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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Shame

O shame! where is thy blush?

Shakespeare.

Those who fear not guilt yet start at shame.

Churchill.

Hide, for shame, Romans, your grandsires’ images, that blush at their degenerate progeny!

Dryden.

A nightingale dies for shame if another bird sings better.

Burton.

I count him lost who is lost to shame.

Plautus.

False shame only is harmful.

Livy.

Where shame is, there is also fear.

Milton.

Conscience is a blushing, shame-faced spirit.

Shakespeare.

Shame is the dying embers of virtue.

H. W. Shaw.

Shame sticks ever close to the ribs of honor.

Middleton.

Nature’s hasty conscience.

Miss Edgeworth.

Shame is a feeling of profanation.

Novalis.

If not yet lost to all the sense of shame.

Homer.

The most curious offspring of shame is shyness.

Sydney Smith.

To disregard what the world thinks of us is not only arrogant but utterly shameless.

Cicero.

Of all evils to the generous, shame is the most deadly pang.

Thomson.

The worst kind of shame is being ashamed of frugality or poverty.

Livy.

I am ashamed of my master and not of my servitude.

Seneca.

While shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished from the heart.

Burke.

It is the guilt, not the scaffold, which constitutes the shame.

Corneille.

I know not how to tell thee! Shame rises in my face, and interrupts the story of my tongue!

Otway.

Shame greatly hurts or greatly helps mankind.

Homer.

Shame may restrain what law does not prohibit.

Seneca.

In shame there is no comfort but to be beyond all bounds of shame.

Sir P. Sidney.

Shame is like the weaver’s thread; if it breaks in the net, it is wholly imperfect.

Bulwer-Lytton.

Mortifications are often more painful than real calamities.

Goldsmith.

As soon as she (woman) begins to be ashamed of what she ought not, she will not be ashamed of what she ought.

Livy.

Nothing is truly infamous, but what is wicked; and therefore shame can never disturb an innocent and virtuous mind.

Sherlock.

He that blushes not at his crime, but adds shamelessness to shame, hath nothing left to restore him to virtue.

Thomas Fuller.

  • Love taught him shame, and shame, with love at strife,
  • Soon taught the sweet civilities of life.
  • Dryden.

  • All is confounded, all!
  • Reproach and everlasting shame
  • Sits mocking in our plumes.
  • Shakespeare.

  • But ’neath yon crimson tree,
  • Lover to listening maid might breathe his flame,
  • Nor mark, within its roseate canopy,
  • Her blush of maiden shame.
  • Bryant.

    The bold defiance of a woman is the certain sign of her shame; when she has once ceased to blush, it is because she has too much to blush for.

    Talleyrand.

    There are two restraints which God has laid upon human nature, shame and fear; shame is the weaker, and has place only in those in whom there are some reminders of virtue.

    Tillotson.

    I can bear scorpion’s stings, tread fields of fire, in frozen gulfs of cold eternal lie, be tossed aloft through tracts of endless void, but cannot live in shame.

    Joanna Baillie.

    For often vice, provoked to shame, borrows the color of a virtuous deed; thus libertines are chaste, and misers good, a coward valiant, and a priest sincere.

    Sewell.

  • That holy shame, which ne’er forgets
  • What clear renown it us’d to wear;
  • Whose blush remains when virtue sets,
  • To show her sunshine has been there.
  • Moore.

  • And there’s a lust in man no charm can tame
  • Of loudly publishing our neighbor’s shame;
  • On eagle’s wings immortal scandals fly,
  • While virtuous actions are but born and die.
  • Juvenal.

  • 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.
  • Goldsmith.

  • He was not born to shame:
  • Upon his brow shame was asham’d to sit;
  • For ’tis a throne where honour may be crown’d
  • Sole monarch of the universal earth.
  • Shakespeare.

  • When knaves and fools combin’d o’er all prevail,
  • When justice halts, and right begins to fail,
  • E’en then the boldest start from public sneers,
  • Afraid of shame—unknown to other fears.
  • More darkly sin, by satire kept in awe,
  • And shrink from ridicule, though not from law.
  • Byron.

    Shame is a feeling of profanation. Friendships, love and piety ought to be handled with a sort of mysterious secrecy; they ought to be spoken of only in the rare moments of perfect confidence,—to be mutually understood in silence. Many things are too delicate to be thought,—many more, to be spoken.

    Novalis.