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Shame Quotes

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Shame Quotes

“Do the Pentecostals look back with shame as they remember when they dwelt across the theological tracks, but with the glory of the Lord in their midst? When they had a normal church life, which meant nights of prayers, followed by signs and wonders, and diverse miracles, and genuine gifts of the Holy Ghost? When they were not clock watchers, and their meetings lasted for hours, saturated with holy power? Have we no tears for these memories, or shame that our children know nothing of such power?”

“What happened after 9/11 - and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not - was deeply shameful. The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons....The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.”

“It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also. You, Mr. Gray, you yourself, with yourrose-red youth and your rose-white boyhood, you have had passions that have made you afraid, thoughts that have filled you with terror, day-dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek with shame.”

World Made Dream Might Passion Memories Sleep Sin White Brain Youth Red Shame Filled Rose Mere Terror Gray Cheeks Stains Boyhood

Author:Oscar Wilde

“I'd still thought that everything I thought about that night-the shame, the fear-would fade in time. But that hadn't happened. Instead, the things that I remembered, these little details, seemed to grow stronger, to the point where I could feel their weight in my chest. Nothing, however stuck with me more than the memory of stepping into that dark room and what I found there, and how the light then took that nightmare and made it real.”

Feels Littles Made Stills Real Light Night Found Grows Fear Memories Dark Rooms Happened Weight Stronger Shame Details Stuck Made It Remembered Nightmare Chests Fades Dark Room

Author:Sarah Dessen

“Shame has poor memory.”

Memories Poor Shame Poor Memory

Author:Gabriel Garcia Marquez

“Most of our difficulties, our hopes, and our worries are empty fantasies. Nothing has ever existed except this moment. That's all there is. That's all we are. Yet most human beings spend 50 to 90 percent or more of their time in their imagination, living in fantasy. We think about what has happened to us, what might have happened, how we feel about it, how we should be different, how others should be different, how it's all a shame, and on and on; it's all fantasy, all imagination. Memory is imagination. Every memory that we stick to devastates our life.”

Thinking Feels Should Humans Different Moments Might Imagination Memories Human Beings Worry Fantasy Our Lives Happened Percent Empty Difficulty Shame Sticks

Author:Joko Beck

“With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame.”

Men Stills Past Time Memories Shame Errors Wounds Bitter Preparation Flavor

Book:Middlemarch: Top Novelist Focus

Source: Middlemarch: Top Novelist Focus

“There is certainly no greater happiness than to be able to look back on a life usefully and virtuously employed, to trace our own progress in existence, by such tokens as excite neither shame nor sorrow.”

Looks Able Memories Existence Greater Progress Sorrow Shame Employed Recollection Tokens

Book:The beauties of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: consisting of maxims and observations, moral, critical, and miscellaneous: to which are now added biographical anecdotes of the doctor, selected from the works of Mrs. Piozzi;--his Life, recently published by Mr. Boswell, and other authentic testimonies; also his will, and the sermon he wrote for the late Doctor Dodd

Source: The beauties of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: consisting of maxims and observations, moral, critical, and miscellaneous: to which are now added biographical anecdotes of the doctor, selected from the works of Mrs. Piozzi;--his Life, recently published by Mr. Boswell, and other authentic testimonies; also his will, and the sermon he wrote for the late Doctor Dodd

“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.”

Knows Way Next Memories Return Husband Shame Saved My Husband Next Day Blake

Author:Amy Winehouse

“By virtue of depression, we recall those misdeeds we buried in the depths of our memory. Depression exhumes our shames.”

Memories Virtue Shame Depth Buried Recalls Our Memories Misdeeds

Author:Emile M. Cioran

“Forgiveness is a process of giving up the old for something new. Old experiences and memories that we hold on to in anger, resentment, shame, or guilt cloud our spirit mind. The truth is, everything that has happened had to happen. It was a growth experience. There was something you needed to know or learn. If you stay angry, hurt, afraid, ashamed, or guilty, you miss the lesson. You will be stuck in a cloud of pain.”

“I think we're at risk with our democracy. I think we're dealing with the most closed, imperialistic, nastiest administration in living memory. They even put Richard Nixon to shame.”

Thinking Memories Democracy Risk Shame Administration Nasty

Author:Wesley Clark

“We wouldn't pay to rent and watch the same painful movie two hundred fifty times, but somehow we let our mind replay a bad memory over and over, each time experiencing the same distress and shame.”

Mind Two Memories Pay Watches Hundred Shame Painful Fifty Distress Replay Bad Memories

Book:How to Train a Wild Elephant: And Other Adventures in Mindfulness

Source: How to Train a Wild Elephant: And Other Adventures in Mindfulness

“...there was a blond misty boy sitting beside me, and he looked at me, and I at him, and we were not strangers: our hands moved towards each other to embrace. I never heard his voice, for we did not speak; it is a shame, I should so like the memory of it. Loneliness, like fever, thrives on night, but there with him light broke, breaking in the trees like birdsong, and when sunrise came, he loosened his fingers from mine, and walked away, that misty boy, my friend.”

Source: Some postwar American writers

“For over two weeks, the defenders of Wake Island held off a vastly superior force of Japanese ships and troops, inspiring the whole nation with their plucky spirit and sacrifice. Unfortunately, Navy leaders at Pearl Harbor, struggling to protect what was left of the shattered Pacific Fleet, canceled a relief mission, allowing the island and its defenders to fall without support. Wake damaged the long-standing trust between the Corps and the Navy, a memory that still rankles Marines and shames sailors.”

“Poking at the memories, at the guilt she felt over her sister, was like prodding a bear that could wake and consume her at any moment.”

Fear Memories Sadness Shame Guilt Memory Melancholy Guilty Conscience

Book:Terra Nova

Source: Terra Nova