I could feel guilt about several things today, including:
- taking this photo, yesterday morning,
- eating all of this, last night:
- taking only three other photos, yesterday:
- not explaining any of those photos,
- writing only one other post with the word “guilt” in the title during almost one thousand and two hundred days of consecutive blogging, and
- stealing quotes about guilt from other people:
“Grief is not as heavy as guilt, but it takes more away from you.”
― Veronica Roth, Insurgent“Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.”
― Voltaire“I’ve got a bad case of the 3:00 am guilts – you know, when you lie in bed awake and replay all those things you didn’t do right? Because, as we all know, nothing solves insomnia like a nice warm glass of regret, depression and self-loathing.”
― D.D. Barant, Dying Bites“Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World“Calvin : There’s no problem so awful, that you can’t add some guilt to it and make it even worse.”
― Bill Watterson, The Complete Calvin and Hobbes“He showed the words “chocolate cake” to a group of Americans and recorded their word associations. “Guilt” was the top response. If that strikes you as unexceptional, consider the response of French eaters to the same prompt: “celebration.”
― Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto
I don’t want to feel guilt about not including the song “Guilt” by Marianne Faithfull.
What are your thoughts about guilt?
If you don’t leave a comment, would you feel guilt about that?
I feel no guilt, as I press the “Publish” button for this post.
The Year(s) of Living Non-Judgmentally 
So glad you were able to let that burden go as you wrote this post Ann!
I saw this popcorn the other day – how would you rate it? (without any guilt)
Without guilt, Val, I say that it wasn’t fabulous but very easy to eat. ❤
Good to know .. I’ll keep eating chips instead!
No guilt about that, Val!
Chocolate cake, triple layer with ganache or buttercream, for Everyone!!
Yay!!!!! ❤
I am sitting in a MacDonalds because I don’t have wifi at home anymore discussing with an engineer the problem with our balance of payments relative to China. And we both decided to feel guilty because every time we buy an overseas product instead of a local product we are contributing to the problem. That’s what I feel guilty about.
That’s interesting — deciding to feel guilty. I wonder if it’s possible to decide to feel unguilty. No guilt about this comment.
The fact that you chose, among others, an Aldous Huxley quote–and you didn’t steal them because you attributed them to them to their original authors–intrigues me. For one thing it’s a sentiment Huxley agreed with that he placed in a book that’s in many other parts critical of our tendencies toward self-delusion and harm.
For another thing he would later express guilt that Brave New World only offered two options: a dysfunctional civilization or a dysfunctional savagery, and he would offer a third option, a world that brings out the best in us, in his final novel Island. The fictional island of Pala is populated with good and kind people, and also mynah birds who cry out “Attention! Attention!” and “Here and now, boys, here and now,” to remind people to be conscious of the present.
Now I’ll try not to feel guilty about leaving such a long comment.
Attention! Attention! I love this comment.
Marianne Faithfull’s lyrics are paradoxical. She doesn’t seem to have done anything worth feeling guilty about, despote being capable of it. If she could get away with murder, she’d commit it. Is she feeling guikt because of what she is capable of? Is that it? Or does she feel guilt for not ending inequities? For not stealing from the rich and giving to the poor?
I am guilty. Sometimes I feel very bad about that. Sometimes I eat chocolate cake, but I never feel guilty about that.
I have no guilt about not being able to answer for Marianne Faithfull and I have no guilt about wishing you lots of delicious chocolate cake.
Love the quotes – seems to me that guilt and anxiety about the past and tge future are not dissimilar? Guilt can also serve a purpose if it is constructively attended to as one of your quotes about not wallowing in the muck, states. I hadn’t thiught about guilt asconnected toworry and anxiety before, that is helpful! I do recognize its connection to grief and totheroad not taken. Hope you have a bright day. Love you as always.
Love you and how you always brighten my day, Carol.
Loved the quotes! Thanks.
I have no guilt about accepting compliments from you, Emilie.
Great quotes. No I don’t feel guilty about anything. I got over that a long time ago. I regret certain things in my life, but again, they’ve led me to where I am now.
I have no guilt about loving this great comment.
Triple fudge chocolate cake, with cherry pie filling in the middle. Made it today…no guilt involved. Only celebration ! ☺
I am now celebrating you, Van, without guilt!
Yay, Calvin and Hobbs!! No guilt there.
No guilt here, either. Yay, Carol!!
I confess, I’m riddled with guilt. I wish it would teach a life lesson or something, but it doesn’t. No matter how much I try to shake it off it’s still there.
I hope you can shake off some guilt, Bradley, that stays shaken off. Be gone, Bradley’s guilt!
I’m feeling less guilty because I finally got to read one of your posts on the actual day it was sent but horrendously gulty that I have so many others backed up to still read…looking forward to tomorrow!!! 1200!!! Jan
Janet S. Woodruff RN, BSN Healthcare Associates BIDMC ________________________________________
Looking forward to seeing you, without guilt!
Definitely, I do not like guilt. It indicates your wrong doing.
Who likes guilt? Nobody!
Gefilte is just guilt, sneezed.
Your puns are nothing to sneeze at.
I believe Marianne was a Catholic convent girl. I attended a Jesuit grammar school with my friend Tom McGuinness. At one of his Blues Band concerts, whilst recounting those days on stage, Tom looked up at the box where Jessica and I were seated, and said: ‘Where else could you get an A level in guilt?’.
Thanks for this A level comment, Derrick.
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