You can find shame in every house, burning in an ashtray, hanging framed upon a wall, covering a bed. But nobody notices it any more.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that shame exists in everyday life but often goes unnoticed by people.
Salman Rushdie's quote reflects on the pervasive nature of shame in human existence. It points out that shame is not only personal but also woven into the fabric of our homes and lives, manifesting in various forms, yet society has become desensitized to its presence. This sentiment highlights the need for greater awareness and acknowledgment of the emotions we often ignore or overlook.
In practice
This quote can be used during a discussion about mental health to emphasize the commonality of shame.
I've been fascinated by Machiavelli since I was very young. I've always felt that he had a bad rap from history, and that he was actually a person quite unlike what we now think of as Machiavellian. He was a republican. He disliked totalitarian government.
Killing people because you don't like their ideas - it's a bad thing.
faith without doubt is addiction
I am clearly vulnerable to these more passionate and volatile unstable relationships. I am trying to not be so vulnerable.
In India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood. Where religion intervenes, mere innocence is no excuse. Yet we go on skating around this issue, speaking of religion in the fashionable language of 'respect.' What is there to respect in any of this, or in any of the crimes now being committed almost daily around the world in religion's dreaded name?
Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.
What do you want a meaning for? Life is a desire, not a meaning.
I grew up with four T.V. channels. If you missed a show, you missed it. You gotta wait a week for the next one. I'd mail-order books: take a quarter, get an envelope, send off for it and wait until it arrived. I grew up waiting for things.
The paternalist is a sentimentalist at heart, and the sentimentalist is always potentially cruel.
And every human being is precious.
You and your sins must separate, or you and your God will never come together.
We love the old saints, missionaries, martyrs, and reformers. Our Luthers, Bunyans, Wesleys and Asburys, etc... We will write their biographies, reverence their memories, frame their epitaphs, and build their monuments. We will do anything except imitate them. We cherish the last drop of their blood, but watch carefully over the first drop of our own.
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