“For virtue is of little guilt ashamed.”

“Our dreams of a pure virtue are dissolved in a situation in which it is possible to exercise the virtue of responsibility toward a community of nations only by courting the prospective guilt of the atomic bomb.”

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) American protestant theologian

“We do not make people humble and meek when we show them their guilt and cause them to be ashamed of themselves. We are more likely to stir their arrogance and rouse in them a reckless aggressiveness. Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice of guilt within us.”

Eric Hoffer book The True Believer

“We all share the guilt. We went along with everything, and we half-took the Nazis seriously instead of saying "to hell with you and your stupid nonsense". I misled my soldiers into believing this rubbish. I feel utterly ashamed of myself. Perhaps we bear even more guilt than these uneducated animals.”

Dietrich von Choltitz (1894–1966) German general

“But little virtue hath the tardy gift.”

Francesco Berni (1497–1535) Italian poet

“If a man would be righteous, let him depart from a court. Virtue is incompatible with absolute power. He who is ashamed to commit cruelty must always fear it.”
Exeat aula qui volt esse pius. Virtus et summa potestas non coeunt; semper metuet quem saeva pudebunt.

Marcus Annaeus Lucanus book Pharsalia

“Patience is a virtue,
Virtue is a grace.
Grace is a little girl
Who would not wash her face.”

Dick King-Smith (1922–2011) English writer of children's books

“Ignorance has its virtues; without it there’d be mighty little conversation.”

Sophia Loren (1934) Italian actress

“I do not know, my listener, what your crime, your guilt, your sins are, but surely we are all more or less of the guilt of loving only little. Take comfort, then, in these words just as I take comfort in them. P. 173-174”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

“The worst guilt is to accept an unearned guilt.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher