"Self-reproach" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... resolutions that were well meant, but indiscreet. Among others, I remember I resolved to pray, at least once, in some way, every hour that I was awake. I tried faithfully to keep this resolution, but never having succeeded a single day, I suffered the pangs of self-reproach, until reflection satisfied me that the only wisdom possible, with regard to such a resolve, was to break it. I remember, too, that I made a resolution to speak upon religion to every person with whom I conversed,—on ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... 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 arm with a sigh of peaceful ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... for the present, because of a change in the weather. In a few days came "The Field Battery" with Walter's review, bringing a revival of the self-reproach he had begun to forget. The paper felt in his hand like bad news or something nasty. He could not bear the thought of having to take his part in the talk it would occasion. It could not now be helped, however, and that was a great comfort! It was impossible, ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... paced the room, while Sybil lay on the couch, watching her with eyes half shut. She grew more and more angry with herself, and as her self-reproach increased, her anger against Ratcliffe faded away. She had no right to be angry with Ratcliffe. He had never deceived her. He had always openly enough avowed that he knew no code of morals in politics; that if virtue did not answer his purpose he used ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... 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 rudeness, and tried to make up for it by ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... looked within the bloom of modesty. They have seen, and not once or twice, a man forget himself; they have witnessed devotion, unselfish sorrow, unaffected delicacy, spontaneous charity, ingenuous self-reproach; and it may be that on seeing a human being surrender for another's good not something but his uttermost all, they have dimly suspected in human nature a glory connecting it with the divine. In these the passion of humanity is warm and ready to become on occasion a burning flame; ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... the commonplace 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
... 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 ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... retiring from public life; his services and his sufferings in his severe and long career, repaid by exile and confiscation, and for ever embittered to his memory by the murder of his sovereign, had justly satisfied the claims of his conscience and honour; and led him, without a single self-reproach, to seek a quiet retreat in domestic society : but the second declaration of Lord Hood no sooner reached this little obscure dwelling,-no sooner had he read the words Louis XVII. and the constitution to which he had sworn united, than ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... 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, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... affairs: therefore, having stated my reasons, and suggested my conclusions, I leave you to apply them as you think proper; and I shall only add, that the accomplishment of my wishes, on this subject, would give me peculiar satisfaction. It would relieve my mind from part of a weight of self-reproach. I have made both my parents unhappy. I have reason to fear that the shock my mother received, by my means, contributed much to her late illness. An event that would restore my whole family to happiness must, therefore, be to me the most desirable upon earth. I should feel immediate ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... memory brought a feeling of helplessness not wholly devoid of self-reproach. It was bad enough that her presence should add so greatly to the dangers besetting her friends; it was far worse that she should have fainted at the very moment when such weakness might well ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... yourself with 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 ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... newspapers and a brace of cracker boxes, two half-tamed Mohaves were heading for the heights to the north-east, where water would freeze in the canteens these December nights, and the rock tanks were nearly solid ice. Two hours later while Harris, nervous, irritable, and filled with nameless self-reproach, was pacing the narrow veranda at the doctor's quarters, there was a stir at the southward end of the post, a sound of hoofbeats and footfalls, a running to and fro and lighting up at the office. An orderly came on the jump and banged at the adjutant's door, and Strong shuffled forth in the moonlight ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... which lay hidden far beneath these obvious depressing influences. She felt that she was no longer to her husband what she had been to him, and felt it with something of self-reproach,—which was a wrong to herself, for she had been a true and tender wife. Deeper than all the rest was still another feeling, which had hardly risen into the region of inwardly articulated thought, but lay unshaped beneath all the syllabled trains ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... unwilling to execute it. * * * * * * * * These and other similar arguments were pressed upon me; and after a week's deliberation, I yielded to their force. It is quite possible that I may have erred * * * * * * I shall, at least, have no cause of self-reproach." ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... was, it did not matter; for, I tell you, I felt no compunction, and I told myself that in time you would get over the shock and might be happy after all; for I said that you would have no greater cause for self-reproach than the soldier who slays an enemy to save ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... belief, so mamma had cried in the midnight, which nobody outside of institutions for the feeble-minded would ever hold. But Cally was struck only with Mattie's enormous seriousness. Self-reproach filled her for the interval that seemed ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... is lifted from this person's mind by your gracefully-placed words," he declared, and he was continuing to indicate the nature of his self-reproach by means of a suitable analogy when the expression of Fa Fai's eyes turned him to a point behind himself. There, lying on the spot from which he had just risen, was a second Willow plate, differing in no detail of resemblance ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... that Billy Louise, in her desperation, was tempted to use a swear word, but she resisted the temptation. She got up and went around to him, hesitated while she looked down at his set face, drew a long breath, and blinked back some tears of self-reproach because of the devils of memory she had unwittingly turned loose ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... Gray, the colour coming back to his face; but the girl in her excitement of self-reproach and contrition begged to be allowed to dress the mutilated hand which her own careless movement had ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... staggering mass that chokes and crushes them into perdition, brings every law of healthy existence into question with them, and every alleged method of help and hope into doubt. Indignation, without any calming faith in justice, and self-contempt, without any curative self-reproach, dull the intelligence, and degrade the conscience, into sullen incredulity of all sunshine outside the dunghill, or breeze beyond the wafting of its impurity; and at last a philosophy develops itself, partly satiric, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... went home full of self-reproach because sometimes her patience had failed her. Liz looked up with traces of tears in her eyes, when Joan came in. Joan did not hesitate. She only thought of giving her comfort. She went and sat down in a chair near by—she drew the ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... reply, for he stole softly away, annoyed, as he thought, at having been a listener to what was not intended for his ears. But there was a little sting of self-reproach at his selfish desertion of home, and, more than all, that Catherine should have been blamed for offences that any one who had known her would ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... woman he loved, and who loved him. He looked 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 rapidly in mental review ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... how soon they should reach a very small village, and find a night's shelter in a tiny inn. Joe, better appreciating the true danger, was full of anxious forebodings and also self-reproach, for allowing himself to be guided by a child so young and ignorant as Cecile. Still it never occurred ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... one-talent man thought his trust not worth investing, and behold, the account of it was called for with the rest. He {135} had in his hands a trust from God and had wasted it, and there was nothing left for him but the weeping of regret and the gnashing of teeth of indignant self-reproach. ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... occurred 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 frequently occur before ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... and sympathy, he went on to tell of three little ones, orphaned by the plague, and left alone and utterly helpless, in a cabin on the Wilderness Road. As he spoke, he remembered with a pang of self-reproach, that Father Orin was with them now and waiting for him. He rose suddenly, saying that he must go, but a slight noise at the door caused him to pause and turn. It was William Pressley coming in, and Ruth went forward to meet him, ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... Anne drove out of his head by begging him, in moving terms of self-reproach, to forgive her her weakness. She had regained her composure as abruptly, if not as completely, as she had lost it; and would have had him believe that the passion he had witnessed was less deep than it seemed, and rather ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... 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
... three years I courted her, steadfastly, but in a curiously capricious and inconsistent way, with all the changes of an all-daring and naught-fearing devotion, wildly-blazing happiness, sudden shyness and trembling shrinking, violent dismay, self-reproach, deep self-contempt - all this being caused by the confusion and the strife in the intimate ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... pile of spare tires beside them; on it Gerard put his hand, steadying himself against the shock that was less of surprise than of poignant self-reproach for his own failure to divine this open riddle. In that moment of final understanding, he knew that he had seen the pitiful truth rise to the surface of Corrie's blue eyes a hundred times, and had left its appeal to die ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... gowns, the nosegays, the willow-wands, the whirling movements on the green, the flash of gentle sentiment towards the stranger—to the yellow melancholy of this one-candled spectacle, what a step! Besides the jar of contrast there came to her a chill self-reproach that she had not returned sooner, to help her mother in these domesticities, instead of ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... With such self-reproach began a serious conversation. How sad that Mozart, passionate as he was, keenly alive to all the beauties of the world, and full of the highest aspirations, never knew peace and contentment, in spite of all that he enjoyed and created in his ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... those which do. And this choice is offered to every man who possesses in literary or artistic culture a never-failing source of pleasures, which are neither withered by age, nor staled by custom, nor embittered in the recollection by the pangs of self-reproach. ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... devoted, constantly 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 to his sister ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... that Elizabeth's mind was occupied with Hepsie while she bathed and cooled her swollen eyelids. Long afterward she remembered Hugh had laid his arm across his white face at that moment, but she was never to know the fulness of the self-reproach nor the depths of the despair which Hugh Noland suffered—Hugh, who loved her. For himself, he did not so much care, being a man and accustomed to the life of men in those things, but he saw the endless round of her days, carrying with her through them all the secrecy and shame of it; she ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... this to contend with, for Vienna was a favorite resort in those days for the English, and she was constantly encountering some of her old set. She bore up bravely for a while, but it killed her. She never wearied her lover with her self-reproach, but crushed back her sorrows into her heart, and met him always with a gentle smile. That same smile contrasted so sadly, at last, with the wan, worn features, that it often made him bend his bushy brows to conceal the ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... do," he replied. Indeed he was so relieved so pleased, so thankful to be freed from the load of self-reproach that he ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... 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 childhood, ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... sighed Kittie in great self-reproach. "And when you were so kind as to change, too. We'll go right back to the dishes, Bea, and not disgrace your work any more, and I'll go right to work and clean this room decent, so that everything will shine until you can see your face ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... say: "It is a very good thing to mistrust ourselves, but at the same time how will that avail us, unless we put our whole confidence in God, and wait for His mercy? It is right that our daily faults and infidelities should cause us self-reproach when we would appear before our Lord; and we read of great souls, like St. Catherine of Siena and St. Teresa, who, when they had been betrayed into some fault, were overwhelmed with confusion. Again, it is reasonable that, having offended God, we should out of humility and a feeling ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... to the old theologies. But how to let one's self down from the high level 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 borrowed, ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... 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 ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... "if ever I let youngsters have their way again!" But his eyes shone with a strange mixture of self-reproach and satisfaction ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... new turn. Her crushing self-reproach at the degradation of David Rossi, fallen, lost, and in prison, gave way to an intense bitterness against the Baron, successful, radiant, and triumphant. She turned a bright light upon the incidents of the past months ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... was wronging her. Juliet—his Juliet of the steadfast eyes and low, sincere voice—was surely incapable of double dealing! Whatever her life in the past had been, however frivolous, however artificial, it had been given to him—perhaps to him alone—to know her as she was. A great wave of self-reproach went over him. How had he ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... agitation. The trembling of his voice attracted her attention; but she did not suspect the cause. She thought that her presence recalled sad memories, that he doubtless still loved her, and that he suffered. This idea saddened her, and filled her with self-reproach. ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... 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. ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... noticed in the 'Evening Post.' I had considered 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 on ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... find some way out of this maze of promises to Henrietta and of self-reproach, and his mental wanderings were interrupted by an unwelcome request from the nurse that he should go at once to Mrs. Sales. She seemed, the woman warned him, to be very much excited: would he please be careful? She must not ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... 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 benefit of ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... man almost to forget a lady who has shown him favor. If he can quite forget her—and will be so unromantic—why, let him, and perhaps small harm done. But almost—That leaves him at the mercy of every generous self-reproach. He is ready to do anything to prove that she was every ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... source of distress to her. She would have preferred to believe the letter, for such a belief would have rid her of the sting of self-reproach; but, try as she might, she could not wholly get her consent ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... not one of unmixed pleasure; the more he knew of Isaura, the more he felt self-reproach that he had allowed himself to know ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... him mechanically, for I was undergoing a mental castigation which rather disturbed me. Indeed, like a young fool—as eager in self-reproach as in self-glorification—I was so occupied in inwardly calling myself hard names, that even when my host gave me a commission for my new picture, 'The Return of Columbus,' at two hundred and fifty pounds, together with ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... sow? God grant she may never have to defend those English homes against the guns of Vincennes! but if she must, it is on a comparatively undisciplined militia she must depend;—and then she may remember, with bitter self-reproach, the lesson of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... 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 that of ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... closing of the sentence. For she had stated the absolute truth, and yet left much untold. She saw disappointment and reluctant conviction in his face, coupled with an immense faith in her that stung her to an agony of shame and self-reproach. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... value 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, until too late they learn the old lesson ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... upon yourself, Barty, not on me. Follow your own instincts when you feel you can do so without self-reproach, and all will be ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... course of a long experience as a Christian minister," says a clergyman whom she encountered at this period, "I do not think I ever saw deeper penitence and humility, more real contrition of soul, and more bitter self-reproach ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... morning as keen as the fickle air—so sharply did it bring back to him the overwhelming pictures of their happiness together. And out of his acute loneliness rose vague questionings and misgivings. He said to himself in bitter self-reproach that she would not have gone if he had been to her all he ought to have been in the crisis of that night. If harm should befall her now! How the thought clutched and dragged at his heart. Forebodings tortured him, and in the penumbra of his thoughts seemed to leave ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... The dreary, undefined self-reproach and vague alarms, intensified by the sullen, reserved temper, and culminating in such a shock, alienating the only persons she cared for, and filling her with terror for the future, could not but have a physical effect, and Dolores was found on the morrow with a bad head-ache, ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... anxious to console and encourage, as well as to talk the young step-mother out of her self-reproach, 'I do not think that if I had been my good aunt's own child, she would have been more likely to find out that anything was amiss. It was the fashion to be strong and healthy in that house, and I was never really ill—but I came as a little stunted, dwining cockney, and so I was considered ever ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... like a heavy burden upon Pelle; time had taken the bitterness out of it. He could recall without self-reproach his life with her and her two brothers in the "Ark," and often wondered what had become of the latter. No one could give him any ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... his brother officers, and it was not pleasant to face them without a guinea. An evil propensity, at which, as you remember, General Chattesworth hinted, had grown amid his distresses, and the sting of self-reproach exasperated him. Then there was his old love for Lilias Walsingham, and the pang of rejection, and the hope of a strong passion sometimes leaping high and bright, and sometimes nickering into ghastly ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... startled him from his lethargy. He suddenly realized that his son's few remaining hours on earth were slipping by, and the boy had not been comforted. When this came to him, his self-reproach cut him sharply, and he resolved to make amends at once. He obtained permission from the officer of the day, and that evening, after retreat, went to ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... in a despair of ever finding what alone could give meaning to her existence, and an object to her intellect and affections. And Agellius on the other hand, what surprise, remorse, and humiliation came upon him! It was a strange contrast, the complaint of nature unregenerate on the one hand, the self-reproach of nature regenerate and lapsing on the other. At last he spoke, and they were ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... cratur," exclaimed Bane, relaxing his grasp with a feeling of self-reproach, for he had a strong suspicion that his captive really was Salamander. "I do believe I've killed him. Wow! Shames, man, lend a hand to carry him to the fire, and plow up a bit flame that we ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... little thing was licking his hand, and the old lawyer's face was softened and glowing as he nursed it and coaxed it with crumbs. As he looked, St. George warmed to them all in new fellowship and, too, in swift self-reproach; for in what had seemed to him but "broad lines and comic masks" he suddenly saw the authority and reality of homely hearts. The better and more intimate names for everything which seemed now within his grasp were more important than Yaque itself. He remembered, with a thrill, how his ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... in haste to receive the queen of England. He showed the more respect to this queen, deprived of every mark of pomp and stripped of followers, as he felt some self-reproach for his own want of heart and his avarice. But supplicants for favor know how to accommodate the expression of their features, and the daughter of Henry IV. smiled as she advanced to meet a man ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Mrs. Forrester and was full of sympathy for her afflicted friend, and full of sympathy for foolish, headstrong little Karen. The mingled sympathies rang strangely. She avowed self-reproach. She was afraid that she had precipitated the rupture between Karen and her husband, not quite, perhaps, understanding the facts. She had seen Gregory, she was very sorry for him. She was, apparently, sorry for everyone; except of course, Mr. Drew, the villain of the piece; but of ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... no doubt of it. Your reply, which I should have acknowledged sooner, gives substance to the self-reproach that came to me the moment my letter to you was out of my hands. All my friends complain that they can get nothing from me but "journalistic correspondence"; and now when once I lay aside the hurry and ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... seigneur of Grange-Flandre, Valperfond, etc., had married Marie-Francoise Perier in 1760. Their fortune resembled many others of that period: it was more nominal than actual, more showy than solid. Not that the husband and wife had any cause for self-reproach, or that their estates had suffered from dissipation; unstained by the corrupt manners of the period, their union had been a model of sincere affection, of domestic virtue and mutual confidence. Marie-Francoise ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... till the rashly anticipated relationship between their daughter and Clark in the past had been made fact by the church's ordinances. They did not, however, express a positive objection, Mr. Paddock remembering, with self-reproach, that it was owing to his original strongly expressed disapproval of Selina's being a soldier's wife that the wedding had been delayed, and finally hindered—with worse consequences than were expected; and ever since the misadventure brought about by ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... 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 ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... certain allusions in the correspondence of his last years, when his affairs were in the most embarrassed condition, and his absence from Vienna frequently caused by the pressure of creditors. He appears at this time to have experienced moments of poignant self-reproach. His love of dancing, masquerades, masked balls, &c., was so great, that he did not willingly forego an opportunity of joining any one of those assemblies, whether public or private. He dressed handsomely, and wished to make a favourable impression in society independently ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... most inconsiderate avowal, and how was it possible now to avert its consequences? Every tender and uneasy glance that Mr. Fairman cast upon his cherished daughter, passed like a sting to me, and roused the bitterest self-reproach. I could have calmed his groundless fears, had I been bold enough to risk his righteous indignation. The frankness and cordiality which had ever marked my intercourse with Miss Fairman, were from this hour suspended. Could it be otherwise with one so innocent, so truthful, and so ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... looking on the reasonable side, "the visibility wasn't good, and I fired from the hip, but it's no use saying I oughtn't at least to have winged him, because I ought." She shook her head with a touch of self-reproach. "I shall be chaffed about this if it comes out," she ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... this rate, before he dared 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 her ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... minister or the insignia of a president of the republic, even as his mediaeval prototype bore a bishop's mitre or a cardinal's hat. The boisterous exuberance of youthful spirits still vents itself in rowdy student life to the scandal of bourgeois placidity, and the poignant self-revelation and gnawing self-reproach of a Francois Villon find their analogue in the pathetic verse of a Paul Verlaine. Beneath the fair and ordered surface of the normal life of Paris still sleep the fiery passions which, from the days of the Maillotins ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... 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 ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... every word you have said,' he returned. 'I am full of self-reproach that I might have known this and seen this, and known you and seen you, any time these dozen years, and that I never have. I hardly know how I ever got here—creature that I am, not only of my own ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... was ever easily touched, felt a thrill of self-reproach as the thought suddenly occurred that, however good his intentions might be, he was in reality running a helpless woman down like a bloodhound. He stopped short instantly, and acting, as on most occasions ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... lost! The best on earth!" He laid his hands on the tree-stem and pressed his head against it till it hurt him. He did not know how to contain himself for misery and self-reproach. He felt like a man who has been drunk and has reduced his own house to ashes in his intoxication. How all this could have come to pass he now no longer knew. After his nocturnal ride he had caused Nilus the treasurer to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... don't suppose I've missed a sitter like that since I was a child in the nursery. Of course," she proceeded, looking on the reasonable side, "the visibility wasn't good, but it's no use saying I oughtn't at least to have winged him, because I ought." She shook her head with a touch of self-reproach. "I shall get chaffed about this if it comes out," ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... and at its foot were written in blazing characters the awful words, JUDGMENT AND CONDEMNATION! There was no escape—none! Hell, with its unquenchable fires and unimaginable horrors, yawned to receive her; and she felt, with anguish and self-reproach not to be described, how wretched a bargain she had made, and how dearly the brief gratification of her evil passions had been purchased at the cost of an eternity of woe ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... it is wholly impossible for any man in the ordinary circumstances of English life to possess himself of a piece of great art. A modern drawing of average merit, or a first-class engraving, may, perhaps, not without some self-reproach, be purchased out of his savings by a man of narrow income; but a satisfactory example of first-rate art—masterhands' work—is wholly out of his reach. And we are so accustomed to look upon this as the natural course and necessity of ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... brought confusion into 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 morning she went about the house ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... to him, immediately or remotely. That is to say, in conditions which oblige every man to look out for himself, a man cannot be a Christian without remorse; he cannot do a generous action without self-reproach; he cannot be nobly unselfish without the fear of being a fool. You would think that this predicament must deprave, and so without doubt it does; and yet it is not wholly depraving. It often has its effect in character of a rare and pathetic ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... fill one with more shame and self-reproach than the large results from very small efforts in the right direction. Polly and I prospered in our efforts to "attend." I may say for myself that, child as I was, I began to find a satisfaction and pleasure in going to church, though the place was hideous, the ritual dreary, ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... reasons for acquiring instruction are multiplied and strengthened. Are you an honest man? You will spare neither labor nor sacrifice to gain a competent knowledge of your duty. Are you a man of honor? You will be careful to avoid self-reproach. Does your bosom glow with the holy fervor of patriotism? You will so accomplish yourself as to avoid bringing down upon your country either insult ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... Malcome; but what were those petty griefs, compared with the agony of having known the sweet possession of his heart, and lost it,—lost it, too, through my own selfish folly and weakness? Truly, there's naught so bitter as self-reproach. Heaven only knows what I have suffered since that dreadful night, when I fled from his angry, reproachful looks, and locked myself in the solitude of my chamber. And that freezing, distant recognition on the following morning! O, what a shuddering horror will ever creep ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... conduct toward 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 had been ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... 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
... she cried, putting 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, I should ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... 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 I expect it to portray?' Without a moment's delay ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... mind half distracted, the battlefield of a dozen unhappy emotions of which the most coherent were seething self-reproach and frantic irritation with Trego (why must it have been he, of all men?) Sally inconsiderately left the two to conclude their quarrel without an audience—took to her heels incontinently and sped like a hunted shadow across the open lawn. She flung through the side door and left ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... Clements discovered that the door was not shut, and he closed it tight, preventing my hearing any more. I now turned to Marble, whose countenance betrayed the self-reproach he endured, at ascertaining the injury he had done, by his ill-judged artifice. I made no reproaches, however, but squeezed his hand in token of my forgiveness. The poor fellow, I plainly saw, had great difficulty in forgiving himself; though he said nothing ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... time of his convalescence amid the tranquillity of Silverdale Grange had with the gracious kindliness of Miss Barrington and her niece been a revelation to him. There were moments when it brought him bitterness and self-reproach, but these were usually brief, and he made the most of what he knew might never be his again, telling himself that it would at least be ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... be; we are friends," returns he, hastily, so full of surprise and self-reproach as to be almost unconscious ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... 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 ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... knowledge of it all flashed upon her was something deeper than thought, something more moving than any mere matter of perception. A passionate gratitude throbbed in her heart, confused with a passionate self-reproach. She desired to speak, but somehow her lips refused utterance. She trembled and turned white, and stood ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... his Alice was then; but even over that day there hung a cloud, for it was begun in intemperance and ended in riot. He thought of the hour when he first looked on his boy, and had felt as proud as if no other man had ever had a bonny bairn but he. He thought with shuddering self-reproach of long years of base neglect and wrong towards the children whose strength and peace his own words and deeds had smitten down as with blows of iron. He thought of the days and years of utter selfishness which had drained away every ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... Finally, he went over to the table, and wrote a passionate letter to the girl he had loved, imploring her forgiveness, and accusing himself of madness. He covered page after page with wild words of sorrow, and wilder words of pain. There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution. When Dorian had finished the letter, he felt that ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... kept turning back to look at the wreck, till he happened to lay his hand on his breast He stopped in the middle of his ridiculous lament wore a look of self-reproach, and cast his eyes ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... lover, and driven from her father's home, had drowned herself after a brief struggle with circumstance. However Shelley may have felt that his conscience was free from blame, however small an element of self-reproach may have mingled with his grief and horror, there is no doubt that he suffered most acutely. His deepest ground for remorse seems to have been the conviction that he had drawn Harriet into a sphere of thought and feeling for which ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... around her almost convulsively. "Madge," he cried, "you have not only brought me happiness—you have saved me from a bitter, lifelong self-reproach far worse than poverty. How can I ever show sufficient devotion in return ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... man and a laggard officer of the Crown," he exclaimed with air of great self-reproach. "There are women in that company and wounded men, no doubt. We must take them clothing, horses, ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... was standing by the bedside of his dying father, watching eagerly for some indication, however slight, of returning life or reason. The hours of horror and self-reproach had entirely changed his feelings and ideas; for it was only at the instant when he saw his father raise the poisoned wine to his lips that he saw his crime in all its hideous enormity. His soul ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... Self-reproach, too, was fighting a fairly even fight with the excitement that had been called up by that same pair of brown eyes. Armand for the past four or five hours had acted in direct opposition to the earnest advice given to him by his chief; he had ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... aside the suggestion of Mr. Seward that war should be declared against France and Spain as a means of quieting domestic difficulties which were even then represented by contending armies; with what calmness of mind he laid aside Mr. Greeley's letter of despair and self-reproach of July 29, 1861, and proceeded with the preparation of his programme of military operations from every base line of the armies of the Republic; with what skill and statesmanlike foresight he corrected Mr. Seward's letter to Mr. Adams in regard to the ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... very edge of his hair, to the farthest depths of his soul. He would have taken the hand: then he drew back with a gesture of self-reproach, as if he could tread his past sinful pride ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... make a 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
... said, self-reproach fully, "for coming in second. Never actually won a race in my life yet. Is it the same ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... shadowless and penniless: but a heavy weight had been removed from my bosom, and I was calm. Had I not lost my love, or had that loss left me free from self-reproach, I believe I might have been happy; but I knew not what steps I should take. I searched my pockets, and found that a few pieces of gold remained to me; I counted them smilingly. I had left my horse at the inn below. I was ashamed to return there, at least till the setting ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso
... as Soeur Lucie turned to leave the room, she felt a sudden pang of self-reproach. She was deceiving the good-humoured, simple little sister, who had been kind to her after her own fashion; and she was going away, and would never see her any more. She thought she would like to have one more kind word from her, as she could not ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... broke down, she arose with a pang of self-reproach, crossed to his chair, and laid ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... moroseness. He was like one beside himself, his 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
... This blanched the cheek of each one. Three months of such unremitting pain, steadily on the increase, was appalling; but mother faced the prospect without a murmur, willing to bear by God's grace what He should inflict, and to wait His good time for deliverance. I was filled with self-reproach, for I should have been with her ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... a head to be ashamed of his heart; and it was with no self-reproach that he let tears come, and then wiped them away. He slept at last; and the sleep of a tired man should be sweet. But "as he slept he dreamed." He fell to his journeyings again. He thought himself back on the wearisome road he had come that day, and it seemed that night ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... reaction against such self-reproach. The memory of her life with Tito, of the conditions which made their real union impossible, while their external union imposed a set of false duties on her which were essentially the concealment and sanctioning of what her mind revolted from, told her that flight ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... unmanliness and effeminacy, on 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 ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... character that when she sees the affair in its true light—I suppose I'm to blame! Yes, I ought to have told her at the beginning that I was engaged. But you can't force a fact of that sort upon a new acquaintance: it looks silly." Dunham hung his head in self-reproach. ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... whistle off the recollection of her; for there was always Something of self-reproach with it. I drove gayly along the road, enjoying the stare of hostlers and stable-boys as I managed my horses knowingly down the steep street of Hempstead; when, just at the skirts of the village, one of the traces of my leader came loose. I pulled up; and as the animal was restive and my servant ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... hat-rack in the hall. Many women in Europe and elsewhere, ladies of the great world that Beth had only dreamed about, would have given their ears (since ear puffs were in fashion) to receive such a note from Peter. It was a beautiful note besides—manly, gentle, breathing contrition and self-reproach. Beth merely ignored it. Whatever she thought of it and of Peter she wanted to deliberate ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... one end of the room now and gazed at them, he realized with a little pang of self-reproach that his latest exploit had been prompted by as much of a desire to set himself right with the company as to square ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... as quietly as possible, and then his glance meeting Theo's, she broke into a little burst of horror-stricken self-reproach. ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... been thought weakly charitable by all the rest of the family. Mr. Adderley had been forwarded by Sir Francis Walsingham like a bale of goods, and arriving in a mood of such self-reproach as would be deemed abject, by persons used to the modern relations between noblemen and their chaplains, was exhilarated by the unlooked-for comfort of finding his young charge at least living, and in his grandfather's house. From his narrative, ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... you dawning from some heaven, Who would not suffer self-reproach to live In one to whom your friendship once was given. I catch a vision, faint and fugitive, Of a dark face with eyes contemplative, Deep eyes that smile in silence, And parted lips that whisper, 'Say nothing more, old friend, of being forgiven, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... stride, full of self-reproach. "Now, ain't that like me! Pluggin' ahead, and never thinking about how played out you are. We'll ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... the interest with which your daughter has honored me," he said, "your words would inflict on me intolerable self-reproach, but I cannot blame myself for not being silent when silence would have been a reproach to her delicacy and a libel on my own affection. Now, however, sir, I yield myself wholly to your cooler judgment and better ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... found that he had mechanically walked back to Cosmo Place. He was recalled from his absorption to a more pressing calamity, as he recognised, with an acute pang of self-reproach, the doctor's brougham still standing before the door. He entered the house quickly. There was a sense of that strange emptiness, of the ordinary living rooms of the house being deserted, that gives one an almost physical sense that life is being lived through with stress and terrible ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... 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 act the ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... 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 ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... 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 to ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... first place, it follows from this subject, that the mere workings of conscience are no proof of holiness. When, after the commission of a wrong act, the soul of a man is filled with self-reproach, he must not take it for granted that this is the stirring of a better nature within him, and is indicative of some remains of original righteousness. This reaction of conscience against his disobedience of law is as necessary, and unavoidable, as the action of his eyelids under the blaze ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... hindrance to Hamlet's action was his conscience, it by no means follows that this was the sole or the chief hindrance. And, thirdly, let him observe, and let him ask himself whether the coincidence is a mere accident, that Hamlet is here almost repeating the words he used in vain self-reproach some time before (IV. ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... mounting it, rode to where he could put it to the gallop. So men try to leave behind them the sneering demons of conscience and self-reproach. Some of them succeed in doing so, but find the pair waiting for them on their own doorstep. Herbert Courtland galloped his horse intermittently for an hour or two, and then rode leisurely back to his rooms. He felt that he had got the better of those ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... self-reproach and {225} pain, the fairy Morgana appears, telling her that love, which is stronger than death, can bring Merlin eternal grace. Vivien is led away by her maid, and Lancelot enters with the knights to seek Merlin's ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... just told them, and of their new and peaceful life, brought these recollections so strongly upon Kate that she could not suppress them, Mrs Nickleby began to have a glimmering that she had been rather thoughtless now and then, and was conscious of something like self-reproach as she embraced her daughter, and yielded to the emotions which such a conversation ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... doesn't always run true to form. Hating 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
... 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 a friendly businesslike ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... Wilkins that odd thing that happened to you up country, in the summer." In complying he tried to save his self-respect by affecting a contemptuous indifference in the matter, and beginning reluctantly and pooh-poohingly. He had pangs afterwards as he walked home to dress for dinner, but his self-reproach was less afflicting as time passed. His suffering from it was never so great as from the slight passed upon his apparition, when Wilkins or what other it might be, would meet the suggestion that he should tell him about it, with the hurried interposition, "Yes, ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... she murmured, oblivious of the fact that no one was telling her anything. "You needn't tell me!" Then, with rare self-reproach, "Perhaps I hadn't ought to have said so much, but such blindness is enough to provoke a saint. If he'd any eyes—couldn't he see Esther?" Mrs. Sykes sighed as she emptied the doctor's ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay |
