"Self-justification" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an opening to make peace," said an inner voice. "You've given the yielding plan a fair trial, and it has failed," said self-justification—the swiftest pleader I know. "There are some people, with self-satisfied, arbitrary tempers, upon whom gentleness is worse than wasted, because it misleads them. They have that remnant of savage notions which drives them to mistake generosity for weakness. The only way to convince them ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... much diplomacy in her interview with her aunt. Seated at the good lady's feet in an attitude of childlike humility, she related the story of her adventures in simple, unexaggerated language, without any attempt at self-justification. ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... his sleeve across his eyes, and then timidly looked at me. Seeing nothing in my face, doubtless, but an expression of the profoundest commiseration, he remarked, with a more assured voice, as if in self-justification,— ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... past twelve years these two had stood shoulder to shoulder through both many times over. But their zeal produced no manifest results. Denvil's temperature rose steadily, and his stress of mind broke out in a semi-coherent babble of remorse and self-justification, of argument and appeal, of desperate reckonings in regard to ways and means. Desmond left his station by the bed and crossed over to his friend, who was noiselessly washing ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... the sure way to produce anger, self-justification, and an increase of the strength of prejudice, against that which has caused him this ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... Condor's voice had dropped from its original tone of petty rancor to one of petulant self-justification. Stillman knew at once that her ill-temper had caught her off-guard and she was already trying to crawl slowly back into his favor. She had meant, no doubt, to soften her news over a glass or two of chilled white wine which ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... to say that; but you have been a different person ever since that letter came." And so she torments him into an angry self-justification (which she takes triumphantly as a confession) that "it is very disagreeable to have his thoughts broken in on by one who has no sympathy with him and his pursuits—and who" and at that point he wisely stops short, for he was ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... the United States persuaded through me that he was really trying to keep Europe at peace and that the responsibility for what was going to happen would be on France. The German is so skilful at intrigue that he seeks even in advance of an expected offensive to lay the foundation for self-justification. ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... and appetites, fear, depraved will, self-justification, pride, envy, de- ceit, hatred, revenge, sin, sickness, ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... her word of regret—regret mingled with self-justification. She thought she had been quite right in speaking to Thekla for allowing such familiarities; how was she to know that the man was an old friend and playmate? He looked like a right profligate good-for-nothing. And to have a servant ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... eagerness which may be best illustrated by the proverb referring to a blind horse. Every one, inclined to that same impetuosity, and want of soberness, can remember the dismay with which hosts of such disregarded checks will recur to the mind when too late, and the poor satisfaction of the self-justification which truly answers that their object was not even comprehended. Henrietta, accustomed but little to heed such indications of dissent from her will, did not once think of her grandmamma's dislike, and Beatrice with her eyes fully ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... South lost because slavery had eaten out the enduring vigour of its resources; the North won because free labour and the rights of man had given it the greater effective power. At last, the theory on which the South stood for self-justification crumbled ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... summing it up in terms at once generous and apt, "she has behaved like the gentlewoman that she is. With all her littlenesses, all her lacks, mama is essentially that." And the sweetest moments of self-justification were those in which her heart really ached a little for "poor mama," moments in which she wondered whether the love that had come to her, in her great sorrow, high among the pine woods, had ever been her mother's to lose. The wonder made ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... expressed by the word to which it is prefixed, on the actor; as LLOSGI, to burn; YMLOSGI, to burn one's self; CYFIAWNAD, justification; YMGYFIAWNAD, self-justification. It also denotes reciprocity of action; as CYDIO, to take hold of; YMGYDIO, to take hold of each other. For the meaning of terms with this prefix, not inserted here, see the words from which they are ...
— A Pocket Dictionary - Welsh-English • William Richards
... her on her guard," she broke forth at length, bent, it would seem, upon self-justification against an invisible accuser. "I saw aversion in Winston's eye the day he came home to find the other here. He would never forgive his slave the presumption of choosing a husband for herself. Did I not tell her so? Yet this has caught her ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... every diary is towards self-justification and complaint; yet, to-day, personally, I have "no complaints." Would it not be wiser, then, as well as more dignified, to let the Dardanelles R.I.P.? The public will not be starved. A Dardanelles library exists—- nothing less—from which three luminous works by Masefield, Nevinson and Callwell ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... are multiplied and my own efforts at self-justification rather a hindrance than a furtherance, therefore Christ the Son of God gave Himself into death for my sins." To believe this is to have ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... button of mine—the devil take it!—a button of mine that was hanging by a single thread suddenly broke off, and hopped and skipped and rattled and rolled until it had reached the feet of his Excellency himself—this amid a profound general silence! THAT was what came of my intended self-justification and plea for mercy! THAT was the only answer that I had to ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... him. The observation had struck home. He realized how poignantly Dick must have endured the loss of Echo and thought of his betrayal by Jack. As he had suffered mentally so Dick must be suffering in the desert. In self-justification he returned ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... remembrance by astonishment and admiration for the feat of speed and endurance. In eagerness to question he inclined to attempt a generous part and frankly offer to heal the breach; but Christian's depression and sad following gaze provoked him to self-justification by recalling the offence of that outrageous utterance against White Fell; and the impulse passed. Then other considerations counselled silence; and afterwards a humour possessed him to wait and see how Christian would find opportunity to proclaim his performance ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... fearfully if his father's cold and precise appraisal of his character and courage had been correct. Suppose he was unable to stand the rigid strains and pressures of a real emergency. Suppose— He tightened his lips in defiant self-justification. What did they expect of a twenty-year-old kid anyway? He was, after all, the youngest and probably the greenest mail pilot in the entire ...
— Rescue Squad • Thomas J. O'Hara
... discovery that was to secure her dowry, but by a private marriage with Frank escape at once into freedom and security. While, though he had first held out to young Hazeldean the inducement of Beatrice's dowry as reason of self-justification in the eyes of the Squire, it was still easier to drop that inducement, which had always rather damped than fired the high spirit and generous heart of the poor Guardsman. And Randal could conscientiously say, that when he had asked the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... Apostles, and was unrebuked by them. They went further back, and in the curse pronounced by Noah upon the unfilial Ham and his posterity, they found warrant for holding the African in perpetual bondage. So the South closed up its ranks, in Church and State, and answered its critics with self-justification, and with counterattack on what it declared to be their unconstitutional, anarchic, ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... innumerable pocketfuls of pill-boxes; and found it very difficult to make either his captors or you believe that he was neither going to burn wheat-ricks, nor poison pheasants, but was simply "sugaring the trees for moths," as a blameless entomologist? And when, in self-justification, he took you to his house in Islington, and showed you the glazed and corked drawers full of delicate insects, which had evidently cost him in the collecting the spare hours of many busy years, and many a pound, too, ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... function and that, deporting myself gravely and decently in silence, taking, if possible, a back seat; and, in consequence of that, people who do not understand me have been heard to describe me as a "stick," as "shy," and by an abundance of the like unflattering terms. So that I am bound almost in self-justification to set down my reasons for this temperance ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... grave-side of this mountain Messalina he recalled the leading events of her turbulent career, as he had heard them celebrated at his several campfires, and perhaps with an unconscious attempt at self-justification repeated that she was a holy terror, and sank his pick into her grave up to the handle. At that moment a raven, which had silently settled upon a branch of the blasted tree above his head, solemnly snapped its beak and uttered its mind about the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... to swerve from the high principles she expressed, or been led away by the disturbing forces of a nature calm only on the surface. Nothing is more baffling than the incomplete revelations of a very complex order of mind, with its many-sided sympathies and its apparent contradictions. The self-justification she puts forward for her errors is sometimes sophistical, but not for that insincere. She is not trying to make us her dupes; she is the dupe herself of her dangerous eloquence. But her moral worth so infinitely outweighed the alloy ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... printing-office the whole day, during ninety degrees of heat, for the purpose of setting an example, and have bribed people to work whom nothing but bribes would induce so to do. I am obliged to say all this in self-justification. No member of the Bible Society would ever have heard a syllable respecting what I have undergone but for the question, 'What has ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... or stiffen his upper lip against the reluctant, protesting business employee. We imaginative people are base enough, heaven knows, but it is only in rare moods of bitter penetration that we pierce down to the baser lusts, the viler shames, the everlasting lying and muddle-headed self-justification ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... seemed obvious that Beatrice was drawing near to her reward, and Mrs. Baxendale, with pardonable error, took this last inquiry about Emily for a piece of conscientiousness, which, once satisfied, Wilfrid would hold on his course to a happy haven. 'She has given him up,' was her self-justification. 'Beatrice now would suffer no less than she ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... passionate repudiation, lightened in her eyes. How dared he—how could he, say that? how so falsely misrepresent her actions, and misinterpret her purposes? Her mind went staggering back over the past, seeking for means of self-justification and defense. She had only meant to benefit him—to amplify and soften his character—to inspire him with more ideal views and aims; and to do this she had—what? Sophie paused, and shuddered. Could it, after all, be true? Had she, forgetful of maidenly modesty ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... a man who lives in an eternal struggle of self-justification,—his reason forever going over and over with its plea before his regretful and never-satisfied heart, which was drawn every hour of the day by some chain of memory towards the faith whose visible administrators he detested with the whole ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... for a change. Mr. Moses ain't there, but he'll be back afore you can reckon him up. You may knock at that door till you 'ammer in the button, and never find a soul in the house, only Aunt M'riar. You try! 'Ammer away!" There was a faux air of self-justification in this, which did not bear analysis. Possibly Micky thought so himself, for he vanished up the Court. He would at least be able to bring a false alarm if any ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... daughter, then added, as if in self-justification: "I knew, of course, that you'd find help if things got too bad." At the same time she noticed how Katrina's hands shook for all they were being held tightly clasped. She understood then that the old folks were worse ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof |
