Glory built on selfish principles is shame and guilt.
William Cowper
Every woman while she would be ready to die of shame if surprised in the act of generation, nonetheless carries her pregnancy without a trace of shame and indeed with a kind of pride. The reason is that pregnancy is in a certain sense a cancellation of the guilt incurred by coitus; thus coitus bears all the shame and disgrace of the affair, while pregnancy, which is so intimately associated with it, stays pure and innocent and is indeed to some extent sacred.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Innocence is the weakest defense. Innocence has a single voice that can only say over and over again, "I didn't do it." Guilt has a thousand voices, all of them lies.
Leonard F. Peltier
Life without industry is guilt. Industry without Art is Brutality.
John Ruskin
Defending the truth is not something one does out of a sense of duty or to allay guilt complexes, but is a reward in itself.
Simone De Beauvoir
Guilt, on the contrary, like a base thief, suspects every eye that beholds him to be privy to his transgressions, and every tongue that mentions his name to be proclaiming them.
Henry Fielding Amelia
Without the spice of guilt, sin cannot be fully savored.
Alexander Chase
It is criminal to steal a purse, daring to steal a fortune, a mark of greatness to steal a crown. The blame diminishes as the guilt increases.
Johann Friedrich Von Schiller
Guilt is the source of sorrows, the avenging fiend that follows us behind with whips and stings.
Nicholas Rowe
Whoever blushes confesses guilt, true innocence never feels shame.
Jean Jacques Rousseau
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.
Robert Southey
The mind of guilt is full of scorpions.
William Shakespeare
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