91 Shame Quotes

Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart; nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants.

This Earle of Oxford, making of his low obeisance to Queen Elizabeth, happened to let a Fart, at which he was so abashed and ashamed that he went to Travell, 7 yeares. On his returne the Queen welcomed him home, and sayd, My Lord, I had forgott the Fart.

If I think of all those homosexuals in Germany today, I think I'd hand my German passport back, if I had one.

We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents.

Stand us against a wall and shoot us, well and good, you are victors. But why should I be brought before a Tribunal like a c-c-c-... I can't even get the word [criminal] out!

I do feel ashamed of having participated to the slightest even as a tool in those dark days. But I was obliged to serve the state to which I had taken an oath. It was a tragic fate.

Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.

'You know, that might be the answer - to act boastfully about something we ought to be ashamed of. That's a trick that never seems to fail.'

My soul knows my meat is doing bad things, and is embarrassed. But my meat just keeps right on doing bad, dumb things.'

One of the misfortunes of our time is that in getting rid of false shame we have killed off so much real shame as well.

What is the main thing in love? To know and to hide. To know about the one you love and to hide that you love. At times the hiding (shame) overpowers the knowing (passion). The passion for the hidden - the passion for the revealed.

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.

Here dead we lie because we did not choose To live and shame the land from which we sprung. Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose; But young men think it is, and we were young.

In the third grade a nun stuffed me in a garbage can under her desk because she said that's where I belonged.

I have since often observed, how incongruous and irrational the common temper of mankind is, especially of youth, to that reason which ought to guide them in such cases - viz. they are not ashamed to sin, and yet are ashamed to repent. Not ashamed of the action for which they ought justly to be esteemed fools, but are ashamed of the returning, which can only make them be esteemed wise men.

A girl, if she has any pride, is so ashamed of having anything she wishes to say out of the hearing of her own family, she thinks it must be something so very wrong, that it is ten to one, if she have the opportunity of saying it, that she will not. And yet she is spending her life, perhaps, in dreaming of accidental means of unrestrained communion.

On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A.

We must find our way to a time when faith, without evidence, disgraces anyone who would claim it.[2]

Soldiers now pose, thumbs up, before the atrocities they commit, and send off the pictures to their buddies and family. What is revealed by these photographs is as much the culture of shamelessness as the reigning admiration for unapologetic brutality. Ours is a society in which secrets of private life that, formerly, you would have given nearly anything to conceal, you now clamor to get on a television show to reveal.

Where popular authority is absolute and unrestrained, the people have an infinitely greater, because a far better founded, confidence in their own power. They are themselves, in a great measure, their own instruments. They are nearer to their objects. Besides, they are less under responsibility to one of the greatest controlling powers on the earth, the sense of fame and estimation. The share of infamy that is likely to fall to the lot of each individual in public acts is small indeed; the operation of opinion being in the inverse ratio to the number of those who abuse power. Their own approbation of their own acts has to them the appearance of a public judgment in their favor. A perfect democracy is, therefore, the most shameless thing in the world. As it is the most shameless, it is also the most fearless. No man apprehends in his person that he can be made subject to punishment.

Truth...never comes into the world but like a bastard, to the ignominy of him that brought her forth.

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers - stern and wild ones, - and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.

One of the strongest feelings I remember from my childhood is, precisely, of being humiliated; of being knocked about by words, acts, or situations. Isn't it a fact that children are always feeling deeply humiliated in their relations with grown-ups and each other? I have a feeling children spend a good deal of their time humiliating one another. Our whole education is just one long humiliation, and it was even more so when I was a child. One of the wounds I've found hardest to bear in my adult life has been the fear of humiliation, and the sense of being humiliated. . . Every time I read a review, for instance - whether laudatory or not - this feeling awakes. . . To humiliate and be humiliated, I think, is a crucial element in our whole social structure. It's not only the artist I'm sorry for. It's just that I know exactly where he feels most humiliated. Our bureaucracy, for instance. I regard it as in high degree built up on humiliation, one of the nastiest and most dangerous of all poisons.

My debts are large, my failures great, my shame secret and heavy; yet I come to ask for my good, I quake in fear lest my prayer be granted. ~ 28

This is practically the language used to fallen women, and chiefly by their own sex: 'God may forgive you, but we never can!' - a declaration which, however common, in spirit if not in substance, is, when one comes to analyse it, unparalleled in its arrogance of blasphemy. That for a single offence, however grave, a whole life should be blasted, is a doctrine repugnant even to Nature's own dealings in the visible world. ~ Ch. 11

When alone he secretly shook his head. But suddenly he recalled the analysis made by the Party secretary regarding 'two kinds of social system, two attitudes, and therefore two different results.' He felt as if he had seen a ray of light in the darkness. He said to himself, 'Lao Chiu can endure pain of such magnitude, and in spite of his burns he is always thinking of going back to the furnace. He wants to live. Why should he not be able to live?' That moment, suddenly the doctor and the patient were drawn closely together. From then on, the doctor thought of the patient often and also tried to compare himself with Lao Chiu. The more he compared the more he felt ashamed of himself and the more eager he was to do his best for this worker. So, from the very first day the assistant surgeon learned something from his patient.

Look at you just looking at the Rock, gawking at the Rock; you ought to be ashamed of yourself, a woman your age looking at the Rock like this!'

It's a fantastic religion, it makes absolutely no demands upon you at all. That's why it's not a great religion, all great religions are built on shame. You don't have any of that if you're Protestant. You go to church, sing a few hymns, have a cup of tea, everybody goes home and has a wank.

Not with a Club, the Heart is broken Nor with a Stone - A Whip so small you could not see it I've known To lash the Magic Creature Till it fell, Yet that Whip's Name Too noble then to tell. Magnanimous as Bird By Boy descried - Singing unto the Stone Of which it died - Shame need not crouch In such an Earth as Ours - Shame - stand erect - The Universe is yours.

For which he wex a litel red for shame, Whan he the peple upon him herde cryen, That to beholde it was a noble game, How sobreliche he caste doun his yen. Criseyda gan al his chere aspyen, And let so softe it in her herte sinke That to herself she seyde, 'Who yaf me drinke?'

These horrifying digital snapshots of the American dream in action on foreign soil are worse than anything even I could have expected. I have been in this business a long time and I have seen many staggering things, but this one is over the line. Now I am really ashamed to carry an American passport.

Niggle thought that he had never heard anything so generous as that Voice. It made Gentle Treatment sound like a load of rich gifts, and the summons to a King's feast. Then suddenly Niggle felt ashamed. To hear that he was considered a case for Gentle Treatment overwhelmed him, and made him blush in the dark. It was like being publicly praised, when you and all the audience knew that the praise was not deserved. Niggle hid his blushes in the rough blanket. There was a silence. Then the First Voice spoke to Niggle, quite close. 'You have been listening,' it said.

Rance: How shocking! His abnormal condition has driven him to seek refuge in religion. Always the last ditch stand of a man on the brink of disaster.

Mrs Prentice: Are you ashamed of the fact that you write to strange men? Prentice: There's nothing furtive in my relationship with the editor of The Guardian.

It is the one event in my life of which I am most ashamed and I have long feared would be made public.

The only art her guilt to cover, To hide her shame from every eye, To give repentance to her lover, And wring his bosom, is - to die.

I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time being ashamed.

Love is not a crime ... men and women should be proudly natural; they need not grovel on the earth and cover their faces for shame.

Here lies one who meant well, tried a little, failed much: - surely that may be his epitaph of which he need not be ashamed.

The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them - words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller, but for want of an understanding ear.

If you still have to ask, shame on you