Top 100 Guilt Shame Quotes
#1. We want to take action out of the desire to contribute to life rather than out of fear, guilt, shame, or obligation.
Marshall B. Rosenberg
#2. My entire demeanor is displaying confusion, guilt, shame, pain, pleasure, and a yearning need for him. Lying beneath this huge man, I feel so very helpless and pinned like a butterfly on a plaque. Lucas's
Erotic Storm
#3. Desire is a teacher: When we immerse ourselves in it without guilt, shame, or clinging, it can show us something special about our own minds that allows us to embrace life fully.
Mark Epstein
#4. Mind chatter: a clatter of left-brain rains of doubt, worry, guilt, shame in a thunderstorm of fear. Forgive the chatter, clear your mind.
Soul Dancer
#5. I have never seen a person grow or change in a self - constructive meaningful way when motivated by guilt, shame, or self hate.
Herb Goldberg
#6. The conflict between church teachings and natural desires results in guilt, shame and anger.
Darrel Ray
#7. A tranquil conscience invites freedom from anguish, sorrow, guilt, shame, and self-condemnation. It provides a foundation for happiness. It is a condition of immense worth.
Richard G. Scott
#8. God didn't send His only Son to die on the cross so that we can hide behind our guilt, shame, and pride.
Heather Bixler
#9. The Mommy Wars, as they stand today, serve as an effective check on the ambitions of the American mother. The phenomenon keeps women in a perpetual state of guilt, shame and inadequacy, and does so without involving anyone but wealthy white women.
Shannon Drury
#10. Power-Over leads to punishment and violence. Power-With leads to compassion and understanding, and to learning motivated by reverence for life rather than fear, guilt, shame, or anger.
Marshall B. Rosenberg
#11. When someone reacts violently and aggressively, it only goes to demonstrate the lack of truth, trust and confidence in oneself and issue that we are defending. It rather portrays the guilt, shame and self anger for defending the indefensible.
Vishwas Chavan
#12. There's the unusual stuff that psychopaths do - impulsive antisocial behavior, beginning in childhood - and there are the moral emotions that psychopaths lack. They feel no compassion, guilt, shame, or even embarrassment, which makes it easy for them to lie, and to hurt family, friends, and animals.
Jonathan Haidt
#13. Always when Will did something to protect Tessa, Jem thought it was for his sake, not for Will's. Always Will wished Jem could be entirely right. Each needle prick had it own name. Guilt. Shame. Love.
Cassandra Clare
#14. WHAT ARE THE CONSEQUENCES when we go against our instincts? What are the consequences of not speaking out? What are the consequences of guilt, shame, and doubt?
Terry Tempest Williams
#15. In the end, it was the secrets that held me hostage and fuelled my depression, but, once released, emancipation - from fear, shame, guilt and judgement - was finally possible.
B.G. Bowers
#16. Guilt is one side of a nasty triangle; the other two are shame and stigma. This grim coalition combines to inculpate women themselves of the crimes committed against them.
Germaine Greer
#17. Guilt is just as powerful, but its influence is positive, while shame's is destructive. Shame erodes our courage and fuels disengagement.
Brene Brown
#18. Guilt is feeling bad about what you have done; shame is feeling bad about who you are - all it is, is muddling up things you have done with who you are.
Marcus Brigstocke
#19. Guilt is about what you do with your dick. Shame is about being a dick.
Neil Strauss
#20. Don't underestimate the power of a guilty mind. Never underestimate self-shame and self-destruction.
Tim Hawken
#21. Help your children to see and notice poverty and differences in privilege that seem inhumane and unfair. Do this in a way that does not increase guilt or shame for what you have as a family, but rather helps them see their responsibility for sharing with others and keeping others in mind.
Polly Young-Eisendrath
#22. The Holy Spirit never uses guilt or shame to persuade us to give. For that matter, he never persuades us to give in the first place. That's called manipulation, a device employed by a different spirit.
Ron Brackin
#23. Responsibilites and expectations are the basis of guilt and shame and judgement, and they provide the essential framework that promotes performance as the basis for identity and value.
Wm. Paul Young
#24. I don't have a lot of shame. That doesn't mean I can't feel bad about the way someone reacts to me or about something I read about myself online. But I don't have a lot of guilt, no. I've always been this way. I'm missing a chip.
Chelsea Handler
#25. Where guilty is, rage and courage doth abound.
Ben Jonson
#26. Last time I'd made a trek to Zane's hotel room, we'd been at NerdCon, and I'd been fueled by pride and anger and desire. Now, all I felt was shame and guilt. And love. In
Megan Erickson
#27. Unlike guilt, which is the feeling of doing something wrong shame is the feeling of being something wrong.
Marilyn J. Sorensen
#28. Your mistakes are to help you develop your purpose, not shame and guilt.
Sue Fitzmaurice
#29. Anger, depression, guilt, and shame are the product of the thinking that is at the base of violence on our planet.
Marshall B. Rosenberg
#30. I've got the Jewish guilt and the Irish shame and it's a hell of a job distinguishing which is which.
Kevin Kline
#31. Nobody disappears completely anymore. The only thing that's disappeared is privacy, which is never coming back. And which is probably a good thing. Why should anything be private? No hiding, no guilt, no shame. Just a completely transparent world.
Paul Russell
#32. Every word I put down, I put down with tears, with bitter blood, with sour gall, well mixed and blended with shame and guilt.
V.C. Andrews
#33. the truth is important, the truth is what makes us free people. No guilt or shame holding us back.
Shelly Crane
#34. If you are burdened with depressing feelings of guilt or disappointment, of failure or shame, there is a cure.
Boyd K. Packer
#35. In darkness one may be ashamed of what one does, without the shame of disgrace.
Sophocles
#36. When we wallow in guilt, remorse, and shame over real or imagined sins of the past, we are disdaining God's gift of grace.
Brennan Manning
#37. With no guilt and no shame, no sorrow or blame. Whatever it is, we are all the same.
Peter Gabriel
#38. Most of us have spent our lives caught up in plans, expectations, ambitions for the future; in regrets, guilt or shame about the past. To come into the present is to stop the war.
Jack Kornfield
#39. Every morning I look in the mirror and remind myself: "No one owes you sh*t!" In this way, I am never disappointed. Never placing blame.
Brandi L. Bates
#40. Secondly, if we continue to view ourselves as moral lepers and spiritual failures, if our lives are shadowed by low self-esteem, shame, remorse, unhealthy guilt, and self-hatred, we reject the teaching of Jesus and cling to our negative self-image. In
Brennan Manning
#41. Men the most infamous are fond of fame, And those who fear not guilt yet start at shame.
Charles Churchill
#43. I place us where we are a happy couple who are madly in love, and we are kissing the way people kiss on their wedding day. With joy and relief and love. Without guilt. Without Shame.
A.S. King
#44. From the perspective of the one committing suicide, his or her act can be one of the most perverse forms of moral manipulation, as it abandons those left behind to their shame, guilt, and grief. Suicide is something like a metaphysical "I gotcha!" It is often an attempt to kill or wound others.
Stanley Hauerwas
#45. I would rather have these things weigh on my mind. At the end of this tunnel of guilt and shame, there must be a light of some kind.
Ani DiFranco
#46. I didn't need his criticism. I carried enough guilt on my own. I had done everything wrong. I had the highest marks in school but couldn't master common sense.
Ruta Sepetys
#47. Guilt says: I made a mistake. Shame says: I AM a mistake.
Brene Brown
#48. Ricky just listens. He isn't shocked. He isn't surprised. He listens to me because he knows. He knows the shame and the guilt and the sorrow and the rage. And he does not judge me. He just listens.
Emily Andrews
#49. Every major life decision I made came from my pain, guilt and shame...even down to the man I chose for a husband.
Elona Washington
#50. Martin Luther King, Jr., would have been the last person to have wanted his iconization and his heroism. He was an enormously guilt-laden man. He was drenched in a sense of shame about his being featured as the preeminent leader of African-American culture and the civil rights movement.
Michael Eric Dyson
#51. Comfort came in and stood with an appearance of guilt and shame.
Her head bent, her eyes soaked with tears, her hands and legs, vibrating like a guiter string as perspiration covered her entire body, she felt like disappearing into the thin air, maybe to another mind creating world.
Michael Bassey Johnson
#52. Living was living. The price was guilt and shame.
Markus Zusak
#53. Balance is of the essence,' she said. 'That appies to all good, harmonious relationships. Balance in guilt, balance in shame and pangs of conscience.
Jo Nesbo
#54. How vast the benefits divine which we in Christ possess! We are redeemed from guilt and shame and called to holiness. But not for works which we have done, or shall hereafter do, hath God decreed on sinful men salvation to bestow.
Augustus Toplady
#55. In Adam we became identified with guilt, fear, and shame. In Christ we are now identified with forgiveness, confidence, and honor.
Timothy C. Tennent
#56. The wicked fear the good, because the good are a constant reproach to their consciences. The ungodly like religion in the same way that they like lions, either dead or behind bars; they fear religion when it breaks loose and begins to challenge their consciences.
Fulton J. Sheen
#57. It is the guilt, not the scaffold, which constitutes the shame.
Pierre Corneille
#58. Guilt is more about what you do. Shame is more about who you are.
Matt Chandler
#59. Children who use more shame self-talk (I am bad) versus guilt self-talk (I did something bad) struggle mightily with issues of self-worth and self-loathing. Using shame to parent teaches children that they are not inherently worthy of love.
Brene Brown
#60. This was not guilt: guilt is what you feel when you have done something wrong. What I felt was shame: I was what was wrong.
Atul Gawande
#61. There may be responsible persons, but there are no guilty ones.
Albert Camus
#62. I was just lying there, swimming in my own shame and guilt, when this still small voice whispered into the depths of my soul: I love you. I desire you. I delight in you. I saw you were going to that before I went to the cross, and I still went.
Jefferson Bethke
#63. You can't look outside of yourself. You must look within yourself, and address all of the things that are going on within you, and clear out the things that are not useful. Whether it's fear or anger or shame or guilt or whatever it is - clean that stuff up.
Iyanla Vanzant
#64. There's an idea that the human body is somehow evil and bad and there are parts of it that are especially evil and bad, and we should be ashamed. Fear, guilt and shame are built into the attitude toward sex and the body. It's reflected in these prohibitions and these taboos that we have.
George Carlin
#65. All this guilt and shame and remorse you carry, Kestrel. Don't you see? That is what they burned you with. And you have added to it, all these years. The wall is of your own making. Take it down. Forgive yourself. Come out.
Robin Hobb
#66. Guilt says I've done something wrong; ... shame says there is something wrong with me. Guilt says I've made a mistake; ... shame says I am a mistake. Guilt says what did was not good; ... shame says I am no good.
John Bradshaw
#67. The distinction between shame and guilt is very important, since these two emotions may tear a person in opposite directions. The wish to relieve guilt may motivate a confession, but the wish to avoid the humiliation of shame may prevent it.
Paul Ekman
#68. I can't even explain to you how terrible that feels, that I equate dating a woman with punishment, shame, guilt, disappointment, reproach, reprimand, persecution. It's a nightmare.
John Mayer
#69. People, especially women, are judged on their bodies. And food, far from being a source of energy and enjoyment, becomes a battleground of guilt and shame and excess and deprivation. Everywhere we look, success and sexiness and happiness seem to belong to the thin.
Emma Woolf
#70. An exciting and inspiring future awaits you beyond the noise in your mind, beyond the guilt, doubt, fear, shame, insecurity and heaviness of the past you carry around.
Debbie Ford
#71. I felt Mr Willard had deserted me. I thought he must have planned it all along, but Buddy said No, his father simply couldn't stand the sight of sickness and especially his own son's sickness, because he thought all sickness was sickness of the will. Mr Willard had never been sick a day in his life.
Sylvia Plath
#73. Our minds, unedited by guilt or shame, are not for public consumption, because they would either be hurtful or else just make us look like the selfish and unkind bastards we are. We don't share thoughts, we share carefully sanitized, watered-down versions of them.
Jonathan Tropper
#74. With death, all suffering would end. Doubt would end. Shame and guilt would end. All her questions would end. Memory - most mercifully of all - would end. She could quietly excuse herself from life.
Elizabeth Gilbert
#75. I had to sever my emotional cord to escape the anger and shame that silently slithered through my head, disconnecting myself from the stares and whispers that followed me down the hall.
Rebecca Donovan
#76. The scene was not without a mixture of awe, such as must always invest the spectacle of guilt and shame in a fellow creature, before society shall have grown corrupt enough to smile, instead of shuddering at it.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
#77. While guilt over sinfulness can often lead to repentance, shame leads to indifference, intolerance, lack of vulnerability, and lack of intimacy with others as it burros its way further into our minds.
Tyler Braun
#78. Watch out for each other. Love everyone and forgive everyone, including yourself. Forgive your anger. Forgive your guilt. Your shame. Your sadness. Embrace and open up your love, your joy, your truth, and most especially your heart.
Jim Henson
#79. I had a lot of guilt and shame when I was running from God, but nothing like when I was running for God. I was always looking for God's approval, and that's where the guilt and shame came out in a big way.
Jud Wilhite
#80. The emotional garbage I had carried all of those years - the prejudice and the denial, the shame and the guilt - was dissolved by understanding that the Other is not other at all.
John Howard Griffin
#81. I am not racked with self-loathing. Some issues of guilt and shame, but I'm a pretty good guy.
Marcus Brigstocke
#82. Silence, shame, guilt, or any other emotional torment simply cannot rob us of God's love, of his plan for us.
Jo Ann Fore
#83. Murderers with severe personality disorders, police had learned, sometimes could fool a lie detector because they lacked shame and guilt, and didn't feel the normal stress when lying.
Michael Benson
#84. He gave himself to them completely, with no guilt, no shame, no reservation, and in that surrender he found a quiet, shining pearl he had never known existed - himself. He was Sam. He was Sunshine. He was Peaches.
Heidi Cullinan
#85. If you don't enjoy your life, sorrow, sadness, suffering, fear, shame and guilt will.
Iyanla Vanzant
#86. It's an absurd request. Our minds, unedited by guilt or shame, are selfish and unkind, and the majority of our thoughts, at any given time, are not for public consumption, because they would either be hurtful or else just make us look like the selfish and unkind bastards we are.
Jonathan Tropper
#87. Rather than being able to have a healthy relationship with our own sexual imagination, we're driven into some dark corners by shame and embarrassment and guilt, and those dark corners breed all sorts of monsters.
Alan Moore
#88. Shame and guilt are noble emotions essential in the maintenance of civilized society, and vital for the development of some of the most refined and elegant qualities of human potential.
Willard Gaylin
#89. Are we bereft of citizenship because we are mothers, wives and daughters of a mighty people? Have women no country
no interests staked in public weal
no liabilities in common peril
no partnership in a nation's guilt and shame?
Angelina Grimke
#90. Self redemption is the first step to exoneration from guilt.
Dennis E. Adonis
#92. As I digest what words I speak, I consume more wisely.
Soul Dancer
#93. What I do know now, and didn't know then is that, in the long run, motive matters more with good deeds than it does with bad. When all the guilt and shame for the bad we've done have run their course, it's the good we did that can save us.
Gregory David Roberts
#94. His eyes were likewise greeted by White Fang, but about the latter there were no signs of shame nor guilt. He carried himself with pride, as though, forsooth, he had achieved a deed praiseworthy and meritorious. There was about him no consciousness of sin.
Jack London
#95. Work on psychological blocks like shame and guilt - they falsely color your reality.
Deepak Chopra
#96. We are more pained when one of our friends is guilty of something shameful than when we do it ourselves.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#97. Hell existed in the imagination of those who feared it, because of the guilt and shame they carried with them after death.
Andrea Barbosa
#98. Shame is difficult. It's a weapon and a signal. It can paralyze or motivate. My friend Louis CK likes to say that "guilt is an intersection" Getting out of it means making a choice and moving forward.
Amy Poehler
#99. The Refinement of Shame. People are not ashamed to think something foul, but they are ashamed when they think these foul thoughts are attributed to them.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#100. Life ... as God intended it enables us to live above the drag of fear, superstition, shame, pessimism, guilt, anxiety, worry, and all the negativity that keeps people from seizing each day as a gift from Him.
Charles R. Swindoll
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