Richard Wright Quotes

How awful is that hour when con, science stings.

Listen to me." He grabbed my arms, holding me there. " I couldn't find you. And I will never forgive myself for that. Ever.

There are moments in life that you wish with all your heart you could take back. Like, just erase from existence. Like, if you could, you'd erase yourself right out of existence too, just to make that moment not exist.

By retaliating our sufferings on the heads of those we love, we get rid of a present uneasiness and incur lasting remorse. With the accomplishment of our revenge our fondness returns; so that we feel the injury we have done them, even more than they do.

And no, it wasn't shame I now felt, or guilt, but something rarer in my life and stronger than both: remorse. A feeling which is more complicated, curdled, and primeval. Whose chief characteristic is that nothing can be done about it: too much time has passed, too much damage has been done, for amends to be made.

I knew I had done something awful. I had killed love, before I even knew the enormity of what love meant.

Fool that I am," said he,"that I did not tear out my heart the day I resolved to revenge myself".

I could not stop something I knew was wrong and terrible. I had an awful sense of powerlessness.

Losse embraceth shame.

His eyes were dimmed with tears and, looking humbly up to heaven, he wept for the innocence he had lost.

I'm never going to dance again. Guilty feet have got no rhythm.

Sadness at being caught, at the incontrovertibe knowledge that she will never forgive you.

I suppose I’m the one responsible for destroying myself.

Guilt starts as a feeling of failure.

Delia picked at the raw sores of her conscience...Drunk or sober, Delia lived in the small town in her heart, ignoring the world in which all her love had turned to grief.

I shed more tears than God could ever have required.

Do you absolutely despise me, Walter?" "No." He hesitated and his voice was strange. "I despise myself.

It must be the ultimate punishment, don't you think, to finally gain wisdom, only to realize that the consequences of your actions are irrevocable?

The most painful thing to experience is not defeat but regret

For a moment, my heart aches for him. I should never have asked him to join me here; I should never have asked him to cross.

But [your crime] will be there, one hundred times denied, always there, dragging itself behind you. Then you will finally know that you have committed your life with one throw of the die, once and for all, and there is nothing you can do but tug our crime along until your death. Such is the law, just and unjust, of repentance. Then we will see what will become of your young pride.

It seems to me, sorry seems to be the hardest word.

But I think that sometimes, when one's behaved like a rather second-rate person, the way I did at breakfast, then in a kind of self-destructive shock one goes and does something really second-rate. Almost as if to prove it.

Desperate remorse swallows the present in a quenchless rage.

Looking back, it was the thing in his life that shamed him the most: the times he was purposefully, calculatingly mean to Alice. It was those moments, and there had been many of them, that indicated to him that he was not a good person. He got mad at her for many things, but it was always really for the same thing: that she possessed his love and he couldn't seem to get it back. She didn't deserve it, which was to say she deserved better