"Remorse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of my life so that I might escape the present agony. I believe it was only then that I thought clearly about the penalty of my crime. I saw myself already being accused and threatened with dire punishment. From this moment fear complicated my feeling of remorse. I felt my hair stand on end. A few minutes later I saw three or four human shapes spying at me from the terrace, where they seemed to be waiting in ambush; I withdrew; the shapes vanished into the air; ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... pen toward Eaton, looking steadily at him. In a strong man the human eye is a sword among weapons. Eaton quailed. The fingers of the unhappy wretch went out mechanically for the pen. He was sweating terror and remorse, but the essential weakness of the man could not stand out unbacked against the masterful force of this man's imperious will. He wrote his name in the places directed, and flung down the pen like ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... become the sweetheart of the woman, the friend of the husband, the spoilt child of the mother. Never had he enjoyed such a capital time. His position in the family struck him as quite natural. He was on the most friendly terms with Camille, in regard to whom he felt neither anger nor remorse. He was so sure of being prudent and calm that he did not even keep watch on his gestures and speech. The egotism he displayed in the enjoyment of his good fortune, shielded him from any fault. All that kept ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... soul is drown'd and dead, Black, heavy thoughts come thronging o'er me; Remembrance then unfolds, with finger slow and dread, Her long and doomful scroll before me. Then reading those dark lines, with shame, remorse, and fear, I curse and tremble as I trace them, Though bitter be my cry, though bitter be my tear, Those lines—I never ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... of Lepol and Dufour. There was much embracing of Les Anciens Aigles of the Old Guard—much mention of "great days, and souvenirs dear to his heart," of the "scars of his brave soldiers;" which, to serve his views, he will re-open without remorse, like the vampire of Greece. The populace were tranquil, as I had remarked them on the bridge. Inspirited by my still unsatisfied curiosity, I rejoined my escort, and proceeded to the gardens, where not more than thirty persons were collected under the windows. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 566, September 15, 1832 • Various
... that infamous decree set aside," he said grimly. "It was a matter of duty and of conscience, and I did it without remorse. . . . They were on what they supposed to be a wedding trip. But I had warned her." He shrugged his massive shoulders. "If they were not over-particular they were probably happy. Then he broke his neck hunting—before you ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... the Snimmy was standing before her, overcome by remorse. He was holding his shoe in his hand in the most gentlemanly manner, and Sara forgave him at once when she saw how sorry and ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... Beast-of-burden drudgeries Could not earn him what was his: He who heard the world applaud Glories seized by force and fraud, He must break,—he must take!— Both for hate and hunger's sake. He must seize by fraud and force; He must strike, without remorse! Seize he might; but never keep. Strike, his once!—Behold him here. (Human life we buy so cheap, Who should know we held ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... they breed remorse,' and 'Time wears all his locks before' (or, as the Fourth-form boy translated it in pentameter, "Tempus habet nullat posteriori comas"). The fault was mine for wasting an invaluable hour among the 'shy traffickers' of Salcombe. By the time we worked down to the bar the tide had been ebbing for ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... him. It was he who had induced the patient woman to follow him on the long journey. They all knew this was now the matter of his thoughts. His ragged figure and down-drooped, miserable face were dignified with the tragedy of a useless remorse. As Lucy passed him he raised his eyes, but said nothing. Then, as the others drew together round the circle of tin cups and plates, a groan came suddenly from the tent. He leaped up, made a gesture of repelling ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... overmastering desire for sympathy had passed, words cannot express her regret that she had spoken. For years and years afterwards it would suddenly come upon her, "I told him and he despised me," and she would beat her foot on the floor with all her might, in a useless transport of remorse. ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... mought kinder git over yer hate fer me." He had been talking with low tenderness, half to himself, and with his face to the river, and he did not see the girl's tears falling to the porch. Her sorrow gave way in a great sob now, and he turned with sharp remorse, and ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... convince us that God is a Moral Governor. The distinction between brutes and men is, that man has a sense of the distinction between right and wrong. If we find a tribe of savages, or individuals who indulge their appetites without rule, and who do wrong without any apparent remorse or shame, we designate them brutes. Even those who in words deny any difference between right and wrong, do in fact admit its existence, by their attempts to justify that opinion. Though weaker, or less regarded in some than in others, every man is conscious of a faculty in ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... have mercy upon me! But do you look to it, man, that you get something for yourself out of it, besides the remorse that shall ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... exercised no discrimination in this regard. You could take it or leave it. Unless you had just lost some one near and dear to you, or otherwise tasted the dregs of sorrow or remorse, you couldn't ordinarily stay within a few yards of William and grieve. Not that he had not suffered, young as he was. Not that he could not and did not grieve with those he knew were in sorrow or distress; you are not to think ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... contumacy to my father." If the anecdote illustrates the touch of superstition in Johnson's mind, it reveals too that sacred depth of tenderness which ennobled his character. No repentance can ever wipe out the past or make it be as though it had not been; but the remorse of a fine character may be transmuted into a permanent source of nobler views ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... loved my wife and in a way, her two girls. But, except for them, I have cheated, ensnared, robbed and killed without pity or remorse." ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... fancy in such thoughts. Writing in her old age she queries: "Would he, ... with his incomparable ambition and will, ever have been able to adapt himself to the compact edifice of the German empire? Assuredly it must always have seemed to him like a prison!" To a woman wracked by remorse it may have been comforting to believe that when the catastrophe occurred the work of the man she once had loved was really completed. Doubtless indeed Lassalle himself had begun to realize, short as was the period from the foundation ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... her, but he felt no remorse—she had jeopardized his liberty, his standing among men. A cold horror caught him when he thought of the calf turned loose on the range, his brand on its ribs. He rushed in a panic from the kitchen, ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... mists. It lay, a looming terror, forgotten of heaven and unfriendly to man (as one might readily imagine), haunted for ever with wailing airs and rumours, ghosts calling in the deeps of dusk and melancholy, legends of horror and remorse. ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... scenery, nor the scenery apart from the acting, nor the three apart from the poetry. Poetry, music, and art combine with the actor to interpret truths of life which transcend philosophic definition. Thus in the first act of "Parsifal," innocence born of ignorance, remorse born of the experience of temptation and sin, and reverence bred in an atmosphere not innocent yet free from the experience of great temptation, mingle in a drama which elevates all hearts, because in some one of these three phases it touches every heart. And ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... tearful, and oppressed with dark and terrible forewarnings—the accuser was more happy than the judge. The last thoughts that floated before the young mind of Angelo Villani, ere wrapped in sleep, were bright and sanguine. He felt no honourable remorse that he had entrapped the confidence of another—he felt only that his scheme had prospered, that his mission had been fulfilled. The grateful words of Rienzi rang in his ear, and hopes of fortune and power, beneath the sway ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Violin, and turned it over and over, apparently lost to all about him, when suddenly his keen eye rested upon a damage it had received, which was hidden by new varnish. His heart sank within him; he was overcome by this piece of vandalism. In mingled words of passion and remorse he gave vent to his feelings. He placed it in its case, remarking sadly that it had no ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... overwhelmed by remorse, she confessed to a horrible crime. She had killed her husband, as Fualdes was murdered, by bleeding him; she had salted the body and packed it in pieces into old casks, exactly as if it have been pork; and for a long time she had taken a piece every morning and thrown it into the ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... much foreboding of all these possibilities ever since they left Sloane street, his only gleam of hope being a consciousness that this time at least there could be no doubt of Frank Lavender's absolute sincerity, of his remorse, and his almost morbid craving to make reparation if that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... introduced to decorate the morality of a newspaper essay, or to furnish petty topics of harangue from the windows of that state-house? I trust it is neither too presumptuous nor too late to ask. Can you put the dearest interest of society at risk without guilt and without remorse. ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... may think it the misfortune I now lie under makes me make this application to you; but I do assure your majesty, it is the remorse I now have in me of the wrong I have done you in several things, and now in taking up arms against you. For my taking up arms, it was never in my thought since the king died: the Prince and Princess of Orange will be witness for me of the assurance I gave them, that I would never ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... humanity, or true genius. Nor can I help thinking, that we may discern the traces of the influence exerted by religious faith in the spirit of the poetry of the age of Elizabeth, in the means of exciting terror and pity, in the delineation of the passions of grief, remorse, love, sympathy, the sense of shame, in the fond desires, the longings after immortality, in the heaven of hope, and the abyss of despair it ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... to make these improvements, and in some manner or other he had let the time slip by: now, the power was wrested from him. It is ever so. Golden opportunities come into our hands, and we look at them complacently, and—do not use them. Bitter regrets, sometimes remorse, take their places when they have flitted away for ever; but neither the regret nor the remorse can ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... while he could hear the voice of conscience rating him. He would have preferred to play now, but then he remembered the quantity of spirit he had consumed. He must take no chances. When he played Lablache he must be sober. The delay of one night, however, he knew would bring him agonies of remorse, therefore he would settle everything now so that in the throes of conscience he could not refuse to play. He feared delay. He feared the vacillation which the solitary hours of the night might bring to him. He leant forward ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... opened her eyes she saw the big stars above her and felt a sinewy arm beneath her head. Compton was fanning her with his hat and calling upon her to speak, his voice agonized with fear and remorse. ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... who, now his feelings had found vent, had composed himself, so as to meet his wily adversary with tolerable fortitude: "Sir Christian, stop! There are two classes of human kind your sect deceive without regret—betray without compunction—and destroy, body and soul, without remorse—women and Jews. It is nought, sir, nought—mere pastime—women's hearts and reputations, and old men's grey hairs! Alas! alas! and is such the religion of England!" The old man bent his head, and moaned heavily; then, after a little space of time, raised himself, ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... taken ill, and had to go abroad. He said I was breaking his heart by holding out against him so long at such close quarters; he could never have believed it of woman. I might play that game once too often, he said. He came home merely to die. His death caused a terrible remorse in me for my cruelty—though I hope he died of consumption and not of me entirely. I went down to Sandbourne to his funeral, and was his only mourner. He left me a little money—because I broke his heart, I suppose. That's how men are—so ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... seminaries which were under the inspection and government of the ecclesiastical order" (Ibid). The wealth of the Church grew apace. "The arts of a rapacious priesthood were practised upon the ignorant devotion of the simple; and even the remorse of the wicked was made an instrument of increasing the ecclesiastical treasure. For an opinion was propagated with industry among the people, that the remission of their sins was to be purchased by their liberalities to the churches and monks" (p. 146). "The monastic orders, in ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... uninhabited craft; a thing appointed to desolation, and therefore fit roosting-place for their homeless selves. And heaved and heaved, still unrestingly heaved the black sea, as if its vast tides were a conscience; and the great mundane soul were in anguish and remorse for the long sin and ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... de Vere, There stands a specter in your hall; The guilt of blood is at your door; You changed a wholesome heart to gall. You held your course without remorse, To make him trust his modest worth, And, last, you fixed a vacant stare, And slew him ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... deeply repentant for allowing Jim to escape from the innocent, inoffending Miss Watson. He became consumed with horror and remorse to hear Jim making plans for stealing his wife and children, if their masters wouldn't sell them. His conscience kept stirring him up hotter than ever when he heard Jim talking to himself about the joys of freedom. After ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... solid new iron door, is set apart for the reception of the priceless M.S.S. of the society. The oak flooring of the passages to the cells exhibit many initials, telling a tale of more than one guilty life—of remorse—let us ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... murther my selfe before you wyth this blade and knife in present hand." The king burning with amorous heate, beholding this pitifull spectacle, and consideringe the inuincible constancie and chastitie of the Countesse, vanquished by remorse of conscience, ioyned with like pitie, taking her by the hand, said: "Rise vp Lady, and liue from henceforth assured: for I will not ne yet pretende all the dayes of my life, to commit any thing in you against your ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... a Prince soone wonne with mouing words: By this account then, Margaret may winne him, For she's a woman to be pittied much: Her sighes will make a batt'ry in his brest, Her teares will pierce into a Marble heart: The Tyger will be milde, whiles she doth mourne; And Nero will be tainted with remorse, To heare and see her plaints, her Brinish Teares. I, but shee's come to begge, Warwicke to giue: Shee on his left side, crauing ayde for Henrie; He on his right, asking a wife for Edward. Shee Weepes, and sayes, her Henry is depos'd: He Smiles, and sayes, his Edward ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... sakes he had so ardently longed to increase his fortune—it was our interest that had lent such brightness to his hopes, and that imparted such bitterness to his present distress. He now tormented himself with remorse at having neglected my mother's advice; which would at least have saved him from the additional burden of debt—he vainly reproached himself for having brought her from the dignity, the ease, the luxury of her ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... that night for royalty! Filled with remorse for having signed the fatal decree, and knowing not how to retrace his steps or to retrieve the effects of his rash act, the king passed the hours in agony. With a heavy heart and a throbbing brow, he paced the length of his royal bedchamber, ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones
... got his from the common laboring man that works with his hands and tools. How's he to get some of the remorse fund back into ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... melted with aesthetic emotion before a picture of the Woman taken in Adultery or the Woman that was a Sinner, has never once attempted to save an actual woman of the same kind in his own city, and would be utterly at a loss if such a one, in an hour of remorse, were to throw herself on his pity and protection. There is a great difference between a sinner in a book or a picture and a sinner in the flesh. Multitudes in their hearts believe that all the remarkable and interesting people lived long ago or that, at any rate, if any are ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... Mahomed Akber to visit us. He told us that Mahomed Akber had begun to see the impolicy of having murdered the Envoy, which fact he had just avowed to him, shedding many tears, either of pretended remorse or of real vexation at having committed himself. On several occasions Mahomed Akber personally, and by deputy, besought Skinner and myself to give him advice as to how he was to extricate himself ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... head and drooping eyelids. None, save himself, knew how bitter were the feelings within him, or the remorse that was his portion for having behaved unkindly to his brother within the last few hours of life. He had rebelled at his state of debt becoming known to Dr. Ashton; he had feared to lose Anne: it seemed to him now, that he would live under the ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... but fear'd, Mocking at right, Misrule appear'd. With eyeballs glaring fiery red, Enough to strike beholders dead, Gnashing his teeth, and in a flood Pouring corruption forth and blood From his chafed jaws; without remorse Whipping and spurring on his horse, 1770 Whose sides, in their own blood embay'd, E'en to the bone were open laid, Came Tyranny, disdaining awe, And trampling over Sense and Law; One thing, and only one, he knew, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... give thee to help him to escape. Affect to haggle long, and speak much of the difficulties and dangers of the deed. At length agree to put him on my fast camel this night at moon-rise, if thou art left as his guard and we are wrapt in slumber. Play thy part well, and show thy remorse at cheating thy master—even for a lakh[35] of rupees—yea, and show fear of what will happen to thee, and pretend distrust of him. At length succumb again, and as the moon just shows above the mountains untie his bonds ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... atonement? And with the thought of reparation, and possible forgiveness and reconcilement, his old love for Isy rushed in like a flood, grown infinitely nobler, and was uplifted at last into a genuine self-abandoning devotion. But until this final change arrived, his occasional paroxysms of remorse touched almost on madness, and for some time it seemed doubtful whether his mind must not retain a permanent tinge of insanity. He conceived a huge disgust of his office and all its requirements; and ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... emotions the Pearl had never known, and they included remorse and fear. "I ain't finished yet," the gesture with which she imposed his silence held her accustomed languor. "I got to say that the man—that's you—that fought all through the Boer war was no shirker, ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... breaking so rudely with its intuitions, seems to have felt some remorse. In place of a theory of association in which, after reflection, it no longer believes, it asks for a "Critical examination of Pestalozzi's system of instruction and education, considered mainly in its relation to the well-being and morality of the poor classes." Who knows? ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... have done her wrong, in believing that she deserted me," he answered, "the heart-ache is but a poor way of expressing the remorse ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... of me!" cried the girl, with a bitterness that reached her mother's heart. "I was nobody! I couldn't feel! No one could care for me!" The turmoil of despair, of triumph, of remorse and resentment, which filled her soul, tried to express itself in ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... love—with awe And trembling like some treasure kept, That was not theirs by holy law— Whose beauty with remorse they saw And o'er whose preciousness they wept. Humility, that low, sweet root, From which all heavenly virtues shoot, Was in the hearts of both—but most In NAMA'S heart, by whom alone Those charms, for which a heaven was lost. Seemed ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... have heard it asserted that the experience I have here described was only that of persons who, in the full vigor of life and health, were suddenly put in peril of immediate death; and that whatever regret, repentance, or remorse might afflict the last moments of elderly persons, or persons prepared by previous disease for dissolution, this species of revelation, by the sudden glare of death, of the whole past existence was not among the phenomena ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... Creation, is filled with Sentiments different from those which he discovered whilst he was in Hell. The Place inspires him with Thoughts more adapted to it: He reflects upon the happy Condition from which he fell, and breaks forth into a Speech that is softned with several transient Touches of Remorse and Self-accusation: But at length he confirms himself in Impenitence, and in his Design of drawing Man into his own State of Guilt and Misery. This Conflict of Passions is raised with a great deal of Art, as the opening of his Speech to the Sun ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... family, we do not know exactly. The Pontiff in his rage and grief was like a wild beast driven to bay. He shut himself up in a private room, refused food, and howled with so terrible a voice that it was heard in the streets beyond his palace. When he rose up from this agony, remorse seemed to have struck him. He assembled a Conclave of the Cardinals, wept before them, rent his robes, confessed his sins, and instituted a commission for the reform of the abuses he had sanctioned ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... lead the way back up into the bala-khana. Arriving there, both of them wilt so utterly and completely, and proceed to plead for mercy with such ludicrous promptness, that my sense of the ridiculous outweighs all other considerations, and I regard their demonstrations of remorse with a broad smile of amusement. It is anything but a laughing matter from their own standpoint, however; the mudbake warns them forthwith that I have threatened to have them bastinadoed, and they fairly writhe and groan in an agony of apprehension. The khan, owing to his more ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... Badger, the worthy old man had held his peace out of regard for the Duke of Winterset. This nobleman, heretofore secretly disliked, suspected of irregular devices at play, and never admired, had won admiration and popularity by his remorse for the mistake, and by the modesty of his attitude in endeavoring to atone for it, without presuming upon the privilege of his rank to laugh at the indignation of society; an action the more praiseworthy because his exposure of the impostor ...
— Monsieur Beaucaire • Booth Tarkington
... passion sweep Through manhood's fiery heart, and when By strong temptation toss'd and tried, I thought how that lost father died; Unwept, unpitied, in his sin; Then tears of burning shame would rise, And stern remorse awake within A host of mental agonies. He fell—by one dark vice defiled; Was I ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... tastes even in hours more happy, and now, especially, they jumped with the wild protest of a soul eager for some outlet of action or excitement. But for these others, these women—this woman—these boys, all brought into this danger by my own mad folly, ah! when the thought of these arose, a swift remorse caught me; and though for myself I feared not at ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... least, dispersed; they have peaceably put their necks once more under the yoke of civil law, just as Morgan, that Achilles among pirates, transformed himself from a buccaneering scourge to a quiet colonist, and spent, without remorse, around his domestic hearth the millions gathered in blood by the lurid light ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... of Burleigh's wife had been poor, and yet did not enjoy being rich and great,' said Bessie. 'It killed her, poor thing. And yet she had married for love, and had no remorse of ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... and woof the ready present yields And toil while daylight lasts. When I bethink How brief the past, the future still more brief, Calls on to action, action! Not for me Is time for retrospection or for dreams, Not time for self-laudation or remorse. Have I done nobly? Then I must not let Dead yesterday unborn to-morrow shame. Have I done wrong? Well, let the bitter taste Of fruit that turned to ashes on my lip Be my reminder in temptation's hour, And keep me silent ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Lisle, in presence of death itself, experience no scruple in having kept the son from his dying father? Would she ever feel remorse of conscience in this world, or in the next? At all events, she expedited in every possible manner the wooing and winning of Althea. Was there in Heaven no guardian angel for this motherless child? Was not her very name ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... that he had become so touched and charmed by the letters she wrote that even his craven heart was turned to see its own baseness. He had every opportunity of tampering with our mail. He felt, when I was left wounded at the Monocacy, that that would end the play; and then, in his despair and remorse, he deserted. He was around Frederick a day or two in disguise, and sought to see you and her. Failing in that, he sent you by the landlady the packet that was afterwards taken from your overcoat by the secret-service men; and the next thing he came within an ace ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... now had she brooded under a cloud of despair. She had scarcely stirred out of her room; she had eaten scarcely enough to sustain life. She had shut herself up, a prey to harrowing remorse and terror—a remorse which she knew to be as useless as her terror was nerve-racking. Her awakening had come, sudden, awful. And, like all such awakenings, it had come too late, so that the horror of her ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... Garden, Maud," is as fine a love-song as Tennyson ever wrote, with a triumphant ring, and a soaring exultant note. Then the poem drops from its height, like a lark shot high in heaven; tragedy comes, and remorse, and the beautiful interlude ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... the frenzy of love, or the freedom of man for the servitude of husband, then I might have sought to achieve the impossible; but I should have died in the effort!—and thou wouldst have known that remorse which haunts ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of it." I was filled with remorse. "Upon my word, Rich, I hadn't an idea beyond getting away from that place. If you had seen what ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Works (which included a selection of the poems published in the three first editions, a reissue of Sibylline Leaves, the 'Wanderings of Cain', a few poems recently contributed to periodicals, and the following dramas—the translation of Schiller's 'Piccolomini', published in 1800, 'Remorse'—a revised version of 'Osorio'—published in 1813, and 'Zapolya', published in 1817) was issued in three volumes in 1828. A second collected edition in three volumes, a reissue of 1828, with an amended text and the addition of 'The Improvisatore' and 'The Garden ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... was drunk,—the money paid, Tho' not without remorse. To pay another man so much, For ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... be inseparably associated with grief. So long as the body-surplus is abundant enough to stand the heavy overdrafts made on it by grief and mental distress, without robbing the stomach of its power to digest and the brain of its ability to sleep, the physical effects of grief, and even of remorse, will be slight. ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... to the hotel, and I got a doctor and a nurse, and for two days I had to watch the revolution alone, while dad had fits of remorse 'cause he brought me to such a charnel house, ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... conscience, of all things, ought to be tenderly handled; for if you do not, you injure not only the conscience, but the whole moral frame and constitution is injured, recurring at times to remorse, and seeking refuge only in making the conscience callous. But the conscience of faction,—the conscience of sedition,—the conscience of conspiracy, war, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... convenient opportunity, to make the blow. The performance was now begun, and these men had nothing to do but to watch the motions of Stradella, and attend to the music, which they had scarce begun to hear, before the suggestions of humanity began to operate upon their minds; they were seized with remorse, and reflected with horror on the thought of depriving of his life a man capable of giving to his auditors such pleasure as ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... blond wigs, she kept fair-haired footmen who were shorn from time to time to furnish the supply. In the latter part of her life, spent at Paris and its vicinity, she fell a victim to hypochondria, suffering the most bitter pangs of remorse and terrible fear at approaching death. To alleviate this, she founded a convent where she taught the children music. She died in 1615, in Paris, "in that blended piety and coquetry which formed the basis of a character unable to give up gallantries ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... so perverse in answering, Harvest, hear what complaints are brought to me. Thou art accused by the public voice For an engrosser of the common store; A carl that hast no conscience nor remorse, But dost impoverish the fruitful earth, To make thy garners rise up to the heavens. To whom giv'st thou? who feedeth at thy board? No alms, but [an] unreasonable gain Digests what thy huge iron teeth devour: Small beer, coarse bread, the hind's and beggar's cry, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... bare-footed way after me through the great Sahara of charred stuff, and night now well arrived, and the moon a-drift in the heaven, making the desolate lonesomeness of the ruins tenfold desolate, so that my heart smote me then with bitterness and remorse, and I had a vision of myself that night which I will not put down on paper. At last, however, pretty late in the evening, I spied a large mansion with green lattice-work facade, and shaknisier, and terrace-roof, which had been hidden from me by ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... a settlement. We must rise to the occasion—if only to save ourselves from a lifelong remorse for wrecking this venture—for what the historian of the future would describe as a crime against the Empire in her hour of deadliest peril, and a crime against the peace and happiness of our ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... Louise, the pious Carmelite of St. Denis, succeeded in awakening in her father's soul a gleam of religious terror, the courtiers in charge of the royal pleasures redoubled their efforts to distract the king from thoughts so perilous for their own fortunes. Louis XV., fluctuating between remorse and depravity, ruled by Madame Dubarry, bound hand and foot to the triumvirate of Chancellor Maupeou, Abbe Terray, and the Duke of Aiguillon, who were consuming between them in his name the last remnants of absolute power, fell suddenly ill of small-pox. The princesses, his daughters, had never had ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... of which is always carefully kept fresh with paint and gilding, are crowded with statues in wood, carved with wonderful skill and spirit by Flemish artists, in centuries gone by—oaken saints looking down from pedestals, and Adam and Eve in the remorse of their first transgression supporting, by the help of the tree of knowledge and the serpent, a curiously wrought pulpit. The walls are hung with pictures by the Flemish masters, wherever space can be found for them. In the Cathedral, is the Descent from the Cross, by Rubens, which proves, ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... Moussol, and to make preparations for their departure. But I, having yet a mind to see something in Egypt, left my uncles, and went to lodge at a great distance from the khan, and did not appear till they were gone. They had sought for me all over the city; but, not finding me, they judged the remorse of having come to Egypt without my father's consent, had induced me to return to Damascus, without saying any thing to them. So they began their journey, expecting to find me at Damascus, and there to take ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... my daughter. A man who has got the philosopher's stone can never be harmed by any of earth's paltry troubles. And my Rose! O my dear friend, the truly dreadful thing would be, if I were to give her to you to wife: this being, this child, that I cannot help loving so dearly, that I fold up with remorse and sorrow in my heart, would go to wreck like others amid the pleasures of the world, in self-will and frivolity, in dissipation and recklessness. You would indulge her out of love in all sorts of follies, and so make her and yourself ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... yards' distance. They both started, and looked at each other in silence. Often, in the last fortnight, Adam had imagined himself as close to Arthur as this, assailing him with words that should be as harrowing as the voice of remorse, forcing upon him a just share in the misery he had caused; and often, too, he had told himself that such a meeting had better not be. But in imagining the meeting he had always seen Arthur, as he had met him on that evening in the ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... Pangs of remorse fill my soul as I write these lines. For the twenty-four hours we remained in that town I monopolised this delightful Baron. I plied him with questions, I insisted on his showing me everything there was to be seen of interest, ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... went steadily on their course, the little flags waving triumphantly from the mast-heads. They moved so gracefully and behaved so beautifully that Martin expressed his sorrow that the girls were not there to see them. Will made no reply, but he felt a twinge of remorse as he remembered how Greta had looked forward to this sail as a great event. He tried to quiet his conscience with the consideration that it was much better for her not to be there; for she would certainly have felt mortified ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... I gazed in the night, in the night, And again on the waves in their fleeting; Ah woe! thou hast wasted thy days in delight, Now silence thou light, In the night, in the night, The remorse in ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... The woman drew in her knees, tightening her hold on the child. Her face was stained with tears. (She had loved the baby before she loved Pinker. Remorse moved her and righteous indignation.) Mrs. Nevill Tyson's nostrils twitched; deep black rings were round her eyes. Passion and hunger were in them, ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... either of the previous two, was discovered in a volume of marvellously rare pieces sold by a Bristol bookseller to the late Mr. Maskell for L300, and by him to the British Museum. Take another case connected with the same press. A piece entitled The Remorse of Conscience, by William Lichfield, parson of All Hallows, Thames Street, who died in 1447, leaving a larger number of MSS. behind him than Lamb once humorously made Coleridge do, long enjoyed the reputation of being a solitary survivor; ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... were dispelled as fancies. They beheld only what they yearned for, and when at last they dropped from the dizzy height of their castles in cloudland their whole world, era, and ideal was shattered. Unavailing remorse, impotent rage, spiritual and intense physical exhaustion completed their demoralization. The more harried and reckless among them became frenzied. Turning first against their rulers, then against one another, they finally started ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... have done!' Macdonald said to the culprit, who was hanging his head, remorse having overtaken him. 'How can you hope to keep your friends if you ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... after this. She died, while you were yet struggling into existence. Heaven had pity upon her blighted life, and called her from the world of shadows and sighs that encompassed her round about. They repented—all of them—when repentance was only remorse, and kissed her dead lips with a passionate pleading for pardon, that was terrible ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... end, where Winnipeg narrows like the neck of a bottle, his tongue loosened from its silence and he began to babble and talk in broken sentences, and it was all about De Courtenay and a remorse that ate the ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... who follow her chariot like a mob, stamp upon the mangled wretch. All this had passed over me, and left me scarred and bloodless in this solitude. It was not my fault, Maud—I say it was no fault of mine; I have no remorse, though more regrets than I can count, and all scored with fire. As people passed by Bartram, and looked upon its neglected grounds and smokeless chimneys, they thought my plight, I dare say, about the worst a proud man could be reduced to. They could not imagine one half its ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... wise and practical, as you assume to be, you will do what I ask you without a question. If you do it AT ONCE, you may save yourself and Ruth some trouble, some mortification, and perhaps some remorse and ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... standing as he had left her, and presently he turned to her again. "Forgive me," he said, "for provoking a discussion which has pained you needlessly. If repentance and remorse could wipe out the past, I should be worthy to claim you this minute. But I know you are right. There might have been hours of intoxication, but there would have been years of misery also—for you—as my wife. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... tell you," she answered. "It is the longing to be with the one we love; it is the hate of the wicked things we have done; it is remorse." ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... of the spear and the cruse was a couch of almost humour, and it, with the ironical taunt flung across the valley to Abner, gives relief to the strain of emotion in the story. Saul's burst of passionate remorse is morbid, paroxysmal, like his fits of fury, and is sure to foam itself away. The man had no self-control. He had let wild, ungoverned moods master him, and was truly 'possessed.' One passion indulged had pushed him ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... that she had really seen Godfrey, and what was much worse, that Godfrey had really seen her upon an occasion when she would have much preferred to remain invisible to him, she was filled with remorse, and determined to write him a letter. Like that of the young man himself to his father, its composition took her a good ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... much remorse either then or afterwards; but I would not repeat the performance—believe it or not as you please. ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... be happy in heaven, no matter who may be in hell; that the husband could be happy there, with the wife that would have died for him at any moment of his life, in hell. But they say, "Hell, we don't believe in fire. I don't think you understand me. What we believe in now is remorse." What will you have remorse for? For the mean things you have done when you are in hell? Will you have any remorse for the mean things you have done when you are in heaven? Or will you be so good then that you won't care how you used to be? I tell you today, that no matter in what heaven ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... before his mind was haunted by the memory of so terrible a crime; his moody, irritable ways. She imagined the evenings as of old; she, toiling at some work, long after houses were shut, and folks abed; he, more savage than he had ever been before with the inward gnawing of his remorse. At such times she could have cried aloud with terror, at the scenes ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... exhibited a curious display of feeling for one who could plan and perpetrate so dastardly a crime as that which he had committed at the dugout. Human nature is a strange blending of good and evil passions. Two minutes ago the man would, without the least remorse, have shot the dog. Now as he reached him, and he listened to the beast's plaintive cries, he stretched out his arm and stroked its trembling sides, and then stooped to examine the wounded limb. And, ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... object on which to vent my rage; now it could result only in Edmee's flight or death? Her death! At the mere thought of it the blood ran cold in my veins, a weight fell on my heart, and I felt all the stings of remorse piercing it. This night of agony was for me the clearest call of Providence. At last I understood those laws of modesty and sacred liberty which my ignorance had hitherto outraged and blasphemed. They astonished ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... corrupt and profligate than individuals, because they have more power to do mischief, and are less amenable to disgrace or punishment. They feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill. The principle of private or natural conscience is extinguished in each individual (we have no moral sense in the breasts of others), and nothing is considered but how the united efforts of the whole (released from idle scruples) may be best directed to the obtaining of ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... fatall entrance of Duncan Vnder my Battlements. Come you Spirits, That tend on mortall thoughts, vnsex me here, And fill me from the Crowne to the Toe, top-full Of direst Crueltie: make thick my blood, Stop vp th' accesse, and passage to Remorse, That no compunctious visitings of Nature Shake my fell purpose, nor keepe peace betweene Th' effect, and hit. Come to my Womans Brests, And take my Milke for Gall, you murth'ring Ministers, Where-euer, in your sightlesse substances, You wait on Natures Mischiefe. Come thick ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... expedition. The Vulcan and four other vessels were to be employed in the service. I was of course well acquainted with all the risks to be encountered. I knew that I might either be blown up, or, if overtaken by the enemy, cut to pieces without remorse, no quarter being given to people engaged in that sort of work. During the first day after volunteering I had not time to think much about the matter, but four-and-twenty hours spent in comparative inaction enabled me to ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... sheds its softening influence over their hearts. Many such ideas as those I have alluded to passed through my mind as I sat, unable to move, watching the proceedings of the savages, and I felt with a pang of intense remorse how utterly I had neglected doing anything towards sending the gospel of salvation in which I believed and thought I trusted, to them or any other of the ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston |
