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Shame
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“Shame can be self-indulgence too.”
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“All disgrace smells alike. Differences in ruin are only matters of degree.”
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“Shame is the proper reaction when one has purposefully violated the accepted behavior of society. Inflicting it is etiquette's response when its rules are disobeyed. The law has all kinds of nasty ways of retaliating when it is disregarded, but etiquette has only a sense of social shame to deter people from treating others in ways they know are wrong. So naturally Miss Manners wants to maintain the sense of shame. Some forms of discomfort are fully justified, and the person who feels shame ought to be dealing with removing its causes rather than seeking to relieve the symptoms.”
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“Waves of shame ran through her, like savage internal blushes.”
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“Tom was feeling more and more like the Prodigal Son and did not like it, as indeed we daresay the Prodigal Son himself did not like it either. For to have to eat fatted calf when you are thoroughly ashamed of yourself and only want to slink in and not be noticed must be a severe trial; not to speak of one's Good Brother.”
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“I suppose that a lifetime spent hiding one's erotic truth could have a cumulative renunciatory effect. Sexual shame is in itself a kind of death.”
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“Nothing makes you so lonely as shame.”
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“Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.”
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“Guilt says, 'I screwed up.' Shame says, 'I'm screwed up.'”
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“Shame is quicksand on the path to soul.”
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“Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.”
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“Shame is universal and one of the most primitive human emotions that we experience. The only people who don't experience shame lack the capacity for empathy and human connection.”
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“You can suffer from hunger or cold, but if you survive, you quickly forget. If you feel shame even once, however, you die of it all your life.”