Max Frisch Quotes

An excuse is sometimes more ugly than guilt.

[P]erhaps you notice how the denial is so often the preface to the justification.

We did what our people do all the time, we told ourselves something we did was right and we found a way to justify it, even though we knew it was wrong.

Being guilty tends to engender feelings of guilt.

They always say they didn't. I never heard of one who said, 'You know, I deserve this.' Never happens.

Sin we have explain'd away; Unluckily, the sinners stay.

An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie, for an excuse is a lie guarded.

I think feeling responsible for stuff that goes wrong is an inherent part of being female.

I might as well have pulled the trigger myself.

Even before my parents died, I felt all the responsibility to my family. I don't know why. In any business, any relationship, if something goes wrong, I feel I am to blame. It's something inside me.

There is luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel no one else has a right to blame us.

I carry lots of guilt.

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us.

I'm guilty for a lot of things.

Man can and does rationalize his sins. He finds reasons for all his weakness, invents excuses that first calm and then deaden his conscience. He blames God, society, education, and environment for his wrong doing.

There's shames a man can never reason away, though he looks back and piles up reasons over them forty dozen deep. And maybe those are the shames a man never should reason away.

You may be sure that when a man begins to call himself a realist he is preparing to do something that he is secretly ashamed of doing.

Guilt's a terrible thing.

I believe in guilt. There's not enough guilt around these days for my taste.

If you cannot endure to be thought in the wrong, you will begin to do terrible things to make the wrong appear right.

The most effective way to silence our guilty conscience is to convince ourselves and others that those we have sinned against are indeed depraved creatures, deserving every punishment, even extermination. We cannot pity those we have wronged, nor can we be indifferent toward them. We must hate and persecute them or else leave the door open to self-contempt.

Yes, it's your fault I'm alive.

You have a conscience, and a conscience is a valuable attribute, but not if it begins to make you think you were to blame for what is far beyond the scope of your responsibility.

Man only blames himself in order that he may be praised.

I've always been a magnet for guilt.