quotations about shame
Most of my life was spent marinating in shame. It felt like part of my genetic makeup. Shame held my head underwater and told me to resign to my fate, to stop fighting. Shame left me feeling my very personhood was flawed.
TARA HEDMAN
When Shame is Protective
Love taught him shame, and shame, with love at strife,
Soon taught the sweet civilities of life.
JOHN DRYDEN
Cymon and Iphigenia
You made me cry
When you said goodbye
Isn't that a shame
My tears fell like rain
Isn't that a shame
You're the one to blame
JOHN LENNON
"Ain't That a Shame"
Now there's a lifestyle
With painted lips
Now there's a lifestyle
Everybody wants it
But it don't exist
And I said shame...
EURYTHMICS
"Shame"
Once they know they've got a hold of your shame, they can shake it out and hold it up for the all world to see. And you become less than it. You become something disgusting.
KIRSTY EAGER
Raw Blue
You can find shame in every house, burning in an ashtray, hanging framed upon a wall, covering a bed. But nobody notices it any more.
SALMAN RUSHDIE
Shame
Suddenly, my need to disappear became stronger than my need to be safe. That's what shame does.
TARA HEDMAN
When Shame is Protective
Honor and shame from no condition rise;
Act well your part, there all the honor lies.
ALEXANDER POPE
An Essay on Man
Shame is like a lock, it shuts away what must be shut away, and is one of the most important mechanisms of social life.
KARL OVE KNAUSGAARD
Autumn
Shame regulates differences, creates secrets, builds up a charge. The counterforce and antithesis of shame is desire, which with all its being seeks to eliminate differences, to do away with secrets, release tensions.
KARL OVE KNAUSGAARD
Autumn
Shame wields its power when you tamp it down and ignore its existence. Expose it to the light, and it becomes a vampire at high noon.
HOWARD ENGLANDER
"It's a shame we have so much trouble talking about shame", Chicago Now, August 29, 2017
Shame is like the weaver's thread; if it breaks in the net, it is wholly imperfect.
BULWER
attributed, Day's Collacon
Shame is a great concealer of tears.
ALTAHIYA
attributed, Day's Collacon
Shame is an attachment to negative self-perception that has been fostered by the perceptions and opinions of others. Shame is a wasted sensibility.
DEVON ST. CLAIRE
"Shame and Negative Self Perception", Empire State News, August 31, 2017
Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.
BRENE BROWN
I Thought It Was Just Me
Among the problems with shame was that it in fact did not make you shorter or quieter or less visible. You just felt like you were.
J. R. WARD
Lover Enshrined
Sin and shame ever go together; he that would be freed from the last must be sure to shun the company of the first.
ANNE BRADSTREET
Meditations Divine and Moral
Time was when most people didn't want to admit feelings shame, but even that terribly crippling feeling is more out in the open now than it used to be. Admitting shame is admitting a flaw or a defect in oneself, as if there is something wrong with the person's being. Talking about feeling shame or guilt can make a person feel exposed and vulnerable; it can also lead to grace.
JEANIE MILEY
"Growing Edges: Talking about shame and guilt can lead to grace", Standard-Times, August 19, 2017
I want to drag knives over my skin, just to feel something other than shame, but I'm not even brave enough for that.
PAULA HAWKINS
The Girl on the Train
Once shame touches your being at any point, even the most distant nerve is implicated, whether you know it or not; any fleeting encounter or random thought will rake up the anguish and add to it.
STEFAN ZWEIG
The Post Office Girl