Guilt Quotations

Quotes regarding guilt.

Sourced

• In England a man is presoomed to be innocent till he's proved guilty an' they take it f 'r granted he's guilty. In this counthry a man is presoomed to be guilty ontil he's proved guilty an' afther that he's presoomed to be innocent.
  • Finley Peter Dunne, Mr. Dooley's opinions (1901), p. 212.

• Guilt has very quick ears to an accusation.
  • Henry Fielding, Amelia (1751), Book III, chapter 11.

• He declares himself guilty who justifies himself before accusation.
  • Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia (1732).

• They who feel guilty are afraid, and they who are afraid somehow feel guilty. To the onlooker, too, the fearful seem guilty.
  • Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind (1954).

• Where guilt is, rage and courage both abound.
  • Ben Jonson, Sejanus His Fall (1602).

• Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, in Walter Kaufmann, translator, The Portable Nietzsche (1954), p. 96-97.

• Nothing is more wretched than a guilty conscience.
  • Plautus, Mostellaria, Act V, scene i, line 14.

• These instances are selected by the learned author as typical of the working of our national nostrum, 'Not Proven', as applied to nice and perplexing cases: a verdict which has been construed by the profane to mean 'Not Guilty, but don't do it again'.
  • William Roughead, Famous crimes (1935), p. 204.

Unsourced

• Everyone is guilty of something, if you look hard enough.
  • Unknown
  • Alternate: We're all guilty of something, if you look hard enough.

• The guilty think all talk is of themselves.
  • Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Canon's Yeoman's Prologue" The Canterbury Tales

• He has been staring at me for the past 3 hours! And what have you seen reflected in my eyes but your own guilt, gnawing at you!
  • Kor & Worf in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Sword of Kahless.

• Think not that guilt requires the burning torches of the Furies to agitate and torment it. Their own frauds, their crimes, their remembrances of the past, their terrors of the future,—these are the domestic furies that are ever present to the mind of the impious.
  • Robert Hall

• Guilt alone, like brain-sick frenzy in its feverish mood, fills the light air with visionary terrors, and shapeless forms of fear.
  • Junius

• Guilt, though it may attain temporal splendor, can never confer real happiness; the evil consequences of our crimes long survive their commission, and, like the ghosts of the murdered, forever haunt the steps of the malefactor; while the paths of virtue, though seldom those of worldly greatness, are always those of pleasantness and peace.
  • Sir Walter Scott

• He who is conscious of secret and dark designs, which, if known, would blast him, is perpetually shrinking and dodging from public observation, and is afraid of all around him, and much more of all above him.
  • Wirt

• They whose guilt within their bosom lies, imagine every eye beholds their blame.
  • Shakespeare

• Life is not the supreme good; but of all earthly ills the chief is guilt.
  • Schiller

• They who once engage in iniquitous designs miserably deceive themselves when they think that they will go so far and no farther; one fault begets another, one crime renders another necessary; and thus they are impelled continually downward into a depth of guilt, which at the commencement of their career they would have died rather than have incurred.
  • Southey

• Let wickedness escape as it may at the bar, it never fails of doing justice upon itself; for every guilty person is his own hangman.
  • Seneca

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