quotations about shame
While shame is something a person imposes upon themselves, shaming is a thing that society imposes on people and on women in far greater numbers than men.
GABRIELLE ZEVIN
interview, Seattle Pi, August 26, 2017
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
Love taught him shame, and shame, with love at strife,
Soon taught the sweet civilities of life.
JOHN DRYDEN
Cymon and Iphigenia
Shame is a part of original sin.
JOHN HUMPHREY NOYES
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
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
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
It is the guilt, not the scaffold, which constitutes the shame.
PIERRE CORNEILLE
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
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
It is safest to be moderately base--to be flexible in shame, and to be always ready for what is generous, good and just, when anything is to be gained by virtue.
SYDNEY SMITH
The Works of the Rev. Sydney Smith
Though honor might possess certain advantages, yet shame had others, and not inferior.
THOMAS MANN
The Magic Mountain
Shame is a great concealer of tears.
ALTAHIYA
attributed, Day's Collacon
Shame is the lie someone told you about yourself.
ANAIS NIN
attributed, Why Men Fall Out of Love
Shame is the turnkey that keeps our evil desires in jail.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.
BRENE BROWN
I Thought It Was Just Me
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
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"
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"