William Wilberforce Quotes

Judge me if you want to. And as a matter of fact, it won't even count, 'cause the only person who can judge is God.

This is his first punishment, that by the verdict of his own heart no guilty man is acquitted.

Glory, built on selfish principles, is shame and guilt.

I come from a highly moral family. I was very much taught what was right and wrong, and in my perception of things, I did something that was very wrong. To know that, and to then be so publicly exposed, was very hard.

In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so.

Every person who is tempted to go astray does not deserve punishment

Crimes are not to be measured by the issue of events, but from the bad intentions of men.

No punishment is so terrible as prosperous guilt.

People who have lust in their heart as just as guilty as those who commit adultery.

Only criminals and adulterers should have to hide who they are.

Criminals together. We're in hell, my little friend, and there's never any mistake there. People are not damned for nothing.

To say that we have a clear conscience is to utter a solecism; had we never sinned we should have had no conscience. Were defeat unknown, neither would victory be celebrated by songs of triumph.

Those who grant sympathy to guilt, grant none to innocence.

The moral man is as guilty as the rest. His morality cannot save him.

Only God can judge me.

It is so often on the name of a misdeed that a life goes to pieces, not the nameless and personal action itself, which was perhaps a perfectly definite necessity of that life and would have been absorbed by it without effort.

It felt wrong to be so proud of something that I had absolutely nothing to do with, but I couldn't help myself.

For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead Kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think.

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.

If, while I hear the wild shriek of the slave mother robbed of her little ones, I do not open my mouth, am I not guilty?

Truth to tell, we are all criminals if we remain silent.

Thank God, men that art greatly guilty are never wise.

Many without punishment, none without sin.

Embarrassment isn't a just cause of action.

The Refinement of Shame. People are not ashamed to think something foul, but they are ashamed when they think these foul thoughts are attributed to them.