quotations about shame
If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can't survive.
BRENE BROWN
Daring Greatly
The most paradoxical aspect of neurotic shame is that it is the core motivator of the superachieved and the underachieved, the star and the scapegoat, the righteous and the wretched, the powerful and the pathetic.
JOHN BRADSHAW
Healing the Shame that Binds You
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
Do but increase a man's pride, and his fear of shame will ever be proportioned to it; for the greater value a man sets upon himself, the more pains he will take, and the greater hardships he will undergo to avoid shame.
BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE
The Fable of the Bees
It is better to be buried than to live in shame.
PANTHEA
attributed, Day's Collacon
Shame is a great concealer of tears.
ALTAHIYA
attributed, Day's Collacon
Love taught him shame, and shame, with love at strife,
Soon taught the sweet civilities of life.
JOHN DRYDEN
Cymon and Iphigenia
Where there is no shame, there is no honor.
MARTIN OPITZ
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
Shame, depart, thou art an enemy to my salvation!
JOHN BUNYAN
The Pilgrim's Progress
I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
JONATHAN SWIFT
"Thoughts on Various Subjects", The Works of Jonathan Swift
Shame is like the weaver's thread; if it breaks in the net, it is wholly imperfect.
BULWER
attributed, Day's Collacon
Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.
BRENE BROWN
I Thought It Was Just Me
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
Though honor might possess certain advantages, yet shame had others, and not inferior.
THOMAS MANN
The Magic Mountain
Shame is the lie someone told you about yourself.
ANAIS NIN
attributed, Why Men Fall Out of Love
Whoever despiseth shame, despiseth sin.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Shame need not crouch
In such an earth as ours
Stand--stand erect;
The universe is yours.
EMILY DICKINSON
"Not with a Club, the Heart is broken"
There's shames a man can never reason away, though he looks back and piles up reasons over them forty dozen deep. And maybe those are the shames a man never should reason away.
KEN KESEY
Sometimes a Great Notion
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