guilt

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__e 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.

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.

The passive righteousness of faith frees me from passing final judgment on myself.

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.

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.

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.

Father, I can__ take this,_ I said. __hy not?_ __ecause you__e a priest, Father._ __nd my money__ no good because of it? What are you? A member of the Masonic Lodge?_ __aw, Father,_ I said. __ just feel guilty taking money from you._ __ell, you__e Irish and Jewish. You have to feel guilty over somethin_, don__ ya? Take the money and be happy ye have it.

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__ 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. ____ not afraid of you, ya know,_ I said, although I was terrified of her. The words hurt her, but that wasn__ 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__ mean to be hurtful, because I knew what it was like to be ridiculed for something that was beyond one__ 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. __ou look good in a nun__ 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.

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.

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.

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.

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__ joy and nutriment. To the untrue man, the whole universe is false__t is impalpable__t 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.

On the perfect night there is nothing more transcendent or terrifying than boxing. It's the ultimate representation of the guilty pleasure.

I have only ever known Guilt to have one weakness, one not easily given and not easily found: Forgiveness...In truth, Guilt__ strength lies not in the failure of others to grant us forgiveness, but in our failure to forgive ourselves.

Guilt was its own prison.

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.

The antagonism between life and conscience may be removed in two ways: by a change of life or by a change of conscience.

Guilt is a waste of time unless you learn how to be more loving the next time a similar situation presents itself.