Guilt

Guilt is the state of being responsible for the commission of an offense. It is also a cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person realizes or believes—accurately or not—that he or she has violated a moral standard, and bears significant responsibility for that violation. It is closely related to the concept of remorse.

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).

• These false pretexts and varnished colours failing,
  Rare in thy guilt how foul must thou appear.
  • John Milton, Samson Agonistes (1671), line 901.

• 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.

• And then it started like a guilty thing
  Upon a fearful summons.
  • William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act I, scene 1, line 148.

• O, she is fallen
  Into a pit of ink, that the wide sea
  Hath drops too few to wash her clean again.
  • William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing (1598-99), Act IV, scene 1, line 141.

• A land of levity is a land of guilt.
  • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night VII. Preface.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 345-46.

• In ipsa dubitatione facinus inest, etiamsi ad id non pervenerint.
  • Guilt is present in the very hesitation, even though the deed be not committed.
  • Cicero, De Officiis (44 B.C.), III. 8.

• Let no guilty man escape, if it can be avoided. No personal consideration should stand in the way of performing a public duty.
  • Ulysses S. Grant, indorsement of a letter relating to the Whiskey Ring (July 29, 1875).

• 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, The House of the Seven Gables, The Flight of Two Owls.

• How guilt once harbour'd in the conscious breast,
  Intimidates the brave, degrades the great.
  • Samuel Johnson, Irene, Act IV, scene 8.

• The gods
  Grow angry with your patience. 'Tis their care,
  And must be yours, that guilty men escape not:
  As crimes do grow, justice should rouse itself.
  • Ben Jonson, Catiline, Act III, scene 5.

• Exemplo quodcumque malo committitur, ipsi
  Displicet auctori. Prima est hæc ultio, quod se
  Judice nemo nocens absolvitur.
  • Whatever guilt is perpetrated by some evil prompting, is grievous to the author of the crime. This is the first punishment of guilt that no one who is guilty is acquitted at the judgment seat of his own conscience.
  • Juvenal, Satires, XIII. 1.

• Ingenia humana sunt ad suam cuique levandam culpam nimio plus facunda.
  • Men's minds are too ingenious in palliating guilt in themselves.
  • Livy, Annales, XXVIII. 25.

• Facinus quos inquinat æquat.
  • Those whom guilt stains it equals.
  • Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, Pharsalia, V. 290.

• Nulla manus belli, mutato judice, pura est.
  • Neither side is guiltless if its adversary is appointed judge.
  • Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, Pharsalia, VII. 263.

• Heu! quam difficile est crimen non prodere vultu.
  • Alas! how difficult it is to prevent the countenance from betraying guilt.
  • Ovid, Metamorphoses, II. 447.

• Dum ne ob male facta peream, parvi æstimo.
  • I esteem death a trifle, if not caused by guilt.
  • Plautus, Captivi, III. 5. 24.

• Nihil est miserius quam animus hominis conscius.
  • Nothing is more wretched than the mind of a man conscious of guilt.
  • Plautus, Mostellaria, Act III. 1. 13.

• How glowing guilt exalts the keen delight!
  • Alexander Pope, Eloisa to Abelard (1717), line 230.

• Haste, holy Friar,
  Haste, ere the sinner shall expire!
  Of all his guilt let him be shriven,
  And smooth his path from earth to heaven!
  • Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), Canto V, Stanza 22.

• Haud est nocens, quicumque non sponte est nocens.
  • He is not guilty who is not guilty of his own free will.
  • Seneca, Hercules Œtæus, 886.

• Multa trepidus solet
  Detegere vultus.
  • The fearful face usually betrays great guilt.
  • Seneca, Thyestes, CCCXXX.

• Fatetur facinus is qui judicium fugit.
  • He who flees from trial confesses his guilt.
  • Syrus, Maxims.

• Let guilty men remember, their black deeds
  Do lean on crutches made of slender reeds.
  • John Webster, The White Devil; or, Vittoria Corombona, Act V, scene 6.

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