And that for every negative event or coincidence that has happened since, imagining that you triggered them, that you made them happen makes you feel like you possess a degree of control that you don’t...

It seems that the Parisian Oulipo group has recently constructed a matrix of all possible murder-story situations and has found that there is still to be written a book in which the murderer is the...

He was clearly not the murderer whom Hawksmoor was seeking, but it was generally the innocent who confessed: in the course of many enquiries, Hawksmoor had come across those who accused themselves of crimes which...

Out, damned spot! out, I say!

We see our sins reflected everywhere: in the pallor of our intimates’ faces, in the scratching of tree branches against windows, in the strange movements of everyday objects. These may be messages from God or...

It was a stark choice: shoes or food; beauty or sustenance; the sensible or the self-indulgent. “I’ll take the shoes,” she said firmly.

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.

I am often guilty of expecting the worst so as to avoid disappointment and welcome surprise.

Conscience is what makes a boy tell his mother before his sister does.

I, however, have really never been anywhere yet, not because some sins or other could wrap themselves around me there, but because I’d rather sin at home, where God even announces the weather to me...

She closes her eyes, and I can see the moisture. She’s deep-breathing again, and I notice her hands are clutched around the opposing wrists, nails digging in deep, hard, scratching. Pain to replace pain.

I always welcomed the comforting cloak of night except for the times when I lost something in it.

If people ever question your loyalty, you never had theirs.

That’s the strangest thing about this life, about being in the ministry. People change the subject when they see you coming. And then sometimes those very same people come into your study and tell you...

Everyone in a decadent society, Lorrain urges, is guilty. Everyone loves masking murder and everyone takes masochistic pleasure in the risk of discovery and punishment.

You look good in a nun’s suit,” I said. It was a stupid thing to say, but I meant well by it. She looked down at the black robe as if she were seeing it...

Il n’est si homme de bien, qu’il mette à l’examen des loix toutes ses actions et pensées, qui ne soit pendable dix fois en sa vie.(There is no man so good that if he placed...

Buck Barrow, brother of Clyde Barrow (Bonnie & Clyde) was once asked “Where are you wanted by the law?” Barrow replied, “Wherever I’ve been.” What a picture of our own guilt. We cannot escape our...

When thinking about life, remember this: No amount of guilt can solve the past, and no amount of anxiety can change the future.

A selfish person can still love someone else, can’t they? Even when they’ve hurt them and let them down.

It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.

I won’t cry. When the guilt is this heavy, you can’t. It just settles and stays with you, and it’s cold.

Ninety-six per cent of juvenile prostitutes are fugitives from abusive domestic situations; 66 per cent began working before they turned 16. (Prostitution is their only perceived means of survival.) Millions of children work as prostitutes...

Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one’s own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer...

The Adversary, of course, simply wants them to lay down their sins, guilt and all, and follow Him. But this type holds on to their sinfulness and their guilt for it, because otherwise, they’d have...

Living the good life as created beings depends on living within the limits and according to the truths of the human condition. Purity of heart and the capacity to channel desires toward personal self-mastery in...

Just as my body had changed at puberty, now I was developing a sense of guilt, a sense not only of how I appeared to others, but of how I appeared to myself, especially in...

I’ve spent all the years since full of guilt and misery, even though I didn’t remember it. I’ve let it run my thoughts, my plans, my whole life. But the experience doesn’t own me. I...

Because no retreat from the world can mask what is in your face.

Guilt and fear are a kind of rot. It spreads unless it’s cleaned. And there’s only one way to do that.

What was it about women and crying that made me feel like crap? They must have guilt pheromones in their tears.

displaying true emotion-what we want to ask but somehow feel if ask for it – will be taken as bad criticism.this is guilt

The cases described in this section (The Fear of Being) may seem extreme, but I have become convinced that they are not as uncommon as one would think. Beneath the seemingly rational exterior of our...

He is talking to people in Toronto, trying to find out if I am guilty; but he won’t find it out that way. He doesn’t understand yet that guilt comes to you not from the...

The existence of guilty sense is soimportant in education and religion.

I refer to what is called mysterium iniquitatis, meaning, as I see it, that a crime in the final analysis remains inexplicable inasmuch as it cannot be fully traced back to biological, psychological and/or sociological...

No good has ever come from feeling guilty, neither intelligence, policy, nor compassion. The guilty do not pay attention to the object but only to themselves, and not even to their own interests, which might...

In the Code of Canon Law, it states clearly: ‘A person who is conscious of grave sin is not to celebrate Mass or receive the body of the Lord without previous sacramental confession.’ I haven’t...

Why had he committed this terrible sin? Everything in the world was insignificant compared to what he had lost. Everything in the world is insignificant compared to the truth and purity of one small man...

Experience had taught me that innocence seldom utters outraged shrikes. Guilt does. Innocence is a mighty shield, and the man or woman covered by it, is much more likely to answer calmly: ‘My life is...

In the end, it was the secrets that held me hostage and fuelled my depression, but, once released, emancipation – from fear, shame, guilt and judgement – was finally possible.

These twelve people who decide guilt or innocence are not legal scholars. The only law they take into the jury room is the law Judge Lake gives them.

Oh, my capacity for guilt is enormous. I’m all the time thinking I’m not doing the things I should be doing, not doing enough of it, or I said I’d be vice-president of something or...

Self redemption is the first step to exoneration from guilt.

We have an obligation to feel guilty.” The words came out of her lips as if she were reciting an elegy. “Guilty. Because we kill the ones we love.

True, nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am, but why will say that I am mad?! The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense...

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...

Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.

I never cut my neighbor’s throat;My neighbor’s gold I never stole;I never spoiled his house and land;But God have mercy on my soul!For I am haunted night and dayBy all the deeds I have not...

Okay.I will go.But only ifyou will give meyour guiltto takewith me.