“
One dark night the skeletons that they had carefully hidden in an obscure closet appeared, grabbed them around the throat, and strangled them.
”
”
Ben Carson (Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence)
“
If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best take it out and teach it to dance.
”
”
George Bernard Shaw
“
My dear sister, you can’t escape God, and you can’t escape your skeletons in the closet. They will always be there until you take them out from behind those dusty old moth-eaten coats. Your exterior facade of ‘everything is alright’ only works for a little while, and then the cracks begin to show. You can only hide behind yourself for so long. You can’t keep running!
”
”
Corallie Buchanan (Watch Out! Godly Women on the Loose)
“
As human beings we govern our actions with our deepest fears. But if you name that shit, you claim that shit: let enough people into your closet and you'll find there's no more room for skeletons. Leave yourself nowhere to hide and you can live your life unguarded.
”
”
Kevin Smith (Tough Shit: Life Advice from a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good)
“
Everybody's got skeletons in the closets. Every once in a while, you've got to open up the closet and the let the skeletons breathe. Half the time, the very thing you think is gonna destroy you or ruin you is the very thing that nobody cares about. My advice to people with skeletons is to dust them off every now and then-- as long as your closet's aint full of them. It's not good to have more than two or three.
”
”
Tyler Perry
“
We doubt in others, what is in fact in ourselves. The skeletons in your own closet are the things that scare you the most about others; people who come from a background of lying are suspicious of lying in others and so on and so forth. The most trusting of people, are not people who have never been betrayed or who have never felt pain; but the most trusting of people are those who in themselves do not find those things worthy of that blame. We see the world through the eyes of the condition of our own souls.
”
”
C. JoyBell C.
“
Hell, even the straight people have enough skeletons in their closet to fill a tomb. Everybody’s too afraid of going to hell or getting made fun of to be honest about what they want and who they are, so they can’t even really admit what they want to themselves.
”
”
Meredith Russo (If I Was Your Girl)
“
People need to stand up for their wrongs, as they stand up for their rights.
”
”
Anthony Liccione
“
Here's a queer fact: none among the skeletons in your closet are ‘straight’ so expect them to ‘come out’ very, very soon...
”
”
Khayri R.R. Woulfe
“
I love crafting. Knitting, decoupage, scrapbooking, any "lady-ish" art form, I'm a fan. For about six months each. Then I shove all the supplies in a closet, alongside the skeletons of long dead New Year's resolutions, like saber fencing, playing the ukulele, and Japanese brush painting.
”
”
Felicia Day (You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost))
“
We all have skeletons in our closets. Some of us are just better at hiding them behind the hangers filled with clothes." "Yeah, right, you don't seem like the type of guy who has a pile of femur bones stuffed behind your collared shirts and navy blue blazers." Nick and Wilson
”
”
Gretchen de la O (Almost Eighteen (Wilson Mooney, #1))
“
It is better to have ten skeletons in your closet, than walk with no bones.
”
”
Anthony Liccione
“
There’s nothing worse than seeing the craziness in a calm person as they ask for something completely ridiculous and then to have them look at you as if you’re a shovel shy of a tool shed.
”
”
Jennifer L. Hart (Skeletons in the Closet (The Misadventures of the Laundry Hag, #1))
“
[Adapted and condensed Valedictorian speech:]
I'm going to ask that you seriously consider modeling your life, not in the manner of the Dalai Lama or Jesus - though I'm sure they're helpful - but something a bit more hands-on, Carassius auratus auratus, commonly known as the domestic goldfish. People make fun of the goldfish. People don't think twice about swallowing it. Jonas Ornata III, Princeton class of '42, appears in the Guinness Book of World Records for swallowing the greatest number of goldfish in a fifteen-minute interval, a cruel total of thirty-nine. In his defense, though, I don't think Jonas understood the glory of the goldfish, that they have magnificent lessons to teach us. If you live like a goldfish, you can survive the harshest, most thwarting of circumstances. You can live through hardships that make your cohorts - the guppy, the neon tetra - go belly-up at the first sign of trouble. There was an infamous incident described in a journal published by the Goldfish Society of America - a sadistic five-year-old girl threw hers to the carpet, stepped on it, not once but twice - luckily she'd done it on a shag carpet and thus her heel didn't quite come down fully on the fish. After thirty harrowing seconds she tossed it back into its tank. It went on to live another forty-seven years. They can live in ice-covered ponds in the dead of winter. Bowls that haven't seen soap in a year. And they don't die from neglect, not immediately. They hold on for three, sometimes four months if they're abandoned. If you live like a goldfish, you adapt, not across hundreds of thousands of years like most species, having to go through the red tape of natural selection, but within mere months, weeks even. You give them a little tank? They give you a little body. Big tank? Big body. Indoor. Outdoor. Fish tanks, bowls. Cloudy water, clear water. Social or alone. The most incredible thing about goldfish, however, is their memory. Everyone pities them for only remembering their last three seconds, but in fact, to be so forcibly tied to the present - it's a gift. They are free. No moping over missteps, slip-ups, faux pas or disturbing childhoods. No inner demons. Their closets are light filled and skeleton free. And what could be more exhilarating than seeing the world for the very first time, in all of its beauty, almost thirty thousand times a day? How glorious to know that your Golden Age wasn't forty years ago when you still had all you hair, but only three seconds ago, and thus, very possibly it's still going on, this very moment." I counted three Mississippis in my head, though I might have rushed it, being nervous. "And this moment, too." Another three seconds. "And this moment, too." Another. "And this moment, too.
”
”
Marisha Pessl
“
You don't have to face every skeleton in your closet before you can make some room in there!
”
”
Carmen Klassen (Love Your Clutter Away: A step-by-step guide to gently letting clutter go for good)
“
George Bernard Shaw once famously said that if you can’t get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you might as well teach it to dance.
”
”
Robert B. Baer (The Perfect Kill: 21 Laws for Assassins)
“
If you can’t get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you’d best teach it to dance. —George Bernard Shaw
”
”
Sharon L. Hicks (How Do You Grab a Naked Lady?: A Memoir)
“
Only one comment seemed to perfectly fit her current situation. “I see dead people.”
He leaned forward hands on his hips. “Me too. It’s the only explanation for what’s standing in front of me. Unless some high school kids broke into the anatomy closet and stole the classroom skeleton, stretched some cadaver skin over that bitch then cast an ancient ritual to animate it.” She laughed. For as much as she now disliked the bastard she had to admit he was amusing. “Did they do the same to that shit you’re wearing? You do realize it’s 2008 right?” She raised a hand. “Wait let me see if I can reach you using your own language. You do ken ‘tis year of our Lord two thousand and eight aye?
”
”
Jennifer Turner (Eternal Seduction (A Darkness Within, #1))
“
Dogs are better than people. This is a complete and true verified fact. Dogs don’t care what you look like. Dogs don’t care what skeletons hide in your closet. They don’t care what color you are, or what weight, or how rich, or how guilty. They don’t care about your gender or your sexual orientation. They don’t care if you have deformities or illnesses. They care about being fed and played with and petted. They’ll lick your face because it’s your face. “I love dogs,
”
”
Francesca Zappia (Now Entering Addamsville)
“
You stuff your own closet full of skeletons and you wonder what kind of bones everyone else has stuffed away.
”
”
William Kent Krueger (Iron Lake (Cork O'Connor, #1))
“
To ask God to redeem Jerusalem but not cast sin outside the city walls is like asking a doctor to heal your body without excising the disease. Like asking the light to arise without casting out the darkness. Like asking for restoration to come and destruction to remain. It is to ask for a contradiction. God excludes sin from his kingdom because of his goodness, not in opposition to or in spite of it.
”
”
Joshua Ryan Butler (The Skeletons in God's Closet: The Mercy of Hell, the Surprise of Judgment, the Hope of Holy War)
“
People don’t blush when they’re embarrassed. White people blush when they’re embarrassed. Why so embarrassed, white people? Any skeletons in your closet? Oh yeah, that’s right—we’ve got more skeletons in our closet than anybody.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom)
“
When you give me art—give me something that reaches inside of my core and twists, taking the very breath that sustains me away.
Give me something that wakens me from my lethargy.
Give me something that causes me to ponder and question all that I have come to know; due to my circumstances that I have been allotted in this life.
Give me something that causes me to question my pride and arrogance of knowing that I am right in my thoughts, beliefs and perceptions.
Shake me: as if you had grabbed me and pushed me against the wall—shattering all of my preconceived notions; causing me to break out of the box that I have put others in.
Give me something that scraped over the scar tissue of wounds that you carry within, opening them afresh and causing you pain—real core pain—pain that you had pushed down; pain that now resides in your closet of skeletons.
When you give me art, give me you, or give me nothing at all…
©2014 Suzanne Steele
”
”
Suzanne Steele (The Author)
“
Suddenly, I had a problem. Jesus wants to get rid of sex trafficking too, only he takes it a lot more seriously than I do. I want to get rid of sex trafficking; Jesus wants to get rid of lust. I want to prune back the wicked tree; he wants to dig out the root. And that wicked root is in me. I may not be a sex trafficker, a pedophile tourist, or a greedy madam—but I have lust. I can be one lusty animal. Jesus says if you even look lustfully at one of God’s daughters, demeaningly commodifying her as an object for your own self-centered gratification, then the power of hell has its roots in you, and when God arrives to establish his kingdom, you are in danger of being cast outside the kingdom with it.
”
”
Joshua Ryan Butler (The Skeletons in God's Closet: The Mercy of Hell, the Surprise of Judgment, the Hope of Holy War)
“
If your roots are in Jesus, your fruit will be love. Fruit takes time to grow; it doesn’t appear overnight. We don’t have to beat ourselves up for not being perfect Jesus-followers the day after we’ve started walking in his dust. It took the disciples a long time too. But the longer we’re planted in God’s garden, the deeper our roots grow in his goodness, and the more generosity, joy, and selflessness begin to spring forth from our branches.
”
”
Joshua Ryan Butler (The Skeletons in God's Closet: The Mercy of Hell, the Surprise of Judgment, the Hope of Holy War)
“
The Underworld guards the secrets. It's got the skeletons in the closet, and any other skeletons you might wish to get your hands on. It's got the stories, or quite a few of them. 'There is something down there and you want it told,' as poet Gwendolyn MacEwen says. The swimmer among the jewelled dead — double-gendered, like the seer Tiresias — in Adrienne Rich's poem 'Diving Into the Wreck' has a similar motive:
There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there ...
”
”
Margaret Atwood (Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing)
“
In fact, some might argue that starting C-PTSD treatment by diving into the back of your closet and chasing out your scariest, most deeply buried skeleton is a terrible idea. You could find a murderous clown in the storm drain of your life, and he could start haunting your everyday existence. You could dig up something that triggers you badly and makes your symptoms worse or is so unpleasant to look at that you just quit therapy and never come back. That’s why many trauma therapists try to set up a strong framework of coping mechanisms before people launch into their foundational traumas.
”
”
Stephanie Foo (What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma)
“
Well, that was certainly a disgusting display worthy of your father's family."
"Shut up, Ma," Lisa Livia said, her hands on her hips. "Like you weren't born in the Bronx, and the Fortunatos weren't a big step up for you. Now you listen to me. You try to move this wedding away from Two Rivers again, I'm gonna clean every skeleton out of every closet you got and make them dance, you hear me? I'll dig up everything you ever buried, including my daddy, and then I'll sink that beat-up rowboat you're living on so you'll be out in the street with nothing. Do not fuck with my kid and do not fuck with my friend, they are all the family I got, and they are off-limits to you. Understand?
”
”
Jennifer Crusie (Agnes and the Hitman (The Organization, #0))
“
I have come to believe that our culture’s popular understanding of these difficult doctrines is often a caricature of what the Bible actually teaches and what mature Christian theology has historically proclaimed. To Laugh At, To Live By What do I mean by a caricature? A caricature is a cartoonlike drawing of a real person, place, or thing. You’ve probably seen them at street fairs, drawings of popular figures like President Obama, Marilyn Monroe, or your aunt Cindy. Caricatures exaggerate some features, distort some features, and oversimplify some features. The result is a humorous cartoon. In one sense, a caricature bears a striking resemblance to the real thing. That picture really does look like President Obama, Marilyn Monroe, or your aunt Cindy. Features unique to the real person are included and even emphasized, so you can tell it’s a cartoon of that person and not someone else. But in another sense, the caricature looks nothing like the real thing. Salient features have been distorted, oversimplified, or blown way out of proportion. President Obama’s ears are way too big. Aunt Cindy’s grin is way too wide. And Marilyn Monroe . . . well, you get the picture. A caricature would never pass for a photograph. If you were to take your driver’s license, remove the photo, and replace it with a caricature, the police officer pulling you over would either laugh . . . or arrest you. Placed next to a photograph, a caricature looks like a humorous, or even hideous, distortion of the real thing. Similarly, our popular caricatures of these tough doctrines do include features of the original. One doesn’t have to look too far in the biblical story to find that hell has flames, holy war has fighting, and judgment brings us face-to-face with God. But in the caricatures, these features are severely exaggerated, distorted, and oversimplified, resulting in a not-so-humorous cartoon that looks nothing like the original. All we have to do is start asking questions: Where do the flames come from, and what are they doing? Who is doing the fighting, and how are they winning? Why does God judge the world, and what basis does he use for judgment? Questions like these help us quickly realize that our popular caricatures of tough biblical doctrines are like cartoons: good for us to laugh at, but not to live by. But the caricature does help us with something important: it draws our attention to parts of God’s story where our understanding is off. If the caricature makes God look like a sadistic torturer, a coldhearted judge, or a greedy génocidaire, it probably means there are details we need to take a closer look at. The caricatures can alert us to parts of the picture where our vision is distorted.
”
”
Joshua Ryan Butler (The Skeletons in God's Closet: The Mercy of Hell, the Surprise of Judgment, the Hope of Holy War)
“
When you hide the bodies of the problems, that's how you eventually amass skeletons in your closet.
”
”
Faydra D. Fields
“
Why don’t you tell me where this fear comes from. Maybe talking about it will help us somehow.”
I feel like this fear should have vanished already, but what she’s doing is keeping me at a steady level of heightened uneasiness, not taking my fear away completely. I try to focus on where this box comes from.
“Um…okay.” Okay, just do it, just say something real. “This one is from my…fantastic childhood. Childhood punishments. The tiny closet upstairs.”
Shut in the dark to think about what I did. It was better than other punishments, but sometimes I was in there for too long, desperate for fresh air.
“My mother kept our winter coats in our closet,” she says, and it’s a silly thing to say after what I just told her, but I can tell she doesn’t know what else to do.
“I don’t really want to talk about it anymore,” I say with a gasp. She doesn’t know what to say because no one could possibly know what to say, because my childhood pain is too pathetic for anyone else to handle--my heart rate spikes again.
“Okay. Then…I can talk. Ask me something.”
I lift my head. It was working before, focusing on her. Her racing heart, her body against mine. Two strong skeletons wrapped in muscle, tangled together; two Abnegation transfers working on leaving tentative flirtation behind. “Why is your heart racing, Tris?”
“Well, I…I barely know you.” I can picture her scowling. “I barely know you and I’m crammed up against you in a box, Four, what do you think?”
“If we were in your fear landscape…” I say. “Would I be in it?”
“I’m not afraid of you.”
“Of course you’re not. That’s not what I meant.” I meant not Are you afraid of me? but Am I important enough to you to feature in the landscape anyway?
Probably not. She’s right, she hardly knows me. But still: Her heart is racing.
”
”
Veronica Roth (Four: A Divergent Story Collection (Divergent, #0.1-0.4))
“
I don't need to smell them rotting to know where all your secrets are buried. You can't hide them from me in the Milieu. - The Malwatch
”
”
Scaylen Renvac
“
Mort d'un coq, but you annoy me, you vex me, you anger and enrage me- me, I could twist your so stupid neck! What lies behind all this I know no more than you, but may Satan serve me fried turnip with parsley if I traverse Monsieur Robin Hood's barnyard seeking a conventional explanation for something which fairly reeks of the superphysical. No, a reason there is, there must be, but you are as far from seeing it as an Icelander is from hearing the blackbirds whistle in the horsechestnuts of St. Cloud Yes!
”
”
Seabury Quinn (The Skeleton Closet of Jules De Grandin)
“
You won't freeze me in my tracks
or put me on a string.
I won't be made a puppet
on a stage at leftwing.
There are no strings to yank
or closet skeletons to sell,
and I will not walk the plank
above your wishing well.
You'll see me in the street.
You'll hear me in the field.
There will be no retreat
or brake at the yield.
”
”
Calvin W. Allison (The Sunset of Science and the Risen Son of Truth)
“
You could do this for any task you’ve been putting off, such as cleaning your closet. The deadlines might be: Week 1, open the door and stare at the mess. Week 2, tackle anything that’s on a hanger. Week 3, throw out anything that predates the Reagan administration. Week 4, find out if Goodwill accepts skeletons. Week 5—well, you get the picture.
”
”
Kelly McGonigal (The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It)
“
Curiously, people resist the noble aspects of their shadow more strenuously than they hide the dark sides. To draw the skeletons out of the closet is relatively easy, but to own the gold in the shadow is terrifying. It is more disrupting to find that you have a profound nobility of character than to find out you are a bum.
”
”
Robert A. Johnson (Owning Your Own Shadow: A Jungian Approach to Transformative Self-Acceptance, Exploring the Unlit Part of the Ego and Finding Balance Through Spiritual Self-Discovery)
“
Sometimes it helps to share it. To not hold it in.” “And what would you know about it?” I run my tongue over my teeth. “You’re not the only one with skeletons in that big-ass closet of yours.
”
”
Cora Rose (Until Him (Inevitable, #1))
“
Once again, I had a problem. Jesus wants genocide out of God’s world too, only he takes it a lot more seriously than I do. I want to get rid of genocide; Jesus wants to get rid of rage. I want to put boundaries on the wicked wildfire; he wants to snuff out the spark. And that wicked spark is in me. I may not be a Third World dictator, a genocidal soldier, or an interrogation torturer. But I have anger, and it’s most often not the righteous kind. I can be a vindictive beast. Jesus says if you are nice to folks on the outside but rage against them in your heart, you are in danger of the fire of hell.
”
”
Joshua Ryan Butler (The Skeletons in God's Closet: The Mercy of Hell, the Surprise of Judgment, the Hope of Holy War)
“
Hell is that place where God tells its residents: Thy will be done. Have your way. Live as you want without me. Hell is a democracy.
”
”
Joshua Ryan Butler (The Skeletons in God's Closet: The Mercy of Hell, the Surprise of Judgment, the Hope of Holy War)
“
Jesus’ people often seem to be given only two options: capitulate your faith in the bible and swoop everyone up in a universal “love is god” type of pop-theology, or bang your bible on the pulpit and preach about how “those people” out there on the other side of the church doors are all on a highway headed to hell.
”
”
Joshua Ryan Butler (The Skeletons in God's Closet: The Mercy of Hell, the Surprise of Judgment, the Hope of Holy War)
“
Having taken a brief, essential look at faith, we now have the foundation set for overcoming. So many people have the bad, self-sabotaging habit of focusing on self and/or others to the point that they sincerely believe it is impossible to be an overcomer; I mean an actual overcomer. They recall the many times they have failed, and see the many times hypocritical people declare themselves to be holy, but have a graveyard full of skeletons in their proverbial closets, proving them to be religious liars. Thus, they say it is impossible to overcome. What’s wrong with this picture? In these cases, why will these people never overcome? It’s simply a matter of wrong focus, and an unwillingness to exercise miraculous faith in God.
”
”
L. David Harris (#FOCUS: Heaven's in Your View)
“
Skeletons In Your Closet
It is common courtesy
to let the skeletons in your closet out
at least once a year to go trick-or-treating.
”
”
Beryl Dov
“
Half the time, the very thing you think that’s going to destroy you or ruin you is the very thing that nobody cares about. My advice to anybody with skeletons is dust them off every now and then—as long as your closet ain’t full of them. It’s not good to have more than two or three.
”
”
Tyler Perry (Don't Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings: Madea's Uninhibited Commentaries on Love and Life)
“
While you were busy judging me, your closet door opened and all your skeletons fell out!
”
”
Rosetta Diane Hoessli (Whispers Through Time)
“
How happy you are, Anna!” said Dolly. “Everything is clear and good in your heart.” “Everyone has a skeleton in his closet, as the English say.
”
”
Leo Tolstoy (Anna Karenina)
“
Avoid strife for today by forgetting the strife of yesterday,
We all have skeletons in the closet -- use your skeleton key to keep them there.
”
”
T.R. Bosse (The Mystery of the Trinity Revealed)
“
Teach the skeletons in your closet to dance,"
author unknown
”
”
Tenzi Moscato (The Blood Prophecy (The Blood Prophecy series))