Embarrassments Quotes & Sayings

Beauty and art, no doubt, pervade all business of life like a kindly genius, and form the bright adornment of all our surroundings, both mental and material, soothing the sadness of our condition and the embarrassments of real life, killing time in entertaining fashion, and where there's nothing to be achieved, occupying the place of what is vicious, better, at any rate, than vice. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

His life, for years past, had been mainly a succession of resigned adaptations, and he had learned, before dealing practically with his embarrassments, to extract from most of them a small tribute of amusement.
("The Triumph Of The Night") — Edith Wharton

His marriage was of infinitely more salvation to the laird than if it had set him free from all his worldly embarrassments, for it set him growing again - and that is the only final path out of oppression. — George MacDonald

He'd discovered the tables now and was staring at the pile. It looked like the work of a miniaturist beaver: a heap of objects that was illegible yet clearly not random. To Sasha's eye, it almost shook under its load of embarrassments and close shaves and little triumphs and moments of pure exhilaration. It contained years of her life compressed. The screwdriver was at the outer edge. Sasha moved closer to Alex, drawn to the sight of him taking everything in. — Jennifer Egan

I've always felt, as a writer, that radicals are fascinating because they're relations, they have a place in the American family. They're the relatives everyone wishes would go away. They're the embarrassments to decorum and good taste. — E.L. Doctorow

Followers do not like themselves, of course; that's why they crawl. And masters have nothing but contempt for their subservants, which is why they impose such colorful embarrassments upon them. — Timothy Leary

I thank heaven that the 4th. of July is over. It is always a day of great fatigue to me, and of some embarrassments from improper intrusions and some from unintended exclusions. — Thomas Jefferson

Amos believed that people go way out of their way to avoid minor embarrassments and he decided very early on in his life that it was not worth it. — Amos Tversky

I blushed. You haven't seen a bald man in his sixties blush? Oh, it happens, just as it does to a hairy, spotty fifteen-year-old. And because it's rarer, it sends the blusher tumbling back to that time when life felt like nothing more than one long sequence of embarrassments. — Julian Barnes

A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art. — Jorge Luis Borges

A dog - a dog teaches us so much about love. Wordless, imperfect love; love that is constant, love that is simple
goodness, love that forgives not only bad singing and embarrassments, but misunderstandings and harsh words.
Love that sits and stays and stays and stays, until it finally becomes its own forever. Love, stronger than death. A dog is a four-legged reminder that love comes and time passes and then your heart breaks. — Deb Caletti

Margaret was not dreaming nor was she quite asleep, although the moon looking at her face believed she was. She was experiencing the thing insomniacs dread-- not being awake but the ticky-tacky thoughts that fill in the space where sleep ought to be. Rags and swatches; draincloths and crumpled paper napkins. Old griefs and embarrassments; jealousies and offense. Just common ignoble scraps not deep enough for dreaming and not light enough to dismiss. — Toni Morrison

Refreshment is the remedy for all manner of embarrassments. — Winston Graham

A writer, or any man, must believe that whatever happens to him is an instrument; everything has been given for an end. This is even stronger in the case of the artist. Everything that happens, including humiliations, embarrassments, misfortunes, all has been given like clay, like material for one's art. One must accept it. For this reason I speak in a poem of the ancient food of heroes: humiliation, unhappiness, discord. Those things are given to us to transform, so that we may make from the miserable circumstances of our lives things that are eternal, or aspire to be so. — Jorge Luis Borges

One notices immediately that the First Book of Samuel is mostly ignored by the Chronicler. This truth of the assembly does not want to go back to the rawness of the tribe. It is content to live from the state, and it is glad for the lid that state truth has put upon the tribal versions that might contain embarrassments. The beginning point is only to give a favorable version of the transition. The first narrative disposes of Saul by telling of the suicide. The narrative is crafted so that David is not mentioned, and therefore could not be blamed, until v. 14. — Walter Brueggemann

When once experience taught me that I could work when I chose, and within a quarter of an hour of my determining to do so, I was relieved, in a great measure, from those embarrassments and depressions which I see afflicting many an author who waits for a mood instead of summoning it, and is the sport, instead of the master, of his own impressions and ideas. — Harriet Martineau

We should seek to free the moral life from the embarrassments and entanglements in which it has been involved by the quibbles of the schools and the mutual antagonisms of the sects; to introduce into it an element of downrightness and practical earnestness; above all, to secure to the modern world, in its struggle with manifold evil, the boon of moral unity, despite intellectual diversity. — Felix Adler

How idle then is the notion that some entertain, that the establishment of this plan of government will speedily extricate us out of debt, and make us a rich and flourishing people. My opinion is the reverse, that in the complete operation and effect of it, it will be an insupportable burden, that will sink us the deeper under our present embarrassments. — Thomas Cogswell Upham

Catholics have seldom had the difficulties and embarrassments many Protestants have had about creation vs. evolution. Ever since Augustine, they have interpreted Genesis' "days" non-literally. — Peter Kreeft

Diffidence may check resolution and obstruct performance, but compensates its embarrassments by more important advantages; it conciliates the proud, and softens the severe; averts envy from excellence, and censure from miscarriage. — Samuel Johnson

Art is made by those who consider themselves to have failed at whatever isn't art. And of course it is loved as consolation, or a call to arms, by those who feel the same. One of the reasons there seem to be fewer readers for literature today than there were yesterday is that the concept of failure has been outlawed. If we are all beautiful, all clever, all happy, all successes in our way, what do we want with the language of the dispossessed? But the nature of failure ensures that writers will go on writing no matter how many readers they have. You have to master the embarrassments and ignominies of life. — Howard Jacobson

The common denominator in all these problems is that the world is not a line of dominoes in which each event causes exactly one event and is caused by exactly one event. The world is a tissue of causes and effects that criss and cross in tangled patterns. The embarrassments for Hume's two theories of causation (conjunction and counterfactuals) can be diagrammed as a family of networks in which the lines fan in or out or loop around, as in the diagram on the following page. — Steven Pinker

In so strong a light, nevertheless, do they appear to the Secretary, that, on their due observance, at the present critical juncture, materially depend, in his judgment, the individual and aggregate prosperity of the citizens of the United States; their relief from the embarrassments they now experience; their character as a people; the cause of good government. — Alexander Hamilton

There are books that speak to us of our own lives with a clarity we cannot match. They prevent the morose suspicion that we do not fully belong to the species, that we lie beyond comprehension. Our embarrassments, our sulks, our envy, our feelings of guilt, these phenomena are conveyed in Austen in a way that affords us bursts of almost magical self-recognition. The author has located words to depict a situation we thought ourselves alone in feeling, and for a few moments, we see ourselves more clearly and wish to become whom the author would have wanted us to be. — Alain De Botton

The opposite of esprit d'escalier is the way that life's embarrassments come back to haunt us even after they're long past. I could remember every stupid thing I'd ever said or done, recall them with picture-perfect clarity. Any time I was feeling low, I'd naturally start to remember other times I felt that way, a hit parade of humiliations coming one after another to my mind. — Cory Doctorow

Invitations to speak upon public occasions are among my most grievous embarrassments. Why is it inferred that one is or can be a public speaker because she has written a book? Writing is a very private business. I do not know any other occupation which requires so much privacy unless it is a life of prayer or a life of crime. — Corra May Harris

Immediate, glad obedience to God sets our course on the sea of happiness. Disobedience drops anchor in the sea of despair.Godly living means no regrets about yesterday, no embarrassments today, no schemes for tomorrow. Trust and let the One who holds both the past and future be your Guide for the present. — Woodrow Kroll

Though her body fit with his like a puzzle piece, his mind was an ever-shifting riddle she felt she could study her whole life and never fully solve. She spent the most time touching him, caressing him, massaging the secrets from his shoulders and embarrassments from his lower back. — Thomm Quackenbush

The most formidable of all the ills that threaten the future of the Union arises from the presence of a black population upon its territory; and in contemplating the cause of the present embarrassments, or the future dangers of the United States, the observer is invariably led to this as a primary fact. — Alexis De Tocqueville

It has always seemed to me a disgrace that the embarrassments of early life should continue to smart throughout adulthood with undiminished intensity. Is it not enough that our youthful blunders made us cringe at the time, when we were at our tenderest, but must stay with us beyond cure, burn marks ready to flare up painfully at the merest touch? No: an indiscretion from earliest adolescence will still bring a blush to the cheek of the nonagenarian on his deathbed. — John Banville

Most Icelandic people are really proud to be from there, and we don't have embarrassments like World War II where we were cruel to other people. We don't even have an army. So it's sort of like an all-around good, innocent place. — Bjork

I know that disavowal is an unusal form of betrayal. From the outside it is impossible to tell if you are disowning someone or simply exercising discretion, being considerate, avoiding embarrassments and sources of irritation. But you, who are doing the disowning, you know what you're doing. And disavowal pulls the underpinnings away from a relationship just as surely as other more flamboyant types of betrayal. — Bernhard Schlink

We all have more than our share of pains and sorrow. Embarrassments and things that haunt us. From that, no one is ever immune, no matter how good or perfect a life you think they live. Shame and hurt spare no one. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Prayer is the act by which man, detaching himself from the embarrassments of sense and nature, ascends to the true level of his destiny. — Henry Parry Liddon

All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art. JL Borges — Jan Karon

I thought about life, about my life, the embarrassments, the little coincidences, the shadows of alarm clocks on bedside tables. I thought about my small victories and everything I'd seen destroyed, I'd swum through mink coats on my parents' bed while they hosted downstairs, I'd lost the only person I could have spent my only life with, I'd left behind a thousand tons of marble, I could have released sculptures, I could have released myself from the marble of myself. I'd experienced joy, but not nearly enough, could there be enough? The end of suffering does not justify the suffering, and so there is no end to suffering, what a mess I am, I thought, what a fool, how foolish and narrow, how worthless, how pinched and pathetic, how helpless. None of my pets know their own names, what kind of person am I? — Jonathan Safran Foer

I feel like the people from Iceland have a different relationship with their country than other places. Most Icelandic people are really proud to be from there, and we don't have embarrassments like World War II where we were cruel to other people. — Bjork

Experience is the best school,
Failures, Mistakes, Embarrassments, and Heartaches are teaching there,
Offering only one lesson called Life,
That you could only finish once you're dead! — Nelson M. Lubao