shame is inventive. They are not the worst things of which one is most ashamed
 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (1886). copy citation

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Author Friedrich Nietzsche
Source Beyond Good and Evil
Topic shame
Date 1886
Language English
Reference
Note Translated by Helen Zimmern
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4363/4363-h/4363-h.htm

Context

“there are actions of love and of an extravagant magnanimity after which nothing can be wiser than to take a stick and thrash the witness soundly: one thereby obscures his recollection. Many a one is able to obscure and abuse his own memory, in order at least to have vengeance on this sole party in the secret: shame is inventive. They are not the worst things of which one is most ashamed: there is not only deceit behind a mask—there is so much goodness in craft. I could imagine that a man with something costly and fragile to conceal, would roll through life clumsily and rotundly like an old, green, heavily-hooped wine-cask:” source