guilt

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.

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.

It is strange the way that someone who wants to find you guilty can start to make you believe in your own guilt, even when you know you are innocent. I was afraid I would condemn myself my mistake.

Most injuries heal in time, but guilt is a cancer that knows where to hide.

All I could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy I'd been selling out of my dorms room. Or maybe they'd realized I got my Essay on Tom Sawyer from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me read the book.

To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of the happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed.

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.

_In the very simplicity of her desire to punish herself appeared egoism in its purest form. Never before had this woman who seemed to think only of herself experienced an egoism so immaculate.

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

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.

So full of artless jealousy is guilt,It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.

You're an asshole, you know that, Haller?"I nodded and headed back to the door."When I need to be.

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.

Okay.I will go.But only ifyou will give meyour guiltto takewith me.

I'm sorry about what happened,' Love said. Death squeezed his hand. 'Play as yourself. Not as me. Trust me one that.

Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.

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.

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.