Shamed Life Quotes & Sayings

WHEN GOD IS A DRUG - RELIGIOUS ADDICTION Mood alteration is an ingredient of compulsive/addictive behavior. Addiction has been described as "a pathological relationship to any mood-altering experience that has life-damaging consequences." Toxic shame has been suggested as the core and fuel of all addiction. Religious addiction is rooted in toxic shame, which can be readily mood-altered through various religious behaviors. One can get feelings of righteousness through any form of worship. One can fast, pray, meditate, serve others, go through sacramental rituals, speak in tongues, be slain by the Holy Spirit, quote the Bible, read Bible passages, or say the name of Yahweh or Jesus. Any of these can be a mood-altering experience. If one is toxically shamed, such an experience can be immensely rewarding. The disciples of any religious system can say we are good and others, those not like us, the sinners, are bad. This can be exhilarating to the souls of toxically shamed people. — John Bradshaw

It's still woman's work whether it's done in a great hall or in the kitchen," I said bitterly. "I know it well enough. It's earning no money for yourself and everything for your husband and master. It's obeying him as quickly and as well as if you were a groom of the servery. It's having to tolerate anything he chooses to do, and smile as he does it. I've served Queen Katherine in these last few years. I've seen how life has been for her. I wouldn't be a princess, not even for a princess's dowry. I wouldn't even be a queen. I have seen her shamed and humiliated and insulted, and all she could do was kneel on her prie dieu, pray for a little help, and get to her feet and smile at the woman who was triumphing over her. — Philippa Gregory

There really is no shortcut just because you have a name, or you have some kind of access or some way you can solve all the problems. And I think one of the things I learned with FUBU, you have to understand that there's really only two ways of operating a business: more sales, or lower overhead. — Daymond John

My life
has appeared unclothed in court,
detail by detail,
death-bone witness by death-bone witness,
and I was shamed at the verdict ... — Anne Sexton

My life is simple, my food is plain, and my quarters are uncluttered. In all things, I have sought clarity. I face the troubles and problems of life and death willingly. Virtue, integrity and courage are my priorities. I can be approached, but never pushed; befriended but never coerced; killed but never shamed. — Yi Sun-sin

Generally speaking, most of our vital, spontaneous, instinctual life gets shamed. Children are shamed for being too rambunctious, for wanting things and for laughing too loud. Much dysfunctional shame occurs at the dinner table. Children are forced to eat when they are not hungry. Sometimes children are forced to eat what they do not find appetizing. Being exiled to the dinner table until the plate is cleaned is not unusual in modern family life. The public humiliation of sitting at the dinner table all alone, often with siblings jeering, is a painful kind of exposure. — John Bradshaw

Shall it not be scorn to me to harp on such a moulder'd string?
I am shamed through all my nature to have lov'd so slight a thing. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

The part of you that's like Gob is the part that makes a choice. That says, I choose to. or, I choose not to. That's what's sacred. — Dr. Willie Parker

He was like a sheep being led to be killed. He was quiet, as a lamb is quiet while its wool is being cut; he never opened his mouth. He was shamed and was treated unfairly. He died without children to continue his family. His life on earth has ended. — Davis Bunn

Looking back, it was the thing in his life that shamed him the most: the times he was purposefully, calculatingly mean to Alice. It was those moments, and there had been many of them, that indicated to him that he was not a good person. He got mad at her for many things, but it was always really for the same thing: that she possessed his love and he couldn't seem to get it back.
She didn't deserve it, which was to say she deserved better — Ann Brashares

Sometimes we forget about our own advantages because we focus on what we don't have. Just because you have to work a little harder at something that seems easier to others doesn't mean you're without your own talents. — Chris Colfer

The house of the Lord doesn't filter out the flock - Wanda Lovell — Britney Spears

herself from the rains. But through the raw and broken trees she could see the valley, faint beneath a gelatinous fog. She's all but certain that she's falling toward the very same — Jason Gurley

I tried not to think about my life. I did not have any good solid plans for it long-term - no bad plans either, no plans at all - and the lostness of that, compared with the clear ambitions of my friends (marriage, children, law school), sometimes shamed me. Other times in my mind I defended such a condition as morally and intellectually superior - my life was open and ready and free - but that did not make it less lonely. — Lorrie Moore

To be shame-bound means that whenever you feel any feeling, need or drive, you immediately feel ashamed. The dynamic core of your human life is grounded in your feelings, needs and drives. When these are bound by shame, you are shamed to the core. — John Bradshaw

bullets were a quick, impersonal way to kill. Using your hands, though - that took work. It required hate. It was a strange and sour thing to know that such hatred had been directed at me. That peculiars who didn't even know my name had, in a moment of collective madness, hated me enough to try to beat out my life with their fists. I felt shamed by it, dehumanized somehow, though I couldn't exactly understand why. It was something I'd have to reckon with, if one day I ever had the luxury of time to reckon with such things. I — Ransom Riggs

When our instinctual life is shamed, the natural core of our life is bound up. It's like an acorn going through excruciating agony for becoming an oak, or a flower feeling ashamed for blossoming. — John Bradshaw

That was how he would go on tormenting her, after his physical departure from her life. A baroque plan, byzantine even, a plan that both pleased and shamed him.
He awaited only the night, this one grotesque, terrible night. — Sherry Thomas

She was unequal to anyone's wistfulness. She had made too little of her life. Its loneliness shamed her like a crime. — Lorrie Moore

I would never tell you what to believe, Daniel, so please don't tell me that my opinion is wrong. We should be allowed a few basic human rights in life: the right to decide what goes into our bodies and the right to have an opinion without feeling shamed for it. — Jewel E. Ann

You will never truly realize God is all you need until He becomes all you have. — Mother Teresa

A desk, some pads, a pencil, and a large basket
to hold all of mu mistakes. — Albert Einstein

A fantasy is something produced in the imagination, allowing you to indulge in a thought life that is very different from what you experience on a day-to-day basis. Within this realm there is no fear of discovery, no worry about being shamed; here there is only the deepest of pleasures. — K. Kiker

Toxically shamed people tend to become more and more stagnant as life goes on. They live in a guarded, secretive and defensive way. They try to be more than human (perfect and controlling) or less than human (losing interest in life or stagnated in some addictive behavior). — John Bradshaw

A samurai never worries about losing his life. He worries about losing his honour. Being shamed is far worse than losing your life. A samurai is always ready to die - for his lord, for his honour. That's the samurai way — Lesley Downer

He wanted to know about day-to-day life in America, what people ate and what consumed them, what shamed them and what attracted them, but he read novel after novel and was disappointed: — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Mood alteration is an ingredient of compulsive/addictive behavior. Addiction has been described as "a pathological relationship to any mood-altering experience that has life-damaging consequences." Toxic shame has been suggested as the core and fuel of all addiction. Religious addiction is rooted in toxic shame, which can be readily mood-altered through various religious behaviors. One can get feelings of righteousness through any form of worship. One can fast, pray, meditate, serve others, go through sacramental rituals, speak in tongues, be slain by the Holy Spirit, quote the Bible, read Bible passages, or say the name of Yahweh or Jesus. Any of these can be a mood-altering experience. If one is toxically shamed, such an experience can be immensely rewarding. — John Bradshaw

Now comes the picture of mass defeat, the most awesome spectacle of the war. It is in the bent bodies of old women who poke among ruins seeking some miserable object that will link their lives with the old days. It is in the shamed darting eyes of the defeated. It is in the faces of the little boys who regard our triumphant columns with fear and fascination. And above all it is in the thousands of beaten, dusty soldiers who stream along the roads towards the stockades. Their feet clump wearily, mechanically, hopelessly on the still endless road of war. They move as haggard, gray masses, in which the individual had neither life nor meaning. It is impossible to see in these men the quality that made them stand up and fight like demons out of hell a few shorts months ago. — Audie Murphy

Melancholy, amorous and barbaric, these tales exalted adulterous love as the only true kind, while in the real life of the same society adultery was a crime, not to mention a sin. If found out, it dishonored the lady and shamed the husband, a fellow knight. It was understood that he had the right to kill both unfaithful wife and lover. Nothing fits in this canon. The gay, the elevating, the ennobling pursuit is founded upon sin and invites the dishonor it is supposed to avert. Courtly love was a greater tangle of irreconcilables even than usury. It remained artificial, a literary convention, a fantasy (like modern pornography) more for purposes of — Barbara W. Tuchman

The major problem in our lives is to decide and clarify our responsibilities. To truly be committed to a life of honesty, love and discipline, we must be willing to commit ourselves to reality. This commitment, according to Peck, "requires the willingness and the capacity to suffer continual self-examination." Such an ability requires a good relationship with oneself. This is precisely what no shame-based person has. In fact, a toxically shamed person has an adversarial relationship with himself. Toxic shame - the shame that binds us - is a core part of neurotic and character disordered syndromes of behavior. — John Bradshaw

For I am - or I was - one of those people who pride themselves in on their willpower, on their ability to make a decision and carry it through. This virtue, like most virtues, is ambiguity itself. People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at all - a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named - but elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world are not. This is certainly what my decision, made so long ago in Joey's bed, came to. I had decided to allow no room in the universe for something which shamed and frightened me. I succeeded very well - by not looking at the universe, by not looking at myself, by remaining, in effect, in constant motion. — James Baldwin

Three hundred nights like three hundred walls
must rise between my love and me
and the sea will be a black art between us.
Time with a hard hand will tear out
the streets tangled in my breast.
Nothing will be left but memories.
(O afternoons earned with suffering,
nights hoping for the sight of you,
dejected vacant lots, poor sky
shamed in the bottom of the puddles
like a fallen angel ...
And your life that graces my desire
and that run-down and lighthearted neighborhood
shining today in the glow of my love ... )
Final as a statue
your absence will sadden other fields. — Jorge Luis Borges

Thus then lived this folk in much plenty and ease of life, though not delicately nor desiring things out of measure. They wrought with their hands and wearied themselves; and they rested from their toil and feasted and were merry: to-morrow was not a burden to them, nor yesterday a thing which they would fain forget: life shamed them not, nor did death make them afraid. — William Morris

Those who must control everything fear being vulnerable. Why? Because to be vulnerable opens one up to being shamed. All my life I used up my energies by always having to be guarded. This was a mighty waste of time and energy. The fear was that I would be exposed. And when exposed, all would see that I was flawed and defective as a person - an imposter. Control is a way to ensure that no one can ever shame us again. It involves controlling our own thoughts, expressions, feelings and actions. And it involves attempting to control other people's thoughts, feelings and actions. Control is the ultimate villain in destroying intimacy. We cannot share freely unless we are equal. When one person controls another, equality is ruptured. — John Bradshaw

I recently discovered that a friend who was re-reading Bleak House had done no other Dickens apart from Barnaby Ridge. That's just weird. I shamed and nagged him into picking up Great Expectations instead. But when I tried to recall anything about it other than its excellence, I failed. Maybe there was something about a peculiar stepfather? Or was that This Boy's Life? And I realized that, as this is true of just about every book I consumed between the ages of, say fifteen to forty, I havent even read the books I think I've read. I can't tell you how depressing this is. What's the fucking point? — Nick Hornby

Do all of you think we have fleas?" Decebel asked as he looked at Jen and Sally.
"I think we just make an assumption because of the hair and what not, that you, ya know, might have a problem with the little buggers when you in your wolf form. — Quinn Loftis

Today the danger of the pro-life position, which I vigorously support, is that it can be frighteningly selective. The rights of the unborn and the dignity of the age-worn are pieces of the same pro-life fabric. We weep at the unjustified destruction of the unborn. Did we also weep when the evening news reported from Arkansas that a black family had been shotgunned out of a white neighborhood.
When we laud life and blast abortionists, our credibility as Christians is questionable. On one hand we proclaim the love and anguish, the pain and joy that goes into fashioning a single child. We proclaim how precious each life is to God and should be to us. On the other hand, when it is the enemy that shrieks to heaven with his flesh in flames, we do not weep, we are not shamed; we call for more — Brennan Manning

Don't attempt to fight the enemy in your own strength. You will experience burnout, and you will fail. Don't even think about it! The key is to engage in spiritual warfare God's way. And that is by resting in him and fighting from victory, not for victory! — Pedro Okoro