"Self-reproach" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of such a character to one's own poor standard? I trust that the influence of this long intellectual and spiritual companionship never absolutely leaves one who has lived in it. It may come to him in the form of self-reproach that he falls so far short of the superior being who has been so long the object of his contemplation. But it also carries him at times into the other's personality, so that he finds himself thinking thoughts that are not his own, using phrases which he has unconsciously borrowed, writing, ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... nature, and thus paying him with the equivalent best suited to his capacity. It suffices that, in being stuffed with the preposterous delusion about Olivia, Sir Andrew is rendered supremely happy at the time; while he manifestly has not force enough to remember it with any twinges of shame or self-reproach. And we feel that, while clawing his fatuous crotchets and playing out his absurdities, Sir Toby is really doing Sir Andrew no wrong, since the latter is then most himself, is in his happiest mood, and in the most natural freedom of his indigenous gifts and graces. All which ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... proceeding with the most austere looks, and pointed language, when observing the shame, and the self-reproach that agitated her mind, he divested himself in great measure of ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... failure of Bruce upon the Eugenian race, or justified his fate by aspersing his memory and his adherents of the race of Conn. This feeling of irritation, always most deep-seated when driven in by a consciousness of mismanagement or of self-reproach, goes a great way to account for the fact, that more than one generation was to pass away, before any closer union could be brought about between the Northern and ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... said with a slight frown of self-reproach. "La! but I don't deserve your solicitude. Heavens know what a brute I was for years, whilst I neglected you, and ignored the noble devotion which I, alas! do even now so ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... compassion brimmed his heart; he realized that he didn't matter, that his amour propre was of no account—that nothing mattered so long as she were spared one little pang of self-reproach. ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... evening's hour, a mournful voice repeating the first words of the beautiful psalm—De Profundis clamavit Domini—then it stopped, but the priest, as soon as he had recovered from the first shock, and remembering with bitter self-reproach his omission, took up the words where the supernatural voice had left off, and finished the recitation of the De Profundis, resolving, as he did so, that, for the time to come, nothing should prevent him from reciting ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... piece as a boy runs, no trace of disarray or feminine floundering in her action. More than ever, indeed, did she appear a fine nymph-like creature; so that, watching her flight Tom Verity was touched alike with self-reproach and admiration. For he had succeeded in asserting himself beyond his intention. Had overcome, had worsted her; yet, as it occurred to him, won a but barren victory. That she was alienated and resentful he could hardly doubt, while the riddle he had ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... sofa, for she had no wish to talk just then with anybody. She felt indeed much disquieted, but what her feelings were when her sister related the circumstance of their papa's coming home, on purpose to take them to a place of amusement, may be more easily imagined then described; and yet we fear that self-reproach did not, in the smallest degree, mingle with their feelings, so little do some people know ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... gratefuller word—that might justify her to herself. And, instead, she realized for the first time the desert she had herself created, the loneliness she had herself imposed. And with prophetic terror she saw in front of her the daily self-reproach that her self-esteem might not be ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... our luck!" he protested, in the keenest self-reproach. "There isn't a horse or a mule in camp that you could get a mile an hour out of. In fact, I'm thinking there isn't ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... types might be depicted. From the over-conscientious who rigidly hold themselves to an ideal, who watch every departure from perfection with agony and self-reproach, and who may either reach the highest level or "break down" and become inefficient to the almost conscienceless group, doing only what seems more profitable, are many intermediate types merging one with ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... ex-dragoon had survived his affliction by a twelvemonth, and hard as it may be to have to tell it, he did not look much the worse for it. Heaven knows what wasted agonies of remorse and self-reproach may not have racked George's honest heart, as he lay awake at nights thinking of the wife he had abandoned in the pursuit of a fortune, which ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... book[1] where we read of a life Born to a throne, taking love for its bliss, Self-reproach wounding the sweet royal wife For keeping two years he ...
— Harry • Fanny Wheeler Hart
... times it may be even wilful. But you are too sensitive; you think too much of what seems to me a not unnatural (although of course improper) protest against coldness and injustice. I should be the last to encourage a child against a parent, but, to comfort your self-reproach, I think it right to assure you that, in my judgment, the outburst you refer ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... and turned her face towards mine. I read in her eyes something of the conflict of emotions which possessed her; she seemed at once to deprecate my disapproval and to ask my sympathy; she prayed me to be gentle to her fault and kind to her happiness; self-reproach shadowed her joy, but the golden gleam of it strayed through. I looked eagerly at her; this would not have been her bearing had she come from a last farewell; for the radiance was there, however much dimmed ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... a fretful contortion, and obeyed. So it went on all the morning, Ethel's eagerness checked by Miss Winter's dry manner, producing pettishness, till Ethel, in a state between self-reproach and a sense of injustice, went up to prepare for dinner, and to visit Margaret on ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... the colour coming back to his face; but the girl in her excitement of self-reproach and contrition begged to be allowed to dress the mutilated hand which her own careless movement had ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... undertake the thing at once,' he said, in a tone to which the uneasiness of self-reproach gave a touch of imperiousness. 'But really,' he added, 'it seems trespassing on your goodness much too far. Your time is valuable. Would it be ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... feeling of shame and self-reproach—indeed they seemed, not like an army, but like a fugitive population of a city captured after a siege, and of a great city too. For the whole multitude who were marching together numbered not less than forty thousand. Each of them took with him anything he could carry which was likely ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... lurking distrust that made her afraid of Max Wyndham. She felt as if he were watching to catch her off her guard, ready at a moment's notice to turn to his own purposes any rash confidence into which she might be betrayed. And she told herself with passionate self-reproach that she had already been guilty of ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... his uncle, never ventured to question him as to what was done with the money acquired by his labor and that of his wife and daughter. He walked the streets with a bowed head, hiding from every eye his stricken, dull, distraught face. He felt, with self-reproach, that the cloth he wore ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... sympathized with Julia in her present expectations, and was now somewhat relieved from the pressure of that self-reproach, with which the consideration of having withdrawn her young friend from a secure asylum, had long tormented her. In learning that Hippolitus lived, Julia experienced a sudden renovation of life and spirits. From the languid stupefaction ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... have lost my tongue and my head together. I had expected tears, pale cheeks, a burst of self-reproach, and that I should have to comfort and be very gentle and sympathetic. I had dreaded the role; but here was a new turn of affairs; and, I own it, my self-love was not a little wounded. The play was played out, that was evident. The curtain had fallen, and here was I, a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... Mr. Stillwood, when a blase man about town, verging on forty, had first seen her, then a fair-haired, ethereal-looking child, in spite of her dirt, playing in the gutter. To his lasting self-reproach it was young Gadley himself, accompanying his employer home from Westminster, who had drawn Mr. Stillwood's attention to the girl by boxing her ears for having, as he passed, slapped his face with a convenient sprat. Stillwood, acting on the impulse of the moment, had ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... roused the applause of all the better-minded section, whose cheers were not wholly unmingled with self-reproach. Bloomfield himself, it was plain, felt its force, and as to the more vehement members of Parrett's, it considerably ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... existence, and an object to her intellect and affections. And Agellius on the other hand, what surprise, remorse, and humiliation came upon him! It was a strange contrast, the complaint of nature unregenerate on the one hand, the self-reproach of nature regenerate and lapsing on the other. At last he spoke, and they ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... Valperfond, etc., had married Marie-Francoise Perier in 1760. Their fortune resembled many others of that period: it was more nominal than actual, more showy than solid. Not that the husband and wife had any cause for self-reproach, or that their estates had suffered from dissipation; unstained by the corrupt manners of the period, their union had been a model of sincere affection, of domestic virtue and mutual confidence. Marie-Francoise was quite beautiful enough to have made a sensation in society, but ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the best kind of African hunting in one respect. One feels no self-reproach in having killed a lion, for there is always the comforting thought that by killing one lion you have saved the lives of three hundred other animals. Every lion exacts an annual toll of at least that number of zebras, hartebeests, ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... Epidamnus to arbitration, they chose to prosecute their complaints war rather than by a fair trial. And let their conduct towards us who are their kindred be a warning to you not to be misled by their deceit, nor to yield to their direct requests; concessions to adversaries only end in self-reproach, and the more strictly they are avoided the greater will ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... self-sacrificing labour was for him a high vocation. He writhed, his limbs twisting involuntarily, when these thoughts beset him, and often he was surprised to discover that he was actually uttering aloud words of self-reproach. ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... rolls of a hundred francs, so that the lovers she paid might not leave her. Now, after these involuntarily dishonest acts, these petty crimes extorted from her upright nature, she plunged into such depths of self-reproach, remorse, melancholy, such black despair, that in that hell in which she rolled on from sin to sin, desperate and unsatisfied, she had taken to drinking to escape herself, to save herself from the present, to drown herself and founder for a few moments in the ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... of her high attainments must beware of spiritual pride. And Mrs. Anderson took the warning with beautiful meekness, sinking into forty fathoms of undisguised and rather ostentatious humility, heaving solemn sighs in token of self-reproach—a self-reproach that did not ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... Coffin was waiting in his shore-boat. I listened, minute after minute, on the chance of hearing his hail. A heavy bank of cloud had overcast the moon, and the packet melted from sight in a blur of darkness. Worst of all—worse even than the sting of self-reproach—was the prospect of returning to Stimcoe's and wearing through the night, while out there in the darkness the two men would meet, and all that followed their meeting must ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... to whistle or to smoke, he has a present which offers some resistance to the past—sensations which assert themselves against tyrannous memories. And if there were such a thing as taking averages of feeling, it would certainly be found that in the hunting and shooting seasons regret, self-reproach, and mortified pride weigh lighter on country gentlemen than in late spring and summer. Arthur felt that he should be more of a man on horseback. Even the presence of Pym, waiting on him with the usual deference, ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... departed in a state of humiliation and self-reproach I had never before known, wandering about aimlessly for a long time. When at length I arrived at home, late for supper, my mother's solicitude only served to deepen my pain. She went to the kitchen ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... reflected, with great sadness and self-reproach, on the way in which I had neglected my Bible; and it flashed across me that I was actually in the sight of God a greater sinner than this blood-stained pirate; for, thought I, he tells me that he never read the Bible, and was never brought up to care for it; whereas ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... wondered with a sharp touch of self-reproach what had made her say such a stupid thing—a thing which might have, and indeed had, two such different meanings? What she had meant had been that she must forget the hurt surprise she and her husband had felt that Godfrey Radmore, ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... to feel the heart burn with wrath and envy of "the privileged classes." Yes, but all that time I was one of "the privileged" myself, and now I can accept a recognized standing among them without shadow of self-reproach. ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... man who possesses in literary or artistic culture a never-failing source of pleasures, which are neither withered by age, nor staled by custom, nor embittered in the recollection by the pangs of self-reproach. ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... not hear the reply, for he stole softly away, annoyed, as he thought, at having been a listener to what was not intended for his ears. But there was a little sting of self-reproach at his selfish desertion of home, and, more than all, that Catherine should have been blamed for offences that any one who had known her would never have attributed ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... knowing what she was going to say next: "Yes, I think that the real reason why Cornelia wouldn't go in costume was that she felt that it was a kind of subterfuge. She keeps me in a perfect twitter of self-reproach. I tell her I would rather have the conscience of the worst kind of person than hers; I could get along with it a great deal easier. Don't you think ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... that his great mind should not have made him see, in this very craving after self-examination, caused by his inclination for truth; and in that extraordinary susceptibility of conscience which lead to self-reproach for egotism, only because he felt pleasure in exercising beneficence and that it did not contain enough sacrifice; it is singular, I say, that this same spirit of equity did not make him see how he shone in the only two faculties ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... the prime of life when I sent them from me. They have since married again, and are the mothers of families. They frequently send letters to comfort me in my troubles and afflictions, but their kind remembrances serve only to add to my self-reproach for my cruel treatment of them in past years. I banished them from me for lesser offenses than I myself had ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... his son exclaimed with energy; "for if so it must surely be the cause of life-long self-reproach to her. Will you go with us to ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... no further. Her husband had taken her in his arms, and had interrupted her words with blustering exclamations of self-reproach and self-condemnation. He was a brute, he cried, a senseless, selfish ass, who had no right to such a wife, who was not worth a single one of the tears that by now ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... a reason why Chiltern's letters had not arrived, and great were Honora's self-reproach and penitence. With a party of Englishmen he had gone up into the interior of a Central American country to visit some famous ruins. He sent her photographs of them, and of the Englishmen, and of himself. Yes, he had seen the newspapers. If she had not seen them, she was not to read them ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... into the street, Lindsay thrust his hand within Arnold's elbow. It was an impulse, and the analysis of it would show elements like self-reproach, and a sense of value continually renewed, and a vain desire for an absolutely common ground. The physical nearness, the touch, was something, and each felt it in the remoteness of his other world with satisfaction. There was absurdly little in what ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... was silent too. She was confounded by the new phase of feeling, imperfectly revealed to her, and filled with wonder, and self-reproach, and sympathy. Had she been to blame to leave her child exposed to an influence which had proved too much for her peace of mind?—that was the well-worn conventional phrase, and it was the only one that seemed to answer the occasion, too ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... simply because God gave me the beauty and the power. I hate it; oh, how I hate it! Suppose that Jean Moret is dead, who, then, in God's name is responsible for his death? I, I alone! Do you think that I am so heartless that I can look upon such things with no pang of self-reproach? I wish that I were old and ugly, fortuneless and an outcast—or dead. Then I would not be compelled to prostitute my beauty and my talents to conspire with a rabble of scoundrels and convicts who discuss murder and assassination as if ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... risk handing down to others such a heritage of struggle and possible failure as was his. Yet, in the same breath, the Devil whispered a plausible reminder that men as good as he had taken the risk time after time; that De Quincey himself had followed passion's dictates seemingly without a twinge of self-reproach. But Lenox was too single-minded to take shelter behind the failures of others. For him the principle was all. For him all thought of marriage must be set aside, at least, until he knew for certain how completely the subtle poison ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... my forgiving disposition still to befriend you, after all that has happened, ought to appeal to any better feelings that you may still have left, and revive the long dormant emotions of repentance and self-reproach, when you think on ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... operation of which will filter bitterness and shame through all his life. "And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord." Two words (in the Hebrew) make the transition from sullen misery to real though shaded peace. No lengthened outpouring, no accumulation of self-reproach; he is too deeply moved for many words, which he knows God does not need. More would have been less. All is contained in that one sob, in which the whole frostwork of these weary months breaks up and rolls away, swept before the strong ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... not deny also that I was savagely stung by mortification; for a man is so made that he does not relish a refusal any the more for being aware that he has not too anxiously sought acceptance; but, on the contrary, his self-reproach for that tardiness of his is made more bitter by the rebuff. He feels that he has deserved it, and ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... him mechanically, for I was undergoing a mental castigation which rather disturbed me. Indeed, like a young fool—as eager in self-reproach as in self-glorification—I was so occupied in inwardly calling myself hard names, that even when my host gave me a commission for my new picture, 'The Return of Columbus,' at two hundred and fifty pounds, together with an order to paint himself, Mrs Reay, and half-a-dozen of their children, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... in honour and estimation, until the subject of this memoir, John, brought upon it disgrace, and incurred to himself lasting self-reproach. ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... was ushered into the darkened room at the surgical home, Elaine smiled greeting to him, and the smile stabbed him with self-reproach. He had come to wound her. There must be no further delay. He must act the ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... to interfere with the circulation of the vital ether of happiness in the young, which is damaging to the complexion of the soul. It is bitter, when you are middle-aged and unsuccessful, to go to sleep in self-reproach and awake unexonerated. It is likely to cause fermentation in the sweetest nature; it is certain to breed gray hairs and a premature longing for death. It is pitiful, if you are the home-keeping mother of an impoverished family, to drop in your traces helpless at night, and awake ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... drew herself up in her nurse's arms with a pretty gesture, like a pheasant's neck in a sort of reproof, as she said "Thank you" to her little self, when she had held out a flower to Mr. Keble, which, for once in his life, he did not notice; and his self-reproach produced the thoughts of thankfulness. One of the gems of the Lyra, "Bereavement," was the thought that came to the mind of the Pastor as he buried the little sister, the only child except the elder girl, of the bailiff at Dr. Moberly's ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... through her tears. "'Tis that Peggy's cousin thinks that I betrayed him. I thought he was up attic, and he wasn't. I told Peggy to tell him to go there, but she did not hear me. Thee knows my fault, Mrs. Owen," she wailed in an agony of self-reproach. "Thee knows just how froward and saucy I can be, and I was just that way with the sheriff, and—and pert. He spoke of the closet, showing that he knew of it, and I was so sure that Clifford was up attic that I asked the sheriff if I should open the door for him. I did, and there ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... haste and with a little self-reproach for having forgotten it, she had ordered her pony chaise; and then examined into the condition of her stores. The sponge cake was somewhat dry; the sickle pears wanted looking over. Part of them were past ripe. Indeed so many of them, that ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... country—asking her as a great favor to forward an addressed letter to the prisoner, a fortnight after receipt. The aunt obeyed implicitly. This was the letter which fell like a thunderbolt on the prisoner on the night of December 3d. All his old love returned—he was full of self-reproach and pity for the poor girl. The letter read ominously. Perhaps she was going to put an end to herself. His first thought was to rush up to his friend, Constant, to seek his advice. Perhaps Constant knew something of the affair. The ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... myself with plain, obvious evidence, I have allowed myself to frame hypothetical interpretations, which, to acts simple in themselves, and explicable on ordinary motives, render the simple-seeming acts portentous. With bitter pangs of self-reproach I have at times discovered that a long and plausible history constructed by me, relating to personal friends, has crumpled into a ruin of absurdity, by the disclosure of the primary misconception on which the whole history was based. I have gone, let us say, on the supposition that two people ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... separated him from the woman he loved, and who loved him. He looked quickly at her; but the light of momentary excitement had died out of the face, and the expression was now perfectly serene. Several reflections passed rapidly through Mat's mind. He saw clearly that the girl had not a particle of self-reproach; not a doubt of the rectitude or even the nobility of her conduct; she had immolated herself with the same inflexible resolve and unquestioning faith as the sublime murderer of Marat. Then passing rapidly in mental review the history of so many self-murdered hearts, he asked which was the more ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... revolution in English poetry was fully consummated. None of the writers of this period, not even Sir Walter Scott, contributed so much to the consummation as Lord Byron. Yet Lord Byron contributed to it unwillingly, and with constant self-reproach and shame. All his tastes and inclinations led him to take part with the school of poetry which was going out against the school which was coming in. Of Pope himself he spoke with extravagant admiration. He did not venture ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in Browning of the Romantic temper with a peculiar mastery of everything in human nature which traverses and repudiates Romance. The duke and the lady are simpler and slighter Hamlets—Hamlets who have no agonies of self-questioning and self-reproach; intervening in the long pageant of the famous lovers of romantic tradition with the same disturbing shock as he in the bead-roll of heroic avengers. The poet's indignant denunciation of his lovers ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... my error, Mr. Woodburn," she replied, with an air of self-reproach and of slightly-offended pride, which, however, gave way to kindly tones, as she proceeded; "I have unintentionally helped you to an argument, while I am constrained to decide that no argument, so long as I stand in my present position, must prevail with me. Do not, ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... an end, he was stranded. There was nothing to do but go back to the wife and child whose existence he never remembered except with a pang of self-reproach. He meant to go back to them—but not yet. It was too soon. Edith was too much with him. The fact that her physical presence was withdrawn made her spiritually the more pervasive. The afterglow of their days together couldn't fade otherwise than slowly, like light when ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... beside himself, his wonted firmness and self-control, at times, failed to stay him, and he preferred to shut himself up alone in one of the towers of the castle at Livorno, venting his passionate despair in fits of weeping and in abject cries of self-reproach. ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... of so great a calamity she felt, not triumph, but a shocked sense of loss, of self-reproach. Five minutes after she ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... that morning as keen as the fickle air—so sharply did it bring back to him the overwhelming pictures of their happiness together. And out of his acute loneliness rose vague questionings and misgivings. He said to himself in bitter self-reproach that she would not have gone if he had been to her all he ought to have been in the crisis of that night. If harm should befall her now! How the thought clutched and dragged at his heart. Forebodings tortured him, and in the penumbra of his thoughts ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... was his. The outcome of neutrality can be as great a force as that of action, and to assume the right to stand aside is to play as decisive a part as the fiercest champion. Nevertheless he held to that neutral attitude through the pangs of self-reproach. ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... must speak to Mr Rowland about it; the matter might really become serious; and if he should ever be entrapped into marrying into the Grey connections, among people so decidedly objectionable, it would be a terrible self-reproach to her as long as she lived, that she had not interfered in time. She should ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... soon over, and of its ugly details only a few remained in her mind. She had a glimpse of Amy's face down in the handsome coffin, and at the sight she turned away with a swift pang of self-reproach. "I shouldn't have let Fanny do that!" ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... Yes, my dear boy, you are quite right. (Goes up to him.) Now have I taken away all your remorse and self-reproach? ...
— Ghosts - A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... "to spare a day or two to go with me to Arqua. I should like," he said, "to visit that tomb with you—a pair of poetical pilgrims—eh, Tom, what say you?" But "Tom" was for Rome and Lord John Russell, and ever afterwards bewailed the lost opportunity "with wonder and self-reproach" (Life, p. 423; Life, by Karl Elze, 1872, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... said more!" cried Mary, in an agony of self-reproach. "I meant to go into her house this morning, and try to make her hear reason; it might not ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards
... self-reproach and secret disturbance, vowed that the journey would do him good; that he was eager to see the old country once again. He had resolved, as the penance for his blunder, that he would not be the means of hindering ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... dear—that is to say, not as dear as they are. For, as matters at present stand, it is wholly impossible for any man in the ordinary circumstances of English life to possess himself of a piece of great art. A modern drawing of average merit, or a first-class engraving, may, perhaps, not without some self-reproach, be purchased out of his savings by a man of narrow income; but a satisfactory example of first-rate art—masterhands' work—is wholly out of his reach. And we are so accustomed to look upon this as the natural course and necessity ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... there shadowless and penniless: but a heavy weight had been removed from my bosom, and I was calm. Had I not lost my love, or had that loss left me free from self-reproach, I believe I might have been happy; but I knew not what steps I should take. I searched my pockets, and found that a few pieces of gold remained to me; I counted them smilingly. I had left my horse at the inn ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso
... against such self-reproach. The memory of her life with Tito, of the conditions which made their real union impossible, while their external union imposed a set of false duties on her which were essentially the concealment and sanctioning of what her mind revolted from, told her that flight ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... finally retired, leaving Mr. Roberts not wholly without self-reproach, for having momentarily indulged injurious thoughts against one who, it was evident, was possessed of a self-respect which forbade his indulging ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... in my youthful zeal I made many resolutions that were well meant, but indiscreet. Among others, I remember I resolved to pray, at least once, in some way, every hour that I was awake. I tried faithfully to keep this resolution, but never having succeeded a single day, I suffered the pangs of self-reproach, until reflection satisfied me that the only wisdom possible, with regard to such a resolve, was to break it. I remember, too, that I made a resolution to speak upon religion to every person with whom I conversed,—on ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... a certain sort of self-reproach in all this. I feel it is a weakness perhaps, but I feel that we are all of us too hard on these organ fellows—for, after all, are they not, in a certain sense, the type and embodiment of our age? Is not repetition, reiteration, our boldest characteristic? Is there, ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... which swept over Lola as the knowledge of it all flashed upon her was something deeper than thought, something more moving than any mere matter of perception. A passionate gratitude throbbed in her heart, confused with a passionate self-reproach. She desired to speak, but somehow her lips refused utterance. She trembled and turned white, and stood wringing ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... taking a few steps, she again stopped and stood a minute, shivering, and weeping under the bare boughs of the great oak tree beneath which Burr had read aloud to her one of her own sentimental poems. Groaning in spirit, and heart-stung by pangs of self-reproach, she hurried up the slope ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... might have hated him the more for it. But now that he lay a prisoner, famished, starving, the fact that he loved her touched her heart, transfixed her with an almost poignant feeling, choked her with a rising flood of pity and self-reproach. ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... Claudius' murder of his brother to have been a solitary achievement, skilfully carried out by one whose genial good-fellowship and convivial habits gave the lie to any suggestion of criminality. Whatever may have been his inward feelings of remorse or self-reproach, Claudius masked them successfully from the eyes of all. Hamlet's instinctive dislike of his uncle was not shared by the members of the Danish court. The "witchcraft of his wit," his "traitorous gifts," were powerful aids ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... sorry. It was dreadful to let you go upstairs to dress and find that," cried the woman, in a tumult of self-reproach. ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... the Barry sitting-room, and noticed with a feeling that was almost like self-reproach how thin and frail and white the poor young creature looked. Why, she seemed little more than a child! Her great dark eyes were far too big for her wasted face, and her hands were ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... self-reproach and returning love overwhelmed him. "I swear to you," he said brokenly, through fast-flowing tears, "you are immortally dear to ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... have inspired the writing of personal narratives are themselves representative of the different types: Caesar's Commentaries, with his detached impersonal description of his great exploits; the Confessions of St. Augustine, with his intimate self-analysis and intense self-reproach, and the less well-known De Vita Propria Liber by Cardan. This latter is a serious attempt at scientific self-examination. Recently, attention has been directed to the accumulation of autobiographical ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the gesture, and for a moment it crossed his mind in self-reproach that the part he chose to play was that of a bully. A second he hesitated. Should he surrender the letter unread, and fight on without the aid of the information it might bring him? Then the thought of Ashburn and ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... evident; and a whole sacrifice without any blemish is very rarely offered up nowadays, however it may have been in olden times. I could not look at her dejected face and gloomy expression without a keen sense of self-reproach. ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... his needs as a fugitive—she had meant to repair his underwear, but had postponed doing so, and her neglect now appeared to be a detail as lamentable as the calamity itself. She could neither be stilled upon it, nor herself exhaust its urgings to self-reproach, though she finally took up another theme temporarily. Upon an unusually violent outbreak of her husband's, in denunciation of the runaway, she cried out faintly that he was cruel; and further wearied her broken voice with details of Walter's ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... vexation, and wish I could knock my foolish head against the wall, that bodily pain might make me feel less anguish from self-reproach! To say the truth, I was never more displeased with myself, and I will tell you the cause. You may recollect that I did not mention to you the circumstance of —— having a fortune left to him; nor did a hint of it drop from me when ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... enough," cried the old man in a tone of self-reproach, "fancy forgetting Christmas—even in one's dreams! Everything seems ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 24, 1892 • Various
... instant her eyes were softened with a tender look of self-reproach. His heart warmed at the sight, but before he could convince himself that it was not a creation of his own fancy, it had passed, and once more she was holding him at bay ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... might have saved himself a deal of self-reproach, and likewise Eleseus with his plans and intentions, that he might have kept in moderation. And more than all, the village would have done well to be less confident, instead of going about smiling and rubbing its hands like angels sure of being blessed—no call for them to do so if they had but known. ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... found himself alone after his wife had undertaken to fulfil his abandoned filial duty at her parents' house, he felt a slight twinge of self-reproach. He could not deny that this was not the first time he had evaded the sterile Sabbath evenings at his mother-in-law's, or that even at other times he was not in accord with the cold and colorless sanctity of the family. ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... Finally, he went over to the table, and wrote a passionate letter to the girl he had loved, imploring her forgiveness, and accusing himself of madness. He covered page after page with wild words of sorrow, and wilder words of pain. There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution. When Dorian had finished the letter, he felt that he had ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... rich, and by refusing your hand do all in my power to prevent your being otherwise. In making me the offer, you must have satisfied the delicacy of your feelings with regard to my family, and may take possession of Longbourn estate whenever it falls, without any self-reproach. This matter may be considered, therefore, as finally settled." And rising as she thus spoke, she would have quitted the room had not ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... on, and Tom Drift advanced inch by inch nearer the brink. He slipped, not without many an effort to recover himself, many a pang of self-reproach, many a ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... me," sighed Kittie in great self-reproach. "And when you were so kind as to change, too. We'll go right back to the dishes, Bea, and not disgrace your work any more, and I'll go right to work and clean this room decent, so that everything will shine until you can see ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... lay heavy on the land. Harlotry and atheism sat in the high places; and the "caresses of wantons and the jests of buffoons regulated the measures of a government which had just ability enough to deceive, just religion enough to persecute." But, while Milton mourned over this disastrous change, no self-reproach mingled with his sorrow. To the last he had striven against the oppressor; and when confined to his narrow alley, a prisoner in his own mean dwelling, like another Prometheus on his rock, he still turned upon him an eye of unsubdued defiance. Who, that has read his powerful ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Miss Lou's white shoulder was bare, and upon it was the long red mark of the whip. Aun' Jinkey was bathing the bruise with some lotion. "My poor child!" said the lady, "Madison is almost beside himself with grief and self-reproach." ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... no longer, but, full of shame and self-reproach for that which he could not help, he stepped softly into the room, and then stood still, staring hard at the bed, and at a blood-stained handkerchief lying where it had been thrown ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... and then, as Soeur Lucie turned to leave the room, she felt a sudden pang of self-reproach. She was deceiving the good-humoured, simple little sister, who had been kind to her after her own fashion; and she was going away, and would never see her any more. She thought she would like to have one more kind word from her, as she could not ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... Vernon's money, and spending it, he pronounces in his autobiography, to have been the first great error of his life. Though it so chanced that the money was not required until Franklin was able to pay it, yet for several months he was in the endurance of intense mental anxiety and constant self-reproach. ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... good, a sense of the beautiful always awakens within us; and this became manifest in Mary Fuller. For the first time the squalid misery of her home became a subject of self-reproach, and with a thoughtful cloud upon her brow, she set herself patiently to work drawing out all the scant elements of comfort that the place afforded. Out of this grew a longing for the presence of her father, that he too might enjoy the benefit of ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... sure to be thrown into that view of the case which upheld the dignity of human nature. Participating most cordially in these feelings of reverence for Mr. Ricardo's political character, I had besides a sorrow not unmixed with self-reproach arising out of some considerations more immediately relating to myself. In August and September 1821 I wrote The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater: and in the course of this little work I took occasion to express my obligations, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... harden my heart no more at that time; for, in verity, there doth be a strange half-pain in the bosom, if that you have to flog a maid that doth be utter thine, and this to the despite that there hath been—as then—no properness of anger to have for an after self-reproach. ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... Then came self-reproach. He remembered with hot cheeks that he had actually joked with Ellery about her in early days, and let himself be bantered in return—cad that he was, incapable of appreciating at first sight the woman he was to love. He had ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... each other's embrace. Lucy, with the maternal tenderness that should have been Eleanor's, pressed her lips on the hot brow that lay upon her breast, murmuring words of promise, of consolation, of self-reproach, feeling her whole being passing out to Eleanor's in a great tide of passionate ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... stood at one end of the room now and gazed at them, he realized with a little pang of self-reproach that his latest exploit had been prompted by as much of a desire to set himself right with the company as to square the padrone's ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... made you restless,' said Psmith, in a voice of self-reproach, when he had settled himself once more by the manager's side. 'I am sorry. I will not pursue the subject. Indeed, I believe that my fears are unnecessary. Statistics show, I understand, that large numbers of men emerge in safety every year from Turkish Baths. There was ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... interested in watching the progress of the struggle than in guarding Brunow, and Brunow was watching the struggle too, but not in the least with any look of amazement, but only with one which I could not for the life of me help construing into fear and shame and self-reproach. It was like a scene beheld by lightning, divided and apart from everything else, ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... done it..." and a dozen scarcely definable differences in his look and manner seemed all at once to be summed up in the boyish act. "After all, I'm engaged to him," she reflected, and then smiled at the absurdity of the word. The next instant, with a pang of self-reproach, she remembered Sophy Viner's cry: "I knew all the while he didn't care..." "Poor thing, oh poor ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... assured the parson that your husband's noble conduct had softened your obdurate nature; and then, thinking I had produced the right impression, I came boldly to close quarters with him. I said, 'At the very time when you met us, sir, my unhappy friend was speaking in terms of touching, self-reproach of her conduct to the late Mrs. Armadale. She confided to me her anxiety to make some atonement, if possible, to Mrs. Armadale's son; and it is at her entreaty (for she cannot prevail on herself to face you) that I now beg to inquire whether Mr. Armadale is still in Somersetshire, and whether ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... father, but I can no longer soothe Oliver. That is my saddest thought. It makes me wish, sometimes, that he would find another loving heart on which he could lean without any self-reproach. I should soon learn to bear it. It would so assure his future and rid me of the fear that he may fail to hold the place he has won by such hard work ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... allay his self-reproach was the thought that Marthy and Randy would have to pass the night alone. In spite of their bickerings, when night came Marthy was wont to dismiss her fears of the country, and rest her head upon Sam's strong arm with a sigh of peaceful ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... only explain this by one of those fits of exceeding bashfulness that sometimes overtake supersensitive natures. School- girls just budding into womanhood often behave in a similar manner; and they are no more to be censured for it than Hawthorne,—to whom it may have caused moments of poignant self-reproach in his daily reflections. But Doctor Howe was the man of all men whom Hawthorne ought to have known, and half an hour's conversation might have made them ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... Mrs. Conover, who had been shuffling her cards around in ill-suppressed excitement, popped out a trump with a cry of triumph just as Henry's Ace of Spades covered the king. A dreadful scene followed. The Dean was all gallantry, Mrs. Conover all self-reproach, Mrs. Robert Lee-Satterlee all charm, and Henry all exasperation; and when, later in the same hand, his mind torn with the memory of his lost ace, he made a revoke and was quietly brought to account by the Dean, Nancy ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... the solution of the problem—appeared, as we have seen, to have made up her mind on the subject. And probably her daughter had been enough influenced by the stranger's manner and appearance, even in the short period of the interview we have just described, to get rid of a feeling she had of self-reproach for her own rashness. We don't understand girls, but we ask this question of those who do: Is it possible that Miss Sally was impressed by the splendid arm with the name tattooed on it—an arm in which every muscle told as ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... in very different case. Neither Aline nor any of hers have been concerned in counter-revolutionary work, which is the true source of the calamity that now threatens to overtake us. I can procure her removal from Paris without self-reproach, convinced that I am doing nothing that any one could censure, or that might become the subject of enquiries. But Mme. de Plougastel is the wife of M. le Comte de Plougastel, whom all the world knows to be an agent between the Court ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... and instantly he will tell all, and can never more leave thy side." Lohengrin saw Frederick had got the ear of Elsa, and in a terrible voice told him to go, and chided Elsa gently for listening to such a man. As he spoke she sank at his feet, full of self-reproach. ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... death he had deplored, was still alive, and no other than the renowned Colonel Evellin, whose address in forwarding to him the supplies procured from Holland, and whose brave exploits with the Northern army, had endeared his name to him, even while he deemed him a stranger, excited wonder, grief, self-reproach, and admiration. He readily promised Dr. Beaumont that no solicitations should ever induce him to bestow confidence on a man whose crimes marked him out as an outcast from society; and, with the most ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... entered into his wife's feelings of torture and self-reproach, but he pointed to the dead boy, whose face above the white shirt looked peculiarly refined, almost perfect, young and smooth and quite peaceful, and then drew her more closely towards him with the other hand. "Don't cry. You were the one ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... it, the Baron's brow became shadowed with self-reproach as he heard those simple words, and his eyes had a look of ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... Miss Frean's lecture Tory had suffered an occasional moment of self-reproach. However, only within the past twenty-four hours had she talked over the situation frankly and openly with ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... Natasha too, with her quick instinct, had instantly noticed her brother's condition. But, though she noticed it, she was herself in such high spirits at that moment, so far from sorrow, sadness, or self-reproach, that she purposely deceived herself as young people often do. "No, I am too happy now to spoil my enjoyment by sympathy with anyone's sorrow," she felt, and she said to herself: "No, I must be mistaken, he must be feeling happy, just as ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... the commonplace man the uncommonplace is for ever unintelligible. What was the good of all that excitement—that agony of self-reproach for little things? None at all, if the object is only to be an ordinary good sort of man—if a decent fulfilment of the round of common duties is the be-all and the end-all of human ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... of Mr. Seward that war should be declared against France and Spain as a means of quieting domestic difficulties which were even then represented by contending armies; with what calmness of mind he laid aside Mr. Greeley's letter of despair and self-reproach of July 29, 1861, and proceeded with the preparation of his programme of military operations from every base line of the armies of the Republic; with what skill and statesmanlike foresight he corrected Mr. Seward's letter to Mr. Adams ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... from all blame. He sayeth unto himself, "What others do, I have done. If, notwithstanding this, I meet with failure, no blame can attach to me." Thinking so, he containeth himself and never indulgeth in self-reproach. O Bharata, no one should despair saying, "Oh, I am acting, yet success is not mine!" For there are two other causes, besides exertion, towards success. Whether there be success or failure, there should be no despair, for success in acts dependeth upon the union of many circumstances. If ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... of distress to her. She would have preferred to believe the letter, for such a belief would have rid her of the sting of self-reproach; but, try as she might, she could not wholly get her ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder |
