Quotes About Shame

My charity is outrage, life my shame; And in that shame still live my sorrow's rage!

Let life be short, else shame will be too long.

PILLORY, n. A mechanical device for inflicting personal distinction - prototype of the modern newspaper conducted by persons of austere virtues and blameless lives.

It's not a crime not to know yourself. It's not a crime to send life away. It's just a shame.

When I first went to places where people were suffering from war and persecution, I felt ashamed of my feelings of sadness. I could see more possibilities in my life.

shame should be reserved for the things we choose to do, not the circumstances that life puts on us

It shames man not to feel man's human fear, It shames man only if the fear subdue

The man that blushes is not quite a brute.

Hiding and protecting the parts of your body, from evil and filthy eyes, means dignified and glorious respect and honour for your body; otherwise, you destine humiliation for yourself and your body shamelessly.

Is there any shame to sleeping? There are news reports on all the time about how sleep deprived we are and how dangerous it is with drivers falling asleep at the wheel and machine operators pushing the wrong buttons. I'm actually performing a public service by sleeping. Maybe I'm worried that they'll think I'm lazy. At three o'clock in the morning, however, I figured subterfuge was pointless.

Guilt always makes the other feelings worse.

When you know to laugh and when to look upon things as too absurd to take seriously, the other person is ashamed to carry through even if he was serious about it.

Had it really been so wonderful? I knew very well that at that time, too, there had been shame. And uneasiness, and humiliation, and disgust: accept, submit, force yourself. Is it possible that even happy moments of pleasure never stand up to a rigorous examination? Possible.

I observed her, amazed and disappointed, and determined to not be like her, to become truly different and so show her that it was useless and cruel to frighten us with her repeated 'You will never ever ever see me again'; instead she should have changed for real, or left home for real, left us, disappeared. How I suffered for her and for myself, how ashamed I was to have come out of the belly of such an unhappy person.

J'espérais que ça passerait, mais infériorité et honte ne firent que s'intensifier.

Come soffrivo per lei e per me, come mi vergognavo di essere uscita dalla sua pancia di persona scontenta.

I want to sharpen my pride on what strengthens me, my witness on what haunts me. Whatever we name ourselves, however we end up shattering our self-hatred, shame, silence, and isolation, the goal is the same: to end our daily material oppression.

Pride works in direct opposition to internalized oppression. The latter provides a fertile ground for shame, denial, self-hatred, and fear. The former encourages anger, strength, and joy. To transform self-hatred into pride is a fundamental act of resistance.

Simply put, diagnosis wields immense power. It can provide us access to vital medical technology or shame us, reveal a path toward less pain or get us locked up. It opens doors and slams them shut.

When the time came to sell cookies, my mother, to whom few things could have been more shameful than the idea of my going door-to-door trying to sell anything, sold all the cookies herself, to her own mother. Ten years later, when I was visiting my grandmother in Ankara, I found them in the pantry: thirty unopened boxes of Girl Scout cookies. "Why didn't you eat your cookies?" I asked. "Oh, they're cookies? I thought they were candles," said my grandmother.

Just because one is born in sin is no reason to brag about it.

After life is bent, torn, exploded, there are shattered pieces that do not heal for years, if at all. What is left are scars and something else—shame, I suppose, shame for letting it all continue.

When you fail, you disgrace yourself and others. When you succeed, be proud and others will be proud for you.

Outing someone is like ripping a butterfly from its cocoon. You can damage them for life and rob them of THEIR life changing experience of liberation. For a successful emergence THEY have to struggle through the cocoon of fear and shame. THEN they can fly.