Quotes about shame
page 5

Neal Stephenson photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
Margaret Cho photo
Ken Ham photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“He who cuts off his nose takes poor revenge for a shame inflicted on him.”
Male ulciscitur dedecus sibi illatum, qui amputat nasum suum.

Peter of Blois French poet and diplomat

De Hierosolymitana peregrinatione acceleranda (1189), cited from Mary Beth Rose (ed.) Women in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1986) p. 29; translation from John Simpson The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) p. 55.
A similar proverb, Qui son nez cope deshonore son vis, appears in the late 12th century chanson de geste Garin le Loheren, line 2877.

George Gordon Byron photo
Linda Blair photo

“Every time I watch it, I still see something new, and I’ve seen it a lot as you can imagine. When fans only talk about the scares, they’re not really learning anything, which is a shame because Billy really put a lot of thematic elements in this movie that are supposed to make you think. It wasn’t just about scaring people; it was a family drama that had horrific elements.”

Linda Blair (1959) actress, producer, animal rights activist

Exclusive: Linda Blair Reflects on 40 Years with The Exorcist for FEARnet’s February 17th Five-Film Marathon http://www.dreadcentral.com/news/41504/exclusive-linda-blair-reflects-on-40-years-with-the-exorcist-for-fearnet-s-february-17th-five-film-marathon/ (February 16, 2013)

Peter Damian photo

“Let that ancient dragon, Cadalus, take note. Let this disturber of the Church, this destroyer of apostolic discipline, this enemy of man’s salvation understand. Let him beware, I say, this root of all sin, this herald of the devil, this apostle of Antichrist. And what else shall I call him? He is the arrow drawn from the quiver of Satan, the rod of the Assyrian, the son Belial, "the son of perdition, who rises in his pride against every god, so called, ever object of men’s worship" (2 Thess. 2:3-4), the whirlpool of lust, the shipwreck of chastity, the disgrace of Christianity, the ignominy of bishops, the progeny of vipers, the stench or the world, the filth of the ages, the shame of the universe. Still more epithets for Cadalus can be added, a list of darksome names: slippery snake, a twisting serpent, the dung of humanity, the latrine of crime, the dregs of vice, the abomination of heaven the expulsion from paradise, the fodder of hell, the stubble of eternal fire.”

Peter Damian (1007–1072) reformist monk

Letter 120:13. Damian to young King Henry IV, A. D. 1065 or 1066, wherein Damian exhorts Henry to use his sword against the disturber of the Church’s peace, Cadalus, the bishop of Parma, the antipope Honorius II (d. 1072):
The Fathers of the Church, Medieval Continuation, 1998, Letters 91-120, Owen J. Blum, Irven Michael Resnick, trs., Catholic University of America Press, ISBN 0813208165 ISBN 9780813208169, vol. 5, pp. 393-394. http://books.google.com/books?id=Vlspdtjmhd4C&pg=PA393&dq=%22Let+that+ancient+dragon,+Cadalus,+take+note%22&hl=en&ei=QVpiTIjeIIG88gaFq-SVCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22Let%20that%20ancient%20dragon%2C%20Cadalus%2C%20take%20note%22&f=false

Richard Stallman photo

“C++ is a badly designed and ugly language. It would be a shame to use it in Emacs.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

Re: Efforts to attract more users? http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/c++/rms" emacs-devel (12 July 2010)
2010s

Steve Sailer photo

“To be preyed upon by those stronger than you is bad enough; but to allow your artists and children to be slaughtered and defiled by barely organized foreigners who could be kept out by simple acts of national self-respect is far more shameful.”

Steve Sailer (1958) American journalist and movie critic

Checking Iron Age Barbarian Prejudice http://takimag.com/article/checking_iron_age_barbarian_prejudice_steve_sailer/print#ixzz4A7r77jkG, Taki's Magazine, April 22, 2015

Jim Brown photo

“Jimmy Brown made headlines recently for his off-the-wall talk of an NFL comeback at 47. That's a shame because people who never saw Jimmy Brown in his prime will think of him only as a dotty middle-aged man on a colossal ego trip.”

Jim Brown (1936) American former professional football player and current special advisor to the Cleveland Browns

Miami Herald November 25, 1983 http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=MH&s_site=miami&p_multi=MH&p_theme=realcities&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EB35E1FABDBE6BF&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM
About

Heather Brooke photo
Jerome K. Jerome photo
Homér photo

“Clearly doing good puts doing bad to shame.”

XXII. 374 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)

James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce photo
Théodore Guérin photo
Andrés Bonifacio photo

“Reason teaches us that we must be united in will, united in thought, and that we might have strength to search out the reigning evil in our Nation. This is the time for the light of truth to surface; this is the time for us to show that we have our own sentiments, have honour, have shame, and have solidarity.”

Andrés Bonifacio (1863–1897) Filipino nationalist and revolutionary

Quoted in: " Talumpati ni Pangulong Aquino sa pagdiriwang ng anibersaryo ng Araw ng Kalayaan, ika-12 ng Hunyo 2013 http://www.gov.ph/2013/06/12/talumpati-ni-pangulong-aquino-sa-pagdiriwang-ng-anibersaryo-ng-araw-ng-kalayaan-ika-12-ng-hunyo-2013/." on gov.ph. June 12, 2013.

Julian of Norwich photo
Geert Wilders photo
Nikolai Gogol photo
David Lloyd George photo
Homér photo

“How ill, alas! do want and shame agree!”

XVII. 347 (tr. Alexander Pope).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)

“It's a shame that pantyless party girls get more attention than the real heroes, the nurses and teachers and moms.”

Laura Penny (1975) Canadian journalist

Source: More Money than Brains (2010), Chapter six, More is Less, p. 183

Will Durant photo

“Nothing should more deeply shame the modern student than the recency and inadequacy of his acquaintance with India.”

The Story of Civilization (1935–1975), I - Our Oriental Heritage (1935)

Clive Hamilton photo
George S. Patton photo
Emily Dickinson photo
Franz Kafka photo

“"Like a dog!" he said, it was as if the shame of it should outlive him.”

Source: The Trial (1920), Ch. 10, end of the book

Enoch Powell photo

“I am one of what must be an increasing number who find the portentous moralisings of A. Solzhenitsyn a bore and an irritation. Scarcely any aspect of life in the countries where he passes his voluntary exile has failed to incur his pessimistic censure. Coming from Russia, where freedom of the press has been not so much unknown as uncomprehended since long before the Revolution, he is shocked to discover that a free press disseminated all kinds of false, partial and invented information and that journalists contradict themselves from one day to the next without shame and without apology. Only a Russian would find all that surprising, or fail to understand that freedom which is not misused is not freedom at all.

Like all travellers he misunderstands what he observes. It simply is not true that ‘within the Western countries the press has become more powerful than the legislative power, the executive and the judiciary’. The British electorate regularly disprove this by electing governments in the teeth of the hostility and misrepresentation of virtually the whole of the press. Our modern Munchhausen has, however, found a more remarkable mare’s nest still: he has discovered the ‘false slogan, characteristic of a false era, that everyone is entitled to know everything’. Excited by this discovery he announces a novel and profound moral principle, a new addendum to the catalogue of human rights. ‘People,’ he says, ‘have a right not to know, and it is a more valuable one.’ Not merely morality but theology illuminates the theme: people have, say Solzhenitsyn, ‘the right not to have their divine souls’ burdened with ‘the excessive flow of information’.

Just so. Whatever may be the case in Russia, we in the degenerate West can switch off the radio or television, or not buy a newspaper, or not read such parts of it as we do not wish to. I can assure Solzhenitsyn that the method works admirably, ‘right’ or ‘no right’. I know, because I have applied it with complete success to his own speeches and writings.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Letter in answer to Solzhenitsyn's Harvard statement (21 June 1978), from Reflections of a Statesman. The Writings and Speeches of Enoch Powell (London: Bellew, 1991), p. 577
1970s

William James photo

“Every Jack sees in his own particular Jill charms and perfections to the enchantment of which we stolid onlookers are stone-cold. And which has the superior view of the absolute truth, he or we? Which has the more vital insight into the nature of Jill's existence, as a fact? Is he in excess, being in this matter a maniac? or are we in defect, being victims of a pathological anesthesia as regards Jill's magical importance? Surely the latter; surely to Jack are the profounder truths revealed; surely poor Jill's palpitating little life-throbs are among the wonders of creation, are worthy of this sympathetic interest; and it is to our shame that the rest of us cannot feel like Jack. For Jack realizes Jill concretely, and we do not. He struggles toward a union with her inner life, divining her feelings, anticipating her desires, understanding her limits as manfully as he can, and yet inadequately, too; for he also is afflicted with some blindness, even here. Whilst we, dead clods that we are, do not even seek after these things, but are contented that that portion of eternal fact named Jill should be for us as if it were not. Jill, who knows her inner life, knows that Jack's way of taking it - so importantly - is the true and serious way; and she responds to the truth in him by taking him truly and seriously, too. May the ancient blindness never wrap its clouds about either of them again! Where would any of us be, were there no one willing to know us as we really are or ready to repay us for our insight by making recognizant return? We ought, all of us, to realize each other in this intense, pathetic, and important way.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

"What Makes a Life Significant?"
1910s, Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals (1911)

Hayley Jensen photo
Ayman Odeh photo

“In a government that has lost all shame, that fears its own shadow, the majority tramples the minority, legislation is racist and the democratic space is under constant threat.”

Ayman Odeh (1975) Israeli lawyer and member of the Knesset

As quoted in ‘Racist and Discriminatory’: U.S. Jewish Leaders Warn Israel Against Passage of Nation-state Bill https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-u-s-jewish-chiefs-warn-against-passage-of-racist-nation-state-bill-1.6270788 (July 15, 2018) by Allison Kaplan Sommer and Bar Peleg, Haaretz.

Edward Coote Pinkney photo

“Look out upon the stars, my love,
And shame them with thine eyes.”

Edward Coote Pinkney (1802–1828) American poet, lawyer, sailor, professor, and editor

A Serenade, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Mohan Bhagwat photo

“Crimes against women happening in urban India are shameful. It is a dangerous trend. But such crimes won't happen in "Bharat" or the rural areas of the country. You go to villages and forests of the country and there will be no such incidents of gang-rape or sex crimes.”

Mohan Bhagwat (1950) Indian activist

As quoted in " Rapes occur in India, not Bharat, says RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/rapes-occur-in-india-not-bharat-says-rss-chief-mohan-bhagwat-509401", NDTV (4 January 2013)
2011-2014

Tad Williams photo

“If the strong can bully the weak without shame, then how are we different from the beasts of forest and field?”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, To Green Angel Tower (1993), Part 1, Chapter 8, “Nights of Fire” (p. 255).

John Edwards photo

“And we have so much work to do in America, because all across America, there are walls … There's a wall around Washington, D. C. The American people are, today, on the outside of that wall. And on the inside are the big corporations and the lobbyists who are working to protect a system that takes care of them. … There is another wall that divides us. It's the moral shame of 37 million of our own people who wake up in poverty every single day This is not OK. And for eight long, long years, this wall has gotten taller And there's also a wall that's divided our image in the world. The America as the beacon of hope is behind that wall. And all the world sees now is a bully. They see Iraq, Guantanamo, secret prison and government that argues that water boarding is not torture. This is not OK. That wall has to come down for the sake of our ideals and our security. We can change this. We can change it. Yes we can. If we stand together, we can change it. … This is not going to be easy. It's going to be the fight of our lives. But we're ready, because we know that this election is about something bigger than the tired old hateful politics of the past. This election is about taking down these walls that divide us, so that we can see what's possible -- what's possible, that one America that we can build together.”

John Edwards (1953) American politician

Endorsement of Senator Barack Obama on May 14, 2008. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/14/AR2008051403533.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzkAjd3xQ7w

Jane Austen photo
William Ernest Henley photo

“Life is (I think) a blunder and a shame.”

William Ernest Henley (1849–1903) English poet, critic and editor

Source: In Hospital (1908), p. 4

Mike Oldfield photo

“Down to the River
Was this all some
Cry for love?
It's a cry for love:
Are you a victim of
That Money Bug
In your blood,
Mr. Shame?”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Heaven's Open (1991)

William Howitt photo

“The barbarities and desperate outrages of the so-called Christian race, throughout every region of the world, and upon every people they have been able to subdue, are not to be paralleled by those of any other race, however fierce, however untaught, and however reckless of mercy and of shame in any age of the earth.”

William Howitt (1792–1879) British writer

Colonization and Christianity. Quoted from The Capital by Karl Marx https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch31.htm, and https://books.google.com/books?id=Zajh1WZa-OoC

Dara Ó Briain photo
Chuck Klosterman photo
John Ruskin photo
George Galloway photo
Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman photo
George Farquhar photo

“There is no scandal like rags, nor any crime so shameful as poverty.”

George Farquhar (1677–1707) Irish dramatist

The Beaux’ Stratagem (1707), Arch, Act i, Sc. 1.

Markiplier photo
Charles Barkley photo
Tony Abbott photo

“I mean, the Nazis did terrible evil but they had a sufficient sense of shame to try to hide it”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

Tony Abbott's Nazi reference shows his penchant for alienating voters http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbotts-nazi-reference-shows-his-penchant-for-alienating-voters-20150903-gjeccu.html#ixzz3liz6US8O, September 4, 2015.
2015

Henry Campbell-Bannerman photo
Glenn Greenwald photo

“The history of human knowledge is nothing more than the realization that yesterday's pieties are actually shameful errors.”

Glenn Greenwald (1967) American journalist, lawyer and writer

"France's censorship demands to Twitter are more dangerous than 'hate speech'" in The Guardian, 2 January 2013. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/02/free-speech-twitter-france

William Morley Punshon photo
Erving Goffman photo
Tsunetomo Yamamoto photo
Ellen Page photo
Noel Coward photo

“It seems such a shame
When the English claim
The Earth,
That they give rise
To such hilarity
And mirth.”

Noel Coward (1899–1973) English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer

Mad Dogs and Englishmen (1930)

“Dear citizens. Now I plan to jump off a bridge over the Han River. I hope you give us the last chance. Please lend us 100 million won which will be used for paying back debt and seed money of our organization… I know this is shameful. I'm sorry. I'll repent for the last of my life.”

Sung Jae-gi (1967–2013) South Korean masculism activist

As quoted in "Activist's 'suicide' causes huge stir" http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2013/07/116_140028.html Koreatimes 2013.07.26

Peter Akinola photo
Ursula K. Le Guin photo

“It is not human to be without shame and without desire.”

Source: Hainish Cycle, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Chapter 13 “Down on the Farm” (p. 177)

Shane Warne photo
Pat Condell photo
Neil Gaiman photo

“In you, humanity is precarious; and so, in dread and in shame, you kill the animal in you. And its slaughter poisons you.”

Source: Last Men in London (1932), Chapter I: The World of the Last Men.

Ahmad Sirhindi photo
Alison Bechdel photo
Dylan Moran photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Tony Abbott photo

“I want to make it clear that I do not judge or condemn any woman who has had an abortion, but every abortion is a tragedy and up to 100,000 abortions a year is this generation's legacy of unutterable shame”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

Quoted in "Abortion a Badge of Liberation Says Abbott" http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/abortion-a-badge-of-liberation-says-abbott/2006/02/16/1140037807340.html on www.theage.com.au, March 17, 2004.
2005

Chelsea Manning photo

“As the late Howard Zinn once said, "There is not a flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."”

Chelsea Manning (1987) United States Army soldier and whistleblower

Letter to Barack Obama (2013)

Winston S. Churchill photo

“Everything is overshadowed by the impending trial of will-power which is developing in Europe. I think we shall have to choose in the next few weeks between war and shame, and I have very little doubt what the decision will be.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to David Lloyd George (13 August 1938), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), p. 962
The 1930s

Isoroku Yamamoto photo
John Masefield photo
Philip Sidney photo
John Updike photo

“From infancy on, we are all spies; the shame is not this but that the secrets to be discovered are so paltry and few.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

Bech, A Book (1970)

Edgar Guest photo
John Bunyan photo

“But now in this Valley of Humiliation poor Christian was hard put to it, for he had gone but a little way before he espied a foul Fiend coming over the field to meet him; his name is Apollyon. Then did Christian begin to be afraid, and to cast in his mind whether to go back, or to stand his ground. But he considered again, that he had no Armor for his back, and therefore thought that to turn the back to him might give him greater advantage with ease to pierce him with his Darts; therefore he resolved to venture, and stand his ground. For thought he, had I no more in mine eye than the saving of my life, 'twould be the best way to stand.
So he went on, and Apollyon met him. Now the Monster was hideous to behold, he was cloathed with scales like a Fish (and they are his pride) he had Wings like a Dragon, feet like a Bear, and out of his belly came Fire and Smoke, and his mouth was as the mouth of a Lion. When he was come up to Christian, he beheld him with a disdainful countenance, and thus began to question with him.
Apollyon: Whence come you, and whither are you bound?
Christian: I am come from the City of Destruction, which is the place of all evil, and am going to the City of Zion.
Apollyon: By this I perceive thou art one of my Subjects, for all that Country is mine; and I am the Prince and God of it. How is it then that thou hast run away from thy King? Were it not that I hope thou mayest do me more service, I would strike thee now at one blow to the ground.
Christian: I was born indeed in your Dominions, but your service was hard, and your wages such as a man could not live on, for the wages of Sin is death; therefore when I was come to years, I did as other considerate persons do, look out if perhaps I might mend my self.
Apollyon: There is no Prince that will thus lightly lose his Subjects, neither will I as yet lose thee. But since thou complainest of thy service and wages be content to go back; what our Country will afford, I do here promise to give thee.
Christian: But I have let myself to another, even to the King of Princes, and how can I with fairness go back with thee?
Apollyon: Thou hast done in this, according to the Proverb, Changed a bad for a worse: but it is ordinary for those that have professed themselves his Servants, after a while to give him the slip, and return again to me: do thou so to, and all shall be well.
Christian: I have given him my faith, and sworn my Allegiance to him; how then can I go back from this, and not be hanged as a Traitor?
Apollyon: Thou didst the same to me, and yet I am willing to pass by all, if now thou wilt yet turn again, and go back.
Christian: What I promised thee was in my nonage; and besides, I count that the Prince under whose Banner now I stand, is able to absolve me; yea, and to pardon also what I did as to my compliance with thee: and besides, (O thou destroying Apollyon) to speak truth, I like his Service, his Wages, his Servants, his Government, his Company, and Country better than thine: and, therefore, leave off to perswade me further, I am his Servant, and I will follow him.
Apollyon: Consider again when thou art in cool blood, what thou art like to meet with in the way that thou goest. Thou knowest that for the most part, his Servants come to an ill end, because they are transgressors against me, and my ways. How many of them have been put to shameful deaths! and besides, thou countest his service better than mine, whereas he never came yet from the place where he is, to deliver any that served him out of our hands; but as for me, how many times, as all the World very well knows, have I delivered, either by power or fraud, those that have faithfully served me, from him and his, though taken by them, and so I will deliver thee.
Christian: His forbearing at present to deliver them, is on purpose to try their love, whether they will cleave to him to the end: and as for the ill end thou sayest they come to, that is most glorious in their account. For for present deliverance, they do not much expect it; for they stay for their Glory, and then they shall have it, when their Prince comes in his, and the Glory of the Angels.
Apollyon: Thou hast already been unfaithful in thy service to him, and how doest thou think to receive wages of him?
Christian: Wherein, O Apollyon, have I been unfaithful to him?
Apollyon: Thou didst faint at first setting out, when thou wast almost choked in the Gulf of Dispond; thou didst attempt wrong ways to be rid of thy burden, whereas thou shouldest have stayed till thy Prince had taken it off: thou didst sinfully sleep and lose thy choice thing: thou wast also almost perswaded to go back, at the sight of the Lions; and when thou talkest of thy Journey, and of what thou hast heard, and seen, thou art inwardly desirous of vain-glory in all that thou sayest or doest.
Christian:All this is true, and much more, which thou hast left out; but the Prince whom I serve and honour, is merciful, and ready to forgive: but besides, these infirmities possessed me in thy Country, for there I suckt them in, and I have groaned under them, been sorry for them, and have obtained pardon of my Prince.
Apollyon: Then Apollyon broke out into a grievous rage, saying, I am an enemy to this Prince: I hate his Person, his Laws, and People: I am come out on purpose to withstand thee.
Christian: Apollyon beware what you do, for I am in the King's Highway, the way of Holiness, therefore take heed to your self.
Apollyon: Then Apollyon straddled quite over the whole breadth of the way, and said, I am void of fear in this matter, prepare thy self to die, for I swear by my Infernal Den, that thou shalt go no further, here will I spill thy soul; and with that, he threw a flaming Dart at his breast, but Christian had a Shield in his hand, with which he caught it, and so prevented the danger of that. Then did Christian draw, for he saw 'twas time to bestir him; and Apollyon as fast made at him, throwing Darts as thick as Hail; by the which, notwithstanding all that Christian could do to avoid it, Apollyon wounded him in his head, his hand and foot; this made Christian give a little back: Apollyon therefore followed his work amain, and Christian again took courage, and resisted as manfully as he could. This sore combat lasted for above half a day, even till Christian was almost quite spent. For you must know that Christian by reason of his wounds, must needs grow weaker and weaker.
Then Apollyon espying his opportunity, began to gather up close to Christian, and wrestling with him, gave him a dreadful fall; and with that, Christian's Sword flew out of his hand. Then said Apollyon, I am sure of thee now, and with that, he had almost prest him to death, so that Christian began to despair of life. But as God would have it, while Apollyon was fetching of his last blow, thereby to make a full end of this good Man, Christian nimbly reached out his hand for his Sword, and caught it, saying, Rejoice not against me, O mine Enemy! when I fall, I shall arise; and with that, gave him a deadly thrust, which made him give back, as one that had received his mortal wound: Christian perceiving that, made at him again, saying, Nay, in all these things we are more than Conquerors, through him that loved us. And with that, Apollyon spread forth his Dragon's wings, and sped him away, that Christian saw him no more….”

Source: The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), Part I, Ch. IX : Apollyon<!-- (London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, New York and Toronto: Henry Frowde, 1904) -->

Jon Stewart photo

“[mobster impression] Hey! Nice nominee you got there. [sniff, tightens tie] Be a shame if something happened to him, Mr. President. Know what I mean?”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

The Daily Show, February 21, 2013 http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/vqslp2/doc-blockers/

Sri Aurobindo photo

“O soldier and hero of God, where for thee is sorrow or shame or suffering? For thy life is a glory, thy deeds a consecration, victory thy apotheosis, defeat thy triumph.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Karma

George Washington Plunkitt photo
Johannes Lichtenauer photo
Bobby Fischer photo
Alain de Botton photo
Manmohan Acharya photo

“The slippers of the mortal Earth, Now touched the chest of the Moon. Oh, It is shameful that”

Manmohan Acharya (1967–2013) Poet, lyricist

Song of the Bumblebee (2008)

Hugh Blair photo

“Dissimulation in youth is the forerunner of perfidy in old age; its first appearance is the fatal omen of growing depravity and future shame.”

Hugh Blair (1718–1800) British philosopher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 242.

“It was a weakness of Voltaire's
To forget to say his prayers,
And one which to his shame
He never overcame.”

Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875–1956) British writer

Clerihews: Biography for Beginners (1905)

Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“This year we must continue to improve the quality of American life. Let us fulfill and improve the great health and education programs of last year, extending special opportunities to those who risk their lives in our armed forces. I urge the House of Representatives to complete action on three programs already passed by the Senate—the Teacher Corps, rent assistance, and home rule for the District of Columbia. In some of our urban areas we must help rebuild entire sections and neighborhoods containing, in some cases, as many as 100,000 people. Working together, private enterprise and government must press forward with the task of providing homes and shops, parks and hospitals, and all the other necessary parts of a flourishing community where our people can come to live the good life. I will offer other proposals to stimulate and to reward planning for the growth of entire metropolitan areas. Of all the reckless devastations of our national heritage, none is really more shameful than the continued poisoning of our rivers and our air. We must undertake a cooperative effort to end pollution in several river basins, making additional funds available to help draw the plans and construct the plants that are necessary to make the waters of our entire river systems clean, and make them a source of pleasure and beauty for all of our people. To attack and to overcome growing crime and lawlessness, I think we must have a stepped-up program to help modernize and strengthen our local police forces. Our people have a right to feel secure in their homes and on their streets—and that right just must be secured. Nor can we fail to arrest the destruction of life and property on our highways.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Khaled Hosseini photo
Halldór Laxness photo

“My children have never brought any shame upon their father. They have been independent children, my children.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Bjartur
Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935), Book Two, Part II: Years of Prosperity

H. G. Wells photo
James Russell Lowell photo

“Laborin' man an' laborin' woman
Hev one glory an' one shame;
Ev'y thin' thet's done inhuman
Injers all on 'em the same.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

No. 1, st. 5
The Biglow Papers (1848–1866), Series I (1848)