blame vs pay the penalty

blame

verb
  • To assert the cause of some bad event. 

  • To censure (someone or something); to criticize. 

  • To assert or consider that someone is the cause of something negative; to place blame, to attribute responsibility (for something negative or for doing something negative). 

noun
  • Culpability for something negative or undesirable. 

  • A source control feature that can show which user was responsible for a particular portion of the source code. 

  • Censure. 

  • Responsibility for something meriting censure. 

pay the penalty

verb
  • To incur negative consequences of one's deeds; to suffer as a result of some choice. 

How often have the words blame and pay the penalty occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )