guilt

We get used to living in a state of mild disappointment with ourselves.

Guilt cannot, in fact, express itself, except in the indirect language of "captivity" and "infection," inherited from the two prior stages. Thus both symbols are transposed "inward" to express a freedom that enslaves itself, affects itself, and infects itself by its own choice. Conversely, the symbolic and non-literal character of the captivity of sin and the infection of defilement becomes quite clear when these symbols are used to denote a dimension of freedom itself; then and only then do we know that they are symbols, when they reveal a situation that is centered in the relation of oneself to oneself. Why this recourse to the prior symbolism? Because the paradox of a captive free will - the paradox of a servile will - is insupportable for thought. That freedom must be delivered and that this deliverance is deliverance from self-enslavement cannot be said directly; yet it is the central theme of "salvation

Or was their guilt written plainly, and for all the world to see, across their face? Was it their face, in fact, for which they were guilty?

I remembered my father telling me when I was a little girl, "Guilt is bullshit. Don't ever let anyone make you feel guilty.

Only afterward did the guilt set in--the guilt that for a few minutes he let himself stop feeling guilty.

his conscience washed clean by happiness.

Guilt wears track shoes. Sprint, marathon, or cross-country, it doesn__ matter. It runs tireless to catch you, and it carries a sledgehammer.

Don't underestimate the power of a guilty mind. Never underestimate self-shame and self-destruction.

Guilt doesn__ stop you from doing something. It just stops you from enjoying it.

Condemn you me for that the duke did love me?So may you blame some fair and crystal river, For that some melancholic distracted manHath drowned himself in__.

I love you guilty. It makes it easier for me to wrap you around my finger.

With guilt there arises indeed a sort of demand which can be called scrupulosity and whose ambiguous character is extremely interesting. A scrupulous consciousness is a delicate consciousness, a precise consciousness, enamored of increasing perfection... This atomization of the law into a multitude of commandments entails an endless 'juridization' of action and a quasi-obsessional ritualization of daily life... With it we enter into the hell of guilt, such as St. Paul described it: the law itself becomes a source of sin.

Humanity has always had a flair for guilt by association.

Guilt is the other side of compassion. Its original purpose was to enable you to empathize on an aware level with yourselves and other members of creaturehood, so that you could consciously control what was previously handled on a biological level alone. Guilt in that respect therefore has a strong natural basis, and when it is perverted, misused or misunderstood, it has that great terrifying energy of any runaway basic phenomenon.

Guilt is an indulgence, it entangles you in the past.

One of the big lies with sin is that we are already waist-deep and might as well just plunge in.

A guilty person sometimes has the luck to escape detection, but never to feel sure of it.

This book is a personal memoir; but it is also a larger story-about carelessness and guilt, and the wreckage they can make of lives.