Guilt Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old guilt quotes, guilt sayings, and guilt proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.

Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one's own actions or lack of action. Audre Lorde
Guilt is also a way for us to express to others that we are a person of good conscience. Tom Hodgkinson
Guilt is a useless feeling. It's never enough to make you change direction--only enough to make you useless. Daniel Nayeri
Guilt is a destructive and ultimately pointless emotion. Lynn Crilly
No guilt is forgotten so long as the conscience still knows of it. Stefan Zweig
Every man is guilty of all the good he didn't do. Voltaire
Guilt is the very nerve of sorrow. Horace Bushnell
Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion of death. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
Guilt is the price we pay willingly for doing what we are going to do anyway. Isabelle Holland
Guilt is a rope that wears thin. Ayn Rand
Successful guilt is the bane of society. Publilius Syrus
He declares himself guilty who justifies himself before accusation. Proverb
Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving. Erma Bombeck
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
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
Guilt alone, like brain-sick frenzy in its feverish mood, fills the light air with visionary terrors, and shapeless forms of fear. Junius
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
Guilt is always hungry, don't let it consume you. Terri Guillemets
Guilt is oftentimes the strongest witness against itself. Edward Counsel
The guilt you feel finally comes to an end when you fully express how it came into your consciousness. Luke Garne
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
What is guilt? It is moral self-reproach--I did wrong when it was possible to have done otherwise. Nathaniel Branden
Make friends with guilt. Guilt is a beautiful emotion that alerts us when something is wrong so that we may achieve peace with our conscience. Without conscience there would be no morality. So we can greet guilt cordially and with acceptance, just as we do all other emotions. After we respond to guilt, it has done its job and we can release it. Glenn R. Schiraldi
Guilt hath very quick ears to an accusation. Henry Fielding
Guilt is something small people feel when they run out of excuses for their behavior. Gaius Baltar
Repentant tears wash out the stain of guilt. Saint Augustine
Guilt: punishing yourself before God doesn't. Alan Cohen
Guilt is ever at a loss, and confusion waits upon it; when innocence and bold truth are always ready for expression. William Congreve
Where guilt is, rage and courage doth abound. Ben Jonson
Guilt is an indulgence, it entangles you in the past. Gregg Hurwitz
Guilt once harbored in the conscious breast, intimidates the brave, degrades the great. Samuel Johnson
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
Guilt is a poor, helpless, dependent being. Without the alliance of able, diligent, and let me add, fortunate fraud, it is inevitably undone. If the guilty culprit be obstinately silent, it forms a deadly presumption against him; if he speaks, talking tends only to his discovery, and his very defence often furnishes the materials for his conviction. Junius
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
People incapable of guilt usually do have a good time. Rust Cohle
The guilty think all talk is of themselves. Chaucer
Guilt is abscent when the act is justified. unknown
Guilt is anything you did and fear others to know about. Mohammad
Guilt is the source of sorrows, the avenging fiend that follows us behind with whips and stings. Nicholas Rowe
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
You're making yourself too important. Guilt comes from feeling we're at the center of the universe. We're not. Gloria Whelan
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
Like hatred, guilt can't be locked in the silence of forgetting, without taking part of your soul with it. Shannon L. Alder
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
Releasing guilt is like removing a huge weight from your shoulders. Guilt is released through the empowering thought of love and respect for yourself. Let go of standards of perfection and refuse to use up the precious currency of your life, the now, with thoughts that continue to frustrate and weaken you. Instead, vow to be better than you used to be, which is the true test of nobility. Wayne Dyer
Guilt is a lazy feeling that takes no action; the wings of integrity are the only thing that sets it free. Shannon L. Alder
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
Guilt is a waste of time unless you learn how to be more loving the next time a similar situation presents itself. Annette Vaillancourt
Guilt is a manifestation of condemnation or aversion towards oneself, which does not understand the changing transformative quality of mind. Joseph Goldstein
Guilt is really self- condemnation and self-invalidation of our worth and value as a human being. David R. Hawkins
Fear is the tax that conscience pays to guilt. George Sewell
There is no greater guilt than discontentment. Lao-Tzu
So full of artless jealousy is guilt, / It spills itself in fearing to be spilt. William Shakespeare (Hamlet)
The only art her guilt to cover, / To hide her shame from every eye, / To give repentance to her lover, / And wring his bosom, is — to die. Oliver Goldsmith
By the sympathy of your human hearts for sin ye shall scent out all the places — whether in church, bedchamber, street. field, or forest — where crime has been committed, and shall exult to behold the whole earth one stain of guilt, one mighty blood spot Nathaniel Hawthorne
What is our innocence, / what is our guilt? All are / naked, none is safe. Marianne Moore
Remorse sleeps during a prosperous period but wakes up in adversity. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
But, R - e - m - o - r - s - e! / The water-wagon is the place for me; . . . / It is no time for mirth and laughter, / The cold, gray dawn of the morning after! George Ade
In former days, everyone found the assumption of innocence so easy; today we find fatally easy the assumption of guilt. Amanda Cross
Of all means to regeneration Remorse is surely the most wasteful. It cuts away healthy tissue with the poisoned. It is a knife that probes far deeper than the evil. E.M. Forster
True guilt is guilt at the obligation one owes to oneself to be oneself. False guilt is guilt felt at not being what other people feel one ought to be or assume that one is. R. D. Laing
Guilt feelings so often arise from accusations rather than from crimes. Iris Murdoch
Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. William Shakespeare (Macbeth)
What hangs people ... is the unfortunate circumstance of guilt. Robert Louis Stevenson
If something makes you cry, you have to do something about it. That’s the difference between politics and guilt. Bill Clinton
I have many regrets, and I’m sure everyone does. The stupid things you do, you regret if you have any sense, and if you don’t regret them, maybe you’re stupid. Katharine Hepburn
O conscience, upright and stainless, how bitter a sting to thee is a little fault! Dante Alighieri
There is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball, and that is to have either a clear conscience or none at all. Ogden Nash
In former days, everyone found the assumption of innocence so easy; today we find fatally easy the assumption of guilt. Carolyn Heilbrun
When lovely woman stoops to folly / And finds too late that men betray, / What charm can soothe her melancholy, / What art can wash her guilt away? Oliver Goldsmith
My doctrine is this, that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt. Anna Sewell
Remorse begets reform. Wiliam Cowper
We can always get along better ty reason and love of truth than by worry of conscience and remorse Harmful are these, and evil. Baruch Spinoza
Mothers, food, love, and career: the four major guilt groups. Cathy Guisewite
Conscience reigns but it does not govern. Paul Valéry
What the devil loves is that vague cloud of unspecified guilt feeling or unspecified virtue by which he lures us into despair or presumption. 'Details, please?' is the answer. C.S. Lewis
All men alike stand condemned, not by alien codes of ethics, hut by their own, and all men therefore arc conscious of guilt. C.S. Lewis
When we grieve, tears and guilt get mixed together. Art Buchwald
Conscience is thoroughly well-bred and soon leaves off talking to those who do not wish to hear it. Samuel Butler
The fact that human conscience remains partially infantile throughout life is the core of human tragedy. Erik H. Erikson
Each man’s soul is a menagerie where Conscience, the animal-tamer, lives with a collection of wild beasts. Austin O’Malley
The voice of conscience is so delicate that it is easy to stifle; but it is also so clear that it is impossible to mistake. Germaine De Staël
What we call real estate — the solid ground to build a house on — is the broad foundation on which nearly all the guilt of this world rests. Nathaniel Hawthorne
How extraordinary it is that one feels most guilt about the sins one is unable to commit. V.S. Pritchett
An excuse not requested betrays the guilt of him who makes it. Roman Proverb
He confesses his guilt who flees from his trial. Roman Proverb
He declares himself guilty who justifies himself before being accused. English Proverb
He who is guilty believes that all men speak ill of him. Italian Proverb
How difficult it is not to betray guilt by our looks. Roman Proverb
How near to guilt a man may approach without being guilty. Roman Proverb
Measure your guilt, then stretch your legs. Arabian Proverb
The act does not make the person guilty, unless the mind be guilty. Roman Proverb
The innocent are free from fear; but the guilty have always the dread of punishment before their eyes. Roman Proverb
A mind conscious of guilt is its own accuser. Roman Proverb
The one who secretly meditates a crime bears all the guilt of the deed. Roman Proverb
A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession. Albert Camus
If a dog will not come to you after having looked you in the face, you should go home and examine your conscience. Woodrow Wilson
Enjoying someone else’s smell—the most modest form of guilt there is. Francesco Pacifico
You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty. Jessica Mitford
I think that everything he did, feeding the poor, giving money to friends in need, it was all a way of redeeming himself. And that, I believe, is what true redemption is, Amir jan, when guilt leads to good. Khaled Hosseini
Everyone’s conscience in religion is between God and themselves, and it belongs to none other. Margaret Cavendish
Negative emotions like loneliness, envy, and guilt have an important role to play in a happy life; they're big, flashing signs that something needs to change. Gretchen Rubin
No amount of guilt can solve the past. No amount of anxiety can change the future. Bruce Van Horn
Guilt before we act is called morality. Jesse Fisher
Without the sensation of guilt, the hierarchy are afraid the individual would run free and there would be no order. Without order, there is no power. Guilt forces each of us to surrender our will, our souls to those who should not possess them. Alessandro Farnese
Fear and guilt are sisters. Trish Park
Hey, hey, hey. Come on. I know what guilt is. It's one of those touchy-feely words that people throw around that don't really mean anything... You know, like 'maternal' or 'addiction.' Karen Walker
I'm only human baby / Ain't I allowed to make mistakes / You put your guilt on me / And it's causing my poor heart to break, yeah / Making me the human that I am Marcus Miller; Luther Vandross
There's a war between guilt and grace / And they're fighting for a sacred space / But I'm living proof / Grace wins every time Matthew West
Words can't describe the way it feels / When mercy floods a thirsty soul / A broken side begins to heal / And grace returns what guilt has stole Matthew West
Oh! load of guilt! relentless misery! / Still, ever still the same where'er I fly; / No peace, no hope, not one poor moment's glimpse / Through all the blackness of eternity! Thomas Oldham