Hannah Arendt Quotes

Those are not the tears of repentance!... Self-loathing is not sorrow. Yet it is good, for it marks a step in the way home, and in the father's arms the prodigal forgets the self he abominates.

Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.

True penitence condemns to silence. What a man is ready to recall he would be willing to repeat.

Sadly, we do a much better job of making people feel guilty than we do of delivering them from the guilt we create. We need to confess this and change our ways.

I just hope everybody forgives me for whatever I did wrong. And hope they remember some of what I did right.

I've done a lot of bad things. Use your imagination.

I don't want to forgive myself. That's why I hate psychoanalysis I think if you're guilty of something you should live with it. Get rid of it - how can you get rid of a real guilt? I think people should live with it, face up to it.

I did a lot of things I regret.

I don't regret any of my transgressions, because I believe I paid for them a million times over.

Forgive me now - tomorrow I may no longer feel guilty.

We cannot go back in time and change the past but we can repent.

Be ashamed when you sin, not when you repent.

One things there's no getting by, I've been a wicked girl, Says I... But, if I can't be sorry I might as well be glad !

Your own regrets may not be as ugly as you think they are.

One can repent even of having repented.

Now here's a good one: you're lying on your deathbed. You have one hour to live. Who is it, exactly, you have needed all these years to forgive?

Repentant tears wash out the stain of guilt.

Great is the difference betwixt a man's being frightened at, and humbled for his sins.

My children forgave me at a time when I could barely forgive myself.

I've done a lot of things in my life that I'm not proud of.

I am making amends and seeking forgiveness. My only hope is that some good can come out of my situation.

I think everybody wants to redeem themselves after they've done something that might be considered negative. I don't think anyone wants to go to the grave negative.

I think we all suffer from guilt at some point in our lives, but for the most part, I never really regret, and I try to always remain positive.

I did a lot of things that I regretted and I certainly paid for my mistakes. You have to go and ask for forgiveness and it wasn't until I really started doing good and doing right, by other people as well as myself, that I really started to feel that guilt go away. So I don't have a problem going to sleep at night.

I really believe guilt finds its way out of a person.