Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
One's own guilt or shame can feel like a harsher prison than any jail.
In plain terms
Your own mind can be a prison.
What can you take from it?
Inner shame can trap you worse than walls.

Where it applies

  • feeling guilty
  • self-reflection
  • struggling with shame

Putting it to work

  • address inner guilt
  • practice self-forgiveness

Questions to consider

  • What traps you inside?
  • How do you free yourself?

Another view

External forces can also limit freedom.

More from Nathaniel Hawthorne

  1. Life is made up of marble and mud.

    Permalink to quote #58
  2. The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.

    Permalink to quote #60
  3. God will give him blood to drink!

    Permalink to quote #57

Related quotes

  1. You know what my favourite quotation is?:It's from Chaucer... Criseyde says it, 'I am myne owene woman, wel at ese.'

    Mary McCarthyMary McCarthy quote #1
  2. Anything you see in me is in you. If you want to see a vicious killer, that's who you'll see, do you understand that? If you see me as your brother, that's wha…

    Charles MansonCharles Manson quote #1
  3. I had discovered that a person does not have to be this or be that or be anything, not even oneself. One is free. [citation needed]

    Walker PercyWalker Percy quote #2