Quotes
Quotes about Shame
Saint Augustine! well hast thou said,
That of our vices we can frame
A ladder, if we will but tread
Beneath our feet each deed of shame.
Blind and naked Ignorance
Delivers brawling judgments, unashamed,
On all things all day long.
Authors--essayist, atheist, novelist, realist, rhymester, play your part,
Paint the mortal shame of nature with the living hues of art.
To be discontented with the divine discontent, and to be ashamed with the noble shame, is the very germ of the first upgrowth of all virtue.
Laborin' man an' laborin' woman
Hev one glory an' one shame;
Ev'y thin' thet's done inhuman
Injers all on 'em the same.
Ah! what if some unshamed iconoclast
Crumbling old fetish raiments of the past,
Rises from dead cerements the Christ at last?
What if men take to following where He leads,
Weary of mumbling Athanasian creeds?
Life is (I think) a blunder and a shame.
The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.
I once admitted--to my shame--
That football was a brutal game.
Because She hates it.
And there's a lust in man no charm can tame
Of loudly publishing our neighbour's shame;
On eagles' wings immortal scandals fly,
While virtuous actions are but born and die.
Who fears to speak of Ninety-eight?
Who blushes at the name?
When cowards mock the patriot's fate,
Who hangs his head for shame?
Speak the truth and shame the Devil.
There are few people who would not be ashamed of being loved when they love no longer.
What a chimera, then, is man! what a novelty, what a monster, what a chaos, what a subject of contradiction, what a prodigy! A judge of all things, feeble worm of the earth, depositary of the truth, cloaca of uncertainty and error, the glory and the shame of the universe!
Whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame.
A workman that needeth not to be ashamed.
...to be acutely conscious is a disease, a real, honest-to-goodnes disease." My debauchery I undertook solitarily, by night, covertly, fearfully, filthily, with a shame that would not abandon me... I was then already bearing the underground in my soul.
The best-selling formula for our times insists on the combination of frank sex and technical information. The reader enjoys the sex, and, if he feels any shame in this, it can dissolve in a sense of virtue that he is learning how an airport is run, or a bank, or the White House, or a nuclear installation.
I prayed and was ashamed of praying
We were all caught in the shame of sleep
Between man and man at the last there rests at least shame
I sit in mine own lodgings feeling truly in a wretched dim hell of mine own making, spent, used, shameless, shameful
And then I see myself as ageing, bald, rheumy, three teeth but newly drawn, a man who should think it foul shame to drivel and froth so in youth's lust
It was not a question of being cheerful, rather of shedding the shameful rotting stuff that was himself by making that inner nub which cried I, I, I into the centre of something free of the agony of thought
It is somewhat childish to be angry and ashamed
