough, with our help.
— Albert Camus, The Fall
Safety is only an illusion when evil is on the hunt. I can't stand by and watch. I have to act. It isn't easy to absolve one's self of guilt.
— Terry Goodkind, The First Confessor
Guilt rarely listens to reason ...
— Michael G.  Williams, Perishables
I was a woman unaccustomed to guilt, and it drowned me - pulling me deeper, cutting off my air supply.
— Alessandra Torre, Moonshot
more guilt, guilt, guilt. That's the Irish condition.
— Adrian McKinty, The Cold Cold Ground
When he saw the vista of the street reflected in the mirror in which he was looking, he was terror stricken. He had the impression that the whole view had turned into eyes that reproached him.
— Kōbō Abe, The Box Man
It was curious how some people had a highly developed sense of guilt, she thought, while others had none.
— Alexander McCall Smith, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
She's still clinging to the side of her mountain, just like I'm still wandering lost in my battlefield.
— Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes
Fuck 'em. Call it whatever you want. Maybe it's just two people clinging to each other to stay alive. Maybe sometimes that's all love gets to be. And, maybe, if they hold onto each other long enough . . . maybe something good finally happens.
— Rick Remender, Tokyo Ghost, Vol. 1: Atomic Garden
Feeling guilty is not a substitute for loving somebody
—  it only is an indicator that you have failed to love somebody.
Guilt had teeth and it ate folks up if they didn't know how to tame it
— Michelle Modesto
Guilt can weigh you down; like being bound in lead chains in a deep murky lake, making you spend the rest of your life gasping for air.
— Brownell Landrum, Repercussions: DUET stories Volume IV - Adult Version
Think about what I said, Kat. You have nothing to prove.”“I don’t?”“No,” I said, and I’d say it a thousand times.But I knew screaming it from the top of Seneca Rocks wasn’t going to change how she felt.
— Jennifer L. Armentrout, Opal
I'm sorry about what happened,' Love said. Death squeezed his hand. 'Play as yourself. Not as me. Trust me one that.
— Martha Brockenbrough
Only the guilty and the lovers really fear. The first because of what they are, the second for what they might lose.
— Jonathan Carroll
You seem to be holding up rather well under the burden of the world's troubles. How do you do it?
— Juliann Whicker, Hotblood
What do you feel like you SHOULD be doing instead of writing? IF you have an answer, then you have guilt. The "should" of life are always linked to guilt.
— Andi Cumbo-Floyd, Writing Day In and Day Out: Living a Practice of Words
The Berglunds were the super-guilty sort of liberals who needed to forgive everybody so their own good fortune could be forgiven
—  who lack the courage of their privilege
So often when people hear about the suffering in our world, they feel guilty, but rarely does guilt actually motivate action like empathy or compassion. Guilt paralyzes and causes us to deny and avoid what makes us feel guilty. The goal is to replace our guilt with generosity. We all have a natural desire to help and to care, and we simply need to allow ourselves to give from our love without self-reproach. We each must do what we can. This is all that God asks of us." - , God Has a Dream, p. 87-88
— Desmond Tutu
One of the big lies with sin is that we are already waist-deep and might as well just plunge in.
— Matt      Chandler
What troubled me most is that although I was an unwilling observer, I felt guilty myself as if something in what I witnessed touched a shameful and repressed desire.
— John  Mole, It's All Greek to Me!: A Tale of a Mad Dog and an Englishman, Ruins, Retsina--and Real Greeks
I can turn every "is" into "ought ".
— Kevin DeYoung, Crazy Busy: A (Mercifully) Short Book about a (Really) Big Problem
We get used to living in a state of mild disappointment with ourselves.
— Kevin DeYoung, Crazy Busy: A (Mercifully) Short Book about a (Really) Big Problem
This book is a personal memoir; but it is also a larger story-about carelessness and guilt, and the wreckage they can make of lives.
— Brooke Hayward, Haywire
Don't accuse others of your past, hidden guilt and sins." ~ Angelica Hopes, If I Could Tell You
— Angelica Hopes
With all her finesse for cleaning, Snag sometimes felt that her biggest contribution to mankind was making a mess of things.
— Seré Prince Halverson, All the Winters After
Jesus isn't suffering day after day for your sin. He sits triumphantly at the right hand of God and has won the final and decisive victory for you. If constant lamenting over your sin could actually help you atone for it, then it would be a noble act. However, since there is nothing to be added to your salvation and your agony contributes nothing to your salvation or sanctification, then you are free to walk through life with confidence in your forgiveness. Godly sorrow for sin does not lead to self-condemnation and attempts to atone for your sins through acts of penance. Godly sorrow leads to repentance, which leads us to the cross. There we see, once again, the beautiful sufficiency of our marvelous Savior. Godly sorrow leads us on to a big party, another glorious celebration of the truth of the gospel.
— Barbara R. Duguid, Extravagant Grace: God's Glory Displayed in Our Weakness
On the perfect night there is nothing more transcendent or terrifying than boxing. It's the ultimate representation of the guilty pleasure.
— Brian D'Ambrosio, Life in the Trenches
Guilt is the other side of compassion. Its original purpose was to enable you to empathize on an aware level with yourselves and other members of creaturehood, so that you could consciously control what was previously handled on a biological level alone. Guilt in that respect therefore has a strong natural basis, and when it is perverted, misused or misunderstood, it has that great terrifying energy of any runaway basic phenomenon.
— Jane Roberts, The Nature of Personal Reality: Specific, Practical Techniques for Solving Everyday Problems and Enriching the Life You Know
Guilt chilled me more than all of this rain combined.
— Katherine McIntyre, Snatched
Got something to do with guilt,' Toro said. 'Her mother,neh?' 'Guilt. Longing. Got something to do with all of us.
— Kiana Davenport, Shark Dialogues
As I lifted the ash dagger, something inside me fractured so completely that there would be no hope of ever repairing it.
— Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses
I have only ever known Guilt to have one weakness, one not easily given and not easily found: Forgiveness...In truth, Guilt’s strength lies not in the failure of others to grant us forgiveness, but in our failure to forgive ourselves.
— Kelseyleigh Reber, If I Resist
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.
— Paul Ricœur, The Conflict of Interpretations
Condemn you me for that the duke did love me?So may you blame some fair and crystal river, For that some melancholic distracted manHath drowned himself in’t.
— John Webster, The White Devil
Without guilt or remorse, shame was an empty emotion. Indeed, shame would not be shame.
— Sylvain Reynard, The Raven
No monster would hold the hurt I see in your eyes or carry the guilt you do every day.
— Katherine McIntyre, Soul Solution
Guilt cannot, in fact, express itself, except in the indirect language of "captivity" and "infection," inherited from the two prior stages. Thus both symbols are transposed "inward" to express a freedom that enslaves itself, affects itself, and infects itself by its own choice. Conversely, the symbolic and non-literal character of the captivity of sin and the infection of defilement becomes quite clear when these symbols are used to denote a dimension of freedom itself; then and only then do we know that they are symbols, when they reveal a situation that is centered in the relation of oneself to oneself. Why this recourse to the prior symbolism? Because the paradox of a captive free will - the paradox of a servile will - is insupportable for thought. That freedom must be delivered and that this deliverance is deliverance from self-enslavement cannot be said directly; yet it is the central theme of "salvation
— Paul Ricœur
The shadows along the streets were personal, and, every passing day, they seemed to grow longer and hungrier
— Katherine McIntyre, Soul Solution
Father, I can’t take this,” I said.  “Why not?” “Because you’re a priest, Father.” “And my money’s no good because of it? What are you? A member of the Masonic Lodge?” “Naw, Father,” I said. “I just feel guilty taking money from you.”  “Well, you’re Irish and Jewish. You have to feel guilty over somethin’, don’t ya? Take the money and be happy ye have it.
— John William Tuohy, No Time to Say Goodbye: A Memoir of a Life in Foster Care
My affliction decided to join us, forcing me to push my toes on the floor as though I were trying to eject myself from the chair. I prayed she didn’t notice what the affliction was making me do. I half expected to be eaten alive or murdered and buried out back in the school yard. “I’m not afraid of you, ya know,” I said, although I was terrified of her. The words hurt her, but that wasn’t my intent. She turned her face and looked out the window into North Cliff Street. She knew what her face and twisted body looked like, and she probably knew what the kids said about her. It was probably an open wound for her and I had just tossed salt into it.  I was instantly ashamed of what I done and tried to correct myself. I didn’t mean to be hurtful, because I knew what it was like to be ridiculed for something that was beyond one’s control, such as my affliction, and how it made me afraid to touch the chalk because the feel of chalk to people like me is overwhelming. If I had to write on the blackboard, I held the chalk with the cuff of my shirt and the class laughed.  “You look good in a nun’s suit,” I said. It was a stupid thing to say, but I meant well by it. She looked down at the black robe as if she were seeing it for the first time.
— John William Tuohy, No Time to Say Goodbye: A Memoir of a Life in Foster Care
Regret piles up around us like books we have never read.
— Jack Ryan
Guilt doesn’t stop you from doing something. It just stops you from enjoying it.
— Nityananda Das, Divine Union
Besides the pleasure, there is always remorse, from the indulgence of our passions; and, after all, what have you men to fear from all this; the world excuses, and notoriety ennobles you?
— Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
Fear and guilt are your enemies. If you let go of fear, fear lets go of you. If you release guilt, guilt will release you. How do you do that? By choosing to. It's that simple.
— Donald L. Hicks, Look into the stillness
I asked Mama was it a sin to do what I done, and she said no, it was the same as David slaying Goliath, it was only to save Ulyssa and the others, not because of meanness that I did it. I would do it again, too. I am not sorry, but this has hurt my heart and spirit more than all the other trials, for being forsaken is worse than being killed.
— Nancy E. Turner, These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901, Arizona Territories
My needs were covered by layer upon layer of denial. I was scrambling for reasons. But the truth was, even if he had had a successful career, I would have used it as an excuse to complain about neglect. He could never actually win. I was running a very common script, that of deciphering why he wasn’t enough for me and why I needed someone else—as if someone else could give me everything. As if there was one person who could be my Mr. Right and who could satisfy every ever-changing facet of my personality. At that point I still believed that this was possible…desirable…and necessary.
— Louisa Leontiades, The Husband Swap
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
— Hugh Lofting, The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle
Certain brands of guilt can be inculcated in a secular way but other brands of guilt can only be obtained with reference to the metaphysical.
— Sarah Ruhl, Dead Man's Cell Phone
If you’re being tormented by guilt or feelings of failure in this area, confess your thoughts to God, pray about it, put it in God’s hands, and then stand up and proclaim the truth!
— Stormie Omartian, The Power of a Praying Parent
I'd put him in the spot where he got hit. It was my fault he got shot. A hundred kills? Two hundred? More? What did they mean if my brother was dead?
— Chris Kyle, American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History
One must consider that small children are virtually incapable of making much impact on their world. No matter what path taken as achild, survivors grow up believing they should have done something differently.Perhaps there is no greater form ofsurvivor guilt than “I didn't try to stop it." Or “I should have told." The legacy of a helpless, vulnerable, out-of-control, and humiliated child creates an adult who is generally tentative, insecure, and quite angry. The anger is not often expressed, however, as it is not safe to be angry with violent people. Confrontation and conﬂict are difﬁcult for many survivors.
— Sarah E. Olson
A man in loss is not a man to trust.
— Auliq Ice
I think most Christians hear these urgent calls to do more (or feel them internally already) and learn to live with a low-level guilt that comes from not doing enough. We know we can always pray more and give more and evangelize more, so we get used to living in a state of mild disappointment with ourselves.
— Kevin DeYoung
In comparison with the spirit of priestly revenge all the remaining spirits are hardly worth considering.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
In the Code of Canon Law, it states clearly: 'A person who is conscious of grave sin is not to celebrate Mass or receive the body of the Lord without previous sacramental confession.' I haven’t attended confession in well over a decade, and that’s less because of dogmatic conflict than it is because of moral cowardice. Deeper than that, maybe I don’t want to be forgiven. I want to be punished. Which may be just about the most selfish, egotistical thought I’ve ever had. I’m sick with self-love. Or self-loathing. After all, they’re both essentially the same thing.
— Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Indecision Now! A Libertarian Rage
He dropped the tavern apron in a heap on the floor and pulled the freshly laundered one up and over his head, tied it with slightly tremoring fingers. The vast whiteness felt like absolution.
— Devon Trevarrow Flaherty, The Night of One Hundred Thieves
As worthless as guilt was known to be, he couldn't help feeling it, seeing his wife work herself to exhaustion for a parish tea that would last only two hours.
— Jan Karon
Your pain and anger will pass, but the guilt would remain with you for always.
— Dodie Smith, The 101 Dalmatians
It's a police mantra that all members of the public are guilty of something, but some members of the public are more guilty than others.
— Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes
In the end, I sold my soul." he had said, and Abby had replied "That wasn’t the end.
— Jo Walton, Half a Crown
As a motivation —for humans, but Christians especially— guilt is always wrong and can never move them to do anything He wants of them. Never let them realize that.
— Geoffrey Wood
Guilt can teach us to become better; shame causes us to become bitter." EL
— Evinda Lepins, A Cup of Grace for the Day: Coffee Hour with Chicklit Power
If we can keep the Christians thinking of themselves as sinners not sons and daughters, we can make them view their relationship to The Adversary as a negative-sum-game: They fall in a hole, He pulls them out, they fall back in, etc... That way they never get anywhere; they’re always either standing next to a hole or down in it.
— Geoffrey Wood
Guilt, if cultivated in a Christian client, can render their Christianity worthless to themselves and others.
— Geoffrey Wood
What I want to write is that I lay there until morning, with tear-stained eyes, a tear-stained pillow, a tear-stained life. What can one do with levels of gloom and guilt, fear and disbelief, of bewilderment above one's capacity to register? I slept soundly.
— Darin Strauss, Half a Life
Even if their guilt actually does produce a good action, it will be the saddest good action you’ll ever see, and it will be of no use to them because their goal is not to obey, but to feel less guilty, thus nothing about their souls will be reshaped.
— Geoffrey Wood
Their guilt plus their repentance should have equalled forgiveness. But they don’t feel forgiven, so they failed, which makes them feel guilty, which was why they repented in the first place, so they’re stuck right where they started: Guilty.
— Geoffrey Wood
His immense self-pity, his demand for sympathy poured and spread itself in pools at their feet, and all she did, miserable sinner that she was, was to draw her skirts a little closer round her ankles, lest she should get wet.
— Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
If people ever question your loyalty, you never had theirs.
— Justin K. McFarlane Beau
Guils is the greatest weapon vecause its cuts rarely heal and it aims for the heart
— Orson Scott Card, Earth Unaware
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.
— Alexander McCall Smith
Ah! it is well for the unfortunate to be resigned, but for the guilty there is no peace.
— Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein
Guilt is a self-indulgence.
— Marian Keyes, Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married
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.
— Cristiane Serruya, Trust: Betrayed
Guilt is an indulgence, it entangles you in the past.
— Gregg Hurwitz
Guilt is a waste of time unless you learn how to be more loving the next time a similar situation presents itself.
— Annette Vaillancourt, How to Manifest Your Soulmate with Eft: Relationship as a Spiritual Path
his conscience washed clean by happiness.
— Françoise Sagan, Dans un mois, dans un an
But with each step she took, Mythili realized why most people don’t go shopping alone. It’s because this mind of ours gets pretty damn busy. It starts analyzing every little stimulus you receive. And because you don’t have another human being walking next to you distracting you from all the little stuff you should be ignoring, your mind takes it upon itself to provide you with companionship and talk you through your life.
— Shweta Ganesh Kumar, A Newlywed’s Adventures in Married Land
After all, the fundamental question of philosophy (like that of psychoanalysis) is the same as the question of the detective novel: who is guilty?
— Umberto Eco, Postscript to the Name of the Rose
When I picked up the bird and felt its light weight in my hands, I realized that carelessness was a form of cruelty. See, I'd always told myself that because I meant no harm, anything that happened wasn't my fault. At that moment, though, I knew I was wrong. If I hadn't given the female my gun, the bird wouldn't have been shot. I was responsible even though I didn't pull the trigger.
— J.R. Ward, Lover Eternal
I've spent all the years since full of guilt and misery, even though I didn't remember it. I've let it run my thoughts, my plans, my whole life. But the experience doesn't own me. I own it. What I do with it is up to me, just like what Molly does with her death magic is up to her.
— Faith Hunter, Black Arts
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.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
So there we have it. I get up in the morning determined to do something approximating to the right thing, and with in two hours find something to feel guilty about.
— Nick Hornby, How to Be Good
To be fair, she called this morning. I stared at the phone. Circled it on my bed. And, eventually, it stopped ringing. If it had been important, she would’ve called back, right? That was the line of thought that ran through my head until halfway through the day, when I started to feel bad about it.
— Kelley York
It was a great fucking time, the short era of disaster euphoria, for nothing enhances pleasures and blocks guilt like a looming cataclysm.
— Aleksandar Hemon, The Book of My Lives
Maybe that would be a good thing to do. He wasn't entirely sure, and that bothered him more than anything. How was he meant to judge right from wrong when he had never really striven to do right before? The only good thing he had known was his time with Drin, and Drin had died because o
— Emily Veinglory, Father of Dragons
The hostility and venomous response the topic of sexual trauma and rape in the military brings up, especially with men from my Era, is revealing. This opposition speaks to their guilt and toward the truth that stays hidden.
— Diane Chamberlain, Conduct Unbecoming: Rape, Torture, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from Military Commanders
It happened. It was awful. You aren't perfect. That's all there is. Don't confuse your grief with guilt.
— Veronica Roth, Allegiant
Feel guilty. Mourn this. But move on. Don't let it destroy you. Forgive yourself.
— Richelle Mead, Last Sacrifice
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.
— Reginald Rose, Twelve Angry Men
Guilt was its own prison.
— Richelle Mead, Last Sacrifice
I turn away, tempted to punch the glass. I'm in the gratest danger of my life, and I'm playing with my hair and wondering if the boy I can't have-and refuse to let myself want-thinks I'm pretty.
— Shannon Messenger, Let the Sky Fall
....you can overcome sadness, loneliness, even terrible loss. But guilt goes with you the grave.
— Jodee Blanco, Please Stop Laughing at Me... One Woman's Inspirational Story
Humanity has always had a flair for guilt by association.
— Seanan McGuire, Rosemary and Rue
Don't underestimate the power of a guilty mind. Never underestimate self-shame and self-destruction.
— Tim Hawken, Hellbound
I love you guilty. It makes it easier for me to wrap you around my finger.
— Susan Elizabeth Phillips, What I Did for Love
No,” Joan vowed. She grabbed Bash’s shirt. “I don’t want this. Didn’t want this to happen.”Screams resonated.Bash continued quietly, “None of us do. That’s not up to us. We have to decide what we’re going to do with what we’re given. Play the cards dealt to us.
— Cate Campbell Beatty, Donor 23
Confession is for the confessor. It makes you feel good
—  it ruins the lives of everyone else. It’s a selfish thing to do. Don’t confess.
I should have forgiven him.”“Maybe. Maybe there’s more we all could have done,” he says, “but we just have to let the guilt remind us to do better next time.”I frown and pull back. That is a lesson that members of Abnegation learn – guilt as a tool, rather than a weapon against the self.
— Veronica Roth, Divergent
Living the good life as created beings depends on living within the limits and according to the truths of the human condition. Purity of heart and the capacity to channel desires toward personal self-mastery in holiness are part of the high calling of the Christian life. These remain necessities, despite the promises of a false humanism that claims that human nature has neither limits nor boundaries, being infinitely plastic and malleable -- a vain and counterproductive attempt to liberate humans from guilt.
— George Cardinal Pell, God and Caesar: Selected Essays on Religion, Politics, and Society
Or was their guilt written plainly, and for all the world to see, across their face? Was it their face, in fact, for which they were guilty?
— Julie Otsuka, The Buddha in the Attic
God has broken me in every way possible. I spent a year not caring, a year trying to figure out what I'd done to deserve it. and a year trying to make it right.
— Cassandra Giovanni, Finding Perfection
Shame is the demon that keeps many of us trapped in our pain
—  healing comes when we gain the courage to confront our demon(s).
Repeat the same action over and over again, and eventually it will feel right. Eventually, there isn't even any guilt.
— Jodi Picoult, The Storyteller
Ninety-six per cent of juvenile prostitutes are fugitives from abusive domestic situations; 66 per cent began working before they turned 16. (Prostitution is their only perceived means of survival.) Millions of children work as prostitutes around the world. A third are male. One study revealed that over 50 per cent of prostitutes are the children of alcoholics or substance abusers, and 90 per cent are deflowered through incest or rape. Ninety-one per cent of prostitutes do not speak of the abuse. (The truth of life is told through the language of behavior.) Abused children suffer Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, guilt, self-destructive impulses, suspicion, fear. Seventy-five per cent of prostitutes attempt suicide. (Imagine their scrapbook of memories.)
— Antonella Gambotto-Burke, The Eclipse: A Memoir of Suicide
A guilty person sometimes has the luck to escape detection, but never to feel sure of it.
— Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
Our guilt has its uses. It justifies much in the lives of others.
— Max Frisch, Montauk
Guilt is a manifestation of condemnation or aversion towards oneself, which does not understand the changing transformative quality of mind.'Seeking the Heart of Wisdom
— Joseph Goldstein
Guilt doesn't follow the rules of time. Most things fade with time, regret, eyesight, memories. But guilt feeds on time, and as it feeds, it grows, and when it runs out of time, it begins to gnaw on the guilty.
— J.D. Mason, Drop Dead, Gorgeous
There are two kinds of Communists: the arrogant ones, who enter the fray hoping to make men out of the people and bring progress to the nation; and the innocent ones, who get involved because they believe in equality and justice. The arrogant ones are obsessed with power; they presume to think for everyone; only bad can come of them. But the innocents? The only harm they do is to themselves. But that's all they ever wanted in the first place. They feel so guilty about the suffering of the poor, and are so keen to share it, that they make their lives miserable on purpose.
— Orhan Pamuk, Snow
I remembered my father telling me when I was a little girl, "Guilt is bullshit. Don't ever let anyone make you feel guilty.
— Kaylie Jones, Lies My Mother Never Told Me: A Memoir
It was the Communists, it was the Mexicans, it was the government. And the only people who acknowledged their guilt weren't guilty at all.
— Connie Willis, The Best of Connie Willis: Award-Winning Stories
My conscience is crosswired with my sweat glands, but there's a short in the system and I break out over things I didn't do, which only makes me look more suspect.
— David Sedaris, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
If I was president of the Slime Committee, I'd make it easier to come clean about shit. If coming clean is what you're supposed to do, then it should be made more fucken accessible, I say.
— D.B.C. Pierre
For the hundredth time, he examined his face in the bathroom mirror, patiently touched every scratch with the styptic pencil, and repowdered them. He ministered to his face and hands objectively, as if they were not a part of himself. When his eyes met the staring eyes in the mirror, they slipped away as they must have slipped away, Guy thought, that first afternoon on the train, when he had tried to avoid Bruno’s eyes.
— Patricia Highsmith
I have a very hard time getting to rage. I always assume that maybe I've done something wrong and then forgotten about it.
— Merrill Markoe, The Psycho Ex Game
The exoneration of the mass. No one voice is to blame. But his voice was there.
— Ian McDonald, The Dervish House
But, the thing about guilt is, no one can take away for you; you have to unpack it yourself.
— Andrea Randall, In the Stillness
And that for every negative event or coincidence that has happened since, imagining that you triggered them, that you made them happen makes you feel like you possess a degree of control that you don't have.
— Michelle Hodkin, The Evolution of Mara Dyer
Guilt is intense. Suffocating. A brick, tied quietly around your ankles while you sleep. You never fall slowly into guilt-you wake up with little time to take your last breath before being pulled under.
— Andrea Randall, In the Stillness
Relationship is thus always slavery of a kind, which leaves a residue of guilt.
— Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death
This was not guilt: guilt is what you feel when you have done something wrong. What I felt was shame: I was what was wrong.
— Atul Gawande, Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science
Ivanov: Once I worked hard and thought a lot but I never got tired; now I do nothing and think of nothing, but I'm tired in body and spirit. My conscience aches day and night, I feel deeply guilty but I don't understand where I am actually at fault. And add to that my wife's illness, my lack of money, the constant bickering, gossip, unnecessary conversations, that stupid Borkin... My home has become loathsome to me and I find living there worse than torture.
— Anton Chekhov, Ivanov
Only afterward did the guilt set in--the guilt that for a few minutes he let himself stop feeling guilty.
— Tiffany Reisz, The Siren
You give frequent flyer miles with that guilt trip?
— Cecily White, Prophecy Girl
...one half leaning in, one half pulling away.
— Jodi Picoult, The Pact
God knows we all have to at least try to justify our behavior so we don't feel too guilty about it later.
— Taylor Nadeau, The Death of Edwin Hubble
The passive righteousness of faith frees me from passing final judgment on myself.
— Tullian Tchividjian
She opened a small silver compact and looked at her face in its mirror. I am still guiltless, she thought, I have not done it yet. But I will look the same when I have done it; nobody will know the difference by looking at me. She touched the little puff twice to her nose and once to her chin. She closed the compact and put it away.("Mind Over Murder")
— Cornell Woolrich, Angels of Darkness
Guilt wears track shoes. Sprint, marathon, or cross-country, it doesn’t matter. It runs tireless to catch you, and it carries a sledgehammer.
— Jamie  Mason
It dances on the air for a moment before it falls, too. A fresh gust of wind almost saves it, but a worker catches sight of it and lifts a tube up to suck the paper from the air, to suck the words from the sky.I'm sorry, Grandfather.
— Ally Condie, Matched
The Homunculi may have started the war, but we were the ones who carried it out.
— Hiromu Arakawa, Fullmetal Alchemist, Vol. 16
No good has ever come from feeling guilty, neither intelligence, policy, nor compassion. The guilty do not pay attention to the object but only to themselves, and not even to their own interests, which might make sense, but to their anxieties.
— Paul Goodman
You have a conscience, and a conscience is a valuable attribute, but not if it begins to make you think you were to blame for what is far beyond the scope of your responsibility.
— Philip Roth, Nemesis
The antagonism between life and conscience may be removed in two ways: by a change of life or by a change of conscience.
— Leo Tolstoy
The Christian soul knows it needs Divine Help and therefore turns to Him Who loved us even while we were yet sinners. Examination of conscience, instead of inducing morbidity, thereby becomes an occasion of joy. There are two ways of knowing how good and loving God is. One is by never losing Him, through the preservation of innocence, and the other is by finding Him after one has lost Him. Repentance is not self-regarding, but God-regarding. It is not self-loathing, but God-loving. Christianity bids us accept ourselves as we really are, with all our faults and our failings and our sins. In all other religions, one has to be good to come to God—in Christianity one does not. Christianity might be described as a “come as you are” party. It bids us stop worrying about ourselves, stop concentrating on our faults and our failings, and thrust them upon the Saviour with a firm resolve of amendment. The examination of conscience never induces despair, always hope…Because examination of conscience is done in the light of God’s love, it begins with a prayer to the Holy Spirit to illumine our minds. A soul then acts toward the Spirit of God as toward a watchmaker who will fix our watch. We put a watch in his hands because we know he will not force it, and we put our souls in God’s hands because we know that if he inspects them regularly they will work as they should…it is true that, the closer we get to God, the more we see our defects. A painting reveals few defects under candlelight, but the sunlight may reveal it as daub. The very good never believe themselves very good, because they are judging themselves by the Ideal. In perfect innocence each soul, like the Apostles at the Last Supper, cries out, “Is it I, Lord” (Matt. 26:22).
— Fulton J. Sheen, Peace of Soul: Timeless Wisdom on Finding Serenity and Joy by the Century's Most Acclaimed Catholic Bishop
Let go of self-condemnation and guilt!
— Tae Yun Kim, The Silent Master: Awakening the Power Within
Guilt was a fascinating thing: it seemed not to weaken over time. If anything it grew stronger as the circumstances faded from memory, as the fear and the necessity became abstract. And only her own actions stood out with crystal clarity.
— Michael  Grant
A love that left people alone in their guilt would not have real people as its object. So, in vicarious responsibility for people, and in His love for real human beings, Jesus becomes the one burdened by guilt.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas
I would only blame myself if something happened to you.
— Shannon A. Thompson, November Snow
One of the more gratifying things about guilt is that it makes us feel important.
— Susan Beth Pfeffer, About David
There has been no single influence which has done more to prevent man from finding God and rebuilding his character, has done more to lower the moral tone of society than the denial of personal guilt. This repudiation of man’s personal responsibility for his action is falsely justified in two ways: by assuming that man is only an animal and by giving a sense of guilt the tag “morbid.
— Fulton J. Sheen, Peace of Soul: Timeless Wisdom on Finding Serenity and Joy by the Century's Most Acclaimed Catholic Bishop
God never estimates what we give from impulse. We are given credit for what we determine in our hearts to give; for the giving that is governed by a fixed determination. The Spirit of God revolutionises our philanthropic instincts. Much of our philanthropy is simply the impulse to save ourselves an uncomfortable feeling. The Spirit of God alters all that. As saints our attitude towards giving is that we give for Jesus Christ’s sake, and from no other motive. 
— Oswald Chambers, Biblical Psychology: Christ-Centered Solutions for Daily Problems
Morrigan "What are guilt ferrets:"Atticus "They're bastards. They cling to your neck and tickle and bite and generally make you miserable, which is a pretty good trick for a metaphor." They were also impervious to logic, perhaps their most diabolical power.
— Kevin Hearne, Two Ravens and One Crow
Experience had taught me that innocence seldom utters outraged shrikes. Guilt does. Innocence is a mighty shield, and the man or woman covered by it, is much more likely to answer calmly: 'My life is blameless. Look into it, if you like, for you will find nothing.' That is the tone of innocence.
— Whittaker Chambers, Witness
What was it about women and crying that made me feel like crap? They must have guilt pheromones in their tears.
— John Corwin, Dark Light of Mine
Enough of this guilt," he told her, his voice reduced to a cracked whisper. "What's done is done.
— Alexis Steinhauer
Every morning I wake up, I feel guilty; every breath of borrowed time is heavy in my chest."-Lo-The Wild Hunt
— Ashley Jeffery
Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.
— Erma Bombeck