"Sense of shame" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... triumphantly. "I should think she could see from that, if she's not as blind as an owl, I've observed her atrocious designs upon Bernard, and mean to checkmate them. If, after such a letter, she has the cheek to send us her Yankee girl to chaperon, I shall consider her lost to all sense of shame and all notions of decency. But she won't, of course. She'll withdraw her unobtrusively." And Lucy flung the peccant sheet that had roused all this wrath on to the back of ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... rushed from threat to execution; but showing the only quality, that of courage, for which she had respect, her great rival confused and disarmed her. She was only sensible, with a vivid, agonizing sense of shame, that her only cause of hatred against this woman was that he loved her. And this she would have died a thousand ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... what arose from his own sense of shame; but next day the Rector spoke to his pupils, and he particularly cautioned them against those pursuits which tend to debase the character. 'The rich,' said he, 'owe their virtues and talents to society as much as the poor man does his industry; and if the former fall into low ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... with all her ignorance and all her desires, committed to the mercy of a man who, even though he be in love, cannot know her shrinking and secret emotions, will submit to him with a certain sense of shame, and will be obedient and complaisant so long as her young imagination persuades her to expect the pleasure or the happiness of that morrow which ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... his glance, gave me a certain sense of shame, but I could not stop myself. 'One knows,' I said, 'that there are many things which an ecclesiastic may do without harm, which are not permitted to an ordinary layman—one who is an honest man, and ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant
... she gasped, turning deathly pale. He hesitated a moment, as if his words were arrested by a sense of shame. ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... Esther made no mistake of a too prodigal largess a man like Reardon was bewitched by, even if he ran from it. She stood there in sorrowful dignity and let her eyes plead for her. And Alston, though he had accomplished something for her as well as for Anne, felt only a sense of shame and the misery of falling short. He had thought he loved her (he had got so far now as to say to himself he thought so) and he loved her no more. He wished only to escape, and his wish took every shred of the hero out ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... on several occasions by a sense of shame at realising the impotence and bareness of his own mind, that he laid down an ambitious scheme of self-improvement, and attacked history with a zealous desire for his own mental reform. But he soon discovered that it was useless. ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... on these works of art was in all respects, shabbiness excepted, unlike the former personage. His whole appearance and manner denoted briskness. Though threadbare, he expressed to the crowd that poverty had not subdued his spirit, or tinged with any sense of shame this honest effort to turn his talents to some account. The writing which formed a part of his composition was conceived in a similarly cheerful tone. It breathed the following sentiments: "The writer is poor, but ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... this. One may be convinced of the justice of a sentence, but the more one is convinced of it, the more does one regret the course of conduct that made the sentence necessary. The sinner who suffers for his sin bears not only the pain of the punishment but also the sense of shame and self-condemnation. The good man who suffers for his goodness does indeed have to bear the burden of an awful mystery, a doubt whether God is indeed on the side of the righteous; but he is not ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the angular form of the teacher as she retreated to her platform. If Miss Merton had dealt her a blow on her upturned face, it could have hurt no more severely than had this unlooked-for reprimand. She was filled with a choking sense of shame that threatened to end in a burst of angry sobs. The deep blush that had risen to her face receded, leaving her very white. Those students sitting in her immediate vicinity had, of course, heard Miss Merton. She glanced quickly about to encounter two pairs of ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... homebred wit and humor freely flow and flash. There the half-forgotten legends and superstitions, the utterance of which to other ears than those of their own people is forbidden—perhaps by a slight sense of shame, perhaps by the utter failure of language,—together with the pastimes and adventures of their native villages or districts, are arrested in their rapid progress to oblivion, as they are occasionally called ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... stooped to a basket which lay near her, and, taking from it a pair of garden scissors, knelt beside Paul, and began to snip his bonds. He woke to find her thus engaged, and a virginal sweet sense of shame filled him. Her fingers touched his skin at times, and he tingled with ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... and gratified array of staid matrons and coquettish girls faced the camera, again only one young maiden of fifteen or sixteen showing any sense of shame, and she fled into her cell, only to be ruthlessly ordered ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... his master's baton; even so, but with how much more of spirit and precision, the captain footed it in time to his own whistling, and his long morning shadow capered beyond him on the grass. The Kanakas smiled on the performance; Herrick looked on heavy-eyed, hunger for the moment conquering all sense of shame; and a little farther off, but still hard by, the clerk was torn by the seven ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... her protest. He knew her generosity and courage. But a sense of shame was not lacking at the thought that the very position he had used to convince Marcel could not be allowed to stand where his ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... finish off some work, I have entered the shop with a stern determination not to drink a single drop until I completed it. I have bitterly felt that my failing was a matter of common conversation in the town, and a burning sense of shame would flush my fevered brow at the conviction that I was scorned by the respectable portion of the community. But these feelings passed away like the morning cloud or early dew, and ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... brief royal favor that she enjoyed by thirty-six years of rigid and austere penitence. Other favorites, however, pursued a path of pride, lowering their heads only under the "bludgeonings of Fate." Yet most of them, while Marie Therese lived, respected and honored her and felt a certain sense of shame in her presence. The brilliant and beautiful Madame de Montespan said, some time before her scandalous relations with the King had fairly begun, "God preserve me from being the King's mistress. If I were so I should feel ashamed to face the Queen." ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... spectator of the Show in which not the faintest shadow of Christianity according to Christ, appeared—and when the theatrical pageant was over, he hurried out into the fresh air half stupefied with the heavy sense of shame that such things could be, and no man found true enough to the commands of the Divine Master to shake the ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... the skin was half an inch thick, the pips innumerable, and the eatable portion small and poor. It is with a feeling such as that that you read over your early sermon. Still, mingling with the sense of shame, there is a certain satisfaction. You have not been standing still; you have been getting on. And we always ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... alarmed, and this very alarm hindered him from following the only prudent course he could have taken under the circumstances. He should have aroused his fellow-voyagers, and proclaimed the error into which he had fallen. He did not do so. A sense of shame at having neglected his duty, or rather at having performed it in an indifferent manner,—a species of regret not uncommon among his countrymen,—hindered him from disclosing the truth, and taking steps to avert any ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... she replied, with a quick sense of shame, taking her son's arm as they turned back. Even to turn back made the burden heavier, and dispelled the little advantage which they had got by ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... his head by Nature for last night's business at the Cote Dorion. How true it was that penalties did not always come with— indiscretions. Yet, all at once, he flushed again to the forehead, for a curious sense of shame flashed through his whole being, and one Charley Steele—the Charley Steele of this morning, an unknown, unadventuring, onlooking Charley Steele—was viewing with abashed eyes the Charley Steele who had ended a doubtful ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... rejected only to return; a surprising thought, so alluring that the sense of shame, of chivalry, could not press it back. Cutty's words began to flow into one ear and out of the other, without sense. There was in his heart—put there by the recollection of the jewels—an indescribable bitterness, ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... away to the window again, not angrily, but smoothing down the folds of her bright print dress as if she were wiping her hands of her husband and his guest. Something like a very material and man-like sense of shame struggled up through his crust of religion. He stammered, "You don't ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... God." Rom. 5:1. Peace is the natural result of justification. It is sin that destroys the happiness of man. Before sin entered into this world man lived in a delightful Eden. His heart was open and frank before God, and he rejoiced in his presence. Sin brought a sense of shame and guilt, and he hid from the presence of God. All men admire the innocency of childhood. The peaceful countenance of an infant, its freedom from care, anxieties and unrest but remind us ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... fact, mad. Regan and Goneril are the only pictures of the unnatural in Shakspeare; the pure unnatural—and you will observe that Shakspeare has left their hideousness unsoftened or diversified by a single line of goodness or common human frailty. Whereas in Edmund, for whom passion, the sense of shame as a bastard, and ambition, offer some plausible excuses, Shakspeare has placed many redeeming traits. Edmund is what, under certain circumstances, any man of powerful intellect might be, if some other qualities and feelings were cut off. Hamlet is, inclusively, an ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... on the following afternoon, she felt like a naughty little girl who is playing truant from school. When she remembered the way that she had avoided the Superintendent's almost direct questions, she blushed with an inward sense of shame. But when she thought of the Young Doctor's offer to go with her—"wherever she was going"—she threw back her head with a defiant little gesture. She knew well that the Young Doctor was sorry ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... beset with dangers. It is often hard to avoid saying an unkind thing, a cruel thing, which is smart, and which may even be deserved. Who can say that he has escaped this temptation, and what man of heart can think of his own fall without a sense of shame? There are, I admit, authors so antipathetic to me, that I cannot trust myself to review them. Would that I had never reviewed them! They cannot be so bad as they seem to me: they must have qualities which escape my observation. Then there is the temptation ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... asked him to be considerate. His temper was slightly hasty; but he was bearing the request in mind, and controlling it, though his heightened colour and flashing eyes showed that he suffered keenly from a baffling sense of shame and impending disgrace. These feelings, however, were subsiding, and as they retired his astonishment seemed to grow, and his hand trembled when he folded up the letter for the last ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... No sense of shame deterred me from telling my mother, to whom I presented her money, the whole truth about this decisive night. I voluntarily confessed my sin in having utilised her pension, sparing no detail. She folded her hands and thanked God for His mercy, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... for some years before was almost dropped in England. But, whoever the introducers were, they have succeeded to a miracle; many of the young nobility and gentry are already become great proficients, and are under no manner of concern to hide their talent, but are got beyond all sense of shame or fear of reproach. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... these occasions I had the honor of a brief interview with the king. Madame De Campan mentions, as an amusing incident in her early life, though terrific at the time, and overwhelming to her sense of shame, that not long after her establishment at Versailles, in the service of some one amongst the daughters of Louis XV., having as yet never seen the king, she was one day suddenly introduced to his particular notice, under the following circumstances: The ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... imperial Juno, from above, Saw Dido fetter'd in the chains of love, Hot with the venom which her veins inflam'd, And by no sense of shame to be reclaim'd, With soothing words to Venus she begun: "High praises, endless honors, you have won, And mighty trophies, with your worthy son! Two gods a silly woman have undone! Nor am I ignorant, you both suspect This rising city, which my hands erect: But shall celestial ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... history of Christianity in Japan. It has, indeed, its elements of glorious and heroic martyrdom, but it has elements, also, on which few of us can look back without a deep sense of shame. Let us trust that by this time the people of Japan have come to understand that the conflict of their forefathers was not with Christianity, but rather with Christians who had forgotten "what spirit ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... persuaded herself that her fancy had tricked her. But there was nothing but the twilight of the garden all around her, and Blake's huge bulk by her side, and she promptly dismissed the illusion, not without a sense of shame. ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... own that it was not any fine sense of shame which settled my decision; for indeed there was nearly as much of danger in going back as in going on, and perhaps even more of labour, the journey being so roundabout. But that which saved me from turning back ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... not death which had deprived her of her husband, but an odious rival—an infamous and perfidious creature lost to all sense of shame. ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... and she saw Mary Fuller leaning forward and gazing after Isabel with her eyes full of tears. Instantly a change came over the rough manner of the woman—she remembered her encomiums on Isabel's beauty with a quick sense of shame, and leaning forward reached out ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... no embarrassment in the bright smile she sent him, no sense of shame in showing her friend the dear little being who had come to her out of the Infinite to be worked for and loved. Young smothered a groan but he turned obediently and went to the chair in ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... drunken hound," he screamed. "Have you no sense of shame or duty? After to-night I will give you a lesson. After to-night you shall know what it ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... length, luxury, that scourge of societies, corrupted their hearts; and divorces became so frequent, that many women reckoned their age by the number of their husbands." To this he might have added, that several Roman ladies of rank were so lost to all sense of shame, that they publicly entered their names ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... presents; that even the young architect was forced to change his lodgings by such disreputable goings-on. People wondered how Miss Joliffe and her niece had the effrontery to show themselves at church on Sundays; the younger creature, at least, must have some sense of shame left, for she never ventured to exhibit in public either the fine dresses or the jewellery that her lover ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... he wondered. They had given him no time to think. They had swooped down upon him when his brain was dulled with anguish. Virtually, they had kidnapped him. Why had they brought him here to accept charity of a women's institution? Why need they thus intensify his sense of shame at his life's failure, and, above all, at his failure to provide for Angeline? In the poorhouse he would have been only one more derelict; but here he stood alone to be stared at and pitied and thrown a sickly-satisfying crumb. ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... turned the muzzle in the direction of the now invisible entrance, my thumb on one of the hammers, ready to cock the piece, my breath suspended, my muscles rigid and tense. But later I laid down the weapon with a sense of shame and mortification. What did I fear, and why?—I, to whom the night ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... cowards all the sensations of heroes whilst they tolerate every abomination, accept every plunder, and submit to every oppression. Christianity, in making a merit of such submission, has marked only that depth in the abyss at which the very sense of shame is lost. The Christian has been like Dickens' doctor in the debtor's prison, who tells the newcomer of its ineffable peace and security: no duns; no tyrannical collectors of rates, taxes, and rent; no importunate hopes nor exacting duties; nothing but the rest ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... intended to discourage, dishearten, and drive the free colored people out of the country. In looking at the recent black law of Illinois, one is struck dumb with its enormity. It would seem that the men who enacted that law, had not only banished from their minds all sense of justice, but all sense of shame. It coolly proposes to sell the bodies and souls of the blacks to increase the intelligence and refinement of the whites; to rob every black stranger who ventures among them, to ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... laughed especially irritated him. A curious train of thought was aroused. He was Isaac Ford's son, and what had happened with Isaac Ford might happen with him. He felt in his cheeks the faint heat of a blush at the thought, and experienced a poignant sense of shame. He was appalled by what was in his blood. It was like learning suddenly that his father had been a leper and that his own blood might bear the taint of that dread disease. Isaac Ford, the austere soldier ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... come out to pick up aesthetic entertainment in Europe; it may therefore be understood that he was able to conceive that a man might be too commercial. He was very willing to grant it, but the concession, as to his own case, was not made with any very oppressive sense of shame. If he had been too commercial, he was ready to forget it, for in being so he had done no man any wrong that might not be as easily forgotten. He reflected with sober placidity that at least there were ...
— The American • Henry James
... But the sense of shame is as amenable to costume as to the lack of it, and Kedzie—the shoulder-revealer—was as much shocked by what her parents had on as they by what ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... A sense of shame that never yet My foot on that old shore was set, Though prodigal in wandering, Arose; and with a tingled cheek, Like some late wild duck on the wing, I started down the Chesapeake. The morning sunlight, silvery calm, From basking shores of woodland broke, ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... visit her. Sergius sternly declined, but was horrified by the definiteness of his desire. He was so alarmed that he wrote about it to the starets. And in addition, to keep himself in hand, he spoke to a young novice and, conquering his sense of shame, confessed his weakness to him, asking him to keep watch on him and not let him go anywhere except to service and to ...
— Father Sergius • Leo Tolstoy
... seeks to hide her weakness but that only means that she's ambitious and has a sense of shame. Only whores are honest, and ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... twenty serious surgical cases out of doors in pitch darkness, with a limited supply of not over clean water, short-handed, hurried, without proper appliances—it was a sight that would have startled the artist in antiseptic surgery. But there they lay; and it was with something like a sense of shame that I turned ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... youth, and add one Venus more. 330 Her too receive (for her my soul adores), So may the sons of sons of sons of whores Prop thine, O empress! like each neighbour throne, And make a long posterity thy own.' Pleased, she accepts the hero, and the dame Wraps in her veil, and frees from sense of shame. ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... permission, and he afterwards made an able speech. Since the beginning of the world there never was so extraordinary and so eccentric a position as his. It is a moral power and influence as great in its way, and as strangely acquired, as Bonaparte's political power was. Utterly lost to all sense of shame and decency, trampling truth and honour under his feet, cast off by all respectable men, he makes his faults and his vices subservient to the extension of his influence, for he says and does whatever suits his purpose for ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... therein. "Peace on earth and good will to men" is the character of all the rights and privileges, the influence, and the power of woman. A man may act on society by the collision of intellect, in public debate; he may urge his measures by a sense of shame, by fear and by personal interest; he may coerce by the combination of public sentiment; he may drive by physical force, and he does not outstep the boundaries of his sphere. But all the power, and all the conquests that are lawful to woman, are those only which appeal to the kindly, ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... itself ignoble; if we separate it in thought from the conditions which make it guilty, it does not appear despicable; it is not a kind of suffering, its nature is active; and therefore we can watch its course without shrinking. But jealousy, and especially sexual jealousy, brings with it a sense of shame and humiliation. For this reason it is generally hidden; if we perceive it we ourselves are ashamed and turn our eyes away; and when it is not hidden it commonly stirs contempt as well as pity. Nor is this all. ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... if they do," said Wilbur. "I should like to proclaim it from the housetops." Then they passed and the rose scent of Margaret's garments was in Annie's face. She was glad that Margaret had hushed her husband. She argued that it proved some little sense of shame, but oh, when all alone with her own husband, she had made no disclaimer. Annie came out from her hiding and went on. The Edes ahead of her melted into the shadows but she could still hear Wilbur's glad voice. The gladness in it made her pity Margaret more. She thought how horrible it must be ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of my guardians and the wrongful urgings of others, and that afterwards, when I realized that this kind of life was quite unsuited to me (for not all things suit all men), I was held back by Cornelius of Woerden's reproaches and by a certain boyish sense of shame. I was never able to endure fasting, through some peculiarity of my constitution. Once roused from sleep I could never fall asleep again for several hours. I was so drawn towards literature, which is not practised ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... — Only a pound for the drover's friend. The drover's friend that had seen his day, And now was worthless, and cast away With a broken knee and a broken heart To be flogged and starved in a hawker's cart. Well, I made a bid for a sense of shame And the memories dear of the good ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... banners of Satan, and becoming the avowed and sworn vassals of his infernal empire. They accordingly seem to have invented the ideas of a sabbath of witches, a numerous assembly of persons who had cast off all sense of shame, and all regard for those things which the rest of the human species held most sacred, where the devil appeared among them in his most forbidding form, and, by rites equally ridiculous and obscene, the persons present acknowledged themselves his subjects. ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... degree, from fright of death, Will hate of living and beholding light Take hold on humankind that they inflict Their own destruction with a gloomy heart— Forgetful that this fear is font of cares, This fear the plague upon their sense of shame, And this that breaks the ties of comradry And oversets all reverence and faith, Mid direst slaughter. For long ere to-day Often were traitors to country and dear parents Through quest to shun the realms of Acheron. ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... replied to Princess Mary's expressions of gratitude for her deliverance, as she termed what had occurred. "Any police officer would have done as much! If we had had only peasants to fight, we should not have let the enemy come so far," said he with a sense of shame and wishing to change the subject. "I am only happy to have had the opportunity of making your acquaintance. Good-by, Princess. I wish you happiness and consolation and hope to meet you again in happier ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... all true women science is hostile to the sense of shame. They feel as if one wished to peep under their skin with it—or worse still! ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... dishonourable things, and that simply because the men around us are too coarse in their morals and too dull in their sensibilities to see any shame in such things. And thus it comes about that, in the very best of men, their still perverted sense of shame remains in them a constant snare and a source of temptation. A man of a fine nature feels keenly the temptation to shrink from those paths of truth and duty that expose him to the cruel judgments and the coarse and scandalising attacks of public and private enemies. ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... and snatching their prey, or smiting the enemy's detachments, under the very jaws of their cannon, our partisans succeeded in embodying public opinion, through the very sense of shame, against their enemies. The courage of the Whigs was ennobled, and their timidity rebuked, when they beheld such a daring spirit, and one so crowned by frequent successes, in such petty numbers. The 'esprit de corps', which these successes, ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... to Burr came out strongly. Madelon saw the cant of his head and swing of his shoulders, with a half sense of shame that he was not Burr, and yet with a sudden understanding of him that she had never felt before. She had not seen him since her betrothal to Burr. She thought to herself that he was thinner, and that the red flush on his cheeks was the flush of fever ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and would have made some insolent reply, but a sudden sense of shame caused him to remain silent. Feeling irritated with his father, and grieved for Lialia, while despising himself, he went down the steps into the garden. A little frog, croaking beneath his feet, burst like an acorn. He slipped, and with a cry of disgust sprang aside. Mechanically ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... a perpetual change of motion, opposite assertions might exist according to the difference of the perception respecting such object. Moral worth he attributed to taking pleasure in the beautiful; and virtue he referred to a certain sense of shame implanted in man by nature; and to a certain conscious feeling of justice, which secures the bonds of connexion in ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... conscience had been awakened or the literary canon had been laid down—or at least in places and among company where the fear of these, and of the critic, had never penetrated; and he borrowed, copied, adapted, without any sense of shame or remorse, because without any sense of sin. He has his conventional manner of opening, and his established formula for closing his tale. In portraiture, in scenery, in costume, he is simplicity itself. The heroine of the ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... tears were still in woman's eyes, When morn awoke on Paradise; And still her sense of shame forbade To tell her grievance, or upbraid; Nor knew she which was dearer cost, To seek him, or to shun him most Then Adam, willing to believe A heart by casual fancy moved Would soon come back, at voice she loved, ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... mother nor Claude Heath would discover what had been done with Halton's assistance, she was nevertheless sufficiently uncertain to feel a tremor as she put her hand on the drawing-room door, and it was a tremor in which a sense of shame ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... back stealthily, and with a heart throbbing with a certain wild sense of shame, to watch the light gleaming in the cottage. You linger in the shadows of the trees until you catch a glimpse of her figure gliding past the window. You bear the image home with you. You are silent on your return. You retire early, but you ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... in enumerating, except for an auctioneer's advertisement,—and the whole repeated and doubled by the reflection of a great mirror, which showed me Zenobia's proud figure, likewise, and my own. It cost me, I acknowledge, a bitter sense of shame, to perceive in myself a positive effort to bear up against the effect which Zenobia sought to impose on me. I reasoned against her, in my secret mind, and strove so to keep my footing. In the gorgeousness with which she had surrounded herself,—in ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... quotes the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics as saying that "a family of five persons requires $754 a year to live on." The average number in the family of a mine worker is five or six. "This small income," Roberts observes, "drives many of our people to live in cheap and rickety houses, where the sense of shame and decency is blunted in early youth, and where men cannot find such home comforts as will counteract the attractions of the saloon." Hundreds of company houses, according to Roberts, are unfit for habitation, and "in the houses of mine employees, of all nationalities, ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... trade prohibited, our men impressed, Our flag insulted—still her people bend, Amidst the ticking of their wooden clocks, Bemused o'er small inventions. Out upon't! Such tame submission yokes not with my spirit, And sends my southern blood into my cheeks, As proxy for New England's sense of shame. ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... have nothing to say," he began at last, and his tone had changed and was more calm. "You are right, perhaps. What should I say to you, since you have lost all sense of shame and all thought of respect or obedience? Do you expect that I shall argue with you, and try to convince you that I am right, instead of forcing you to respect me and yourself? Thank Heaven, I have never yet questioned ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... was incumbent on him to substantiate the truth? This was done by Bunyan, the author of the Pilgrim's Progress, and by Cowper, the truly Christian poet:—they are respected accordingly. But in these narratives, except a little cant in Ward's, we find nothing approaching to a sense of shame or remorse. Vidocq, like Homer's Ulysses, has a lie ready for every occasion, and appears, like that hero, to regard himself as "the man for wisdom's various arts renowned." Vaux is almost equal to him in this respect, and exults in ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... bad headache, and a sense of shame and sickness. When he got up he felt most wretched, and while washing he thought to himself, "Ah! that I could thus wash away the memory of last night!" Of course, after what had occurred, Eric and Montagu were no longer on speaking terms, ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... usurpation, bold as it was, produced no other effect than that of his being insulted by the populace as he went through the streets, and the refusal of the king-at-arms to enrol the certificate of his brother's having died without issue. The first of these inconveniences he bore without any sense of shame, though not without repining, conscious that it would gradually vanish with the novelty of his invasion; and as to the last, he conquered it by means ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... the boy began to think. First of all, he was puzzled. He had fared forth peaceably, and spoken to no one except the storekeeper. To force a man into peace by denying him his gun, seemed as unreasonable as to prevent fisticuffs by cutting off hands. But, also, a deep sense of shame swept over him, and scalded him. Getting into trouble here was, somehow, different from getting into trouble at home—and, in ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... you!" she said, in a tone so grave and sweet and angelically tender, that for a second he was smitten with a sudden sense of shame. ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... though with no great haste, for they were gentry to whom caution was second nature and it was by no means certain what the arrival of the automobile might portend. The four at the curb, deterred from retreat by that sense of shame which is not entirely absent even in the lowest and most depraved, were now insistently giving their rap to incite their comrades to hasten. The rotund gentleman walked around to that side of the carriage and gazed at them with some degree of interest and ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... and discontented, almost hid himself in those days in his own study, the victim of that most wearing of intolerable and sickening diseases—a sense of shame. Except to play football occasionally, he seldom left his room or took any exercise, and fell into a dispirited, broken way of life, feeling unhappy and alone. He had no associates now except his inferiors, for his conduct had forfeited the regard of ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... Olympian deity,—he sees in Burns a highly gifted genius also, but yet a wreck and a failure; a man broken down by the force of that degrading habit which unfortunately and peculiarly and even mysteriously robs a man of all dignity, all honor, and all sense of shame. Amid the misfortunes, the mistakes, and the degradations of the born poet, whom he alike admires and pities and mildly blames, he sees also the noble elements of the poet's gifted soul, and loves him, especially for his sincerity, which ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... vouchsafed the beatific vision of an Angel—an Angel who had said— "God thinks no evil of thee—desires no wrong towards thee—has no punishment in store for thee—give thyself into His Hand, and be at peace!" was already flinching and turning away from the Faith that should keep me strong! A sense of shame stole over me—and almost timidly I approached the table on which the open book lay, and sat down in the chair so invitingly placed. I had scarcely done this when the voices began again, in rather louder and ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... agony after dreaming of falling from some terrifying height. Morgan had just struck the bottom of the precipice in his wild, self-effacing dream. The shock of waking was numbing; there was no room for anything in his righted consciousness but a vast, down-bearing sense of shame. She had seen a side of his nature long submerged, long fought, long ago conquered as he believed; the vindictive, the savage part of him, the cruel ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... country but has its score of such; not an asylum record-book but chronicles the sad histories of thousands of these poor, lost creatures—male and female; not an asylum nurse or doctor but will sadly point out these creatures to you, bereft of every trace of reason, all sense of shame, still practicing the horrible vice that has driven every semblance of humanity from their faces and the very light of ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... Cecilia, do you really think it possible to be wicked merely for the love of wickedness? No human being becomes wicked all at once; a man begins by doing wrong because it is, or because he thinks it is for his interest; if he continue to do so, he must conquer his sense of shame, and lose his love of virtue. But how can you, Cecilia, who feel such a strong sense of shame, and such an eager desire to improve, imagine that you ...
— The Bracelets • Maria Edgeworth
... of the preceding day, twisted his head round at every footstep in the hall, fearing that Waring had come to question him. He knew that he had done no wrong; in fact, he had told Pat that they had better drive back home. But a sense of shame at his cowardice, and the realization that his word was as water in evidence, that he was but a wastrel, a tramp, burdened him with an aching desire to get away—to hide himself from Waring's eyes, from the eyes of ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... some kind chance would enable him to see his mistress without being discovered. With this view, and as if believing that she would be able to see through a disguise impenetrable to others, and with some sense of shame at having been confined in a dungeon, Philip drew his slouched hat over his eyes, and muffling his face in the folds of his short cloak, walked in front of the dwelling, casting frequent glances at the windows. It was in vain, however; and fearful of attracting an attention which he desired to ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... shook his head, but he could say no more. His attitude had not changed, yet he felt a sense of shame before the straightforward honesty of Esther's outlook. She had no sense of the evil of the world. That very fact seemed to make the world ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... occasioned by the approach of Lady Rookwood, whose shadow, falling over the brow and visage of the deceased, produced the appearance we have described. Simultaneously quitting each other, with a deep sense of shame, mingled with remorse, both remained, their eyes fixed upon the dead, whose repose they ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... I felt a sense of shame at being an unexpected witness of his degradation. As I started to draw Evelyn back a guard prodded the Slav with his bayonet point. Bothwell whirled like a tiger and sprang for the throat of the fellow. They went down together. Other guards rushed ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... series of Popes, the historian Gieseler says: "The succession of Popes which now follows proves the degeneracy of the cardinals (from among whom the Pope is chosen) as to all discipline and sense of shame: they were distinguished for nothing but undisguised meanness and wickedness; ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... expedition rapidly and in profound silence, unless some one of the party should relate that he has had an unpropitious dream When this happens, an immediate arrest is put upon the expedition, and the whole party face about, and return without any sense of shame or mortification. A whole party is thus often arrested by a single person; and their return is applauded by the tribe, as a respectful docility to the divine impulse, as they deem it, from the Great Spirit. ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... astonished, exceedingly astonished—more than astonished. I saw her change countenance. She turned extremely red. I imagined I saw a mixture of many feelings: a great, though short struggle; half a wish of yielding to truths, half a sense of shame, but habit, habit carried it. She would have laughed if she could. It was a sort of laugh, as she answered, 'A pretty good lecture, upon my word. Was it part of your last sermon? At this rate you will soon reform ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... done nothing, you've said nothing, you've made no sign, you've lived alongside of me as if it had made no difference—no difference in either of our lives. What are you made of, I wonder? Don't you see the hideous ignominy of it? Don't you see how you've shared in my disgrace? Or haven't you any sense of shame?" ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... use of victory; so their courage would sink in unforeseen adversities, their hopes of new resources vanish, and their grovelling souls condescend to ask quarter of the most inconsiderable enemy, and without sense of shame accept the hardest and most mortifying conditions. Those now imposed were, that they should possess only the lands lying beyond the river Halycus;(637) that they should give all the natives free liberty to retire to Syracuse with their families and effects; and that they should ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... to go and tell Mother, but a sense of shame at her own short-comings, of loyalty to John, "who might be cruel, but nobody should know it," restrained her, and after a summary cleaning up, she dressed herself prettily, and sat down to wait for John to ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... private and mutual secrecies of children, by so much and ten times more is it important to establish confidential secrecy between parent and child. For in so doing, you not only prevent the undesirable secrecy, but you build normally on modesty; you lay foundations for a true sense of shame, disgust, and disgrace; and in doing so, set up one of the strong defenses against perversions and prurient allurement ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... words. I hardly know how to utter the feeling they raise. In all the relations of mortality to immortality, of body to soul, there are painful and even ugly things, things to which, by common consent, we refer only upon dire necessity, and with a sense of shame. Happy they in whom the mortal has put on immortality! Decay and its accompaniments, all that makes the most beloved of the appearances of God's creation a terror, compelling us to call to the earth for succour, and pray her to take our dead ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... deliverance from the burden of pretense. By this I mean not hypocrisy, but the common human desire to put the best foot forward and hide from the world our real inward poverty. For sin has played many evil tricks upon us, and one has been the infusing into us a false sense of shame. There is hardly a man or woman who dares to be just what he or she is without doctoring up the impression. The fear of being found out gnaws like rodents within their hearts. The man of culture is haunted by the fear that he will some ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer
... also was calm in the face of her enemy. No sense of shame or embarrassment troubled her. Their mingled breath caressed ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... Cavalrymen had been dismounted. Heavy masses of Assyrian archers and Arabian slingers were advanced to prepare for the attack by overwhelming volleys. The Persian noblemen, stung to madness by their king's reproaches and their own sense of shame, bound themselves by fearful oaths never to draw from the onset until victorious or dead. The attack itself was led by princes of the blood, royal half-brothers of the king. Xerxes sat again on the ivory throne, assured by every obsequious tongue that the sacred fire gave fair omens, that to-day ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... of their credulous fancies, allowing their passions to be worked up to a tremendous pitch of excitement, and rushing into excesses of folly and violence that have left a stain on their memory, and will awaken a sense of shame, pity, and amazement in the minds of ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... employers of labour, two classes who in M. Comte's system are reduced to one, for he allows of no idle rich. A life made up of mere amusement and self-indulgence, though not interdicted by law, is to be deemed so disgraceful, that nobody with the smallest sense of shame would choose to be guilty of it. Here, we think, M. Comte has lighted on a true principle, towards which the tone of opinion in modern Europe is more and more tending, and which is destined to be one of the constitutive principles of regenerated society. We believe, for example, with him, that ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... burning gaze compels her to return it. Oh, that he should see her here, singing before all these people! For the first time a terrible sense of shame overpowers her; a longing to escape the eyes that from all parts of the hall appear to stare at her and ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... She understood his boyish sense of shame. Making smooth allowances for a feeling natural to his youth and the circumstances, she said, "I am your sister, for you were my husband's brother in arms, Carlo. We two speak heart to heart: I sometimes fancy you have that voice: you hurt me with it more than ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... chambers, subsequently made fun of him. 'Why,' they said, 'when you are being thrashed, and you are in pain, your only thought is to bawl out girls! Is it perchance that you expect us young ladies to go and intercede for you? How is that you have no sense of shame?' To their taunts he gave a most plausible explanation. 'Once,' he replied, 'when in the agony of pain, I gave vent to shouting girls, in the hope, perchance, I did not then know, of its being able to alleviate the soreness. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... notwithstanding his villainy, he was too useful a person to part with and send to a brick cart, he was still retained to fish for the settlement; but a very vigilant eye was kept over him, and such steps taken as appeared likely to prevent him from repeating his offence, if the sense of shame and fear of punishment were not of themselves ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... vitality by every exposure to cold,—her lonely days and nights,—the interminable sewing, that now, for her own reasons, she would trust to no hands but her own,—conscious incapacity to be what all the women about her were, stirring, active, hardy housekeepers,—a vague sense of shame, and a great dread of the future,—her comfortless and motherless condition,—slowly, but surely, like frost, and wind, and rain, and snow, beat on this frail blossom, and it went with the rest. June roses were laid against her dark ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... ought not, of course; but where enthusiasm and even respect for the leader can no longer be felt, there is danger of diminution of zeal for the cause. Were he to take the honourable course, which alone would show a sense of shame—that of resignation—his political enemies would be silenced, and his friends would feel that although reparation for the past is impossible, he has not been blinded by long continuance in deception and sin to his own unworthiness, and to the fact that his ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... seat, as he spoke, and sat down. Henry had a quick sense of shame. He had spoken insincerely, for effect ... in order to impress them with his cleverness, and their answer to him filled him with a sense of inferiority. He felt that they must despise him, and feeling that, he ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... got but little reward in this life. Many of the poor became so accustomed to her services that they hardly thanked her for them. The rich heard them mentioned with wonder, but were silent, from a sense of shame at the difference between her sacrifices and their own. Many ladies, however, respected her deeply. They could not help it. One gentleman—one only—gave her his friendship and perfect confidence. This was Mr. Hall, the vicar of Nunnely. He said, and said truly, that her life came nearer the ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... ghastly and appalling; and they urged upon the commandant the necessity of escaping to Michilimackinac before it was too late. Dubuisson appears to have met the crisis with equal resolution and address. He braced the shaken nerves of his white followers by appeals to their sense of shame, threats of the governor's wrath, and assurances that all would yet be well; then set himself to the more difficult task of holding the Indian allies to their work. He says that he scarcely ate or slept for ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... saint, and, never stopping to give his better nature time to rise and rebuke him, he had summoned Janet. It was to sting Blakely, more than to punish the girl, he had ordered Natzie to the guard-room. Then, as the hours wore on and he realized how contemptible had been his conduct, the sense of shame well-nigh crushed him, and though it galled him to think that some of his own kind, probably, had connived at Natzie's escape, he thanked God the girl was gone. And now having convinced herself that here at last she had positive ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... Norma an allowance, an allowance so big that when Norma first told Aunt Kate about it, it was with a sense of shame. Norma had her check-book, and need ask nobody for spending money. More than that her generous old patron insisted that she use all the family charge accounts freely: "You mustn't think of paying in any shop!" said Aunt Marianna ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... mind in parents which will help on the better and more adequate social care of these afflicted members of society, the sense of shame and the keen suffering from social stigma in such cases must be mitigated. It must be seen that although it may be the fault of one or both parents that such a child has come into the world, it is an added and deeper fault, even in many cases a social crime, to leave that child in ordinary relations ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... difficulty in placing his gaze so that it would appear to naturally fall elsewhere than on Moran. He was mortified by a sense of shame that he could not deal squarely with this aspirant for his daughter's hand. He had been sincere in saying that he would never barter her to further his own interests, but so much hung in the balance here that until the issue really arose he feared ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... palpitate a little. At first he attributed this to a sense of shame in thus craftily setting a trap for the good old captain. But he soon discovered that it was the sight of the beloved one's father that set his blood in a ferment. Thus reassured, he began, in accordance with ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... as far as could be done by one man." He then advances to the first entrance of the bridge, and being easily distinguished among those who showed their backs in retreating from the fight, facing about to engage the foe hand to hand, by his surprising bravery he terrified the enemy. Two indeed a sense of shame kept with him, Sp. Lartius and T. Herminius, men eminent for their birth, and renowned for their gallant exploits. With them he for a short time stood the first storm of the danger, and the severest brunt of the battle. But as they who demolished the bridge called upon them to retire, he obliged ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... once more find justification for the famous definition of German contained in Schopenhauer's famous phrase: "The German is remarkable for the absolute lack of that feeling which the Latins call 'verecundia'—sense of shame." ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... were bent to the chase, scenting the game, knowing the infinite meaning of their hunt and the glory of victory. Mary Cresswell had listened but a half hour before her world seemed so small and sordid and narrow, so trivial, that a sense of shame spread over her. These people were not only earnest, but expert. They acknowledged the need ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... entreated him to go with her to some foreign city where they could live quietly and where she could rest; if they were careful, there would "be enough for all." Neither Brown nor her brothers and sisters had any sense of shame about these letters. It seemed never to occur to them that this golden stream, whether it rushed or whether it trickled, came out of the industry, out of the mortal body of a woman. They regarded her as a natural source of wealth; a copper vein, ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... how private so ever you thought you were in it, yet it could not escape your Husbands Jealousie and Mistrust; and at last, when you least suspected it, was fully discover'd by your Gallant himself. And that occasion'd your being turn'd out of Doors; and that taking all sense of shame from you, (as you well observed) exposed you to a thousand Temptantions; which being suited to your own Natural Inclinations, you presently closed withal; which in a little time was, it seems, attended by the Pox; and which besides, many times laid you open to the Cognizance of the Civil Magistrate; ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... Esther was not conscious that the expression of a feeling or a wish on her part carried any special weight, but there could be no doubt that if Miss Dudley seemed to want any thing very much, Mr. Hazard showed no sense of shame in suddenly forgetting his fixed theories and encouraging her to do what she pleased. This point was settled when she had been some ten days at work trying to satisfy Wharton's demands, which were also ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... did not know that his head was uncovered. He was amazed at himself, he felt a certain sense of shame. ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... the same mechanical greeting, if the Emperor or the Pope had been at that moment presented to him; but Dennet, who had been attending to her father, made up all that was wanting in cordiality. She had always had a certain sense of shame for having flouted her cousin, and, as his mother told her, driven him to death and destruction, and it was highly satisfactory to see him safe and sound, and apparently ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... would have been her own state of mind two years earlier if she had received such a letter. Miss Forsythe read it with a very heavy heart. She hesitated about showing it to Mrs. Fletcher, and when she did, and gave her the check, it was with a sense of shame. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... very happily ever after. The sensuality, baseness, and malice of their natures is unredeemed by any quality of a different description,—by any touch of kindness,—or even by any honest burst of hearty hatred and revenge. We are in a world where there is no humanity, no veracity, no sense of shame,—a world for which any good-natured man would gladly take in exchange the society of Milton's devils. But as soon as we enter the regions of Tragedy, we find a great change. There is no lack of fine sentiment there. Metastasio is surpassed ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... nor flexible feelings in his breast; who is skilled in savage deeds, as a lion, which, yielding to the impulse of his mighty strength and haughty soul, attacks the flocks of men, that he may take a repast. Thus has Achilles lost all compassion, nor in him is there sense of shame, which greatly hurts and profits men. For perhaps some one will lose another more dear, either a brother, or a son; yet does he cease weeping and lamenting, for the Destinies have placed in men an enduring mind. But ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... faithless of women that she must needs be, the reproach of her sex, the opprobrium of all the ladies of this city, to cast aside all regard for her honour, her marriage vow, her reputation before the world, and, lost to all sense of shame, to scruple not to bring disgrace upon a man so worthy, a citizen so honourable, a husband by whom she was so well treated, ay, and upon herself to boot! By my hope of salvation no mercy should be shewn ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... freely. Yet only to brush them away with a sense of shame. Beneath his outer controlling egotism there were large and generous elements in his mixed nature. And nothing could stand finally against the memory of that sweet all-sacrificing devotion which had been lavished upon himself and ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not easily forgotten, however. It had brought home to her a fresh revelation. And it had come in the boy's final appeal not to give him away. A fierce sense of shame surged through her heart. It communicated itself to her eyes, and displayed itself further in the deep flush on her beautiful cheeks. Yet its reason must have remained obscure to ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum |
