Emily Dickinson Quotes

None but the guilty know the withering pains of repentance.

Sharp and fell remorse, the offspring of my sin! Why do you, O God, lacerate my heart so late? Why, O boding cries, that scream so close to me,--why do I listen to you now, and never heard you before?

Let me tell you a few things about regret. There is no end to it. Do you regret the beginning which ended so badly, or just the ending itself?

Remorse is sorrow over being caught and the pain of consequences that follow. Repentance is not being concerned for ourselves but having a contrite heart.

I wondered about the half-life of regret.

Vice leaves repentance in the soul, like an ulcer in the flesh, which is always scratching and lacerating itself; for reason effaces all other griefs and sorrows, but it begets that of repentance.

It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.

It's a horrible thing to realize what you've done.

I think whenever you lose somebody close to you, there's always a part of you that wishes you could have done something differently.

Remorse is the pain of sin.

Words will not be able to ever express how sorry I am for this, and I have profound regret and sorrow for the multitude of mistakes and harm I have caused.

There are no words to express my sorrow and regret for the pain I have caused others by words and actions. To the people I have hurt, I am truly sorry.

I kept this to remind me of you trying to brush away the Villa Rossa from your teeth in the morning, swearing and eating aspirin and cursing harlots. Every time I see that glass I think of you trying to clean your conscience with a toothbrush.

The dead are visible only in the terrible lidless eye of memory.

With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame.

Remorse sleeps during a prosperous period but wakes up in adversity.

Memory is a wonderful thing if you don't have to deal with the past.

Memory haunts me from age to age, and passion leads me by the hand--evil have I done, and with sorrow have I made acquaintance from age to age, and from age to age evil shall I do, and sorrow shall I know till my redemption comes.

Being conscious of having done a wicked action leaves stings of remorse behind it, which, like an ulcer in the flesh, makes the mind smart with perpetual wounds; for reason, which chases away all other pains, creates repentance, shames the soul with confusion, and punishes it with torment.

Remorse ... is one of the many afflictions for which time finds a cure.

I had a little sorrow, Born of a little sin.

Ah, what a warning for a thoughtless man, Could field or grove, could any spot of earth, Show to his eye an image of the pangs Which it hath witnessed,-render back an echo Of the sad steps by which it hath been trod!

Now conscience wakes despair That slumber'd,-wakes the bitter memory Of what he was, what is, and what must be Worse.

Remorse is the poison of life.

Come t'e' picciol fallo amaro morso! Dante. What grievous pain a little fault doth give thee!