Quotes about Shame

The public have neither shame nor gratitude.

We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinion, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.

You and I are what we are, and will be what we will be. As for being poisoned by a book, there is no such thing as that... The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame. That is all.

James and John wanted the glory, but not the cup of shame; the crown, but not the cross; the role of master, but not servant.

On the contrary, I am living it out from day to day, trying to accept disgrace as my state of being. Is it enough for God, do you think, that I live in disgrace without term?

I was going to rise, do some typing and coffee drinking in the kitchen all day since at that time work, work was my dominant thought, not love- not the pain which impels me to write this even while I don't want to, the pain which won't be eased by writing of this but heightened, but which will be redeemed, and if only it were a dignified pain and could be placed somewhere other than this black gutter of shame and loss and noisemaking folly in the night... /The Subterraneans

The real madness probably is not another thing that the wisdom itself that, tired of discovering the shames of the world, has taken the intelligent resolution to become mad.

Because we have offered no provision for sons and daughters who fall, many of our Adams and our Eves are hiding in the bushes.

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

One useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three is a Congress.

Dishonor waits on perfidy. A man should blush to think a falsehood; it is the crime of cowards.

Almost all our desires, when examined, contain something too shameful to reveal.