Quotes about shame

A collection of quotes on the topic of shame, use, likeness, doing.

Quotes about shame

“I thought, “I want to die. I want to die more than ever before. There’s no chance now of a recovery. No matter what sort of thing I do, no matter what I do, it’s sure to be a failure, just a final coating applied to my shame. That dream of going on bicycles to see a waterfall framed in summer leaves—it was not for the likes of me. All that can happen now is that one foul, humiliating sin will be piled on another, and my sufferings will become only the more acute. I want to die. I must die. Living itself is the source of sin.”

Osamu Dazai book No Longer Human

The Third Notebook:Part Two
No Longer Human

Dreams, Failure, Suffering, Chance

“He could only consider me as the living corpse of a would-be suicide, a person dead to shame, an idiot ghost.”

Osamu Dazai book No Longer Human

Third Notebook: Part Two
Source: No Longer Human

Suicide, Personality, Dead

“"It's not a shame to fail exams, but it's a shame to be satisfied with the habit of failing continuously." Ahmed Omaar”

Ahmed Omaar (1987)

Source: https://www.pinterest.com/ahmedomaar7/

“Fool me one time, shame on you. Fool me twice, can't put the blame on you. Fool me three times, fuck the peace sign. Load the chopper, let it rain on you.”

J. Cole (1985) American Song Writer, Rapper and former Pro Basketball Player, From Fayetteville, North Carolina

Source: Song No Role Modelz

Peace, Time, Fools

“Mine has been a life of much shame. I can't even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being.”

Osamu Dazai book No Longer Human

Source: No Longer Human

Life

“I thought that the only action a man could perform without shame was to take his life; that he had no right to diminish himself in the succession of days and the inertic of misery. No elect, I kept telling myself, but those who committed suicide.”

Emil M. Cioran book A Short History of Decay

A Short History of Decay (1949)

Life, Suicide, Success

“Success in life consists of standing without shame before God.”

Charbel Makhlouf (1828–1898) Lebanese Maronite monk and saint

Love is a Radiant Light: The Life & Words of Saint Charbel (2019)

God, Life, Success

“It's not a shame to fail exams, but it's a shame to be satisfied with the habit of failing continuously.”

Ahmed Omaar

“It's no shame to be born stupid. Only to die stupid.”

Erich Maria Remarque book Three Comrades

Source: Three Comrades

Stupidity

“Do not feel ashamed if the amount of charity is small because to refuse the needy is an act of greater shame.”

Ali book Nahj al-Balagha

Nahj al-Balagha

Feeling

“It is common opinion among us in regard to beauty and wisdom that there is an honourable and a shameful way of bestowing them. For to offer one’s beauty for money to all comers is called prostitution; but we think it virtuous to become friendly with a lover who is known to be a man of honour. So is it with wisdom. Those who offer it to all comers for money are known as sophists, prostitutors of wisdom.”

Xenophon (-430–-354 BC) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Words spoken by Socrates to Antiphon in Memorabilia, 1.6.11.

Wisdom, Money, Beauty, Way

“fool me once, shame on you. fool me twice, shame on me.”

Todd Strasser (1950) American author of young-adult and middle grade novels

Source: Count Your Blessings

Fools

“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

Source: An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire (2005), p. 86
Source: War Talk

Art, Music, Literature, Joy

“Few are the women and maidens who would let themselves think that one could at the same time be joyous and modest. They are all bold and coarse in their speech, in their demeanor wild and lewd. That is now the fashion of being in good cheer. But it is specially evil that the young maiden folk are exceedingly bold of speech and bearing, and curse like troopers, to say nothing of their shameful words and scandalous coarse sayings, which one always hears and learns from another.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Women, Fashion, Thinking, Learning

“Lying and guile need only to be revealed and recognized to be undone. When once lying is recognized as such, it needs no second stroke; it falls of itself and vanishes in shame.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Source: A Sincere Admonition to All Christians to Guard Against Insurrection and Rebellion (1522), p. 60

Lying

“I excused myself as soon as I finished eating, and boy did I stuff myself on that meal. I then walked outside onto the beach. The wine had long since gone to my head, making me feel a sense of dizzy invigoration. I started walking along the shore, taking in the magnificence of the gentle, moonlit ocean. It was so… romantic. I kept walking and walking with no destination in mind. The romance of it all filled me with despair and longing. I wanted a girlfriend to experience that moment with me, but no girl wanted to be my girlfriend. The only thing I could do was imagine how heavenly it would be to have a beautiful girl by my side. It is such a shameful tragedy.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

I ended up walking for two hours, and at the end of it I was crying to myself because I felt so sad.
My Twisted World (2014), Thoughts at 19, Longing

Beauty, Feeling, Imagination, Girl

“Please, don't talk to me about 'Pure Awareness' or 'Dwelling in the Absolute'.
I want to see how you treat your partner,
your kids, your parents, your precious body.
Please, don't lecture me about 'the illusion of the separate self' or how you achieved permanent bliss in just 7 days.
I want to feel a genuine warmth radiating from your heart.
I want to hear how well you listen,
take in information that doesn't fit your personal philosophy.
I want to see how you deal with people who disagree with you.
Don't tell me how awakened you are, how free you are from ego.
I want to know you beneath the words.
I want to know what you're like when troubles befall you.
If you can fully allow your pain and not pretend to be invulnerable.
If you can feel your anger yet not step into violence.
If you can grant safe passage to your sorrow yet not be its slave.
If you can feel your shame and not shame others:
If you can fuck up, and admit it.
If you can say 'sorry', and really mean it.
If you can be fully human in your glorious divinity.
Don't talk to me about your spirituality, friend.
I'm really not that interested.
I only want to meet YOU.
Know your precious heart.
Know the beautiful human struggling for the light.
Before 'the spiritual one'.
Before all the clever words.”

Jeff Foster (1980) Spiritual teacher

Source: https://www.facebook.com/LifeWithoutACentre/posts/1523252961105640

“There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Speech in http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020917-7.html Nashville, Tennessee, (September 17, 2002), in which the president confused a centuries-old proverb ("Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.") 2000s, 2002

Fools

“If a woman sleeps alone it puts a shame on all men. God has a very big heart, but there is one sin He will not forgive. If a woman calls a man to her bed and he will not go.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book Zorba the Greek

Source: Zorba the Greek

Men, God, Forgiveness, Sleep

“I believe, Eragon, that you are full of love and that you are looking for one who will reciprocate your affection. No shame exists in that.”

Christopher Paolini book Eragon

Source: Eragon

Love

“What will be left of the power of example if it is proved that capital punishment has another power, and a very real one, which degrades men to the point of shame, madness, and murder?”

Albert Camus book Reflections on the Guillotine

Reflections on the Guillotine (1957)

Men, Madness

“I mean that it is more natural for me to be wicked than virtuous, when I do a bad act, and I've done many, I never feel wither shame, remorse or fear, I sometimes wish it was not necessary as I don't like the trouble, but as for any moral sense of principle, I haven't a particle. Many people are like me as actions prove, but they are not so frank in owning it and insist on keeping up the humbug of virtue. You'll find that is true, Rose, when you know the world better.”

Louisa May Alcott A Long Fatal Love Chase

A Long Fatal Love Chase (1866)

People, World, Fear, Feeling

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

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Heart

“For a while, I thought of myself as an atheist until I realized it was a belief, too. It's a shame everything has to have a label. I feel that if I was figuratively dropped on the Earth and there was a political line, I would be just left of center. The difference for me is that conservatives are more interested in property values and rights and free markets, and liberals are more interested in human rights. In the end, there are people who don't fit into the marketplace and are not equipped. I believe the government should step in where the free market fails.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Las Vegas CityLife, August 9, 2007 http://www.lvcitylife.com/articles/2007/08/10/ae/stage/iq_15893857.txt Interviews, Print Interviews

People, Feeling

“You made me cry,
when you said goodbye
Ain't that a shame
My tears fell like rain
Ain't that a shame
You're the one to blame”

Fats Domino (1928–2017) American R&B musician

Ain't That a Shame (1955) co-written with Dave Bartholomew

Tear, Cry

“Cause I knew you were trouble when you walked in,
So shame on me now.
Flew me to places I'd never been,
So you put me down oh.”

Taylor Swift (1989) American singer-songwriter

I Knew You Were Trouble, written by Taylor Swift, Max Martin, and Shellback.
Song lyrics, Red (2012)

“Mansplaining is a sexist term designed to silence men via gender shaming.”

Markus Persson (1979) Swedish video game programmer

[Hansen, Steven, Minecraft billionaire feels oppressed by women, https://www.destructoid.com/minecraft-billionaire-feels-oppressed-by-women-363094.phtml, 12 November 2017, Destructoid, 2016-05-23]

Men, Silence

“If Germany, my beloved fatherland, of whom you know I am proud, will not accept me, then must I, in the name of God, again make France or England richer by one capable German; — and to the shame of the German nation.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Austrian Romantic composer

"Will mich Deutschland, mein geliebtes Vaterland, worauf ich (wie Sie wissen) stolz bin, nicht aufnehmen, so muß in Gottes Namen Frankreich oder England wieder um einen geschickten Deutschen mehr reich werden,- und das zur Schande der deutschen Nation."
Letter to Leopold Mozart (Vienna, 17 August 1782), from Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words by Friedrich Kerst, trans. Henry Edward Krehbiel (1906).

God

“He had two subjects of conversation, the shame and come-down of being a tramp, and the best way of getting a free meal.”

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 28, on Paddy the tramp

Way

“Avoid shame, but do not seek glory, — nothing so expensive as glory.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

Vol. I, ch. 4
Lady Holland's Memoir (1855)

“A person is strong only when he stands upon his own truth, when he speaks and acts from his deepest convictions. Then, whatever the situation he may be in, he always knows what he must say and do. He may fall, but he cannot bring shame upon himself or his cause.”

Mikhail Bakunin book God and the State

God and the State (1871; publ. 1882)
Context: A person is strong only when he stands upon his own truth, when he speaks and acts from his deepest convictions. Then, whatever the situation he may be in, he always knows what he must say and do. He may fall, but he cannot bring shame upon himself or his cause. If we seek the liberation of the people by means of a lie, we will surely grow confused, go astray, and lose sight of our objective, and if we have any influence at all on the people we will lead them astray as well — in other words, we will be acting in the spirit of reaction and to its benefit.

Truth, Strong, Personality

“You certainly know that We consider war to be the shame of mankind, but one situation that can be considered as worse is the decay of humanity. Armageddon should not be understood as only a physical battle. It is full of incalculable dangers, among which will be epidemics, but the most ruinous consequence will be psychic perversions. People will lose trust in one another, and will compete in doing evil. They will develop a persistent hatred of all except their own kind, and will sink into irresponsibility and depravity.”

Helena Roerich (1879–1955) Russian philosopher

286
Armageddon

War, People, Evil

“I hold my peace, sir? no;
No, I will speak as liberal as the north;
Let heaven and men and devils, let them all,
All, all, cry shame against me, yet I'll speak.”

William Shakespeare Othello

Source: Othello

Men, Peace, Cry

“It's such a shame to waste time. We always think we have so much of it.”

Mitch Albom For One More Day

Source: For One More Day

Thinking, Time

“It is shaming sometimes, how the body will not, or cannot, lie about emotions.”

Ian McEwan book On Chesil Beach

Source: On Chesil Beach

Lie

“Does a rake deserve to possess anything of worth, since he chases everything in skirts and then imagines he can successfully hide his shame by slandering [women in general]?”

Christine de Pizan (1365–1430) Italian French late medieval author

Source: Der Sendbrief vom Liebesgott / The Letter of the God of Love

Women, Imagination

“Watch out for each other. Love everyone and forgive everyone, including yourself. Forgive your anger. Forgive your guilt. Your shame. Your sadness. Embrace and open up your love, your joy, your truth, and most especially your heart.”

Jim Henson (1936–1990) American puppeteer

Love, Truth, Sadness, Forgiveness

“Ye Hypocrites, are these your pranks
To murder men and gie God thanks
Desist for shame, proceed no further
God won't accept your thanks for murder.”

Robert Burns (1759–1796) Scottish poet and lyricist

Men, God

“That's a shame. I'm sure somebody, somewhere, cares.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: The Faceless Ones

“Shame is a soul eating emotion.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Soul

“My hands are of your color, but I shame to wear a heart so white.”

William Shakespeare Macbeth

Variant: My hands are of your colour; but I shame
To wear a heart so white.
Source: Macbeth

Color, Heart

“Bloody thou art, bloody will be thy end;
Shame serves thy life and doth thy death attend.”

William Shakespeare Richard III

Source: Richard III

Life, Death, Art

“I feel shame, not for the wrong things I have done, but for the right things that I have failed to do.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

Feeling

“Give me hunger, pain and want,
Shut me out with shame and failure
From your doors of gold and fame,
Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger!

But leave me a little love.”

Carl Sandburg book Chicago Poems

Source: Chicago Poems

Love, Hunger, Pain, Failure

“The world and the universe is an extremely beautiful place, and the more we understand about it the more beautiful does it appear. It is an immensely exciting experience to be born in the world, born in the universe, and look around you and realise that before you die you have the opportunity of understanding an immense amount about that world and about that universe and about life and about why we're here. We have the opportunity of understanding far, far more than any of our predecessors ever. That is such an exciting possibility, it would be such a shame to blow it and end your life not having understood what there is to understand.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

An Interview by Sheena McDonald (1995)

Life, World, Beauty, Understanding

“For me, vulnerability led to anxiety, which led to shame, which led to disconnection, which led to Bud Light.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

Light

“It's such a shame that we know so little about our own country, that we can't find it in our hearts to love our own kind. Instead we admire those who show our country disrespect and betray its people.”

Orhan Pamuk book Snow

Source: Snow

Love, People, Heart, Country

“Give me strength, not to be better than my enemies, but to defeat my greatest enemy, the doubts within myself. Give me strength for a straight back and clear eyes, so when life fades, as the setting sun, my spirit may come to you without shame.”

P. C. Cast (1960) American writer

Life, Sun

“Look: the trees exist; the houses
we dwell in stand there stalwartly.
Only we
pass by it all, like a rush of air.
And everything conspires to keep quiet
about us,
half out of shame perhaps, half out of
some secret hope.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Duino Elegies

Source: Duino Elegies

Secret, Hope, Tree, Housing

“Her affection for him was now the breath and life of Tess's being; it enveloped her as a photosphere, irradiated her into forgetfulness of her past sorrows, keeping back the gloomy spectres that would persist in their attempts to touch her—doubt, fear, moodiness, care, shame. She knew that they were waiting like wolves just outside the circumscribing light, but she had long spells of power to keep them in hungry subjection there.”

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English novelist and poet

Source: Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Life, Fear, Light, Waiting

“Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive,
Half wishing they were dead to save the shame.
The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow;
They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats,
And flare up bodily, wings and all. What then?
Who's sorry for a gnat… or a girl?”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) English poet, author

Source: A Little Book Of Love Poems

Life, Girl, Dead

“Shame on the man who goes to his grave escorted by the miserable hopes that have kept him alive.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Hope

“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Books, World

“Let life be short, else shame will be too long.”

William Shakespeare Henry V

Source: Henry V

Life

“There is quite enough sorrow and shame and suffering and baseness in real life, and there is no need for meeting it unnecessarily in fiction.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Life, Suffering

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

Source: The Writing Life

Learning

“There is not a man of us who does not at times need a helping hand to be stretched out to him, and then shame upon him who will not stretch out the helping hand to his brother.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Time, Help

“It's a shame that we have to live, but it's a tragedy that we get to live only one life.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Life

“The poor maidservant who used to say that she only believed in God when she had a toothache puts all theologians to shame.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Tears and Saints (1937)

God

“It seemed that at the end of the lecture Dr. Krokowski was making propaganda for psycho-analysis; with open arms he summoned all and sundry to come unto him. "Come unto me," he was saying, though not in those words, " come unto me, all ye who are weary and heavy-laden." And he left no doubt of his conviction that all those present were weary and heavy-laden. He spoke of secret suffering, of shame and sorrow, of the redeeming power of the analytic. He advocated the bringing of light into the unconscious mind and explained how the abnormality was metamorphosed into the conscious emotion; he urged them to have confidence; he promised relief.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 4

Secret, Confidence, Light, Suffering

“The new hero-type favored by Aschenbach, and recurring in his books in a multiplicity of individual variants, had already been remarked upon at an early stage by a shrewd commentator, who had described his conception as that of “an intellectual and boyish manly virtue, that of a youth who clenches his teeth in proud shame and stands calmly on as the swords and spears pass through his body … the figure of Saint Sebastian is the most perfect symbol if not of art in general, then certainly of the kind of art in question.”

Thomas Mann book Death in Venice

Source: Death in Venice (1912), Ch. 2, as translated by David Luke

Books, Youth, Art, Question

“Hearing, one day, that a poor young girl of her acquaintance had been enticed to a fashionable house of ill-fame, she ran to the place, entered the house, and claimed the girl. She found there several gentlemen of the Court, whom she rebuked with a severity, the justice of which they confessed by sudden and precipitate flight; she then took the young girl by the hand and led her from the abode of shame.”

Josephine Butler (1828–1906) British feminist

1874 https://attackingthedevil.co.uk/related/thoughts.php

Justice, Girl, Fashion, Housing

“Maybe baseball has to accept that it is now more like classical music than popular music, with football and basketball — and soccer? — being the Justin Biebers and Lady Gagas of sports. Baseball need not hang its head in shame. A lot of things that are good and worthy are not popular. And baseball is plenty popular, for heaven's sake.”

Jay Nordlinger (1963) American journalist

2010s, Baseball and Its Worriers (2018)

Music, Sport, Football

“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.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

28 Gitanjali http://www.spiritualbee.com/gitanjali-poems-of-tagore/ (1912)

Secret, Fear, Failure

“Afterwards they did as the others had done, as human beings always do, as they themselves would do many times again in the strange future — they sat with their eyes half-closed and the same uneasy look of shame and terror in them as Amy and her lover.
But these two required no artificial stimulus for their love. They had no need of the night. And they felt no culpability. They were two grand young creatures, driven together naturally by the very force of their love, and their ardour cleansed everything, like fire. They were innocent. They had no regrets and felt no remorse. They thought they were united.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

The Inferno (1917), Ch. XV

Love, Lovers, Nature, Time

“Any attempt to escape the negative, to avoid it or quash it or silence it, only backfires. The avoidance of suffering is a form of suffering. The avoidance of struggle is a struggle. The denial of failure is a failure. Hiding what is shameful is itself a form of shame.”

Mark Manson (1984) American writer and blogger

Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (2016), Chapter 1, “Don’t Try” (p. 11)

Failure, Silence, Suffering

“I apologize in my capacity as leader of the NP to the millions who suffered wrenching disruption of forced removals; who suffered the shame of being arrested for pass law offences; who over the decades suffered the indignities and humiliation of racial discrimination.”

F. W. de Klerk (1936) South African politician

Testifying before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission at a special hearing in Cape Town https://web.archive.org/web/20050119042614/http://www.doj.gov.za:80/trc/media/1997/9705/s970514a.htm (May 1997) 1990s, 1997

Law, Suffering

“In effect it seemed to him that, though honor might possess certain advantages, yet shame had others, and not inferior: advantages, even, that were well-nigh boundless in their scope.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 3

“It is I who drink lonely Drinks at twelve, midnight, in hotels of strange towns, It is I who laugh, it is I who make love And then, feel shame, it is I who lie dying With a rattle in my throat. I am sinner, I am saint. I am the beloved and the Betrayed. I have no joys that are not yours, no Aches which are not yours. I too call myself I.”

Kamala Surayya (1934–2009) Indian author

Kamala Suraiyya Das

Love, Lie, Making love, Feeling

“Against us is the law
With its immensity of strength and power
Against us is the law!
Police know how to make a man
A guilty or an innocent
Against us is the power of police!
The shameless lies that men have told
Will ever more be paid in gold
Against us is the power of the gold!
Against us is racial hatred
And the simple fact that we are poor

My father dear, I am a prisoner
Don't be ashamed to tell my crime
The crime of love and brotherhood
And only silence is shame”

Joan Baez (1941) American singer

"The Ballad of Sacco and Vanzetti, Part Two"
Sacco e Vanzetti (1971)

Love, Men, Law, Silence

“Why, it was like reading about France and the French, before the ever memorable and blessed Revolution, which swept a thousand years of such villany away in one swift tidal-wave of blood -- one: a settlement of that hoary debt in the proportion of half a drop of blood for each hogshead of it that had been pressed by slow tortures out of that people in the weary stretch of ten centuries of wrong and shame and misery the like of which was not to be mated but in hell. There were two "Reigns of Terror," if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the "horrors" of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror -- that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.”

Mark Twain book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Ch. 13 http://www.literature.org/authors/twain-mark/connecticut/chapter-13.html A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889)

Death, Hunger, People, Hell

“A sadder vision yet: thine aged sire
Shaming his hoary locks with treacherous wile!
And dost thou now doubt Truth to be a liar?
And wilt thou die, that hast forgot to smile?”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Four Riddles, no. II
Rhyme? and Reason? (1883)

Truth, Age, Smile

“I became evil for no reason. I had no motive for my wickedness except wickedness itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved the self-destruction, I loved my fall, not the object for which I had fallen but my fall itself. My depraved soul leaped down from your firmament to ruin. I was seeking not to gain anything by shameful means, but shame for its own sake.”

Aurelius Augustinus book Confessions

II, 4
Confessions (c. 397)

Love, Soul, Motivation, Evil

“He who loves is not ashamed before men of what he does for God, neither does he hide it through shame though the whole world should condemn it.”

John of the Cross (1542–1591) Spanish mystic and Roman Catholic saint

Note to Stanza 29 part 4
Spiritual Canticle of The Soul and The Bridegroom, Notes to the Stanzas

Love, Men, God, World

“First of all we must insist that the immigrant that comes here is willing to become a Canadian and is willing to assimilate our ways, he should be treated on equal grounds and it would be shameful to discriminate against such a person for reasons of their beliefs or the place of birth or origin. But it is the responsibility of that person to become a Canadian in all aspects of life, nothing else but a Canadian. There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says that he is a Canadian, but tries to impose his customs and habits upon us, is not a Canadian. We have room for only one flag, the Canadian flag. There is room for only two languages here, English and French. And we have room for loyalty, but only one, loyalty to the Canadian people. We won’t accept anyone, I’m saying anyone, who will try to impose his religion or his customs on us.”

Wilfrid Laurier (1841–1919) 7th prime minister of Canada

allegedly said in 1907 according to 13 March 2013 article http://princearthurherald.com/en/politics-2/another-gaffe-by-trudeau-551 by Michael Eugenio of the Herald. The quote was also used 8 December 2015 by David Kendrick in Guelph Mercury https://www.guelphmercury.com/opinion-story/6163164-canada-is-losing-some-of-its-identity/ 3 March 2017 report by Melissa Martin of Winnipeg Free Press https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/special/goodnews/moment-of-clarity-in-my-canada-415358084.html described as having been wrongly attributed for at least 7 years, based on a Teddy Roosevelt quote Misattributed

Life, People, Religion, Way

“Sir,
Would you allow me, grateful as I am for the kind reception you once extended to me, to show my concern about maintaining your well-deserved prestige and to point out that your star which, until now, has shone so brightly, risks being dimmed by the most shameful and indelible of stains?”

Emile Zola J’accuse…!

J'accuse! (1898)

Star

“Beauty is a terrible and awful thing! It is terrible because it has not been fathomed and never can be fathomed, for God sets us nothing but riddles. Here the boundaries meet and all contradictions exist side by side. I am a cultivated man, brother, but I’ve thought a lot about this. It’s terrible what mysteries there are! Too many riddles weigh men down on earth. We must solve them as we can, and try to keep a dry skin in the water. Beauty! I can’t endure the thought that a man of lofty mind and heart begins with the ideal of the Madonna and ends with the ideal of Sodom. What’s still more awful is that a man with the ideal of Sodom in his soul does not renounce the ideal of the Madonna, and his heart may be on fire with that ideal, genuinely on fire, just as in his days of youth and innocence. Yes, man is broad, too broad, indeed. I’d have him narrower. The devil only knows what to make of it! What to the mind is shameful is beauty and nothing else to the heart. Is there beauty in Sodom? Believe me, that for the immense mass of mankind beauty is found in Sodom. Did you know that secret? The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man. But a man always talks of his own ache.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) Russian author

The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)

Men, God, Secret, Youth

“I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it's just too much. The current's too strong. They've got to let go, drift apart. That's how it is with us. It's a shame, Kath, because we've loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can't stay together forever.”

Kazuo Ishiguro book Never Let Me Go

Source: Never Let Me Go (2005), Chapter 23, p. 282

Love, People, Thinking, Strong

“Once shame touches your being at any point, even the most distant nerve is implicated, whether you know it or not; any fleeting encounter or random thought will rake up the anguish and add to it.”

Stefan Zweig book The Post Office Girl

The Post Office Girl (published posthumously in 1982)

Distant

“Hence I feel no shame in asserting that this whole region engirdled by the moon, and the center of the earth, traverse this grand circle amid the rest of the planets in an annual revolution around the sun. Near the sun is the center of the universe. Moreover, since the sun remains stationary, whatever appears as a motion of the sun is really due rather to the motion of the earth.”

Nicolaus Copernicus book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium

Book 1, Ch. 10
De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (1543)

Feeling, Universe, Appearance, Sun

“Everybody's having fun,
except me I'm the lonely one
I live in shame.”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

Goodbye to Romance, written by Ozzy Osbourne, Randy Rhoads and Bob Daisley.
Song lyrics, Blizzard of Ozz (1980)

“A nightingale dies for shame if another bird sings better.”

Robert Burton book The Anatomy of Melancholy

Section 2, member 3, subsection 6.
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part I

Bird, Singing

“Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer; there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness.”

Carl Sagan book Contact

Source: Contact (1985), Chapter 14 (p. 231, quoting George Santayana)

Youth, Happiness

“I can see her lookin fast in her faded jeans
She's a hard lovin woman got me feelin mean
Sometimes I think its a shame when I get feelin better when I'm feelin no pain
Sundown you better take care if I find you been creepin round my back stairs
Sundown you better take care if I find you been creepin round my back stairs”

Gordon Lightfoot (1938) Canadian singer-songwriter

Sundown, Track 7, Reprise
Sundown (1974)

Pain, Thinking

“If then we would indeed be “filled with wisdom and spiritual understanding;” if we would “walk worthy of the Lord unto all well pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God;” here let us fix our eyes! “Laying aside every weight, and the sin that does so easily beset us; let us run with patience the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Here best we may learn the infinite importance of Christianity. How little it can deserve to be treated in that slight and superficial way, in which it is in these days regarded by the bulk of nominal Christians, who are apt to think it may be enough, and almost equally pleasing to God, to be religious in any way, and upon any system. What exquisite folly it must be to risk the soul on such a venture, in direct contradiction to the dictates of reason, and the express declaration of the word of God! “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?”
LOOKING UNTO JESUS!
Here we shall best learn the duty and reasonableness of an absolute and unconditional surrender of soul and body to the will and service of God.—“We are not our own; for we are bought with a price,” and must “therefore” make it our grand concern to “glorify God with our bodies and our spirits, which are God’s.” Should we be base enough, even if we could do it with safety, to make any reserves in our returns of service to that gracious Saviour, who “gave up himself for us?” If we have formerly talked of compounding by the performance of some commands for the breach of others; can we now bear the mention of a composition of duties, or of retaining to ourselves the right of practising little sins! The very suggestion of such an idea fills us with indignation and shame, if our hearts be not dead to every sense of gratitude.
LOOKING UNTO JESUS!
Here we find displayed, in the most lively colours, the guilt of sin, and how hateful it must be to the perfect holiness of that Being, “who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity.” When we see that, rather than sin should go unpunished, “God spared not his own Son,” but “was pleased[99], to bruise him and put him to grief” for our sakes; how vainly must impenitent sinners flatter themselves with the hope of escaping the vengeance of Heaven, and buoy themselves up with I know not what desperate dreams of the Divine benignity!
Here too we may anticipate the dreadful sufferings of that state, “where shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth;” when rather than that we should undergo them, “the Son of God” himself, who “thought it no robbery to be equal with God,” consented to take upon him our degraded nature with all its weaknesses and infirmities; to be “a man of sorrows,” “to hide not his face from shame and spitting,” “to be wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities,” and at length to endure the sharpness of death, “even the death of the Cross,” that he might “deliver us from the wrath to come,” and open the kingdom of Heaven to all believers.
LOOKING UNTO JESUS!
Here best we may learn to grow in the love of God! The certainty of his pity and love towards repenting sinners, thus irrefragably demonstrated, chases away the sense of tormenting fear, and best lays the ground in us of a reciprocal affection. And while we steadily contemplate this wonderful transaction, and consider in its several relations the amazing truth, that “God spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all;” if our minds be not utterly dead to every impulse of sensibility, the emotions of admiration, of preference, of hope, and trust, and joy, cannot but spring up within us, chastened with reverential fear, and softened and quickened by overflowing gratitude. Here we shall become animated by an abiding disposition to endeavour to please our great Benefactor; and by a humble persuasion, that the weakest endeavours of this nature will not be despised by a Being, who has already proved himself so kindly affected towards us. Here we cannot fail to imbibe an earnest desire of possessing his favour, and a conviction, founded on his own declarations thus unquestionably confirmed, that the desire shall not be disappointed. Whenever we are conscious that we have offended this gracious Being, a single thought of the great work of Redemption will be enough to fill us with compunction. We shall feel a deep concern, grief mingled with indignant shame, for having conducted ourselves so unworthily towards one who to us has been infinite in kindness: we shall not rest till we have reason to hope that he is reconciled to us; and we shall watch over our hearts and conduct in future with a renewed jealousy, [Pg 243] lest we should again offend him. To those who are ever so little acquainted with the nature of the human mind, it were superfluous to remark, that the affections and tempers which have been enumerated, are the infallible marks and the constituent properties of Love. Let him then who would abound and grow in this Christian principle, be much conversant with the great doctrines of the Gospel.
It is obvious, that the attentive and frequent consideration of these great doctrines, must have a still more direct tendency to produce and cherish in our minds the principle of the love of Christ.”

William Wilberforce (1759–1833) English politician

Source: Real Christianity (1797), p. 240-243.

Love, Death, Wisdom, God

“Perhaps because of my fever, perhaps because of my lofty pain, I imagine that some one there is declaiming a great poem, that some one is speaking of Prometheus. He has stolen light from the gods. In his entrails he feels the pain, always beginning again, always fresh, gathering from evening to evening, when the vulture steals to him as it would steal to its nest. And you feel that we are all like Prometheus because of desire, but there is neither vulture nor gods.
There is no paradise except that which we create in the great tomb of the churches. There is no hell, no inferno except the frenzy of living.
There is no mysterious fire. I have stolen the truth. I have stolen the whole truth. I have seen sacred things, tragic things, pure things, and I was right. I have seen shameful things, and I was right. And so I have entered the kingdom of truth, if, while preserving respect to truth and without soiling it, we can use the expression that deceit and religious blasphemy employ.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

The Inferno (1917), Ch. XVII

God, Pain, Truth, Feeling

“By virtue of depression, we recall those misdeeds we buried in the depths of our memory. Depression exhumes our shames.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Anathemas and Admirations (1987)

Memory

“We're here today because of the courage of those who stood up, and took risks, to say that freedom is a right for all people, no matter what side of a wall they live on, and no matter what they look like. We are here today because of the Prague Spring -- because the simple and principled pursuit of liberty and opportunity shamed those who relied on the power of tanks and arms to put down the will of a people. We are here today because 20 years ago, the people of this city, took to the streets to claim the promise of a new day, and the fundamental human rights that had been denied them for far too long. Sametová Revoluce--the Velvet Revolution taught us many things. It showed us that peaceful protest could shake the foundations of an empire and expose the emptiness of an ideology. It showed us that small countries can play a pivotal role in world events and that young people can lead the way in overcoming old conflicts. And it proved that moral leadership is more powerful than any weapon.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2009, A World without Nuclear Weapons (April 2009)

People, World, Peace, Way

“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.”

Louis Kronenberger (1904–1980) American critic and writer

Source: Company Manners: A Cultural Inquiry into American Life (1954), p. 76.

Time, Falseness

“As much in vain, perhaps, will they search ancient history for examples of the modern Slave-Trade. Too many nations enslaved the prisoners they took in war. But to go to nations with whom there is no war, who have no way provoked, without farther design of conquest, purely to catch inoffensive people, like wild beasts, for slaves, is an hight of outrage against Humanity and Justice, that seems left by Heathen nations to be practised by pretended Christians. How shameful are all attempts to colour and excuse it!”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1770s, African Slavery in America (March 1775)

War, People, Justice, Way

“Everyone superior in one thing. In civilized circumstances, everyone feels superior to everyone else in at least one way; this is the basis of the general goodwill, inasmuch as everyone is someone who, under certain conditions, can be of help, and need therefore feel no shame in allowing himself to be helped.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

Section IX, "Man Alone with Himself" / aphorism 509
Human, All Too Human (1878), Helen Zimmern translation

Way, Feeling, Help

“Shameful it is to say, yet the common herd, if only we admit the truth, value friendships by their profit.”
Turpe quidem dictu, sed, si modo vera fatemur, vulgus amicitias utilitate probat.

Ovid book Epistulae ex Ponto

II, iii, 7-8; translation by Arthur Leslie Wheeler
Epistulae ex Ponto (Letters From the Black Sea)

Friendship, Truth

“Men the most infamous are fond of fame,
And those who fear not guilt yet start at shame.”

Charles Churchill (satirist) (1731–1764) British poet

The Author (1763), line 233

Men, Fear

“Our love of what is beautiful does not lead to extravagance; our love of the things of the mind does not make us soft. We regard wealth as something to be properly used, rather than as something to boast about. As for poverty, no one need be ashamed to admit it, the real shame is in not taking practical measures to escape from it.”

Pericles (-494–-429 BC) Greek statesman, orator, and general of Athens

Book 2.40
History of the Peloponnesian War

Love, Beauty, Wealth

“With this horrendous murder of the Jews we have lost the war. We have brought an indelible shame upon ourselves, a curse that cannot be lifted. We deserve no mercy, we are all guilty together.”

Wilm Hosenfeld (1895–1952) Righteous Among the Nations

16 June 1943; attributed by Richard J. Evans in " Why Did Stauffenberg Plant the Bomb? http://www.signandsight.com/features/1824.html", Süddeutsche Zeitung, 23 January 2009.

War

“The voice of the intelligence is soft and weak, said Freud. It is drowned out by the roar of fear. It is ignored by the voice of desire. It is contradicted by the voice of shame. It is hissed away by hate, and extinguished by anger. Most of all it is silenced by ignorance.”

Karl Menninger (1893–1990) American psychiatrist

The Progressive (October 1955)

Hate, Fear, Intelligence, Silence

“… it is shameful that there are so few women in science… In China there are many, many women in physics. There is a misconception in America that women scientists are all dowdy spinsters. This is the fault of men. In Chinese society, a woman is valued for what she is, and men encourage her to accomplishments yet she remains eternally feminine.”

Chien-Shiung Wu (1912–1997) Chinese American experimental physicist

As quoted in "Queen of Physics", Newsweek (20 May 1963) no. 61, 20.

Women, Men, Science

“The good historian, then, must be thus described: he must be fearless, uncorrupted, free, the friend of truth and of liberty; one who, to use the words of the comic poet, calls a fig a fig, and a skiff a skiff, neither giving nor withholding from any, from favour or from enmity, not influenced by pity, by shame, or by remorse; a just judge, so far benevolent to all as never to give more than is due to any in his work; a stranger to all, of no country, bound only by his own laws, acknowledging no sovereign, never considering what this or that man may say of him, but relating faithfully everything as it happened.”

Lucian (120) ancient Greek writer

How to Write History

Truth, Law, Country

“The second necessity for the Christians is that your Majesty establish the Holy Inquisition, because there are many who live according to the Jewish law, and according to the Mahomedan sect, without any fear of God or shame of the world. And since there are many spread all over the fortresses, there is the need of the Holy Inquisition and of many preachers. Your Majesty should provide such necessary things for your loyal and faithful subjects in India.”

Francis Xavier (1506–1552) Navarrese Basque Roman Catholic saint and missionary

Letter addressed to the King of Portugal on May 16, 1545. Joseph Wicki, Documenta Indica, Vol. IV, Rome, 1956. quoted from Goel, S. R. (1985). St. Francis Xavier: The man and his mission.

God, World, Fear, Faith

“This too I know—and wise it were
If each could know the same—
That every prison that men build
Is built with bricks of shame,
And bound with bars lest Christ should see
How men their brothers maim.”

Oscar Wilde book The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Pt. V, st. 29
The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

Men, Christ