Shame (social)

“ It is not clear who is meant by the ‘they’ that are to see the shame. It may be the world at large, or it may be the very spirits that have done the mischief, looking p. 67on with a fiendish smile on the misery and nakedness of the poor wretch whom they have ruined. ”

“ As in revenge or quittal of such strife:
But as he is my kinsman, my dear friend,
The shame and fault finds no excuse nor end.
'Shameful it is; ay, if the fact be known:
Hateful it is; there is no hate in loving:
I'll beg her love; but she is own:
The worst is but denial and reproving:
My will is strong, past reason's weak removing. ”

“ Before closing we wish to give a concrete example of the tenacious power of the life of shame once [Pg 141] it has fastened its fangs in the heart and body of its victim. We tell the story so that every girl in this country may know that once enslaved there is scarcely any redemption. ”

“ Alas! it is not only our own self-love, but it is likewise our hardness toward our brethren, which magnifies to us our own misfortunes. Let us enter those poor, unprovided dwellings, where shame conceals such bitter and affecting poverty ”

“ Shame—shame on them, who have not even the poor pretext of damaged health! They will spend their money and enjoy themselves—ay, and more scandal for them!—will all the time sanctimoniously reprobate what is going on round them, and then return quite happy and as they came. ”

“ I said it; martyrdom or shame! It is shame which awaits me.
So spoke the Curé, when Marianne had taken away her young mistress, and his conscience exaggerated the gravity and the consequences of his imprudent rapture.
—Yes, it is shame, it is shame.
—Do not despair in this way, said a jeering voice.
Marcel turned round, terror-struck.
His servant was behind him.
She had approached, noiselessly, and was looking at him with her strange, green eyes.
—Shame lies in scandal, she added sententiously. Reassure yourself; that pretty young lady will hold her tongue. ”

“ You are taken to prison and fancy yourself indelibly disgraced? You are bankrupt under odd circumstances? You drive a queer bargain with your friend and are found out, and imagine the world will punish you? Pshaw! Your shame is only vanity. Go and talk to the world as if nothing had happened, and nothing has happened. Tumble down; brush the mud off your clothes; appear with a smiling countenance, and nobody cares. Do you suppose society is going to take out its pocket-handkerchief and be inconsolable when you die? ”

“ No, your shame is known to all men, and the shame of all who belong to you. Again, what think you of the woman who, because it is the fashion, goes out to balls indecently and improperly dressed—who is not covered as becomes a Christian matron or maiden, but is so clad as to bring the blush of lust to the face of the brazen, and of shame to that of the pure in heart; or of those who go to all sort of plays and spectacles, who encourage the most questionable of dances and ballets, and bring up their children in the same spirit? Is their modesty known to all men? ”

“ If I had but done sooner what Eve asked, this would not have happened. I will bear it.'
'Sir Edric, do not be angry with me, for if I did not say this, then I should be but an ill counsellor. And, firstly, do not use the word shame. The ways of nature are past all explaining; if a woman be frail and easily impressed, and other circumstances concur, then in some few rare cases a thing of this sort does happen. If there be shame, it is not upon you but upon nature—to whom one would not lightly impute shame. ”

“ The same mutual relationships with the ideas of morality are found in connexion with the sense of shame. Beyond question, the sentiments of shame and of disgust are closely connected with the ideas of custom and morality; for shame and disgust arise especially in connexion with matters which conflict with our ideas of morality. ”

“ The haggard misery of the one, sign of sleeplessness and late watching—the attenuated feebleness of the other, showing the effects of some practices, no matter of what particular sort, which are undermining his constitution, and rapidly tending to destroy him. If you but look in his eye as I have done, marking its wildness, its wandering, its sensible expression of shame—you can hardly fail to think with me that something is morally wrong. ”

“ He wanted to want to take her in his arms and kiss her lips and hold her tightly to him, and when desire refused to rise in him, shame took its place, and because he couldn't understand the shame, he supplanted it with anger.
"Men have no happiness!" ”

“ Shame is stronger than conscience. I need not tell you of all the bonds of infamy that united masters and slaves. Debauchery, extortion, and fraud were both precept and example for my youth, and life went on merrily. ”

“ And he felt crushed with a sense of personal shame as though he himself had perpetrated all the wickedness that reigned in the world, as though he himself had caused all these tears to flow, had mangled and torn into shreds all these human hearts. He was overwhelmed with shame because of these downtrodden homes which he passed on his way, he was ashamed to enter his own house where by virtue of sin and of madness the dreadful image of the semi-idiot, semi-beast, held its autocratic insolent sway. ”

“ Issuing when shame hath ceased to check the brawls
Of some abused Festivity—so be it.
I came not dreaming of unruffled life,
Untainted manners; born among the hills,
Bred also there, I wanted not a scale
To regulate my hopes; pleased with the good
I shrink not from the evil with disgust,
Or with immoderate pain. I look for Man,
The common creature of the brotherhood,
Differing but little from the Man elsewhere,
For selfishness and envy and revenge,
Ill neighbourhood—pity that this should be—
Flattery and double-dealing, strife and wrong. ”

“ First, to define the passion of shame, I think it may be called a sorrowful reflection on our own unworthiness, proceeding from an apprehension that others either do, or might, if they knew all, deservedly despise us. ”

“ Shame of a very different nature,—a moral shamefacedness,— which if not itself an instinctive virtue, is near akin to one, makes those who are endowed with the best and highest feelings, conceal them from all common eyes ”

“ I shuddered, too, when I contemplated the shame which awaited me, should some future event, yet hidden in the lap of time, reveal to the world the secret villainy of the man who had borne himself so proudly among his fellows. Yet even these regrets, even the apprehension of fresh difficulties in the concealment of my crime, were insufficient to deter me from the prosecution of my original intention; and blinded by the intemperance of misguided affection, heedless of the shame and misery into which I was about to plunge the woman I adored, I sought and obtained your hand. ”

“ Such in fact is the state of mind that shame gives expression to; the soul is stung as it were at the result; its remorse for its ill-considered attempt is a whip that makes it feel to the quick, and it would bring in oblivion to its aid against its tormentor. ”

“ You have endeavoured to put a brand of shame upon a man who never, consciously, was guilty of a dishonourable action in his life."
"Well, and how do you feel?"
"Feel! God forgive me, but I feel as though I should like to kill you." ”

“ He could allude to the victims of misfortune in terms of charity that would draw tears to all eyes, and plead for the innocence of childhood and the chastity of woman in strains of eloquence that would send the burning tinge of shame to the most gloating sensualist, or the most hardened trafficker in that which robs a man of his reason and affections. ”

“ I now perceive the folly of this compassion and these hopes. I need not be assiduous to spare you the shame and mortification of hearing the truth. Shame is as much a stranger to your heart as remorse. Say what I will, disclose what I will, your conduct will be just the same. A show of much reluctance and humility will, no doubt, be made, and the tongue will be busy in imploring favour which the heart disdains. ”

“ You have brought shame upon your parents and shame upon your son, and that shame you can never wipe out. If you had in you a spark of human feeling, if you were not worthless and heartless you would blush to look me in the face or your child in the face. ”

“ Oh, the ineffable misery of an exposed shame! the terrible sense that we are to meet abroad and before the world the stern condemnation our conscience has already pronounced, and that henceforth we are to be shunned and avoided! There is not left to us any longer one mood of mind that can bring repose. If we are depressed, it is in the mourning of our guilt we seem to be dressed; if for a moment we assume the air of light-heartedness, it is to shock the world by the want of feeling for our shame! It is written that we are to be outcasts and live apart!
“May I come in, Loo?” ”

“ But sensitiveness to shame is that quality of our nature on which, above all others, moral progress depends. The stigma of public disgrace is one of the most potent safeguards of virtue. The world cries "Shame" upon the thief, and the dread of the disgrace which is implied in being called a [Pg 19] thief acts as one of the strongest preventives upon those whom hunger and poverty might tempt to steal. ”

“ But then, as things now are with us, like all the rest of the machinery of the soul, shame has gone sadly astray both in its objects and in its operations, till it demands a long, a severe, and a very noble discipline over himself before any man can keep shame in its proper place and directed in upon its proper objects. ”

“ Alas! we so dearly love to be lamented in our misfortunes: indifference alone irritates and wounds us: here not only shall all hearts be shut to our misfortunes, but all beholders shall insult our shame, and the only portion left to the sinner shall be his confusion, his despair, and his crimes. ”

“ We have seen that in all parts of the world persons who feel shame for some moral delinquency, are apt to avert, bend down, or hide their faces, independently of any thought about their personal appearance. ”

“ She would, then, hail with delight the means of quitting the disgraceful life she now, for the first time, views with shame and disgust, for the purpose of entirely devoting herself to the rude, unpolished man whose taste she so entirely partakes of, and who seeks to hide himself from the world, as much from inclination as from a desire of escaping from the universal reprobation in which his family is viewed. ”

“ And thus it comes about that, in the very best of men, their still perverted sense of shame remains in them a constant snare and a source of temptation. A man of a fine nature feels keenly the temptation to shrink from those paths of truth and duty that expose him to the cruel judgments and the coarse and scandalising attacks of public and private enemies. It was in the Valley of Humiliation that Shame set upon Faithful, and it is a real humiliation to any man of anything of this pilgrim’s fine character and feeling to be attacked, scoffed at, and held up to blame and opprobrium. ”

“ Dandinus, &c.
SUBSECT. VI.—Shame and Disgrace, Causes.
Shame and disgrace cause most violent passions and bitter pangs. Ob pudorem et dedecus publicum, ob errorum commissum saepe moventur generosi animi (Felix Plater, lib. 3. de alienat mentis.) Generous minds are often moved with shame, to despair for some public disgrace. And he, saith Philo, lib. 2. de provid. dei, [1673] “that subjects himself to fear, grief, ambition, shame, is not happy, but altogether miserable, tortured with continual labour, care, and misery.” ”

“ These examples suffice to show that the sentiment of shame, which is associated with great discomfort, is a safeguard against immorality and against breaches of custom.
Similar relations exist for the sense of disgust, which is allied to the sense of shame. Shame is felt in the performance of an action disgusting to others, if against one's will one is watched in the process. Defæcation is usually effected in some retired place: in the onlooker, defæcation arouses disgust; whilst by the person defæcating, if he knows that he is being observed, shame is felt. ”

“ 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 opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins. Good Lord, my dear Ramsden, we are ashamed to walk, ashamed to ride in an omnibus, ashamed to hire a hansom instead of keeping a carriage, ashamed of keeping one horse instead of two and a groom-gardener instead of a coachman and footman. The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is. ”

“ Much of the trouble, vexation, and misery of which men are the cause to themselves is due to cowardice, or the false shame which results from attaching undue importance to custom, fashion, or the opinion of others, even when that opinion is not confirmed by their own reflexion. Shame is an invaluable protection to men, as a restraining feeling. But the objects to which it properly attaches are wrong-doing, unkindness, discourtesy, to others, and, as regards ourselves, ignorance, imprudence, intemperance, impurity, and avoidable defects or misfortunes. ”

“ Thou art the shame of human nature: [438] thou representest man in the likeness of a beast, and worse; as if he were made but instead of a barrel or a sink: look on a drunkard filthing and spewing, and reeling and bawling, and see if he be not uglier than a brute! Thou art a shame to thy own reason, when thou showest the world, that it cannot so much as shut thy mouth, nor prevail with thee in so small a thing. ”