Self Reproach Quotes

“It was part of his nature to extenuate nothing and live on as one of his own worst accusers.”
― Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge

“Forgiveness comes much later if at all
Sometimes after a lifetime of negotiation
With your demons
Words you could have said
Or left unsaid
Bruises you could have hidden
With a little make-up
And things would have been just fine
Until the next time”
― Nalini Priyadarshni, Doppelganger in My House

“The duel may go on for a long time, but self-defense often wins over self-reproach.”
― Pawan Mishra, Coinman: An Untold Conspiracy

“I felt at times, it is hard to describe this, almost mad with guilt, with a sort of general guilt about my whole life.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“She felt all the force of that comparison; but not as her sister had hoped, to urge her to exertion now; she felt it with all the pain of continual self-reproach, regretted most bitterly that she had never exerted herself before; but it brought only the torture of penitence, without the hope of amendment. Her mind was so much weakened that she still fancied present exertion impossible, and therefore it only dispirited her more.”
― Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

“She stared out at the gloaming and didn't care that it might be the last twilight she ever saw. She cared only that she had spent too much of her twenty-six years alone, with no one at her side to share the sunsets, the starry skies, the turbulent beauty of storm clouds. She wished that she had reached out to people more, instead of retreating inward, wished that she had not made her heart into a sheltering closet. Now, when nothing mattered any more, when the insight couldn't do her any damn good at all, she realized that there was less hope of survival alone than with others. She'd been acutely aware that terror, betrayal, and cruelty had a human face, but she had not sufficiently appreciated that courage, kindness, and love had a human face as well. Hope wasn't a cottage industry; it was neither a product that she could manufacture like needlepoint samplers nor a substance that she could secrete, in her cautious solitude, like a maple tree producing the essence of syrup. Hope was to be found in other people, by reaching out, by taking risks, by opening her fortress heart.”
― Dean Koontz, Intensity

“Shinzen Young’s formula suffering equals pain multiplied by resistance (S = P × R) applies perfectly in these types of situations. We magnify any pain by the degree to which we fight it. When we stop reproaching and start accepting, suffering diminishes.

A big part of the Self-Worth Safari adventure is that of reconnecting with your intrinsic reality, rather than living in the mental movie theater of self-assessment and self-reproach. The terrain of romantic love can be painful enough without adding any additional penalty points. If you have lost a partner (or someone you hoped would be a partner), even if love has eluded you entirely, that’s enough to deal with. You don’t need the additional burden of negative judgment about yourself. The pain of loss heals with time, but self-reproach is like a cancer that eats away at happiness and energy.

Self-acceptance is a deep understanding of who you really are, with honest acknowledgment of (so-called) strengths and weaknesses as well as your needs. It means accepting your reality, even when it’s not “enough”.”
― John Niland