Quotes about Shame

Nobody escapes being wounded. We are all wounded people, whether physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually. The main question is not 'How can we hide our wounds?' so we don't have to be embarrassed but 'How can we put our roundedness in the service of others?' When our wounds cease to be a source of shame and become a source of healing, we have become wounded healers.

Sons are indeed a heritage from the LORD, children, a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the sons born in one's youth. Happy is the man who has filled his quiver with them. Such men will never be put to shame when they speak with their enemies at the city gate. (Ps. 127:3-5)

An uncommon prudence is habtual with the subtler depravity, for it has everything to hide.

As I'm traveling around, I meet many small children. And when I look at a small and think how we've harmed this beautiful planet since I was that age, I feel a kind of desperation, anger, shame. I don't know what I feel; I just don't know what the emotion is.

Shame is an ornament to the young; a disgrace to the old.

In winter when the snow and ice were fierce, we shook beneath our different roofs alone, and that's what Hell is like, I think. It's cold and shame and shaking. And worst of all, it's loneliness.

St. Augustine also states that, in a sense, shame is related to disobedience. Positively, this would mean that when there is perfect obedience to God, there is no shame. This confirms somewhat the spiritual truth that Catholic educators have observed, namely, that as obedience to the law of Christ increases, concupiscence or the passions actually diminish.

It was only after Adam and Eve had by sin lost the inner effulgence of grace that they became conscious of the fact that they were naked. They felt the need for clothes to cover their newfound shame; previously their bodies had Glowed with a man mantle of charity woven by the fingers of God. It is almost universally true that excessive external display betrays an inner poverty and nakedness of the soul.

You cannot talk about race without talking about privilege. And when people start talking about privilege, they get paralyzed by shame.

A few days later, however, he wrote in one of his memo books this, which he let me read, "Children have a lesson adults should learn, to not be ashamed of failing, but to get up and try again. Most of us adults are so afraid, so cautious, so 'safe,' and therefore so shrinking and rigid and afraid that it is why so many humans fail. Most middle-aged adults have resigned themselves to failure.

Never regard something as doing you good if it makes you betray a trust, or lose your sense of shame, or makes you show hatred, suspicion, ill will, or hypocrisy, or a desire for things best done behind closed doors.

There is nothing more shameful than perfidious friendship.