quotations about shame
Shame is like everything else; live with it for long enough and it becomes part of the furniture.
SALMAN RUSHDIE
Shame
One of the misfortunes of our time is that in getting rid of false shame we have killed off so much real shame as well.
LOUIS KRONENBERGER
Company Manners
Shame should be reserved for the things we choose to do, not the circumstances that life puts on us.
ANN PATCHETT
Truth and Beauty
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 is an uncomfortable companion, it makes you want to climb out of your skin.
ZOE FITZGERALD CARTER
"Charlottesville rage rooted in white shame", San Francisco Chronicle, August 26, 2017
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 makes the world go around.
MORISSEY
"Shame Is The Name"
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
Where there is shame there is virtue.
JOHANN RIST
attributed, Day's Collacon
Shame is a part of original sin.
JOHN HUMPHREY NOYES
attributed, Day's Collacon
Don't you think the things people are most ashamed of are things they can't help?
C. S. LEWIS
Till We Have Faces
Shame may restrain what law does not prohibit.
SENECA
attributed, Day's Collacon
All is confounded, all!
Reproach and everlasting shame
Sits mocking in our plumes.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Henry V
Shame is always easier to handle if you have someone to share it with.
CRAIG THOMPSON
Blankets
I drew it over my skin like a violins bow, No one would ever hear the song of my shame.
JODI PICOULT
Handle with Care
It is the guilt, not the scaffold, which constitutes the shame.
PIERRE CORNEILLE
attributed, Day's Collacon
I count him lost, who is lost to shame.
PLAUTUS
Bacchides
Shame is the turnkey that keeps our evil desires in jail.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Mine has been a life of much shame. I can't even guess what it must be to live the life of a human being.
OSAMU DAZAI
No Longer Human
Only man can blush.
No other creature knows of shame.
Why have we wandered so far away
From simple honesty?
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"The Song of the Soul"