Guilt (n.) is a 'qualitative', not a merely 'quantitative', concept. What is relevant is not that my failings are less than my neighbors, or less than they've been in the past. Rather, what is relevant is that I have failed to live as I should in my relationship to God.
Guilt (n.) is eternal, it is living life like a murderer who fled the scene of his act'and his crime'on the express train: alas, just beneath the coach in which he sat ran the telegraph wires carrying his description and orders for his arrest at the first station.
Guilt (n.) laid on woman — that sin came into the world through her — is secretly gallant: it supposes her capable of infinitely more guilt than man; yet the case against her is always quashed, and existence pays the costs.
Guilt (n.) examined runs: Am I guilty? Yes. How? By beginning what I could not carry to completion. What is thy guilt? That I did not understand it earlier. Thy responsibility? Every possible consequence in her life.
Guilt (n.) joined to sympathy — the anguish of sympathy while being the guilty one — twists the soul like a joint wrenched out of its natural position.
Guilt (n.) is what the religious teaches us to fear, instead of fate — "only this is danger" — and to dwell on one's own guilt is not egoism, for precisely thereby a man is in a God-relationship.
Guilt (n.) is so vast that a man cannot even compute his debt: time softens his judgment of the past until he cannot state what he owes.
Guilt (n.) is most terrible when the world rewards it: to incarnate guilt day after day and never notice it, because everything around confirms it is nothing, almost meritorious.
Guilt (n.) is the only way to choose oneself absolutely: only as guilty do I choose myself whole — even the father's iniquity passed to the son, he repents as his own.
Guilt (n.) grows with freedom — the freer, the guiltier — and this is one of the secrets of blessedness.
Guilt (n.) is truly something to cry about: the aesthete's tears for himself are barren, and his whimpering is cured as children's are — 'I'll give you something to cry about.'
Guilt (n.) that enters through dread makes a man both innocent and guilty: an alien power seized him which he did not love but dreaded — yet he sank in the dread he loved even while he feared it.
Guilt (n.) can seem to come merely from anxiety about oneself — something that could never have happened to Adam.
Guilt (n.) can be brought on by the anxiety not of becoming guilty but of being regarded as guilty.
Guilt (n.) by fate is the greatest contradiction — paganism would have perished on it, and out of it Christianity breaks forth.
Guilt (n.) is nothing as long as it is the object of anxiety; the moment guilt is posited, anxiety is gone and repentance is there.
Guilt (n.) fixes the spirit's eye the way a serpent's gaze does: anxiety stares at it almost with longing, and fears it.
Guilt (n.) is where the finite spirit must begin if it would see God — and the greater the genius, the more profoundly he discovers it.
Guilt (n.) learned from the police court is never understood, for if a man is guilty he is infinitely guilty; without a verdict he becomes a model of virtue, a little better than most but not quite as good as the parson — fit to retire to a collection of models.
Guilt (n.) should not be increased so that God may become greater, but the knowledge of guilt may; as the sleepless magistrate uses spies who are themselves guilty, everyone the Holy One employs is a debtor.