quotations about shame
Most of my life was spent marinating in shame. It felt like part of my genetic makeup. Shame held my head underwater and told me to resign to my fate, to stop fighting. Shame left me feeling my very personhood was flawed.
TARA HEDMAN
When Shame is Protective
Love taught him shame, and shame, with love at strife,
Soon taught the sweet civilities of life.
JOHN DRYDEN
Cymon and Iphigenia
Don't you think the things people are most ashamed of are things they can't help?
C. S. LEWIS
Till We Have Faces
You can find shame in every house, burning in an ashtray, hanging framed upon a wall, covering a bed. But nobody notices it any more.
SALMAN RUSHDIE
Shame
Once they know they've got a hold of your shame, they can shake it out and hold it up for the all world to see. And you become less than it. You become something disgusting.
KIRSTY EAGER
Raw Blue
Among the problems with shame was that it in fact did not make you shorter or quieter or less visible. You just felt like you were.
J. R. WARD
Lover Enshrined
Shame is an attachment to negative self-perception that has been fostered by the perceptions and opinions of others. Shame is a wasted sensibility.
DEVON ST. CLAIRE
"Shame and Negative Self Perception", Empire State News, August 31, 2017
Shame is like the weaver's thread; if it breaks in the net, it is wholly imperfect.
BULWER
attributed, Day's Collacon
Honor and shame from no condition rise;
Act well your part, there all the honor lies.
ALEXANDER POPE
An Essay on Man
You made me cry
When you said goodbye
Isn't that a shame
My tears fell like rain
Isn't that a shame
You're the one to blame
JOHN LENNON
"Ain't That a Shame"
Now there's a lifestyle
With painted lips
Now there's a lifestyle
Everybody wants it
But it don't exist
And I said shame...
EURYTHMICS
"Shame"
Suddenly, my need to disappear became stronger than my need to be safe. That's what shame does.
TARA HEDMAN
When Shame is Protective
It is safest to be moderately base--to be flexible in shame, and to be always ready for what is generous, good and just, when anything is to be gained by virtue.
SYDNEY SMITH
The Works of the Rev. Sydney Smith
Shame, depart, thou art an enemy to my salvation!
JOHN BUNYAN
The Pilgrim's Progress
Shame ... ever sticks close to the ribs of honor.
THOMAS MIDDLETON
The Mayor of Queenborough; Or Hengist, King of Kent
I want to drag knives over my skin, just to feel something other than shame, but I'm not even brave enough for that.
PAULA HAWKINS
The Girl on the Train
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.
KEN KESEY
Sometimes a Great Notion
Mine has been a life of much shame. I can't even guess what it must be to live the life of a human being.
OSAMU DAZAI
No Longer Human
Sin and shame ever go together; he that would be freed from the last must be sure to shun the company of the first.
ANNE BRADSTREET
Meditations Divine and Moral
Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.
BRENE BROWN
I Thought It Was Just Me