"Guilty conscience" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Marmaduke returned. He looked pale and weary. But more champagne, and this time something to eat with it, seemed to set him to rights again—no doubt by relieving him from the reproaches of a guilty conscience. ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... hesitation, Natalie darted back to her own door, just in time to escape Richard Turlington descending the cabin stairs. All he did was to go to one of the drawers under the main-cabin book-case and to take out a map, ascending again immediately to the deck. Natalie's guilty conscience rushed instantly, nevertheless, to the conclusion that Richard suspected her. When she showed herself for the second time, instead of venturing into the cabin, she called across it in ...
— Miss or Mrs.? • Wilkie Collins
... conditions, during times of peace, the trip she was taking would have been a delightful outing. Just now things were different. Small garrisons of American soldiers had crowded forward and were occupying the largest cities along her route. As yet she had not gotten beyond them. "A guilty conscience needs no accuser"; everywhere that she went she imagined herself ...
— The Woman with a Stone Heart - A Romance of the Philippine War • Oscar William Coursey
... utmost thankfulness on poor Lehrs' account, and we looked on the incident almost as a miracle. We could not help assuming, however, that M. Villemain had been influenced by Didot, who had been prompted by his own guilty conscience for his despicable exploitation of Lehrs, and by the prospect of thus relieving himself of the responsibility of helping him. At the same time, from similar cases within our knowledge, which were fully confirmed ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... Physiognomy is a subtle science, and the exceptions to its rules are often of a sensational character. In the same way Kerry looked for evasion, and, where possible, flight, on the part of one possessing a guilty conscience. Mollie Gretna was a phenomenal exception to a rule otherwise sound. And even one familiar with criminal psychology might be forgiven for failing to detect guilt in a woman anxious to make the acquaintance of a prominent member of the Criminal ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... of silence the noise burst out again. Still listening attentively, he made out, in course of time, that the jail was besieged by a furious multitude. His guilty conscience instantly arrayed these men against himself, and brought the fear upon him that he would be singled out, and torn ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... Pain, fright and a guilty conscience were blended in Shirley's scream. Rosemary came rushing down, followed by Aunt Trudy who added her cries to the child's when she saw her doubled up on the floor, rocking back and forth and ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... waste of the human frame. It is a fuel easily combustible in the visceral grate of the stomach. The mutton-eater is eupeptic. His dreams are airy and lightsome. Somnus descends smiling to his nocturnal pillow, and not clad in the portentous panoply of indigestion, which rivals a guilty conscience in its night visions. The mutton department of Quincy Market is all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... feeling the mother of Constance found to prevail wherever she went, and she never attributed the coolness of fashionable acquaintances, nor the gradual falling away of more intimate friends, to any other than the right cause. How could she? In her case the adage was true to the letter—"A guilty conscience needs no accusation." ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... with two or three lackeys. Yakob did nothing but wait at table, where he idly flicked away the flies, and as idly changed the plates. He was almost too idle to speak, and when the visitors addressed him he answered in a tone indicating excessive boredom or a guilty conscience. Because he was quiet, never seriously drunk, and did not smoke, his master had made him butler; he was also very zealous ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... that way, saw his cousin's face lighted up as if in glee: and he even heard him chuckle. Perhaps Percy may have caught the same sound, for he turned his head after dropping down into his seat, and scowled darkly at Andy. There is nothing like a guilty conscience to bring about a self-betrayal; and somehow Percy seemed to know what the Bird boy was ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... But you always give me a guilty conscience, when you're like this. I think of the things I might have done and haven't; and I think of the things I have said and done, which I ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... also intelligent. He understood perfectly well what I wanted when I spoke to him; that is, he had a guilty conscience when in mischief that translated my tone to him. Also he recognized instantly a bird out of place, as, for instance, one on the floor which usually frequented the perches and higher parts of the room; and having taken upon himself the office of regulator, ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... eagerness to return to the sailor's wild, roving life have its root in the tortures of a guilty conscience? ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... but it's wrong, like most other things they say. It's the man with the guilty conscience who looks you straight in the eye. Now that the buttonwood is chopped down, what's the next thing ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... desperate methods was ample proof of his apprehension of danger. If Percival Coolidge had committed suicide, this fellow would surely have nothing to fear; he could safely ignore any efforts to trap him; indeed would possess no suspicions along that line. It was his own guilty conscience which drove him to desperation. Coolidge had been murdered, and this man was either guilty of the crime, or else knew the one who was, and had personal reasons ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... fears are aroused, and in his vain efforts to quiet them he is about to go through a most severe ordeal of fasting and acute physical suffering. How terrible is sin! How dreadful must be the goadings of the guilty conscience when men and women will so punish themselves, if ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... vacant stare? Does he know his son is by? Guilty conscience who can bear? Hope shut out or blank Despair, When ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... she says, in an awestruck tone. "She has just come out of that room. She is, I know,"—a guilty conscience making a coward of her,—"looking for me. She may ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... matter well Ere my consent was given! Avoided then the gates of hell And urged my way to heaven! Lord, give me strength now to resume My former confidence; Remove my terrors, bid me come With hopeful penitence. In mercy hear my humble cry, Redeem my soul from sin, My guilty conscience pacify And ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... help thinking that we are worrying ourselves about nothing, Pete," replied Nic. "It's a case of the guilty conscience needing no accuser." ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... much composure as her guilty conscience would allow her to assume; "she read an account of the death of a—a friend, ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... our faces, sided with our consciences, and convinced us we had much better have either staid at home or prepared ourselves with a permit and good warm wrappings. It all comes back to me so plainly that I can almost feel the pinchings of the cold and the torment of a guilty conscience as I write, and I feel a real pity for these two little children as they trudge along over the prairie, so troubled and so cold. My dear brother being older than I, and the chief party interested, generously ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... electron to take the place of the one it lost it will welcome it. That is, the sodium ion will want to go toward places where there are extra electrons. In the same way the chlorine ion will go toward places where electrons are wanted as if it could satisfy its guilty conscience by giving up the electron which it stole from the sodium atom, or at least by giving away some other electron, for ...
— Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son • John Mills
... conspire together (being out of several families, and as they affirm, no way related one to the other, and scarce of familiar acquaintance) to do an act of this nature whereby no benefit or advantage could redound to any of the parties, but a guilty conscience for perjuring themselves in taking the lives of two poor simple women away, and there appears no malice in the case. For the prisoners themselves did scarce so much as object it. Wherefore, said they, it is very evident that the parties were bewitched, and that when ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... circumstances were very good, my husband loving, to the greatest degree, my servants respectful; and, in short, I lived the happiest life woman could enjoy, had my former crimes never crept into my guilty conscience. ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... of a fool, but out I went as eagerly as if there had been some hope. Miss Cullen began to tease me over my sudden access of energy, declaring that she was sure it was a pose for their benefit, or else due to a guilty conscience over having ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... Where there's a won't there's a way. Nonsense makes the heart grow fonder. A word to the wise is a dangerous thing. A living gale is better than a dead calm. A fool and his money corrupt good manners. A word in the hand is worth two in the ear. A man is known by the love-letters he keeps. A guilty conscience is the mother of invention. Whosoever thy hands find to do, do with thy might. It's a wise child who knows less than his own father. Never put off till to-morrow what you can wear to-night. He who loves and runs away, may live ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... do not deny that the agonies and terrors of death are sometimes a punishment for sin: this is the case in regard to all those who actually commit sin, and sink into the grave amid the horrors of a guilty conscience. But the question is, Do suffering and death never fall upon the innocent under the administration of God? We affirm that they do; and also that they may fall upon the innocent, in perfect accordance with the ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... from one side to another. About the same time four or five of the lower stairs gave way from rottenness, so that it needed no little agility to reach the bedrooms. The old man had to come and mend his house, and because he had a guilty conscience he brought a basket of figs with him; but, instead of owning that the wood was rotten, he insinuated that it had been maliciously ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... been carried back home, she discovered that she had changed since she went away. Aunt Hitty no longer seemed infallible. Indeed, Araminta had admitted to herself, though with the pangs of a guilty conscience, that it was possible for Aunt Hitty to be mistaken. It was probable that the entire knowledge of the world was not concentrated ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... at their actions, and then, as the ridiculousness of the situation presented itself, I smiled. "A guilty conscience needeth no accuser," it is said, and this truth was ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer
... Cowed by his guilty conscience, the gentleman followed the advice of his servant, and taking him alone with him, repaired to a Bishop (4) whose office it was to have the city gates opened, and to give orders ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... would talk whilst you wuz dyin', anyway; you can't keep folks from talkin'." Sez I, "Like as not they'd say it wuz a guilty conscience that made you droop round ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... considered that peradventure some have so headlong and untoward a disposition, that poverty would rather make him worse; whose disease is cured by Providence, with giving him store of money. Another, knowing his own guilty conscience, and comparing his character with his own estate, is afraid lest the loss of that should be grievous unto him, the use of which is pleasant. Wherefore he resolveth to change his customs, and whiles he ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... Nevertheless, coupled with the gratification was a slight feeling of uneasiness. Nevada—well, Nevada was such a long and safe way off; whereas Boston was so very and dangerously near. To a person with a guilty conscience, one with a secret to conceal, the advantages of Nevada as a residence for a possibly inquisitive relative were obvious. And was Thomas writing merely to impart the news of his employer's return? Or were ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the stirring of a guilty conscience when you asked me whether I should like to be made fun of? I took it for granted you'd been ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... that Arthur Morton, her brother, was talking of horse-whipping him. In what particular respect the doctor had behaved badly was unknown—some surmised one thing and some another; but it was observed, and taken as the obvious sign of a guilty conscience, that he would go for miles round rather than pass the windows of Leigh Hall, and that he gave up attending morning service upon Sundays where he might have met the young lady. There was an advertisement also in the Lancet as ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... said at last, "there may be nothing in it. It may be only his guilty conscience. Knowing himself to be a traitor, he may have read the accusation in the ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sound of movement. The keepers were going down the hill again. To Barrett's guilty conscience it seemed that they were coming up. He turned ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... intimated to Henry in any fashion that she knew of his return to the shop. She was, if anything, kinder and gentler with him than she had been before, but whenever he attempted, being led thereto by a guilty conscience, to undeceive her, Sylvia lightly but decidedly waved the revelation aside. She ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... ballads, the yearning or remorse of the living draw the dead from their graves. In the tale of The Cruel Mother, we seem to see the workings of the guilty conscience, which at length 'visualised' the victims of unnatural murder. The bride goes alone to the bonnie greenwood, to bear and to ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... the whole female peerage of Willis's time in a shudder; and the melancholy marchioness, and the abandoned countess, and the heart-stricken baroness trembling as each gets the volume, and asks of her guilty conscience, "Gracious goodness, is the monster going to show ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... in a low and humble tone; and guilty conscience brought the deep colour, wave after wave of crimson, into ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... which Jonah had gone up to curse the wickedness of Nineveh? As he had spoken he had been aware that those sincere, somewhat matter—of-fact and far from unfriendly eyes that were fixed on him had undergone no change whatever. Here was no vile creature who would start up with a guilty conscience to repel the remotest hint of an accusation; and indeed, quite unconsciously to himself, he had been led on to ask for her help. Not that he feared her. Not that he could not have said the harshest things to her which there was any reason ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... of a guilty conscience once or twice before at Draven's, but never knew it to work in quite so strange a manner as it did with ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... between Luis Enius and the Skeleton, says a recent writer, "is a scene truly Calderonic — the hour, the place, the intended assassin, and the sudden reflection of himself, with his guilty conscience impersonate before him; it reminds us of that wild fable of Jeremy Taylor or Fuller, about the bird with a human face, that feeds on human flesh until it chances to see its reflection in a stream, and then it pines away for grief ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... anything now. If this big fat slob is going to claim half my mine, you can law us—he'll have to pay the bills. Now git, you old dastard, and if you horn in here again I'll show you where you head out!" He waved him away, and Dusty Rhodes slunk off, for a guilty conscience makes cowards of us all; but Judson Eells stood solid as adamant, though his lawyer was whispering ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... wall of his bedroom and gazes with horror at an enormous index-finger which, with the hand to which it is attached, has crawled across the floor as would a devilfish, or some such sort of monster. The finger threateningly points to the unhappy person. Unquestionably it symbolises a guilty conscience. Franz von Stuck has left his impression on Kubin. He portrays mounds of corpses, the fruit of war, which revolt the spectator, both on account of the folly and crime suggested and the morbid taste of ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... dismissed subject Quade returned, with the persistence of a guilty conscience. "Say," he said, "while we're talking about it, you don't happen to believe what ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... shine; but I suppose it for argument sake, with Mr. Badmans friends; I say, suppose there be an Hell, and that too, such an one as the Scripture speaks of, one at the remotest distance from God and Life eternall, one where the Worm of a guilty Conscience never dyes, and where the fire of the Wrath of God ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... shilling that I was! Of what use were my silver, my stamp, and my real value here, where all these qualities were worthless. In the eyes of the world, a man is valued just according to the opinion formed of him. It must be a shocking thing to have a guilty conscience, and to be sneaking about on account of wicked deeds. As for me, innocent as I was, I could not help shuddering before their eyes whenever they brought me out, for I knew I should be thrown back again up the table as a false ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... struck straight home at the Honorable Freddie's guilty conscience. Had they, too, tracked him down? And was he now to be accused of having stolen that infernal scarab? A wave of relief swept over him as he realized that he had got rid of the thing. A decent chappie like that detective ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... begun to slant westward toward the mid-afternoon Jean Isbel had set as a meeting time Ellen directed her steps through the forest to the Rim. She felt ashamed of her eagerness. She had a guilty conscience that no strange thrills could silence. It would be fun to see him, to watch him, to let him wait for her, ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... truth of this scandalous story will be told, and the historian will then pronounce a judgment which will leave an indelible stain on the reputation of some who with a guilty conscience now sun themselves in the prosperity of public approval. Their children will not read that judgment without ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... winter's fire, listened to tales of ghosts—of the unceasing sting of a guilty conscience; often had she shuddered at the recital of murders; often had she wept over the story of the innocent put to death, and stood aghast that the human mind could premeditate ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... did not annoy me. I found no desire arising in me to deny them and doubtless, though mayhap with a guilty conscience, I should have ditched the undertaking, consigned it to that heap of undone duties, where already lie notes on a comparison of Andalusian mules with the mules of Liane de Pougy, a few scribbled memoranda for a treatise ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... nerves," said Judith. "Is it a guilty conscience?" She laughed. "You are hiding something from me. I've been aware ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... anything, and yet it skulks and hides like a fugitive from justice. One never sees it flying aloft in the air and traversing the world openly, like most birds, but it darts along fences and through bushes as if pursued by a guilty conscience. Only when the musical fit is upon it does it come up into full view, and invite the ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... board two Turkish soldiers of the garrison, who had formerly been instruments of Abdal Rahman[363] aga, to bind and torture our men whom they had betrayed. On seeing our men, whom they had used so ill, they were in great doubt what usage they might now receive, as their guilty conscience told them they merited no good treatment at our hands. They brought some fruit to sell, and, I suppose, came as spies to see what we were doing. At the first sight of our men, whom they knew, they would fain have put off their boat again, but ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... Assistant had been aroused at the beginning, and he determined to ascertain how far Philip's knowledge of his conduct extended, for his guilty conscience whispered that some discovery of the soldier occasioned the changed behavior. It might be caused only by suspicion, and if so, he trusted by his ingenuity to dispel it; but if he had been betrayed, it was important that he should know it. The Assistant, moreover, was curious ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... a guilty conscience," was the reply. "Our men, as true soldiers, know but one enemy ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... arms upraised to warn him back. The naturalist, the explorer, or the shipwrecked seaman would have found nothing frightful in this exhibition of the harmless life of the Australian ocean. But the convict's guilty conscience, long suppressed and derided, asserted itself in this hour when it was alone with Nature and Night. The bitter intellectual power which had so long supported him succumbed beneath imagination—the unconscious ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... McKay, but Ledantec, misled by a guilty conscience, was thinking of Lord Lydstone, and his mysteriously ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... behaviour, I knew him and distrusted him enough not to think much of it. He was a coward, cursed with a guilty conscience, and would fain have passed himself off as a righteous judge and powerful patron. He was anxious to conciliate me, not so much, I thought, because of my hint about the property, which he was satisfied ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... guilty conscience, and the heart that ticks the time Of the clockworks of my nature, I desire to say that I'm A weak and sinful creature, as regards my daily walk The last five years and better. It ain't worth while ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... understand it, Laura. He is mad—mad with the terrors of a guilty conscience. Every word you have said makes me positively certain that when Anne Catherick left you yesterday you were on the eve of discovering a secret which might have been your vile husband's ruin, and he thinks you HAVE ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... was a tone that cowed the chairman, struggling with his guilty conscience. "I have warned you that I'm not here to argue this matter with you. I'll not be drawn into any discussion. What I have, I have!" He waved his papers above his head. "What I can do that I'll do! I would remind you, gentlemen, that ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... He had a guilty conscience; he knew what was coming. She meant to ask him if he intended offering Black Beauty to Miss Vincent, and, of course, he made up ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... soon," suggested Helen Adeline, the suspicion of a guilty conscience lurking in the remark. "She can have her bread and milk like she always does—that's simple 'nuff. But do you think she ought to sleep ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... man," said Peter; "like the dreams of Bunyan, they are founded on three tremendous facts, Sin, Death, and Hell; and like his they have done incalculable good, at least in my own country, in the language in which they are written. Many a guilty conscience has the Bardd Cwsg aroused with its dreadful sights, its strong sighs, its puffs of smoke from the pit, and its showers of sparks from the mouth of the yet lower gulf of [the deep] Unknown. Were it not for the Bardd Cwsg perhaps I ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... her ladyship's distemper I had not lighted on the thought of Constance Pleyel. I was not so much amazed at it that the name alone could have bowled me over in that way; but Lady Rollinson's idea was that it had gone home instantly to a guilty conscience. ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... resolution was introduced that a commission be appointed to investigate the charges preferred against the Camden and Amboy Transportation Company. The resolution was adopted, but it was virtually left to the accused to select the members of the commission. That the directors had a guilty conscience appeared from the fact that the last annual report of the company, which had just been printed, was withdrawn and destroyed. To silence their unknown accuser, they threatened him with criminal prosecution. He now gave ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... further into the church, nor does it appear that the hermit desired it; and he could not withdraw his head lest the fiends should seize him. He had to stay and listen to the good man's prayers and liturgies, which only added to the terrors of his guilty conscience, so that his remorseful screams were heard above all the psalms and prayings. The hermit found it a great affliction, for the population of the district was kept away by the unpleasantness of Tregeagle's presence. At last two other clergy came to his assistance, and Tregeagle was ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... confession of novel-reading there is a sort of inference that he had wasted his time, or else the guilty conscience of the novelist in me imagines such an inference. But however this may be, there is certainly no question concerning the intention of a correspondent who once wrote to me after reading some rather bragging claims I had made for fiction as a mental ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... lightning it flashed upon his mind that that accusation had perhaps been formulated again, and this time officially before the council. And if Say were innocent, as he still believed, why did she inquire about him who was the originator of it? He did not attribute her query to a guilty conscience, for the Indian has but a very dim notion about human conscience, if he thinks of it at all. He would have gone further and have seen in the utterance of his wife the evidence of some positive knowledge. Did Say know anything about the real object of the stormy ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... If the party examined be Unconstant, or contrary to himself, in his deliberate Answers, it argueth a Guilty Conscience, which stops the freedom of Utterance. And yet there are causes of Astonishment, which may befal the Good, as ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... not be very easy for me to give you any idea of the pleasure I found in your present. People who write for the magazines (probably from a guilty conscience) are apt to suppose their works practically unpublished. It seems unlikely that any one would take the trouble to read a little paper buried among so many others; and reading it, read it with any attention or pleasure. And so, I can assure you, your little book, coming ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... time Gryson said nothing. When he spoke it was evident that the lust for vengeance and a guilty conscience were fighting an ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... the cellar storage cages, after a passing youth hinted to him that there had been a robbery. He found one cage open and a suitcase missing. Police theorize that the youth may have been the burglar, or an accomplice with a guilty conscience or a grudge, and they are hunting him for questioning. Mr. Snood described him as about sixteen years of age, medium height, with a long 'ducktail' haircut, and wearing a heavy black sweater. They are also checking second-hand stores for ...
— It's like this, cat • Emily Neville
... where these sweets are sought Some bitter bubbles up, and poisons all the draught. First guilty conscience does the mirror bring, Then sharp remorse shoots out the angry sting, And anxious thoughts, within themselves at strife, Upbraid ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... her guilty conscience pricked her. Oh, I am sure of it, Mr. Denzil! My stepmother and ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... "It is a guilty conscience," he said. "I ought not to come back and dine with you to-night. I ought to put you into a cab and myself into another, go home for my bag and take the night-express to Paris. The House only rises for ten days and I have to be in my place on the ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... me?—what good am I for life? Then why live? A guilty conscience only means a living death. You have been very good to me—both you and your wife. But I am going to end it all. Let me confess. It will bring me some small comfort even now in the dying hour I have given to myself. You remember poor Huntingdon? I shot that man—murdered ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the pangs of a guilty conscience will not suffer him to sleep; and death only will end his ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... comment upon the fact that no client, male or female, consults a lawyer with regard to what he ought to do. Women, often having decided to do that which they ought not to do, attempt to secure counsel's approval of the contemplated sin; but while a lawyer is sometimes called upon to bolster up a guilty conscience, rarely is he sincerely invited to act as spiritual adviser. Most men being worse than their lawyers, prefer not to have the latter find them out. If they have made up their minds to do a mean thing they do not wish to run the ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... him, and she had been furtively watching him during his examination of the bag. There were two very bright spots upon her cheeks, which might have been caused by her morning drive to the post-office; or they might have been produced by a guilty conscience and anxiety regarding ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... meaning of this, which is Jannelli's version, seems to be: "When you ought not to please yourself, you do please yourself, in committing the crime; but the consequence is that, afterwards, when you ought to feel pleased, in that you have gratified your desires, you cannot, in consequence of your guilty conscience." It is so mutilated, however, that Cassitti, Jannelli, and other ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... our arrival had been the easily discernible presence in our midst of the brass buttons of Corporal Gamarra. Possibly he who had selected this remote corner of the wilderness for his abode had a guilty conscience and at the sight of a gendarme decided that he had better hide at once. More probably, however, he feared the visit of a recruiting party, since it is quite likely that he had not served his legal ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... the situation so exactly that they were frequently in her thoughts, and Hilary, to her intense gratification, heard her murmur them to herself one day when she thought herself alone. The quotation was one copied into the note book under the heading, "A Guilty Conscience Speaks." ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... to lift her eyes to the kingly figure before her, and meeting the pained, dark eyes bent on her, and realising that there was nothing, indeed, to make her fear but her own guilty conscience, she burst suddenly into an uncontrollable passion of weeping, and slipping from the couch fell ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... fourteenth satires deal with more abstract themes, the pangs of the guilty conscience and the importance of parental example. In the first, Juvenal consoles his friend, Calvinus, who has been defrauded of a sum of money. The loss, he says, is small, and, after all, honesty is rare nowadays. Men have so little care for the gods ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... if she could. I wouldn't be a mite afraid to sleep in that room; I'd rather have it than the one I've got. If I was afraid to sleep in a room where a good woman died, I wouldn't tell of it. If I saw things or heard things I'd think the fault must be with my own guilty conscience." Then she turned to Miss Stark. "Any time you feel timid in that room I'm ready and willing to change ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... presented before you the form of that injured friend, which, if your heart is not yet callous to every impression, must be more blasting to your sight, than all the chimeras that can be conjured up by a terrified imagination, or a guilty conscience. I no sooner received the accursed intelligence at Zamora, than I flew with the speed of lightning. I permitted no consideration upon earth to delay me till I arrived at Alicant. But the sea was ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... swear to you by all that is sacred to me, that it is the first and only time that I have deceived you. And never will I venture to do it again, for it is a dismal and awful feeling to stand before you with a guilty conscience." ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... the boxes on the pack-horse, take therefrom a piece of bread, deliberately grease the same with butter, and then holding it forth, more in sorrow than in anger, invite Brusa to refresh himself after his fatiguing chase of the sheep. The struggle between a guilty conscience and a sharp appetite would now become painfully perceptible on the countenance of Brusa as well as in the relaxation of his tail. As he approached the tempting morsel nothing could be more abject than his manner—stealing furtive glances at the eyes of his master, and trying to conciliate him ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... better than nothing. Freedom from her father's heavy yoke, freedom to work, and read, and sing, and study, and grow,—oh! how she longed for this, but at what a cost would she gain it if she had to harbor the guilty conscience of an undutiful and rebellious daughter, and at the same time cut herself off from the sight of the one being she loved best ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... have a guilty conscience in connection with a piece of mischief, and he was delighted to have an opportunity to call attention ...
— Four Little Blossoms and Their Winter Fun • Mabel C. Hawley
... Was it a guilty conscience, the dull slow agony of remorse, which had stricken this man down—this strong powerfully-built man, who was a stranger to illness and all physical suffering? Was the body only crushed by the burden of the mind? Gilbert ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... wonder how such saints can sing, Or praise the Lord upon the wing, Who roar, and scold, and whip, and sting, And to their slaves and mammon cling, In guilty conscience union. ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... an officer who was to procure proper trappings and a suitable mount for me, both Matai Shang and Thurid seemed most sincere in professing their pleasure at having had an opportunity to know me. It was with a sigh of relief that I quitted the chamber, convinced that nothing more than a guilty conscience had prompted my belief that either of my ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... are given therunto. | | 30. Of the naturall actions altered | by melancholie. | | 31. How melancholie altereth | Symptomes of melancholy the naturall workes of the body: | abounding in the whole body. juice and excrement. | | 32. Of the affliction of conscience | Guilty conscience for offence for sinne. | committed. | 33. Whether the afflicted conscience | be of melancholie. | | 34. The particular difference betwixt | How melancholy and despair melancholie and the afflicted | differ. conscience in the same | person. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... I leave him: let him borrow of his oath, for of his word no body will trust him. Let him by no means marry an honest woman, for the other will keep her self. Let him steal as much as he can, that a guilty conscience may bring him to his destinate repentance."—I think he means hanging. And this were his last will and Testament, the Devil stood laughing at his bed's feet while he made it. Sblood, what, doth he think to fop of ...
— The London Prodigal • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... rather die now than, like the gentleman, live to see the day that I would change my politics for an office worth three thousand dollars per year, and then feel compelled to erect a lightning rod to protect a guilty conscience from an offended God." ...
— Life of Abraham Lincoln - Little Blue Book Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 324 • John Hugh Bowers
... the accused the benefit of the doubt, he seeks to ease his guilty conscience by rapping ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... two hours, and they hoped he had come to spend the whole day with them." There, the whole truth was out. And how do you suppose that boy felt? He had disobeyed his parents; told a lie to conceal it; had for weeks suffered the pangs of a guilty conscience; and now the whole truth was discovered. He stood before his parents overwhelmed with shame, convicted of disobedience, and mean, ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... the little dumb-waiter spread for his supper and passed his hand over his face. 'Charley,' he says, 'I must have a shave first. The pangs of a guilty conscience,' he says, 'are piffle compared with the miseries of a beard. Have you ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... wondering which of the crew had taken it. His suspicion played idly over the crew, and then settled on the youth called Greer. His reason for this was that Greer said very little. Madden thought this must be the sign of a guilty conscience. ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... grew, and the more certain that nothing else in all the world could possibly taste so good. But the Old Orchard was not the place for him to work on that egg. In the first place, it was too near Farmer Brown's house. This made Blacky uneasy. You see, he had something of a guilty conscience. Not that he felt at all a sense of having done wrong. To his way of thinking, if he were smart enough to get that egg, he had just as much right to it as any one else, particularly Farmer Brown's boy. Yet he wasn't at all sure that Farmer Brown's boy would look at ...
— Blacky the Crow • Thornton W. Burgess
... suspicions of the Bashaw, for the old hoary-headed assassin saw in him, not darkly or dimly, the sword which was being drawn by avenging Heaven to cut off his family root and branch, perhaps his own head, and break up for ever his blood-cemented kingdom. These suspicions of a guilty conscience came at length to such a pitch, that the day arrived when the innocent youth was to be strangled, so snatching violently away the instrument of vengeance from the hands of inexorable justice! But, on that very day, the Bashaw received intelligence of a threatened invasion ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... delimiting the northern frontier started. The Russian, troubled doubtless by a guilty conscience, had feared to start without a strong military escort, and lack of forage made this impossible. Hence much delay. Our military attache from Rome represented England, but it was reported that France and ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... as I long for the fresh air, we are—whether to mark our own dignity, or to avoid further scrutiny on the part of our fellow-worshipers—almost the last to issue from the church. At the porch we find Mr. Musgrave waiting. A sort of mauvaise honte and a guilty conscience combine to disable me from promptly introducing him to my people, and before I recover my presence of mind, Algy has walked on with Barbara, and I am left to ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... place among them. Their minds will be in a state of perpetual calm, the contentment of a spirit that knows no wants, is disturbed by no regrets. Ambition will never torture them. Ingratitude will never cause them the uneasiness of a moment. The guilty conscience, the hope deferred, the pains of exile, the insolence of office, and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes—these will be entirely unknown to them. If they want "feeding" (by the use of which very word we betray our recognition of them ...
— Samuel Butler's Canterbury Pieces • Samuel Butler
... own nephew and ward, Jack Cockrell, in this shameful company of roisterers. The august uncle blinked, opened his mouth, and turned as red as a lobster. Indignation choked his speech. For his part, Jack stood dumfounded and quaking, the picture of a coward with a guilty conscience. He would have tried to steal from sight but it was ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... Neither business, nor pleasure, nor flattery, could defend Caracalla from the stings of a guilty conscience; and he confessed, in the anguish of a tortured mind, that his disordered fancy often beheld the angry forms of his father and his brother rising into life, to threaten and upbraid him. [25] The consciousness ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... regiment direct. And there was yet another difficulty: it was the middle of the hot weather and a great many of the British officers of the Guides, including the Commanding Officer, were away on leave; to recall them was to make the ears prick up of every person, with a guilty conscience, within a ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... did not I give glory to the redeeming blood of Jesus? Why did I not humbly cast my soul at his blessed footstool for mercy? Why did I judge of his ability to save me by the voice of my shallow reason, and the voice of a guilty conscience? Why betook not I myself to the holy Word of God? Why did I not read and pray that I might understand, since now I perceive that God said then, He giveth liberally to them that pray, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... money with large interest. And, what's more, he's coming over to England in the same ship with us; not as my servant, but paying his own passage, just for the sake of being near me. That doesn't look like a thoroughly guilty conscience." ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... from the fears of his guilty conscience, was the first to recover his power of speech. He looked at the lean, dry lawyer, and demanded fiercely if no legacy had been left to him. "Surely Pine did not forget me?" he lamented, with more ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... Pausanias no longer doubtful. They now determined to arrest him on his return to Sparta. They met him in the street near the temple of Athena Chalcioecus (of the Brazen House), when Pausanias, either alarmed by his guilty conscience, or put on his guard by a secret signal from one of the ephors, turned and fled to the temple, where he took refuge in a small chamber belonging to the building. From this sanctuary it was unlawful to drag him; but the ephors caused the doors to be built up and the roof to be removed, and ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... the person in the jumper was fully acquainted with his escapade, disapproved of it, and meant to prevent him from prolonging it. Yet as he took a peep into the kindly blue eyes which he did not trust himself to meet directly he wondered if this assumption were not created by a guilty conscience rather than by fact. Certainly there was nothing accusatory in the other's bearing. His face was frankness itself. In books criminals were always fearing that people suspected them, reflected Steve. The man knew nothing about him ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... been watching at the keyhole," he muttered to himself, for a guilty conscience needs no accuser, "and ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... live long or die young, I would rather die now than, like the gentleman, change my politics and simultaneous with the change receive an office worth three thousand dollars a year, and then have to erect a lightning-rod over my house to protect a guilty conscience from an ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... Miss Gray consenting sweetly, the Old Lady was left alone and was rather glad of it. She enjoyed her conversation with Sylvia much more in thinking it over after she got home than while it was taking place. When an Old Lady has a guilty conscience, it is apt to make her nervous and distract her thoughts from immediate pleasure. She wondered a little uneasily if Sylvia really did suspect her. Then she concluded that it was out of the question. Who would suspect a mean, unsociable Old ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... other hand, saw in the unwelcome intruder an English officer; and, troubled by his guilty conscience, he dreaded above all things what he might discover. True, the past was past, the plot spent, the Spanish ship gone. But the Colonel remained, and in durance. And if by any chance the Englishman stumbled on him, released ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... who could not sleep For Tray's loud howling, angry grew; Her guilty conscience he awoke, And now no peace ...
— My Dog Tray • Unknown
... Hitherto, for no reason whatever, all had agreed to put the blame upon Billy—possibly because he was present to receive it. As days passed that slight reticence and dejection in his manner, which they had at first attributed to remorse and a guilty conscience, now began to tell as absurdly in his favor. Here was poor Uncle Billy toiling though the ditches, while his selfish partner was lolling in the lap of luxury in San Francisco! Uncle Billy's glowing accounts of Uncle Jim's success only ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... you will," said the boy confidently. "I believe you know perfectly well what it's about. You've got a guilty conscience, Miss Helena!" ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward |
