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Shame Quotes

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Shame Quotes

“Junk food is appealing to the homeless not just because it’s cheap but because it can be bought in places where no one looks at them twice as they stand in fast moving lines to order and pay. This is important for them as they are very alive to being noticed, observed and – usually – judged. They don’t generally buy healthy little quinoa salads from M&S not just because they can’t afford them, but also because they’re embarrassed – people stare at them – they don’t really belong in M&S.”

PovertyShameHomelessnessMarginalization
Book:Four Feet Under: Thirty Untold Stories of Homelessness in London
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“Personally, I would be ashamed to be rich and have precious and expensive goods only to show to the other people that I have more worth than them when in some parts of the world there are people who suffer. No one has more worth than anyone. Everyone can be worthy if he has conditions in his life that enable him to reclaim his values. Worth lies in culture, not in appearance and possession. Besides, every person has his own mission in this world and everyone is valuable.”

WealthPovertySocietyShameLuckEqualityLifestyleWorthHierarchySocial Classes
Author:Maria Karvouni
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“The light, bold, fluttering little figure turned and came back safe to me, and I soon laughed at my fears, and at the cry I had uttered; fruitlessly in any case, for there was no one near. But there have been times since, in my manhood, many times there have been, when I have thought, is it possible, among the possibilities of hidden things, that in the sudden rashness of the child and her wild look so far off, there was any merciful attraction of her into danger, any tempting her towards him permitted on the part of her dead father, that her life might have a chance of ending that day. There has been a time since when I have wondered whether, if the life before her could have been revealed to me at a glance, and so revealed as that a child could fully comprehend it, and if her preservation could have depended on a motion of my hand, I ought to have held it up to save her. There has been a time since – I do not say it lasted long, but it has been – when I have asked myself the question, would it have been better for little Emily to have had the waters close above her head that morning in my sight; and when I have answered Yes, it would have been.”

LoveLifeSchoolFearWorryShameComing Of AgeHistorical FictionOrphanFamily Saga
Book:David Copperfield
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“The moment you have to recruit people to put another person down, in order to convince someone of your value is the day you dishonor your children, your parents and your God. If someone doesn't see your worth the problem is them, not people outside your relationship.”

MenLoveEvilWomenSelf EsteemConfidenceSelf LoveShameRevengeSelf ConfidenceJealousyTherapyFakeComparisonWomen EmpowermentSelf CareShallowInsecureHatefulRuthlessShamefulHeartlessImmatureHatersRelationships 101ImmaturityCruelRise UpMean GirlsBulliesSpousesVengefulWivesHusbandsMature LoveSelf EvaluationLiving A LieEmpowering GirlsStalkersGodlessIn DenialMercilessStayingpositiveuniversity ComInsecurity IssuesDivorce 101Divorce CareOut Of TouchMentally BiasedDisallusionedDishonoring KidsDishonoring ParentsDishonoring YourselfVictomizer
Author:Shannon L. Alder
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“The girl's life had been squandered in the streets, and among the most noisome of the stews and dens of London, but there was something of the woman's original nature left in her still; and when she heard a light step approaching the door opposite to that by which she had entered, and thought of the wide contrast which the small room would in another moment contain, she felt burdened with the sense of her own deep shame: and shrunk as though she could scarcely bear the presence of her with whom she had sought this interview.”

WomenShameInferiorityChaste
Book:Oliver Twist
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“Today, looking back on the moment I made the decision, I am aware that had I been twenty years younger, I probably wouldn’t have dared request that the case be heard in open court. I would have been too afraid of the looks: those damn looks that women of my generation have always had to contend with; those damn looks that make you waver in the morning between a dress and trousers, that follow you or ignore you, flatter you or embarrass you; those damn looks that seem to tell you who you are or what you’re worth, only to forsake you as you age. It was exactly that nerve Dominique pressed when he told me I should be glad my husband still desired me whenever he photographed me coming out of the bathroom. I was, no doubt, still susceptible to it. It’s foolish, but that’s how we were freer, more autonomous women, yet still afraid of being abandoned, still longing to be saved. Maybe the shame lifts once you hit seventy and no one looks at you any more. I don’t know. I wasn’t afraid of my wrinkles or my body.”

WomenFeminismShameRape Survivor
Book:A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides
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“Socially prescribed perfectionism is closely related to anxiety; people who suffer from anxiety are more prone to it. Being a perfectionist also increases your anxiety because you fear the shame of public failure from everything you do. And, as you’d expect by this point in the story, socially prescribed perfectionism began rising, across the Anglosphere nations, in the early 2010s.”

WomenShameSocial MediaBody ImagePerfectionismEating Disorder
Book:The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness
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“Shame is an emotion that many rape survivors struggle with for reasons that can be more complicated than we might think. It is a distinctly insidious form of humiliation, the result of a serious injury to our self-esteem, which can be exacerbated by the feeling that we’ve done something wrong. Humiliation is par for the course when your body is used sexually against your will—that part of the aftermath of sexual violence is pretty well understood. Less well appreciated is why rape survivors may end up feeling responsible for what has happened to them. A common assumption is that women blame themselves because of low self-esteem: if only I had dressed differently, if only I had not looked at him that way, if only I had made better decisions for myself. While a woman’s self-image may play a role in how she comes to understand what has happened to her, the sense of responsibility held by many rape survivors is at least partly driven by a dominant worldview regarding personal safety and harm. Although this picture is slowly changing, historically, at least in the West, girls have been taught from a young age that the world is basically a safe place and that so long as you are sufficiently careful and intelligent, you can protect yourself from any serious harm. Underscoring this narrative is the fact that in our entertainment-saturated media culture, the everydayness of sexual violence against women is overlooked in favour of sensationalized stories of extreme violence. And because rape is typically experienced in private, unlike other traumatic experiences, like combat fighting in war, for instance, the clear evidence of its pervasiveness is obscured from our collective vision. This further reinforces the mistaken notion that the world is a benign place for women—and worse, it makes incidents of sexual violence against women look like a series of unrelated, isolated events when in fact they are the systematic consequence of patriarchal social structures. So how does the rape survivor reconcile this dominant worldview with what has happened to her? After all, it cannot be true both that the world is a safe place and that you were raped, unless, of course, the rape was your fault. The other alternative is to reject the dominant worldview, but this means accepting the fact that we live in a world where women, by virtue of being women, are at risk. For a variety of reasons, it can be easier and less painful to believe instead that being raped was a result of your own poor choices.”

WomenShameTraumaPtsdSexual Abuse
Book:One Hour in Paris: A True Story of Rape and Recovery
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“It ended by my almost believing (perhaps actually believing) that this was perhaps my normal condition. But at first, in the beginning, what agonies I endured in that struggle! I did not believe it was the same with other people, and all my life I hid this fact about myself as a secret. I was ashamed (even now, perhaps, I am ashamed): I got to the point of feeling a sort of secret abnormal, despicable enjoyment in returning home to my corner on some disgusting Petersburg night, acutely conscious that that day I had committed a loathsome action again, that what was done could never be undone, and secretly, inwardly gnawing, gnawing at myself for it, tearing and consuming myself till at last the bitterness turned into a sort of shameful accursed sweetness, and at last—into positive real enjoyment! Yes, into enjoyment, into enjoyment! I insist upon that. I have spoken of this because I keep wanting to know for a fact whether other people feel such enjoyment? I will explain; the enjoyment was just from the too intense consciousness of one’s own degradation; it was from feeling oneself that one had reached the last barrier, that it was horrible, but that it could not be otherwise; that there was no escape for you; that you never could become a different man; that even if time and faith were still left you to change into something different you would most likely not wish to change; or if you did wish to, even then you would do nothing; because perhaps in reality there was nothing for you to change into. And the worst of it was, and the root of it all, that it was all in accord with the normal fundamental laws of over-acute consciousness, and with the inertia that was the direct result of those laws, and that consequently one was not only unable to change but could do absolutely nothing. Thus it would follow, as the result of acute consciousness, that one is not to blame in being a scoundrel; as though that were any consolation to the scoundrel once he has come to realise that he actually is a scoundrel.”

StruggleDespairDepressionShameAgonyActionsHopelessnessFatalismInevitabilities
Book:Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead
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“At the top of the page I wrote my full name [...] At the sight of it, many thoughts rushed through me, but I could write down only this: "I wish I could love someone so much that I would die from it." And then as I looked at this sentence a great deal of shame came over me and I wept and wept so much that the tears fell on the page and caused all the words to become one great big blur.”

LoveLifeDeathSadnessDespairDepressionShameWeepingName
Author:Jamaica Kincaid
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“O [Roman] people be ashamed; be ashamed of your lives. Almost no cities are free of evil dens, are altogether free of impurities, except the cities in which the barbarians have begun to live... Let nobody think otherwise, the vices of our bad lives have alone conquered us... The Goths lie, but are chaste, the Franks lie, but are but are generous, the Saxons are savage in cruelty...but are admirable in chastity...what hope can there be [for the Romans] when the barbarians are more pure [than they]?" -Salvian”

EvilSinShameVicesAshamedShamefulBarbariansSad But TrueSinsEvil PeopleViceImpurityEvil ThoughtsEvil MenRomansEvilsShame Of SocietyDual MeaningImpuritiesStill True Today
Book:Change to Chains-The 6,000 Year Quest for Control -Volume I-Rise of the Republic
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“The intensity of this cultural shame demanded a poster boy who would deter ‘bestial’ human behaviours and presentation, and so to the genesis of Satan, ‘the beast’ – a carnal, hairy, lascivious, malevolent, stinking satyr capable of taking sexually suggestive serpentine form: the humanising of the mammalian self.”

ChristianHumanityEvilChristianityShameSatanThe DevilThe BeastAbrahamic ReligionsBeelzebub
Book:Apple: Sex, Drugs, Motherhood and the Recovery of the Feminine
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“Si quelqu’un a volé, ou porté atteinte à autrui, ou même tué un autre homme, on envoie quérir la Clairvoyante. Car certains font le mal sans en ressentir aucune honte. Et nombre d’entre eux parviennent à cacher leurs scrupules au plus profond de leur conscience en se trouvant de multiples excuses. Ils vont parfois même jusqu’à se convaincre qu’ils étaient dans leur bon droit en commettant leur crime. Mais lorsqu’ils rencontrent la Clairvoyante, ils ne peuvent plus se cacher leurs méfaits ni les dissimuler aux autres. La plupart des hommes connaissent le repentir. Et quand il m’arrive de rencontrer quelqu’un qui n’en éprouve pas ou presque, je fais en sorte qu’il ressente une douleur. Car j’ai appris à utiliser ce don inhabituel qui est aussi le tien.”

EvilJusticeShameRemorse
Book:The Shamer’s Daughter
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“Hasanati ni matendo mema. Mema yanatoka kwa Mungu. Mabaya yanatoka kwa Shetani. Mke mwema anatoka kwa Mungu. Mke mbaya anatoka kwa Shetani. Mke mwema ana hekima na busara, ana maadili na tabia njema, ana utu na uchapakazi, ana wema na upendo, na ana aibu kwa wanaume.”

MenLoveGodWisdomHumanityEvilGoodnessEthicsShameGoodSatanGood DeedsPrudenceMunguGood WifeShetaniGood BehaviorHekimaUpendoMabayaMemaIndustriousnessUtuWemaAibuMaadiliUchapakaziBusaraHasanatiWanaumeMatendo MemaTabia NjemaBad WifeMke MbayaMke Mwema
Author:Enock Maregesi
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“When basic human needs are ignored, rejected, or invalidated by those in roles and positions to appropriately meet them; when the means by which these needs have been previously met are no longer available: and when prior abuse has already left one vulnerable for being exploited further, the stage is set for the possibility these needs will be prostituted. This situation places a survivor who has unmet needs in an incredible dilemma. She can either do without or seek the satisfaction of mobilized needs through some "illegitimate" source that leaves her increasingly divided from herself and ostracized from others. While meeting needs in this way resolves the immediate existential experience of deprivation and abandonment. it produces numerous other difficulties. These include experiencing oneself as “bad” or "weak" for having such strong needs; experiencing shame and guilt for relying on “illegitimate” sources of satisfaction: experiencing a loss of self-respect for indulging in activities contrary to personal moral standards of conduct; risking the displeasure and misunderstanding of others important to her; and opening oneself to the continued abuse and victimization of perpetrators who are all too willing to selfishly use others for their own pleasure and purposes under the guise of being 'helpful.”

NeedsHumanityEvilWeaknessAbuseShameVictimGuiltVulnerabilityManipulationNeglectSurvivorAbandonedChild AbuseExploitationEmotional AbuseDeprivedAbandonmentProstitutionDeprivationAbuse Of PowerBasic NeedsGuilty ConscienceVictimizationOstracismEmotional NeglectExploitInvalidationAbuse Of Authority
Author:J. Jeffrey Means
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“Cyber bullying occurs online daily. Most don't consider their actions or words to be bullying. Here's a few clues that you're a cyber bully. (1) You post information about someone in order to ruin their character. (2) You post threats to someone. (3) You tag someone in vulgar degrading posts. (4) You post any information intended to harm or shame another individual seeking to gain attention. Then, you are a cyber bully and need to get some help.”

PeopleInspirationalWisdomInspirationHappinessSpiritualFaithQuotesEvilHopeFearUnderstandingAttentionKnowledgeTroubleEventsInspireExpressionDevelopmentInternetGratitudeCriticismShameGuiltPersonal GrowthCaringHarmHappyGoodPostsManDecisionsWomanFakeAuthorWickedMaterialismCriticizeProblemsHelpArticlesBullyPersonTeenagersDisbeliefThingsBad TimesAdultCyberPlacesIntentionsGeneralWorld Wide WebSubjectMotivesSeeking Attention
Book:Sweet Destiny
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“He kissed the wall and bent his knees. For an instant, he grew ashamed and sad. He himself was not touched very often. Andrei sensed how pathetic he must have looked, but he was much too lonely to care. He sped up and could feel the devil cheering, “Lower. Go as low as hell,” and he limboed his way into that hell. And it was freezing and it was hot. One knows they are truly gone when their own tears start to lubricate their self-play. Andrei kept going, stroking wet, painfully, finishing at the same time the man did. And then the door opened.”

HellSadnessLonelinessShameAddictionCryingMasturbationMasturbating
Book:A Happy Ghost
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“Sisters of the torn shirts. Sisters of the chase around the desk, casting couch, hotel room, file cabinet. Sisters dragging shattered dreams, bruised hopes, ambitions abandoned in the dirt. Sisters fishing one by one in the lake of shame. Hooks baited with fear always come back empty. Truth dawns slow when you've been beaten and lied to, but it burns hard and bright once it wakes. Sisters, drop everything. Walk away from the lake, leaning on each other's shoulders when you need the support. Feel the contractions of another truth ready to be born. Shame turned inside out is rage.”

TruthLiesShameRageAssaultSexual Violence
Book:Shout
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“A culture of a shame and secrets is bound to hide its dirty laundry and continue the same offences for generations. You can't healthfully and successfully sweep your dysfunctions under the carpet and pretend nothing has happened. Whether it's your family culture, or your religious culture, or both, this is a great way to grow deep roots of poison and toxic dysfunction in all of your close relationships. It's a great way to destroy yourself and your loved ones. End the culture of secrecy. End the follied pride that seeks to cover up its shame rather than admit it. Face your offenses head on with a desire to fix them and heal.”

TruthHealingPrideLiesAbuseShameAddictionVulnerabilitySecrecyToxicity
Author:Jennifer DeLucy
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“Loss of any sort should stir up emotion; if it doesn’t, it’s because we’ve trained ourselves to be numb. We’ve bought into the great societal lie that emotional and sensitive is bad, is shameful, is weak, and worse yet is unlike Him.”

JesusLossGriefEmotionalLiesShameWeakness And Strength
Book:This Undeserved Life: Uncovering The Gifts of Grief and The Fullness of Life
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“THE MYTH OF THE GOOD OL BOY AND THE NICE GAL The good of boy myth and the nice gal are a kind of social conformity myth. They create a real paradox when put together with the "rugged individual" part of the Success Myth. How can I be a rugged individual, be my own man and conform at the same time? Conforming means "Don't make a wave", "Don't rock the boat". Be a nice gal or a good ol' boy. This means that we have to pretend a lot. "We are taught to be nice and polite. We are taught that these behaviors (most often lies) are better than telling the truth. Our churches, schools, and politics are rampant with teaching dishonesty (saying things we don't mean and pretending to feel ways we don't feel). We smile when we feel sad; laugh nervously when dealing with grief; laugh at jokes we don't think are funny; tell people things to be polite that we surely don't mean." - Bradshaw On: The Family”

LiesShameParadoxConformDishonestyPolitenessPretenceGood GirlGood BoyCongruenceRock The BoatMake Waves
Book:Healing the Shame that Binds You
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“The reality is, no matter what you were told, whatever happened to you as a child was not legally or morally your fault. Abused children are instilled with guilt regarding their "participation." It's an especially complex issue if the abuser is a family member. The child is told and believes that by his word his family will disintegrate, or harm may descend upon other loved ones. He fears he will lose more by telling than not.”

FearSilenceLiesShameBlameGuiltBreakupChild AbuseChild Sexual AbusePedophileVictim BlamingSelf BlameChild Abuser
Book:Becoming One: A Story of Triumph Over Dissociative Identity Disorder
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