The Guilty Quotes

The guilty pleasure defense. In my view if it's guilty, it ain't pleasure. ~ Jessica Zafra

Everything in this book is mostly true but some details have been changed to protect the guilty. I know it's usually about "protecting the innocent" but why would they need protection? They're innocent. And they're also not nearly as fun to write about as the guilty, who always have more fascinating stories and who make you feel better about yourself by comparison. ~ Jenny Lawson

Though the dungeon, the scourge, and the executioner be absent, the guilty mind can apply the goad and scorch with blows. ~ Lucretius

Young girls are the chatelaines of truth; they must see that it is protected, that the guilty lead the life of the guilty, even if the world rocks on its foundations. ~ Jean Giraudoux

He who disguises tyranny, protection, or even benefits under the air and name of friendship reminds me of the guilty priest who poisoned the sacramental bread. ~ Nicolas Chamfort

The capture of Saddam Hussein has proven to the bad ones, to the guilty ones, to the sinful ones that they cannot run forever. Sooner or later, the other criminals will also be found from their hideouts. ~ Hamid Karzai

I'm the guilty one for uttering those terrible, ugly words. ~ Donald Sterling

In peace alone reason was heard and merit distinguished; but in the rage of war the blind steel spared the innocent no more than the guilty. ~ Tacitus

it's always the wrong people who have the guilty conscience. Those who are really responsible for suffering in the world couldn't care less. ~ David Lagercrantz

I am a house gutted by fire where only the guilty sometimes sleep before the punishment that devours them hounds them out in the open. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Our capital system is haunted by the demon of error: error in determining guilt and error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die. What effect was race having? What effect was poverty having? ~ George Ryan

Relationships don't thrive because the guilty are punished but because the innocent are merciful. ~ Max Lucado

Pure and intelligent women can be deceived and misled by the baser sort, their very innocence and experience making them credulous and the helpless tools of the guilty and bold. ~ Catharine Beecher

There isno feeling sadder or more hopeless than the coolingof a friendship between two men. Between a man anda woman a delicate web of terms and conditions is always negotiated. Between men, on the other hand, the deep sense of friendship rests on its selflessness: we expect no sacrifices, no tenderness from each other, all we want is to preserve a pact wordlessly made between us. Perhaps I was really the guilty one, because I did not know you well ~ Sandor Marai

This is the part of a great man, after he has maturely weighed all circumstances, to punish the guilty, to spare the many, and in every state of fortune not to depart from an upright, virtuous conduct. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

Trials are no longer about freeing the innocent, punishing the guilty, and making restitution to the injured. They have devolved into a contest over who will win. ~ Tammy Bruce

And, as we all know, there is also a kind of Charity in which Love plays
no part. It's so easy to toss a coin to a poor man in the street; in fact it's
usually easier to do that than not.
It frees us from the guilty feelings aroused by the cruel spectacle of
poverty. What a relief, and purchased with just one coin! It's cheap for us and solves the beggar's problem. However, if we really loved that poor man, we would do far more for him.
Or perhaps less. We would not toss him a coin and, who knows, our
guilty feelings might arouse real Love in us. ~ Paulo Coelho

Only the guilty are guilty. Their children are not. ~ Elie Wiesel

Occult Theft,
Theft which hides itself even from itself, and is legal, respectable, and cowardly,
corrupts the body and soul of man, to the last fibre of them. And the guilty Thieves of Europe, the real sources of all deadly war in it, are the Capitalists ~ John Ruskin

Human life grows cheaper with every mewling, puking infant that is born. Any form of birth control, no matter how unjust or extreme, is preferable to that tyranny exercised so criminally now by those who, in their filth, stupidity, rut and obnoxious lust, blindly and selfishly birth endlessly forth their disgusting progeny in chaotic, cancerous growth, shoving and forcing the guilty in with the innocent in this already over-stuffed planetary rat-box of accelerating madness and asphyxiation. ~ E.E. Rehmus

I worked as a prosecutor watching Catholic priests charged with sex abuse and saw firsthand how the 'circle the wagons' mentality revictimized the innocent, coddled the guilty, and made matters worse for everyone. ~ Christine Pelosi

The many mysteries boil down to three. There is the kind that can be solved: who planted the bomb? Will the travellers reach their destination? What is Mother's childhood secret? There is the supernatural: dark metaphysical forces, never to be fully exposed, yet hinting of themselves in a way that suggests the author could reveal more if he chose, and might do, in his next book. And there are the insoluble mysteries: what lies beyond life, what beauty is for, why the innocent suffer and the guilty prosper, what goes on in the heads of other people, why life keeps fucking us over just when we're doing all right
these are the mysteries the books dealing with them can't solve, and it is for this reason that the best of these books are the ones we keep rereading. ~ James Meek

An all-wise Providence permits not sinners to escape thus easily from the punishment they have merited on earth, but reserves them to aid his own designs, using them as instruments whereby to work his vengeance on the guilty. ~ Alexandre Dumas

Why were so few voices raised in the ancient world in protest against the ruthlessness of man? Why are human beings so obsequious, ready to kill and ready to die at the call of kings and chieftains? Perhaps it is because they worship might, venerate those who command might, and are convinced that it is by force that man prevails. The splendor and the pride of kings blind the people. The Mesopotamian, for example, felt convinced that authorities were always right: "The command of the palace, like the command of Anu, cannot be altered. The king's word is right; his utterance, like that of a god, cannot be changed!" The prophets repudiated the work as well as the power of man as an object of supreme adoration. They denounced "arrogant boasting" and "haughty pride" (Isa. 10:12), the kings who ruled the nations in anger, the oppressors (Isa. 14:4-6), the destroyers of nations, who went forth to inflict waste, ruin, and death (Jer. 4:7), the "guilty men, whose own might is their god" (Hab. 1: 11).

Their course is evil,
Their might is not right.
Jeremiah 23:10

The end of public authority is to realize the moral law, a task for which both knowledge and understanding as well as the possession of power are indispensable means. Yet inherent in power is the tendency to breed conceit. " . . . one of the most striking and one of the most pervasive features of the prophetic polemic [is] the denunciation and distrust of power in all its forms and guises. The h ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel

When one acts on pity against justice, it is the good whom one punishes for the sake of the evil; when one saves the guilty from suffering, it is the innocent whom one forces to suffer. There is no escape from justice, nothing can be unearned and unpaid for in the universe, neither in matter nor in spirit - and if the guilty do not pay, then the innocent have to pay it. ~ Ayn Rand

Time hangs suspended, and yet it's about to end. Death should be a seduction, not a rape. Given one more minute he could do so much. Even the guilty are allowed to make a phone call, send a message. How alive he feels, how brightly he shines, like a lit fuse, a firecracker about to go off. What he wouldn't give for a minute more, just one ordinary minute tacked cudely onto the end of his life. ~ A.S.A Harrison

You can put a man on trial, but you can't make the guilty pay. ~ Shinedown

Beheading, burying and burning humans alive are extreme acts of cruelty. Such crimes against humanity must be investigated and the guilty parties brought to justice. May ALL victims rest in peace! ~ Widad Akrawi

It is an interesting, though idle, speculation, what would be the effect on us if all our reformers, revolutionaries, planners, politicians, and life-arrangers in general were soaked in Homer from their youth up, like the Greeks. They might realize that on the happy day when there is a refrigerator in every home, and two in none, when we all have the opportunity of working for the common good (whatever that is), when Common Man (whoever he is) is triumphant, though not improved--that men will still come and go like the generations of leaves in the forest; that he will still be weak, and the gods strong and incalculable; that the quality of a man matters more than his achievement; that violence and recklessness will still lead to disaster, and that this will fall on the innocent as well as on the guilty. ~ H.D.F. Kitto

Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the 11th; malicious lies that attempt to shift the blame away from the terrorists, themselves, away from the guilty. ~ George W. Bush

If the system turns away from the abuses inflicted on the guilty, then who can be next but the innocents? ~ Michael Connelly

Overcoming the blame tendency is a defining issue in the corporate world. Ben Dattner, a psychologist and organizational consultant, tells of an experience when he was working at the Republic National Bank of New York. He noticed a piece of paper that a co-worker had stapled to his cubicle wall. It read:

'The six phases of a project:
1. Enthusiasm
2. Disillusionment
3. Panic
4. Search for the guilty
5. Punishment of the innocent
6. Rewards for the uninvolved'

Dattner writes: 'I have yet to come across a more accurate description of how most dramas play out in our working lives. ~ Matthew Syed

Ah! it is well for the unfortunate to be resigned, but for the guilty there is no peace. ~ Mary Shelley

The guilty are allowed, by human laws, bloody as they are, to speak in their own defence before they are condemned. ~ Mary Shelley

Most of the time it's not the Europeans who belittle us. What happens when we look at them is that we belittle ourselves. When we undertake the pilgrimage, it's not just to escape the tyranny at home but also to reach to the depths of our souls. The day arrives when the guilty must return to save those who could not find the courage to leave. ~ Orhan Pamuk

When Freemasons vainglory on their deeds during the French Revolution, they forget that many innocents paid with their own life for that, including pregnant women and children from the royal families, and those that have witness it didn't forget, and will likewise turn the karma back on them in the years to come, making their innocents pay for the guilty ones. ~ Robin Sacredfire

I have made the best and happiest ending that I can in this world, made it out of the flax and netting and leftover trim of someone else's life, I know, but made it to keep the innocent safe and the guilty punished, and I have made it as the world should be and not as I have found it. ~ Amy Bloom

Noise and activity are the refuges of the bereaved and the guilty. ~ Veronica Roth

The impostor syndrome. I know it well. Inside every self-assured professional lives a frightened neurotic who prays that he can somehow succeed before his clients discover the fraud. It's the guilty secret that drives us all. ~ Richard North Patterson

We live in a world where the criminal has become the victim, the victim the accused, the accused the guilty, the guilty the innocent and the innocent the criminal. ~ Volker G. Fremuth

Here's a vice: I say yes to too many things. I wish I had the guilty pleasure of saying no. My goal is to try to do less, but more fully. ~ Sigourney Weaver

If you are not lost, what do you want with a Savior? Should the shepherd go after those who never went astray? Why should the woman sweep her house for the bits of money that were never out of her purse? No, the medicine is for the diseased; the quickening is for the dead; the pardon is for the guilty; liberation is for those who are bound: the opening of eyes is for those who are blind. How can the Savior, and His death upon the cross, and the gospel of pardon, be accounted for, unless it be upon the supposition that men are guilty and worthy of condemnation? The sinner is the gospel's reason for existence. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The basis of your religion is injustice. The Son of God the pure, the immaculate, the innocent, is sacrificed for the guilty. This proves his heroism, but no more does away with man's sin than a school boy's volunteering to be flogged for another would exculpate a dunce from negligence. ~ Lord Byron

Salvation is not a reward for the righteous, it is a gift for the guilty. ~ Steven J. Lawson

Secrets can kill the innocent and enchant the guilty. ~ Alexis Hurley

Our capitol punishment system is haunted by the demon of error- error in determining guilt, error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die ... The legislation couldn't reform it. Lawmakers won't repeal it. I won't stand for it. I had to act ... I am commuting the sentences of all death row inmates. ~ George Ryan

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent. ~ Adam Smith

When anyone apologizes to us he has to do it very expertly: otherwise we might easily come to see ourselves as the guilty party and experience unpleasant feelings. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Guilt is like a sore, endlessly fascinating, and the guilty party feels compelled to examine it and pick at it, so that it never really heals. ~ Stephen King

I think, ultimately you know in your heart how much work you've done. You know what you're doing, if you're being honest on stage or not. That's all you being you. But when you acknowledges it - especially with a Tony Award nomination - you just can't help with the guilty pleasure! ~ Laura Bell Bundy

NUM14.18 The LORD is longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. ~ Anonymous

An absurd problem came to the surface: 'How COULD God permit that (crucifixion of Jesus Christ)!' ... the deranged reason of the little community found quite a frightfully absurd answer: God gave his Son for forgiveness, as a SACRIFICE ... The SACRIFICE FOR GUILT, and just in its most repugnant and barbarous form - the sacrifice of the innocent for the sins of the guilty! What horrifying heathenism! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I still believe in good and bad, in black and white, in right and wrong. I believe the guilty should be punished. I believe the law enforcement community has an obligation to make the world a better place, a safer placce. And I believe that with dedication and hard work, everyone can make a difference. Even lawyers. - Jack Bullock ~ William Bernhardt

One can no more prevent the mind from returning to an idea than the sea from returning to a shore. In the case of the sailor, this is called the tide; in the case of the guilty, it is called remorse. God upheaves the soul as well as the ocean. ~ Victor Hugo

If I owe a person money, and cannot pay him, and he threatens to put me in prison, another person can take the debt upon himself, and pay it for me. But if I have committed a crime, every circumstance of the case is changed. Moral justice cannot take the innocent for the guilty even if the innocent would offer itself. To suppose justice to do this, is to destroy the principle of its existence, which is the thing itself. It is then no longer justice. It is indiscriminate revenge. ~ Thomas Paine

267. - A quickness in believing evil without having sufficiently examined it, is the effect of pride and laziness. We wish to find the guilty, and we do not wish to trouble ourselves in examining the crime. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Cassandra always hid when she read, though she never quite knew why. It was as if she couldn't shake the guilty suspicion that she was being lazy, that surrendering herself so completely to something so enjoyable must surely be wrong. But surrender she did. Let herself drop through the rabbit hole and into a tale of magic and mystery ... ~ Kate Morton

Punishment - The justice that the guilty deal out to those that are caught. ~ Elbert Hubbard

40% of homicides go unsolved. You know, it's not a very good record. And, also, 95% of convictions in America come from plea bargaining, which is often coerced. It's like we have the worst of both worlds. We don't convict the guilty enough, and we coerce the innocent too much. ~ Bill Maher

I watched relationships begin and end across those tables, children transferred between divorcees, the guilty relief of those parents who couldn't face cooking, and the secret pleasure of pensioners at a fried breakfast. All human life came through, and most of them shared a few words with me, trading jokes or comments over the mugs of steaming tea ~ Jojo Moyes

It's better that the innocent should live than that the guilty die ~ Brent Weeks

That night the housekeeper burned all the books there were in the stable yard and in all the house; and there must have been some that went up in smoke which should have been preserved in everlasting archives, if the one who did the scrutinizing had not been so indolent. Thus we see the truth of the old saying, to the effect that the innocent must sometimes pay for the sins of the guilty. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

The past is nothing to [the young], not even another country as it is to the old, or even a nightmare as it is to the guilty. ~ Cassandra Clare

The guilty is he who meditates a crime; the punishment is his who lays the plot. ~ Vittorio Alfieri

In Revenge, as in life, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. In the end the guilty always fall. ~ Emily Thorne

The innocent died along with the guilty. And if you did nothing, then only the innocent died. ~ Robert Jordan

I get paid for seeing that my clients have every break the law allows. I have knowingly defended a number of guilty men. But the guilty never escape unscathed. My fees are sufficient punishment for anyone. ~ F. Lee Bailey

I don't put bad people in the Void, Blayne. Only the guilty ones. ~ Caroline Cairn

WE ARE MEMBERS OF THE GUILTY REMNANT. WE HAVE TAKEN A VOW OF SILENCE. WE STAND BEFORE YOU AS LIVING REMINDERS OF GOD'S AWESOME POWER. HIS JUDGMENT IS UPON US. ~ Tom Perrotta

The truth, in the right hands, can be a very flexible tool. ~ Gabriel Boutros

Fornicating is like parenting: no matter how you do it, you have the guilty sense that somewhere other people are doing it more correctly. ~ Phillip Lopate

Whatever criticism we may have for Jonah, at least it can be said that Jonah was consistent. This legalistic, over-judgmental, young prophet will consistently proscribe the most severe form of punishment for the guilty
even when the guilty party is himself. The young Jonah hijacks written Torah to condemn everyone
even himself. ~ Michael Ben Zehabe

Charity has always been a expression of the guilty consciences of a ruling class. ~ Doris Lessing

To win the guilty kiss of a saint, I'd welcome the plague as a blessing. ~ Emil Cioran

I have terrible taste in things: music, movies, TV shows. I love all the guilty pleasures: Bravo, 'Real Housewives.' ~ Grace Helbig

On the perfect night there is nothing more transcendent or terrifying than boxing. It's the ultimate representation of the guilty pleasure. ~ Brian D'Ambrosio

If anyone comes to me complaining about others that "this person is like this", I will question that person first. 'Why did you come complaining to me?' You come complaining therefore you are the guilty one. If anyone comes complaining without being asked, then you should disregard him completely. ~ Dada Bhagwan

If you wish to discover the guilty person, first find out to whom the crime might be useful. ~ Alexandre Dumas

The city of Copenhagen is a climate crime scene tonight, with the guilty men and women fleeing to the airport in shame. World leaders had a once in a generation chance to change the world for good, to avert catastrophic climate change. In the end they produced a poor deal full of loopholes big enough to fly Air Force One through. ~ Kumi Naidoo

Better to live with the guilty secret than the open truth of their life together - that they were bound by the habit of illicit lust, mutual degradation. ~ Fay Weldon

As soon as a person indicates that they are willing to absorb guilt, a manipulator will stick to that person like glue and feed on their energy. This dynamic can be avoided simply by refusing to take on feelings of guilt. You do not have to justify yourself to anyone and you do not owe anybody anything. If you are to blame for something then you can accept the punishment, as long as you do not get stuck in the position of the guilty party afterwards. You do not owe those close to you anything either; after all, you care about them because you love them not because you have been coerced into doing so. This is a completely different matter. If you have a tendency to justify yourself, start letting go of it; once manipulative individuals realize they no longer have a way of hooking into your energy they will leave you alone. Guilt goes ~ Vadim Zeland

After years of loss and reflection, your old deluded decisions click together like the works of a watch packed tight within its case--many tiny, turning, interlocking wheels....the force of every decision transferring gear to gear, wheel to wheel, each one motivating a larger energy going in no direction but steep downward to darkness at an increasing pitch. And then one morning the world resembles Noah's flood, stretching unrecognizable to the horizon and you wonder how you go there. One thing for sure, it wasn't from a bad throw of dice or runes or an unfavorable turn of cards. Blame falls hard and can't be dodged by the guilty. ~ Charles Frazier

In the detective story, as in its mirror image, the Quest for the Grail, maps (the ritual of space) and timetables (the ritual of time) are desirable. Nature should reflect its human inhabitants, i.e., it should be the Great Good Place; for the more Eden-like it is, the greater the contradiction of murder. The country is preferable to the town, a well-to-do neighborhood (but not too well-to-do-or there will be a suspicion of ill-gotten gains) better than a slum. The corpse must shock not only because it is a corpse but also because, even for a corpse, it is shockingly out of place, as when a dog makes a mess on a drawing room carpet."

(The guilty vicarage: Notes on the detective story, by an addict, Harper's Magazine, May 1948) ~ W. H. Auden

It's all very well to have your eight suspects parading in their endless ring-around-the-rosebush outside the library. That's fine. But give some sensible reason why they were there. If you must shower the room with bus tickets, provide a reason for that too. In other words, construct your story. Your present problem is not to explain the villainy of the guilty: it's to explain the stupidity of the innocent. ~ John Dickson Carr

I hear much of people's calling out to punish the guilty, but very few are concerned to clear the innocent. ~ Daniel Defoe

No one ever said you've got to prepare to be hated. You've got to prepare for the yelling and the anger. You have got to prepare how to survive being the guilty one, even in innocence. ~ Tiffany McDaniel

As to adultery, let it be held disgraceful, in general, for any man or woman to be found in any way unfaithful when they are married, and called husband and wife. If during the time of bearing children anything of the sort occur, let the guilty person be punished with a loss of privileges in proportion to the offense. ~ Aristotle.

I am haunted by the demon of error - error in determining guilt and error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die. ~ George Ryan

The influence of sin touches the innocent as well as the guilty. ~ Billy Graham

You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty. ~ Jessica Mitford

In view of the vast size of the occupied areas in the East the forces available for establishing security in these areas will be sufficient only if all resistance is punished not by legal prosecution of the guilty but by the spreading of such terror by the occupying power as is appropriate to eradicate every inclination to resist among the population. The competent commanders must find the means of keeping order not by demanding more security forces but by applying suitable Draconian methods. ~ Alfred Jodl

A court case is usually a competition to prove the innocence of the innocent … or the guilty. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Any nation which claims that this [North Atlantic] treaty is directed against it should be reminded of the Biblical admonition that 'The guilty flee when no man pursueth. ~ Dean Acheson

In life, you have to keep certain parts of yourself in check because you want to be a decent human being. But one of the guilty pleasures of acting is that sometimes you get to let a little something out that you don't in life because it's not right. ~ Paul Dano

The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation. ~ Anonymous

I became obsessed with the one question-when was it, when were we, irrevocable? When did all the little tumblers fall into place and our fate was locked in and it became impossible for us to be anything other than what we became? When was the guilty moment? ~ Tiffany Reisz

Perhaps I was really the guilty one, because I did not know you well enough. I accepted that you did not reveal yourself completely to me, I admired your intelligence and your strange, bitter pride, I wanted to believe that you would forgive me as other people did because of this happy capacity I had to circulate in the world and to be welcomed, while you were only tolerated ~ Sandor Marai

The portrait artist must acknowledge human complexity with each brushstroke. The eyes, nose and mouth that compose a sitter's face, just like the suffering and joy that compose his soul, are similar to those of ten million others yet still singular to him. This acknowledgment is where art begins. It may also be where mercy begins. If criminals drew the faces of their victims before perpetrating their crimes and judges drew the faces of the guilty before sentencing them, then there would be no faces for executioners to draw. ~ Anthony Marra

Not all the blood of beasts On Jewish altars slain, Could give the guilty conscience peace, Or wash away the stain: But Christ, the heav'nly Lamb, Takes all our sins away, A sacrifice of nobler nam' And richer blood than they. ~ Isaac Watts

When the guilty verdict was handed down, I walked outside and saw a rainbow encircling the sun. Everyone in Monrovia could see it. It was a hot day, 80 or 90 degrees. I don't remember seeing any raindrops fall. I thought, this is a sign. ~ Leymah Gbowee