Quotes about guilty
page 3

“Though with those streams he no resemblance hold,
Whose foam is amber and their gravel gold;
His genuine and less guilty wealth t' explore,
Search not his bottom, but survey his shore.”

John Denham Cooper's Hill

Cooper's Hill, Line 165.

Search, Wealth

“Not another day or hour would she remain, no help was possible, no atonement could retrieve the past, no love or pity, pardon or excuse should soften the sharp pang of reparation for the guilty man. To go instantly and forever was her only thought, and this gave her strength to rise and look about her.”

Louisa May Alcott A Long Fatal Love Chase

A Long Fatal Love Chase (1866)

Love, Past, Help

“To spare the guilty is to injure the innocent.”

Publilio Siro Latin writer

Maxim 113
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave

“A Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for holy Communion, if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of the candidate's permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia. When a Catholic does not share a candidate's stand in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

2004 memorandum to Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick of Washington, D.C.
2003

Evil

“Responsible, but not guilty.”

Emilio Massera (1925–2010) Argentine military officer

After being convicted of murder, torture and false imprisonment.
Obituary, The Economist, 27 November 2010, p. 98

“To have a sense of sin means to feel guilty at there being an ethical choice to make, a guilt which, however "good" I may become, remains unchanged.”

W. H. Auden book The Dyer's Hand

"The Guilty Vicarage", p. 157
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

Feeling, Sense

“The defendant wants to hide the truth because he's generally guilty. The defense attorney's job is to make sure the jury does not arrive at that truth.”

Alan M. Dershowitz (1938) American lawyer, author

U.S. News & World Report (August 9, 1982)

Truth

“We have to care about our bodies and what we put in them. Women have to take the time to focus on our mental health—take time for self, for the spiritual, without feeling guilty or selfish. The world will see you the way you see you, and treat you the way you treat yourself.”

Beyoncé (1981) American singer, songwriter and actress

"Beyoncé Wants to Change the Conversation", interview with Elle (4 April 2016) http://www.elle.com/fashion/a35286/beyonce-elle-cover-photos

Women, Health, World, Way

“Let us look back on the conduct of Mr. Attlee and his friends in the years before the war. The Labour Party denounced the Baldwin Government for "planning a vast and expensive rearmament programme"… Mr. Attlee said on November 10, 1935: "The National Government is preparing a great programme of rearmament which will endanger the peace of the world". Mr. Morrison, in the same month, said "the Government leaders are all urging a policy of rearmament, and Mr. Chamberlain is ready and anxious to spend millions of pounds on machines of destruction". I suppose those must have been the aeroplanes which saved us in the Battle of Britain. And, again: "Every vote for the Unionists would be a vote for an international race in arms, and a vote for that was a vote for war". Such was the language of the Socialist leaders in the years while Hitler's Germany was rearming night and day…. And yet… at the election of 1945, the Labour Party gained great credit by denouncing the Chamberlain Government as guilty men for not having made larger and more timely arrangements.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Woodford (12 October 1951), quoted in The Times (13 October 1951), p. 9
Post-war years (1945–1955)

Men, War, World, Peace

“Let us face the truth: why should I feel guilty for being alive? Why should I sacrifice my life in order to prove that I am strong?”

Neamat Imam book The Black Coat

The Black Coat (2013)

Life, Truth, Feeling, Strong

“It went without saying that he felt guilty about what had happened, but married friends had assured him that guilt was the cornerstone of any good marriage. It meant that a conscience was at work, values were held in high esteem, and reasons to feel guilty were best avoided whenever possible.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Travis Parker, Proloque, p. 2
2000s, The Choice (2007)

Marriage, Feeling

“When I was informed by the police they had decided to charge me with treason … I was in a state of shock. That I have been found guilty of treason shocks me the more.”

Francis Minah (1929–1989) Sierra Leonean politician

Former Vice President Convicted Of Treason, Sentenced To Death, AP News, en-US, 2018-07-09 https://www.apnews.com/984b27b0479c90a4cb47a13106ad8120,

“Nothing so wretched as a guilty conscience.”
Nihil est miserius, quam animus hominis conscius.

Plautus Mostellaria

Act III, scene i, line 13.
Variant translation: Nothing is more wretched than the mind of a man conscious of guilt. (translator unknown)
Mostellaria (The Haunted House)

“Let us examine therefore, in summary fashion, the laws whereby a woman in Israel might obtain a divorce by death and re-marry. The laws calling for the death penalty against the man. To list these without taking time to give all the references, the Biblical references, which can be given although we dealt with many of them:
1. Adultery, 2. Rape, 3. Incest, 4. Homosexuality or sodomy, 5. Bestiality, 6. Premeditated Murder, 7. Smiting Father or Mother, 8. Death of a woman from miscarriage due to assault and battery, 9. Sacrificing children to Molech, 10. Cursing Father or Mother, 11. Kidnapping, 12. Being a wizard, 13. Being a false prophet or dreamer, 14. Apostacy, 15. Sacrificing to other Gods, 16. Refusing to follow the decision of judges, 17. Blasphemy, 18. Transgressing the Covenant.
In other words, for all these offenses, a woman gained a divorce by death. On the other hand, a divorce by death was obtainable by men because of the following death penalties cited for women: 1. Unchastity before marriage, 2. Adultery after marriage, 3. Prostituion by a priests daughter, 4. Bestiality, 5. Being a witch or a sorceress, 6. Transgressing the covenant, and 7. Incest.
Now it is obvious that that the list for men is more than twice as long. And it is obvious that some of the death penalties for men would also apply to women, as for example murder. But many of the crimes that are cited for men such as rape and kidnapping, while it is conceivable that the woman would be guilty of those it is not very likely. Those are primarily masculine offenses.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, The Law of Divorce (n.d.)

Death, Women, Men, God

“The compassion of Christ inclines Him to save sinners, —
the power of Christ enables Him to save sinners, — and the
promise of Christ binds Him to save sinners.
A guilty, weak, and helpless worm,
On Thy kind arms I fall;
Be Thou my Strength and Righteousness,
My Saviour and my All.”

Isaac Watts (1674–1748) English hymnwriter, theologian and logician

Source: Attributed from postum publications, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 82.

Christ

“Most lawyers are used to trying to win a case on some kind of technical or evidentiary ground. We had to teach them to rethink death cases. Most capital defendants are guilty.”

Morris Dees (1936) American activist

1990 Interview with Morris Dees https://www.jstor.org/stable/29759412?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents Litigation (American Bar Association)

Death

“Okay, you've got the indictment, that's all you're gonna get… I'll plead not guilty right now.”

Ted Bundy (1946–1989) American serial killer

As Leon County Sherriff Ken Katsaris reads him his indictment for the murder of the Chi Omega Sorority girls (July 27, 1978) video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR8SZ93h-Wc.

“How great is your sin in rejecting Jesus Christ! You slight the glorious Person for whose coming God made such great preparation in such a series of wonderful providences from the beginning of the world, bringing to pass a thing before unknown, the union of the Divine nature with the human in one person. You have been guilty of slighting that great Saviour, who, after such preparation, actually accomplished the purchase of redemption, and who, after He had spent three or four and thirty years in poverty, labor, and contempt, in purchasing redemption, at last finished the purchase by closing His life under such extreme sufferings; and so by His death, and continuing for a time under the power of death, completed the whole. This is the Saviour you reject and despise. You make light of all the glory of His person, and of all the love of God the Father in sending Him into the world, and all His wonderful love appearing in the whole of His work.”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 492.

Love, Life, Death, God

“All the terms that we demanded have, since the war began, been substantially conceded…My hon. Friend…[said] that we must obtain a success in order that we may secure better terms; but that is not the public and popular sentiment; the popular feeling is, that as to terms there is no great matter at issue, but that what you want is more military success…It is not only indefensible—it is hideous, it is anti-Christian, it is immoral, it is inhuman; and you have no right to make war simply for what you call success. If, when you have obtained the objects of the war, you continue it in order to obtain military glory…I say you tempt the justice of Him in whose hands the fates of armies are as absolutely lodged as the fate of the infant slumbering in its cradle; you tempt Him to launch upon you His wrath; and if this be courage, I, for one, have no courage to enter upon such a course. I believe it to be alike guilty and unwise.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1855/may/24/prosecution-of-the-war in the House of Commons (24 May 1855) on the Crimean War. 1850s

Fate, War, Justice, Feeling

“The stark truth, of course, is that they have not abolished the death penalty at all. They have merely transferred it from the guilty to the innocent - and incidentally ensured that many more violent deaths occur.”

George MacDonald Fraser (1925–2008) English-born author of Scottish descent

Crime and Punishment. p. 146.
The Light's On At Signpost (2002)

Death, Truth, Penalty

“But that leads me to my third hard truth: something happens to people in law enforcement. Many of us develop different flavors of cynicism that we work hard to resist because they can be lazy mental shortcuts. For example, criminal suspects routinely lie about their guilt, and nearly everybody we charge is guilty. That makes it easy for some folks in law enforcement to assume that everybody is lying and that no suspect, regardless of their race, could be innocent. Easy, but wrong.”

James Comey (1960) American lawyer and the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

2010s, Hard Truths: Law Enforcement (2015)

People, Truth, Lie, Law

“[I]t's guilty of the very thing that makes kids hate history as a subject when it's taught badly: The Da Vinci Code makes the past feel like a dull, grainy, faraway thing, instead of something vibrant and alive.”

Stephanie Zacharek (1963) American film critic

Review http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2006/05/18/da_vinci/index.html of The Da Vinci Code (2006)

Hate, Feeling, History, Past

“Fay: I'm innocent till I'm proved guilty. This is a free country. The law is impartial.
Truscott: Who's been filling your head with that rubbish?
Fay: I can't be had for anything. You've no proof.
Truscott: When I make out my report I shall say you've given me a confession. It could prejudice your case if I have to forge one.”

Joe Orton (1933–1967) English playwright and author

Loot (1965), Act II

Law, Country

“My profession often gets bad press for a variety of sins, both actual and imagined: arrogance, venality, insensitivity to moral issues about the use of knowledge, pandering to sources of funding with insufficient worry about attendant degradation of values. As an advocate for science, I plead “mildly guilty now and then” to all these charges. Scientists are human beings subject to all the foibles and temptations of ordinary life. Some of us are moral rocks; others are reeds. I like to think (though I have no proof) that we are better, on average, than members of many other callings on a variety of issues central to the practice of good science: willingness to alter received opinion in the face of uncomfortable data, dedication to discovering and publicizing our best and most honest account of nature's factuality, judgment of colleagues on the might of their ideas rather than the power of their positions.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Dinosaur in a Haystack

"The Razumovsky Duet", p. 270
Dinosaur in a Haystack (1995)

Life, Imagination, Idea, Nature

“Sleep demands of us a guilty immunity. There is not one of us who, given an eternal incognito, a thumbprint nowhere set against our souls, would not commit rape, murder and all abominations.”

Djuna Barnes book Nightwood

Source: Nightwood (1936), Ch. 5 : Watchman, What of the Night?

Soul, Sleep

“The phrase "a literature of decadence" implies a scale of literature: infancy, childhood, adolescence, etc. This term, I would say, supposes something fateful and providential, like an inescapable decree; and it is completely unjust to reproach us for the fulfillment of a law that is mysterious. All I can understand of this academic saying is that it is shameful to obey this law pleasurably, and that we are guilty of rejoicing in our destiny.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Le mot littérature de décadence implique qu'il y a une échelle de littératures, une vagissante, une puérile, une adolescente, etc. Ce terme, veux-je dire, suppose quelque chose de fatal et de providentiel, comme un décret inéluctable; et il est tout à fait injuste de nous reprocher d'accomplir la loi mystérieuse. Tout ce que je puis comprendre dans la parole académique, c'est qu'il est honteux d'obéir à cette loi avec plaisir, et que nous sommes coupables de nous réjouir dans notre destinée. XI: "Notes nouvelles sur Edgar Poe III," I http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Edgar_Poe_III._Notes_nouvelles_sur_Edgar_Poe_%28L%E2%80%99Art_romantique%29#I L'art romantique (1869)

Fate, Pleasure, Law, Literature

“When the whole is at stake, there is no crime except that of rejecting the whole, or not defending it. … Those who identify themselves with the whole, who are installed as the leaders and defenders of the whole can make mistakes, but they cannot do wrong—they are not guilty. They may become guilty again when this identification no longer holds, when they are gone.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 82-83

“We are so proud of our guarantees of freedom in thought and speech and worship, that, unconsciously, we are guilty of one of the greatest errors that ignorance can make — we assume our standard of values is shared by all other humans in the world.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

As quoted in Strategies of Containment : A Critical Appraisal of Post-war American National Security Policy (1982) by John Lewis Gaddis
1960s

World, Error, Freedom

“To be judged by the state as an innocent, is to be guilty. It is to sanction, through passivity and obedience, the array of crimes carried out by the state.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

“Happy as a Hangman,” truthdig.com http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/happy_as_a_hangman_20101206/, December 6, 2010

“My own experience of mescalin is described in the appendix of Beyond the Outsider. My 'trip' was pleasant enough, although I experienced none of the visual effects described by Huxley; I was plunged into an agreeable but sluggish dreaminess. In this torpid state, I became aware of the problem mentioned by Huxley: 'How was this cleansed perception to be reconciled with a proper concern with human relations…?' -- in my case, with my concern for my wife and three-year-old daughter? Although I personally felt nothing but a sense of relaxation and trustfulness, I was aware that, in practice, the world is full of dangers, and in this state, I was incapable of the necessary vigilance; it made me feel guilty. I was neglecting my job of looking after them. Moreover, my ability to think was impaired. Huxley remarks that he found his own ability to remember and 'think straight' to be little, if at all, reduced. I could 'think straight', but I could not think to any purpose. Even the feeling of universal love was not particularly pleasant; I compared it to having a large alsation dog who puts his paws on your shoulder and licks your face.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Frankenstein's Castle (1980), p. 59-60

Love, World, Dogs, Feeling

“Man emerged as the dominant type on earth about a million years ago, but has only been really effective as a psychosocial organism for under ten thousand years. In that mere second of cosmic time, he has produced astonishing achievements — but has also been guilty of unprecedented horrors and follies. And looked at in the long perspective of evolution he is singularly imperfect, still incapable of carrying out his planetary responsibilities in a satisfactory manner…”

Julian Huxley (1887–1975) English biologist, philosopher, author

The New Divinity (1964)

Time

“I am greedy. I eat under stress. When you are eating, the rest of the world is tuned out. And when you tune back in you feel guilty about having been greedy and the rest of the world is still there, so you have to carry on eating!”

Nigella Lawson (1960) British food writer, journalist and broadcaster

A woman of extremes (2001)

World, Feeling

“When I was young, I thought the act of getting older meant, year by year, getting more sophisticated, more hard, cool, and unpitying. Less innocent.
Maybe that was a childish idea of what getting older was about. Maybe adults, mature adults, get more innocent with time, not less. Because the word “innocent” does not mean “naïve,” it means “not guilty.”
Children do small evils to each other, schoolyard fights and insults, not because their hearts are pure, but because their powers are small. Grownups have more power. Some of them do great evils with that power. But what about the ones who don’t? Aren’t they more innocent than children, not less?”

John C. Wright (1961) American novelist and technical writer

Source: Fugitives of Chaos (2006), Chapter 12, “North by Northwest” (p. 181)

Children, Idea, Evil, Time

“This legible lesson, this ritual recording, must be repeated as often as possible; the punishments must be a school rather than a festival; an ever-open book rather than a ceremony. The duration that makes the punishment effective for the guilty is also useful for the spectators. They must be able to consult at each moment the permanent lexicon of crime and punishment. A secret punishment is a punishment half wasted. Children should be allowed to come to the places where the penalty is being carried out; there they will attend their classes in civics. And grown men will periodically relearn the laws. Let us conceive of places of punishment as a Garden of the Laws that families would visit on Sundays.”

Michel Foucault book Discipline and Punish

Source: Discipline and Punish (1977), Chapter Three, The Gentle Way in Punishment

Men, Children, Secret, Books

“What work have I got to do, then?” said Will, but went on at once, “No, on second thought, don’t tell me. I shall decide what I do. If you say my work is fighting, or healing, or exploring, or whatever you might say, I'll always be thinking about it. And if I do end up doing that, I'll be resentful because it’ll feel as if I didn’t have a choice, and if I don’t do it, I'll feel guilty because I should. Whatever I do, I will choose it, no one else.”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

“Then you have already taken the first steps toward wisdom,” said Xaphania.
Source: His Dark Materials, The Amber Spyglass (2000), Ch. 37 : The Dunes

Wisdom, Feeling, Thinking, Fight

“The essential is to cease being free and to obey, in repentance, a greater rogue than oneself. When we are all guilty, that will be democracy.”

Albert Camus book The Fall

The Fall (1956)

Democracy

“To win the guilty kiss of a saint, I'd welcome the plague as a blessing”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Tears and Saints (1937)

Kiss

“I am guilty that I raised your hopes about wedding, marriage, children and family, and many other things.”

Ziad Jarrah (1975–2001) September 11th hijacker

Letter to Aysel Şengün (2001)

Marriage, Children, Family, Hope

“I strongly condemn this crime, and am of the opinion that those who are found guilty by a court of law should be given harsh punishment. At the same time, I would like to know whether the same hue and cry which has been raised about it in the media and in Parliament would have been raised had this incident happened in some other part of India, particularly in rural India. I am sure it would not. But surely Delhi is not the whole of India.”

Markandey Katju (1946) Indian judge

On the media attention focused on the 2012 Delhi gang rape, as quoted in "Delhi gangrape: 'Rape isn't India's only problem'" http://www.ibnlive.com/news/india/delhi-gangrape-rape-isnt-indias-only-problem-527414.html, IBNLive (19 December 2012)

Law, Time, Parting, Cry

“I do plainly and ingenuously confess that I am guilty of corruption, and do renounce all defense. I beseech your Lordships to be merciful to a broken reed.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

On being charged by Parliament with corruption in office (1621)

“They are, of course, Nazis. They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism. These guys don't want any other point of view. They don't even feel guilty using tax dollars to spout their propaganda. They are basically Air America with government funding to keep them alive.”

Roger Ailes (1940–2017) Television executive

Howard
Kurtz
Fox News Chief Blasts NPR 'Nazis'
The Daily Beast
2010-11-17
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-11-17/fox-news-chief-roger-ailes-blasts-national-public-radio-brass-as-nazis/
2011-02-10
on NPR firing Juan Williams for remarks he made on Fox News about fearing airplane passengers in Muslim garb

Guy, Feeling

“I feel outside all the contending sections of the liberal party — for I am not in favour of home rule, or the creation of a Dublin parliament…I cannot consent to a measure which is so offensive to the whole protestant population of Ireland, and to the whole sentiment of the province of Ulster so far as its loyal and protestant people are concerned. I cannot agree to exclude them from the protection of the imperial parliament. …In any case of a division, it is I suppose certain that a considerable majority of British members will oppose the bill. Thus, whilst it will have the support of the rebel members, it will be opposed by a majority from Great Britain and by a most hostile vote from all that is loyal in Ireland. The result will be, if a majority supports you it will be one composed in effect of the men who for six years past have insulted the Queen, have torn down the national flag, have declared your lord lieutenant guilty of deliberate murder, and have made the imperial parliament an assembly totally unable to manage the legislative business for which it annually assembles at Westminster.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Letter to William Gladstone opposing his plans for Irish Home Rule (13 May 1886), published in The Life of William Ewart Gladstone (1903), Volume III by John Morley, p. 326-29
1880s

Men, Hostility, People, Feeling

“There is a fountain fill'd with blood
Drawn from Emmanuel's veins;
And sinners, plung'd beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains.”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

No. 79, "Praise for the Fountain Opened".
Olney Hymns (1779)

“Eventually, with regret, I left the religious life, and, once freed of the burden of failure and inadequacy, I felt my belief in God slip quietly away. He had never really impinged upon my life, though I had done my best to enable him to do so. Now that I no longer felt so guilty and anxious about him, he became too remote to be a reality.”

Karen Armstrong book A History of God

A History of God (1993)

Life, God, Failure, Reality

“St. Paul says, that God commendeth his love to us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us: and that when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son. St. Paul was in a peculiar manner a child of grace: with gratitude, therefore, he honours and extols its efficacy in all his epistles; and particularly in his epistle to the Romans throughout he defends his doctrines with great precision and copiousness. 'Every mouth,' says he, 'must be stopped, and all the world become guilty before God. By the deeds of the law no flesh can be justified. Man must be justified freely by his grace. By grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.”

Thomas Bradwardine (1300–1349) Theologian; Archbishop of Canterbury

De causa Dei contra Pelagium

Love, Death, God, World

“It is a notorious fact that many prominent Hindus who had offended the religious susceptibilities of the Muslims either by their writings or by their part in the Shudhi movement have been murdered by some fanatic Musalmans…. This is, of course, a very short list and could be easily expanded. But whether the number of prominent Hindus killed by fanatic Muslims is large or small matters little. What matters is the attitude of those who count towards these murderers. The murderers paid the penalty of law where law is enforced. The leading Moslems, however, never condemned theses criminals. On the contrary, they were hailed as religious martyrs and agitation was carried on for clemency being shown to them. As an illustration of this attitude, one may refer to Mr. Barkat Ali, a Barrister of Lahore, who argued the appeal of Abdul Qayum. He went to the length of saying that Qayum was not guilty of murder of Nathuramal because his act was justifiable by the law of the Koran. This attitude of the Moslems is quite understandable. What is not understandable is the attitude of Mr. Gandhi.”

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) Father of republic India, champion of human rights, father of India's Constitution, polymath, revolutionary…

Source: Pakistan or The Partition of India (1946), p. 157

Law, Penalty, Understanding, Parting

“Everything persecutes him; all things go against the guilty. No calamity by itself. Everything went badly with me, when I harboured revenge, but [I] changed, and left everything in God's hands: since then all happily.”

Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist

Nemesis Divina (1734)

God, Revenge, Change

“Depression is seductive: it offends and teases, frightens you and draws you in, tempting you with its promise of sweet oblivion, then overwhelming you with a nearly sexual power, squirming past your defenses, dissolving your will, invading the tired spirit so utterly that it becomes difficult to recall that you ever lived without it… or to imagine that you might live that way again. With all the guile of Satan himself, depression persuades you that its invasion was all your own idea, that you wanted it all along. It fogs the part of the brain that reasons, that knows right and wrong. It captures you with its warm, guilty, hateful pleasures, and, worst of all, it becomes familiar. All at once, you find yourself in thrall to the very thing that most terrifies you. Your work slides, your friendships slide, your marriage slides, but you scarcely notice: to be depressed is to be half in love with disaster.”

Stephen L. Carter book The Emperor of Ocean Park

Source: The Emperor of Ocean Park (2002), Ch. 12, A Special Delivery, II

Love, Hate, Friendship, Marriage

“To have merit to abstain from a fault, is a manner to be guilty.”

Marguerite Yourcenar (1903–1987) French writer

Avoir du mérite à s'abstenir d'une faute, c'est une façon d'être coupable.
Alexis (1929)

“Everybody sees me as a solitary entity
but I long to be important to somebody It's a love of fairy tales that drives this guilty wish
To walk serenely in front of family to collect my kiss
and though this notion is as flawed as any I have learned
I'd like to think that like the others, it's something I deserve”

Happy Rhodes (1965) American singer-songwriter

"Chosen One"
Find Me (2007)

Love, Family, Kiss, Thinking

“Lay your sleeping head, my love
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral;
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie:
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.”

W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet

Lay your sleeping head, my love (1937), lines 1–2, written January 1937; also known as Lullaby.

Love, Children, Lie, Beauty

“33 years ago I pleaded guilty, and I served time at the prison for common law crimes at Chino, not in a VIP prison. That period was to have covered the totality of my sentence. By the time I left prison, the judge had changed his mind and claimed that the time served at Chino did not fulfil the entire sentence, and it is this reversal that justified my leaving the United States.”

Roman Polanski (1933) Polish-French film director, producer, writer, actor, and rapist

I can remain silent no longer (2010)

Law, Change, Time

“The time has been in Israel under the law of God, the celestial law, or that which pertains to the celestial law, for it is one of the laws of that kingdom where our Father dwells, that if a man was found guilty of adultery, he must have his blood shed, and that is near at hand. But now I say, in the name of the Lord, that if this people will sin no more, but faithfully live their religion, their sins will be forgiven them without taking life.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses 4:219 (Feb. 8, 1857)
1850s

Life, God, People, Religion

“[Scripture], by which, “as in a glass, we may survey ourselves, and know what manner of persons we are,” (James 1. 23) discovers ourselves to us; pierces into the inmost recesses of the mind; strips off every disguise; lays open the inward part; makes a strict scrutiny into the very soul and spirit; and critically judges of the thoughts and intents of the heart. (Heb. iv. 12) It shows us with what exactness and care we are to search and try our spirits, examine ourselves, and watch our ways, and keep our hearts, in order to acquire this important self-science; which it often calls us to do. “Examine yourselves; prove your own selves; know you not yourselves? Let a man examine himself.” (1 Cor. xi. 28) Our Saviour upbraids his disciples with their self-ignorance, in not “knowing what manner of spirits they were of.” (Luke ix. 55) And, saith the apostle, “If a man (through self-ignorance) thinketh himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself. But let every man prove his work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself, and not another.” (Gal. vi. 3, 4) Here we are commanded, instead of judging others, to judge ourselves; and to avoid the. inexcusable rashness of condemning others for the very crimes we ourselves are guilty of, (Rom. ii. 1, 21, 22) which a self-ignorant man is very apt to do; nay, to be more offended at a small blemish in another's character, than at a greater in his own; which folly, self-ignorance, and hypocrisy, our Saviour, with just severity, animadverts upon. (Mat. vii. 3-5) And what stress was laid upon this under the Old Testament dispensation appears sufficiently from those expressions. "Keep thy heart with all diligence." (Prov. iv. 23) "Commune with your own heart." (Psal. iv. 4) "Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts." (Psal. cxxxix. 23) "Examine me, O Lord, and prove me; try my reins and my heart." (Psal. xxvi. 2) "Let us search and try our ways." (Lam. iii. 4) "Recollect, recollect yourselves, O "nation not desired."”

John Mason (1706–1763) English Independent minister and author

Zeph. ii. 1
A Treatise on Self-Knowledge (1745)

God, Way, Soul, Search

“All who are content with a humanistic law system…are guilty of idolatry…they are asking us to serve other gods.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Writings, The Institutes of Biblical Law (1973)

God, Law

“You see, the religious people — most of them — really think this planet is an experiment. That’s what their beliefs come down to. Some god or other is always fixing and poking, messing around with tradesmen’s wives, giving tablets on mountains, commanding you to mutilate your children, telling people what words they can say and what words they can’t say, making people feel guilty about enjoying themselves, and like that. Why can’t the gods leave well enough alone? All this intervention speaks of incompetence. If God didn’t want Lot’s wife to look back, why didn’t he make her obedient, so she’d do what her husband told her? Or if he hadn’t made Lot such a shithead, maybe she would’ve listened to him more. If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn’t he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why’s he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there’s one thing the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer. He’s not good at design, he’s not good at execution. He’d be out of business if there was any competition.”

Carl Sagan book Contact

Source: Contact (1985), Chapter 16 (p. 285)

God, Children, People, Way

“A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent, unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty, until found effective.”

Edward Teller (1908–2003) Hungarian-American nuclear physicist

Conversations on the Dark Secrets of Physics (1991) by Edward Teller, Wendy Teller and Wilson Talley, Ch. 5, p. 69 footnote

“Sweet semblance of the children who have forsaken me, Archemorus, solace of my lost estate and country, pride of my servitude, what guilty gods took your life, my joy, whom but now in parting I left at play, crushing the grasses as you hastened in your forward crawl? Ah, where is your starry face? Where your words unfinished in constricted sounds, and laughs and gurgles that only I could understand? How often would I talk to you of Lemnos and the Argo and lull you to sleep with my long tale of woe!”
O mihi desertae natorum dulcis imago, Archemore, o rerum et patriae solamen ademptae seruitiique decus, qui te, mea gaudia, sontes extinxere dei, modo quem digressa reliqui lascivum et prono uexantem gramina cursu? heu ubi siderei vultus? ubi verba ligatis imperfecta sonis risusque et murmura soli intellecta mihi? quotiens tibi Lemnon et Argo sueta loqui et longa somnum suadere querela!

Statius book Thebaid

Source: Thebaid, Book V, Line 608

Life, God, Children, Understanding

“It was hard to just sit and relax. Everyone he saw somehow looked suspicious, especially all those people who appeared perfectly innocuous: nobody who looked that innocuous could be anything but guilty, Spider thought.”

K. A. Bedford book Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait

Source: Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait (2008), Chapter 17 (p. 200)

People, Appearance

“It is certain that every man has a right to keep his own sentiments, if he pleases: he has certainly a right to judge whether he will make them public, or commit them only to the sight of his own friends. In that state the manuscript is, in every sense his peculiar property; and no man can take it from him or make any use of it which he has not authorized, without being guilty of a violation of his property.”

Joseph Yates (judge) (1722–1770) English barrister and judge

4 Burr. Part IV., 2379.
Dissenting in Millar v Taylor (1769)

Sense

“It is conceivable that we might be able to provide good medical care for everyone needing it, in a new system designed to assure equity, provided we can restrain ourselves, or our computers, from designing a system in which all 200 million of us are assumed to be in constant peril of failed health every day of our lives. In the same sense that our judicial system presumes us to be innocent until proven guilty, a medical care system may work best if it starts with the presumption that most people are healthy. Left to themselves, computers may try to do it in the opposite way, taking it as given that some sort of direct, continual, professional intervention is required all the time, in order to maintain the health of each citizen, and we will end up spending all our money on nothing but this.”

Lewis Thomas (1913–1993) American physician, poet and educator

Source: Aspects of Biomedical Science Policy (1972), p. 4

Money, People, Health, Way

“You were both catalysts,” Mrs Persson told me, “no more than that. Do you still not realize your error? No individual can claim so much personal guilt. It is madness to do so. We are all guilty of supporting the circumstances, the self-deceptions, the misconceptions and misinformation which lead to War. Every lie we tell ourselves brings an evil like the destruction of Hiroshima closer. We drown in our lies.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Book 2, Chapter 7 “A Mechanical Man” (p. 394)
Oswald Bastable, The Steel Tsar (1981)

War, Lie, Error, Support

“God knows, I’m hardly a sociologist. But I hope in the future for some form of reconciliation. Because I think all men are guilty. I’m not talking about rape and pillage. I’m not talking about Harveyesque. I’m talking about all of the spectrum. From an aggressive flirt. Or even just a flirty-flirt that has one sour note in it. Or what I think every man was guilty of, some form of omission in attitude, in his views. Are we really going to have only capital punishment? Because right now, that’s what we have. You get accused, you’re obliterated. Charlie Rose ceases to exist.”

Barry Diller (1942) American businessman

March 2018 interview with New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/24/style/barry-diller-iac.html

Men, God, Hope, Thinking

“But speaking of rules, you've been arrested dozens of times in your life. Specific incidents aside, what's common to these run-ins? Where do you stand vis-à-vis the law?
"Goddammit. Yeah, I have. First, there's a huge difference between being arrested and being guilty. Second, see, the law changes and I don't. How I stand vis-à-vis the law at any given moment depends on the law. The law can change from state to state, from nation to nation, from city to city. I guess I have to go by a higher law. How's that? Yeah, I consider myself a road man for the lords of karma."”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Salon interview (3 February 2003) http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/02/03/thompson/index_np.html 2000s

Life, Law, Change, Time

“Senator, I am not now, nor have I ever been, an oil trader. and neither has anyone on my behalf. I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one - and neither has anyone on my behalf. Now I know that standards have slipped in the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice. I am here today but last week you already found me guilty. You traduced my name around the world without ever having asked me a single question, without ever having contacted me, without ever written to me or telephoned me, without any attempt to contact me whatsoever. And you call that justice.”

George Galloway (1954) British politician, broadcaster, and writer

" Galloway v the US Senate: transcript of statement http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1616578,00.html", The Times, May 18, 2005 Testimony before the US Senate on May 17, 2005.

World, Justice, Idea, Question

“Maybe if they didn't know it beforehand, they wouldn't find out I'd ever been guilty of trying to think for myself.”

Sinclair Lewis book Main Street

Main Street (1920)

Thinking

“Men remain feeling guilty, for a false sense of guilt has no cure save the truth, and this is not forthcoming. Since the citizens are now guilt-ridden because of their education and political indoctrination, they are more amenable to robbery, and even murder. If the white man feels guilty towards the Negro, he is less capable of defending himself against the Negroes who turn into a revolutionary rabble, bent on theft and murder. The state finds it easier to rob men when men feel guilty for what they are and have, and the state drones on and on about the needs of the poor of the nation and of the world.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Source: Writings, Politics of Guilt and Pity (1978), p. 46

Men, Truth, World, Education

“A little folly is desirable in him that will not be guilty of stupidity.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 9. Of Vanity
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Stupidity

“We must not be guilty of taking the law into our own hands, and converting it from what it really is to what we think it ought to be.”

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge (1820–1894) British lawyer, judge and Liberal politician

1 Cababe & Ellis' Q. B. D. Rep. 136.
Reg. v. Ramsey (1883)

Law, Thinking

“…the white man is being systematically indoctrinated into believing that he is guilty of enslaving and abusing the Negro. Granted that some Negroes were mistreated as slaves, the fact still remains that nowhere in all history or in the world today has the Negro been better off. The life expectancy of the Negro increased when he was transported to America. He was not taken from freedom into slavery, but from a vicious slavery to degenerate chiefs to a generally benevolent slavery in the United States. There is not the slightest evidence that any American Negro had ever lived in a "free society" in Africa; even the idea did not exist in Africa. The move from Africa to America was a vast increase of freedom for the Negro, materially and spiritually as well as personally. The Negroes were sold from a harsh slavery into a milder one. Slavery was basic to the African way of life, to the point that slaves were the actual money of the African economy. Elsewhere, gold and silver served as money; in Africa, it was slaves…”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Source: Writings, Politics of Guilt and Pity (1978), pp. 3-4

Life, Money, World, Way

“Ben, the ethics of sex is a thorny problem. Each of us is forced to grope for a solution he can live with — in the face of a preposterous, unworkable, and evil code of so-called "morals." Most of us know the code is wrong; almost everybody breaks it. But we pay Danegeld by feeling guilty and giving lip service. Willy-nilly, the code rides us, dead and stinking, an albatross around the neck.
You, too, Ben. You fancy yourself a free soul — and break that evil code. But faced with a problem in sexual ethics new to you, you tested it against that same Judeo-Christian code… so automatically your stomach did flip-flops… and you think that proves you're right and they're wrong. Faugh! I'd as lief use trial by ordeal.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Stranger in a Strange Land

"Jubal Harshaw"
Stranger in a Strange Land (1961; 1991)

Sex, Feeling, Soul, Problem

“I think the detective story is by far the best upholder of the democratic doctrine in literature. I mean, there couldn't have been detective stories until there were democracies, because the very foundation of the detective story is the thesis that if you're guilty you'll get it in the neck and if you're innocent you can't possibly be harmed. No matter who you are. There was no such conception of justice until after 1830. There was no such thing as a policeman or a detective in the world before 1830, because the modern conception of the policeman and detective, namely, a man whose only function is to find out who did it and then get the evidence that will punish him, did not exist. … In Paris before the year 1800 — read the Dumas stories — there were gangs of people whose business was to go out and punish wrongdoers. But why? Because they had hurt De Marillac or Richelieu or the Duke or some Huguenot noble, not just because they had harmed society. It is only the modern policeman that is out to protect society.”

Rex Stout (1886–1975) American writer

Rex Stout, pp. 248–249
Invitation to Learning

People, World, Justice, Democracy

“I hate people saying anything stupid. I don't really suffer fools very well at all. When people are acting like idiots, not that I'm not guilty of doing the odd idiotic thing myself from time to time, but when people say stupid things, it stresses me out. I have a pretty thick skin about people coming up to me and saying things to me when I'm out, I don't really mind that too much. but when people are just loud and annoying, it drives me crazy.”

Joshua Jackson (1978) Canadian actor

As quoted in the article 'End of an Era?' in Live and Kicking magazine (2000)

Hate, People, Stupidity, Fools

“There’s obviously always danger in making music or art for art’s sake. Even as Christians we can be guilty of that, being more about the art than the Artist who gave us this gift.”

Steven Curtis Chapman (1962) American Christian music singer-songwriter, record producer, actor, author, and social activist

Press conference after 2007 GMA Music Awards http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5378840845486744543&q=steven+curtis+chapman

Art, Music

“To show favour to a villain is to sow in the sea, and to be guilty of an injustice.”

Stefano Guazzo (1530–1593) Italian writer

Il far beneficio ad un tristo è seminar nel mare, è far atto d'ingiustizia.
Del Prencipe di Valacchia, p. 67.
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 314.

Sea

“Marylin Marsh, who had about it with Spain, declared to him [the old Spanish man] […] But it redounds to your national credit, the then Missus Turner went on in effect - she'd been reading up on reciprocal atrocities in the Guerra Civil - that the sunny Spanish could never be guilty of an Auschwitz, for example. In the first place, your ovens would have died, like our kitchen stove, instead of your Jews, whom you'd got rid of anyhow in the sunny Fifteenth century, no? And in the second place the whole idea of extermination camps would've been too impersonal for your exquisite Moorish tastes. Much more agradable to push folks off a cliff one at a time into a gorgeous Mediterranean sunset, as you did near Malaga - three hundred, was it, or three thousand? Or to rape and then kill a convent-full of nuns in the manner of the saint of their choice - was that Barcelona or Valencia?”

John Barth book Sabbatical: A Romance

Source: Sabbatical: A Romance (1982), p. 37

Idea, Time, Reading

“Nevertheless, our constant efforts to lower our estimate of the present world should not lead us to hate life or to be ungrateful toward God. For this life, though it is full of countless miseries, deserves to be reckoned among the divine blessings which should not be despised. Therefore, if we discover nothing of God’s goodness in it, we are already guilty of no small ingratitude toward him.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Page 72.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)

Life, God, Hate, World

“My doubt goes like this: How could the Loving One have the heart to let human beings become so guilty that they got his murder on their consciences?”

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

Source: 1840s, Two Ethical-Religious Minor Essays (1849), p. 63

Love, Heart

“On the second Michael Jackson trial, speaking on "Larry King Live," CNN, Feb. 21, 2003: "But I'm telling you, this boy, two-thirds of this can be corroborated by other people. So why would he lie about the molestation part? It is in graphic detail. It just seems true… I think Michael Jackson walks. And I think it's a disgrace. He's guilty."”

Nancy Grace (1959) American legal commentator, television host, television journalist, and former prosecutor

"Larry King Live", CNN (Feb. 21, 2003), reported in " Jacko Not Guilty: Past Predictions https://web.archive.org/web/20061115152018/http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/court_cases/jacko_not_guilty_past_predictions_22555.asp", TVNewser.com (June 14, 2006).

People, Lie, Boy, Thinking

“33,000 e-mails are missing. And she's so guilty. She's so guilty.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, August, Speech at rally in Wilmington, North Carolina (August 9, 2016)

“Maybe Nina wouldn't have died if I hadn't moved in with them and drawn Sheener after me, but I can't feel guilty about that. I tried hard to be a good foster daughter to them, and they were happy with me. What happened was that life dropped a big custard pie on us, and that's not my fault; you can never see the custard pies coming. It's not good slapstick if you see the pie coming."
"Custard pie?" he asked, perplexed. "You see life as a slapstick comedy? Like the Three Stooges?"
"Partly."
"Life is just a joke then?"
"No. Life is serious and a joke at the same time."
"But how can that be?”

Dean Koontz book Lightning

"If you don't know," she said, "maybe I should be the one asking the questions here."
Part I, Chapter 2.10, dialog between 12-year-old Laura Shane and a psychotherapist after the death of her foster mother
Lightning (1988)

Life, Happiness, Feeling, Question

“Knowing that his audiences are capable of forming bad impressions of him, the individual may come to feel ashamed of a well-intentioned honest act merely because the context of its performance provides false impressions that are bad. Feeling this unwarranted shame, he may feel that his feelings can be seen; feeling that he is thus seen, he may feel that his appearance confirms these false conclusions concerning him. He may then add to the precariousness of his position by engaging in just those defensive maneuvers that he would employ were he really guilty. In this way it is possible for all of us to become fleetingly for ourselves the worst person we can imagine that others might imagine us to be.”

Erving Goffman book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Source: 1950s-1960s, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, 1959, p. 236

Way, Feeling, Imagination, Appearance

“If the women but have little virtue, the jealousy of their husbands is extreme, and their revenge deadly and almost certain. A few inches of cold steel have been the punishment of many an unwary man, who has been guilty, perhaps, of nothing more than indiscretion. The difficulties of the attempt [to copulate with a married woman] are numerous, and the consequences of discovery fatal, in the better classes. With the unmarried women, too, great watchfulness is used. The main object of the parents is to marry their daughters well, and to this a fair name is necessary. The sharp eyes of a duena, and the ready weapons to a father or brother, are a protection which the characters of most of them — men and women — render by no means useless; for the very men who would lay down their lives to avenge the dishonor of their own family would risk the same lives to complete the dishonor of another.”

Richard Henry Dana Jr. book Two Years Before the Mast

Referring to the Mexican residents of Santa Barbara in 1835 (p. 162)
Two Years Before the Mast (1840)

Women, Men, Jealousy, Family

“I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land can never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed, it might be done.”

John Brown (abolitionist) (1800–1859) American abolitionist

This was written on a note that he had at his execution (2 December 1859), most sources say it was handed to the guard, but some dispute that and claim it was handed to a reporter accompaning him; as quoted in John Brown and his Men https://books.google.com/books?id=uiaYWp66b-cC&pg=PR1&dq=John+Brown+and+his+Men+%281894%29+by+Richard+Josiah+Hinton&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Uub_VN3CN5HbggTdxIK4Cw&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=John%20Brown%20and%20his%20Men%20(1894)%20by%20Richard%20Josiah%20Hinton&f=false (1894) by Richard Josiah Hinton, p. 398.

Thinking

“Creation is in fact a fault, man's famous sin thereby appearing as a minor version of a much graver one. What are we guilty of, except of having followed, more or less slavishly, the Creator's example? Easy to recognize in ourselves the fatality which was His: not for nothing have we issued from the hands of a wicked and woebegone god, a god accursed.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

The New Gods (1969)

God, Appearance

“I know that I have been denounced as a traitor and I resent the accusation, as I conceive myself to have been guilty of no underhand or deceitful act against Britain, although I am also able to understand the resentment that my broadcasts have, in many quarters, aroused.”

William Joyce (1906–1946) British fascist and propaganda broadcaster

J.W. Hall (ed.), The Trial of William Joyce (Notable British Trials series, William Hodge & Co, 1946), p. 58
Statement given by Joyce under caution, 31 May 1945.

Understanding

“I have already expressed my opinion that the interference of the noble Lord should have been for the suppression of the trade in opium, and that the war was not justified by any excesses committed on the part of the Chinese. I have already stated, that although the Chinese were undoubtedly guilty of much absurd phraseology, of no little ostentatious pride, and of some excess, justice, in my opinion, is with them, and, that whilst they, the Pagans, and semi-civilized barbarians, have it, we, the enlightened and civilized Christians, are pursuing objects at variance both with justice, and with religion.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1840/apr/08/war-with-china-adjourned-debate#column_819 in the House of Commons (8 April 1840) against the First Opium War. 1840s

War, Religion, Justice, Parting