Embarrassment Quotes - Page 7

• children are an embarrassment to a business civilization. A business society needs children for the same reason that a nomadic or a pastoral society needs them - to perpetuate itself. Unfortunately, however, children are of no use to a business society until they have almost reached physical maturity.

  Margaret Halsey

  Children, Business, Maturity

  Margaret Halsey (1952). “The Folks at Home”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I was so embarrassed I could feel my nerves curling like bacon over a hot fire.

  Margaret Halsey

  Fire, Hot, Nerves

  Margaret Halsey (1944). “Some of My Best Friends are Soldiers: A Kind of Novel”, New York : Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Struggle, School, Diversity

  "Life and Destiny". Book by Felix Adler, 1903.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Richard Curtis, the writer and director of Love Actually, is brilliant at many things, but his genius, I submit, is for thrusting characters into situations in which they feel driven to humiliate themselves. Which is why we love them, especially when it's all in the name of love. He is the Bard of Embarrassment.

  David Edelstein

  Character, Names, Love Actually

  4 Copy quote

• The most moving scene for me in 'Pride and Prejudice' is the Pemberley music room scene: Elizabeth has just saved Darcy's sister from embarrassment and confusion, and as the music plays on, Darcy's look of gratitude becomes a look of love, which we see reciprocated in Elizabeth's eyes.

  Andrew Davies

  Gratitude, Moving, Eye

  6 Copy quote

• There is something worse than dying, and that is humiliation - at least so it seemed to me.

  Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

  Dying, Humiliation

  11 Copy quote

• Making this movie as a period piece about a period that was very recent in people's minds. I was in Taiwan [during the 1970s], so I hope I did all right. Otherwise, it could be the biggest embarrassment of my life. Also, the story is not linear, it's patchy, like a cubist painting, and there is always the possibility it will not hold together, it will fall apart. The tone is part satire, part serious drama, part tragedy, all mixed together, and it has to hit an emotional core. That's also very scary.

  Ang Lee

  Drama, Fall, Emotional

  4 Copy quote

• Dissimulation, even the most innocent in its nature, is ever productive of embarrassment; whether the design is evil or not artifice is always dangerous and almost inevitably disgraceful.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Evil, Design, Innocent

  4 Copy quote

• The beginning and the end of love are both marked by embarrassment when the two find themselves alone.
  [Fr., Le commencement et le declin de l'amour se font sentir par l'embarras ou l'on est de se trouver seuls.]

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Love, Two, Fonts

  15 Copy quote

• The awkwardness and embarrassment which all feel on beginning to write, when they themselves are the theme, ought to serve as a hint to author's that self is a subject they ought very rarely to descant upon.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Writing, Self, Hints

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.69

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is an embarrassment that the dominant forms of matter in the universe remain hypothetical.

  Jim Peebles

  Matter, Form, Hypothetical

  4 Copy quote

• Well, Harry Reid and other members of congress, they're just furious over this Olympic uniform deal. He says we should burn the uniforms, and it's an embarrassment and a disgrace. Not as embarrassing as congress constantly borrowing money from the Chinese, but still embarrassing.

  Jay Leno

  Funny, London Olympics, Chinese

  4 Copy quote

• What a wonderful thing it is to have a good friend. He identifies your innermost desires, and spares you the embarrassment of disclosing them to him yourself.

  Jean de La Fontaine

  Good Friend, Desire, Wonderful

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Miscarriage, Envy, Excellence

  Samuel Johnson, Hester Lynch Piozzi, James Boswell (1804). “The beauties of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: consisting of maxims and observations, moral, critical, and miscellaneous: to which are now added biographical anecdotes of the doctor, selected from the works of Mrs. Piozzi;--his Life, recently published by Mr. Boswell, and other authentic testimonies; also his will, and the sermon he wrote for the late Doctor Dodd”, p.174

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• nobody ever dies of an indignity.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Dies, Indignity

  Elizabeth Bowen (1950). “Collected Impressions”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• What is asserted by a man is an opinion; what is asserted by a woman is opinionated. A woman with ideas and the ability to express them is something of a social embarrassment, like an unhousebroken pet.

  Marya Mannes

  Men, Ideas, Pet

  Marya Mannes (1964). “But Will it Sell?”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The job of the media is not to protect the powerful from embarrassment.

  Simon Jenkins

  Jobs, Powerful, Media

  "US embassy cables: The job of the media is not to protect the powerful from embarrassment" by Simon Jenkins, www.theguardian.com. November 28, 2010.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Why get excited over this latest episode in the long, sad history of American anti-intellectualism? Let me suggest that, as patriotic Americans, we should cringe in embarrassment that, at the dawn of a new, technological millennium, a jurisdiction in our heartland has opted to suppress one of the greatest triumphs of human discovery.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Patriotic, Discovery, Long

  Stephen Jay Gould (2011). “I Have Landed”, p.215, Harvard University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Rather than being able to have a healthy relationship with our own sexual imagination, we're driven into some dark corners by shame and embarrassment and guilt, and those dark corners breed all sorts of monsters.

  Alan Moore

  Dark, Imagination, Healthy

  Source: www.avclub.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I was so uncomfortable at a party recently when the conversation droned on about women who are constantly getting married. I was on the edge of my chair, close to squirming in embarrassment because I myself was guilty of four husbands. I finally leaned forward and squeaked, 'But one died!

  Bette Davis

  Husband, Party, Four

  8 Copy quote

• We define boredom as the pain a person feels when he's doing nothing or something irrelevant, instead of something he wants to do but won't, can't, or doesn't dare. Boredom is acute when he knows the other thing and inhibits his action, e.g., out of politeness, embarrassment, fear of punishment or shame. Boredom is chronic if he has repressed the thought of it and no longer is aware of it. A large part of stupidity is just the chronic boredom, for a person can't learn, or be intelligent about, what he's not interested in, when his repressed thoughts are elsewhere.

  Paul Goodman

  Pain, Blessing, Intelligent

  "Growing Up Absurd" by Paul Goodman, (pp. 71-72), 1956.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Am I lonely? Yes. Am I upset? Yes. Am I confused? Yes. Do I have my days when I've thrown a little pity party for myself? Absolutely. But I'm also doing really well. I'd be a robot if I said I didn't feel moments of anger, of hurt, of embarrassment... [but] You joke and say, 'What doesn't kill you makes you stronger'.

  Jennifer Aniston

  Lonely, Hurt, Confused

  "Aniston says Pitt missing ‘sensitivity chip’". "The Associated Press" Interview, www.today.com. August 2, 2005.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• There's kind of this unequaled thrill of playing a half-finished song, it's kind of sense of slight embarrassment; like you're blushing. I like doing that. I did that with "Eyeoneye" and it was almost a curse on the song for a while; I debuted it when it was half-finished in a very public way

  Andrew Bird

  Song, Thrill, Half

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Prayer, Book, Writing

  4 Copy quote

• The greatest embarrassment of my political career has been that active duties seem to deprive me of time for careful investigation. I seem almost obliged to form conclusions from impressions instead of from study.... I wish that I had more knowledge, more thorough acquaintance, with the matters involved.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Careers, Political, Wish

  Woodrow Wilson, Arthur Stanley Link (1977). “The Papers of Woodrow Wilson”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source