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Shame Quotes

Browse 2566 quotes about Shame.

Shame Quotes

“I believe one of our souls' major purposes is to know, love, and express our authentic selves. To live the life and be the person we were created to be. However, our true selves only emerge when it's safe to do so. Self-condemnation, shame, and guilt send your true nature into hiding. It's only in the safety of gentle curiosity, encouragement, and self-love that your soul can bloom as it was created to do.”

“I pity bashful men, who feel the pain Of fancied scorn and undeserved disdain, And bear the marks upon a blushing face, OF needless shame, and self-impos'd disgrace.”

Men Feels Self Pain Faces Bears Mark Shame Pity Scorn Disgrace Disdain Blushing Bashful

Book:Poems

Source: Poems

“All violence is an attempt to replace shame with self-esteem.”

Self Violence Self Esteem Shame Esteem

Author:James Gilligan

“The drivenness in any addiction is about the ruptured self, the belief that one is flawed as a person. The content of the addiction, whether it is alcoholism or work, is an attempt at an intimate relationship. The workaholic with her work or the alcoholic with his booze are having a love affair. Each alters mood to avoid the feeling of loneliness and hurt in the underbelly of shame.”

Persons Self Feelings Belief Hurt Loneliness Shame Addiction Affair Mood Intimate Flawed Alcoholism Alcoholics Love Affair Booze Workaholic Intimate Relationships

Author:John Bradshaw

“I'm much more self-conscious clothed than unclothed. I'm a frustrated Page Three girl. I have no shame about my body.”

Self Body Girl Three Pages Conscious Shame Frustrated Self Conscious

Author:Susannah Constantine

“If same-sex relationships are really sinful, then why do they so often produce good fruit-loving families, open homes, self-sacrifice, commitment, faithfulness, joy? And if conservative Christians are really right in their response to same-sex relationships, then why does that response often produce bad fruit-secrets, shame, depression, loneliness, broken families, and fear?”

“Self-centered indulgence, pride and a lack of shame over sin are now emblems of the American lifestyle.”

Self Sin Pride Shame Lifestyle Indulgence Self Centered Emblems Self Indulgence

Author:Billy Graham

“Shame can be self-indulgence too.”

Self Shame Indulgence Self Indulgence

Book:Eyes, etc: a memoir

Source: Eyes, etc: a memoir

“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.”

Source: How Could You Do That?!: Abdication of Character, Courage, Consci

“In I Praise My Destroyer, Diane Ackerman demonstrates once again her love for the specific language that rises from the juncture of self and the natural world, and her skillful use of that language. Whether she turns her attention to the act of eating an apricot 'the color of shame and dawn,' or to 'the omnipotence of light,' or to grief when 'All the greens of summer have blown apart,' her linking of unique images, her energetic wit and whimsy, her compassionate investment in life, always bring new pleasures and perceptions to the reader.”

“Shame cannot survive being spoken. It cannot tolerate having words wrapped around it. What it craves is secrecy, silence, and judgment. If you stay quiet, you stay in a lot of self-judgment.”

Ifs Self Silence Quiet Judgment Shame Tolerate Crave Secrecy

Author:Brené Brown

“The joy of being a consumer is that it doesnt require thought, responsibility, self-awareness or shame: All you have to do is obey the first urge that gurgles up from your stomach. And then obey the next. And the next. And the next.”

Firsts Self Joy Next Responsibility Awareness Shame Self Awareness Consumers Urges Stomach

Author:Matt Taibbi

“Masturbation is a meditation on self-love. So many of us are afflicted with self-loathing, bad body images, shame about our body functions, and confusion about sex and pleasure, I recommend an intense love affair with yourself”

Self Body Sex Pleasure Meditation Self Love Function Shame Affair Intense Confusion Body Image Love Affair Loathing Masturbation Self Loathing Intense Love

Author:Betty Dodson

“that which is begun in self-confidence will end in shame.”

Ends Self Shame Self Confidence

Book:Complete Works of Richard Sibbes: (7 Volume Set)

Source: Complete Works of Richard Sibbes: (7 Volume Set)

“I am not racked with self-loathing. Some issues of guilt and shame, but I'm a pretty good guy.”

Self Guy Issues Shame Guilt Good Guy Loathing Self Loathing

Author:Marcus Brigstocke

“You can't hate yourself happy, You can't criticize yourself thin, You can't shame yourself wealthy. Real change begins with self-love and self care.”

Real Self Care Hate Self Love Shame Wealthy Criticize Self Care Hate You Real Change

Author:Jessica Ortner

“To be sure an European woman would blush to her fingers' ends at the very idea of appearing publicly stark naked; but education and prejudice are everything, since it is an axiom, that where there is no feeling of self-reproach, there can assuredly be no shame.”

Ideas Ends Self Feelings Prejudice Shame Fingers Naked Appearing Starks Axioms Reproach Nudity

Book:Narrative of a Five Years' Expedition Against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam: In Guiana ... from the Year 1772 to 1777 ; Elucidating the History of that Country and Describing Its Productions, Viz. Quadrupeds, Birds, [etc.] Trees, Shrubs, [etc.] with an Account of the Indians and Negroes of Guinea

Source: Narrative of a Five Years' Expedition Against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam: In Guiana ... from the Year 1772 to 1777 ; Elucidating the History of that Country and Describing Its Productions, Viz. Quadrupeds, Birds, [etc.] Trees, Shrubs, [etc.] with an Account of the Indians and Negroes of Guinea

“I became evil for no reason. I had no motive for my wickedness except wickedness itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved the self-destruction, I loved my fall, not the object for which I had fallen but my fall itself. My depraved soul leaped down from your firmament to ruin. I was seeking not to gain anything by shameful means, but shame for its own sake.”

Mean Soul Self Reason Fall Evil Objects Gains Destruction Shame Sake Seeking Ruins Fallen Motive No Reason Wickedness Foul Shameful Self Destruction Depraved Firmament

Book:The Confessions

Source: The Confessions

“An older child, one who possesses a conscience, will be troubled with self-reproaches and feelings of shame for his naughtiness, even if he is not discovered. But our two-year-olds and our three-year- olds experience guilt feelings only when they feel or anticipate disapproval from the outside. In doing this, they have taken the first steps toward the goal of conscience, but there is a long way ahead before the policeman outside becomes the policeman inside.”

“Will, therefore, is the unbroken determination to exercise free choice as well as self-restraint, in spite of the unavoidable experience of shame and doubt in infancy.”

Wells Self Choices Doubt Exercise Determination Shame Spite Restraint Infancy Unbroken Self Restraint Free Choice

Book:Insight and Responsibility

Source: Insight and Responsibility

“No one can give you anything-love, shame, self-esteem- until you give it to yourself. Today, give yourself good things.”

Giving Self Today Self Esteem Shame Good Things Esteem

Author:Martha Beck

“Choice! The key is choice. You have options. You need not spend your life wallowing in failure, ignorance, grief, poverty, shame, and self-pity. But hold on! If this is true then why have so many among us apparently elected to live in this manner? The answer is obvious. Those who live in unhappy failure have never exercised their options for a better way of life because they have never been aware that had any choices”

Ifs Way Needs Self Choices Answers Grief Poverty Ignorance Keys Shame Obvious Unhappy Pity Better Ways Self Pity Wallowing

Author:Og Mandino

“Nowhere has truth such a short life as in Sicily; a fact has scarcely happened five minutes before its genuine kernel has vanished, been camouflaged, embellished, disfigured, squashed, annihilated by imagination and self interest; shame, fear, generosity, malice, opportunism, charity, all the passions, good as well as evil, fling themselves onto the fact and tear it to pieces; very soon it has vanished altogether.”

“Because connection with others and our "best self" is the most primal need we have, shame feels absolutely awful.”

Needs Feels Self Connections Shame Awful Primal Best Self

Author:Christiane Northrup

“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.”

Knows Way Writing Self Easy Break Doubt Mass Shame Hungry Packs Ladders Herds Self-doubt Aspiring Writers

Author:Chuck Wendig

“We have made men proud of most vices, but not of cowardice. Whenever we have almost succeeded in doing so, God permits a war or an earthquake or some other calamity, and at once courage becomes so obviously lovely and important even in human eyes that all our work is undone, and there is still at least one vice of which they feel genuine shame. The danger of inducing cowardice in our patients, therefore, is lest we produce real self-knowledge and self-loathing, with consequent repentance and humility.”

“In the short summer night she learned so much. She would have thought a woman would have died of shame... She felt, now, she had come to the real bedrock of her nature, and was essentially shameless. She was her sensual self, naked an unashamed. She felt a triumph, almost a vainglory. So! That was how it was! That was life! That was how onself really was! There was nothing left to disguise or be ashamed of. She shared her ultimate nakedness with a man, another being.”

Men Real Self Night Left Felt Summer Ultimate Died Shame Naked Sensual Triumph Ashamed Disguise Shameless Bedrock Summer Nights Short Summer

Author:D. H. Lawrence

“It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.”

Source: Moab is My Washpot

“If Nietzsche is correct, that to shame a man is to kill him, then any honest attempt at autobiography will be an act of self-destruction.”

Ifs Men Self Honest Destruction Shame Autobiography Self Destruction

Author:Albert Camus

“There was a warmth of fury in his last phrases. He meant she loved him more than he her. Perhaps he could not love her. Perhaps she had not in herself that which he wanted. It was the deepest motive of her soul, this self-mistrust. It was so deep she dared neither realise nor acknowledge. Perhaps she was deficient. Like an infinitely subtle shame, it kept her always back. If it were so, she would do without him. She would never let herself want him. She would merely see.”

Ifs Want Soul Self Wanted Lasts Shame Acknowledge Phrases Motive Subtle Realising Warmth Fury Mistrust Want Him

Book:The Essential D.H. Lawrence

Source: The Essential D.H. Lawrence

“Suffering... is not just lots of pain but pain amplified by distinctly human emotions such as regret, self-pity, shame, humiliation, and dread.”

Humans Self Pain Suffering Emotion Regret Shame Pity Dread Humiliation Self Pity Human Emotions

Author:Michael Pollan

“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”)”

Self Worship Spring Understood Rain Tradition Dignity Shame Endless Awe Vitality Being There Cafes Exaltation Spring Rain

Author:Nancy Holder

“Shame works like the zoom lens on a camera. When we are feeling shame, the camera is zoomed in tight and all we see is our flawed selves, alone and struggling.(page 68)”

Self Feelings Struggle Pages Shame Cameras Lenses Flawed Zoom

Author:Brené Brown

“The mask was a thing on it's own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-conciousness.”

Self Behinds Shame Mask Liberated

Book:Lord of the Flies

Source: Lord of the Flies

“Why does shame and self-loathing become cruelty to the innocent ?”

Doe Self Shame Innocent Cruelty Loathing Self Loathing

Book:Merrick: a novel

Source: Merrick: a novel

“My name is Asher Lev... I am a traitor, an apostate, a self-hater, an inflicter of shame upon my family, my friends, my people; also, I am a mocker of ideas sacred to Christians, a blasphemous manipulator of modes and forms revered by Gentiles for two thousand years.”

People Years Two Ideas Self Christian Form Names Thousand My Friends My Family Shame Sacred Thousand Years Traitor Gentiles Manipulator

Book:My Name Is Asher Lev

Source: My Name Is Asher Lev

“To truly esteem oneself means that one must be capable of feeling shame or self-disgust when one does not live up to a certain standard”

Mean Doe Self Feelings Certain Capable Standards Shame Oneself Esteem Disgusting

Book:The End of History and the Last Man

Source: The End of History and the Last Man

“one must verge on the unknown, write toward the truth hitherto unrecognizable of one’s own sincerity, including the avoidable beauty of doom, shame, and embarrassment, that very area of personal self-recognition,(detailed individual is universal remember) which formal conventions, internalized, keep us from discovering in ourselves and others”

Writing Self Remember Individual Areas Universal Shame Including Recognition Sincerity Conventions Discovering Formal Doom Embarrassment Verge Self Recognition

Author:Allen Ginsberg

“Perfectionism is a self destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect, and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame.”

Ifs Looks I Can Self Feelings Belief Perfect Judgment Shame Blame Painful Primaries Fuel Destructive Perfectionism Belief Systems Self Destructive Painful Feelings

Book:Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

Source: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

“Feelings and stories of unworthiness and shame are perhaps the most binding element in the trance of fear. When we believe something is wrong with us, we are convinced we are in danger. Our shame fuels ongoing fear, and our fear fuels more shame. The very fact that we feel fear seems to prove that we are broken or incapable. When we are trapped in trance, being fearful and bad seem to define who we are. The anxiety in our body, the stories, the ways we make excuses, withdraw or lash out—these become to us the self that is most real.”

Way Feels Believe Real Self Facts Stories Feelings Body Seems Danger Broken Prove Elements Anxiety Shame Excuse Convinced Who We Are Fuel Fearful Trapped Incapable Ongoing Binding Lashes Trance

Author:Tara Brach

“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.”

Thinking Firsts Believe Self Done Facts Feelings Pain Lying Events Deserve Claims Shame Patterns Painful Who We Are Cycles Traps

Book:The Christian Atheist: Believing in God But Living as If He Doesn't Exist

Source: The Christian Atheist: Believing in God But Living as If He Doesn't Exist

“All my life I have battled the alarm clock, pummeling the snooze button over and over with mounting self-loathing until the shame is finally strong enough to lever me upright.”

Self Enough Strong Shame Clock Buttons Strong Enough Alarms Loathing Self Loathing Levers Alarm Clocks Snooze Button

Book:Warm Bodies and The New Hunger: A Special 5th Anniversary Edition

Source: Warm Bodies and The New Hunger: A Special 5th Anniversary Edition

“No one starts as a self-hater. But rack up all of your mistakes and take a large enough number of wrong turns in life and soon you stop trying to forgive yourself. Everywhere you look you find shame or failure staring back.”

Trying Looks Self Enough Turns Numbers Mistake Shame Forgiving Staring Stop Trying Forgive Yourself Racks Wrong Turn

Author:André Aciman

“Are you a censor? Do you tell people not to say “girl”? Shame on you! If nothing offends you, you’re a saint or you’re psychotic. If a few things offend you, deal with them--fairly. If you’re often offended by things, you’re probably a self-righteous asshole and it’s too bad you weren’t censored yourself--by your mother in an abortion clinic.”

People Ifs Self Mother Girl Deals Shame Saint Abortion Righteous Offended Psychotic Self Righteous Clinic Censored Shame On You

Author:William T. Vollmann

“We all place ourselves at various levels, and we are constantly falling from these heights. It is the falls we are ashamed of. Self-esteem is the cause of our shame, of our fall. It is this self-esteem that must be understood, and not the fall.”

Self Fall Causes Levels Self Esteem Understood Shame Various Esteem Height Ashamed

Book:Commentaries on Living 2

Source: Commentaries on Living 2

“Quite often I have been faced with people who were praised and admired for their talents and their achievements... According to prevailing attitudes, these people-the pride and joy of their parents-should have had a strong and stable sense of self-assurance. But the case is exactly the opposite... Whenever they suddenly get the feeling they have failed to live up to some ideal image or have not measured up to some standard, then they are plagued by anxiety or deep feelings of guilt and shame. What are the reasons for such disturbances in these competent, accomplished people?”

“We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased, we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too. The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people are pleased, we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.”

Source: The Collected Works of Langston Hughes: Essays on art, race, politics, and world affairs

“A tranquil conscience invites freedom from anguish, sorrow, guilt, shame, and self-condemnation. It provides a foundation for happiness. It is a condition of immense worth.”

Self Conditions Honesty Sorrow Conscience Shame Foundation Guilt Invites Immense Anguish Condemnation Tranquil

Author:Richard G. Scott

“I was doing a children's book on self-esteem, and I really felt like I wanted to shed the shame I'd been feeling - and maybe make it easier for women my age who had probably felt bad about themselves.”

Children Book Self Feelings Age Wanted Felt Self Esteem Easier Shame Esteem Shed Children's Books

Author:Jamie Lee Curtis

“We live in a world of self-deprecation, and while it’s healthy to make fun of ourselves from time to time, it bothers me when I see women of all ages belittling their accomplishments because they don’t want to appear boastful or overconfident. You don’t see a lot of guys out there underplaying their strengths or making light of what they’re good at, so why should women? While I get that there’s a fine line between owning your accomplishments and reciting every line of your résumé, there is absolutely no shame in being proud of what you’ve managed to achieve! Own it!”

World Want Should Self Light Age Guy Fun Lines Achieve Fine Proud Healthy Shame Bother Accomplishment Be Proud Fine Lines Belittle Reciting Self Deprecation Overconfident

Author:Lea Michele