"Compunction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... comrades understood it. Beasley himself knew it. Buck had assured him that he would shoot him down like a dog if he offended against the unwritten laws of instinctive chivalry as he understood them, and he would do it without any compunction ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... well enough that the fellow is probably on the watch to betray him, if he shows any signs of compunction; at least to report faithfully to his superiors the slightest expression of sympathy with a heretic; but a horrible curiosity prevails over fear, and he pauses close to the fatal door. His face is all of a flame, his knees knock together, his ears are ringing, his heart ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... compunction at leaving me to the dulness of this horrible palace, to satisfy your idle fancy for going to Rome,' said she, pouting her pretty lip, and playing with a lock of the dark brown hair that ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... to keep her promise. She knew now that George had never meant that her mother should live with them, that he had never meant that they should take an apartment, that he had lied to her, without compunction, from the beginning. She knew this as surely as she knew that he was faithless and selfish, as surely as she knew that he had ceased to love her and would never love her again. And this knowledge, which had once caused her such poignant agony, seemed now as detached and remote as any tragedy ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... Roy felt less compunction in lifting the second, and this being replaced, he began to sound others with his knuckles, to find that they all gave forth the ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... went on both settlers and Governors accustomed themselves to treat the aborigines rather as beasts of burden than as men, and they were hunted, slain, or driven to labour with as little compunction as if they had been pack-mules. The slightest sign of revolt was wont to be punished by an outlet of blood which left the unfortunate folk cowering in deeper terror and despair than before. The utter misery of the Indians may be imagined when the measures they took to free themselves ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... exquisite discomfort to the roomful. She had not expected to meet any of them but 'the poor old things'; and why she had come to see them she hardly knew, except that, while on her way from Oxford Street to a studio in Latimer Road, she had suddenly remembered them with compunction as two long-neglected ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... instructive to read their profound conviction that they were saving their country's honour, furthering their own salvation, and promoting the glory of God. The slaughter of the innocents which necessarily attended their project was lamentable indeed, but inevitable, and gave rise to as little real compunction as the eating of beef and mutton. These men were by no means heartless; they were only blind from ignorance of Scripture, and excess of zeal ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... present, no part in his thoughts. It was wrong and ungrateful of him that they should not have, and if he had remembered them he would have known that it was wrong and ungrateful; but he would not have cared. And as for his food—he had supped royally, and without compunction, upon the fruit of an inviting orchard to which he had helped himself, unblushingly, upon his ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... of Miss Ledwith's very large wealth, and it would have made no difference if she had known it, except the exciting in her of a quick question why they had been taken in at all, and whether she were not indeed being in her turn benevolently practised upon, as she with much compunction practised upon her mother. ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... anxious to communicate as often as possible with the outside world. In spite of the great pride this man took in his office, his notions regarding his duties were rather vague. Being desirous of knowing what was going on among his neighbours, he had no compunction about opening the few letters they got; not that he destroyed them after reading them—he very coolly handed them over opened. The people did not like this, and considered it rather high-handed on his part; but then, what was there for them to do ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... while in front of the empty tent and if any had been there to note him, they might have seen a shadow as of compunction creep ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... surprise; one laughed grimly and swore. "By the body of God, if I thought he were not I would twist his accursed neck for him! But the cholera never fails, he is dead for certain—see!" And he knocked the head of the corpse to and fro against the sides of the coffin with no more compunction than if it had been a block of wood. Sickened at the sight, I turned away and said no more. On reaching one of the more important thoroughfares I perceived several knots of people collected, who glanced at one another with eager yet shamed faces, and spoke in low voices. A whisper reached my ears, ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... said he. "I had misjudged you. I thank Heaven that my compunction at leaving poor Staunton all alone in this plight caused me to turn my carriage back, and so to make your acquaintance. Knowing as much as you do, the situation is very easily explained. A year ago Godfrey Staunton lodged ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... bar your path. Winnington is a good fellow, but a thickheaded Philistine all the same. You spoke to me about him with compunction. Have no compunctions. Go straight forward. Women have got to shew themselves ruthless, and hard, and cunning, like men—if they ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to the conclusion that the sooner we changed that state the better. Our excursion to Topsham would, we supposed, prove a very disagreeable business to him; but we knew it would result very agreeably for us, and so, though with a good deal of maidenly compunction and granddaughterly compassion on Julia's part, we ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... a strange accident, indeed, that lays two men by the heels and lets the third go without a scratch!" Delivering himself thus, he came forward into the room, and, taking the last victim of Jonathan's adventure by the arm, with as little compunction as he would have handled a sack of grain he dragged the limp and helpless figure from where it lay to the floor beside the first victim. Then, lifting the lighted candle, he bent over the two prostrate bodies, holding the illumination close to the lineaments ...
— The Ruby of Kishmoor • Howard Pyle
... the Indian there is an expression of conscious guilt, such as may appear in that of one not hardened by habitual crime. There is even something like compunction for what he is about to do, with remorse for what he has already done. Now that he is drawing near the scene, where those betrayed by him must suffer, his reflections are anything but pleasant. Rather are they tinged with regret. Don Valerian Miranda has been ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... I accused her with doing what I meant to have done, and as I designed to have given her the ribbon, asserted she had given it to me. When she appeared, my heart was agonized, but the presence of so many people was more powerful than my compunction. I did not fear punishment, but I dreaded shame: I dreaded it more than death, more than the crime, more than all the world. I would have buried, hid myself in the centre of the earth: invincible shame bore down every other sentiment; shame alone caused all my impudence, and ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... answered—"I say it to my shame, but I cannot see you in this poor place without compunction. It is not my single thought, nor my first; and yet it's there! I would gladly see you delivered. I do not offer it in love, and far from that; but, as God judges me—and I wonder at ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... suspense that my temper knows ill how to endure; but I should rather be rendered miserable than happy, in merely overpowering your reason by entreaty. I leave you, therefore, to your own reflections; yet remember,—and refuse not to remember with some compunction, that all chance, all possibility of earthly happiness for me depends ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... twinge of compunction as she closed her bedroom door; she was by no means given to introspection, but "conscience, that makes cowards of us all," told her that she had not been quite gracious to ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... back, apparently to report to his aunt, who, with Lady Helen, had been watching the experiment from the main drawing-room. His face was a curious mixture of gravity and the keenest excitement. The gravity was mostly sharp compunction. He had satisfied a passionate curiosity, but in the doing of it he had outraged certain instincts of breeding and refinement which were now ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... reminding us of the body which piety bids us to forget. Painters and sculptors glorify that which saints and ascetics have mortified. The masterpieces of Titian and Correggio, for example, lead the soul away from compunction, away from penitence, away from worship even, to dwell on the delight of youthful faces, blooming colour, graceful movement, delicate emotion[5]. Nor is this all: religious motives may be misused for what is worse ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... full: he said, with a shade of compunction, "I am not a gentleman, but you are a lady. I'll trust you. I'll ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... and cordiality by most of my shipmates, except Murphy and some of his cronies; nor did one feeling of regret or compunction enter my mind for the lies and hypocrisy with which I had deceived and cheated my parents. The reader will probably be aware that except the circumstance of reducing the size of my chest, and the seizure ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... slavery bent, Your conscience hangs on hinges, And gives mild treason easy vent, Despite compunction's twinges! ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... erect, and serves as a differential thermometer, detecting the presence or absence of the divine sentiment in man. By fault of our dulness and selfishness we are looking up to nature, but when we are convalescent, nature will look up to us. We see the foaming brook with compunction: if our own life flowed with the right energy, we should shame the brook. The stream of zeal sparkles with real fire, and not with reflex rays of sun and moon. Nature may be as selfishly studied as ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... while his companions went fossil-hunting, and stayed so long as to excite their compunction, and quicken their steps when they at length detached themselves from the enticing ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lest an open quarrel had actually taken place. He knew well that Josef Blot, alias Weirmarsh, was not a man to be trifled with. If Sir Hugh had served his purpose, as he no doubt had, then he would be betrayed to the police without compunction, just as others ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... Texas. The trail boss promised me a job with any of their herds, and assured me that a cow hand of my abilities would never want a situation in the north. I was anxious to go with him, and would have done so, but felt a compunction which I did not care to broach to him, for I was satisfied ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... behind him to help to support his case, probably made him reckless. In April, 1355, six months after his arrival in Venice as doge, the smouldering fire broke out. Two of the conspirators were seized with compunction on the eve of the catastrophe and betrayed the plot—one with a merciful motive to serve a patrician he loved, the other with perhaps less noble intentions—and, without a blow struck, the conspiracy collapsed. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... had neither fear nor compunction in asserting that authority which would be his to the full to-morrow. He felt that there was a vein of rebellion in Elsa's character, and this he meant to drain and to staunch till it had withered to nothingness. It would never do for him—of all men—to have ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... expressions of surprise and sympathy and with a feeling of compunction. A thought was sluggishly trailing through my mind: "Does she still care ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... deed other than terrible, or the man that did it other than fierce and stern. No traits of chivalrous generosity are told of him, nothing that softens the dreadfulness of war. He showed no touch of pity or compunction, no lofty, statesmanlike qualities, nothing constructive; he was simply a rough soldier, with an iron hand and an iron heel, who burned and slew and settled down his men in the land they ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... shewed a singular implacability in her dealings with the rest of the world. In spite of which my aunt still retained her, for, while conscious of her cruelty, she could appreciate her services. I began gradually to realise that Francoise's kindness, her compunction, the sum total of her virtues concealed many of these back-kitchen tragedies, just as history reveals to us that the reigns of the kings and queens who are portrayed as kneeling with clasped hands in the windows of churches, were stained by oppression and bloodshed. I had taken note of the ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... were as dry and as full of dust as the entrails of a carpet sweeper. His vision was blurred and he had no control over his muscles. Weakly he leaned against the table in front of the jury, the room swaying about him. The pains of hell gat hold upon him. He was dying. Even the staff felt compunction—all but the Honorable Peckham. ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... patted her shoulder with a queer compunction that had never troubled him before in his dealings ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... better to clear out of India. I only pushed that crazy girl aside. Englishmen knock and kick our people without slightest compunction. Perhaps you are a tourist—or new to ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... your adoption lends great weight to any utterance of yours on public matters. Your interview on the war in THE TIMES of Nov. 22 will everywhere have influence for its gravity and fineness of feeling. It is with compunction that I call your attention to the fact that your statement is ambiguous on precisely those issues of the conflict which your fellow-citizens have nearest ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... the offers of marriage which she accepted in succession, abandoning one suitor after the other without any adequate reason or any feeling of compunction. At length she unexpectedly accepted a man of whom she had ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... endeavour. But he was careful not to let her suspect his intention. First of all, he was full of compunction for his bad temper of the night before; he was also slightly ashamed of what he was going to do; and then, too, he knew that she would resent his prying. What he did must be done with tact. He had no wish to make her unhappy over it. And so, when he saw her ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... laid claim to my property, but for Mary. To turn Sir Geoffrey with his mother and sister out of it, would have caused me little compunction, for they would still be rich enough; I confess indeed it would have given me satisfaction. Nor could I say what real hurt of any kind it would occasion to Mary; and if I were writing for the public, instead of my one reader, I know ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... the only instance in which she had brought on herself the pain of some filial compunction. It was always arranged, when possible, that she should have a small bed in her mamma's room; for Mrs. Davilow's motherly tenderness clung chiefly to her eldest girl, who had been born in her happier time. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... assizes would the trial be postponed. A special commission was sped to do the work while Manchester jurors were in a white heat of panic, indignation, and fury. Then came the trial, which was just what might be expected. Witnesses swore ahead without compunction, and jurors believed them without hesitation. Five men arraigned together as principals—Allen, Larkin, O'Brien, Shore, and Maguire—were found guilty, and the judge concerning in the verdict, were ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... I felt the castigation intended, that I have had some compunction in administering this discipline to the Reviewer in return. Surely the Edinburgh Review can put a better head on, when it takes notice of this second portion of my work? I will give it ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... who commanded in the delivery of the people thus sold felt some compunction at his employment. He represented these enormous excesses to the President of Bengal, for which he received a severe reprimand from the civil governor; and I much doubt whether the breach caused by the conflict between ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... less, if a man be in some sort hindered so that he is not at liberty to make use of such external acts, the interior man does not therefore cease to pray; in the secret chamber of his heart, where lies compunction, he lies prostrate before the eyes of God (Of Care for ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... not gifted with at all more feeling or sentiment than usually falls to the lot of a youth of his age, but a sort of compunction visited him at that moment to think how soon they all, alive and well, had invaded the poor old woman's locked and guarded sanctuary! He stooped to gather another lily, and offered the flowers to his ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... your pardon," he said gently. "I didn't intend it so. I suppose I'm wrong; but what others, mere observers, say seems to me so trivial. The gossip of people who'd knife you without compunction the instant your back was turned for their own gratification or gain—to let them judge and sentence—pardon me once more. I shan't mention the ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... life, that ocean of love, that inconceivable blessedness. How hast thou outrun us, brother Pero; how distanced us in a moment. Oh, could I not watch with thee one hour? Oh that I had received thy last blessing, instead of which, conscious offence, deserved rebuke, painful compunction wring my heart; and perhaps the rod of correction may be suspended, and now ready to fall ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... pill for the vain little thing to swallow: the conviction that she had all along occupied the second place in Dixon's affections, and that he had cast her away, like that other girl, without any compunction. Tom would not have done it; and at the remembrance of him Rose's eyes filled with tears. Rose was returning from the village, whither she had been sent on a message, and she shivered a little as she passed the scene of the last night's disaster; and her alarm ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... is not a self-inflicted compunction, but a Christ-inflicted crucifixion. Our Lord was done with the cross when on Calvary he cried: "It is finished." But where he ended each disciple must begin: "If any man will come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross and ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... With compunction tweaking at his chest Soames descended the stairs, where was always that rather pleasant smell of camphor and port wine, and house where draughts are not permitted. The poor old things—he had not meant to be unkind! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of a cause of weakness, he paid them their price. Cornwallis murmured at having to negotiate and job with "the most corrupt people under heaven"; but he did his share of the work. Castlereagh, personally not less honourable, who had much of it to do, did it without compunction, for it was, he said, "to buy out and secure to the crown for ever the fee-simple of Irish corruption, which has so long enfeebled the powers of the government and endangered the connection". It was essential to the welfare both of Great Britain and Ireland that the ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... coarse velvet of his nose. Then followed two quick snorts of alarm; the horses shied simultaneously outward, while down on the ground between them came two souls with but a single thud, two hearts that squelched as one. In spite of the compunction and sympathy I felt, modesty compelled me to glide unobstrusively away, leaving the souls to disentangle themselves and catch their horses the best ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... she, smiling as innocently as she could. "Joke away, Mr. George; there's nobody to defend ME." And George Osborne, as she walked away—and Amelia looked reprovingly at him—felt some little manly compunction for having inflicted any unnecessary unkindness upon this helpless creature. "My dearest Amelia," said he, "you are too good—too kind. You don't know the world. I do. And your little friend Miss Sharp must ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... afford the world some pleasure. But the buried body is forgotten, and no longer ranks with men. He is noisome and horrible; he is bereft of all that pleases the eye; he is trodden under foot in a cemetery without compunction, so convinced is every one that he is nothing, and that he is rooted from among ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... chaplain, after some thought, said: "I now understand why, six years ago, Biorn confessed his guilt to me in general words, and consented that his wife should take the veil. Some faint compunction must then have stirred within him, and perhaps may stir him yet. At any rate it was impossible that so tender a flower as Verena could remain longer in so rough keeping. But who is there now to watch over ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... offer a cow at a temple in Shahpur lying on their road and persuaded the cow's owner to sell her to them for this sacred purpose, and having duly made the offering and deprived him of the protection afforded by the cow, they had no compunction in strangling him with all the travellers. Travellers who had lost a limb were also exempted from death, but this rule too was broken, as in the case of the native officer with his two daughters who was murdered by the Thugs he had befriended; for ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... their fate from these destroyers. Food, clothing, necessaries, superfluities, mere trash, and valuable property, are alike in their regard, and equally acceptable to their digestive powers. They would devour this journal with as little compunction as so much blank paper—and a sermon as readily as the journal—nor would either meal lie heavy on their stomachs. They float on your coffee, and crawl about your plate, and accompany the victuals to ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... helpmate of an ambitious man of the world. Unstable and irresolute, he is as clay in the hands of Carlos, who plays the part of the shrewd and cynical adviser to his friend, in whose genius and brilliant future he has unbounded confidence. As the result of their talk, Clavigo decides with some compunction to abandon Marie, and, as his fortunes rise, to find a more suitable mate. In the second Scene the other characters of the play are brought before us—Marie Beaumarchais, her sister Sophie, married ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... suffered from an excess of compunction or compassion when his own interests were at stake, annexed the estate bodily to his dominions in 1786. Thirteen years later he was killed at Seringapatam, and in the settlement that followed the little territory was made over ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... most charming impressions of travel in these remoter parts of Japan, yet unvisited by tourists with shotguns. The early European and American hunters in Japan seem to have found no difficulty and felt no compunction in exterminating what they considered 'game' over whole districts, destroying life merely for the wanton pleasure of destruction. Their example is being imitated now by 'Young Japan,' and the destruction of bird life ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... experienced the fickleness of royal favour. The courtier had been present at the trial of Solomona and her brave sons without making the slightest effort to save them, though their fate had moved him to something more than pity. But though Pollux could to a certain extent trample down compunction, and force his conscience to silence, he had not perfect command over his nerves. He might consent to the perpetration of horrors, but he could not endure to witness them; and, as we have seen, he had quietly, and, as he hoped, without ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... that of a monkey on the banks of the Amazon. We were not aware at the time of certain facts, which afterwards came to our knowledge, which might detract somewhat from the desirability of the existence; among others, that the natives shoot and eat the poor little fellows with as little compunction as we should young pigs ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... the first time. Although he had been frowning with vexation, some touch of compunction had held him silent. "I will not allow you to say that, nor should you wish to speak so." He hesitated, rubbing his chin perplexedly. "I acknowledge that I experience the same disgust that you do; yet I am not altogether certain that we are right. ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... Ann," he said, a sudden pang of compunction shooting through his breast. He released her hands. ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... marble in its intensity. I knew that he was suffering, and that my words were the cause of his agony. I knew that I was prodding him deeply and severely, thrusting the iron into his soul with as little compunction as a Mexican charo exerts when he "cinches" a heavily burdened burro. But I was doing it with malice prepense, and I was ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... minutes had elapsed, she heard footsteps, the door was half opened and a nun appeared. The good sister, with an air of compunction, told her that "she had just passed away." And at the same time the tolling of ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... proposed to do with "Traviata." It won fame and cash for its composer in the old days when people went to the opera for lack of the music-hall, not yet invented; when Costa still lorded it not over living musical London merely, but over all the deceased masters, and without compunction added trombones to Mozart's scores, and defiled every masterwork he touched with his unspeakable Costamongery; when Wagner was either unheard of or regarded as a dangerous lunatic and immoral person; and it shows every ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... old story: that's the chaff To catch the birds that sing the ditties; Upon my soul, it makes me laugh To read these letters from Committees! They're all so loving and so fair,— All for your sake such kind compunction; 'T would save your carriage half its wear To touch its wheels with such ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... what he had been urging on her was thrown into the pallid distance of mere thought before the outburst of her habitual emotion. It was as if he saw her drowning while his limbs were bound. The pained compassion which was spread over his features as he watched her, affected her with a compunction unlike any she had felt before, and in a changed and ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... of rage had gone entirely. There had come upon him a swift compunction. "Why did you try to murder me?" ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... hard hearts Rogues, and presently Give us a sign you feel compunction, Every man up with's cudgel, and on his neighbour Bestow such alms, 'till we shall say sufficient, For there your sentence lyes without partiality; Either of head, or hide Rogues, without sparing, Or we shall take the pains to beat you dead else: ...
— Beggars Bush - From the Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... looks much more burdensome when it is laid upon one's self. Indeed, she was conscious just then that one might be shortly thrust upon her which she would find it very hard to bear, and she became troubled with a certain compunction as she remembered how she had of late persistently driven all thought of it out of ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... not fall, nor the tender gaze falter; and driven out of himself, Roger Upjohn was about to step passionately forward, when, seized by fresh compunction, he ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... right," Aurora vigorously snatched away from him the turn to talk, in order to defend him from this misery of compunction. "It was prompted by the most gentlemanly feelings, by real unselfishness and consideration for me. You didn't want me talked about on your account, and you put it as delicately as possible. Only I was a fool; I went off the handle, and wrote while I was mad and hurt ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... said Katherine, and the remark reminded her of her humble friend Rachel. She therefore sat down and wrote her a kind, sympathetic letter, feeling some compunction for having allowed so long an interval to elapse ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... in the Stuart Papers, "with exceeding compunction and tenderness of heart," made an exact confession of his sins, after which he repeated an act of contrition, and received absolution. He next desired to have the other Sacraments of the church proper to his condition administered to him: on which the Benedictine asked if ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... him, and he refuses." The man of science stated that the malady originated in some long continued pressure of secret apprehension. Both Wilfrid and Arabella conceived that persuasion alone was wanted to send Mrs. Chump flying to the yacht; so they had less compunction ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... He saw Cook put the account books on the small table, he heard her, he also comprehended her. And Feather at the window breathlessly watching the two cabs with the servants' trunks on top, and the servants respectably unprofessional in attire and going away quietly without an unpractical compunction—he saw these also and comprehended knowing exactly why compunctions had no part in latter-day ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... views of marriage are entirely unconventional. She doesn't marry her husbands with the intention of living with them. The less she likes a man the more willing she is to marry him, because she'll feel less compunction afterwards if she thoroughly detests her ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... boy!" answered the Countess, "as well may you ask a hungry lion to feel compassion, as a prejudiced and furious people to do justice. They are like the madman at the height of frenzy, who murders without compunction his best and dearest friend; and only wonders and wails over his own cruelty, when he is recovered ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... spoke, a quick compunction seized her. She had never been able to rid her mind of a disquieting conviction that all was not well with this grave, taciturn being, whose personality was not less haunting than his bearing was unobtrusive. ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... early. I asked Mrs. Farlow to telegraph as soon as she got my letter." A twinge of compunction shot through Darrow. Her words recalled to him that on their return to the hotel after luncheon she had given him her letter to post, and that he had never thought of it again. No doubt it was still in the pocket of the ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... a sort of piano-forte van. But the Madonna was there again. Whether the supernatural appearance had startled the horse (a bay griffin), or whether it was invisible to him, I don't know; but he was galloping away, ding dong, without the smallest reverence or compunction. On every picture 'Ex voto' was painted in ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... sir. If I borrowed from any one it would be from you. But my father has this very sum, five thousand pounds, and, as I tell him, I owe him so much that I have no compunction about owing ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... duties are performed at home, may mark people as the most fond and affectionate parents; but let them once go abroad, and come within the contagion of slavery, and it seems to alter the very nature of a man; and the father has sold, and still sells, the mother and his children, with as little compunction as he would a sow and her litter of pigs; and he ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince
... majority was the thing that really gave savour to life. But the first faint line of Europe brought my child to my horizon; and all the rest of the way she kept her place, holding out her little arms to me, beckoning me on. Her four motherless years brought compunction to my heart and tears to my eyes; she should have all the compensation that could be. I suddenly realized how ready I was—how ready!—to have her back. I rebelled fiercely against John's decision that ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Also, Jean Jacques, the young, verdant, impressionable French Catholic, was like her Carvillho Gonzales, and she had loved her Carvillho in her own way very passionately, and— this much to her credit—quite chastely. So that she had no compunction in drawing the young money-master to her side, and keeping him there by such arts as such a woman possesses. These are remarkable after their kind. They are combined of a frankness as to the emotions, and such outer concessions to physical ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... after the Colonel had bled him and clapped in his shoulder, as holding by her husband's hand she beheld the lad in a sweet slumber, murmuring a faint inarticulate word or two in his sleep, a faint blush quivering on his cheek, she owned he was a pretty lad indeed, and confessed with a sort of compunction that neither of her two boys—Jack who was at Oxford, and Charles who was just gone back to school after the Bartlemytide holidays—was half so handsome as the Virginian. What a good figure the boy had! and when papa bled him, his arm was as white ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Londoner, the foreign Jew is such a terrible competitor. He is the nearest approach to the ideal "economic" man, the "fittest" person to survive in trade competition. Admirable in domestic morality, and an orderly citizen, he is almost void of social morality. No compunction or consideration for his fellow-worker will keep him from underselling and overreaching them; he acquires a thorough mastery of all the dishonourable tricks of trade which are difficult to restrain by law; the superior calculating intellect, which is a national heritage, ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... like other people, and to be insulted like that before Trenham Manning! I just burst out crying then and there, and ran away and hid. It was very silly of me, but I couldn't help it. That stings me yet. If I was ever to get a chance to pay Lou Carroll out for that, I'd take it without any compunction." ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... vindication of his sanity it must be recorded that as he passed out of the anteroom the notion of opening the street door and bolting out presented itself to this brave youth, only, of course, to be instantly dismissed: for he felt sure that the other would pursue him without shame or compunction. And the prospect of an officer of hussars being chased along the street by another officer of hussars with a naked sword could not be for a moment entertained. Therefore he followed into the garden. Behind them the girl ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... under-master's vacant place. The occurrence made some sensation—it was unusual for any change of the kind to take place during a term. 'Was Sawyer ill?' one or two of the boys asked, as there came before them the recollection of the young man's pale and careworn face, and they recalled with some compunction the Pariah-like life that for some time past had ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... difficulty. In spite of his gratitude and reverence for Commines, in spite even of his profound belief in his shrewder, sounder judgment, he revolted from this callous opportunism which abandoned a dead master for a new service without the apparent compunction of a moment. Surely the grave should first shut out all that was mortal of the old obedience? And yet, because of that unfailing gratitude and profound faith, he could not join with the girl in her open condemnation. But crumpling the letter anew, ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... curious to find the causes of the changes that he felt here. For that reason and also because he was not without compunction, he consented to stay. ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... competition. With some difficulty he raised and paid over meanwhile to Erasmus Walker the ten thousand pounds of blackmail—for it was little else—agreed upon between them. The great engineer accepted the money with as little compunction as men who earn large incomes always display in taking payment for doing nothing. It is an enviable state of mind, unattainable by most of us who work hard for our living. He pocketed his check with a smile, as if it were quite in the nature of things that ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... a humor, etc. The tyrant goes through various changes of mood in his attitude toward his enemy. In lines 35-43 he feels a moment of contemptuous compunction at the man's suffering, and recognizes the absurdity of a contest between a great king and a person as insignificant as a tricksy elf, a toad, or a rat. But in line 44 his mood turns. He perceives that the burden (gravamen) ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... ever Herod did. Then there were minnows, and herrings, and lizards, and frogs, and weasels, and water-snakes, and other butchers of all sorts and sizes, too numerous to mention. And perhaps the worst of all were the older trout, who never seemed to have the least compunction about eating their small relations, and who were so nimble and lively that it was almost impossible to keep out of their way. Our friend spent most of his time in the shallow water near the banks, where larger fishes were not so likely to follow him, ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... revelry, the brouhaha of a mad population, saluted his deaf ears, the distant music of lutes and viols. The captain of the soldiers went hot and cold. He had harried the heels of the rotund runner in special amusement, but he had not designed murder. A wave of compunction traversed the spectators. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... she longed to believe it the glad reflection of spiritual experience of many who heard her. Lindsay's perception of this was immediate and keen, and when her eyes rested for an instant of glad inquiry upon his in the chartered intimacy of her calling, he felt a pang of compunction. It was a formless reproach, too vague for anything like a charge, but it came nearest to defining itself in the idea that he had gone too far—he who had not left his seat. When the hymn was finished, and Ensign Sand said, "The meeting is now open for testimonies," ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... reptiles, believing that were they to do so the whole race of rattle-snakes would rise up and bite them. Under the influence of the white man, however, their respect for their grandfather the rattle-snake gradually died away, till at last they killed him without compunction or ceremony whenever they met him. The writer who records the old custom observes that he had often reflected on the curious connection which appears to subsist in the mind of an Indian between man ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... borne himself with such correctness toward his warriors and his people, and has shown so much compunction in withdrawing from the limits of the palace, that his mother may forgive ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... little compunction in destroying scores of natives, and, strange to say, the most inhuman atrocities were committed by blacks, who were employed to act as troopers. On one occasion, after the murder of a white man by two blacks, a band of troopers, in the ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... deed he never experienced any compunction; he believed that he was directed by Providence in these "executions," as he called them, and after they were over, he held divine services. His fearful deed sent a thrill of horror through the country, and Brown ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... was an Old Man at a Junction, Whose feelings were wrung with compunction When they said, "The Train's gone!" he exclaimed, "How forlorn!" But remained on the rails of ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... grow and shoot upward in the field of our seraphic father, St. Francis. You, sinners, captives of those Moors of the soul who infest the seas of the eternal life, in the doughty ships of the flesh and the world; you who row in the galleys of Satan, behold with reverent compunction him who redeems souls from the captivity of the demon—the intrepid Gideon, the courageous David, the victorious Roland of Christianity! the celestial guard, more valiant than all the civil guards of past and future. ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... days before Hugh regained his old vigor and buoyancy; then it came to life like an Antaeus flung down to mother earth. His hour of doubt, of self-distrust, of compunction, was whirled away like an uprooted tree on the flood of his happiness. He flung reason and caution to the four winds; he dared Bella or Pete to betray him, he played his heroic part with boisterous ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... or that any one should repent of what he had done in a passion? as we see that Alexander the king did, who could scarcely keep his hands from himself, when he had killed his favourite Clytus: so great was his compunction! Now who, that is acquainted with these instances, can doubt that this motion of the mind is altogether in opinion and voluntary? for who can doubt that disorders of the mind, such as covetousness, and a desire of glory, arise from a great estimation of those things, by which the mind is disordered? ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... mixed with such love, pity, and compunction of spirit, that if possible they may be convinced you dislike not their persons, but their sins. This is God's way ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... him, was not felt to be a very great trial, for it removed him from the sight of his half-fed, half-clothed children, and dejected, suffering wife; and he could, therefore spend with more freedom, and fewer touches, of compunction, the greater portion of his earnings in gratifying the inordinate cravings of ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur
... writing materials. But some inward function of her was uneasy; she felt as though she had failed the little man whose reliance was in her. "You know I'm your friend," she had said to him, and this reference to the Professor had not the flavor of full friendship. The same compunction remained with her next morning, and made her specially gentle with Smith. He had fallen back to his usual condition of vacuity and inertia; she had to rouse him to eat and drink when he sat at table with a face as void of life as a death- mask, and eyes empty and unseeing. Dr. Pond had given ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... and indignation were now laid aside. His tone and looks betokened the deepest distress. All the firmness, reluctance, and wariness of my temper vanished in a moment. My heart was seized with an agony of compunction. I came close to him, and, taking his hand involuntarily, said, ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... gray in an interval between two sleet-laden squalls. In the cheerless light of it the Commandant, who, albeit numb with cold, had had not yet found time to feel fatigue, caught sight of Dr. Bonaday's face, and was smitten with sudden compunction. The old Doctor had sat through six distressful hours like the stoic he was; but his face showed like that of a corpse, and the usually plump and florid cheeks of Mr. Pope hung flaccid, blue with the pinch of the cold and yellow for lack of sleep. The Commandant ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the pocket of an impecunious newspaper correspondent. It was a part of her strength—and of her charm too—that she did such things naturally, openly, without any of the ugly grimaces of dissimulation or compunction. ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... to do; you must excuse me." He was nervous, restless, his heart was beating much faster than usual; he couldn't stand still, and he had no compunction whatever about leaving her to get rid, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... monstrous suggestion that struck me dumb. Without replying, I rose and shook them off, retiring with my boy into the inner chamber. But they pursued me without compunction, repeating the extraordinary "conundrum," and dragging the Malay duenna along with them to interpret my answer. The intrusion provoked me; but, considering their beggarly poverty of true life and liberty, of hopes and joys, and loves and memories, and ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... unrefreshed, and rose pale and sad. I cannot say that Mrs. Hazleton, when she beheld Emily's changed look, felt any great compunction. If she had no great desire to torture, which I will not pretend to say, she did not at all object to see her victim suffer; but Emily's pale cheek and distressed look afforded indications still more satisfactory; which Mrs. Hazleton remarked with the satisfaction of a philosopher watching ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... to a closed house on the bank of the canal where Tebureimoa lay unguarded. We entered without ceremony, being in some haste. He lay on the floor upon a bed of mats, reading in his Gilbert Island Bible with compunction. On our sudden entrance the unwieldy man reared himself half-sitting so that the Bible rolled on the floor, stared on us a moment with blank eyes, and, having recognised his visitors, sank again upon the mats. ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Abidan,' exclaimed the priest; 'but it cannot be. I have dismissed, henceforth and for ever I have dismissed all feeling from my mind; now I have no brother, no friend, no pupil, and, I fear, no Saviour. Israel is all in all to me. I have no other life. 'Tis not compunction, then, that stays my arm. My heart's as hard ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... her then and there without compunction and without remorse. She had defied him and thwarted him even more completely than she knew herself; and there was no death so cruel that he would not gladly have inflicted upon ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... unfair to Samuel Shuckleford to say that he had no compunction whatever in deciding upon a course of action which he knew would involve the ruin of ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... the temptation great. These men then were still deceiving him with a feigned antagonism. He listened at the keyhole, not without some compunction; which, however, became less and less as fragments of ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... He was a man of coarse fibre, ambitious and domineering, cold-hearted and perfidious, with a cynical contempt—such as low-minded people are apt to call "smart"—for the higher human feelings. He was one of those ugly customers who crush, without a twinge of compunction, whatever comes in their way. The slightest opposition made him furious, and his vindictiveness was insatiable. This dexterous and pushing Fonseca held one after another the bishoprics of Badajoz, Cordova, Palencia, and Conde, the ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... wide hats, and long boots, then watering their horses at the ford. They were as daring and irresponsible swashbucklers as ever rode out on mediaeval foray, and, having once sold their allegiance to Torrance of Cedar, and recognized that he was not to be trifled with, were ready to do without compunction anything ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... that Hengly was—" Neel couldn't finish the sentence. He knew what he wanted to say, but the idea was too unbearable to put into words. Costa had no such compunction. ...
— The K-Factor • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... there passed through him a feeling of compunction; he thought of his brother, and not of the watch. The horse was saddled, but Baard paused with his hand on its back, uncertain whether to ride away or no. Now many people came out, among them Anders, who ...
— A Happy Boy • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... which he denounced as at once cruel and impolitic. After much discussion, William, influenced rather by an apprehension that so savage and sweeping an act might prove fatal to his new authority, than by any compunction or impulse of humanity, agreed to recall the general order, and to limit himself, in the first instance, to a single deed of butchery, by way of testing the temper of the nation. Some difficulty seems to ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... Compunction smote me. Her voice sounded more faint, as if from fatigue or discouragement. It seemed to me that the blade against my wrist had relaxed its menace of pressure and just rested in position. I seemed to read my lady's weariness in the slackened ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram |
