proverbs on Guilt

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind; The thief doth fear each bush an officer.

Locked into captivity by an airplane seat, a kindly disposition of keeping a friend company, or a telephone connection, we become ex officio confessors to those with troubled consciences and traces, o...

A few years ago, HBO released a gritty (surprise!) crime drama called True Detective . The show starred Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as the two detectives responsible for catching a serial...

Hobart Mowrer was Research Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois. Mowrer critiqued Freudian psychology and its assertion that guilt was merely a pathology to be dispensed with. In this...

In a famous Earth Day 1971 Pogo comic strip by Walt Kelly, the titular Pogo and his companion Porkypine are enjoying nature when they come upon a clearing filled with trash. Pogo says the iconic line,...

Horace Gray was a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. During one of his cases, a criminal was about to be released, not because he was innocent, but because of a technicality. As Gray prepared to relea...

A shoplifter wrote to a department store, saying, “I’ve just become a Christian, and I can’t sleep at night because I feel guilty. So here’s $100 that I owe you.” He signed his name then added a littl...

There was a Girl Scout who had sold thousands of boxes of Girl Scout cookies and began to get publicity for all those boxes sold. Someone asked her, “How were you able to be so successful selling so m...