Quotes About Shame

No revolution is made out of shame. I reply: Shame is already revolution of a kind

I can see you smile and say: what good will that do? Revolutions are not made by shame. And my answer is that shame is a revolution in itself; it really is the victory of the French Revolution over that German patriotism which defeated it in 1813. Shame is a kind of anger turned in on itself. And if a whole nation were to feel ashamed it would be like a lion recoiling in order to spring.

The real pressure must be made more oppressive by making men conscious of the pressure, and the disgrace more disgraceful by publishing it.

a man be wise it is no shame for him to live and learn.' Sophocles.

Could you be an old maid if you had worn the scarlet letter?

False shame accompanies a man that is poor, shame that either harms a man greatly or profits him; shame is with poverty, but confidence with wealth.

Crimes of which a people is ashamed constitute its real history. The same is true of man.

Nothing more unqualified the man to act with prudence than a misfortune that is attended with shame and guilt.

Why would a man not argue his own shameful culpability, why would he not crave responsibility for disaster, when the alternative was to feel himself to be nothing more than a speck of human dust?

Cheerless poverty has no harder trial than this, that it makes men the subject of ridicule. [Lat., Nil habet infelix paupertas durius in se Quam quod ridiculos homines facit.]

A man whose life has been dishonourable is not entitled to escape disgrace in death.

To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.

The instructed man is ashamed to pronounce in an Orphic manner what everybody knows, and because he is silent people think he is making fun of them.

Ah! Sir, a boy's being flogged is not so severe as a man's having the hiss of the world against him.

Tis a blushing shame-faced spirit that mutinies in a man's bosom. It fills a man full of obstacles. It made me once restore a purse of gold that (by chance) I found. It beggars any man that keeps it.

Oh, shame to men! devil with devil damn'd Firm concord holds, men only disagree Of creatures rational.

When a woman weeps, it is a man's shame.

The man that blushes is not quite a brute.

It's a burden to us even to be human beings-men with our own real body and blood; we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible generalized man.

The quickest way to create a boy or man who lacks compassion is to judge and shame his feelings.

Men walk this tightrope where any sign of weakness illicits shame, and so they're afraid to make themselves vulnerable for fear of looking weak.

Whenever I have talked to anyone at too great length, I am like a man who has drunk too much, and ashamed, doesn't know where to put himself.

When men of infamy to grandeur soar, They light a torch to show their shame the more.

Vanity, shame, and above all disposition, often make men brave and women chaste.