Guilt is a cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person believes or realizes—accurately or not—that he or she has compromised his or her own standards of conduct or has violated a universal moral standard and bears significant responsibility for that violation. We all feel guilt sometimes in life. But it is not a sad story always. Guilt stops us doing bad. This is a collection of 70+ guilt quotes and sayings.
1. Guilt is also a way for us to express to others that we are a person of good conscience. Tom Hodgkinson
2. Guilt is a destructive and ultimately pointless emotion. Lynn Crilly
3. Every man is guilty of all the good he didn't do. Voltaire
4. Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion of death. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
5. Guilt is a rope that wears thin. Ayn Rand
6. He declares himself guilty who justifies himself before accusation. Proverb
7. Guilt is to danger, what fire is to gunpowder; a man need not fear to walk among many barrels of powder, if he have no fire about him. John Flavel
8. Guilt alone, like brain-sick frenzy in its feverish mood, fills the light air with visionary terrors, and shapeless forms of fear. Junius
9. Guilt is always hungry, don't let it consume you. Terri Guillemets
10. The guilt you feel finally comes to an end when you fully express how it came into your consciousness. Luke Garne
11. What is guilt? It is moral self-reproach--I did wrong when it was possible to have done otherwise. Nathaniel Branden
12. Guilt hath very quick ears to an accusation. Henry Fielding
13. Repentant tears wash out the stain of guilt. Saint Augustine
14. Guilt is ever at a loss, and confusion waits upon it; when innocence and bold truth are always ready for expression. William Congreve
15. Guilt is an indulgence, it entangles you in the past.
16. Guilt: punishing yourself before God doesn't. Alan Cohen
17. Where guilt is, rage and courage doth abound. Ben Jonson
18. Guilt is something small people feel when they run out of excuses for their behavior. Gaius Baltar
19. Guilt is the sum total of: All the negative feelings we have ever had about ourselves! Any form of self-hatred, self-rejection, feelings of worthlessness, sinfulness, inferiority, incompetence, failure, or emptiness. The feeling that there are things in us that are lacking or missing or incomplete. Ken Wapnick
20. Guilt is oftentimes the strongest witness against itself. Edward Counsel
21. 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
22. He that is conscious of guilt cannot bear the innocence of others: So they will try to reduce all others to their own level. Charles James Fox
23. Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving. Erma Bombeck
24. Successful guilt is the bane of society. Publilius Syrus
25. Guilt is the price we pay willingly for doing what we are going to do anyway. Isabelle Holland
26. Guilt is the very nerve of sorrow. Horace Bushnell
27. No guilt is forgotten so long as the conscience still knows of it. Stefan Zweig
28. Guilt is a useless feeling. It's never enough to make you change direction--only enough to make you useless. Daniel Nayeri
29. Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one's own actions or lack of action.
30. Guilt has always its horrors and solicitudes; and, to make it yet more shameful and detestable, it is doomed often to stand in awe of those to whom nothing could give influence or weight but their power of betraying. Samuel Johnson
31. Guilt was never a rational thing; it distorts all the faculties of the human mind, it perverts them, it leaves a man no longer in the free use of his reason, it puts him into confusion. Edmund Burke
32. The guilty think all talk is of themselves. Chaucer
33. Guilt is anything you did and fear others to know about. Mohammad MPBUH
34. There are two kinds of guilt: the kind that drowns you until you're useless, and the kind that fires your soul to purpose. Sabaa Tahir
35. Guilt's just your ego's way of tricking you into thinking that you're making moral progress. Don't fall for it, my dear. Elizabeth Gilbert
36. You won't be free from guilt if you are constantly replaying the negative memories of your past. If you're going to replay anything, replay your victories! Joel Osteen
37. Guilt is a lazy feeling that takes no action; the wings of integrity are the only thing that sets it free. Shannon L. Alder
38. Guilt is a waste of time unless you learn how to be more loving the next time a similar situation presents itself. Guilt is really self- condemnation and self-invalidation of our worth and value as a human being. David R. Hawkins
39. Guilt is a manifestation of condemnation or aversion towards oneself, which does not understand the changing transformative quality of mind. Joseph Goldstein
40. 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. Bryant McGill
41. Like hatred, guilt can't be locked in the silence of forgetting, without taking part of your soul with it. Shannon L. Alder
42. You're making yourself too important. Guilt comes from feeling we're at the center of the universe. We're not. Gloria Whelan
43. Guilt is the source of sorrows, the avenging fiend that follows us behind with whips and stings. Nicholas Rowe
44. Guilt is abscent when the act is justified. unknown
45. People incapable of guilt usually do have a good time. Rust Cohle
46. Guilt once harbored in the conscious breast, intimidates the brave, degrades the great. Samuel Johnson
47. It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one. Voltaire
48. Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind. William Shakespeare
49. When one person makes an accusation, check to be sure he himself is not the guilty one. Sometimes it is those whose case is weak who make the most clamour. Piers Anthony
50. Whoever blushes is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
51. A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession. Albert Camus
52. All the seven deadly sins are man's true nature. To be greedy. To be hateful. To have lust. Of course, you have to control them, but if you're made to feel guilty for being human, then you're going to be trapped in a never-ending sin-and-repent cycle that you can't escape from. Marilyn Manson
53. Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide? Jean-Jacques Rousseau
54. Sometimes it's difficult to accept, to recognise one's own mistakes, but one must do it. I was guilty of overconfidence and arrogance, and I was punished for that. Mikhail Gorbachev
55. There are many who are not guilty of doing anything wrong but very guilty of sins of omission - the things they neglect to do - the good things - the kind, thoughtful words, compassionate thoughts and hopeful attitudes they might have had towards their neighbor. Mother Angelica
56. A young bride is like a plucked flower; but a guilty wife is like a flower that had been walked over. Honore de Balzac
57. I never feel guilty or anything after a podcast; I feel better. Nikki Glaser
58. You have to be reasonable with yourself and not feel guilty when things aren't perfect. Jaclyn Smith
59. People's love of sweets and guilty feelings about overindulgence are pretty universal. Will Cotton
60. The guilty think all talk is of themselves. Geoffrey Chaucer
61. Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent. George Orwell
62. It is better that a guilty man should not be brought to trial than that he should be acquitted. Livy
63. One is often guilty by being too just. Pierre Corneille
64. This is his first punishment, that by the verdict of his own heart no guilty man is acquitted. Juvenal
65. To have the truth in your possession you can be found guilty, sentenced to death. Peter Tosh
66. Every guilty person is his own hangman. Lucius Annaeus Seneca
67. No one who's white thinks he's innocent. No one who's black thinks he's guilty. Andrew Young
68. I don't believe in guilty pleasures. If you enjoy something, there's nothing guilty about it. Busy Philipps
69. Sometimes things can be a guilty pleasure, but with 'Idol,' everyone talks about it like it's a real thing; they argue over who's gonna win... There's no laughing at it. Andy Kindler
70. One threatens the innocent who spares the guilty. Edward Coke
71. More oftentimes than not, you're automatically guilty before innocent. Anthony Anderson
72. There is no such thing as a guilty pleasure. Douglas Wilson
