quotations about shame
The secret thoughts of a man run over all things, holy, profane, clean, obscene, grave, and light, without shame or blame.
THOMAS HOBBES
Leviathan
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
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"
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"
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
Shame is the lie someone told you about yourself.
ANAIS NIN
attributed, Why Men Fall Out of Love
Though honor might possess certain advantages, yet shame had others, and not inferior.
THOMAS MANN
The Magic Mountain
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
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
Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.
BRENE BROWN
I Thought It Was Just Me
It is the guilt, not the scaffold, which constitutes the shame.
PIERRE CORNEILLE
attributed, Day's Collacon
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, depart, thou art an enemy to my salvation!
JOHN BUNYAN
The Pilgrim's Progress
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
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
Where there is no shame, there is no honor.
MARTIN OPITZ
attributed, Day's Collacon
Shame is always easier to handle if you have someone to share it with.
CRAIG THOMPSON
Blankets
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
Shame may restrain what law does not prohibit.
SENECA
attributed, Day's Collacon
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