Shame Quotes

When you think of the amount of turnover and profit made by most companies in this country - and especially the big chains, it's a shame that they pay their employees minimum wage and no more than that. What that really says is: 'We're paying you minimum wage, because we're not allowed to pay you any less.

~ Christina Engela

He restrained himself from another wisecrack, infinitesimally but with great effort attempting to close down his nightclub approach to education; every positive change in his life, every minute increment in character, acquired more or less through shame.

~ Richard Price

I won’t claim I’ve never in my life done anything I’m ashamed of, but I haven’t done anything for a good while. If not everyone would agree with the decisions I’ve made, that’s fine. What other people think has never made a situation right or wrong.

~ Curtis Sittenfeld

Denial forces victims to retreat in lifeless existence, dieing in the shadows of buried trauma and painful memories.

~ Trudy Metzger

I am continuously struck by how frequently the various thought processes of the inner critic trigger overwhelming emotional flashbacks. This is because the PTSD-derived inner critic weds shame and self-hate about imperfection to fear of abandonment, and mercilessly drive the psyche with the entwined serpents of perfectionism and endangerment. Recovering individuals must learn to recognize, confront and disidentify from the many inner critic processes that tumble them back in emotional time to the awful feelings of overwhelming fear, self-hate, hopelessness and self-disgust that were part and parcel of their original childhood abandonment.

~ Pete Walker

Since there was nothing at all I was certain of, since I needed to be provided at every instant with a new confirmation of my existence, since nothing was in my very own, undoubted, sole possession, determined unequivocally only by me — in sober truth a disinherited son — naturally I became unsure even of the thing nearest to me, my own body.

~ Franz Kafka

Perfectionism sucks the air out of your uniqueness and leaves you empty, away from who you could become.

~ Darryl Stewart Wellness

He likes to humble our foes by making them seem ridiculous. As he said to me the other day, ‘Kill a man, and you cede him honor in the eyes of the gods. Laugh at him and you shame him'.

~ Raymond E. Feist

Prose divides shame into stations.

~ Wayne Koestenbaum

Shame Sucker! You suck my joy away!You suck my fun away!You suck my happiness away!Shame, you suck!

~ Darryl Stewart Wellness

having DID in itself creates intense shame. A person continually has to deal with not remembering what one has said or done. Thus, the person with DID must be quick with inferences and cover-ups. Unfortunately, this often convinces her, as well as others, that she is a liar.

~ Elizabeth Howell

The spurned diagnosisShameBy shame, I have in mind the terrible, at times unfathomable, feeling of being outcast from human society, of being shunned and spurned, of being wanted by no one, and having no one who empathizes with you (Lynd 1958). Part of this experience of shame is the focus on the inadequacies of oneself in the eyes of others and oneself, and of feeling mortified, wanting to disappear, to hide inside a crack in the wall (Lewis 1971).

~ Elizabeth Howell

Shame eats away at the core of who we are.

~ Christine Caine

Laurence felt a weird combination of shame and rage, as though he'd grown another new body part just in time to get punched in it.

~ Charlie Jane Anders

There is no disgrace in being knocked down, there is only shame in not getting back up; never quit!

~ Ken Poirot

When we are experience shame we are often thrown into crisis mode...In this mode, the neocortex is bypassed and our acess to advanced, rational, calm thinking and processing of emotion all but disappears...we find ourselves becoming aggressive, wanting to run and hide and feeling paralyzed...

~ Brené Brown

When shamings are delivered like remotely administered drone strikes, nobody needs to think about how ferocious our collective power might be. The snowflake never needs to feel responsible for the avalanche.

~ Jon Ronson

Shames the shadow of love she thought

~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

Are you a part of a herd? Then shame on you! Until you leave your herd, you are no one!

~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Do not humiliate people, shame is a lifetime lasting effect that can be nursed but can never be cured.

~ Fort Free

[L]ove ... privileges another to see us in ways that would shame us and disgust others without the intervention of love.

~ William Ian Miller

For the first time in her life, Jocelyn felt the hot shame of being underdressed for a party.

~ Heidi Schulz

[W]e all care deeply about things that seem totally inconsequential to other people. We all carry around with us the flotsam and jetsam of perceived humiliations that actually mean nothing. We are a mass of vulnerabilities, and who knows what will trigger them?

~ Jon Ronson

Many of us live in denial of who we truly are because we fear losing someone or something-and there are times that if we don't rock the boat, too often the one we lose is ourselves...It feels good to be accepted, loved, and approved of by others, but often the membership fee to belong to that club is far too high of a price to pay.

~ Dennis Merritt Jones

When you're hounded by the shame of the past, you can turn into a pretty miserable person who is always trying to measure up and please others.

~ Ed Cyzewski

As a society, our decision to heap shame and contempt upon those who struggle and fail in a system designed to keep them locked up and locked out says far more about ourselves than it does about them.

~ Michelle Alexander

It may be somewhat paradoxical to refer to shame as a 'feeling,' for while shame is initially painful, constant shaming leads to a deadening of feeling. Shame, like cold, is, in essence, the absence of warmth. And when it reaches overwhelming intensity, shame is experienced, like cold, as a feeling of numbness and deadness. [In Dante's Inferno] the lowest circle of hell was a region not of flames, but of ice---absolute coldness.

~ James Gilligan

Fear and shame are the backbone of my self-control. They are the source of inspiration, my insurance against becoming entirely unacceptable. They help me do the right thing. And I am terrified of what I would be without them. Because I suspect that, left to my own devices, I would completely lose control of my life.

~ Allie Brosh

The best way to avoid being confused about Bruce Jenner is get your head out of his bedroom and closet, and then think about all of the things you've been hiding and been miserable about. So what he made his announcement via media. Books, music, movies, business launches are announced in the same manner. Just focus on the feeling of finally disclosing something that enables you to be free and to live as authentically as possible. And then imagine what it's like to own your truth, tell it your way, thus taking away anyone else's ability to spin it their way or use it against you. If you can do any of the above, you will no longer be confused.

~ Robin Caldwell

She that in life and love refuses me, In death and shame my partner she shall be.

~ Thomas Middleton

Tis time to die, when 'tis a shame to live.

~ Thomas Middleton

We are not the ones who will achieve success and put this world to shame, but God will do this

~ Sunday Adelaja

There is not one Indian in the whole of this country who does not cringe in anguish and frustration because of these textbooks. There is not one Indian child who has not come home in shame and tears.

~ Rupert Costo

He knew me. He knew me through and through and he found no shame in me.

~ Ted Dekker

Shame was one of those things that had to be excised like a cancer, but it was a hard thing to remove when it was wrapped around your heart.

~ Simon Wood

Shame lurks in the pockets of the mind (or spirit), like lint. No matter how brave a face you put on things – and believe me, I did – you always have to face yourself in the end.

~ Beverly Rycroft

I understood that no one could have lobbed such a stinging wad of shame out into the world without having a considerable personal reserve of it to draw on.

~ Barbara Ehrenreich

Guilt is one side of a nasty triangle, the other two are shame and stigma. This grim coalition combines to inculpate women themselves of the crimes committed against them.

~ Germaine Greer

Do no be ashamed to make a temporary withdrawal from the field if you see that your enemy is stronger than you; it is not winning or losing a single battle that matters, but how the war ends.

~ Paulo Coelho

Teach them the shame that tells the lie, “I am unforgivable,” when the truth is, “I feel unforgivable, but it was out of my control.” Never let them switch those round right or The Adversary will liberate them in a heartbeat, like a bird flying from a cage.

~ Geoffrey Wood