"Self-reproach" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... smiled, though nothing of her face was visible; he knew that her look was one of diffident, half-blushing pleasure. And then came the sweetness of her accents, timorous, joyful, scarcely to be recognised as the voice which an instant ago had trembled sadly in self-reproach. ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... argued a great deal about the governess scheme. She was quite angry with Phillis, and seemed to suffer a great deal of self-reproach, when the girl spoke of their defective education and lack of accomplishments. Nan had to come to her sister's rescue; but the mother was ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... at hand. The old Emery house, the outward symbol of her married life, was sold, and the big "yard" cut up into building lots long before she was able to sit up. Lydia came frequently, but, acting on the doctor's express command, never brought Ariadne. The outbreaks of self-reproach and embittered grief that were likely to burst upon the widow, even in the midst of one of her quiet, listless days, were not, he said, for a child to see or hear, especially such a sensitive little thing as Ariadne. Those wild bursts of remorse were delirious, he told Lydia, but ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... horseback rides and took morning walks instead, following the shore-paths lazily to shaded coverts dedicated to those happy silences which it takes two to make. Or, they climbed the bluffs and gazed at the impenetrable vast horizon, and thought perhaps of their errand with that pang of self-reproach which, when shared, becomes a subtler form ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... lecture Tory had suffered an occasional moment of self-reproach. However, only within the past twenty-four hours had she talked over the situation frankly and openly with Martha and ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... heart.' He was astonished at his recent conduct, at the malice and envy that had filled his soul. The more he reflected, the stronger became his sorrow and repentance. 'Yes,' he at last exclaimed, with sincere self-reproach, 'God has punished me for my sins; my picture was really a shameful and abominable thing. It was inspired by the wicked hope of injuring a fellow-man, and a brother artist. Hatred and envy guided my pencil; what better feelings could ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... that, to early youth, with heart still untainted by the world, the joys of the Life Everlasting have often so beamed out as to efface all that earth could promise, but he could not be argued out of self-reproach for his own want of sympathy, and spoke mournfully of his cold manner, sternness to small faults, and ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to stretch out a hand to gather for himself the happiness ready to bloom for him, he would be dead! She thought she saw that the man, lonely, sensitive, to a fault, was passing his days in brooding melancholy, in unmerited self-reproach. He had had more than enough of sadness in his life. For an idea, a stupid convention of other folks' manufacture, and not worth respecting, he should have no more. He should not be allowed to take his own path, to push ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... her lips a stifled moan Revealed the torture that her soul had known. Her father noted it, and with a sigh Of self-reproach attempted a reply;— "Dear child, thy love for me hath cost thee much; For young Emanuel,—shrink not from my touch!— Was dear to thee; I knew it, and confess That I, to consummate thy happiness, Had given thee to him with full consent, (Who with Emanuel would not be content?) ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... the Barry sitting-room, and noticed with a feeling that was almost like self-reproach how thin and frail and white the poor young creature looked. Why, she seemed little more than a child! Her great dark eyes were far too big for her wasted face, and ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... hence. And as he looked at her a cold and subtle pang went through him, a curious abominable sensation, mingled with a sort of spiritual pain. He dared not give a name to the one feeling, but the other he easily recognized as self-reproach. He had known it once or ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... justice) was shocked at my silent emotion. No human lip could utter more tender sympathy, more noble self-reproach; but that was no balm to my wound. So I left the house; so I never returned to the law; so all impetus, all motive for exertion, seemed taken from my being; so I went back into books. And so a moping, despondent, worthless mourner might I have been to the end of my days, but that Heaven, in its ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... recollecting the audible throbbings of my heart, and the nervous palpitations which had besieged me; but these symptoms, whether effeminate or not, began to come back tumultuously under the gloomy doubts that succeeded almost before I had uttered this self-reproach. Still I found myself mocked and deluded with false hopes; yet still I renewed my quick walk, and the intensity of my watch for that radiant form that was fated never more to be seen returning from the ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... grave; and the poor youth sank to the ground on his knees, and, hiding his face in his hands, wept bitterly. Suddenly one thought took possession of him out of what had been said. And it was one (as usual) of self-reproach. The Spirit had reproached him with leading a life of selfish misery! Vividly impressed by this idea, he started off hurriedly for his home, crying aloud—"Oh, the wasted time; the lost hours; the precious moments that might have ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... of seeing Lord Lufton watch the artistic motion of Miss Grantly's fingers, and was sitting at a small table as far away from the piano as a long room would permit, when she was suddenly roused from a reverie of self-reproach by a voice close behind her: "Miss Robarts," said the voice, "why have you cut us all?" and Lucy felt that, though she heard the words plainly, nobody else did. Lord Lufton was now speaking to her as he had ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... in the plain her two brothers Castor and Pollux. Her inquiry is a natural one, and her self-reproach naturally suggests her own disgrace as the cause of their not appearing among the other commanders. The two lines in which the poet mentions their death are simple ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... self-reproach and her humility, Diana wrote bitterer things against herself than there was any need. For she, too, was doing her daily work with a lovely truth of aim and simpleness of purpose. With all the joys of life crushed out, she was walking the way which ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... on Mrs. Ogilvie's feelings, gradually but surely, underwent a sort of revulsion. For the first week she was frantic, ill, nervous, full of intense self-reproach. But during the second week, when Sibyl's state of health assumed a new phase, when she ceased to moan in her sleep, and to look troubled, and only lay very still and white, Mrs. Ogilvie took it into her head that ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... brought her to the door, and no doubt she and he had had a quiet, restful time of patient planning; but the not finding Francie soon filled her with great alarm and self-reproach for having let herself be drawn away from the party, when all had stood together on Miss Mohun's lawn. She wanted to start off at once in search of her sister, and was hardly pacified by finding that Gerald was still to come. Then, however, Gerald did come, and alone. He said he had just seen ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he answered, hurrying towards her, and leading her out of the room; leaving poor Caterina to feel all the reaction of shame and self-reproach ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... quickly at her; but the light of momentary excitement had died out of the face, and the expression was now perfectly serene. Several reflections passed rapidly through Mat's mind. He saw clearly that the girl had not a particle of self-reproach; not a doubt of the rectitude or even the nobility of her conduct; she had immolated herself with the same inflexible resolve and unquestioning faith as the sublime murderer of Marat. Then passing ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... man the uncommonplace is for ever unintelligible. What was the good of all that excitement—that agony of self-reproach for little things? None at all, if the object is only to be an ordinary good sort of man—if a decent fulfilment of the round of common duties is the be-all and the end-all of ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... sign I read a ruffled mood. He would dig thus in frozen snow on the coldest winter day, when urged inwardly by painful emotion, whether of nervous excitation, or, sad thoughts of self-reproach. He would dig by the hour, with knit brow and set teeth, nor once lift his head, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... but merely an exhibition of servility and fawning hypocrisy. And so the Northern complaisance toward slavery has in no degree tended to avert the disaster which has overtaken us, but only to breed self-reproach on the one side, and hauteur with ineffable ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... write, and I scorn from my inmost being the sneer with which you will regard the agony that Kennedy suffered from his fall. But to the high and the generous, who have erred and have bewailed their error in secret,—to them I appeal to imagine the anguish of self-reproach, the bitterness of humiliation, which stung him in those few moments after his first dishonour. It is the lofty tower that falls with the heaviest crash; it is the stately soul that suffers the deepest abasement; it is the white ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... Coleman as cherishing an ill-will toward me, and, to tell the truth, have not always been the most courteous in my opinions concerning him. It is a painful thing either to dislike others or to fancy they dislike us, and I have felt both pleasure and self-reproach at finding myself so mistaken with respect to Mr. Coleman. I like to out with a good feeling as soon as it rises, and so I have dropt Coleman a line ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... one time numberless tender things in his mind, which he meant to tell her, but feeling also, while he smarted under the sting of self-reproach (for the indiscretion he had committed), Tai-y give him a rap, he was utterly powerless to open his lips, much though he may have liked to speak, so he kept on sighing and snivelling to himself. With all these things therefore to work upon his feelings, he unwillingly melted ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... sister of his who drew herself up in her nurse's arms with a pretty gesture, like a pheasant's neck in a sort of reproof, as she said "Thank you" to her little self, when she had held out a flower to Mr. Keble, which, for once in his life, he did not notice; and his self-reproach produced the thoughts of thankfulness. One of the gems of the Lyra, "Bereavement," was the thought that came to the mind of the Pastor as he buried the little sister, the only child except the elder girl, of the bailiff at Dr. Moberly's farm. "Fire" embodied ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... "it was himself." Scales, as it were, fell from Bendel's eyes. "Yes, it was he," cried he, "undoubtedly it was he; and fool, madman, that I was, I did not recognise him—I did not, and have betrayed my master!" He then broke out into a torrent of self-reproach; and his distress really excited my compassion. I endeavoured to console him, repeatedly assuring him that I entertained no doubt of his fidelity; and despatched him immediately to the wharf, to discover, if possible, some trace of the extraordinary being. But on that very morning ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... mood changed into one of bitter self-reproach and self-contempt. What miserable folly was this crying for the moon—this picturing of a marriage between the daughter of an ancient and wealthy house—one, too, who was unmistakably proud of her lineage—and a singer in comic opera! Not for nothing had he heard ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... midnight, and, when this did happen, he jumped up by-and-by in shame, to revile himself for an idler and ask his mother wrathfully why she had not tumbled him out of his chair? Tonight Margaret was divided between a desire to let him sleep and a fear of his self-reproach when he awoke; and so, perhaps, the tear ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... lamentable time. Remembrance of the lately bright and safe-looking situation, now suddenly rent asunder and committed to the dubious unknown; anxiety about their own household and the fate of her Son; the Father's just anger, and perhaps some tacit self-reproach that she had favoured a dangerous game by keeping it concealed from her honest-hearted Husband,—lay like crushing burdens on her heart. And if many a thing did smooth itself, and many a thing, which at first was to be feared, did ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... mattered on a night like this!" Then with sudden self-reproach and quick solicitude: "Am I making you walk too far? Wouldn't you like ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... stables, as I generally did when I wanted my saddle-horse, and, in so doing, had doubtless left open the gate to the iron palisade, and probably the window of the study itself. I had been in this careless habit for several years, without ever once having cause for self-reproach. As I before said, there was nothing in my study to tempt a thief; the study was shut out from the body of the house, and the servant sure at nightfall both to close the window and lock the gate; yet now, for the first ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... other without the slightest idea on Mr. Browning's part that he was seeing his old friend Domett for the last time. Some days after when he found that Domett had sailed, he expressed in strong terms to the writer of this sketch the self-reproach he felt at having preferred the conversation of a stranger to ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... her picture of a happy future; but when she awoke, the glad confidence of the previous night had given place to self-reproach and fear. During the breakfast she scarcely spoke or lifted her eyes. Her silent preoccupation was misunderstood by Bancroft; he took it to mean that she didn't care what happened to him; she was selfish, he decided. All the ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... taken the character of a rout at the end, and the dead and wounded lay at long intervals apart. Gaston searched and searched, his heart growing heavier as he did so, for his brother was very dear to him, and he felt a pang of bitter self-reproach at having left him, however inadvertently, to bear the brunt of the battle alone. But search as he would he found nothing either of Raymond or Roger, and a new fear entered ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... evening, in case she should not get back, for she had an errand to do immediately. Then, with a heart now full of anger at Damie, now full of sorrow for him and his awkwardness, again full of vexation on account of his coming back, and then again full of self-reproach that she should be going to meet her only brother in such a way, Barefoot wended her way out into the fields and down the valley ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... have lain down," he said, in tones full of self-reproach. "I might have known that the ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... of self-reproach and returning love overwhelmed him. "I swear to you," he said brokenly, through fast-flowing tears, "you are ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... sick with vexation, and wish I could knock my foolish head against the wall, that bodily pain might make me feel less anguish from self-reproach! To say the truth, I was never more displeased with myself, and I will tell you the cause. You may recollect that I did not mention to you the circumstance of —— having a fortune left to him; nor did ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... in bitter self-reproach, "here's another time I've proved I'm not in your class—not a gentleman. You've raised a point— the real point. Am I what you think me? You think I'm at least a ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... Eloquent was filled with self-reproach, for he had not said one word either of warning or rebuke, and he had been brought up to believe in the value of "the ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... talked about something else. And I knew we all felt mean, eating and drinking Marget's fine things along with those companies of spies, and petting her and complimenting her with the rest, and seeing with self-reproach how foolishly happy she was, and never saying a word to put her on her guard. And, indeed, she was happy, and as proud as a princess, and so grateful to have friends again. And all the time these people were watching with all their eyes and reporting all they ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... we are friends," returns he, hastily, so full of surprise and self-reproach as to be almost ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... the shock, more than the injury which her father had undergone, was ignored, if not neglected. Lanfear had not, indeed, neglected it; but he could not help ignoring it in his happiness, as he remembered afterwards in the self-reproach which he would not let the girl share with him. Nothing, he realized, could have availed if everything had been done which he did not do; but it remained a pang with him that he had so dimly felt his duty to the gentle old man, even while he did it. Gerald lived to witness his ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... save our neighbor from the self-reproach which might be his if he knew we were in such plight through desire to aid his son or himself, replied that we had been sent into the vicinity by General Herkimer, and then explained how we came across Jacob, as well was the ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... confessing that she had let Mrs. Van Burnam into the house prior to the visit of the couple who entered there at midnight. Knowing what an effect this must produce upon Mr. Gryce, utterly unprepared for it as he was, I looked for some burst of anger on his part, or at least some expression of self-reproach. But he only broke a second piece off my little filigree basket, and, totally unconscious of the demolition he was causing, cried out with true ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... dishonesty, however slight, causes self-degradation. It matters not whether the act be successful or not, discovered or concealed; the culprit is no longer the same, but another person; and he is pursued by a secret uneasiness, by self-reproach, or the workings of what we call conscience, which is the inevitable doom ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... First-Level mentality that Verkan Vall wasted no moments on self-reproach or panic. While he was still rolling under his jeep, his mind had been busy with plans to retrieve the situation. Something touched the heel of one boot, and he froze his leg into immobility, at the same time trying to get the big Smith & Wesson free. The shoulder-holster, ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper
... have lost my tongue and my head together. I had expected tears, pale cheeks, a burst of self-reproach, and that I should have to comfort and be very gentle and sympathetic. I had dreaded the role; but here was a new turn of affairs; and, I own it, my self-love was not a little wounded. The play was played out, that was evident. The ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... voice was in itself a charm against ill-humour. A rush of bitter self-reproach told Robert that his dissatisfaction had been the inevitable result of too many blessings on a base nature. He tried to speak; he watched instead, with a desperate, eager gaze, the play of ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... alive by his own will and law; and behold, he had become a devil by that very act. Who can—and who dare, even if he could—withdraw the sacred veil from those bitter agonies of inward shame and self-reproach, made all the more intense by his clear and undoubting knowledge that he was forgiven? What dread of punishment, what blank despair, could have pierced that great heart so deeply as did the thought that the God whom he had hated and defied ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... knew what they were about," Stryker said minutes later. Deliberately he adopted the smug tone best calculated to sting Farrell out of his first self-reproach, and grinned when the navigator bristled defensively. "Some of their enjoinders seem a little stuffy and obvious at times, ...
— Control Group • Roger Dee
... in his stride, full of self-reproach. "Now, ain't that like me! Pluggin' ahead, and never thinking about how played out you are. We'll rest here under ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... them. They were young and in the prime of life when I sent them from me. They have since married again, and are the mothers of families. They frequently send letters to comfort me in my troubles and afflictions, but their kind remembrances serve only to add to my self-reproach for my cruel treatment of them in past years. I banished them from me for lesser offenses than I myself ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... the lap of the gods. Mrs. Conover, who had been shuffling her cards around in ill-suppressed excitement, popped out a trump with a cry of triumph just as Henry's Ace of Spades covered the king. A dreadful scene followed. The Dean was all gallantry, Mrs. Conover all self-reproach, Mrs. Robert Lee-Satterlee all charm, and Henry all exasperation; and when, later in the same hand, his mind torn with the memory of his lost ace, he made a revoke and was quietly brought to account by ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... home, he proceeded to his own room, and feeling unusually drowsy, he threw himself on the bed, and almost instantly dropped asleep. When he awoke, the fumes of the liquor had, in a great degree, evaporated, and he recalled, with considerable self-reproach, the promise he had given, and would gladly have recalled it, if it had been possible. But it was now not far from the appointed hour, and he momentarily expected the arrival of the two doctors. The only thing ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... a twinge of self-reproach. "I am behaving like a fool," she thought, in severe condemnation. "I am losing my own identity; this man is a friend to rely on, an enemy to fear. He will not bow to my whims and caprices. What has come over me? Let me try and ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... pang of self-reproach even to the cold heart of Walpole; a faint blush may have visited his cheek at his recent levity. "The persons of honor and veracity who were present," said he in after years, when he found it necessary to exculpate ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... protested, in the keenest self-reproach. "There isn't a horse or a mule in camp that you could get a mile an hour out of. In fact, I'm thinking there isn't anny horses ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... her father alone on the hilltop did indeed trouble Waitstill. Self-reproach, in the true sense of the word, she did not, could not, feel. Never since the day she was born had she been fathered, and daughterly love was absent; but she suffered when she thought of the fierce, self-willed old man, cutting himself off from all possible friendships, while his ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... loved so little, and were so impatient:—if only we had him back again; if only we had one more opportunity to show him how dear he was; if only we had another chance of proving ourselves worthy. We can hardly forgive ourselves that we were so cold and selfish. Self-reproach, the regret of the unaccepted opportunity, is one of the commonest feelings after bereavement, and it is one of ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... answered, with a sob. "I have not dared go near them. They frighten me. Mother of Heaven, what a night of horror it has been! Oh, that I had taken your advice, Messer Boccacloro!" she exclaimed in a passion of self-reproach. ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... hoped that the passionate outburst of grief and self-reproach would pass, though he himself could find little enough to say. It was all too natural. What was he, he thought, that he should explain away nature, and bid a friendless woman defy a power that has more than once overset the reckoning of the ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... Fairchilds fully realized, with shame at his blind selfishness, the danger and the cruelty of his intimate friendship with this little Mennonite maid. For her it could but end in a heartbreak; for him—"I have been a cad, a despicable cad!" he told himself in bitter self-reproach. "If I had only known! But now it's too late—unless—" In his mind he rapidly went over the simple history of their friendship as they walked along; and, busy with her own thought, Tillie did ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... ushered into the darkened room at the surgical home, Elaine smiled greeting to him, and the smile stabbed him with self-reproach. He had come to wound her. There must be no further delay. He must ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... Howe, in those first sad days, that her cousin was with her, or the reaction from the excitement of anxiety into hopeless grief might have been even more prostrating than it was. All the comfort and tenderness Helen could give her in her helpless self-reproach were hers, though she as well as Gifford never sought to make the sorrow less by evading the truth. But Helen was troubled about her, and said to Dr. Howe, "Lois must come to see me for a while; she does need a change very much. I'm afraid she won't be able to go with me next week, but can't ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... upon May Rockett. She felt for the first time what she had done. Her heart fluttered in an anguish of self-reproach, and her eyes strayed as if seeking help. A minute's hesitation, then, with all the speed she could make, she set off up the avenue towards ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... as impulsively as she had begun. "To me," she meant to have said; then had retreated hastily, before her own sense of something unduly intimate and personal. Wharton stood quietly beside her, saying nothing, but receiving and soothing her self-reproach just as surely as though she had put ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... henceforth all friendly relations between them must cease. She certainly would maintain a severe attitude toward the person who had so grossly insulted her, but would she be altogether pitiless in her anger? All through his dismal feelings of self-reproach, a faint hope of reconciliation kept him from utter despair. As he reviewed the details of the shameful occurrence, he remembered that the expression of her countenance had been one more of sorrow than of anger. The tone of melancholy reproach in which she had uttered the words: "I did not ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... playin', Sah?"—which objection I disclaimed; but soon they all subsided, rather to my regret, and scattered merrily. Afterward I found that some other officer had told them that I considered the affair too noisy, so that I felt a mild self-reproach when one said, "Cunnel, wish you had let we play a little longer, Sah." Still I was not sorry, on the whole; for these sham-fights between companies would in some regiments lead to real ones, and there is a latent jealousy here between the Florida and South Carolina ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... somewhat in appearance; but our search was entirely in vain, while towards evening, as we came out once more where we had a full view of the beautiful bay, I saw something which made me start, and, full of misery and self-reproach, I stopped ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... free. Forthwith he demolished the naraka, and repented of all the evil which he had formerly done. From this time he believed in and honored the Three Precious Ones, and constantly went to a patra tree, repenting under it, with self-reproach, of his errors, and accepting the eight ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... sadness and self-reproach, on the way in which I had neglected my Bible, and it flashed across me that I was actually, in the sight of God, a greater sinner than this blood-stained pirate; for, thought I, he tells me that he never read the Bible and was never brought up to care for it, whereas I was carefully taught ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... have been drink, as each day the State allowed him but one half-bottle of claret. That but for the interference of strangers he might have shot a man, did not interest him. In the outcome of what he regarded merely as an incident, he saw cause neither for congratulation or self-reproach. For his conduct he laid the blame upon the sun, and doubled his ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... he had helped her over the stile and she was returning home through the cornlands, she asked herself with passionate self-reproach why she had yielded to pity? She had felt sorry for Abel, and because she had felt sorry she had allowed him to kiss her. "Only I meant him to do it gently and soberly," she thought, "and he was so rough and fierce that he frightened ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... understands them all and sympathizes with none of them; and describes, with equal indifference, the drunken, brutish delight in his music expressed by the coarse Neapolitan buffoons and the savage gorilla, Caliban, and the abject self-reproach and bitter, poignant remorse exhibited by Antonio and his fellow conspirators; telling Prospero that if he saw them he would pity them, and adding, in his passionless perception of their anguish, "I should, sir, were ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... proceeding with the most austere looks, and pointed language, when observing the shame, and the self-reproach that agitated her mind, he divested himself in great measure of his resentment, ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... had the woman's share of the misery to bear, in the fear and self-reproach and distress which every movement of this kind cost her. The involuntary thrill at seeing her lover, at hearing from him, the conscious struggle which it cost her to throw back his gift, were all noted by her accusing conscience ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... a little chafed at what he thought a childish interruption to themes of graver interest, owned, with self-reproach, that he had forgotten to do so. Should he not write now to order the box to be sent ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... have let grow too strong; it will ever be your master. You must obey. Flee from it and it will follow you; you cannot escape it. Insult it and it will chastise you with burning shame, with stinging self-reproach from day to day." The sternness faded from the beautiful face, the tenderness crept back. He laid his hand upon the young girl's shoulder. "You will marry your lover," he smiled. "With him you will walk the way of sunlight ...
— Passing of the Third Floor Back • Jerome K. Jerome
... on to explain that, if the man had a wife and children, any one who had killed the husband and father would pity them as long as he lived, and could never see them or hear them spoken of without feeling pain, and even some degree of self-reproach; although, so far as the man himself was concerned, it might be that no injustice had been done. After the excitement was over, too, he would begin to make excuses for the man, thinking that perhaps he was poor, and his children were suffering for bread, and it was on their account ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... sure I didn't mean to wake you up," she said, with an apparent lack of self-reproach. "I never can tell whether you are asleep or only kind of drowsin'. There was a boy here just now from old Mis' Cunningham's over on the b'ilin' spring road. They want you to come over quick as convenient. She don't know ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... pang of keen self-reproach. Yes, it had been easy enough for a girl with a pretty face to make him forget his friend. He turned quickly toward the door. But Carrie moved even more rapidly, and by the time he reached it she was ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... ministered? Have the sermons in which our message has been set forth always been the best attempt we could make to reach the ear, subdue the mind and win the hearts of those who waited upon our utterance? Is there any need for self-reproach on our part, or can we answer all these questions with a gladness increasing with each successive reply? The reader will have a rejoinder ready. We do not ask to hear it. It will be enough that he whisper it to his own soul and into the ear of God. It might be of ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... would. As they clasped each other's hands for the final good-bye, Jack seized her passionately and kissed her. Her head fell back from his shoulder; she had fainted. He laid her down upon the grass, and looked upon her in an agony of fear and self-reproach. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... lighted when I passed along the oak walk that was my nearest approach home to Oaklands, and the fact that I had broken my promise to Mr. Winthrop never again to remain out alone after night filled me with alarm and self-reproach. I succeeded in gaining the house unperceived and was in abundant time for dinner, which I feared might ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... demeanour." This painful obligation has been hereditary in my race. I have myself, on a perfectly amateur and unauthorised inspection of Turnberry Point, bent my brows upon the keeper on the question of storm-panes; and felt a keen pang of self-reproach, when we went downstairs again and I found he was making a coffin for his infant child; and then regained my equanimity with the thought that I had done the man a service, and when the proper inspector came, he would be readier ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was with some curiosity mingled with self-reproach that Nuttie, while singing her Benedictus among the tuneful shop-girls, to whom she was bound to set an example, became aware of yesterday's first-class traveller lounging, as far as the rows of chairs would permit, in the aisle, and, as she thought, staring hard at her mother. It was well that ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... before him, astride of the horn of his saddle, a small child,—the identical papoose of my memorable first visit. But the boy was no longer swathed and bandaged, although, for security, his plump little body was engirt by the same sash that encircled his father's own waist. I felt a stirring of self-reproach; I had forgotten all about him! To my suggestion that the exercise might be fatiguing to ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... subjected to had made Bathsheba much more considerate than she had formerly been of the feelings of others, and he trusted that, should she be willing at any time in the future to marry any man at all, that man would be himself. There was a substratum of good feeling in her: her self-reproach for the injury she had thoughtlessly done him might be depended upon now to a much greater extent than before her infatuation and disappointment. It would be possible to approach her by the channel of her good nature, and to suggest ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... seen of the maternal air which characterized her in later years, and perhaps more especially in intercourse with her own sex. Prayer meetings were in vogue among the girls, following the example of their elders; and while taking, no doubt, a leading part in them, she used to suffer much self-reproach about her coldness and inability to be carried away with the same enthusiasm as others. At the same time, nothing was farther from her nature than any sceptical inclination, and she used to pounce with avidity upon any approach to argumentative ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... of his nose, the deep cavities of his temples, and I envied him. He was so reduced that he would probably die very soon. Enviable man! So near extinction—while I had to bear within me a tumult of suffering vitality, doubt, confusion, self-reproach, and an indefinite reluctance to meet the horrid logic of the situation. I could not help muttering: "I feel as if ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... within her, she was aware of a lurking distrust that made her afraid of Max Wyndham. She felt as if he were watching to catch her off her guard, ready at a moment's notice to turn to his own purposes any rash confidence into which she might be betrayed. And she told herself with passionate self-reproach that she had already been guilty of ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... the few years which he might still expect would be his before he should go hence to be here no more. And there, I am assured and duly believe, no unbecoming regrets pursued him; no discontent, as for injustice suffered or expectations unfulfilled; no self-reproach for anything done or anything omitted by himself; no irritation, no peevishness unworthy of his noble nature; but instead, love and hope for his country, when she became the subject of conversation, ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... was waiting in his shore-boat. I listened, minute after minute, on the chance of hearing his hail. A heavy bank of cloud had overcast the moon, and the packet melted from sight in a blur of darkness. Worst of all—worse even than the sting of self-reproach—was the prospect of returning to Stimcoe's and wearing through the night, while out there in the darkness the two men would meet, and all that followed their meeting ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... — N. penitence, contrition, compunction, repentance, remorse; regret &c 833. self-reproach, self-reproof, self-accusation, self-condemnation, self-humiliation; stings of conscience, pangs of conscience, qualms of conscience, prickings of conscience^, twinge of conscience, twitch of conscience, touch of conscience, voice of conscience; compunctious visitings of nature^. acknowledgment, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... passion. If Leam could have been jealous where she did not love, she would have been jealous of her father and Fina. But she was not. On the contrary, it seemed to soften some of the bitterness of her self-reproach, and she was glad that madame's motherless child was not deserted, but had found a substitute for the protection which she had taken from her; for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... gradually regained his health, without regaining the thoughtlessness and selfishness of his previous habits. He was the better for ever for his illness. He had suffered, and he had learned to think: two advantages that he had never known before; and the self-reproach arising from the deplorable event in Wimpole Street, to which he felt himself accessory by all the dangerous intimacy of his unjustifiable theatre, made an impression on his mind which, at the age of six-and-twenty, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... impulse of the moment, he realized his own situation, and that of his victim. He would have given anything at that instant, as he looked down upon the dark waves, to have recalled the deed; but it was too late. Self-reproach and terror ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... wonted firmness and self-control, at times, failed to stay him, and he preferred to shut himself up alone in one of the towers of the castle at Livorno, venting his passionate despair in fits of weeping and in abject cries of self-reproach. ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... of the opportunity he had neglected when it was beyond his reach, but of what avail was the bitterness of his self-reproach when his last moments came? How many lives were sacrificed to his unintelligent hopefulness and indecision! Like him the feeble, the sluggish, and the purposeless too often see no meaning in the happiest occasions, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... of self-reproach swept over him as he retraced the wanderings of his misspent years—misspent as regarded the service of his Creator, however prosperous in the eyes of the world! The past came back like a dream. His innocent ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... autobiographies which have inspired the writing of personal narratives are themselves representative of the different types: Caesar's Commentaries, with his detached impersonal description of his great exploits; the Confessions of St. Augustine, with his intimate self-analysis and intense self-reproach, and the less well-known De Vita Propria Liber by Cardan. This latter is a serious attempt at scientific self-examination. Recently, attention has been directed to the accumulation of autobiographical and biographical materials which are interpreted from the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... "And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord." Two words (in the Hebrew) make the transition from sullen misery to real though shaded peace. No lengthened outpouring, no accumulation of self-reproach; he is too deeply moved for many words, which he knows God does not need. More would have been less. All is contained in that one sob, in which the whole frostwork of these weary months breaks up and rolls away, swept before the strong flood. ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... very lady-like thing of it." Suddenly he flushed. "I shall tear those old things up to-morrow—they've got to go sometime." He was thinking of certain studies at the back of one of his portfolios; they were not ladylike. "Those models!" he muttered, in a tone at once of objurgation and of self-reproach. ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... question, Miss Effingham! You have every right to put it, and the answer, at least, shall add no further cause of self-reproach. Give me, I entreat you, but a minute to collect my thoughts, and I will endeavour to acquit myself of an imperious duty, in a manner more manly and coherent, than I fear has been observed for the last ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... is gone now. I only feel our human weakness, our human need, our human sorrow. Remember, darling, that our very faults, our very mistakes, are the things that may help us to grow higher. Don't sink into a useless self-reproach. 'Turn your sorrow to noble uses.' Use the past to light you to the future. Build on the ruins, dear one. You have Eddy and me to live for, and we love you. God bless you, my ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... croquet mallets in the garden, they seemed at a loss what life had to offer at Stoneborough! Gertrude pronounced that 'she played at it sometimes at Maplewood, where she had nothing better to do,' and then retreated to her own devices. Ethel's heart sank both with dread of the afternoon, and with self-reproach at her spoilt child's discourtesy, whence she knew there would be no rousing her without an incapacitating discussion; and on she wandered in the garden with the guests, receiving instruction where the hoops might be planted, and hearing ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... take notice that I have said nothing of the sort," Briscoe stiffly rejoined. "But I think and I do say that it is a preposterous instance of coxcombry to subject such a woman as Mrs. Royston—because of a generous moment of self-reproach for a cruel and selfish deed—to the imputation of inviting advances from a man who coyly plans evasion and flight—and she scarcely two years ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... had deciphered the epistle, I stood as if rooted to the floor. I felt stunned—my last hope was gone; presently a feeling arose in my mind—a feeling of self-reproach. Whom had I to blame but myself for the departure of the Armenian? Would he have ever thought of attacking the Persians had I not put the idea into his head? he had told me in his epistle that he was indebted to me for the idea. But for that, he might at the present ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... then got into a taxi and drove to see Edith. When he was in this peculiar condition of mind—the odd mixture of self-reproach, satisfaction, amusement and boredom that he felt now —he always went to see Edith, throwing himself into the little affairs of her life as if he had nothing else on his mind. He was a little anxious about Edith. It seemed to him that since Aylmer ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... her hand on his shoulder, her voice full of self-reproach, 'I ought not to have told you. I am so sorry! Do forgive me, dear, kind Jack. I wish I could do something for you, Jack—I do wish I could. But for Goody's nursing and care and all your kindness, ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... But she had not taken herself in hand, religiously; to take one's self in hand morally, or on grounds of expediency, never amounts to much; and such taking in hand was all that Charlotte had as yet attempted. In a little passion of self-reproach and mortification, she occasionally lopped off ugly shoots; but the root was still vigorous and lusty, and only grew the better for its petty pruning. Richard looked very much displeased at his brother's ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... the boy. Fresh from that death-bed, the evils his conscience had protested against from the first appeared to him frightfully heinous, and his anguish of self-reproach was such, that Patrick listened in the greatest anxiety lest he should hear of some deadly stain on his young kinsman's scutcheon; but when the tale was told, and he had demanded 'Is that all?' and found that no further ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... all. The Doctor had done his best to show that her going out had no connection with any of the youths, and he thought Sir Philip would believe it on quieter reflection. He had remembered too, signs of self-reproach mixed with his son's grief for his wife, and his extreme relief at the plan for going abroad, recollecting likewise that Charles had strongly disliked poor Peregrine, and had much resented the liking which young Madam had shown for ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... from this point of view, that Lord Byron lacked it. And it appears singular that his great mind should not have made him see, in this very craving after self-examination, caused by his inclination for truth; and in that extraordinary susceptibility of conscience which lead to self-reproach for egotism, only because he felt pleasure in exercising beneficence and that it did not contain enough sacrifice; it is singular, I say, that this same spirit of equity did not make him see how he shone in the only two faculties that can have no alloy of egotism, and which were very evidently ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... some respect or other, the physical or moral laws of human nature have been overlooked or broken. The existence of an unhealthy locality, the recurrence of an epidemic, will be to us a subject of public shame and self-reproach. Men of science will no longer go up and down entreating mankind in vain to make use of their discoveries; the sanitary reformer will be no longer like Wisdom crying in the streets and no man regarding her; and in ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... penetrate to the inmost fibers of his being, as if he felt that all the responsibility of it was his. And he went on to reason on the cause of the evil, analyzing himself, reverting to his old habit of bitter and unavailing self-reproach. He would have felt so brave, so glorious had victory remained with them! And now, in defeat, weak and nervous as a woman, he once again gave way to one of those overwhelming fits of despair in which ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... we speak of the young husband's anguish, and it may be self-reproach, in that awful hour. He speaks not himself of this matter in his journal, save in briefest words; nor dare we intrude upon such matters as lie between a man and his God. But this we may say, that as Jacob, ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... had long felt herself to be, her former state of mind was positive happiness compared to what she now endured. Envy, regret, self-reproach, and resentment, all struggled in the breast of the self-devoted beauty, while the paper dropped from her hand, and she cast a fearful glance around, as if to ascertain the reality of her fate. The dreadful certainty smote her with a sense of wretchedness ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... he tells her, haltingly, slowly, of Mr. Stephens' suggestion, but carefully as he chooses his words he feels her shrinking, wincing at the images they conjure up; and he tells himself with impatient self-reproach that he has been too quick, too abrupt—that he ought to have allowed the notion to sink into her mind slowly, that he should have made Daisy, or even his father, be ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... power to prevent your being otherwise. In making me the offer, you must have satisfied the delicacy of your feelings with regard to my family, and may take possession of Longbourn estate whenever it falls, without any self-reproach. This matter may be considered, therefore, as finally settled." And rising as she thus spoke, she would have quitted the room had not Mr. Collins ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... but seldom), the first stage was already reached in sleep, and the second was more quickly obtained. During the act it was only occasionally that any thoughts of men or of coitus were present, the attention being fixed on the coming climax. The psychic state afterwards was usually one of self-reproach. (O. Adler, Die Mangelhafte Geschlechtsempfindung des Weibes, 1904, pp. 26-29.) The phenomena in this case may be regarded as fairly typical, but there are many individual variations; mucus emissions and vaginal contractions ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... calculated to allay his self-reproach was the thought that Marthy and Randy would have to pass the night alone. In spite of their bickerings, when night came Marthy was wont to dismiss her fears of the country, and rest her head upon Sam's strong ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... tasks so unprofitable to himself, while his days were often passed in trouble and in prison, he breathes a self-reproach in one of these profound reflections of melancholy which so often startle the man of study, who truly discovers that life is too limited to acquire real knowledge, with the ambition of dispensing it ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... treating it as his own possession, to be displayed or hidden as he chooses, for his own enjoyment, his own self- glorification. Well for such a man if a day comes to him in which he will look back with shame and self-reproach, not merely on every scandal which he may have caused by breaking the moral and social laws of humanity, by neglecting to restrain his appetites, pay his bills, and keep his engagements; but also on every conceited word and look, every gaucherie and rudeness, every self-indulgent moroseness ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... and obeyed. So it went on all the morning, Ethel's eagerness checked by Miss Winter's dry manner, producing pettishness, till Ethel, in a state between self-reproach and a sense of injustice, went up to prepare for dinner, and to visit ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... can read there is no excuse for ignorance in a place where there are books. There are lots of people who have set to work and taught themselves when they have been too poor to go to school, and have done—oh, marvels!" responded Mrs. Carroll, relieving herself of any feeling of self-reproach. Because a few rare geniuses had done so, by facing difficulties and self-sacrifices such as she could not even imagine, she felt there was nothing to prevent every ordinary child from pursuing the ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... secret to themselves, and could so cunningly handle it, that notwithstanding the gods did reveal it by manifest signs and tokens from above, and by predictions of sacrifices, yet all this would not be believed."—/if not the face of men./ This means, probably, the shame and self-reproach with which Romans must now look each other in the face under the consciousness of having fallen away from the republican spirit of their forefathers. The change in the construction of the sentence gives ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... ready to bear witness. If God has seemed to bereave you, it is because he sees it is best; meanwhile, take comfort in this: you have been tenderer than many mothers, and more patient than many sisters, to this dear little brother who loved you so well, so do not let self-reproach add to your sorrow." ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... Still, on my honour, I never hip-hurraed to a toast that I did not feel: there goes broken boots to one of the boys, or, worse again, the cost of a cotton dress for one of the sisters. Whenever I took a sherry-cobbler I thought of suicide after it. Self-indulgence and self-reproach got linked in my nature so inseparably, it was hopeless to summon one without the other, till at last I grew to believe it was very heroic in me to deny myself nothing, seeing how sorry I should be for it afterwards. But come, old fellow, don't lose your evening; we'll have time enough to talk ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... number of times that you go with me on the trip. But you've always refused to be separated from your precious Cynthia, and I couldn't think of inflicting two youngsters on her." Joyce remembered now, with a good deal of self-reproach, how many times she had begged off from accompanying her father. It had not seemed very interesting then, and, as he had said, she did not want to leave Cynthia, even for two or three days. She realized now that she had not only been ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... English verse indicate that command of language which he afterwards attained. The two following years he accuses himself of wasting in idleness at home; but we must doubt whether he had much occasion for self-reproach, when we learn that Hesiod, Anacreon, the Latin works of Petrarch, and "a great many other books not commonly known in the Universities," were ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... matter a thought. It was right in her eyes that he should be told everything. The mention of his name caused her to think that it would be well to tell him of her quarrel with William and of her regret and self-reproach. He was wise and kind, and would know what was right and best to do. Perhaps he might even see some way by which the engagement could be broken without wrong or hurt to William's feelings. A measure of peace came with the hope, and she was presently ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... subdued and half-scared Jaffery who greeted Barbara and Susan at our front door. The jollity had gone out of him. He was nothing but a vast hulk filled with self-reproach. It was his fault, his very grievous and careless fault for having postponed the destruction of the papers, and for having left them loose and unsecured in his rooms. He all but beat his breast. If Doria had died of the shock his would be the blame. He saluted Barbara ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... see him if he wishes it. He shall not think that I am coerced or influenced. It is due to myself, to you, my father, that he leaves this country knowing how thorough is my self-reproach for the past, and my wish that his absence may be eternal. I believe that I do really wish it, but see how my poor frame is shaken! I must have more strength or my heart will be unstable like-wise." Florence held up her clasped ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... I; "but it is the recollection of my own feelings, when, while waiting for Lawless's report last night, I believed I should be forced to meet this Wilford—it is the misery, the self-reproach, the bitter penitence of that moment, when, for the first time, I was able to reflect on the fearful situation in which by my own rashness I had placed myself, a situation in which crime seemed forced upon me, and it appeared ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... asking, as lovers love best to do, the things they know best already. 'O Richard! O Richard!' was all she could say, poor fond wretch; however, we go not by the sense of a bride's language, but by the passion that breaks it up. Every agony of self-reproach, of fear of him, of mistrust, of lurking fate, lay in those sobbed words, 'O ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... his companion. Sensible, however, of the impropriety of his silence, he turned to speak to her; and observing that, although she wore her mask, there was something like disappointment and dejection in her manner, he was moved by self-reproach for his own coldness, and hastened to address her in the ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... have you overheard?" I asked, feeling very small already. My self-reproach was aroused even before I quailed under the ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... meanness she could lapse into the mean, and toward Letty herself had so lapsed. That accident she must guard against. The issues were so big that whatever happened, she couldn't afford to reproach herself. Self-reproach would not only magnify defeat but poison success, since, if she availed herself of her advantages, no success would ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... firelight revealed it, showed plainly that, though his lips moved not, his mind was still active with pleasant thoughts of the one whose name he had mentioned, and whom he so fondly loved. At last a more sober look came to his countenance,—a look of regret, of self-reproach, the look of a man who remembers something he should not ...
— Holiday Tales - Christmas in the Adirondacks • W. H. H. Murray
... however, the clouds favour him not, the tiller is absolved from all blame. He sayeth unto himself, "What others do, I have done. If, notwithstanding this, I meet with failure, no blame can attach to me." Thinking so, he containeth himself and never indulgeth in self-reproach. O Bharata, no one should despair saying, "Oh, I am acting, yet success is not mine!" For there are two other causes, besides exertion, towards success. Whether there be success or failure, there should be no despair, for success in acts dependeth upon the union of many circumstances. If ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... daughter. But it was no capricious favouritism, I am sure. I believe Colonel Buller to have been one of those people whose hearts have depths of tenderness that are never sounded. The Bush House catastrophe had long ago been swept into the lumber-room of Aunt Theresa's memory, but the tender self-reproach of Matilda's father was still to be seen in all his care and ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... tears, and leaned her head against the cushioned carriage, feeling quite overcome by her self-reproach and consciousness. Their mother had died when Mollie was born, and they had been left to fight ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to my direction, for he had not dreamed of anything unusual in my thoughts or plans. He was now entirely alone. But I knew that I was helpless against the phantom which was leading me forth; it also contained a stimulant which was able to bear me safely through seasons of self-reproach and depression. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... necessary to submit, or incur the only penalty which, to such a mind, would be more severe, self-reproach: she had promised to be governed by Mrs Delvile, she had nothing, therefore, to ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... monotony she was wearying. Hope, now, and excited wonder were giving the little one new life. Dave Patton cringed within at the thought of the awakening, the disillusionment, the desolation of sorrow that would come to the baby heart with the dawn of Christmas. He was overwhelmed with self-reproach, because he had not realized all this in time to make provision, before the deep snow had blocked the trail to the Settlement. Now, ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... genius which ten years ago had made the columns of THE FIDDLETOWN AVALANCHE at once fascinating and instructive. It was not until he saw the heightening color, and heard the quick breathing, of his eager listener, that he felt a pang of self-reproach. "God help her and forgive me!" he muttered between his clinched teeth; "but how can I tell ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... glanced over them hurriedly, and gave directions for the answers of some of them to his impatient clerk, who had been wondering at his employer's strange behaviour this morning. Among the letters was one which made his cheek burn with self-reproach. It was an invitation to a club dinner to be given that evening in honour of ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... is apt to interfere with the circulation of the vital ether of happiness in the young, which is damaging to the complexion of the soul. It is bitter, when you are middle-aged and unsuccessful, to go to sleep in self-reproach and awake unexonerated. It is likely to cause fermentation in the sweetest nature; it is certain to breed gray hairs and a premature longing for death. It is pitiful, if you are the home-keeping mother of an impoverished family, to drop in your traces helpless at night, and awake unstrengthened ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... fevered temples, the deep breathings of the Indians, and the motion of the stars creeping over the vista opened to the skies from the little glade, a prey to despair, made so much more poignant by disappointment and self-reproach. Why had he not taken advantage of his temporary release from the cords, to attempt escape by open flight, when the drunkenness of the old Piankeshaw would have increased the chances of success? He had lost ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... marriage would ensure his future materially and socially, and up to a certain point render him independent of malevolent criticism. For already Ingres was fiercely attacked by Parisian authorities on art: he had become important enough to be a target. After cruellest heart-searching and prolonged self-reproach, il gran riffiuto was made, youthful passion, worldly advantages—and plighted faith—were cast to the winds. Henceforth he would live for his palette only, defying poverty, detraction and fiercely antagonistic opinion; if failing in allegiance ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... of the face of William Douglas as he listened to his sister's prattle, like the vapours from the surface of a hill tarn when the sun rises in his strength. He even thought with some self-reproach of his treatment of Malise and of his uncle the Abbot. But a glance at the ring on his finger, and the thought of what might have been his good fortune at that moment but for their interference, again hardened his resolution ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... every-day society in the exclusive cultivation of such as fit him for smelting its ponderous ingots. With that merciful blindness which alone prevents all our lives from becoming a horror of nerveless self-reproach, his parents were equally unaware of their share in the harm done him when they ascribed to a delicate organization the fact that, at an age when love runs riot in all healthy blood, he could not see a Balmoral ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... country beyond the Missouri forests, I found little in the surroundings to occupy my mind; and so far as my communings with myself were concerned, they offered little satisfaction. A sort of shuddering self-reproach overcame me. I wondered whether or not I was less coarse, less a thing polygamous than these crowding Mormons hurrying out to their sodden temples in the West, because now (since I have volunteered in these pages to tell the truth regarding one man's heart), I must admit that in ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... cutting at a bloom on a vine that grew about the tree. He was talking. Guinea's face was turned upward and her hands were clasped behind her head. I could look down into her eyes, but she did not see me, and I felt a sense of self-reproach at thus watching her, listening for her to speak, and I thought to get up, but my legs refused to move, and I sat there, looking down into her eyes. Her face was pale and her lips, which had seemed to me in bloom with the rich juice of life, ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... April 29th.—Off Sardinia.—So much for my chronicle; but I write it with a certain feeling of repugnance and self-reproach. It was very well on the occasion of my first voyage, when I wished to share with you whatever charm the novelty of the scenes through which I was passing might supply to mitigate the pain of our ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... these wretched doubts and questionings and complaints. I have been ill, seriously ill, and there is nothing to account for my illness save the misery of this apparently hopeless state of things existing between us. You have made me weep bitter tears of alternate self-reproach and indignation, and finally of complete miserable bewilderment as to this unhappy condition of affairs. Believe me, tears like these are not good to mingle with love, they are too bitter, too scorching, they blister love's wings ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... street before he became fully conscious that, among the confused, strangled cries of pain within him, that which was loudest and most imploring was a wailing self-reproach. It was a self-reproach with a strain of pleading in it, akin to that with which a mother blames herself for the failings of her son, seizing on any one else's wrong to palliate the guilt of the accused. He had injured Diane ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... preparations she could, had re-entered the kitchen. The first thing that drew her attention was the sleeping figure of the sergeant in the chair. She was filled with self-reproach. Why had she forgotten all about this wounded, tired-out man? Why did she always seem to be holding him at arm's-length when there was, surely, no earthly reason why she should do so? His manner ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... pathetic piety, worthy to be remembered by the side of Agar's wise prayer against the almost equal temptations of poverty and riches. At the birth of his son, he had been reflecting with sorrowful anxiety, not unmingled with self-reproach, on his own many disqualifications for conducting the education of ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... good, a sense of the beautiful always awakens within us; and this became manifest in Mary Fuller. For the first time the squalid misery of her home became a subject of self-reproach, and with a thoughtful cloud upon her brow, she set herself patiently to work drawing out all the scant elements of comfort that the place afforded. Out of this grew a longing for the presence of her father, that he too might enjoy the ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... of such a character to one's own poor standard? I trust that the influence of this long intellectual and spiritual companionship never absolutely leaves one who has lived in it. It may come to him in the form of self-reproach that he falls so far short of the superior being who has been so long the object of his contemplation. But it also carries him at times into the other's personality, so that he finds himself thinking thoughts that are not his own, using phrases which he has unconsciously ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and grief I should have been saved had I attended to the precepts and warnings of my kind parent—how much of bitter self-reproach. And I must warn my young friends, that although the adventures I went through may be found very interesting to read about, they would discover the reality to be very full of pain and wretchedness were they subjected to it; and yet I may tell them ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... herself to approach Marjorie and humbly sue for pardon. The weight of her own troubled conscience prevented her from yielding, and thus she kept her sorrow locked in her aching heart and waited dejectedly for the day when she must leave the Deans' pleasant home, taking with her nothing but bitter self-reproach for ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester |
