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.
Guilt can prevent us from setting the boundaries that would be in our best interests, and in other people's best interests.
I saw my parents as gods whose every wish must be obeyed or I would suffer the penalty of anguish and guilt.
Victims suggest innocence. And innocence, by the inexorable logic that governs all relational terms, suggests guilt.
There are two kinds of guilt: the kind that drowns you until you’re useless, and the kind that fires your soul to purpose.
Guilt always hurries towards its complement, punishment; only there does its satisfaction lie.
Hard though it may be to accept, remember that guilt is sometimes a friendly internal voice reminding you that you're messing up.
When we grow older and begin to realize that our omnipotence is really not so omnipotent, that our strongest wishes are not powerful enough to make the impossible possible, the fear that we have contributed to the death of a loved one diminishes - an...
I can't even explain to you how terrible that feels, that I equate dating a woman with punishment, shame, guilt, disappointment, reproach, reprimand, persecution. It's a nightmare.
In all secrets there is a kind of guilt, however beautiful or joyful they may be, or for what good end they may be set to serve. Secrecy means evasion, and evasion means a problem to the moral mind.
There's guilt about our treatment of native peoples in modern intellectual life, and an unwillingness to acknowledge there could be anything good about Western culture.
I don't have any gnawing guilt over contributing to any unhappiness suffered by my husbands. They were as much to blame as I was.
We gather our arms full of guilt as though it were precious stuff. It must be that we want it that way.
Max Cherry: Is white guilt supposed to make me forget that I run a business?
It is high time to declare an end to the breastfeeding dictatorship that is drowning women in guilt and worry just when they most need support: after the birth of a child.
Lestat: Merciful death. How you love your precious guilt.
I had a girlfriend when I was 17-18, and when she was 21, she wanted us to get married. I couldn't do that, because my game was my priority. We had to part ways, and there was no guilt because I had never committed to marriage.
Lie detectors sometimes work because people believe they work, deterring the wrong people from applying for jobs in the first place, or prompting admissions of guilt during interrogations.
I would feel so guilty about lying that I would try to stress myself out and work up a headache so I wouldn't have the guilt of not having a bit of the symptom.
Wars can be prevented just as surely as they can be provoked, and we who fail to prevent them, must share the guilt for the dead.
Tied up a lot of women, have you?" He raised one eyebrow, whatever that meant. "A bit odd, are you?" She was being sarcastic, trying to taunt him into a sense of guilt. While perhaps bursting any bubble in herself of misguided, soft-hearted concern f...
