It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done. Samuel Johnson
I confess freely to you, I could never look long upon a monkey, without very mortifying reflections. William Congreve
I remember being a kid and seeing the 'National Inquirer' at the grocery store checkout line. When somebody actually picked up a copy, it was mortifying. You felt dirty for them. But now it's perfectly acceptable to read something like that. There's absolutely no taboo surrounding that kind of exploitation. Rashida Jones
What is more mortifying than to feel that you have missed the plum for want of courage to shake the tree? Logan P. Smith
Who knows better than artists how much ugliness there is on the way to beauty, how many ghastly, mortifying missteps, how many days of granitic blockheadedness and dismaying ineptitude there is on the way to accomplishment, how partial all accomplishment is, how incomplete? Tony Kushner
