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Quotes About Shame

A broken heart is such a shabby thing, like poverty and failure and the incurable diseases which are also deforming. I hate it and am ashamed of it, and I must somehow repair this heart and put it back into its normal condition, as a tough somewhat scarred but operating organ.
~ Martha Gellhorn
Shame brings you down. But true humility will only lift you higher.
~ Martha Williamson
Our best destiny, as planetary cohabitants, is the development of what has been called "species consciousness" something over and above nationalisms, blocs, religions, ethnicities. During this week of incredulous misery, I have been trying to apply such a consciousness, and such a sensibility. Thinking of the victims, the perpetrators, and the near future, I felt species grief, then species shame, then species fear.
~ Martin Amis
[W]e are the heirs of a past of rope, fire, and murder. I for one am not ashamed of this past. My shame is for those who became so inhuman that they could inflict this torture upon us.
~ Unknown
O most compassionate Lord Jesus, I implore Thee for the sake of Thy bitter Passion and death, and through the Last Judgment at which Thou wilt be the Judge of the whole world, grant me grace to live in such a manner that at the resurrection I may arise with joy and not with shame." Amen.
~ Unknown
into the ground in front of everyone on a visit earlier
~ Martina Cole
Jesus said, "Shame on the flesh that depends on the soul. 2) Shame on the soul that depends on the flesh.
~ Unknown
I hope somebody cares because I sure don't. I sure don't. Not anymore. I'm ashamed to go around my family. I'm too embarrassed to confide in my friends. Outside of work I don't have a life.
~ Unknown
Today the manliest man would be ashamed to look into the eyes of the woman by his side and tell her that he is the master because he could knock her down with perfect ease, and break her bones with much greater facility than she could his. And yet, out of man's brute nature, out of that most ignoble in himself, has come his loudest assumption of superiority, his longest and lowest tyranny.
~ Unknown
What is the main thing in love? to know and to hide. To know about the one you love and to hide that you love. At times the hiding (shame) overpowers the knowing (passion). The passion for the hidden -- the passion for the revealed.
~ Marina Tsvetaeva
There are very few people who are not ashamed of having been in love when they no longer love each other.
~ Francois La Rochefoucauld
There are few people who are not ashamed of their love affairs when the infatuation is over.
~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The exhibitionist loves to flirt with shame
~ Mason Cooley
You propose marriage with the same breath you tell me you're ashamed of me.
~ Mary Connealy
A perpetrator may have hurt someone for a few minutes of his/her life and may even regret it, but the survivor lives with the pain, triggers, shame and fear for a lifetime.
~ Mary E. DeMuth
Red", I write "is the color of life. It's blood, passion, rage. It's menstrual flow and after birth. Beginnings and violent end. Red is the color of love. Beating hearts and hungry lips. Roses, Valentines, cherries. Red is the color of shame. Crimson cheeks and spilled blood. Broken hearts, opened veins. A burning desire to return to white.
~ Unknown
My son John was just under a year old when I collapsed with a life-threatening kidney disease. The shame and guilt resulting from my unplanned pregnancy had continued to fester to the point that my toxic feelings literally poisoned my body.
~ Mary Manin Morrissey
People with bad consciences always fear the judgment of children.
~ Mary McCarthy
People with bad consciences always fear the judgement of children.
~ Mary McCarthy
There are always men who take their own measure against greatness, and hate it not for what it is, but for what they are. They can envy even the dead. So much Alexander saw. He did not understand, since it was not in him, the power such men have to rouse in others the sleeping envy they once had a decent shame of; to turn respect for excellence into hate. Nor did Kallisthenes understand it in himself. Vanity begets it, vanity covers it up.
~ Mary Renault
I now know something about myself which I have been suspecting for years, if I had had the honesty to admit it. I ought to be frightened and ashamed, but I am not.
~ Mary Renault
It is something, I thought, when a king can put a courtesan to the blush.
~ Mary Renault
Time was, I shrank from what was right, From fear of what was wrong; I would not brave the sacred fight, Because the foe was strong. But now I cast that finer sense And sorer shame aside; Such dread of sin was indolence, Such aim at heaven was pride. J. H. NEWMAN.
~ Unknown
I developed a deep, abiding fear of jeans, which I still have. I hold my breath and shut my eyes when I pull on a pair in the dressing room, afraid they will now, as then, get stuck at my hips and there I will stand, absurd, staring at the excess of hips that should, if I were a good person, be "slim".
~ Marya Hornbacher