Shame Quotes

I was ashamed of myself for being ashamed of myself. I didn't like feeling like that.

~ Benjamin Alire Sáenz

Do not 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

I am not ashamed that I was once a vacuum-cleaner salesman, only that I was a *good* vacuum-cleaner salesman.

~ Robert Morley

...shame spreads through his body like a drop of red dye in water.

~ Zak Ebrahim

When you're ashamed of their action, to ask them the reason of their actions can make you a fool.

~ Auliq Ice

The more judgmental a person is the sadder they are.

~ David W. Earle

Consider letting go of the barriers between yourself and others, let go of the definition our culture has inflicted upon us and allow the best part of ourselves to connect with the wondrous parts of others. Allow yourself to connect in a deeper and more profound way.

~ David W. Earle

When I learned about the gray existing between the black and white of absolute terms, I began to experience more peace. The more I expanded my gray areas (more than 50 shades), the more peace I experienced in my life.

~ David W. Earle

Do not ever get agitated by provoking thoughts and actions. Always keep your calm. This will shame the alien.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

She's not ashamed of loving, although those she's loved are few in number; it was/is sweet and true. She's only ashamed she used love as an excuse.

~ Donna Lynn Hope

...research tells us that we judge people in areas where we're vulnerable to shame, especially picking folks who are doing worse than we're doing. If I feel good about my parenting, I have no interest in judging other people's choices. If I feel good about my body, I don't go around making fun of other people's weight or appearance. We're hard on each other because we're using each other as a launching pad out of our own perceived shaming deficiency.

~ Brené Brown

There is a quiet transformation happening that is moving us from 'turning on each other' to 'turning toward each other.' Without question, that transformation will require shame resilience. If we're willing to dare greatly and risk vulnerability with each other, worthiness has the power to set us free.

~ Brené Brown

Mae's first impulse was to die of shame, but she realized after a hot, stomach-clenching moment that this was probably impractical.

~ Sarah Rees Brennan

I remember being a teenager and being ashamed of my musical tastes, at least some of them. My Brian Wilson and Beach Boys fandom, which is as important to me as anything else, was almost like a porn stash. Hide that shit, someone's coming! You couldn't look like me and be black in West Philadelphia and love the Beach Boys the way I did.

~ Ahmir Questlove Thompson

I am protective of the gentle slope of stomach bulging like an early pregnancy, at my waist. I've earned its existence with everything I've been forced to swallow.

~ Stephanie Roberts

Now since shame is a mental picture of disgrace, in which we shrink from the disgrace itself and not from its consequences, and we only care what opinion is held of us because of the people who form that opinion, it follows that the people before whom we feel shame are those whose opinion of us matters to us.

~ Aristotle

She had heard it was easy to blame others for one's own failures. But that wasn't exactly accurate. It was easy to blame herself for what had happened--hard to live with it.

~ Frank Beddor

If one looks at a balancing scale putting “fear of change” on one side and “status quo” on the other, they are often in balance. Change is hard. We tend to accept our condition and no matter how painful, we will not change until the balancing scale is tipped - only when the discomfort becomes greater than the fear of change does the scale tip.

~ David W. Earle

Late one night, during a toss-and-turn fretful sleep, I pondered my crisis. No solutions were on the horizon. I, again, wasted my psychic energy with prayer. Nothing. No angel on a white cloud. No rainbow’s pot of gold. No way to control the people I loved. As I rolled over and put the pillow over my head attempting to block all that was negative, I silently screamed for rescue. Then, in a far away and distinct part of my brain, a small voice said, “You have to do this on your own.”I thought, “Was that the best You can do?” This god, to whom I was desperately sending burnt offerings of my own humiliation, couldn’t send an avenging angel or a wise man imparting wisdom? All You can give me is this feeble message of abandonment? At that moment, I quit believing in that god.

~ David W. Earle

It was His gentle voice who calledand sent His angel pain to guide me, through the long ‘n dusty corridors, and empty hallways of my soul.

~ David W. Earle

Knowing what I do now, I think about shame and worthiness in this way: 'It's the album, not the picture.' If you imagine opening up a photo album, and many of the pages are full eight-by-ten photos of shaming events, you'll close that album and walk away thinking, Shame defines that story. If, on the other hand, you open that album and see a few small photos of shame experiences, but each one is surrounded by pictures of worthiness, hope, struggle, resilience, courage, failure, success, and vulnerability, the shame experience are only a part of a larger story. They don't define the album.

~ Brené Brown

Her only shame was that she felt none.

~ Nicholas Evans

Recovering is a process of coming to experience a sense of self. More precisely, it is a process of learning to sense one's self, to attune to one's subjective physical, psychic, and social self- experience. These woman's core sense of shame and their difficulty tolerating painful emotions had led them to avoid turning their attention inward to their internal sense of things. In recovering, they came to their senses and learned to trust their sensed experience, in particular their sense of enoughness.

~ Sheila M. Reindl

. . . have not some religions, including the most influential forms of Christianity, taught that the heart of man is totally corrupt? How could the course of religion in its entire sweep not be marked by practices that are shameful in their cruelty and lustfulness, and by beliefs that are degraded and intellectually incredible? What else than what we can find could be expected, in the case of people having little knowledge and no secure method of knowing; with primitive institutions, and with so little control of natural forces that they lived in a constant state of fear?

~ John Dewey

Fool me once, fool me twice, but shame on me if you fool me thrice.

~ Nabil N. Jamal

Shame hates it when we reach out and tell our story. It hates having words wrapped around it- it can't survive being shared. Shame loves secrecy. When we bury our story, the shame metastasizes.

~ Brené Brown

It is also a warning. It is a warning that, if nobody reads the writing on the wall, man will be reduced to the state of the beast, whom he is shaming by his manners.

~ Mahatma Gandhi

The book of Jonah becomes an embarrassing and public reading of your family business. (page iii)

~ Michael Ben Zehabe

Sugar cane reach up to GodAnd every baby cryingShame the blanket of my nightAnd all my days are dying

~ Maya Angelou

And I will raise up for them a plant of renown, and they shall be no more consumed with hunger in the land, neither bear the shame of the heathen any more.

~ Anonymous

each hour is a room of shame, and I amswimming, swimming, holding my head up,smiling, joking, ashamed, ashamed,like being naked with the clothed, or beinga child, having to try to behavewhile hating the terms of your life.

~ Sharon Olds

If you feel ashamed about your need for love & support, it's because you were made to feel this way as a child. It's not a sign of weakness to want affirmation, reassurance or someone to count on; these are natural, appropriate needs. Just make sure to be there for yourself first.

~ Marcia Sirota

Don't stay too long in the shame-filled grounds of relapse. Fertile soil awaits your return and your recoverying.

~ Holli Kenley

I obscenity in the milk of my shame.

~ Ernest Hemingway

Shame is like melting. You can actually feel your muscles sag and drop, as if your body is preparing you to crawl, or possibly ooze, to the nearest exit.

~ Maureen Johnson

Only love can neutralize shame.

~ Omar Manejwala

I can't get myself to say what happened next. I cannot cope with even thinking about this let alone living with it.It is so degrading and I try to forget, it hurts so much because she is my mother.- Graham talks about being sexually abused by his mother

~ Carolyn Ainscough

He, the man, had seen her, touched her, and had not validated her beauty, her womanliness. He had turned away and gone to his own bed. Like Eve after the fall, her nakedness was obscene to her now.

~ Naomi Ragen

I'd never undetstood how Hana Could lie so often and easily. But just like anyhting else, lying becomes easier the more you do it.

~ Lauren Oliver

You cannot shame or belittle people into changing their behaviors.

~ Brené Brown