Only The Guilty Quotes & Sayings

Tacitus laughed at the Germanic tribes who tried to stop a torrent with their shields, but it is no less naive to believe in planetary migration or to believe in the establishment by purely human means of a society fully satisfied and perfectly inoffensive and continuing to progress indefinitely. Al lthis proves that man ,thoough he has inevitably become less naive in some things, has nontheless learned nothing as far as essentials are concerned; the only thing that man is capable of when left to himself is to "commit the oldest sins the newest kind of ways," as Shakespeare would say. And the world being what it is, one is doubtless not guilty of a truism in adding that it is better to go to Heaven naively than to go intelligently to hell. — Frithjof Schuon

Humans are the killers of magic, you see.....People can be cruel, unkind, mean, selfish. We can be a great many dreadful thing, and at one time or another we are all guilty of bad behavior. What we fail to realize is that we are the only ones who can do such things. — Patrick Carman

The only thing of which one can be guilty is of having given ground relative to one's desire. — Jacques Lacan

Christianity happens when men and women accept with unwavering trust that their sins have been not only forgiven, but forgotten, washed away in the blood of the Lamb. Thus, my friend archbishop Joe Reia says, A sad Christian is a phony Christian, and a guilty Christian is no Christian at all. — Brennan Manning

I'm supposed to be guilty of all sorts of crimes and misdemeanors, but when you get right down to it, I'm really only guilty of one: wondering. The road to Hell, you say, is paved with good intentions. Charming. But actually it's paved with intriguing questions. You want to know. Man do you want to know. — Glen Duncan

A monster crosses over into the everyday world. The mortals struggle and show great courage, but it's no use. The monster kills first the guilty, then the innocent, until finally only one remains. The Last Boy, the Last Girl. There is a final battle. The Last One suffers great wounds, but in the final moment vanquishes the monster. Only later does he or she recognize that this is the monster's final trick; the scars run deep, and the awareness of the truth grows like an infection. The Last One knows that the monster isn't dead, only sent to the other side. There it waits until it can slip into the mundane world again. Perhaps next time it will be a knife-wielding madman, or a fanged beast, or some nameless tentacled thing. It's the monster with a thousand faces. The details matter only to the next victims. — Daryl Gregory

Samson crushed himself and his enemies to death beneath the ruins of a building. He can only be excused on the grounds that the Spirit of the Lord, who wrought miracles through him, had bidden him to do so. But, apart from such men excepted by the command of a just law in general or of God, the very Source of justice, in a special case, any one who kills a human being, himself or another, is guilty of murder. — Saint Augustine

The law has been perverted, and the powers of the state have become perverted along with it. The law has not only been turned from its proper function, but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose. The law has become a tool for every kind of greed. Instead of preventing crime, the law itself is guilty of the abuses it is supposed to punish. If this is true, it is a serious matter, and moral duty requires me to call the attention of my fellow-citizens to it. — Frederic Bastiat

She explained that many people, but especially women, feel fraudulent when they are praised for their accomplishments. Instead of feeling worthy of recognition, they feel undeserving and guilty, as if a mistake has been made. Despite being high achievers, even experts in their fields, women can't seem to shake the sense that it is only a matter of time until they are found out for who they really are- impostors with limited skills or abilities. — Sheryl Sandberg

In a world that has lost a sense of sin, one sin remains: Thou shalt not make people feel guilty (except, of course, about making people feel guilty). In other words, the only sin today is to call something a sin. — Christopher West

To those who abuse: the sin is yours, the crime is yours, and the shame is yours. To those who protect the perpetrators: blaming the victims only masks the evil within, making you as guilty as those who abuse. Stand up for the innocent or go down with the rest. — Flora Jessop

At thirteen, Noboru was convinced of his own genius (each of the others in the gang felt the same way) and certain that life consisted of a few simple signals and decisions; that death took root at the moment of birth and man's only recourse thereafter was to water and tend it; that propagation was a fiction; consequently, society was a fiction too: that fathers and teachers, by virtue of being fathers and teachers, were guilty of a grievous sin. Therefore, his own father's death, when he was eight, had been a happy incident, something to be proud of. — Yukio Mishima

Nothing can be more contrary to nature, to reason, to religion, than cruelty; hence as inhuman man is generally considered as a monster; such monsters, however, have existed; and the heart almost bleeds at the recital of the cruel acts such have been guilty of; it teaches us, however, what human nature is when left to itself; not only treacherous, but desperately wicked. — Charles Buck

The battlefield is symbolic of the field of life, where every creature lives on the death of another. A realization of the inevitable guilt of life may so sicken the heart, that like Hamlet, or like Arjuna, one may refuse to go on with it. On the other hand, like most of the rest of us, one may invent a false finally unjustified image of oneself as an exceptional phenomenon in the world
not guilty as others are, but justified in one's inevitable sinning, because one represents the good. Such self-righteousness leads to a misunderstanding, not only of oneself, but of the nature of both Man and the Cosmos. The goal of the myth is to dispel the need for such life-ignorance by affecting a reconciliation of the individual consciousness with the universal will, and this is affected through a realization of the true relationship of the passing phenomena of time to the imperishable life that lives and dies in all. — Joseph Campbell

The hands of the guilty don't necessarily tremble; only in stories does a dropped glass betray agitation. Tension is more often shown in the studied action. — Graham Greene

Pride has quite a bit to do with hatred. In many a case in which one hates another, one subconsciously begins patterns of cherry-picking and selective hearing: he continues to look only for things about the other person which he can use to justify his hatred, things which will then make him feel less guilty about hating someone. In this regard, hatred is not so much an emotion as it is a decision. — Criss Jami

I don't even know if I will be around next year. My cancers are so bad that I think I've arrived at the end of the road. What a pity. I would like to live not only because I love life so much, but because I'd like to see the result of the trial. I do think I will be found guilty. — Oriana Fallaci

When your actions towards acquiring leadership in any country portrays blatant mischief orchestrated towards disregarding the concepts of the constitution, you do not only become guilty of hijacking power which rightfully belong to the people, but also, you are guilty of violation of the rights of freedom of the same people that you purport to want to lead. Like any match, elections is competition towards democracy, and all competitions have rules that set guidelines in that particular competition. Any violation of such rules renders that competition invalid. True democracy does not condone compromises. True democracy upholds and adheres to the rule of law, for it is the rule of law that can explicitly define democracy. — Akuku Mach Pep

Justice is only achieved in beautiful fullness when the oppressed has been elevated back to their rightful place, and when those who were guilty of the oppressing have experienced repentance, healing, and restoration as well.
justice is only achieved in beautiful fullness when the oppressed has been elevated back to their rightful place, and when those who were guilty of the oppressing have experienced repentance, healing, and restoration as well. — Benjamin L. Corey

Over what guilty spirit to not hear the beating, to not hear the beating, but only tears of perfect moan, only tears of perfect moan. — Lou Reed

The law perverted! The law - and, in its wake, all the collective forces of the nation - the law, I say, not only diverted from its proper direction, but made to pursue one entirely contrary! The law become the tool of every kind of avarice, instead of being its check! The law guilty of that very iniquity which it was its mission to punish! Truly, this is a serious fact, if it exists, and one to which I feel bound to call the attention of my fellow citizens. — Frederic Bastiat

But the guilty person is only one of the targets of punishment. For punishment is directed above all at others, at all the potentially guilty. — Michel Foucault

You cannot contain evil by shaming it, or making people feel guilty, but only by revealing it toward it is, and then seeing the good as better. — Richard Rohr

I was very struck by the fact that Colin Powell said he would produce evidence and then never produced it. Then Tony Blair produced a document of seventy paragraphs, but only the last nine referred to the World Trade Center, and they were not convincing. So we have a little problem here: If they're guilty, where is the evidence? And if we can't hear the evidence, why are we going to war? — Robert Fisk

We're trained to believe we should cling to one person only. Yet there are so many people who pass in and out of our lives. Good people, worth people, interesting people. Most of them stay for a little while and then move on. Some of them find a place with us and, if we let them, they enrich us. Don't close yourself off from the rest of the world, Eve. If you find someone who can make you understand a little more, laugh every now and then, give you a new experience, then never feel guilty. You'll just have more to give back to those who are closest to you. — Iris Johansen

In your ordered verdict of guilty you have trampled under foot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, mycivil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights are all alike ignored. Robbed of the fundamental privilege of citizenship, I am degraded from the status of a citizen to that of a subject; and not only myself individually but all of my sex are, by your honor's verdict, doomed to political subjection under this so-called republican form of government. — Susan B. Anthony

[Murder] doesn't concern the victim and the guilty only. It affects the innocent too. You and I are innocent, but the shadow of murder has touched us. We don't know how that shadow is going to affect our lives. — Agatha Christie

Hitler's architect and later Minister of Armaments, Albert Speer. Speer had been imprisoned for his role in the use of slave labor during the war, but though he was found guilty for a number of crimes, and served nineteen years in prison, upon his release which was supported by such people as French president Charles DeGaulle and other high-ranking politicians, he was considered in many ways a "good German". He had admitted his guilt at the Nuremberg War Crimes trials after the war, and acknowledged that the crimes committed under Hitler would haunt Germany forever. He wrote his memoirs in prison and spoke not only about his complicity in the use of slave labor but also his attempts to thwart some of Hitler's more barbaric plans at the end of the war. Much of the proceeds from his bestselling memoirs went to Jewish organizations, though this was not discovered until after Speer had died. — Leonard Cooper

I understand individuals and their personal motivations, but when those same individuals become a part of something bigger, some amorphous corporate ball of greed, I can't anticipate the logical next move, because it has long ago stopped being human. Your average human being has a conscience and the world is structured with checks and balances to shed light on that individual should he or she become something ugly and cruel. But a company can hide its corruption; the individuals responsible can sit innocently and united behind their desks for years before they are discovered. They are as guilty as the guy robbing the liquor store in the ski mask, only they're free to show their faces. I had no idea whether I should be looking for the worker bee or the nest, or both, and my nearsightedness cost my boss his job. — Lisa Lutz

All prisons are brimming over with innocence. It is those who cram their fellows into them, in the name of empty ideas, who are the only guilty ones. — Jean Anouilh

Ife onye metalu' ['what a man commits'] - a statement unclear and menacing in its very inconclusiveness. What a man commits ... Follows him? Comes back to take its toll? Was that all? No, that was only part of it ... The real burden of that cryptic scripture seemed to turn the matter right around. Whatever we see following a man, whatever fate comes to take its revenge on him, can only be what that man in some way or another, in a previous life if not in this, has committed. That was it! So those three words wrapped in an archaic tongue and tucked away at the tail of the bus turn out to be the opening segment of a full-blooded heathen antiphony offering a primitive and quite deadly exposition of suffering. The guilty suffers; the sufferer is guilty. As for the righteous, those whose arms are straight, they will always prosper! — Chinua Achebe

The people trying to change others can conveniently be termed the angry, while the people trying to change themselves might be called the guilty, although it would be just as descriptive to speak of the controlling and the dependent, or the paranoid and the repressive, or, inelegantly, the screamers and the criers. In some circles, attaching labels to people rates only a little higher than chicken stealing, because ... a label immediately ends attempts to understand the individual. — Jo Coudert

According to the biblical tradition the absence of work
idleness
was a condition of the first man's state of blessedness before the Fall. The love of idleness has been preserved in fallen man, but now a heavy curse lies upon him, not only because we have to earn our bread by the sweat of our brow, but also because our sense of morality will not allow us to be both idle and at ease. Whenever we are idle a secret voice keeps telling us to feel guilty. If man could discover a state in which he could be idle and still feel useful and on the path of duty, he would have regained one aspect of that primitive state of blessedness. And there is one such state of enforced and irreproachable idleness enjoyed by an entire class of men
the military class. It is this state of enforced and irreproachable idleness that forms the chief attraction of military service, and it always will. — Leo Tolstoy

Only the guilty are guilty. Their children are not. — Elie Wiesel

I am only waiting for love to give myself up at last into his hands.
That is why it is so late and why I have been guilty of such omissions.
They come with their laws and their codes to bind me fast; but I
evade them ever, for I am only waiting for love to give myself up at
last into his hands.
People blame me and call me heedless; I doubt not they are right
in their blame.
The market day is over and work is all done for the busy. Those
who came to call me in vain have gone back in anger. I am only
waiting for love to give myself up at last into his hands. — Rabindranath Tagore

The only faults considered grave are the following: not respecting the rights of one's neighbor, letting oneself be paralyzed by fear, feeling guilty, thinking one does not deserve the good and bad which occurs in life, and being a coward. — Paulo Coelho

The only crime I'm guilty of is being a young black woman. — Foxy Brown

But when he know that he is not only worse than all those in the world, but is also guilty before all people, on behalf of all and for all, for all human sins, the world's and each person's, only then will the goal of our unity be achieved. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Yet the scene around me had its influence, and a guilty feeling possessed me as I realized that of all present in that place of peace and clean content, I was the only profane thing, an ogre lurking to destroy. The half-grown ferns and evergreen sedge grasses through which the early breeze whispered, would, if I had my way, soon be smeared with the blood of some animal, who was viewing, perhaps with feelings akin to my own, the dawning of another day; to be is last. Strange thoughts, maybe, coming from a trapper, one whose trade is to kill;but be it known to you that he who lives much alone within the portals of the temple of Nature learns to think, and deeply, of things which seldom come within the scope of ordinary life. Much Killing brings ine time, no longer triumph, but a revulsion of feeling. — Grey Owl

We tend to have a limited concept of spiritual death as saying no only to things we want or covet
our guilty pleasures and selfish ambitions. But in reality, it means dying inwardly to whatever has control over us. The thing that really controls us may not be what we want. It may be what we fear. Fear can dominate our lives just as strongly as desire. — Nancy Pearcey

As for the errors I make, the only punishment I acknowledge for having made them is my awareness of those errors, and having to live with it: there is, there should be, no heavier penalty on a person's soul, mind and heart. — Joumana Haddad

He'd made love to her four times now, he realized, but this was his first chance to truly look upon her body. She was every inch as lovely as he'd imagined, if not more. He felt a bit guilty, realizing he'd chastised her for sketching his likeness, when he'd been conjuring an image of her nude form nightly for weeks. The only difference was, he hadn't committed his fantasies to paper.
It would take a Renaissance master to capture this beauty. — Tessa Dare

I dinna like this, Rob,' said a Feegle. 'It's too quiet.'
'Aye, Slightly Sane Georgie, it is that-'
'You are my sunshine, my only su-'
'Daft Wullie!' snapped Rob, without taking his eyes off the strange landscape.
The singing stopped. 'Aye, Rob?' said Daft Wullie from behind him.
'Ye ken I said I'd tell ye when ye wuz guilty o' stupid and inna-pro-pre-ate behavior?'
'Aye, Rob,' said Daft Wullie. 'That wuz another one o' those times, wuz it?'
'Aye. — Terry Pratchett

Convictions and the man--it seems they're two different things in many ways. Maybe in many ways I'm guilty before them!...We're all guilty, we're all guilty, and...if only we were all convinced of it! — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

In the silence punctuated only by their footsteps, both men thought not of themselves but of a Man who once made a long,lonely march up a hill, who in the world's worst hour did the most courageous thing ever done.
At the end of His climb,He spread out His arms and permitted guilty men to drive nails into His hands and feet. He endured untold agony to give undeserving men- like Mike Hollis, Derrick Freeman, Nathan Hayes, and Adam Mitchell- a second chance.
To most people none of this - not what these men were doing now, nor what He did two thousand years ago-made sense.
From the outside, grace and truth,honor and courage,seldom do. — Randy Alcorn

Lots of people today would never consider themselves guilty of idolatry as far as it is spelled out in the Ten Commandments, but by reducing God to some benevolent "man upstairs" whose only attributes are love and tolerance, and who could not care less about sin, they truly have transgressed God's commandment. They have created a god in their mind who does not actually exist and will on the day of judgment, not be able to offer them any help. — Charlie Campbell

The only things that I can tell you is that every case I have reviewed I have been comfortable with the innocence or guilt of the person that I've looked at. I do not believe we've put a guilty ... I mean innocent person to death in the state of Texas. — George W. Bush

Carlyle must undoubtedly plead guilty to the charge of mannerism. He not only has his vein, but his peculiar manner of working it.He has a style which can be imitated, and sometimes is an imitator of himself. — Henry David Thoreau

The longer I procrastinate on returning phone calls and emails, the more guilty I feel about it. The guilt I feel causes me to avoid the issue further, which only leads to more guilt and more procrastination. It gets to the point where I don't email someone for fear of reminding them that they emailed me and thus giving them a reason to be disappointed in me. — Allie Brosh

When the meaning of life has been suppressed, there still remains life. "I live," says Ivan, "in spite of logic." And again: "If I no longer had any faith in life, if I doubted a woman I loved, or the universal order of things, if I were persuaded, on the contrary, that everything was only an infernal and accursed chaos - even then I would want to live." Ivan will live,
then, and will love as well "without knowing why." But to live is also to act. To act in the name of what?
If there is no immortality, then there is neither reward nor punishment. "I believe that there is no virtue
without immortality." And also: "I only know that suffering exists, that no one is guilty, that everything is
connected, that everything passes away and equals out." But if there is no virtue, there is no law:
"Everything is permitted. — Albert Camus

Have come through a very painful and very joyful experience. Heard she behaved badly in the hospital. Found this terribly hard to bear. Unimaginably hard. I turned on her with hatred and disgust, until I suddenly remembered how often I myself have been (and still am, though only in thought) guilty of the very thing I was hating her for - and immediately I was filled with a mixture of self-loathing and pity for her, and this made me feel good again. If only we were always quick enough to see the beam in our own eye, how much kinder we would be! — Leo Tolstoy

Many, many a poor soul hath given its confidence to me, not only on the death-bed, but while strong in life, and fair in reputation. And ever, after such an outpouring, oh, what a relief have I witnessed in those sinful brethren! even as in one who at last draws free air, after a long stifling with his own polluted breath. How can it be otherwise? Why should a wretched man - guilty, we will say, of murder - prefer to keep the dead corpse buried in his own heart, rather than fling it forth at once, and let the universe take care of it!" "Yet — Nathaniel Hawthorne

17God sent his Son into the world. He did not send him to judge the world guilty, but to save the world through him. 18People who believe in God's Son are not judged guilty. But people who do not believe are already judged, because they have not believed in God's only Son. 19They are judged by this fact: — Anonymous

There's no blade sharper than the truth under the Sun, it's enlightens the mind, releases the captives, condemns the guilty and spares the innocent; it's the only weapon a hero ever needs to fight a war, the one which is conducted without a need of any Iron blade! — Marcus L. Lukusa

You should leave your wife more time." "She has all day available." "I'm not kidding. If you don't, you're guilty not only on a human level but also on a political one." "What's the crime?" "The waste of intelligence. A community that finds it natural to suffocate with the care of home and children so many women's intellectual energies is its own enemy and doesn't realize it." I waited in silence for Pietro to respond. My husband reacted with sarcasm. "Elena can cultivate her intelligence when and how she likes, the essential thing is that she not take time from me." "If she doesn't take it from you, then who can she take it from?" Pietro frowned. "When the task we give ourselves has the urgency of passion, there's nothing that can keep us from completing it." I felt wounded, I whispered with a false smile: "My husband is saying that I have no true interest. — Elena Ferrante

In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. — Hunter S. Thompson

The human is the only guilty animal. — John Steinbeck

She is shocked by the rows of thick Plexiglas windows, each equipped with a telephone, each with a prisoner on one side and an outsider on the other. There is a teenage girl chatting with a prisoner who is presumably her father. There's a married couple talking to their daughter. There's a woman with a baby in her arms, sobbing into her phone as she begs her husband not to plead guilty for his crimes. Jail is terrifying to Geraldine, not only because it's a house of criminals but also because it's a cold slap in the face, a reminder of where she will eventually end up. "You've got to stay with me the whole time, Callo! I'm serious, you CANNOT leave me here."

"I'll never," Callo vows, but he's eyeing her strangely. "Just remember which side of the glass you're on right now, Geraldine. — Rebecca McNutt

Now and then I have expressed the opinion that every nation, and every person, would do better, instead of rocking himself to sleep with political catchwords about war-guilt, to ask himself how far his own faults and negligencies and evil tendencies are guilty of the war and all the other wrongs of the world, and that there lies the only possible means of avoiding the next war. — Hermann Hesse

Woman. My lord, said she, he is kept unlawfully in prison; they clapped him up before there was any proclamation against the meetings; the indictment also is false. Besides, they never asked him whether he was guilty or no; neither did he confess the indictment. One of the Justices. Then one of the justices that stood by, whom she knew not, said, My Lord, he was lawfully convicted. Wom. It is false, said she; for when they said to him, Do you confess the indictment? he said only this, that he had been at several meetings, both where there were preaching the Word, and prayer, and that they had God's presence among them. Judge Twisdon. Whereat Judge Twisdon answered very angrily, saying, What, you think we can do what we list; your husband is a breaker of the peace, and is convicted by the law, etc. Whereupon Judge Hale called for the Statute Book. Wom. But, said she, my lord, he was not lawfully convicted. — John Bunyan

For you must know, my dear ones, that each of us is undoubtedly guilty on behalf of all and for all on earth, not only because of the common guilt of the world, but personally, each one of us, for all people and for each person on this earth. This knowledge is the crown of the monk's path, and of every man's path on earth. For monks are not a different sort of men, but only such as all men on earth ought also to be. Only then will our hearts be moved to a love that is infinite, universal, and that knows no satiety. Then each of us will be able to gain the whole world by love and wash away the world's sins with his tears ... — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Second, not only does the gospel prepare me to face my sin, it also frees me up to do so. Facing our sin causes us to feel guilty. Of course we feel guilty because we are guilty. And if I believe, consciously or unconsciously, that God still counts my guilt against me, my instinctive sense of self-protection forbids me to acknowledge my sin and guilt, or, at the least, I seek to minimize it. But we cannot begin to deal with a particular manifestation of sin, such as anger or self-pity, until we first openly acknowledge its presence and activity in our lives. So I need the assurance that my sin is forgiven before I can even acknowledge it, let alone begin to deal with it. By — Jerry Bridges

... we are all guilty of oversimplification at one point or another. It's an enticing idea. It fulfills our need for instant gratification. We find one thing and scream, "Eureka!" We found IT - the one thing that explains it all. The only trouble is that it never works. We are more likely to squeeze gold from our coffee grinder than we are to meet with success when adopting an idea that has been simplified beyond recognition. — Gudjon Bergmann

You see what I mean? Being rich must be a condition, much like sickness or health. Say you are rich, you might, in some mysterious way, be rich forever, but however much money you have, you never feel properly rich. Maybe you need to believe in your wealth in order to be properly rich - I mean, the way saints and revolutionaries believe they are different. And you can't afford to feel guilty if you are rich: if you felt guilty for a second you'd be finished. The not-truly-rich, those who have visions of the poor while indulging in a beefsteak and drinking Champagne, will eventually lose out, because they are insincere in their wealth. They're not rich out of conviction, they are only pretending, cowardly, sneakily, to be rich. You have to be very disciplined to be rich. You can perform a few charitable acts, but only as a kind of a fig leaf. — Sandor Marai

And every writer cherishes the dream of setting the young on fire, even if only by a cigarette butt tossed casually over the shoulder, and when we meet young people who say that they were inspired by what we said to rush off and read the books we were talking about, we can congratulate ourselves for all those guilty hours when, the last two left after a long lunch, we went on arguing about everything we knew. — Clive James

The only way to wash away your sins is by feeling guilty.. — Srinivas Shenoy

Please," he says. "I'm begging you to stop."
I still.
"I can't stomach your pain," he says. "I can feel it so strongly and it's making me crazy- please," he says to me. "Don't be sad. Or hurt. Or guilty. You've done nothing wrong."
"I'm sorry-"
"Don't be sorry, either," he says. "God, the only reason I'm not going to kill Kent for this is because I know it would only upset you more. — Tahereh Mafi

What's the point in answering, Warden? It's obvious that you've already tried and convicted me. If I tell you I am involved, you will believe me guilty. If I tell you I am not involved, you will believe me guilty. The only thing I can do is deny you your precious moral justification. She lifted a hand to her lips and pantomimed turning a key and throwing it away. — Jim Butcher

Bullies, oppressors and all men who do violence to the rights of others are guilty not only of their own crimes, but also of the corruption they bring into the hearts of their victims. — Alessandro Manzoni

If this is true, how is it no one knows?" "The knights of the Kingsguard are sworn to keep the king's secrets. Would you have me break my oath?" Jaime laughed. "Do you think the noble Lord of Winterfell wanted to hear my feeble explanations? Such an honorable man. He only had to look at me to judge me guilty." Jaime lurched to his feet, the water running cold down his chest. "By what right does the wolf judge the lion? By what right?" A violent shiver took him, and he smashed his stump against the rim of the tub as he tried to climb out. — George R R Martin

The human is the only animal on earth that pays a thousand times for the same mistake. The rest of the animals pay only once for every mistake they make. But not us. We have a powerful memory. We make a mistake, we judge ourselves, we find ourselves guilty, and we punish ourselves. — Miguel Ruiz

There is only one salvation for you: take yourself up, and make yourself responsible for all the sins of men. For indeed it is so, my friend, and the moment you make yourself sincerely responsible for everything and everyone, you will see at once that it is really so, that it is you who are guilty on behalf of all and for all. Whereas by shifting your own laziness and powerlessness onto others, you will end by sharing in Satan's pride and murmuring against God.
The Brothers Karamazov
Book VI - The Russian Monk, Chapter 3 - Conversations and Exhortations of Father Zosima. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

When now we turn and look five miles above, there on the edge of town are five houses of prostitutes, - two of blacks and three of whites; and in one of the houses of the whites a worthless black boy was harbored too openly two years ago; so he was hanged for rape. And here, too, is the high whitewashed fence of the "stockade," as the county prison is called; the white folks say it is ever full of black criminals, - the black folks say that only colored boys are sent to jail, and they not because they are guilty, but because the State needs criminals to eke out its income by their forced labor. — W.E.B. Du Bois

I think the fear of humiliating yourself on stage always motivates me to give at least 90 percent. I've definitely been guilty of leaning on the mic stand, but you can only do that so long before you're like, "Jesus, I'm bombing." The fact that people pay to come see me, that's really just out the window. — Bill Burr

They had a year of joy, twelve months of the strange heaven which the salmon know on beds of river shingle, under the gin-clear water. For twenty-four years they were guilty, but this first year was the only one which seemed like happiness. Looking back on it, when they were old, they did not remember that in this year it had ever rained or frozen. The four seasons were coloured like the edge of a rose petal for them. — T.H. White

To cut short the question of the law of retaliation, we must note that even in its primitive form it can operate only between two individuals of whom one is absolutely innocent, and the other absolutely guilty. The victim, to be sure, is innocent. But can the society that is supposed to represent the victim lay claim to innocence? — Albert Camus

In the detective story, as in its mirror image, the Quest for the Grail, maps (the ritual of space) and timetables (the ritual of time) are desirable. Nature should reflect its human inhabitants, i.e., it should be the Great Good Place; for the more Eden-like it is, the greater the contradiction of murder. The country is preferable to the town, a well-to-do neighborhood (but not too well-to-do-or there will be a suspicion of ill-gotten gains) better than a slum. The corpse must shock not only because it is a corpse but also because, even for a corpse, it is shockingly out of place, as when a dog makes a mess on a drawing room carpet."

(The guilty vicarage: Notes on the detective story, by an addict, Harper's Magazine, May 1948) — W. H. Auden

What person here illegally (and in his right mind), will go to the government, announce being here illegally (e.g. plead guilty), provide all sorts of information as to where that person lives etc. to get a work permit only to be a target for deportation in two years? — Greta Van Susteren

I'm not skilled enough to explain properly how we feel. Not only me, but I'm sure Tony and Tim and Pop feel the same way. Last year was a tough one for all of us. We felt like we had the trophy, that we were touching it, and it slipped away. We all felt guilty. We got to this spot, and we didn't let it go. — Manu Ginobili

With reason did the Athenians adjudge Diagoras guilty of atheism, in that he not only divulged the Orphic doctrine, and published the mysteries of Eleusis and of the Cabiri, and chopped up the wooden statue of Hercules to boil his turnips, but openly declared that there were no gods at all. — Athenagoras Of Athens

Mr. Elliot is a man without heart or conscience; a designing, wary, cold-blooded being, who thinks only of himself; who, for his own interest or ease, would be guilty of any cruelty, or any treachery, that could be perpetrated without risk of his general character. He has no feeling for others. Those whom he has been the chief cause of leading into ruin, he can neglect and desert without the slightest compunction. He is totally beyond the reach of any sentiment of justice or compassion. Oh! he is black at heart, hollow and black! — Jane Austen

Meanwhile in Wichita, Kansas, Dr. George Tiller, one of the few doctors who performs late-term abortions - only about 1 percent of all procedures but crucial when, for instance, a fetus develops without a brain - is shot in both arms by a female picketer. He recovers and continues serving women who come to him from many states. I finally meet Dr. Tiller in 2008 at a New York gathering of Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health. I ask him if he has ever helped a woman who was protesting at his clinic. He says: "Of course, I'm there to help them, not to add to their troubles. They probably already feel guilty." In 2009 Dr. Tiller is shot in the head at close range by a male activist hiding inside the Lutheran church where the Tiller family worships each Sunday. This is done in the name of being "pro-life. — Gloria Steinem

Christian consciousness experiences itself in a curious sense as LIBERATED TO FAIL, without intolerable damage to self-esteem and without any reduction of moral seriousness. We are free to be inadequate, free to foul things up, and yet affirm ourselves in a more basic sense than the secular moralist or humanistic idealist (who can affirm themselves only on the basis of merits and accomplishments. We are free to choose and deny finite values, free to take constructive guilt upon us and to see it as an inevitable and providentially given aspect of our fallen human condition.
All that we have said leads us to the pinnacle of this good news: In Jesus Christ we need no longer be guilty before God. It is only before our clay-footed gods that we stand guilty! — Thomas C. Oden

The essence of the charge made against the modern high-status ideal is that it is guilty of effecting a gigantic distortion of priorities, of elevating to the highest level of achievement a process of material accumulation that should instead be only one of many factors determining the direction of our lives under a more truthful, more broadly defined conception of ourselves. — Alain De Botton

From an analytic point of view, the only thing one can be guilty of is having given ground relative to one's desire (Seminar 7, 319) — Jacques Lacan

When you give decision that the guilty is not guilty, only then will the guilty become not guilty. — Dada Bhagwan

Drunkenness is not only the cause of crime, but it is crime; and if any encourage drunkenness for the sake of the profit derived from the sale of drink, they are guilty of a form of moral assassination as criminal as any that has ever been practiced by the braves of any country or of any age. — John Ruskin

In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so. — Immanuel Kant

I don't put bad people in the Void, Blayne. Only the guilty ones. — Caroline Cairn

We're all guilty of saying insincere things at one point or another, if only just to make the moment not totally suck as much as it truly does. — Jen Naumann

And the looks on the faces of my countrymenpassive heads bent arms at their trousers everyone guilty of not being their best of not earning their daily bread the kind of docility I had never expected from Americans even after so many years of our decline. Here was the tiredness of failure imposed on a country that believed only in its opposite. Here was the end product of our deep moral exhaustion. — Gary Shteyngart

I looked at my sister, so tired and yet so happy, and I admit I felt a little envious. And the whole thing still seemed unreal and incomplete to me, and I couldn't really believe it had happened without me. It was as if I had put only one word in a crossword puzzle and someone else finished it when I turned my back. Even more embarrassing, I actually felt a little bit guilty that I hadn't been there, even though I wasn't invited. Debs had been in danger without me, and that felt wrong. Completely stupid and irrational, not at all like me, but there it was. — Jeff Lindsay

the truth can be quickly received, or received at all, only by the sinner who knows and admits that he is guilty of having sinned much. — Malcolm X

It was strange too that he found an arid pleasure in following up to the end the rigid lines of the doctrines of the church and penetrating into obscure silences only to hear and feel the more deeply his own condemnation. The sentence of saint James which says that he who offends against one commandment becomes guilty of all, had seemed to him first a swollen phrase until he had begun to grope in the darkness of his own state. From the evil seed of lust all other deadly sins had sprung forth: pride in himself and contempt of others, covetousness In using money for the purchase of unlawful pleasures, envy of those whose vices he could not reach to and calumnious murmuring against the pious, gluttonous enjoyment of food, the dull glowering anger amid which he brooded upon his longing, the swamp of spiritual and bodily sloth in which his whole being had sunk. — James Joyce

Whoever commits a fraud is guilty not only of the particular injury to him who he deceives, but of the diminution of that confidence which constitutes not only the ease but the existence of society. — Samuel Johnson

I also felt guilty about the three pens I'd stolen, but only for a second. And since there was no convenient way to give them back, I stole a bottle of ink before I left. — Patrick Rothfuss

Wisdom comes from not only in the understanding that often times we say no to things too easily and quickly, but also in knowing that that 'no' for the sake of your physical and mental wellbeing can also be a reasonable and grounded decision for which you shouldn't feel the need to feel guilty. — Forrest Curran

Men were considered "free" only so that they might be considered guilty - could be judged and punished: consequently, every act had to be considered as willed, and the origin of every act had to be considered as lying within the consciousness (and thus the most fundamental psychological deception was made the principle of psychology itself). — Friedrich Nietzsche

Many guilty consciences have been created by the slave trade. Europeans know that they carried on the slave trade, and Africans are aware that the trade would have been impossible if certain Africans did not cooperate with slave ships. To ease their guilty consciences, Europeans try to throw the major responsibility for the slave trade on to the Africans. One major author on the slave trade (appropriately titled Sins of Our Fathers) explained how many white people urged him to state that the trade was the responsibility of African chiefs, and that Europeans merely turned up to buy captives- as though without European demand there would have been captives sitting on the beach by the millions! Issues such as those are not the principal concern of this study, but they can be correctly approached only after understanding that Europe became the center of a world-wide system and that it was European capitalism which set slavery and the Atlantic slave trade in motion. Pg. 82 — Walter Rodney

The gospel gives it all. Justification for our guilt. Sanctification for deconstructing our false ideals. Adoption for the red face of our secret shame. And suddenly, in place of the raw emotions that continually joined forces against us, knocking us around like a nickel in a clothes dryer, the sun can now rise in the morning on a truly perfect storm, as God's grace feeds in us a new passion for Him, and passion responds by feeding us even more grace - a revitalizing shower where the only water seeping into our hearts is from the fountain of living waters, replenishing our once-guilty, once-shameful hearts with sheer joy, acceptance, and freedom. Let it rain. — Matt Chandler