"Self-accusation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... touched by her Uncle's self-accusation. He had been good to her, and not unkind to others. But he was drifting in a sea of doubt, and really wishing to live his life over again. She felt sorry, but what could she say to give his mind peace? She would begin ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... itself, only Stephen's face rose up before her, vivid, pleading, as he had looked when he said, "Never again, Mrs. Philbrick?" and as she looked again into the dark blue eyes, and heard the low tones over again, she sank into a deeper and deeper reverie, from which gradually all self-accusation, all perplexity, faded away, leaving behind them only a vague happiness, a dreamy sense of joy. If lovers could look back on the first quickening of love in their souls, how precious would be the memories; but the unawakened heart never knows the precise ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... 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 is very ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... studying, he calls it, our charitable institutions. Mamma reproaches me that I don't take more interest in philanthropy. That is her worldly side. Everybody has a worldly side. I'm as worldly as I can be"—this with a look of innocence that denied the self-accusation—"but I haven't any call to marry into Exeter Hall and that sort of thing. That is what she means—dear mamma. Are you High-Church or evangelical?" she asked, after ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... added his telephone number. Then he turned wearily away, and went back to his rooms. There was nothing to do but wait. And he found waiting most trying of all. The minutes dragged miserably, each of them weighted with self-accusation, but the afternoon shadows began to lengthen and still his telephone had not rung. Finally he called for Kasia's number and asked for her. A voice which he recognised as that of the negro boy answered that ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... has Cain with his attempt? This, that his powerful effort to excuse himself becomes a forcible self-accusation. Christ says, "Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant," Lk 19, 22. Now, this servant wished to appear without guilt, saying: "I knew thee that thou art a hard man, reaping where thou didst not sow; and I was afraid, and hid thy talent," Mt ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... Timea a great burden was lifted from the soul of Timar. Since the day when the treasure of Ali Tschorbadschi had enabled him to achieve power and riches, Timar had been haunted by the voice of self-accusation; "This money does not belong to you—it was the property of an orphan. You are a man of gold! You ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... lawyer after the problem of opening wider fields to women in the legal profession had been looked at from every angle, only to end in the question, "What can we do to increase their practice?" She spoke with animation, as if she had found the key to the situation, "Employ them." Perhaps more self-accusation than determination to mend their ways was roused by the short ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... of noble family and very rich. The aunt was always present at the lessons; and, knowing that she was very devout, I rejected all songs that were of an amorous tendency, and would only practise such as were unimpeachable. In my demeanour I was always sedate and respectful—full of humility and self-accusation. When I received my money from the old lady, I used to thank her in the name of our convent, for whose use it was to be appropriated, and call her donation a charity, for which Heaven would reward her. Her confessor died, and the old lady chose me to supply his place. This was what I was ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... this I felt led to go to Iowa a few weeks to be what help I could to a dear sister who was going through some deep trials. Her difficulty seemed to be mainly self-accusation. In other words, she had set her spiritual standard so high that she could not live up to her own ideal. Like nearly all people who undergo that difficulty, she was good at heart, but the struggle to get out of her difficulty was severe. God came to her help, gave her victory over her trials, ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... when belief in this species of lycanthropy was at its zenith, there was an extraordinary readiness among the accused to confess, and even to give circumstantial evidence of their own metamorphosis; and that this particular form of self-accusation at length became so popular among the leading people in the land, that the judicial court, having its suspicions awakened, and, doubtless, fearful of sentencing so many important personages, acquitted the majority of the accused, announcing them to ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... accomplished and some positive fact is established in the self-accusation, the question becomes one of finding the value seen by the confessor in blaming himself together with his fellow. Revenge, hatred, jealousy, envy, anger, suspicion, and other passions will be the forces in which this value will be found. One man brings his ancient comrade ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... him. I can not speak for the others, although there was a wondrous maze of lies put forth that night by way of explanation that I might repeat. All I know is that through my mind kept running against my will self-accusation, self-condemnation, self-contempt! I had permitted my love for Ranjoor Singh to be corrupted by most meager evidence. If I had not been his enemy, I had not been true to him, and who is not true is false. I fought with a sense of shame ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... to be a savage self-accusation which sprang from long self-bereavement, and yet there was something terrifying in its brutal frankness. She stood in silence till her mother left the room, then went to her own chamber with a painful knot in her throat. What could she ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... The man who disregards the law of gravitation and falls from a ladder, experiences one kind of painful sensation; but the man who disregards the law of righteousness and falls into sin, experiences quite a different kind of painful sensation—the sensation, not of self-pity, but of self-accusation and remorse, because it is God's holiness against which he has transgressed; and that feeling finds utterance age after age in the agonised cry, "Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done that which ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... and all her praying had been of no avail! She sat there in the most violent agitation! Her grief that she could thus be overcome caused her in despair to begin the bitterest self-accusation. Again she felt the scorn of the crowd at her foolish bridal procession; again she loathed herself for her own weakness—that she could not stop her crying then, nor her thinking of it now—that with her want of ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... deprecating this gross self-accusation on Morell's part). No, you didn't, James. Now ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... place to youth, and, allowing for the vanity of self-accusation, there can be little doubt that the youth of Saint Augustine was une jeunesse orageuse. "And what was that wherein I took delight but to love and to be beloved." There was ever much sentiment and affection in his amours, but his soul ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... saw something in his face-a pity and an agony of self-accusation-that made her weak and white. She sank into a chair, putting her hand on her chest, as if she felt a failing of breath. Then the blood came back to her face, and her eyes ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... had been driven to an expedient which would not have been adopted by a person perfectly innocent. And thus, from one thing to another, the charge of murder had been fixed upon him and his hapless wife. When his confession had been uttered, I felt a species of self-accusation in having contributed to his destruction, and gladly would I have undone the whole day's proceedings. The judge, on the contrary, was quite undisturbed. Viewing the harangue of Armstrong as a mere tissue of falsehood, he ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... undertaken to do. There never was anyone who lived so sternly by principle and reason, or who so maintained her self-control in the face of sorrow, disaster, unhappiness, and bereavement. She never gave way to feeble or morbid self-accusation, and therefore the fact that she could thus have suffered is a sign that this unnamed terror can coexist with a dauntless courage and an ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... self-accusation of sins, in the order of the ten commandments, or the Decalogue, and the other five of the Roman Catholic Church. The priest frequently interrupts this self-accusation with leading questions concerning the most minute particulars of the act which is the subject of accusation. For example, suppose ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... crossed his mind when he had looked on his brother's inanimate form had not been wholly forgotten since; he felt something like self-accusation whenever he saw, in some gray summer dawn, as he had seen now, the boy's bright face, haggard and pale with the premature miseries of the gamester, or heard his half-piteous, half-querulous lamentations over his losses; and he would essay, with all the consummate tact the world had taught him, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... Martin stunned his querist with the retort,—"He was building hell for such idle, presumptuous, fluttering, and inquisitive spirits as you." And everybody will recollect the story of the self-complacent cardinal who went to confess to a holy monk, and thought by self-accusation to get the reputation of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... that the retort upon Rodin would be self-accusation, he appeared to give way to an excess of emotion, and resumed with bitterness: "Ah, sir, you are the last person that I should have thought capable of this odious denunciation. It ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... for the young the joys of personal exuberance; it is all honeycombed, or rather, filled (like champagne) with the generous gaseousness of self-analysis, self-accusation, self-pity, self-righteousness, and autobiography. The poor mortal, in that delusive sense of sympathy and perfect understanding which comes of perfect indifference to one's neighbour's presence, has quicker pulses, higher temperature, more vigorous movements ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... Hollingsworth could have no fault. That was the one principle at the centre of the universe. And the doubtful guilt or possible integrity of other people, appearances, self-evident facts, the testimony of her own senses,—even Hollingsworth's self-accusation, had he volunteered it,—would have weighed not the value of a mote of thistledown on the other side. So secure was she of his right, that she never thought of comparing it with another's wrong, but left the ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... actions; his love of equity; his passion for truth, which was carried almost to a hatred of cant and hypocrisy, were the immediate causes of his want of fairness in his opinion of himself and of his self-accusation of things ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... hyar a minute sooner, Sally," he said, slowly, and there was a trace of self-accusation in his voice, "hit moutn't hev happened. I war jest a mite too tardy—but I knows ye hed ter kill him. I knows ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... the seizure of the heights, and that there, consequently, was the true place for the one in chief command. Any captain, Troubridge especially, could have placed the ships as well as Nelson. It is self-accusation, and not fault-finding merely, that breathes in the words: "Had I been with the first party, I have reason to believe complete success would have crowned our efforts. My ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... mother-love, the best she had to give. Some mother's son she may yet help save, for she knows the vital error which shielded and guarded her boy till he reached his majority, never having met trial, hopelessly untrained in coping with adversity. The younger, sobered by the voice of self-accusation, ever feels the weight of the consciousness of a grave duty slighted; she was made more wise in a day of deep reality than by twenty years of conventional training. Tested again she would give as she has never known giving, ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... to life," he said. "The court has been in mourning for you these two hours, and none has mourned you more deeply and sorrowfully than I. We would all know the cause of your Highness's accident, the meaning of our friend Mendoza's strange self-accusation, and of other things we cannot understand without a ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... himself, he had used no undue influence, he had forged no will; he had merely striven to make them realise their stewardship, to inspire them with his own ideal. In this effort he could find no grounds for self-accusation; on the contrary, the effort was a merit he might lay with humble pride before his God, when the secrets of ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... to unfaithful wives, because in this type of defiance of traditional sex-ethics there is always the spirit of self-accusation; a tacit, if not open, admission ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... Penitence. — 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[obs3], twinge of conscience, twitch of conscience, touch of conscience, voice of conscience; compunctious visitings of nature[obs3]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus |
