[O]nly in a metaphorical sense can one say he feels guilty for what not he but his father or his people have done. (Morally speaking, it is hardly less wrong to feel guilty without having done something specific than it is to feel free of all guilt if one is actually guilty of something.)
Capitalism is presumably the first case of a blaming, rather than a repenting cult. ... An enormous feeling of guilt not itself knowing how to repent, grasps at the cult, not in order to repent for this guilt, but to make it universal, to hammer it into consciousness and finally and above all to include God himself in this guilt.
The soul must accept guilt in order to destroy existing evil, lest it incur the greater guilt of idyllic withdrawal, of seeming to be good by putting up with wrong.
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.
Guilt has very quick ears to an accusation.
He declares himself guilty who justifies himself before accusation.
That deed which in our guilt we today call weakness, will appear tomorrow as an essential link in the complete chain of Man.
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.
They who feel guilty are afraid, and they who are afraid somehow feel guilty. To the onlooker, too, the fearful seem guilty.
Where guilt is, rage and courage both abound.
These false pretexts and varnished colours failing,Rare in thy guilt how foul must thou appear.
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.
Friends and comrades! On that side [south] are toil, hunger, nakedness, the drenching storm, desertion, and death; on this side ease and pleasure. There lies Peru with its riches; here, Panama and its poverty. Choose, each man, what best becomes a brave Castilian. For my part, I go to the south.
Nothing is more wretched than a guilty conscience.
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'.
And then it started like a guilty thingUpon a fearful summons.
O, she is fallenHath drops too few to wash her clean again.
Guilt upon the conscience, like rust upon iron, both defiles and consumes it, gnawing and creeping into it, as that does which at last eats out the very heart and substance of the metal.
A land of levity is a land of guilt.
No guilt is forgotten so long as the conscience still knows of it.
He who flies proves himself guilty.
He declares himself guilty who justifies himself before accusation.
Let no guilty man escape, if it can be avoided. No personal consideration should stand in the way of performing a public duty.
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.
How guilt once harbour'd in the conscious breast,Intimidates the brave, degrades the great.
The godsAs crimes do grow, justice should rouse itself.
How glowing guilt exalts the keen delight!
Haste, holy Friar,And smooth his path from earth to heaven!
Let guilty men remember, their black deedsDo lean on crutches made of slender reeds.