Quotes about shame (850 quotes, page 4)

“We bow our heads in worship on this day and give thanks to the Almighty for the bounty He has bestowed upon us over the past year. We raise our voices in holy gladness to celebrate the victory of the risen Christ over the terrible forces of death. Easter is a joyful festival! It is a celebration because it is indeed a festival of hope! Easter marks the renewal of life! The triumph of the light of truth over the darkness of falsehood! Easter is a festival of human solidarity, because it celebrates the fulfilment of the Good News! The Good News borne by our risen Messiah who chose not one race, who chose not one country, who chose not one language, who chose not one tribe, who chose all of humankind! Each Easter marks the rebirth of our faith. It marks the victory of our risen Saviour over the torture of the cross and the grave. Our Messiah, who came to us in the form of a mortal man, but who by his suffering and crucifixion attained immortality. Our Messiah, born like an outcast in a stable, and executed like criminal on the cross. Our Messiah, whose life bears testimony to the truth that there is no shame in poverty: Those who should be ashamed are they who impoverish others. Whose life testifies to the truth that there is no shame in being persecuted: Those who should be ashamed are they who persecute others. Whose life proclaims the truth that there is no shame in being conquered: Those who should be ashamed are they who conquer others. Whose life testifies to the truth that there is no shame in being dispossessed: Those who should be ashamed are they who dispossess others. Whose life testifies to the truth that there is no shame in being oppressed: Those who should be ashamed are they who oppress others.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

At his speech in Moria, on 3 April 1994
1990s, Speech at the Zionist Christian Church Easter Conference (1994)

Life , Death , Truth , Faith

“My work will use everything that it can to communicate. It will use any trick; it'll do anything — absolutely anything — to communicate and to win the viewer over. Even the most unsophisticated people are not threatened by it; they aren't threatened that this is something they have no understanding of. They can look at it and they can participate with it. And also somebody who has been very highly educated in art and deals with more esoteric areas can also view it and find that the work is open as far as being something that wants to add more to our culture. The work wants to meet the needs of' the people. It tries to bring down all the barriers that block people From their culture. that shield and hide them. It tells them to embrace the moment instead of always feeling that they're being indulged by things that they do not participate in. It tells them to believe in something and to eject their will. The idea of St. John and baptism right now is that there are greater things to come. And it's about embracing guilt and shame and moving forward instead of letting this negative society always thwart us — always a more negative society, always more negative.”

Jeff Koons (1955) American artist

Partly cited in: Linda Weintraub, Arthur Coleman Danto, Thomas McEvilley. Art on the edge and over: searching for art's meaning in contemporary society, 1970s-1990s. Art Insights, Inc., 1996. p. 201; And cited in Kristine Stiles, ‎Peter Howard Selz (1996). Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists' Writings. p. 381
"From Full Phantom Five," 1988

People , Education , Art , Feeling

“There the Unstruck Music eddies around the Infinite One;
There in the midst the Throne of the Unheld is shining, whereon the great Being sits —
Millions of suns are shamed by the radiance of a single hair of His body.”

Kabir (1440–1518) Indian mystic poet

Songs of Kabîr (1915)

Music , Sun

“Shame hates to have words wrapped around it. If we talk about it, it loses its grip on us.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

University of Houston, Pride Stories http://www.uh.edu/pride-stories/Brene-Brown/Brene-Brown-Story%20/index.php

Hate

“The war is total disaster. It's a catastrophe, nothing less. It is such a shame that this took place. In fact, I gained a lot of respect for our current president's father by the fact that he had the sense not to go in to Iraq. He won the war and then said let's not go the rest of the way and he turned out to be right. And Saddam Hussein, whether they like him or didn't like him, he hated terrorists. He'd shoot and kill terrorists. When terrorists came in to his country, which he did control and he did dominate, he would kill terrorists. Now it's a breeding ground for terrorists. So, look, the war is a total catastrophe…and they have a civil war going on.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Interview on "The Situation Room" with Wolf Blitzer http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0703/16/sitroom.03.html (16 March 2007)
2000s

Hate , War , Way , Sense

“Because Impudence is a Vice, it does not follow that Modesty is a Virtue; it is built upon Shame, a Passion in our Nature, and may be either Good or Bad according to the Actions perform'd from that Motive.”

Bernard Mandeville book The Fable of the Bees

Remark C, p. 65
The Fable of the Bees (1714)

Motivation , Nature , Passion

“The sky was aquamarine, stroked with clouds. She could smell the grass and taste the scent of small, crushed flowers. She looked back up over her forehead at the gray-black wall towering behind her, and wondered if the castle had ever been attacked on days like this. Did the sky seem so limitless, the waters of the straits so fresh and clean, the flowers so bright and fragrant, when men fought and screamed, hacked and staggered and fell and watched their blood mat the grass?
Mists and dusk, rain and lowering cloud seemed the better background; clothes to cover the shame of battle.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Use of Weapons (1990), Chapter Two (pp. 50-51).

Men , Flowers , Grass , Water

“This wicked man, the repository and embodiment of many forms of soul-destroying hatreds, this monstrous product of former wrongs and shame, has now resolved to try to break our famous Island race by a process of indiscriminate slaughter and destruction. What he has done is to kindle a fire in British hearts, here and all over the world, which will glow long after all traces of the conflagration he has caused in London have been removed. He has lighted a fire which will burn with a steady and consuming flame until the last vestiges of Nazi tyranny have been burnt out of Europe, and until the Old World—and the New—can join hands to rebuild the temples of man's freedom and man's honour, upon foundations which will not soon or easily be overthrown.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Broadcast (11 September 1940), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill, 1939–1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983), p. 779
The Second World War (1939–1945)

World , Soul , Freedom , Light

“4243. Speak the Truth, and shame the Devil.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Truth

“It is a shame when we must regard a people as an enemy. It is a shame and a regret when the two peoples share so much. And it is a shame, a regret, and a tragedy when those peoples meet as individuals and find much to admire.”

Sherwood Smith (1951) American fantasy and science fiction writer

King's Shield (Inda #3, 2008)

People

“We weren't that close. I'd had friends die before that. And even the way that he did it, it was kind of a twist, but other than that, I'd been through it before. But it's a shame, and it's a shame for his daughter, for one, and it's a shame for fans. But really it's a personal thing, and it was a drag. I wish it didn't happen. And I also think like if he had just kind of hung on for six months, who knows, six months later he could've been a completely different guy.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

When asked if he was close to Kurt Cobain and if his death affected him in a personal way - Howard Stern Show, June 2007 ** Chris Cornell on Pearl Jam, Eddie Vedder, Alice in Chains, Nirvana and Kurt Cobain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQzyZfhutYk,
Solo career Era

Way , Guy , Thinking , Personality

“I had yet to learn that no Bedu thinks it shameful to beg, and that often he will look at the gift which he has received and say, ‘Is this all that you are going to give me?’ I was seeing the worst side of their character, and was disillusioned and resentful, and irritated by their assumption of superiority. In consequence I was assertive and unreasonable.”

Wilfred Thesiger book Arabian Sands

Source: Arabian Sands (1959), p. 49.

Thinking , Learning

“I am so far away from being the person I want to be. I am a terrible person and I am overwhelmed with guilt. I am paralyzed with shame and fear. If I work hard at improving myself each day, I may get a little tiny bit better, but I won't get much better—I'll never be great. It's too late for me. I've really blown it.”

John S. Hall (1960) Poet, author, singer, lawyer

November 22
Quotes from Daily Negations (2007)

Fear , Personality

“Both views have had their glory moments, and both have had their moments of shame. Whether we’re conservatives or whether we’re liberals, it should remind us that we are human beings who are fallible.”

Robert P. George (1955) American legal scholar

As quoted in "Liberals Hold the Moral High Ground" https://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/liberals-hold-moral-high-ground, Intelligence Squared Debates
2017

“And the city stood in its brightness when years later I returned,
My face covered with a coat though now no one was left
Of those who could have remembered my debts never paid,
My shames not eternal, base deeds to be forgiven.
And the city stood in its brightness when years later I returned.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

"And the City Stood in Its Brightness" (1963), trans. Czesław Miłosz and Peter Dale Scott
Bobo's Metamorphosis (1965)

“Sit like a fool then, crassly emptying
Glass after wineglass in some foul tavern,
Watching the night and its candles gutter,
Snoring at sunrise.
In England now the wind blows high
And clouds brush rudely at the sky;
The blood runs thinly through my frame,
I half-caress the hearthstone’s flame,
Oppressed by autumn’s desolate cry.
Then homesick for the south am I,
For where the lucky swallows fly,
But each warm land is just a name
In England now.
The luckless workers I espy
With chins dipped low and collars high,
Walk into winter, do not blame
The shifting globe. A gust of shame
Represses my unmanly sigh
In England now.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

English Literature: A Survey for Students.
Poetry

Fools , Autumn , Winter , Cry

“Stop this war! Shame on you Hobbits! Shame on you! This is a fictitious war! This Lord was not elected by the popular — [a computer-generated Oliphaunt steps on Moore, crushing him].”

Michael Moore (1954) American filmmaker, author, social critic, and liberal activist

In a humorous sendup of Moore's previous acceptance speech for Best Documentary Feature at the 2003 Oscars. Moore himself delivered the lines in the opening act of the 2004 Oscars, while standing in front of a greenscreen which had the Battle of the Pelennor Fields scene from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King playing on it; a battle which was, itself, literally fictitious. (23 March 2004)
2004

War

“Oh, God, enlarge within us the sense of fellowship with all living things, our brothers the animals to whom Thou gavest the earth in common with us. We remember with shame that in the past we have exercised the high dominion of man with ruthless cruelty so that the voice of the earth, which should have gone up to thee in song, has been a groan of travail.”

Basil of Caesarea (329–379) Christian Saint

In circa A.D. 375. Included in A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church (NPNF), edited by P. Schaff and Henry Wace (Edinburg: T. Clark, 1897), 2nd Series, Vol. 8. Quoted in Matthew Scully, [//books.google.it/books?id=SYY7AAAAQBAJ&pg=PT28 Dominion] (2002).

God , Exercises , Sense , Past

“The other's glory seems to make him prey
to shame, as though reproached for coward fear.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Par che la sua viltà rimproverarsi
Senta nell'altrui gloria, e se ne rode.
Canto VIII, stanza 11 (tr. Wickert)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Fear

“To be sure, the human individual can, even must, feel and know himself to be limited—and this is what distinguishes him from the animal—but he can become conscious of his limits, his finite-ness, only because he can make the perfection and infinity of his species the object either of his feeling, conscience, or thought. But if his limitations appear to him as emanating from the species, this can only be due to his delusion that he is identical with the species, a delusion intimately linked with the individual’s love of ease, lethargy, vanity, and selfishness; for a limit which I know to be mine alone, humiliates, shames, and disquiets me. Hence, in order to free myself of this feeling of shame, this uneasiness, I make the limits of my individuality the limits of man’s being itself. What is incomprehensible to me is incomprehensible to others; why should this worry me at all? It is not due to any fault of mine or of my understanding: the cause lies in the understanding of the species itself. But it is a folly, a ludicrous and frivolous folly to designate that which constitutes the nature of man and the absolute nature of the individual, the essence of the species, as finite and limited.”

Ludwig Feuerbach book The Essence of Christianity

Introduction, Z. Hanfi, trans., in The Fiery Brook (1972), pp. 103-104
The Essence of Christianity (1841)

Love , Feeling , Understanding , Nature

“And it shamed me into silence, as quietly she said,
"If you want me to come with you, then that's all right with me.
Cause I know I'm going nowhere, and anywhere's a better place to be.
Anywhere's a better place to be."”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

Better Place to Be
Song lyrics, Sniper and Other Love Songs (1972)

Silence

“Let us assume that we invited an unknown person to a game of cards. If this person answered us, “I don’t play,” we would either interpret this to mean that he did not understand the game, or that he had an aversion to it which arose from economic, ethical, or other reasons. Let us imagine, however, that an honorable man, who was known to possess every possible skill in the game, and who was well versed in its rules and its forbidden tricks, but who could like a game and participate in it only when it was an innocent pastime, were invited into a company of clever swindlers, who were known as good players and to whom he was equal on both scores, to join them in a game. If he said, “I do not play,” we would have to join him in looking the people with whom he was talking straight in the face, and would be able to supplement his words as follows: “I don’t play, that is, with people such as you, who break the rules of the game, and rob it of its pleasure. If you offer to play a game, our mutual agreement, then, is that we recognize the capriciousness of chance as our master; and you call the science of your nimble fingers chance, and I must accept it as such, it I will, or run the risk of insulting you or choose the shame of imitating you.” … The opinion of Socrates can be summarized in these blunt words, when he said to the Sophists, the leaned men of his time, “I know nothing.””

Johann Georg Hamann (1730–1788) German philosopher

Therefore these words were a thorn in their eyes and a scourge on their backs.
Socratic Memorabilia, J. Flaherty, trans. (Baltimore: 1967), pp. 165-167.

Men , People , Pleasure , Imagination

“The part that interests me is that society is organized in such a way that the natural instincts of men are shameful and criminal while the natural instincts of women are mostly legal and acceptable. In other words, men are born as round pegs in a society full of square holes. Whose fault is that? Do you blame the baby who didn't ask to be born male? Or do you blame the society that brought him into the world, all round-pegged and turgid, and said, "Here's your square hole"?The way society is organized at the moment, we have no choice but to blame men for bad behavior. If we allowed men to act like unrestrained horny animals, all hell would break loose. All I'm saying is that society has evolved to keep males in a state of continuous unfulfilled urges, more commonly known as unhappiness.”

Scott Adams (1957) cartoonist, writer

"Pegs and Holes", 2011-06-15, Scott Adams Blog, 2012-12-03 https://www.scottadamssays.com/2011/06/15/pegs-and-holes/,, quoted in * 2011-06-20
Dilbert Creator Scott Adams Says Rape Is A ‘Natural Instinct’ For Men
Huffington Post
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dilbert-creator-scott-adams-on-rape_n_880590

Women , Men , World , Way

“Cool, calm, and unemotional. Protestant, for short. It's a fantastic religion, it makes absolutely no demands upon you at all, which is 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 the church, sing a few hymns, have a cup of tea, everybody goes home and has a wank.”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

On Protestants.
Like, Totally (2006)

Religion , Home , Singing , Tea

“I cannot believe in a paradise
Glorious, undefiled,
For gates all scrolled and streets of gold
Are tales for a dreaming child.

I am too lost for shame
That it moves me unto mirth,
But I can vision a Hell of flame
For I have lived on earth.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"Visions" (1972)

Dreams , Hell

“Shame on me, shame on you,
Shame on them, shame on us,
Shame on me, shame on you,
Shame on them, shame on us,
So what the fuss.”

Stevie Wonder (1950) American musician

So What The Fuss
Song lyrics, A Time To Love (2005)

“When we reflect upon the brutal vices of these salt-water bandits, pirates as shameful as any whom the sea has borne, or recoil from their villainous destruction and cruel deeds, we must also remember the discipline, the fortitude, the comradeship and martial virtues which made them at this period beyond all challenge the most formidable and daring race in the world.”

Winston S. Churchill book A History of the English-Speaking Peoples

On The Vikings, Vol I; The Birth of Britain.
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (1956–58)

World , Water , Sea

“I want to say something to the National Union of Students. When you choose to ally yourselves with an organisation like CAGE, which called Jihadi John a “beautiful young man” and told people to “support the jihad” in Iraq and Afghanistan, it really does, in my opinion, shame your organisation and your noble history of campaigning for justice.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

2010s, 2015, Speech on extremism (20 July 2015)

People , Justice , Beauty , History

“Thus, because Christian morals leave animals out of consideration … therefore in philosophical morals they are of course at once outlawed; they are merely "things," simply means to ends of any sort; and so they are good for vivisection, for deer-stalking, bull-fights, horse-races, etc., and they may be whipped to death as they struggle along with heavy quarry carts. Shame on such a morality … which fails to recognize the Eternal Reality immanent in everything that has life, and shining forth with inscrutable significance from all eyes that see the sun!”

Arthur Schopenhauer book On the Basis of Morality

Part II, Ch. VI, pp. 94 https://archive.org/stream/basisofmorality00schoiala#page/94/mode/2up-95
On the Basis of Morality (1840)

Life , Death , Reality , Sun

“In vain do individual great men seek to mint new concepts and to set them in circulation — it is pointless. They are used for only a moment, and not by many, either, and they merely contribute to making the confusion even worse, for one idea seems to have become the fixed idea of the age: to get the better of one's superior. If the past may be charged with a certain indolent self-satisfaction in rejoicing over what it had, it would indeed be a shame to make the same charge against the present age (the minuet of the past and the gallop of the present). Under a curious delusion, the one cries out incessantly that he has surpassed the other, just as the Copenhageners, with philosophic visage, go out to Dyrehausen "in order to see and observe," without remembering that they themselves become objects for the others, who have also gone out simply to see and observe. Thus there is the continuous leap-frogging of one over the other — "on the basis of the immanent negativity of the concept", as I heard a Hegelian say recently, when he pressed my hand and made a run preliminary to jumping. — When I see someone energetically walking along the street, I am certain that his joyous shout, "I am coming over," is to me — but unfortunately I did not hear who was called (this actually happened); I will leave a blank for the name, so everyone can fill in an appropriate name.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Journals IA 328, 1835
1830s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1830s

Men , Age , Idea , Past

“I can cry like Roger. It's just a shame I can't play like him.”

Andy Murray (1987) British tennis player

After being defeated by Roger Federer; BBC sports report 31 January 2010 http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/tennis/8489082.stm

Cry

“Now reigneth pride in prize
and covetousness is held wise,
and lechery without shame
and gluttony without blame.
Envy reigneth with treason
and sloth is taken in great season.
God do boot, for now is time. Amen.”

John Ball (priest) (1338–1381) English rebel and priest

Letter to the people, quoted in Annals, or a General Chronicle of England by John Stow. "Boot" here means "amends," as in the ancient Anglo-Saxon laws

God , Time , Envy , Season

“How do they allow themselves to commit so many crimes? Is this the same democracy that Bush, Blair, and Sharon want to bring the Iraqi people as a gift? Death to this democracy. Is this how you want to present this democracy to the world? Shame on this democracy. Are you humans? Animals? What are you?…Why do they commit so many crimes? Stop it. Enough with the treachery. Enough with the crimes. The Iraqi people must know that they will steadfast. Even if half of them will be killed, they will not give up”

Ebrahim Amini (1925) Iranian ayatollah

Friday Sermon in Qom, Iran: America Will Not be Able to Stay Here http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/233.htm August 2004.
Democracy in Iraq

Death , People , World , Democracy

“It's shameful to spot a lie and not to name it,
shameful to name it and then to shut your eyes,
shameful to call a funeral a wedding
and play the fool at funerals besides.”

Andrey Voznesensky (1933–2010) Soviet poet

Stanley Kunitz (trans.) Story Under Full Sail (New York: Doubleday, 1974) p. 20.

Lie , Fools , Wedding

“I think of my pictures as dramas; the shapes in the pictures are the performers. They have been created from the need for a group of actors who are able to move dramatically without embarrassment and execute gestures without shame. Neither the action nor the actors can be anticipated, or described in advance. They begin a an unknown adventure in an unknown space... Ideas and plans that existed in the mind at the start were simply the doorway through which one left the world in which they occur. The great cubist pictures thus transcend and belie the implications of the cubist program.”

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) American painter

Source: after 1970, posthumous, Abstract Expressionism, Creators and Critics', 1990, pp. 167-168

World , Idea , Thinking

“As you first see him he wonders frequently whether he is not without honor and slightly mad, a shameful and obscene thinness glistening on the surface of the world like oil on a clean pond, these occasions being varied, of course, with those in which he thinks himself rather an exceptional young man, thoroughly sophisticated, well adjusted to his environment, and somewhat more significant than any one else he knows.
This was his healthy state and it made him cheerful, pleasant, and very attractive to intelligent men and to all women. In this state he considered that he would one day accomplish some quiet subtle thing that the elect would deem worthy and, passing on, would join the dimmer stars in a nebulous, indeterminate heaven half-way between death and immortality. Until the time came for this effort he would be Anthony Patch — not a portrait of a man but a distinct and dynamic personality, opinionated, contemptuous, functioning from within outward — a man who was aware that there could be no honor and yet had honor, who knew the sophistry of courage and yet was brave.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Quoted, The Beautiful and Damned (1922)

Death , Women , Men , World

“Maybe the times we had, they weren't that bad

And everything else was part of the plan

We sang: "I don't know where we go from here"

This is the alpha, omega, beginning and the end

And we all just idolize the dead

So you were born (So you were born!), and that was a good day

Someday you'll die (Someday you'll die!), and that is a shame

But somewhere in the between was a life of which we all dream

And nothing and no one will ever take that away

You had a love and that love had you

And nothing mattered, you were fine

And some will complain, they're just bitter, what a shame

They know that loving and losing is better than nothing at all

Maybe the times we had, they weren't that bad

And everything else was part of our path

We sang: "I don't know where we go from here"

This is the anthem, the slogan, the summary of events

And we all just idealize the past”

Tomas Kalnoky (1980) American musician

"Somewhere In The Between" from "Somewhere in the Between" (2007) http://risc.perix.co.uk/lyrics/sm/sitb/06/

Love , Life , Dreams , Time

“There's a slow train rumbling east of a place called Eden
Feeling wind-blown and proud as the trees upon the plain
And a stranger's voice talked to me of liberty and freedom
Yeah, it seems like he done gone wrong again
And he wears that hat like shame
Well he tasted the fruit of another
And when his Margie, when she discovered
Said she's gonna love him ten times more
Ain't nobody's business if she do”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

"East of Eden"
Lyrics and poetry

Love , Feeling , Business , Tree

“Many well-meaning Dutch people have told me in all earnestness that nothing in Islamic culture incites abuse of women, that this is just a terrible misunderstanding. Men all over the world beat their women, I am constantly informed. In reality, these Westerners are the ones who misunderstand Islam. The Quran mandates these punishments. It gives a legitimate basis for abuse, so that the perpetrators feel no shame and are not hounded by their conscience or their community. I wanted my art exhibit to make it difficult for people to look away from this problem. I wanted secular, non-Muslim people to stop kidding themselves that "Islam is peace and tolerance."”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Chapter 16: Politics

Women , Men , People , World

“The history of medicine proves that in so far as man seeks to know himself and face his whole nature, he has become free from bewildered fear, despondent shame, or arrant hypocrisy. As long as sex is dealt with in the current confusion of ignorance and sophistication, denial and indulgence, suppression and stimulation, punishment and exploitation, secrecy and display, it will be associated with a duplicity and indecency that lead neither to intellectual honesty nor human dignity.”

Alfred Kinsey (1894–1956) American scientist (1894–1956)

Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male (1948)

Fear , Sex , History , Nature

“We reject the pharisaical sanctity, which is but a covering of shame, under which sin has free play.”

Hermann Friedrich Kohlbrügge (1803–1874) Dutch minister

Source: Sermons on the First Epistle of Peter (1855), p. 7

“We have differed and quarrelled in the past but now one bond unites us all—to wage war until victory is won, and never to surrender ourselves to servitude and shame, whatever the cost and the agony must be.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Broadcast (19 May 1940), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill, 1939–1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983), p. 364
The Second World War (1939–1945)

War , Past , Victory

“I have a message to the neo-Nazis, to the white nationalists, and to the neo-Confederates: Your heroes are losers. You are supporting a lost cause. And believe me, I knew the original Nazis, because you see, I was born in Austria in 1947, shortly after the Second World War. And growing up, I was surrounded by broken men, men who came home from a war filled with shrapnel and guilt, men who were misled into a losing ideology. And I can tell you: that these ghosts you idolize spent the rest of their lives living in shame and right now, they’re resting in hell.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947) actor, businessman and politician of Austrian-American heritage

A message for Donald Trump -, ATTN video https://twitter.com/attn/status/898328098529083394 (August 2017)
2010s

Men , War , World , Home

“There is, I believe, something, which may be named by the misleading and debased word 'religion', and is the most distinctively human or awakened activity of man. But clearly there is something else, which is also called 'religion', and is his greatest folly and shame.”

Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) British novelist and philosopher

Other texts
Source: Waking World, Chapter 11: Religion http://olafstapledonarchive.webs.com/wakingworld_ch11.html

Religion

“In my opinion, the national anthem is a symbolic song about our country. It represents honoring the many brave men and women who sacrifice and have sacrificed their lives each and every single day to protect our freedom. Sitting or kneeling down during the national anthem is a disgrace to those people who have served and currently serve our country. Sitting down during the national anthem on September 11th is even more horrific. Protest all you want and use social media all you want. However, during the nearly two minutes when that song is playing, I believe everyone should put their hands on their heart and be proud of our country for we are all truly blessed. Recent history has shown that it is a place where anyone no matter what race or gender has the potential to become President of the United States. We live in the most special place in the world and should be thankful. After the song is over, I would encourage everyone to please use the podium they have, stand up for their beliefs, and make America a better place. The rebuilding of battery park and the freedom tower demonstrates that amazing things can be done in this country when we work together towards a common goal. It is a shame how quickly we have forgotten this as a society. Today we are more divided then ever before. I could never imagine multiple people sitting down during the national anthem on the September 11th anniversary. The lessons of 911 should teach us that if we come together, the world can be a better and more peaceful place #neverforget.”

Kate Upton (1992) American model and actress

Kate Upton on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/p/BKO8_ZGA87r/?taken-by=kateupton&hl=en (September 11, 2016)

Women , Men , People , World

“Readers are less and less seen as mere non-writers, the subhuman “other” or flawed derivative of the author; the lack of a pen is no longer a shameful mark of secondary status but a positively enabling space, just as within every writer can be seen to lurk, as a repressed but contaminating antithesis, a reader.”

Terry Eagleton (1943) British writer, academic and educator

Source: 1980s, Against The Grain (1986), Ch. 13, The Revolt of the Reader

“Malice, like Lust, when it is at the Height, doth not know Shame.”

George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax (1633–1695) English politician

Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Reflections (1750), Moral Thoughts and Reflections

“I speak it to our shame; the cause no grand
Poets adorn our country, is the small
Encouragement to such: for how can he
esteem, that understands not poetry?”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

Sem vergonha o não digo, que a razão
De algum não ser por versos excelente,
É não se ver prezado o verso e rima,
Porque quem não sabe arte, não na estima.
Stanza 97, lines 5–8 (tr. Richard Fanshawe)
Epic poetry, Os Lusíadas (1572), Canto V

Understanding , Country

“No longer is it possible for men to be content to have, while their brothers have not. The physical misery of the world's disinherited is becoming the spiritual misery of the world's elect. Superior privileges of any sort now carry with them the sense of shame.”

George D. Herron (1862–1925) American clergyman, writer and activist

Source: Between Caesar and Jesus (1899), p. 16

Men , World , Sense

“I feel this, truly proclaimed, will help the curbing of this tendency
I know this sharing of shame will ensure that I won't forget myself so easily”

Alanis Morissette (1974) Canadian-American singer-songwriter

Spineless
So-Called Chaos (2004)

Feeling , Help , Forgetting

“"I knew if I came out, there was a possibility I would lose my career. But I didn't do it for my career, I did it for me to live my truth," she says. "I thought, 'I don't want to live and have any shame whatsoever.' I should be proud of who I am, and I don't care if people approve or not. It is who I am."”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

Ellen Degeneres talking about her coming out in 1997 with Oprah Winfrey, on the interview on 'Oprah' show on 9th of November 2009

People , Truth

“A Moscow loving grifter is on the loose in the White House. Shame on the Vichy Republicans who constantly enable him.”

Mike Murphy (political consultant) (1962) American political consultant

Interview with Daniel Lippman https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/04/playbook-birthday-mike-murphy-620654 (2018)
2010s, 2018

Love , Housing

“They say they can't believe it, it's a sacrilegious shame
Now, who would want to hurt such a hero of the game?
But you know I predicted it; I knew he had to fall
How did it happen? I hope his suffering was small.
Tell me every detail, I've got to know it all,
And do you have a picture of the pain?”

Phil Ochs (1940–1976) American protest singer and songwriter

"Crucifixion"
Pleasures of the Harbor (1967)

Pain , Hope , Game , Suffering

“Many many heartfelt thanks for your letter of September 25. Though it filled me with shame and remorse, I was grateful for the Christian impulse which moved you to stretch out a hand to me in my wretchedness. You say "We become that with which we busy our mind." Too true! Alas, too true! I recall that as a boy the school chaplain said to my class, "If you tell dirty jokes you will grow to look like a dirty joke!" This is been my hapless destiny…. Would you do me a favour? Will you send me a photograph of yourself, so that I may behold a countenance suffused with Christian love, and perhaps even repent?”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

To a woman in Manitoba, who sent a letter reproaching Davies for writing "barnyard pornography" in The Rebel Angels (1981), quoted in For Your Eye Alone : Letters 1976-1995 (1999).

Love , School , Boy , Business

“Facts witness to the reality that [Christians] have abandoned God, that they have entered the world and become one with the world. Whatever the world considers praiseworthy – vanity, comfort, wealth, fancy notions, blasphemies – the Christians, too, praise with one accord, quite blatantly without shame and without conscience. We can find with difficulty one man in a thousand who does not conform himself to the world.”

Petr Chelčický book The Net of Faith

Source: The Net of Faith (c. 1443), Chapter 95

God , World , Reality , Wealth

“My mother was convinced, and on this head I have retained her firm belief, that to kill animals for the purpose of feeding on their flesh is one of the most deplorable and shameful infirmities of the human state; that it is one of those curses cast upon man either by his fall, or by the obduracy of his own perversity. She believed, and I am of the same belief, that these habits of hard-heartedness towards the gentlest animals, our companions, our auxiliaries, our brethren in toil and even in affection here below; that these immolations, these sanguinary appetites, this sight of palpitating flesh, are calculated to brutalize the instincts of the heart and make them ferocious. She believed, and I am of the same belief, that this nurture, which is seemingly much more succulent and much more energetic, contains in itself active causes of irritation and putridity, which sour the blood and shorten the days of mankind. In support of these ideas of abstinence, she quoted the innumerable gentle and pious tribes of India who deny themselves all that has had life; and the strong and healthy races of the shepherds and even of the laboring classes of our fields.”

Alphonse de Lamartine (1790–1869) French writer, poet, and politician

Book IV, Note VIII, p. 60
Les confidences (1849)

Life , Quotes , Idea , Support

“Shame on accursed tsarism which tortured and persecuted the Jews. Shame on those who foment hatred towards the Jews, who foment hatred towards other nations.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 252–53.
Collected Works

“In grammar school—and as new to American history as to the American tongue—I nevertheless puzzled through several junior biographies of Franklin because young Ben’s ambition magnified my own. I kept lists in those years of the books I read. I recognized the yearning to escape the limits of family—“a strong inclination for the sea”—as well as some more vertical yearning: a boy becomes a man by gaining wisdom; each book a rung therefore; each rung a classical tag. I weighed the shame of the sordid candle shop where Franklin was forced to work for his father against the optimism of old New England.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

Wisdom , Books , School , Family

“Why, if the Soul can fling the Dust aside,
And naked on the Air of Heaven ride,
Were't not a Shame — were't not a Shame for him
In this clay carcase crippled to abide?”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

The Rubaiyat (1120)

Soul

“Our best destiny, as planetary cohabitants, is the development of what has been called "species consciousness" — something over and above nationalisms, blocs, religions, ethnicities. During this week of incredulous misery, I have been trying to apply such a consciousness, and such a sensibility. Thinking of the victims, the perpetrators, and the near future, I felt species grief, then species shame, then species fear.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

"Fear and loathing" (2001)

Fear , Religion , Thinking , Future

“He's come out of the man
and he's let
the man go —

the liar
Dead

his eyes

rolled up out of
the light — a mockery

which

love cannot touch — just bury it
and hide its face
for shame.”

William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) American poet

"Death"
Collected Poems 1921-1931 (1934)

Love , Light , Dead

“Ye towers of Julius, London's lasting shame,
With many a foul and midnight murder fed.”

Thomas Gray The Bard

II. 3. lines 87-88
The Bard (1757)

“She said out of pity for him, "I shall give you a kiss if you like," but though he once knew, he had long forgotten what kisses are, and he replied, "Thank you," and held out his hand, thinking she had offered to put something into it. This was a great shock to her, but she felt she could not explain without shaming him, so with charming delicacy she gave Peter a thimble which happened to be in her pocket, and pretended that it was a kiss.”

J. M. Barrie book Peter Pan

Source: Peter and Wendy (1911), Ch. 6

Kiss , Thinking

“The merit and strength of a people are measured by their enthusiasm for freedom when the only rewards from it are anguish and martyrdom, the blood and ashes of exile, the sorrow of a house driven by the waves, and the shame of a useless life that lacks the foundation and peace of mind needed to do one's share of the common task.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

Martí : Thoughts/Pensamientos (1994)

Life , People , Peace , Freedom

“I had long known that there was something about me that was either violent or frightening for some reason. In certain three-sided clothing store images I had for some years come upon myself, with shock and disbelief, regret, and shame, disappointment and despair, for I am indeed clearly violent, mad, and ugly, all because of intensity of some kind, a tension, an obsession with getting everything that there was to be got, a passion, an insanity.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Sons Come and Go, Mothers Hang in Forever (1976)

Disappointment , Passion , Madness , Despair

“Yes, but there is the problem. It would have been banal. Mediocre. We had been trained to despise everything which was not excellent. How disgusting to see the father of one of our classmates or friends on vacation playing cards or, even worse, siting on the sofa watching television. We blush with shame for our unfortunate little friend.”

André Weil (1906–1998) French mathematician

From At home with André and Simone Weil by Sylvie Weil, p. 30 https://books.google.com/books?id=OdeDlT9-GBUC&pg=PA30
Quote About

Problem , Training

“I know you are asking today, "How long will it take?" Somebody's asking, "How long will prejudice blind the visions of men, darken their understanding, and drive bright-eyed wisdom from her sacred throne?" Somebody's asking, "When will wounded justice, lying prostrate on the streets of Selma and Birmingham and communities all over the South, be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men?" Somebody's asking, "When will the radiant star of hope be plunged against the nocturnal bosom of this lonely night, plucked from weary souls with chains of fear and the manacles of death? How long will justice be crucified, and truth bear it?" I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because "truth crushed to earth will rise again." How long? Not long, because "no lie can live forever."”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

How long? Not long, because "you shall reap what you sow."
1960s, How Long, Not Long (1965)

Death , Wisdom , Men , Children

“As to the viciousness of the philosophers, the meaning of this complaint is succinctly expressed in the charge that the philosophers do not “hold the gods the city holds.” And this accusation is most true. The quest for wisdom begins in doubt of the conventional wisdom about the highest things. The most cherished beliefs of the community, the collective hopes and fears, are centered on its gods. The unpardonable thing is to be beyond these hopes and fears, beyond the awe and shame the gods impose.”

Allan Bloom (1930–1992) American philosopher, classicist, and academician

“Commerce and Culture,” p. 287.
Giants and Dwarfs (1990)

Wisdom , God , Fear , Hope

“Once you have acquired the skills, you must test them on an opponent, but in no way should you consider victory or submission to be a cause for shame or pride. Rather, you ought to think, "By what means did I defeat him?" Or, "By what means could have I defeated him?"”

Qi Jiguang book Ji Xiao Xin Shu

Then you exert and test yourself for a while.
Source: Jixiao Xinshu (1560; 1584), Chapter 14: The Chapter on the Fist Canon and the Essentials of Nimbleness

Way , Thinking , Victory

“The red-faced president took afternoon tea
With her majesty The Queen
And they watched old films flicker
Across the old palace movie screen
Crying, "What a shame!"
As she slipped in the rain
Poor dancing girl
Well, she won't dance again…”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

"Radio America"(with Carl Barat)
Lyrics and poetry

Girl , Dance , Tea , Cry

“Though but ten years old he was fully as strong as the average man of thirty, and far more agile than the most practiced athlete ever becomes. And day by day his strength was increasing.
His life among these fierce apes had been happy; for his recollection held no other life, nor did he know that there existed within the universe aught else than his little forest and the wild jungle animals with which he was familiar.
He was nearly ten before he commenced to realize that a great difference existed between himself and his fellows. His little body, burned brown by exposure, suddenly caused him feelings of intense shame, for he realized that it was entirely hairless, like some low snake, or other reptile.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 5 : The White Ape

Life , Feeling , Strong , Universe

“Friends — They are like air bubbles on water, hastening to flow together. History tells of Orestes and Pylades, Damon and Pythias, but why should not we put to shame those old reserved worthies by a community of such? Constantly, as it were through a remote skylight, I have glimpses of a serene friendship-land, and know the better why brooks murmur and violets grow. This conjunction of souls, like waves which met and break, subsides also backward over things, and gives all a fresh aspect. I would live henceforth with some gentle soul such a life as may be conceived, double for variety, single for harmony — two, only that we might admire at our oneness — one, because indivisible. Such community to be a pledge of holy living. How could aught unworthy be admitted into our society? To listen with one ear to each summer sound, to behold with one eye each summer scene, our visual rays so to meet and mingle with the object as to be one bent and doubled; with two tongues to be wearied, and thought to spring ceaselessly from a double fountain.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

January 26, 1840
Journals (1838-1859)

Life , Friendship , Soul , History

“It was always something of a puzzle to observers of Australia to explain the high standing of working men and the prevalence of their values in the culture. The easy answer was to say the middle-class was numerically weak. But in a capitalist society their values should be predominant whatever their numbers. So was it that they lacked the will to rule? I have suggested here that convict origins help to explain this puzzle. The bourgeoisie, sharing the shame of the nation, looked for respectability through White Australia and military prowess, and the forms these took had a strong proletarian cast; the working man was elevated by one and was the most notable embodiment of the other.”

John Hirst (1942–2016) Australian historian

"An Oddity from the Start" https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2008/july/1277335186/john-hirst/oddity-start, The Monthly, July 2008.

Men , Strong , Help

“Where are those who protect honour, and those self-respecting persons who defend respectable persons in the time of hardship? Shame is behind you while Paradise is in front of you.”

Ali book Nahj al-Balagha

Nahj al-Balagha

Time , Personality

“It is the safest to be moderately base — to be flexible in shame, and to be always ready for what is generous, good, and just, when anything is to be gained by virtue.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

"Catholics", published in The Edinburgh Review (1827)

“I would never shake the hand of a person like the German foreign minister, nor would I let him in my house. He is the prototype of a shameful politician; the one who makes a career as a protester and a friend of the peace, in order to use his official ideals to get a well paid position as a war mongering foreign minister. A political scum.”

Joschka Fischer (1948) German politician

Jan Myrdal in a speech against the European Union in the Swedish town Falun. http://web.fib.se/visa_fast_info.asp?Avdelning=017&Sidrubrik=Nyheter&Rubrik=F%F6r%20nationen%20och%20kulturen&Meny=027&e=e005

War , Peace , Housing , Personality

“The difference between me and Bono is that he's quite happy to go and flatter people to get what he wants and he's very good at it, but I just can't do it. I'd probably end up punching them in the face rather than shaking their hand, so it's best that I stay out of their way. I can't engage with that level of bullshit. Which is a shame, really, and in a way it would help if I could, but I just can't. I admire the fact that Bono can, and can walk away from it smelling of roses.”

Thom Yorke (1968) English musician, philanthropist and singer-songwriter

source http://www.licc.org.uk/culture/thom-yorke-interview

People , Way , Help , Happiness

“He is a fool who tries to withstand the stronger, for he does not get the mastery and suffers pain besides his shame.”

Hesiod book Works and Days

Source: Works and Days (c. 700 BC), line 210.

Pain , Fools , Suffering

“The Greeks used to put a lot of bodily functions in their plays, and a lot of graphic sexual material, because they believed, that in performing that way it released the demons of shame from the audience, which is what I believe. Cuz I think we’re all pretty much the same, and we all have grown up with that shame-based thing that America deals with, right? And to sit there and hear someone talk about their love of having sex, whatever, makes you feel like you’re not alone, with what you think maybe are dark, twisted thoughts, cuz they’re not. We all share these thoughts. So that’s why I talk like I do, or did, before I retired tonight.”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Relentless (1992)

Love , Sex , Way , Feeling

“What was right and true yesterday is wrong and false today. What was immoral and shameful — promiscuity, abortion, euthanasia, suicide — has become progressive and praiseworthy. Nietzsche called it the transvaluation of all values; the old virtues become sins, and the old sins become virtues.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

2010s, The Death of the West (2002)

Suicide , Falseness

“Miriamele was dismayed by her own willful ignorance. How could she, with all her native good fortune, be so consumed with the few inconveniences that God or fate had put in her way? It was shameful.
She tried to tell Duke Isgrimnur something of her thoughts, but he would not let her slide too far into self-loathing.
“Each one of us has our own sorrows, Princess,” he said. “It’s no shame to take them to heart. The only sin is to forget that other folk have theirs, too—or to let pity for yourself slow your hand when someone needs help.””

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, To Green Angel Tower (1993), Part 1, Chapter 21, “Answered Prayers” (p. 649).

God , Fate , Way , Help

“Among today's Italians, when treading upon Haile Selassie's memory, the sense of guilt and shame is such that they react by seeing only his positive traits: the merits of his past actions. His portrayals always brim with excessive deferance, unwarranted admiration and delusion. They go on and on about his priestly composure, his regal dignity, his great intelligence and his generosity towards former adversaries. They never explain who this sovereign, who we made into a victim, really was. They never dare tell us if he was something more, or less, than a victim. For example, that he was an old man hardened in principles which were centuries out of date; that he was the absolute ruler of a nation which has never heard the words rights and democracy, which lives in a near prehistoric fashion in the suburbs, opressed by hunger, disease, ignorance and the squallor of a feudal regime which even we did not experience during the darkest years of the Medieval period.”

Oriana Fallaci (1929–2006) Italian writer

On Haile Selassie, (June 1972), as quoted in Intervista con la Storia (sixth edition, 2011) p. 509
Intervista con la Storia

Hunger , Disease , Democracy , Intelligence

“In this Sight mine understanding was lifted up into Heaven, and then God brought merrily to my mind David, and others in the Old Law without number; and in the New Law He brought to my mind first Mary Magdalene, Peter and Paul, and those of Inde; and Saint John of Beverley; and others also without number: how they are known in the Church in earth with their sins, and it is to them no shame, but all is turned for them to worship. And therefore our courteous Lord sheweth for them here in part like as it is there in fulness: for there the token of sin is turned to worship.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 38

God , Law , Understanding , Parting

“She calls it marriage now; such name
She chooses to conceal her shame.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Source: Translations, The Aeneid of Virgil (1866), Book IV, p. 117

Marriage

“The phrase "a literature of decadence" implies a scale of literature: infancy, childhood, adolescence, etc. This term, I would say, supposes something fateful and providential, like an inescapable decree; and it is completely unjust to reproach us for the fulfillment of a law that is mysterious. All I can understand of this academic saying is that it is shameful to obey this law pleasurably, and that we are guilty of rejoicing in our destiny.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Le mot littérature de décadence implique qu'il y a une échelle de littératures, une vagissante, une puérile, une adolescente, etc. Ce terme, veux-je dire, suppose quelque chose de fatal et de providentiel, comme un décret inéluctable; et il est tout à fait injuste de nous reprocher d'accomplir la loi mystérieuse. Tout ce que je puis comprendre dans la parole académique, c'est qu'il est honteux d'obéir à cette loi avec plaisir, et que nous sommes coupables de nous réjouir dans notre destinée.
XI: "Notes nouvelles sur Edgar Poe III," I http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Edgar_Poe_III._Notes_nouvelles_sur_Edgar_Poe_%28L%E2%80%99Art_romantique%29#I
L'art romantique (1869)

Fate , Pleasure , Law , Literature

“I thought that the evidence against your claims about me would shame you into changing your behavior. But, five years since you started misrepresenting my role in the founding of Wikipedia, you’re still at it.”

Larry Sanger (1968) American former professor, co-founder of Wikipedia, founder of Citizendium and other projects

"An open letter to Jimmy Wales" Citizendium.org (8 April 2009) http://blog.citizendium.org/2009/04/08/an-open-letter-to-jimmy-wales-copy/.

Behavior , Change

“Muslim historians credit all their heroes with many expeditions each of which “laid waste” this or that province or region or city or countryside. The foremost heroes of the imperial line at Delhi and Agra such as Qutbu’d-Dîn Aibak (1192-1210 A. D.), Shamsu’d-Dîn Iltutmish (1210-36 A. D.), Ghiyãsu’d-Dîn Balban (1246-66 A D.), Alãu’d-Dîn Khaljî (1296-1316 A. D.), Muhammad bin Tughlaq (1325-51 A. D.), Fîruz Shãh Tughlaq (135188 A. D.) Sikandar Lodî (1489-1519 A. D.), Bãbar (1519-26 A. D.) and Aurangzeb (1658-1707 A. D.) have been specially hailed for “hunting the peasantry like wild beasts”, or for seeing to it that “no lamp is lighted for hundreds of miles”, or for “destroying the dens of idolatry and God-pluralism” wherever their writ ran. The sultans of the provincial Muslim dynasties-Malwa, Gujarat, Sindh, Deccan, Jaunpur, Bengal-were not far behind, if not ahead, of what the imperial pioneers had done or were doing; quite often their performance put the imperial pioneers to shame. No study has yet been made of how much the human population declined due to repeated genocides committed by the swordsmen of Islam. But the count of cities and towns and villages which simply disappeared during the Muslim rule leaves little doubt that the loss of life suffered by the cradle of Hindu culture was colossal.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume I (1990)

Life , God , Study , Light

“When I was a little girl (but being raised as a little boy), what I wanted more than anything was to be a dancer. How I longed for it — the lights, the stage, the gorgeous costumes, most of all for the delivering grace of movement in harmony with a choreography greater than myself. Like a little Chinese and two left feet saw to that: I was laughed, bullied, or shamed out of every dance class I attempted.”

Kai Cheng Thom (1991) writer

What I learned, loved and lost as a trans Zumba addict (2018)

Girl , Boy , Light , Dance

“In politics, it seems, retreat is honorable if dictated by military considerations and shameful if even suggested for ethical reasons.”

Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) American writer

"Solutions," Vietnam (1967)

“Quit, quit, for shame, this will not move:
This cannot take her.
If of herself she cannot love,
Nothing can make her:
The devil take her!”

John Suckling (1609–1642) English poet

Why So Pale and Wan, Fond Lover?

Love

“Make a party over your negative thoughts, assuring them that they are the safest, the most cautious, company you have ever kept. At first they will swallow your flattery, but then suddenly, stricken with shame, and knowing themselves for the impostors they are, out and off they will go.”

Henry S. Haskins (1875–1957)

Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 77

“Remember the Italian steward who put on women's clothes and so filched a seat in a lifeboat? "A cur in human shape, certainly he was born and saved to set a new standard by which to judge infamy and shame.”

William S. Burroughs book The Western Lands

Source: The Western Lands (1987), p. 6

Women , Clothes

“Bourguiba on people who patronized the Zéro de Conduite (Zero for Conduct), nightclub- "practice a shameful exhibitionism in morbid and degrading dances."”

Habib Bourguiba (1903–2000) Tunisian politician

[Tunisia: Shudder at the Knees, TIME, Friday, Aug. 26, 1966, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,842668,00.html, September 6, 2011]

People , Dance

“What is lost when the private realm is abolished are many of the attributes typically associated with quality of life. Most people have experienced how privacy enables liberation from constraint. And we’ve all, conversely, had the experience of engaging in private behavior when we thought we were alone – dancing, confessing, exploring sexual expression, sharing untested ideas – only to feel shame at having been seen by others.”

Glenn Greenwald book No Place to Hide

Penguin Books 2015 edition, pages 173-174.
No Place to Hide (2014)

Life , People , Behavior , Feeling

“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.”

Oliver Goldsmith book The Vicar of Wakefield

Source: The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), Ch. 29, Song, st. 2.

Art , Lovers

“My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns;
Love is the fire and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals;
The metal in this furnace wrought are men's defiled souls.”

Robert Southwell (1561–1595) English Jesuit

"The Burning Babe", line 9; pp. 98-9.

Love , Men , Justice , Soul

“It's widely accepted today that high schools are miserable, nerve-pinching stress machines. They are governed by dim hypocrites; the climate favors the cruelest and shallowest students, and many, if not most students, are constantly suppressing a burning sense of injustice, shame, and powerlessness.”

Mark Ames (1965) American writer and journalist

Part VI: Welcome to the Dollhouse, page 232.
Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion, From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond (2005)

School , Sense

“Do not therefore allow yourself to be led astray by the specious good nature of such an institution as that of twin beds.
It is the silliest, the most treacherous, the most dangerous in the world. Shame and anathema to him who conceived it.”

Honoré de Balzac book Physiology of Marriage

Ainsi ne vous laissez jamais séduire par la fausse bonhomie des lits jumeaux.
C'est l'invention la plus sotte, la plus perfide et la plus dangereuse qui soit au monde. Honte et anathème à qui l'imagina!
Part II, Meditation XVII, The Theory of the Bed, I: Twin Beds.
Physiology of Marriage (1829)

World , Nature

“I have obviously failed to galvanize and prod, if not shame enough Americans to be ever vigilant not to let a Chicago communist-raised, communist-educated, communist-nurtured subhuman mongrel like the ACORN community organizer gangster Barack Hussein Obama to weasel his way into the top office of authority in the United States of America.”

Ted Nugent (1948) American rock musician

2014 interview at Guns.com
Source: Ted Nugent calls Obama ‘subhuman mongrel’, January 22, 2014, Morgan, Whitaker, NBC News, MSNBC, http://www.msnbc.com/politicsnation/ted-nugent-calls-obama-subhuman-mongrel

Outdoor Channel's Ted Nugent Says "Subhuman Mongrel" President Obama Should Be Convicted Of Treason, January 21, 2014, Timothy, Johnson, Media Matters for America, https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2014/01/21/outdoor-channels-ted-nugent-says-subhuman-mongr/197669

We know the NRA’s history. Yes, it’s racist., w:Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, September 28, 2017, https://medium.com/@_CSGV/we-know-the-nras-history-yes-it-s-racist-17a3a5188dcb

23 reasons why the NRA is racist, September 27, 2017, Timothy, Johnson, Media Matters for America, https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2017/09/27/23-reasons-why-nra-racist/218065

Education , Way , Communication

“If you still have to ask, shame on you”

Louis Armstrong (1901–1971) American jazz trumpeter, composer and singer

Armstrong's response to the question what jazz is, cited by Max Jones et. al.: "Salute to Satchmo", I.P.C. Specialist & Professional Press Ltd 1970, page 25
Often misquoted as "Man, if you gotta ask you'll never know." Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations (third edition)

Quotes about shame page 4

Quotes about shame
page 4