If not for “shame,” which God created, no one would be free of transgression. Proof of this is that it is more common to murder a person openly than to sleep openly with a woman, even (one’s) own wife. For anger is found in each person, the great, small and elderly alike; but the evil inclination is found only in youths, but not in the small, elderly or the weak. And those youths whose evil inclination overwhelms them are not let off therefrom except because of shame.¹ Therefore an individual cannot boast if he has done good and has not sinned since in his youth he was restrained by his parents or by his shame; therefore even if in later life he avoids sin, let him not boast, since he had initially recoiled from sin because of shame.

footnotes: ¹ Kiddushin 80b.