#guilt

It was such an unexpected and genuine smile that if I only had a soul I'm sure I would have felt quite guilty. ↗

— Jeff Lindsay

#guilty #soul #unexpected #dreams

When all this is over, people will try to blame the Germans alone, and the Germans will try to blame the Nazis alone, and the Nazis will try to blame Hitler alone. They will make him bear the sins of the world. But it's not true. You suspected what was happening, and so did I. It was already too late over a year ago. I caused a reporter to lose his job because you told me to. He was deported. The day I did that I made my little contribution to civilization, the only one that matters. ↗

— Iain Pears

#civilization #cowardice #denunciation #deportation #evil

It's funny how guilty people start to question your spirituality and education only because they have nothing to say that will justify their faults. ↗

— J.B. Albano

#guilty #education

The existence of guilty sense is so important in education and religion. ↗

— Toba Beta

#guilt #guilty-sense #religion #sense #education

There are two kinds of Communists: the arrogant ones, who enter the fray hoping to make men out of the people and bring progress to the nation; and the innocent ones, who get involved because they believe in equality and justice. The arrogant ones are obsessed with power; they presume to think for everyone; only bad can come of them. But the innocents? The only harm they do is to themselves. But that's all they ever wanted in the first place. They feel so guilty about the suffering of the poor, and are so keen to share it, that they make their lives miserable on purpose. ↗

— Orhan Pamuk

#guilt #orhan-pamuk #others-suffering #snow #the-poor

When she can't bring me to heal with scolding, she bends me to shape with guilt. ↗

— Libba Bray

#guilt #women #family

Guilt and misery shrink, by a natural instinct, from public notice: they court privacy and solitude: and even in their choice of a grave will sometimes sequester themselves from the general population of the churchyard, as if declining to claim fellowship with the great family of man; thus, in a symbolic language universally understood, seeking (in the affecting language of Mr. Wordsworth) ’ Humbly to express A penitential loneliness. ↗

— Thomas de Quincey

#guilt #human #thomas-de-quincey #family

The brain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination, made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain, danced like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through moving masks. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#horror #imagery #imagination #macabre #supernatural

Oh, Myr," he chokes out. "I hate having to ask this of you..." He glances towards the car again, and I crouch down in the shadows, hoping it's too dark for him to see whether the window is open or closed. The woman pats his arm, cradling her hand against his elbow. "You know I'd do anything for you and Hil," she says. I like her voice. It's throaty and rich. "You'd do anything?" my father repeats numbly. "Even now? After -?" "Even now," the woman says firmly. ↗

— Margaret Peterson Haddix

#asking #fear #forgiveness #guilt #help

There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for me to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed or enforced nor objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt. ↗

— Ayn Rand

#guilt #injustice #innocence #innocent #justice