Quotes About Shame

seed of a syphilitic she-camel

Crime must be paid for, but not all sins or mistakes need be made public and explained for everyone to examine and remember. And sometimes victims were punished doubly, once by the offense itself, and then a second and more enduring time when others heard of it, pored over it, and imagined every intimate detail.

Love that expects perfection—no past with mistakes, pain, learning—is only hunger. No one grows to maturity without acts to be ashamed of; in accepting that, we love not only the strengths but also the weaknesses, and real bonds grow between us.

Why does shame and self-loathing become cruelty to the innocent ?

He was tired and full of shame, and if Ernestino and the others wouldn't brave this rain, he would go it alone, he would find some place to sing, some place where, anonymous and numbed by drink, he could sing until he had forgotten everything.

I wish you hadn't told her. If you must know, I could have done without your telling her I commited statutory rape on the living room couch with her cousin. - Michael Curry

I'm ashamed, ashamed that I want you and that it sustains me to think, just to think, that because of all you've lost, you might love me.

How can you be ashamed of such things? You're a strange creature, very gentle, I think, and out of kilter with your own time.

You're a bum-rag covered in clart!

What people are afraid of isn't failure. It's blame. Criticism.

It's what we wrestle with every single day. The intersection of comfort, danger, and safety. The balancing act between vulnerability and shame. The opportunity (or the risk) to do art. The willingness to take responsibility for caring enough to make a difference and to have a point of view.

When those in power use shame to bully the weak into compliance, they are stealing from us. They tell us that they will expose our secrets (not good enough, not hardworking enough, not from the right family, made a huge mistake once) and will use the truth to exile us from our tribe. This shame, the shame that lives deep within each of us, is used as a threat. And when those in power use it, they take away part of our humanity.

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

If she had learned anything in the past weeks it was that there was enough to be ashamed of in the course of a messy human life without being ashamed of loving someone.

each hour is a room of shame, and I am swimming, swimming, holding my head up, smiling, joking, ashamed, ashamed, like being naked with the clothed, or being a child, having to try to behave while hating the terms of your life.

Never feel ashamed of your longing for happiness.

Wherever the responsibility lies, shame creates a solid and terrible feeling of unworthiness that resides in our bodies: the storehouse of the memories of our acts, real or imagined, and the secrets we keep about them.

The heart contracts when our bodies are overcome by shame.

Shame weakens us. It can make us frightened to take on something new. We start to withdraw from whatever might give us pleasure, self-esteem, or a sense of our value.

It's affirming that we can look at any experience from the fullness of our being and get past the shame we carry.

In a society as mobile as your own, many people are totally anonymous to those around them. They do not care what they do before strangers or to strangers. If one feels no shame, punishment only angers. If one feels shame, punishment is almost unnecessary. Logically, therefore, your prisons should seek to instill shame, but even if it were possible, it would offend your civil libertarians to do so. "Shaming" others is considered an affront to their dignity.

It's not oil that runs the world, it's shame.

I'm dying from about ninety-nine kinds of shame

I took a job teaching private-school white teenagers how to edit video. They used their newly developed skills to make documentaries about poor brown people in other countries. It's not oil that runs the world, it's shame.