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Self Contempt Quotes

Browse 7 quotes about Self Contempt.

Self Contempt Quotes

“She could have been there all along, he felt, but for some unknown, unarticulated reason, she had never lifted a finger to put her poems into circulation. It was the thing that had baffled him most about her, for in all other ways Anna was a person who stood up for herself and fought hard for what she believed in, and she knew damned well that her poems were good. Doubts, yes, despairing moments, yes, but what writer or artist doesn’t live in that shifting territory between confidence and self-contempt? The proof was in the fact that she had always shared her poems with him, not because he ever asked her but because she wanted to, either reading them out loud or handing him small sheafs of six or seven at once, and again and again he had responded to her new work by saying it was time to get off her ass and start publishing them, which was invariably followed by a diffident shrug from Anna, who sometimes added “You’re right” or “One of these days” or “We’ll see”, depending on her mood.”

“Shame evokes anxiety about what will happen if someone really knows is, but, because it is impossible to for anxiety and anger to be felt simultaneously, we can dream our anxiety by employing anger or rage in the form of contempt... Contempt, because it feels more powerful has always helped us feel safer and more powerful than the anxiety we feel when we experience shame. [3]”

“Contempt The contempt I feel for others—for myself different, less internal than guilt. It’s not that I think (or have ever thought) I was bad—through and through. I think I’m unattractive, unloveable, because I’m incomplete. It’s not what I am that’s wrong, it’s that I’m not more (responsive, alive, generous, considerate, original, sensitive, brave etc.). My profoundest experience is of indifference, rather than censure.”