Quotes About Shame

For who can be ashamed to lose to such beauty? It was enough to watch him win, to see the soles of his feet flashing as they kicked up sand, or the rise and fall of his shoulders as he pulled through the salt. It was enough.

Patroclus" It was the name my father had given me, hopefully but injudiciously, at my birth, and it tasted of bitterness on my tonge. "Honor of the father," it meant. I waited for him to make a joke out of it, some witty jape about my disgrace. He did not. perhaps, I thought, he is too stupid to.

Molly Bea, she of the hard white breasts lightly dusted with golden freckles, would never be so humiliated by life because she could never become as deeply involved in the meaty toughness of life. She would never be victimized by her own illusions because they were not essential to her. She could always find new ones when the old ones wore out. But Cathy was stuck with hers. The illusion of love, magically changed to a memory of shame.

I must fight with my weapons. Not his. Not selfishness and brutality and shame and resentment.

I am weak. But ashamed of your weakness. What good could my strength bring to the world?

Booker Sistrunk sat awkwardly with his hands behind him and continued the mouthing: "You oughtta be ashamed of yourself, treating a brother like this." "The white guy's gettin' the same treatment," Ozzie said. "You're violating my civil rights." "And you're violatin' mine with your mouth. Now shut up or I'll lock you under the jail. We got a little basement down there.

He was ashamed of his greed and embarrassed by his stupidity. It was sickening what money had done to him.

She had been forced to borrow beds, which was humiliating.

The emotional garbage I had carried all of those years - the prejudice and the denial, the shame and the guilt - was dissolved by understanding that the Other is not other at all.

I felt certain that if the world would stop indulging wars and famines and other perils, it would still be possible for human beings to embarrass each other to death. Our self-destruction might take a little longer that way, but I believe it would be no less complete.

A man named Hero washed the press cloths; Meany Hyde told Homer that the man had been a kind of hero, once. 'That's all I heard. He's been comin' here for years, but he was a hero. Just once,' Meany added, as if there might be more shame attached to the rarity of the man's heroism than there was glory to be sung for his moment in the sun.

I wanted my cousins to like Owen, because I liked him—he was my best friend—but, at the same time, I didn't want everything to be so enjoyable that I'd have to invite Owen to Sawyer Depot the next time I went. I was sure that would be disastrous. And I was nervous that my cousins would make fun of Owen, and I confess I was nervous that Owen would embarrass me—I am ashamed of feeling that, to this day.

We all go through a phase—it lasts a lifetime, for some of us—when we're embarrassed by our parents; we don't want them hanging around us because we're afraid they'll do or say something that will make us feel ashamed of them.

And feeling like a failed sexual predator, because of pregnant Mary…

rape, Garp thought, made men feel guilty by association.

Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter.

It was a reaction bred into her from childhood. That was an explanation, not an excuse. The reaction shamed her, and yet she seemed powerless to banish it or keep it from affecting her behavior.

Nothing draws us closer to one another than the degree to which we face our deepest shame openly in one another's company. Coleridge and Wordsworth dreaded such self-exposure; we adore it. What we want is to feel known, warts and all—the more warts, the better. It is the great illusion of our culture that what we confess to is who we are.

Guide the people by law, subdue them by punishment; they may shun crime, but will be void of shame. Guide them by example, subdue them by courtesy; they will learn shame, and come to be good.           CONFUCIUS

There's a blush for won't, and a blush for shan't, And a blush for having done it: There's a blush for thought and a blush for naught, And a blush for just begun it.

You didn't shame anybody into anything." "Oh yes I did. I'm good for you that way. You have a tendency to back away from things otherwise.

The child who desires education will be bettered by it; the child who dislikes it disgraced.

I'm highly emotional, so I'm highly aware of humiliation.

Self-compassion is key because when we're able to be gentle with ourselves in the midst of shame, we're more likely to reach out, connect, and experience empathy.