Self-Condemnation Quotes

Remorse: beholding heaven and feeling hell.

The fox condemns the trap, not himself.

I live in a puddle of guilt, an ocean of guilt that you want your own time.

I didn't have anything to apologize for.

But I do nothing upon myself, and yet I am my own executioner.

Personally of course I regret everything. Not a word, not a deed, not a thought, not a need, not a grief, not a joy, not a girl, not a boy, not a doubt, not a trust, not a scorn, not a lust, not a hope, not a fear, not a smile, not a tear, not a name, not a face, no time, no place...that I do not regret, exceedingly. An ordure, from beginning to end.

Guilt only dreads Liberty of Speech, which drags it out of its lurking Holes, and exposes its Deformity and Horror to Day-light.

I was tormented with guilt for years and years. In fact, it was so bad that if I didn't feel wrong, I didn't feel right!

I hate the human race. Of course, therefore, I hate myself the most, because I am the least of the human race.

Shall I, that have destroyed my Preservers, return home?

Where does guilt and punishment lie, and are we not more expressive over remorse or guilt when other people see the badness in us?

Behold, I am become a reproach to thy holy name, by serving any ambition and the sins of others; which though I did by the persuasion of other men, yet my own conscience did cheek and upbraid me in it.

Nothing is more wretched than the mind of a man conscious of guilt.

I'm a completely worthless woman and no man should risk his life for me.

I felt that I ostracized myself by my behavior, by the past, by living with all the regrets of my mistakes, that I sort of wore a hair shirt and beat myself up most of the day thinking and regretting why did I make such a mistake? Why have I made so many mistakes?

Guilt is a weird thing to me. I don't have a lot of it.

To forgive oneself? No, that doesn't work: we have to be forgiven. But we can only believe this is possible if we ourselves can forgive.

What condemnation could possibly be more harsh than one’s own, when self-pretense is no longer possible?

Nothing could be more absurd than moral lessons at such a moment! Oh, self-satisfied people: with what proud self-satisfaction such babblers are ready to utter their pronouncements! If they only knew to what degree I myself understand all the loathsomeness of my present condition, they wouldn't have the heart to teach me.

Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel-dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.

I never dreamed of any enormity greater than I have committed. I never knew, and never shall know, a worse man than myself.

I've only myself to blame for it, my impotence most of all and my weakness. If I do any good work now it will be only by chance.

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

For if it is not lawful to take the law into our own hands and slay even a guilty person, whose death no public sentence has warranted. Then certainly he who kills himself is a homicide, and so much the guiltier of his own death as he was more innocent of that offence for which he doomed himself to die.

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