quotations about shame
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
I count him lost, who is lost to shame.
PLAUTUS
Bacchides
Shame may restrain what law does not prohibit.
SENECA
attributed, Day's Collacon
Shame is a great concealer of tears.
ALTAHIYA
attributed, Day's Collacon
Shame is the most powerful master emotion. It's the fear that we aren't good enough.
DEBRA CAMPBELL
"Peeling the Onion of Abuse and Shame", Huffington Post, September 14, 2017
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 wields its power when you tamp it down and ignore its existence. Expose it to the light, and it becomes a vampire at high noon.
HOWARD ENGLANDER
"It's a shame we have so much trouble talking about shame", Chicago Now, August 29, 2017
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
He who hath shame seldom sins.
TALMUD
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
Shame is always easier to handle if you have someone to share it with.
CRAIG THOMPSON
Blankets
Shame should be reserved for the things we choose to do, not the circumstances that life puts on us.
ANN PATCHETT
Truth and Beauty
While shame is something a person imposes upon themselves, shaming is a thing that society imposes on people and on women in far greater numbers than men.
GABRIELLE ZEVIN
interview, Seattle Pi, August 26, 2017
It is the guilt, not the scaffold, which constitutes the shame.
PIERRE CORNEILLE
attributed, Day's Collacon
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"
Only man can blush.
No other creature knows of shame.
Why have we wandered so far away
From simple honesty?
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"The Song of the Soul"
Suddenly, my need to disappear became stronger than my need to be safe. That's what shame does.
TARA HEDMAN
When Shame is Protective
The most paradoxical aspect of neurotic shame is that it is the core motivator of the superachieved and the underachieved, the star and the scapegoat, the righteous and the wretched, the powerful and the pathetic.
JOHN BRADSHAW
Healing the Shame that Binds You
Where there is shame there is virtue.
JOHANN RIST
attributed, Day's Collacon
Worthlessness, depravity, torment and fear. The definition is up to you. No matter where you stand, shame breeds nothing but negativity, which can cause you problems throughout your journey.
CORINE GATTI
"7 Ways to Beat Shame", Belief Net, April 14, 2017