Disgrace Quotes

“America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.

Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“To be wealthy and honored in an unjust society is a disgrace.”
― Confucius, The Analects

“I will remember this, thought Ender, when I am defeated. To keep dignity, and give honor where it's due, so that defeat is not disgrace. And I hope I don't have to do it often.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

“Free your life from the fangs of gossips by not associating yourself with them. Anyone who helps you to gossip about someone can also help someone to gossip about you.”
― Israelmore Ayivor

“Betrayal and dishonor is usually an inside job. Keep it 'sucka-free', loved one!”
― T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"

“By out-talking or bad-mouthing people, some get hoisted by their own petard, ultimately. When their sense of shame makes them crawl back to the open, they can only recover through a convalescing remedy of humbleness. After an exhausting journey throughout the scorching desert of disgrace, they come to know how to be reborn from themselves. This rebirth allows them to recognize their true selves and to become relatable again. ("Waiting for emancipation")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“He would not mind hearing Petrus's story one day. But preferably not reduced to English. More and more he is convinced that English is an unfit medium for the truth of South Africa. Stretches of English code whole sentences long have thickened, lost their articulations, their articulateness, their articulatedness. Like a dinosaur expiring and settling in the mud, the language has stiffened. Pressed into the mold of English, Petrus's story would come out arthritic, bygone"(117).”
― J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace

“I'm sorry, my child, I just find it hard to whip up an interest in the subject. It's admirable, what you do, what she does, but to me animal-welfare people are a bit like Christians of a certain kind. Everyone is so cheerful and well-intentioned that after a while you itch to go off and do some raping and pillaging. Or to kick a cat.”
― J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace

“Takamasa Saegusa: 'Seigen, a mere member of the Toudouza, had the effrontery to sully the sacred dueling ground. For that reason, our lord had already decided to subject him to tu-uchi before long. Cut off his head immediately, and stick it on a pike!'

Gennosuke could hardly believe his ears. Such an insult to Irako Seigen was unwarranted. It was pride. For Gennosuke, Irako Seigen was pride itself.

Takamasa Saegusa: 'Fujiki Gennosuke! It is the way of the samurai to take the head of the defeated enemy on the battleground. Do not hesitate! If you are a samurai, you must carry out the duty of a samurai!'

Samurai...

Saegusa, Lord of Izu, continued shouting, but Gennosuke did not attend. That word 'samurai' alone reverberated through his body.

If one aims at the juncture between the base of the skull and the spine, decapitation is not that difficult, but Gennosuke could muster no more strength than a baby. He grew pale and trembled with the strain. He could only hack with his sword as if he were sawing wood. He felt nauseated, as if his own cells one after another were being annihilated. But this...

Lord Tokugawa Tadanaga: 'I approve.'

Takamasa Saegusa: 'Fujiki Gennosuke, for this splendid action you have received words of thanks from our lord. As a sign of his exceptional approval, you shall be given employment at Sunpu Castle. This great debt will by no means be forgotten. From this day forward you must offer your life to our lord!'

Prostrating himself, Gennosuke vomited.”
― Takayuki Yamaguchi, シグルイ 15

“Gran parte de una desgracia cualquiera consiste, por así decirlo, en la sombra de la desgracia, en la reflexión sobre ella. Es decir en el hecho de que no se limite uno a sufrir, sino que se vea obligado a seguir considerando el hecho de que sufre.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“I'd like you to know there is a limit to the disgrace in the consciousness of one's own worthlessness and powerlessness beyond which a man cannot go, and after which he begins to feel a tremendous satisfaction in his own disgrace.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

“I was entirely unconvinced about anything, except that some people were strong and attractive and could do what they wanted, and others were caught and disgraced.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Stripping the rich of their plumage is undiluted disgrace. The poor who were at their service are now opportune to smear their plummeted status.”
― Vincent Okay Nwachukwu, Weighty 'n' Worthy African Proverbs - Volume 1

“Quando ci sono di mezzo gli uomini e il sesso, David, non mi meraviglio più di niente. Forse per gli uomini odiare le donne rende la cosa più eccitante. Tu sei un uomo, dovresti saperlo. Quando hai un rapporto sessuale con una persona che non conosci, quando la intrappoli, la tieni ferma, ti butti su di lei con tutto il tuo peso... Non è un po' come ucciderla? Come piantare un coltello? Per poi andartene lasciandoti dietro un corpo coperto di sangue... Non è un po' come un omicidio? Non ti dà l'inebriante sensazione di averla passata liscia?”
― J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace

“A building, a Greek temple, portrays nothing. It simply stands there in the middle of the rock-cleft valley. The building encloses the figure of the god, and in this concealment lets it stand out into the holy precinct through the open portico. By means of the temple, the god is present in the temple. This presence of the god is in itself the extension and delimitation of the precinct as a holy precinct. The temple and its precinct, however, do not fade away into the indefinite. It is the temple-work that first fits together and at the same time gathers around itself the unity of those paths and relations in which birth and death, disaster and blessing, victory and disgrace, endurance and decline acquire the shape of destiny for human being.”
― Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings

“If the devil wants to really disgrace and destroy a fool and power drunk person, he will push him to go and fight in a brothel or at the sex-toy shop.”
― Bamigboye Olurotimi

“At the end of the first century of Christian rule, the Colosseum still dominated Rome and the Parthenon towered above Athens. Yet when writers of this period discuss architecture, these aren’t the buildings that impress them. Instead, their admiration is drawn by another structure in Egypt. This building was so fabulous that writers in the ancient world struggled to find ways to convey its beauty. ‘Its splendour is such that mere words can only do it an injustice,’ wrote the historian Ammianus Marcellinus. It was, another writer thought, ‘one of the most unique and uncommon sights in the world. For nowhere else on earth can one find such a building.’ Its great halls, its columns, its astonishing statues and its art all made it, outside Rome, ‘the most magnificent building in the whole world’. Everyone had heard of it. No one has heard of it now. While tourists still toil up to the Parthenon, or look in awe at the Colosseum, outside academia few people know of the temple of Serapis. That is because in AD 392 a bishop, supported by a band of fanatical Christians, reduced it to rubble.”
― Catherine Nixey, The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

“It was Hypatia’s fault, said the Christians, that the governor was being so stubborn. It was she, they murmured, who was standing between Orestes and Cyril, preventing them from reconciling. Fanned by the parabalani, the rumours started to catch, and flame. Hypatia was not merely a difficult woman, they said. Hadn’t everyone seen her use symbols in her work, and astrolabes? The illiterate parabalani (‘bestial men – truly abominable’ as one philosopher would later call them) knew what these instruments were. They were not the tools of mathematics and philosophy, no: they were the work of the Devil. Hypatia was not a philosopher: she was a creature of Hell. It was she who was turning the entire city against God with her trickery and her spells. She was ‘atheizing’ Alexandria. Naturally, she seemed appealing enough – but that was how the Evil One worked. Hypatia, they said, had ‘beguiled many people through satanic wiles’. Worst of all, she had even beguiled Orestes. Hadn’t he stopped going to church? It was clear: she had ‘beguiled him through her magic’. This could not be allowed to continue.
One day in March AD 415, Hypatia set out from her home to go for her daily ride through the city. Suddenly, she found her way blocked by a ‘multitude of believers in God’. They ordered her to get down from her chariot. Knowing what had recently happened to her friend Orestes, she must have realized as she climbed down that her situation was a serious one. She cannot possibly have realized quite how serious. As soon as she stood on the street, the parabalani, under the guidance of a Church magistrate called Peter – ‘a perfect believer in all respects in Jesus Christ’ – surged round and seized ‘the pagan woman’. They then dragged Alexandria’s greatest living mathematician through the streets to a church. Once inside, they ripped the clothes from her body then, using broken pieces of pottery as blades, flayed her skin from her flesh. Some say that, while she still gasped for breath, they gouged out her eyes. Once she was dead, they tore her body into pieces and threw what was left of the ‘luminous child of reason’ onto a pyre and burned her.”
― Catherine Nixey, The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

“OSHA does not work, Disability is a failure, and Workers Compensation is a disgrace.”
― Steven Magee

“Possibly, no one can humiliate and disgrace if one behaves not that with others since love and respect speak to love and respect in return.”
― Ehsan Sehgal

“O God deliver us from defeat nor disgraced.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“If we had to speak our mind face to face,
Would we be as courageous to ridicule and lambaste?
Would we with sharpened tongues be so quick to disgrace?
If we had to speak our minds face to face”
― Charmaine J Forde

“If we had the opportunity to speak our minds face to face,
Would we be as bold to ridicule and lambaste?
Or would we with sharpened tongues, be so quick to disgrace,
If we had the opportunity to speak our minds face to face?”
― Charmaine J Forde

“God is looking for people with grace to disgrace people with power.”
― Olawale Daniel

“When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I take out my notebook and write.”
― Marty Rubin

“A deep disgrace comes when what you took for granted becomes what you need today. Let's learn to have value for all.”
― Isaac A. Yowetu

“Don't forget, Bertil. Today's honors must be greeted with the same reserve as yesterday's disgraces.”
― Roxanne Moreil, L'âge d'or. Volume 1

“If it is “God’s will” that people should suffer, then it is not a god worth believing in and certainly not a god worth devoting an ounce of energy or second of time to. Such a god is a disgrace and must be vanquished as such, for suffering has no place in peace.”
― Priscilla Vogelbacher, Hallowed Be Thy Name

“If you use all your power for the sake of a disgraced person, won"t consider it if you hold hands in the worst time, will say I was a ladder for you to succeed”
― Kamaran Ihsan Salih

“Disgraced people take advantage of your support they will make it a power then will use it against you.”
― Kamaran Ihsan Salih