Sunday, October 25, 2020 – Choosing Humiliation
Latent in every man is a venom of amazing bitterness, a black resentment; something that curses and loathes life, a feeling of being trapped, of having trusted and been fooled, of being the helpless prey of impotent rage, blind surrender, the victim of a savage, ruthless power that gives and takes away, enlists a man, and crowning injury inflicts upon him the humiliation of feeling sorry for himself. ~ Paul Valery
It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honored by the humiliation of their fellow beings. ~ Mahatma Gandhi
The most dangerous men on earth are those who are afraid they are wimps. ~ James Gilligan
The love of glory, the fear of disgrace, the incentive to succeed, the desire to live in comfort, and the instinct to humiliate others are often the cause of that courage so renowned among men. ~ Francois La Rochefoucauld
Those children who are beaten will in turn give beatings, those who are intimidated will be intimidating, those who are humiliated will impose humiliation, and those whose souls are murdered will murder. ~ Alice Miller
Avoiding humiliation is the core of tragedy and comedy. ~ John Guare
One man’s transparency is another’s humiliation. ~ Gerry Adams
Your position never gives you the right to command. It only imposes on you the duty of so living your life that others can receive your orders without being humiliated. ~ Dag Hammarskjold
It is humiliating to remain with our hands folded while others write history. It matters little who wins. To make a people great it is necessary to send them to battle even if you have to kick them in the pants. That is what I shall do. ~ Benito Mussolini
If every day a man takes orders in silence from an incompetent superior, if every day he solemnly performs ritual acts which he privately finds ridiculous, if he unhesitatingly gives answers to questionnaires which are contrary to his real opinions and is prepared to deny his own self in public, if he sees no difficulty in feigning sympathy or even affection where, in fact, he feels only indifference or aversion, it still does not mean that he has entirely lost the use of one of the basic human senses, namely, the sense of humiliation. ~ Vaclav Havel
The basis of shame is not some personal mistake of ours, but the ignominy, the humiliation we feel that we must be what we are without any choice in the matter, and that this humiliation is seen by everyone. ~ Milan Kundera
In this world, only those people who have fallen to the lowest degree of humiliation, far below beggary, who are not just without any social consideration but are regarded by all as being deprived of that foremost human dignity, reason itself – only those people, in fact, are capable of telling the truth. All the others lie. ~ Simone Weil
I should just drive around this city and take photos of all the buildings I’ve been humiliated in. ~ Moon Unit Zappa
Art is born of humiliation. ~ W. H. Auden
Imagine a country that flies into space, launches Sputniks, creates such a defense system, and it can’t resolve the problem of women’s pantyhose. There’s no toothpaste, no soap powder, not the basic necessities of life. It was incredible and humiliating to work in such a government. ~ Mikhail Gorbachev
In a consumer society, people wallow in things – fascinating, enjoyable things. If you define your value by the things you acquire and surround yourself with, being excluded is humiliating. ~ Zygmunt Bauman
Gym should be illegal. It’s humiliating. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson
Trying on pants is one of the most humiliating things a man can suffer that doesn’t involve a woman. ~ Larry David
Losing your capital is like losing your trousers. It is a real humiliation, and one not to be soon repeated. ~ James Buchan
Your worst humiliation is only someone else’s momentary entertainment. ~ Karen Crockett
We learn humility through accepting humiliations cheerfully. ~ Mother Teresa
Humiliation is the beginning of sanctification. ~ John Donne
We live in a world of communication – everyone gets information about everyone else. There is universal comparison and you don’t just compare yourself with the people next door, you compare yourself to people all over the world and with what is being presented as the decent, proper and dignified life. It’s the crime of humiliation. ~ Zygmunt Bauman
Personal technology has given us the freedom of being able to do whatever we want, and in the case of celebrities and athletes, whomever they want. But it can also serve as a humiliation jetpack. ~ Sloane Crosley
If you are well off and can afford to spend ten or twenty-five dollars a day to hire some patient soul to listen to your troubles you can be readjusted to the crazy scheme of things and spare yourself the humiliation of becoming a Christian Scientist. You can have your ego trimmed or removed, as you wish, just like a wart or bunion. ~ Henry Miller
I refuse to endure months of expensive humiliation only to be told that at the age of four I was in love with my rocking horse. ~ Noel Coward
No more humiliation for me, thanks very much. No more swallowing my anger. Honestly, I couldn’t manage another mouthful. But it was delicious. Did you make it yourself? ~ Marian Keyes
In a society in which equality is a fact, not merely a word, words of racial or sexual assault and humiliation will be nonsense syllables. ~ Catharine MacKinnon
The theme is the theme of humiliation, which is the square root of sin, as opposed to the freedom from humiliation, and love, which is the square root of wonderful. ~ Carson McCullers
Christianity is the only major religion to have as its central event the humiliation of its God. ~ Bruce Shelley
Humiliation is the only ladder to honoring God’s Kingdom. ~ Andrew Murray
Many of those who are humiliated are not humble. Some react to humiliation with anger, others with patience, and others with freedom. The first are culpable, the next harmless, the last just. ~ Bernard of Clairvaux
To those who despair of everything, reason cannot provide a faith, but only passion, and in this case, it must be the same passion that lay at the root of the despair, namely humiliation and hatred. ~ Albert Camus
With any recovery from morbidity there must go a certain healthy humiliation. ~ G. K. Chesterton
He felt the full warmth of that pleasure from which the proud shut themselves out; the pleasure which not only goes with humiliation, but which almost is humiliation. Men who have escaped death by a hair have it, and men whose love is returned by a woman unexpectedly, and men whose sins are forgiven them. Everything his eye fell on it feasted on, not aesthetically, but with a plain, jolly appetite as of a boy eating buns. He relished the squareness of the houses; he liked their clean angles as if he had just cut them with a knife. The lit squares of the shop windows excited him as the young are excited by the lit stage of some promising pantomime. He happened to see in one shop which projected with a bulging bravery on to the pavement some square tins of potted meat, and it seemed like a hint of a hundred hilarious high teas in a hundred streets of the world. He was, perhaps, the happiest of all the children of men. For in that unendurable instant when he hung, half slipping, to the ball of St. Paul’s, the whole universe had been destroyed and re-created. ~ G. K. Chesterton
The truth is, laughter always sounds more perfect than weeping. Laughter flows in a violent riff and is effortlessly melodic. Weeping is often fought, choked, half strangled, or surrendered to with humiliation. ~ Anne Rice
Just Above Sunset 