Disgraceful Quotes & Sayings

Islam is a religion of success. Unlike Christianity, which has as its main image, in the west at least, a man dying in a devastating, disgraceful, helpless death. — Karen Armstrong

apophthegmata) on a variety of topics.72 It's easy to tell the difference between a proper joke and a vulgar one. The first is appropriate for the most serious kind of person in a light mood on the right occasion. The other, if it involves a disgraceful subject or obscene language, doesn't suit even an easy-going fellow. There are limits to be observed in play and recreation as well. We don't want to abandon all precaution and, carried away by our sense of enjoyment, end up disgracing ourselves. Examples of appropriate kinds of recreation include exercising on the Campus Martius,73 also hunting. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Each of us could be under a cloud of suspicion for the rest of our lives."
"A black spot," Dour Elinor intoned. "A blemish upon our maiden purity."
"Oh, no, surely not," disgraceful Mary Jane replied. "Not for such a trifling thing as neglecting to mention the death of a headmistress and her nasty brother. No one could really be upset over that. It takes much more fun to leave a blemish upon one's maiden purity. — Julie Berry

Empower the future with love. Disgraceful men don't stand a place in the kingdom of god. — Suchet Chaturvedi

Wars of opinion, as they have been the most destructive, are also the most disgraceful of conflicts. — Charles Caleb Colton

Man is mortal. Everyone has to die some day or the other. But one must resolve to lay down one's life in enriching the noble ideals of self-respect and in bettering one's human life. We are not slaves. Nothing is more disgraceful for a brave man than to live life devoid of self-respect. — B.R. Ambedkar

And while Protestant reformers broke with Rome on a variety of counts, their treatment of their fellow human beings was no less disgraceful. Public executions were more popular than ever: heretics were still reduced to ash, scholars were tortured and killed for impertinent displays of reason, and fornicators were murdered without a qualm. — Sam Harris

My dear fellow, the way you flirt with Gwendolen is perfectly disgraceful. It is almost as disgraceful as the way Gwendolen flirts with you. — Oscar Wilde

I don't resist progress, but I have a growing feeling that mankind uses it mostly for disgraceful purposes. — Stanislaw Lem

It is unnatural that a pure stream should flow from a foul fountain its vices are but a continuation of the vices of its origin. A man of moral honor and good political principles, cannot submit to the mean drudgery and disgraceful arts, by which such elections are carried. To be a successful candidate, he must be destitute of the qualities that constitute a just legislator: and being thus disciplined to corruption it is not to be expected that the representative should be better than the man. — Thomas Paine

For a religious leader to question a person's faith is disgraceful. I'm proud to be a Christian, and as president, I will not allow Christianity to be consistently attacked and weakened, unlike what is happening now. — Donald Trump

I've always been slightly hesitant about generalizing movies made by men and women being different in their nature; I think movies by each director are different. Having said that, I think that it's kind of disgraceful that there aren't more female directors. — Susanne Bier

I am almost ashamed to answer,' she said. 'As I have said before, Emily
Fox-Seton has become the lodestar of my existence. I cannot live without
her. She has walked over to Maundell to make sure that we do not have a
dinner-party without fish to-night.'
'She has _walked_ over to Maundell,' said Lord Walderhurst
'after
yesterday?'
'There was not a pair of wheels left in the stable,' answered Lady
Maria. 'It is disgraceful, of course, but she is a splendid walker, and
she said she was not too tired to do it. It is the kind of thing she
ought to be given the Victoria Cross for
saving one from a dinner-party
without fish.'
The Marquis of Walderhurst took up the cord of his monocle and fixed the
glass rigidly in his eye.
'It is not only four miles to Maundell,' he remarked, staring at the
table-cloth, not at Lady Maria, 'but it is four miles back. — Frances Hodgson Burnett

Of the family tree, with so much venerable moss upon it, should have borne, as its topmost bough, an idler like myself. No aim that I have ever cherished would they recognise as laudable; no success of mine - if my life, beyond its domestic scope, had ever been brightened by success - would they deem otherwise than worthless, if not positively disgraceful. "What is he?" murmurs one grey — Nathaniel Hawthorne

It has been more than 30 years since this disgraceful episode occurred, and I believe that the United States government should demand the return of the USS Pueblo to the United States Navy without further delay. — Wayne Allard

I have never been able to discover anything disgraceful in being a colored man. But I have often found it inconvenient - in America. — Bert Williams

Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absentminded. Someone sober will worry about things going badly. Let the lover be. — Rumi

Let's note, that in what I consider the most disgraceful performance abroad by an American official in my lifetime - something not exampled since Jane Fonda sat on the anti-aircraft gun in Hanoi to be photographed - Mr. McDermott said in effect, not in effect, he said it, we should take Saddam Hussein at his word and not take the President at his word. He said the United States is simply trying to provoke. I mean, why Saddam Hussein doesn't pay commercial time for that advertisement for his policy, I do not know. — George Will

I try not to look like a university man here ... My fellow-guests think of a university degree as a disgraceful preliminary to the blood-sucking life of the bourgeoisie. A sign, moreover, that a man has to earn his own living. — Eilis Dillon

I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be. All novels are or should be written for both men and women to read, and I am at a loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man. — Anne Bronte

Don't be so quick to throw away your life. No matter how disgraceful or embarrassing it may be, you need to keep struggling to find your way out until the very end. — Norihiro Yagi

We have made enquiries about the rules of the inhabitants of the Roman empire and the Indian states. . . . We have never rejected anybody because of their different religion or origin. We have not jealously kept away from them what we affirm. And at the same time we have not disdained to learn what they stand for. For it is a fact that to have knowledge of the truth and of sciences and to study them is the highest thing with which a king can adorn himself. And the most disgraceful thing for kings is to disdain learning and be ashamed of exploring the sciences. He who does not learn is not wise. - Khosraw I Anushirvan (according to the Byzantine historian Agathias) — Michael Axworthy

If you only notice human proceedings, you may observe that all who attain great power and riches, make use of either force or fraud; and what they have acquired either by deceit or violence, in order to conceal the disgraceful methods of attainment, they endeavor to sanctify with the false title of honest gains. Those who either from imprudence or want of sagacity avoid doing so, are always overwhelmed with servitude and poverty; for faithful servants are always servants, and honest men are always poor; nor do any ever escape from servitude but the bold and faithless, or from poverty, but the rapacious and fraudulent. God and nature have thrown all human fortunes into the midst of mankind; and they are thus attainable rather by rapine than by industry, by wicked actions rather than by good. Hence it is that men feed upon each other, and those who cannot defend themselves must be worried. — Niccolo Machiavelli

It was disgraceful but also romantic enough to make Lina's heart turn. — Anna Godbersen

The Cold War in Africa is one of the darkest, most disgraceful pages in contemporary history, and everybody ought to be ashamed. — Ryszard Kapuscinski

The brutality was shocking. Disgraceful acts of inhumanity. No one wanted to fall into the hands of the enemy. But it was growing harder to distinguish who the enemy was. — Ruta Sepetys

HELMER; But this is disgraceful. Is this the way you neglect your most sacred duties?
NORA: What do you consider is my most sacred duty?
HELMER: Do I have to tell you that? Isn't it your duty to your husband and children?
NORA:I have another duty, just as sacred.
HELMER: You can't have. What duty do you mean?
NORA: My duty to myself. — Henrik Ibsen

Our dear Imam said that the occupying regime [Israel] must be wiped off the map ... We cannot compromise over the issue of Palestine ... I have no doubt that the new wave that has started in Palestine, and we witness it in the Islamic world too, will eliminate this disgraceful stain from the Islamic world. — Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

The disgraceful and shameful construction of walls, the increasing enforcement of security systems and increasing violation of human rights and labor rights will not protect the economy of the United States. — Tucker Carlson

Alan Shepard was the first and only interplanetary golfer," Coke told his sister. "He was also the first and only interplanetary litterbug," Moe said. "What he did was disgraceful. — Dan Gutman

Everyone should be taught the nobility of labor, the heroism and splendor of honest effort. As long as it is considered disgraceful to labor, or aristocratic not to labor, the world will be filled with idleness and crime, and with every possible moral deformity. — Robert Green Ingersoll

If the players aren't getting paid, there's something terribly, terribly wrong, and that's true only in the United States. Everywhere else, where money is involved with sport, the players get paid. But these poor kids in college, they're doing it for free, and that's just disgraceful. — Frank Deford

To destroy governmental violence, only one thing is needed: It is that people should understand that the feeling of patriotism, which alone supports that instrument of violence, is a rude, harmful, disgraceful, and bad feeling, and, above all, is immoral. — Leo Tolstoy

What is disgraceful and outrageous is that 18,000 children die of hunger every day, every one of them a preventable death. That's what the controversy should be about. — John Powell

It's as if our electric grid didn't even have fences around it. This is disgraceful what we do, and what we don't do, to protect the Internet. — Paul Vixie

Though they have been subjected to disgraceful treatment, the Palestinians in East Jerusalem are fortunate in comparison with those who are less visible, and therefore can be killed, tortured, humiliated, and driven from their destroyed homes and lands virtually at will. It is, in fact, astonishing that their spirit has not been broken. — Noam Chomsky

Freedom of opinion! Where is it? I see a press more mean and paltry and silly and disgraceful than any country ever knew, - if that be its standard, here it is ... I speak of Miss Martineau, and all parties ... shower down upon her a perfect cataract of abuse. "But what has she done? Surely she praised America enough!" - "Yes, but she told us of some of our faults, and Americans can't bear to be told of their faults. — Charles Dickens

He was too simple to wonder when he had attained humility. But he knew he had attained it and he knew it was not disgraceful and it carried no loss of true pride. — Ernest Hemingway,

The triumph of the Romans was indeed sullied by their treatment of the captive king, whom they hung on a gibbet without the knowledge of their indignant general. This disgraceful act of cruelty which might be imputed to the fury of the troops, was followed by the deliberate murder of Withicab, the son of Vadomair; a German prince, of a weak and sickly constitution, but of a daring and formidable spirit. — Edward Gibbon

The real pressure must be made more oppressive by making men conscious of the pressure, and the disgrace more disgraceful by publishing it. — Karl Marx

Some live in poverty but with their honor; some live in wealth but with no honor! Some lives are respectable, some are disgraceful! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

I think the way NOW characterized Smith Barney is disgraceful. I am appalled that an organization like that would not have reserved judgment (until) making their own investigation. — Jamie Dimon

The F-22 is a shameful, disgraceful boondoggle and it revolts me. — Ralph Peters

The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful. — H.L. Mencken

Let's look at the amounts involved.5 When George W. Bush left office, the federal debt was $9 trillion. That's a huge amount, and Bush added nearly $4 trillion to the total, a disgraceful legacy caused primarily by profligate domestic spending and foreign wars. Bush's second term deficits averaged around $500 billion. But still, the $9 trillion represented America's entire debt accumulated from the founding through 2008. Now, under Obama, the federal debt is $18.5 trillion. It's larger than America's gross domestic product which is around $17 trillion. The debt will be over $19 trillion when Obama leaves office. While progressives professed to be scandalized by Bush's $500 billion deficits, they have remained silent while Obama racks up trillion-dollar deficits. — Dinesh D'Souza

Nothing is more disgraceful than that an old man should have nothing to show to prove that he has lived long, except his years. — Seneca The Younger

You Cannot Live as I Have Lived and Not End Up Like This: The Thoroughly Disgraceful Life & Times of Willie Donaldson. — Jay Nordlinger

One of history's most useful tasks is to bring home to us how keenly, honestly and painfully, past generations pursued aims that now seem to us wrong or disgraceful. — John Carey

It was revolting that I had been like that. Shameful. Disgraceful, in the old-time sense of the word. And what was even worse? That I could now see myself so wretchedly clearly. I had changed, I recognized bitterly.I hated that I could see myself as I was. What a terrible thing to know. I would never be able to not know it, to forget it.I didn't see how I could ever forgive River for that. — Cate Tiernan

Drinking habits were very prevalent among men, and were not in any way disgraceful, unless excessive. — Catherine Helen Spence

Safety nets for the poor and disadvantaged are a must for any compassionate nation, but encouraging folks to go on the dole when not absolutely necessary is disgraceful. — Bill O'Reilly

To be a woman condemned to a wretched and disgraceful punishment is no impediment to beauty, but it is an insurmountable obstacle to power. Like all persons of real genius, her ladyship well knew what accorded with her nature and her means. Poverty disgusted her -subjection deprived her of two-thirds of her greatness. Her ladyship was only a queen amongst queens: the enjoyment of satisfied pride was essential to her sway. To command beings of an inferior nature, was, to her, rather a humiliation than a pleasure. — Alexandre Dumas

something good will come out of that disgrace, pain, hopelessness, troubles and cries. It's happening right now. Not tomorrow. — Paul Gitwaza

God ordered Abraham to make a burnt offering of his longed-for son. Abraham built an altar, put firewood upon it, and trusted Isaac up on top of the wood. His murdering knife was already in his hand when an angel dramatically intervened with the news of a last-minute change of plan: God was only joking after all, 'tempting' Abraham, and testing his faith. A modern moralist cannot help but wonder how a child could ever recover from such psychological trauma. By the standards of modern morality, this disgraceful story is an example simultaneously of child abuse, bullying in two assymetrical power relationships, and the first recorded use of the Nuremberg defence: 'I was only obeying orders.' Yet the legend is one of the great foundational myths of all three monotheistic religions. — Richard Dawkins

When poverty is more disgraceful than even vice, is not morality cut to the quick? — Mary Wollstonecraft

Often a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and distances ... and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all that we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, which people see as ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn. — Saint Augustine

He will not suffer thy foot to be moved. Psalm 121:3 IF the Lord will not suffer it, neither men nor devils can do it. How greatly would they rejoice if they could give us a disgraceful fall, drive us from our position, and bury us out of memory! They could do this to their heart's content were it not for one hindrance, and only one: the Lord will not suffer it; and if he does not suffer it, we shall not suffer it. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

As to adultery, let it be held disgraceful, in general, for any man or woman to be found in any way unfaithful when they are married, and called husband and wife. If during the time of bearing children anything of the sort occur, let the guilty person be punished with a loss of privileges in proportion to the offense. — Aristotle.

Let lovers be crazy, disgraceful and wild Those who fret about such things Aren't in love. — Rumi

The thin end of the sensible clothes wedge had been inserted in society by the disgraceful Mrs Bloomer a decade and a half before the year of which I write; but that early attempt at the trouser suit had been comprehensively defeated by the crinoline--a small fact of considerable significance in our understanding of the Victorians. They were offered sense; and chose a six-foot folly unparalleled in the most folly-ridden of minor arts. — John Fowles

Everyone hopes it will be easier for kids. Maybe the goal in America is to have an easy life, and so we find it too disgraceful to tell the truth. — Matthew Quick

We Athenians hold that it is not poverty that is disgraceful but the failure to struggle against it. — Pericles

Now here's somebody who wants to smoke a marijuana cigarette. If he's caught, he goes to jail. Now is that moral? Is that proper? I think it's absolutely disgraceful that our government, supposed to be our government, should be in the position of converting people who are not harming others into criminals, of destroying their lives, putting them in jail. That's the issue to me. The economic issue comes in only for explaining why it has those effects. But the economic reasons are not the reasons — Milton Friedman

I do believe I'm tight,' she said, 'how disgraceful. Please, James, don't be ashamed of me. I did so want to be gay. And I am gay. — Ian Fleming

My disgraceful, wicked heart, thought Amy, is braver than the world. For a moment it seemed to Amy that there was nothing in the world she could not meet and vanquish. And though she knew this to be the most foolish idea, it excited and emboldened her further. — Richard Flanagan

European nation with highest politician/lover ratio: Few European states can hope to compete with France and Italy in this department, and the two nations have been battling for European political lothario supremacy for over thirty years. The contest has been increasingly acrimonious since 1998, when France was initially the clear winner but somehow "lost" sixty-eight illicit lovers in the recount and had to concede defeat. The following year was no less rocked in scandal, when the Italians were disqualified for "stretching the boundaries" of their elected representatives to include senior civil servants - and the crown was tossed back to France. No one was quite prepared for the disgraceful scandal the following year when it was discovered that one French minister had no mistress at all and "loved his wife," a shocking revelation that led to his resignation and ultimately to the fall of the government. — Jasper Fforde

It is disgraceful to live as a stranger in one's country, and be an alien in any matter that affects our welfare. — Aldus Manutius

The most immoral and disgraceful and dangerous thing that anybody can do in the arts is knowingly to feed back to the public its own ignorance and cheap tastes. — Edmund Wilson

Humility is not disgraceful, and carries no loss of true pride. — Ernest Hemingway,

Be yourself,
And take control of your own destiny.
There is nothing more disgraceful in life,
Than living someone else's life. — Mouloud Benzadi

There is no logical basis for the prohibition of marijuana. $7.7 billion is a lot of money, but that is one of the lesser evils. Our failure to successfully enforce these laws is responsible for the deaths of thousands of people in Colombia. I haven't even included the harm to young people. It's absolutely disgraceful to think of picking up a 22-year-old for smoking pot. More disgraceful is the denial of marijuana for medical purposes. — Milton Friedman

It was more difficult not to
understand than to understand. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Let the mouth also fast from disgraceful speeches and railings. For what does it profit if we abstain from fish and fowl and yet bite and devour our brothers and sisters? The evil speaker eats the flesh of his brother and bites the body of his neighbor. — John Chrysostom

It is disgraceful that people are being barred from neighborhoods and clubs on a basis that would have barred Jesus Himself. — James Pike

It is just completely disgraceful that someone can go to the extent of morphing my face onto someone else's body to create a sensational video. — Mona Singh

I think it'd be disgraceful if a chap wasn't allowed to have a bit of fun in Las Vegas. The real scandal would be if you went all the way to Las Vegas and you didn't misbehave in some trivial way. — Boris Johnson

Imagine the National Guard being called against a group of peaceful people. How far can we get; how disgraceful can it become? It's the most disgraceful, the most wicked thing I've seen in all my years of organizing farm labor. — Cesar Chavez

It is too true, however disgraceful it may be to human nature, that nations in general will make war whenever they have a prospect of getting anything by it. — John Jay

Being well satisfied that, for a man who thinks himself to be somebody, there is nothing more disgraceful than to hold himself up as honored, not on his own account, but for the sake of his forefathers. Yet hereditary honors are a noble and splendid treasure to descendants. — Plato

Disgraceful: for the soul to give up when the body is still going strong. — Marcus Aurelius

"thanks" in MaoriGrateful living: an alchemic operation of converting "disgraceful" things into grateful events. — Raimon Panikkar

Perhaps she'd done so to spite him, he thought. He'd tried to kill her, after all. And a worse attempt I've never seen. Disgraceful! His jaw locked in irritation. Now is not the time to think of her. When is a good time? Later. He could almost hear Death clapping happily in his mind, and he didn't think it was because the demon was eager to take Anya's soul. He didn't understand why the demon cared to see her, but he had no time to reason it out. The — Gena Showalter

I have been to lots of parties and acted perfectly disgraceful but I never actually collapsed oh Lana Turner we love you get up — Frank O'Hara

Nothing is more disgraceful than insincerity. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Dissimulation, even the most innocent in its nature, is ever productive of embarrassment; whether the design is evil or not artifice is always dangerous and almost inevitably disgraceful. — Jean De La Bruyere

In Eudora Welty's masterful story "Why I Live at the P.O." (1941), the narrator is engaged in a sibling rivalry with her younger sister, who has come home after leaving under suspicious if not actually disgraceful circumstances. The narrator, Sister, is outraged at having to cook two chickens to feed five people and a small child just because her "spoiled" sister has come home. What Sister can't see, but we can, is that those two fowl are really a fatted calf. It may not be a grand feast by traditional standards, but it is a feast, as called for upon the return of the Prodigal Son, even if the son turns out to be a daughter. Like the brothers in the parable, Sister is irritated and envious that the child who left, and ostensibly used up her "share" of familial goodwill, is instantly welcomed, her sins so quickly forgiven. Then — Thomas C. Foster

Syria has become the great tragedy of this century - a disgraceful humanitarian calamity with suffering and displacement unparalleled in recent history, — Antonio Guterres

As much as I value an union of all the states, I would not admit the southern states into the union, unless they agreed to the discontinuance of this disgraceful trade, because it would bring weakness and not strength to the union. — George Mason

A child is owed the greatest respect; if you have ever have something disgraceful in mind, don't ignore your son's tender years. — Juvenal

It's disgraceful how these humans blame the gods. They say their tribulations come from us, when they themselves, through their own foolishness, bring hardships which are not decreed by Fate. — Homer

The lies (Western slander) which well-meaning zeal has heaped round this man (Muhammad) are disgraceful to ourselves only. — Thomas Carlyle

Do not be deceitful.
Do not be disdainful.
Do not be distrustful.
Do not be disgraceful.
Do not be disrespectful. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Dune: ...That's disgraceful!
Sette: So's your face! — Ashley Cope

Solomon Northup is one of the most remarkable people I've ever encountered in my life; one of the most amazing stories I have ever been in any kind of contact with. To not tell that story would have been disgraceful, in my opinion. — Chiwetel Ejiofor

Mediocre people often have a tinge of religion about them, but it is only a tinge. They take their religion as it comes. They may pray and worship more or less regularly, and they usually stay clear of publicly disgraceful crimes, but they are lukewarm, colorless. Seldom or never do they read a serious book about prayer or study to learn more about God and His plans, to discover how to be humble and chaste and patient. They are always too busy for the one thing necessary. — Thomas Dubay

It is a disgraceful thing to be ignorant ... — Marie De Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise De Sevigne

You cannot disgrace a disgraceful man; you cannot make a shameless man feel ashamed; you cannot make a cockroach a cockroach, because it is already a cockroach! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Behold, O Lord, that I am indignant with myself, for my senseless, profitless, hurtful, perilous passions; that I loathe myself, for these inordinate, unseemly, deformed, false, shameful, disgraceful passions; that my confusion is daily before me, and the shame of my face hath covered me. Alas! woe, woe! O me, how long? — Lancelot Andrewes

Each famous author of antiquity whom I recover places a new offence and another cause of dishonor to the charge of earlier generations, who, not satisfied with their own disgraceful barrenness, permitted the fruit of other minds, and the writings that their ancestors had produced by toil and application, to perish through insufferable neglect. Although they had nothing of their own to hand down to those who were to come after, they robbed posterity of its ancestral heritage. — Petrarch

Dostoyevsky's indignation at Afanasy Fet's innocent lyrics, "Whispers, timid breath, the nightingales trilled," is well known. This is simply disgraceful, wrote Dostoyevsky indignantly, and he speculated what an insulting impression such empty verses would have made if they'd been given to someone to read during the Lisbon earthquake! Some people protested: Yes, of course, Dostoyevsky is right, but we aren't having an earthquake, and we aren't in Lisbon, and after all, are we not allowed to love, to listen to nightingales, to admire the beauty of a beloved woman? But Dostoyevsky's argument held sway for a long time. It did so because of the way Russians perceive Russian life: as a constant, unending Lisbon earthquake. — Tatyana Tolstaya