Shame

Shame is, variously, an affect, emotion, cognition, state, or condition. The roots of the word shame are thought to derive from an older word meaning to cover; as such, covering oneself, literally or figuratively, is a natural expression of shame.

Sourced

• A nightingale dies for shame if another bird sings better.
  • Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part I, Section II. Memb. 3. Subsec. 6.

• Love taught him shame, and shame, with love at strife,
  Soon taught the sweet civilities of life.
  • John Dryden, Cymon and Iphigenia (1700), line 133.

• 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.
  • Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), Chapter XXIV.

• Pudet hæc opprobria nobis
  Et dici potuisse et non potuisse repelli.
  • I am not ashamed that these reproaches can be cast upon us, and that they can not be repelled.
  • Ovid, Metamorphoses (AD 8), Book I. 758.

• Here shame dissuades him, there his fear prevails,
  And each by turns his aching heat assails.
  • Ovid, Metamorphoses (AD 8), Book III. Transformation of Actæon, line 73. Addison's translation.

• O shame! Where is thy blush?
  • William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act III, scene 4, line 82.

• All is confounded, all!
  Reproach and everlasting shame
  Sits mocking in our plumes.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry V (c. 1599), Act IV, scene 5, line 3.

• 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.
  • William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (1597), Act III, scene 2, line 91.

• 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.
  • Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903), Act I.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 702.

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

• Maggior difetto men vergogna lava.
  • Less shame a greater fault would palliate.
  • Dante Alighieri, Inferno, XXX. 142.

• If yet not lost to all the sense of shame.
  • Homer, The Iliad, Book VI, line 350. Pope's translation.

• Næ simul pudere quod non oportet cœperit; quod oportet non pudebit.
  • As soon as she (woman) begins to be ashamed of what she ought not, she will not be ashamed of what she ought.
  • Livy, Annales, XXXIV. 4.

• Pessimus quidem pudor vel est parsimoniæ vel frugalitatis.
  • The worst kind of shame is being ashamed of frugality or poverty.
  • Livy, Annales, XXXIV. 4.

• Nam ego illum periisse duco, cui quidem periit pudor.
  • I count him lost, who is lost to shame.
  • Plautus, Bacchides, III. 3. 80.

• The most curious offspring of shame is shyness.
  • Sydney Smith, Lecture on the Evil Affections.