quotations about shame
Shame is a part of original sin.
JOHN HUMPHREY NOYES
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
Once shame touches your being at any point, even the most distant nerve is implicated, whether you know it or not; any fleeting encounter or random thought will rake up the anguish and add to it.
STEFAN ZWEIG
The Post Office Girl
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
It is the guilt, not the scaffold, which constitutes the shame.
PIERRE CORNEILLE
attributed, Day's Collacon
If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can't survive.
BRENE BROWN
Daring Greatly
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
Honor and shame from no condition rise;
Act well your part, there all the honor lies.
ALEXANDER POPE
An Essay on Man
Do but increase a man's pride, and his fear of shame will ever be proportioned to it; for the greater value a man sets upon himself, the more pains he will take, and the greater hardships he will undergo to avoid shame.
BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE
The Fable of the Bees
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"
Where there is shame there is virtue.
JOHANN RIST
attributed, Day's Collacon
To be shame-bound means that whenever you feel any feeling, need or drive, you immediately feel ashamed. The dynamic core of your human life is grounded in your feelings, needs and drives. When these are bound by shame, you are shamed to the core.
JOHN BRADSHAW
Healing the Shame that Binds You
The secret thoughts of a man run over all things, holy, profane, clean, obscene, grave, and light, without shame or blame.
THOMAS HOBBES
Leviathan
Suddenly, my need to disappear became stronger than my need to be safe. That's what shame does.
TARA HEDMAN
When Shame is Protective
Shame, depart, thou art an enemy to my salvation!
JOHN BUNYAN
The Pilgrim's Progress
Shame regulates differences, creates secrets, builds up a charge. The counterforce and antithesis of shame is desire, which with all its being seeks to eliminate differences, to do away with secrets, release tensions.
KARL OVE KNAUSGAARD
Autumn
Shame need not crouch
In such an earth as ours
Stand--stand erect;
The universe is yours.
EMILY DICKINSON
"Not with a Club, the Heart is broken"
Shame may restrain what law does not prohibit.
SENECA
attributed, Day's Collacon
Shame is the turnkey that keeps our evil desires in jail.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Shame is the lie someone told you about yourself.
ANAIS NIN
attributed, Why Men Fall Out of Love