Quotes About Shame

Shame usually follows a pattern—a cycle of self-recrimination and lies that claims life after life. First, we experience an intensely painful event. Second, we believe the lie that our pain and failure is who we are—not just something we’ve done, or had done to us—and we experience shame. And finally, our feelings of shame trap us into thinking that we can never recover—that, in fact, we don’t even deserve to.

A great wave of humiliation and shame swept over me. Shame that I belonged to a race that could be so dealt with; and shame for my country, that it, the great example of democracy to the world, should be the only civilized, if not the only state on earth, where a human being would be burned alive.

I felt suddenly shy. I was not used to shy. I was used to shame. Shyness is when you turn your head away from something you want. Shame is when you turn your head away from something you do not want.

we are beginning to understand that this instinct of sex which has been so great a cause of suffering and shame and has been treated as a subject fit only for furtive whispers or silly jokes, is in fact one of the greatest powers in human nature, and that its misuse is indeed 'the expense of spirit in a waste of shame.

Between shame and shamelessness lies the axis upon which we turn; meteorological conditions at both these poles are of the most extreme, ferocious type. Shamelessness, shame: the roots of violence.

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.

I'll never, never understand why people think it's their business to comment on other people's bodies. I go to a spa in LA sometimes, a Korean day spa, and all the women there are nude. And I've never felt so in love with the human form as when I'm walking around and seeing all those bodies, thinking, Oh my god, we're all just built so differently. And every single body is beautiful. I will never understand that shame, and the reinforcement of that shame. It's crazy.

O the shame of it, the humiliating shame of being condescended to by dolts

Working with Jim Sheridan for instance, we did this movie Brothers. Jim will ask anybody - we'll get a delivery on set, and like the poor delivery guy will be like, "Here's your pizza," and he'll be like, "Come over here. Come here. I want to ask you a question. Do you think this is real? What do you think? Should we do another take?" And they're like, "I, uh, you want your pizza?" There's no shame in everybody's ideas. There's no shame in somebody not knowing.

(You do not have to be shamed in my closeness. Family are the people who must never make you feel ashamed.) (You are wrong. Family are the people who must make you feel ashamed when you are deserving of shame.) (And you are deserving of shame?) (I am. I am trying to tell you.) 'We were stupid,' he said, 'because we believed in things.' 'Why is this stupid?' 'Because there are not things to believe in.' (Love?) (There is no love. Only the end of love.) (Goodness?) (Do not be a fool.) (God?) (If God exists, He is not to be believed in.)

We live in a world where most people still subscribe to the belief that shame is a good tool for keeping people in line. Not only is this wrong, but it’s dangerous. Shame is highly correlated with addiction, violence, aggression, depression, eating disorders, and bullying.

Shame was an emotion he had abandoned years earlier. Addicts know no shame. You disgrace yourself so many times you become immune to it.

We cannot grow when we are in shame, and we can't use shame to change ourselves or others.

There's a level of shame attached to our history, and we need to replace that shame with pride and own our history. These are our superheroes. These are our people, and I would love to see us own this side of our history with pride.

I'm not sure if the shame/guilt distinction resonates for me. I just know that shame is a debilitating emotion that is perpetuated by Church and State.

I had a lot of guilt and shame when I was running from God, but nothing like when I was running for God. I was always looking for God's approval, and that's where the guilt and shame came out in a big way.

There is no shame — having a dirty face — the shame comes when you keep it dirty.

There is no shame in being hungry for another person. There is no shame in wanting very much to share your life with somebody.

Shame must be accepted to be effective.

It's such a shame to waste time. We always think we have so much of it.

Judaism will be enmeshed in pride and shame for as long as it endures. But to endure as a country, Israel must shun both these tendencies.

Good therapy helps. Good friends help. Pretending that we are doing better than we are doesn't. Shame doesn't. Being heard does.

The Plutocracy's insatiable hunger for pixelated information is enough to put a bulimic Pac-Man to shame

I ate too much and masturbated too recently, you know? It's bad to like jerk off and run out the door, 'cause you run into somebody. "Oh, she knows..." You got to take some time alone to process the shame.

I really thought I was on the way out. My husband Blake saved my life. Often I don't know what I do, then the next day the memory returns. And then I am engulfed in shame.

Well, it's New Year's now but I don't feel that way anymore. I wonder if you do either. Something's happening to me. It's like I'm shrinking smaller and smaller and I can't stp it. There's just os much wrong that I can't imagine the shame in admitting even the tiniest part of it. When you left it was like there was this huge gap to fill, but instead of spreading wide enough to do it I just fell right in, and I'm still falling. Like I'm half-asleep, and I can't wake up, can't wake up.

As never before, he understood the vitality of tradition, the dignity of the worship of what had existed before one's own self had come into being. There was no shame in awe; there was exaltation. (“Cafe Endless: Spring Rain”)

One is never so dangerous when one has no shame, than when one has grown too old to blush.

In youth, it is common to measure right and wrong by the opinion of the world, and in age, to act without any measure but interest, and to lose shame without substituting virtue.

She knew that she belonged to this man, body and soul. Every trace of shame departed; it was burnt out by the fire that consumed her. She gave him a thousand opportunities; she fought to turn his words to serious things. He baffled her with his shallow smile and ready tongue, that twisted all topics to triviality. By six o'clock she was morally on her knees before him; she was imploring him to stay to dinner with her. He refused.

It's a shame, but every time I get something scientific in the script, I read up to find out what I'm talking about - but then I'm on to the next script and it's forgotten.

To be Irish today is the abandonment of shame and the younger people are moving it out and they're moving the fear away. They're not afraid, they're adventurous.

There is no shame in my saying that we all want to be loved.

It's a shame that we have to use whatever leverage we have in Congress to get the president to deal with the biggest problem confronting our future. And that's our excessive spending.

I feel no shame about having paintings be as grandiose and ridiculous as possible.

I just had lunch with Slash two days ago. He loves Axl. He holds no grudges towards him. Twenty years of great music wasn't created because of some stupid grudge. That's a shame.

It's a shame to be called "educated" those who do not study the ancient Greek writers.

It is rather the nature of America - our freewheeling, outspoken, prosperous, liberty-loving citizens extend equality to women, homosexuals, minorities, and almost anyone who comes to our shores, and thereby create desire and with it shame for that desire. Indeed, it is worse still than that: Precisely because we worry publicly that we are insensitive, our enemies scoff privately that we in fact are too sensitive - what we think is liberality and magnanimity they see as license and decadence. If we don't have confidence in who we are, why should they?

Authentic love does not devalue another human being. Authentic love does not silence, shame or abuse. If you are in a relationship with someone who does not honor and respect you, I want you to know that you are worthy of love. Please reach out for help. Your voice will save you. Let it extend into the night, let it part the darkness. Let it set you free to know who you truly are - valuable, beautiful, loved.

Shame is, hands down, the most uncomfortable feeling. And, because it produces continuous amounts of inflammatory chemicals in the body, it is also a health risk.

Are you suggesting we pull a little good cop, bad cop scenario on him? And You're even letting me be the bad cop?" He bowed his head. "That, my pretera, is how much I love you." "You have never been sexier than at this very moment." "It is a shame we have so much company," he agreed quietly.

Miss Havisham is a glitch in the smooth functioning of the Patriarchy, enforcing awareness of a moment of social disaster and personal shame, something it seems she would want us to forget (but no one would forget). (Maybe an interesting "discussion question" for readers of Complicated Grief might be, "What do Terry Barton and Miss Havisham have in common?"?)

I fell into shame like a suicide throws herself into a river. (253)

Good girls hold their heads high by daylight, Their grace and their virtue soaring with kites, While bad girls slink along in their shame- Everyone stares at them, everyone blames. But those bad girls sleep soundly at night, Ne'er do their consciences wake them in a fright, While our good girls toss and they turn- They lay awake for those who will burn.

There is seemingly no biological benefit to acting with conscience; if there were, only moral individuals would survive and procreate. Sadly, we know that's not true. The benefit of conscience is that you won't suffer guilt (private) or shame (public), and that by your own self-imposed definition, you are a moral human, a special kind of animal who takes unique pride in elevating him/herself above the termites.

The easiest way to separate yourself from the unformed blobby mass of "aspiring" writers is to a) actually write and b) actually finish. That's how easy it is to clamber up the ladder to the second echelon. Write. And finish what you write. That's how you break away from the pack and leave the rest of the sickly herd for the hungry wolves of shame and self-doubt. And for all I know, actual wolves.

I gave up shame a long time ago.

George, she says it's the truth that matters. We live and die for the chance to maybe tell a little bit of the truth, maybe shame the Devil just a little bit before we go.