logo

Quotes About Shame

It was revolting that I had been like that. Shameful. Disgraceful, in the old-time sense of the word. And what was even worse? That I could now see myself so wretchedly clearly. I had changed, I recognized bitterly.I hated that I could see myself as I was. What a terrible thing to know. I would never be able to not know it, to forget it.I didn't see how I could ever forgive River for that.
~ Cate Tiernan
But Turner was not without his peccadilloes: a magistrate, he considered it his civic duty to witness every prostitute he sentenced being flogged at Bridewell, moving one commentator to observe: 'Oh, Bridewell! What a shame thy walls reproaches. Poor Molls are whipp'd, while rich ones ride in coaches!
~ Catharine Arnold
Have you no shame?" His answer was a slow grin.
~ Catherine Anderson
I'm not your woman yet. Have you no shame? It's broad daylight. People might see." "They will see you are my woman." "They'll see my drawers, that's what they'll see!" He abandoned his hold on her skirt to run his palm up her back. "No bones. That is good." Loretta's face flamed when she realized he was referring to the whale bones of a corset. A decent man didn't mention such things.
~ Catherine Anderson
If I haven't found out who I am until the end of my life…because I am afraid/ashamed of it, then I would have just pretended to live. Initmacy really means to find something out about yourself that is deep inside.
~ Catherine Breillat
eaten in debt, we have been waited on in debt. Yes, many a time I knew those servants hadn't been paid. That's why they left, they weren't dismissed. And all the time I partook of the whole; yet I must admit, with shame at times. But' – he now looked along the length of the old building – 'I am now earning my living, and it has got to keep me and pay a man. And I can sleep easy at nights.
~ Catherine Cookson
One thing I know is that we all do things we're ashamed of. Shame erupts when you violate some taboo. Anyone who says they haven't suffered shame either hasn't lived or else is lying.
~ Catherine Gildiner
Intimacy is when you're familiar with your emotions, then share your feelings, your fears, your shame, your hopes and joys with another person.
~ Catherine Gildiner
In the long run, shame always outlives physical pain. "Anyone who thinks of a shameful memory will experience it at least as vividly as when they had the original experience,
~ Catherine Gildiner
Freud says shame makes you feel you won't be loved. Shame is much more pernicious than guilt. While guilt is a painful feeling about your actions, shame is much more psychologically destructive because it's a bad feeling about yourself as a person.
~ Catherine Gildiner
Shame is a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by behaviour that is somehow taboo in our society. Freud says shame makes you feel you won't be loved. Shame is much more pernicious than guilt. While guilt is a painful feeling about your actions, shame is much more psychologically destructive because it's a bad feeling about yourself as a person.
~ Catherine Gildiner
her painful herpes. "I would say that shame could certainly cause stress," I responded. "Shame is a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by behaviour that is somehow taboo in our society. Freud says shame makes you feel you won't be loved. Shame is much more pernicious than guilt. While guilt is a painful feeling about your actions, shame is much more psychologically destructive because it's a bad feeling about yourself as a person.
~ Catherine Gildiner
So I know. It's an illness, just like it says in the phrase. It's not a moral failing. It's funny how people have empathy for a physical illness. They see it as bad luck, and they never question whether you can help it. But mental illness we still treat with shame.
~ Catherine Ryan Hyde
But it made him feel ashamed to say it, because it wasn't entirely true. He felt it shouldn't have mattered. But it did. He had wanted everyone to see his talented hen. He had wanted to fill to bursting with pride while everyone watched.
~ Catherine Ryan Hyde
Oh, quit that. Blushing is for virgins and Christians.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
she had saved herself for this, stored her love within her so that this book, which could not possibly have been written for any purpose but to crawl inside her and dwell there like a holy thing, so that this book would not be ashamed of her profligacy.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
The tyrannosaurus looked a little shamefaced - but only a little, for dinosaurs would rather drown in tar than admit they're wrong. That unfortunate attitude played a key role in their extinction.
~ Catherynne M. Valente
In order to keep her cheerful, us-fat-girls-LOVE-chocolate thing going, Ginger had to eat half the box, even though it made her feel ashamed. Comfort eating always did. That was why she could never lose weight: when her heart was heavy, she numbed it with chocolate or biscuits or ice cream. Hating herself for being fat meant she could keep all other feelings at bay. And for a while, food filled all the dark, sad holes inside her.
~ Cathy Kelly
But where does the silence that neglects her end, and where does the silence that respects her begin? The problem with silence is that it can't speak up and say why it's silent. And so silence collects, becomes amplified, takes on a life outside our intentions, in that silence can get misread as indifference, or avoidance, or even shame, and eventually this silence passes over into forgetting.
~ Cathy Park Hong
One characteristic of racism is that children are treated like adults and adults are treated like children. Watching a parent being debased like a child is the deepest shame. I cannot count the number of times I have seen my parents condescended to or mocked by white adults.
~ Cathy Park Hong
My shame is not cultural but political. It is being painfully aware of the power dynamic that pulls at the levers of social interactions and the cringing indignity of where I am in that order either as the afflicted—*or* as the afflicter.
~ Cathy Park Hong
And white tears are why 63 percent of white men and 53 percent of white women elected a malignant man-child as their leader. For to be aware of history, they would be forced to be held accountable, and rather than face that shame, they'd rather, by any means necessary, maintain their innocence.
~ Cathy Park Hong
It may be odd that I also felt a "shock of recognition" when I first saw Pryor. But watching Pryor reminded me of an emotional condition that is specific to Koreans: han, a combination of bitterness, wistfulness, shame, melancholy, and vengefulness, accumulated from years of brutal colonialism, war, and U.S.-supported dictatorships that have never been politically redressed. Han is so ongoing that it can even be passed down: to be Korean is to feel han.
~ Cathy Park Hong
I don't have to be affected by race; I only choose to think about it. I could live only for myself, for my immediate family, following the expectations of my parents, whose survivor instincts align with this country's neoliberal ethos, which is to get ahead at the expense of anyone else while burying the shame that binds us.
~ Cathy Park Hong