Quotes About Shame

Notice how shame, consciously or unconsciously, pulls us away from risk, ratifies our negative sense of worth through self-sabotage, or compels us into frenetic efforts at overcompensation, grandiosity, or yearning for validation that never comes. How much each of us needs to remember theologian Paul Tillich's definition of grace as accepting the fact that we are accepted, despite the fact that we are unacceptable.

Shame ain't a spontaneous emotion; shame is an induced emotion.

What were they now but cerements shaken from the body of death—the fear he had walked in night and day, the incertitude that had ringed him round, the shame that had abased him within and without—cerements, the linens of the grave? His soul had arisen from the grave of boyhood, spurning her graveclothes.

Seus pecados pingavam de seus lábios, um a um, pingavam em gotas vergonhosas de sua alma supurando e gotejando como uma chaga, uma corrente sórdida de vício. Os últimos pecados gotejavam, indolentes, asquerosos.

One human being had seemed to love him and he had denied her life and happiness: he had sentenced her to ignominy, a death of shame. He knew that the prostrate creatures down by the wall were watching him and wished him gone. No one wanted him; he was outcast from life's feast.

Every drunkard has many moments of shame that live like carpet tacks in his memory

As with all megalomaniacs, he had no handles. He was the type of man the Spanish call sin dios, sin verguenza, without God or shame.

Many years ago I learned that we discover the best and worst in people when they're under duress. I think that principle has certainly borne out with my pitiful friend. I wish I had not been witness to it. I take his car keys and drive him to my home and keep him there until he's sober. He weeps in shame before he drives himself home.

Nova Scotia in 1755 fell into decline and became associated with ignorance and failure and poverty. The fisher-people of southern Louisiana became ashamed of who they were.

I messed my pants," he said.

I went to the bathroom in my pants. That's what you done, man.

Dr. Aldous was Bert's rector, and for a miserable moment Mildred felt ashamed that she could claim no rector as her own. As a child she had gone to the Methodist Sunday school, but then her mother had begun to shop around, and finally wound up with the astrologers who had named Veda and Ray. Astrologers, she reflected unhappily, didn't quite seem to fill the bill at this particular time.

I was ashamed of my mother, but see, love didn't come natural to me until I became a Christian.- Ruth McBride

Excuse me, sir, you got dog poop on your shoe.

It's done, Julio," he said. "She's dead. Now get the hell out of there. You killed Caroline Hopkins. Congratulations.

Her name was Erica Williams before she married Fish. I think she was from Honolulu but I don't know for sure. As to where she is now? I don't even know if she's in the United States. She was so ashamed of Randy. She couldn't hold her head up. After Bill died, she had a tag sale. Sold most of her things and then just took off." Cindy

I was living a complete lie. But unfortunately, guilt doesn't make you stop.

Does not the gratitude of the dog put to shame any man who is ungrateful to his benefactors?

I had a lot of failed relationships, a lot of unhappiness, a lot of shame and embarrassment, bad self-image stuff.

Shame is an unhappy emotion invented by pietists in order to exploit the human race.

'You, too, can be the President,' every American kid is told. But one unintended consequence of this belief, it is that, as a result of our being a meritocracy, if you have not succeeded, you are of lesser merit. It is shameful to be a failure in this country.

Girls are socialised in ways that are harmful to their sense of self - to reduce themselves, to cater to the egos of men, to think of their bodies as repositories of shame. As adult women, many struggle to overcome, to unlearn, much of that social conditioning.

No one leaves an old friend unless they are ashamed.

Until women themselves reject stigma and refuse to feel shame for the way others treat them, they have no hope of achieving full human stature.