Family Shame Quotes

There were a couple of things in the intervention that made me know I needed help. One was a letter from my daughter saying that she was ashamed she had the same last name as I did, which will shock you a little bit.

I was mortified by my parents - what they did, who they were, everything. I hated who I was. I hated everything, and I would live in a fantasy world and try to be different. But that's not a lot different, I think, than a lot of kids.

I never wanted to go to college in the state of Washington because I was so embarrassed and ashamed of my family life. I wanted to run. That's what always what I do, I run. I run as far away as I can.

That was one of the most hurtful things, to have my mother see me in court and to have my mother see me behind bars.

When I see professional clowns, mimes, or people who makes ballon animals, I think of their relatives and how disappointed they must be.

The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them. We all feel instinctively, that our children's success reflect glory upon ourselves, while their failures make us feel shame. Unfortunately, the successes which cause us to swell with pride are often of an undesirable kind.... Neither happiness nor virtue, but worldly success, is what the average father desires for his children.

I don't have to look up my family tree, because I know that I'm the sap.

My mother's face floated to mind, a pale, reproachful moon, at her last and first visit to the asylum since my twentieth birthday. A daughter in an asylum! I had done that to her. Still, she had obviously decided to forgive me.

Being Southerners, it was a source of shame to some members of the family that we had no recorded ancestors on either side of the Battle of Hastings.

I remember feeling ashamed, for some reason. I was ashamed of my parents. I couldn't face some of my friends at school anymore, because I desperately wanted to have the classic, you know, typical family. Mother, father. I wanted that security, so I resented my parents for quite a few years because of that.

I had ancestors who were slave-holders, which is a difficult piece of family history to say the least. In a recent New York Times article on the subject of modern attitudes toward our slave-holding past, the writer noted that we all want to be from "innocent origins." I _know_ I'm not. Then again, I suspect most of us are not.

It would take more than long-stemmed roses to change my view that you're a despicable cowardy custard and a disgrace to a proud family. Your ancestors fought in the Crusades and were often mentioned in despatches, and you cringe like a salted snail at the thought of appearing as Santa Claus before an audience of charming children who wouldn't hurt a fly. It's enough to make an aunt turn her face to the wall and give up the struggle.

Posterity, thinned by the crime of its ancestors, shall hear of those battles.

No, not at liberty; because it was considered a stain on the family, but the young men did it; there was a good deal of it.  They often kept one girl steady and sometimes two on different places; men who had wives did it too sometimes; if they could get it on their own place it was easier but they would go wherever they could get it.

A most striking illustration of general feeling on the subject is to be found in the case of George Eve, who carried on with him a woman to the North under the name of wife – She was a mulatto slave, and although it was well known that he lived constantly with her violating one of God’s ten commandments yet nothing was thought of it. There was no one without sin “to cast the first stone at him” but when public opinion was outraged by the report that the ceremony of marriage had been passed between them – then his father was terribly mortified and has since attempted to prove that he is a lunatic – with what success I do not know. He preferred having him living in a constant state of sin to having him pass the boundary of Caste.

I come from a stupid family. My father worked in a bank. They caught him stealing pens.

I was always the shame of the family - the one Yankee who was actually born in the North.

My mother's rules had to do with feminine deportment, so I never played hard enough to break a toy or muddy my dress. My father's rules had to do with never shaming the family by even a hint of scandal, and not providing business rivals with an opportunity to kidnap me or throw acid in my face.

Being from a divorced family almost felt like a scarlet letter at times. And I denied it for a long time.

A bad play folds and is forgotten, but in pictures we don't bury our dead. When you think it's out of your system, your daughter sees it on television and says, My father is an idiot.

My children, as long as you live, the shadow of the Hiss Case will brush you. In every pair of eyes that rests on you, you will see pass, like a cloud passing behind a woods in winter, the memory of your father - dissembled in friendly eyes, lurking in unfriendly eyes.

A blot in thy escutcheon to all futurity.

It was a source of shame for my family that I was in rock and roll, which is so blue-collar. It just isn't done. And I felt it, too.

A missing arm might ruin your symmetry. Personal asymmetry where I come from is a big taboo and brings great shame on the family and sometimes even the whole village." "Do you then have to kill yourself over it or something?" "Goodness me, no! The family and village just have to learn to be ashamed--and nuts to them for being so oversensitive.

There is a skeleton in every house.