"Penitence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you, as a philosopher, in the sober hours of reflection, answer for this to your conscience, even supposing you had doubts of the truth of a system which gives to virtue its sweetest hopes, to impenitent vice its greatest fears, and to true penitence its best consolations; which restrains even the least approaches to guilt, and yet makes those allowances for the infirmities of our nature which the stoic pride denied to it, but which its real imperfection and the goodness of its infinitely ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... brother, is said to have been penitent, but his penitence was not profound. He offered no apology, and the first words he is recorded to have uttered after his guilt was discovered were a joke upon 'the plain fish,' Caliban. He was forgiven, and most ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... did as Sohrab bade him, and he opened his mail and saw the onyx; and when he had seen it he tore his clothes in his distress, and he covered his head with ashes. And the tears of penitence ran from his eyes, and he roared aloud in his ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... was made up of two different men, the one all self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion; the other proud, calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust before his Maker: but he set his foot on the neck of his king. In his devotional retirement, he prayed with convulsions, and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... at Albany one morning, just as I happened to be pasting into one of my books a few quips and cranks anent my books from Punch. He adjured me 'not to do it! for Heaven's sake spare me!' covering his face with his hands. 'What's the matter, friend?' 'I wrote all those,' added he in earnest penitence, 'and I vow faithfully never to do it again!' 'Pray don't make a rash promise, Edmund, and so unkind a one too; I rejoice in all this sort of thing—it sells my books, besides—I'se Maw-worm—I likes ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... you know by what complicated misfortunes she had fallen to that miserable state in which you now behold her, I should have no need of words to excite your compassion. Think, sir, of what once she was. Would you abandon her to the insults of an unfeeling world, deny her opportunity of penitence, and cut off the little comfort that still remains for your ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... ruined soul to the Satan she had served so long. When I am called to the settlement, it seems an insult and a mockery to ask God, whom I have defied, to save me. If I could only have a little time to show my penitence." ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... at his feet, and Annette chopping away his standing-place, and his own extravagances melting his foothold like butter in the sun; with a barren future staring him in the face—he was disposed alike to remorse and penitence. ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... authority, and drew such a picture of the joys they had forfeited through their falsehood and cowardice, that they fell at her feet, saying: "O blessed Dorothea, pray for us, that, through thy intercession, our sins may be forgiven and our penitence accepted!" And she did so. And when they had left the dungeon they proclaimed aloud that ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... already seen, excited his delirium to the utmost in order to obtain possession of his secrets. Having thus explained his successful imposture by natural causes, which excluded any idea of magic or sorcery, he protested his penitence, implored the mercy of God, and prepared himself for execution as ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... for action at any cost, with all the forces he could gather, and without delays. He talked of Cecilia as his uncle's bride to him. Rosamund could hardly trust her ears when he informed her he had told his uncle of his determination to compel him to accomplish the act of penitence. 'Was it prudent to say it, Nevil?' she asked. But, as in his politics, he disdained prudence. A monstrous crime had been committed, involving the honour of the family. No subtlety of insinuation, no suggestion, could wean him from the fixed idea that the apology ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of departure is Raoul of Cambrai burning Origni. The point of arrival is Girard of Roussillon falling one day at the feet of an old priest and expiating his former pride by twenty-two years of penitence. These two episodes ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... the sanguinary resolutions that I had once formed. Yet I was fearful of the effects of my hasty rage, and dreaded an encounter in consequence of which I might rush into evils which no time could repair, nor penitence expiate. ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... continuance of his own house to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre should have been punished by the disease which threatened his nephew's life. "Come," he said, "noble De Lacy—the judgment provoked by a moment's presumption may be even yet averted by prayer and penitence. The dial went back at the prayer of the good King Hezekiah—down, down upon thy knees, and doubt not that, with confession, and penance, and absolution, thou mayst yet atone for thy falling away from the ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... were alone, the Angel said, "Art thou the King?" Then bowing down his head, King Robert crossed both hands upon his breast, And meekly answered him: "Thou knowest best! My sins as scarlet are; let me go hence, And in some cloister's school of penitence, Across those stones, that pave the way to heaven, Walk barefoot, till ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... of this whole period of ecclesiastical history may be summed up in a sentence: The numerous theological controversies, and the pastoral neglect of the people, before the war, had unfitted both the clergy and the masses for deriving from it that deep penitence and thorough reconsecration which a season of great national affliction should have engendered. The moral excesses apparent during this time had been produced by causes long anterior to it. Hence, when the protracted time of carnage and the destruction of property did come, there ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... the night in prayer and contemplation. The hermits tell you, it was upon high mountains that God chose to manifest his will:—fundamenta ejus in montibus sanctis, say they;—they consider these rocks as symbols of their penitence, and mortifications; and their being so beautifully covered with fine flowers, odoriferous and rare plants, as emblems of the virtue and innocence of the religious inhabitants; or how else, say they, could such rocks produce spontaneously flowers in a desart, ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... at St. Mary's, Cambridge, he was dragged into the High Commission Court, and, as the hateful practice then was, a practice dear to the soul of Laud, was bidden to subscribe a formal recantation. This Mr. Bernard refused to do, though professing his sincere sorrow and penitence for any oversights and hasty expressions in his sermon. Thereupon he was sent back to prison, where he died. "If," adds Fuller, "he was miserably abused in prison by the keepers (as some have reported) to the shortening of his life, He that maketh ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... misery and wickedness flow in a dark current beneath; and the blind, the weak, the stupid, and the reckless are continually falling through into the rushing flood. We must, it is true, organize our life-boats. It is our duty to pluck out the drowning wretches, receive their vows of penitence and gratitude, and pray for courage and resignation when they celebrate their rescue by falling in again. But we agree nowadays that we should do them much better service if we could contrive to mend more of the holes in ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... health, increased our blessings and comforts, and given us the life of the ages. Deut. 4:31—"(For the Lord thy God is a merciful God); he will not forsake thee, neither destroy thee, nor forget the covenant of thy fathers." God is ready to accept the penitence of Israel, even now, if only it be sincere. Israel will return and find God only because He is merciful and does not let go of her. It is His mercy that forbids his permanently forsaking His people. Psa. 86:15—"But thou, O Lord, art a God full of compassion, and gracious, long-suffering, ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... presented to the President, signed by several thousand persons in Vermont, praying a remitment of Lyon's fine. He asked the bearer of the petition if Lyon himself had petitioned, and being answered in the negative, said, 'Penitence must ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... this literature is concerned with stories of the conversions or the penitence of courtesans. St. Martinianus, for instance (Feb. 13), was tempted by the courtesan Zoe, but converted her. The story of St. Margaret of Cortona (Feb. 22), a penitent courtesan, is late, for she belongs to the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Saracen exile tells the story of penitence and shame; and to the last moment of his sad life he sighs in the sultry desert for the fair home of his ancestors, the gorgeous Alhambra. We, too, are descended from a race of conquerors, who crossed the ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... a moment, we may plunge our years In fatal penitence, and in the blight Of our own soul, turn all our blood to tears, And colour things to ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... talk,' eh? It's cheap. Penitence is always on the free list. And in your case, as in most, it comes too late to do any good, except to salve the penitent's feelings. Willem lived in the same house with you for three years. All around him was Love. Except ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... man whose feeling has been repressed by sin and crusted over by deception, whose inner restlessness has been accumulating under the misery and impotence of a divided life, is brought into contact with Christian truth, he can only accept it through a volitional crisis, with its cleansing flood of penitence and confession and its blessed reward of the sense of pardon and peace and the relinquishment of the self into the divine hands. But one thing is true of either process in the Christian doctrine of conversion. It is not merely an achievement, although it is that; it is also a rescue. It cannot ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... master Dick a lecture for this irreverent mention of my pet, who, poor fellow, hearing his name called in question, came up in all innocence to fondle me; to which grave remonstrance the hopeful youth replied by another whistle, half of penitence, half of amusement. ...
— The Ground-Ash • Mary Russell Mitford
... fulfilled my duty, at the risk of all my soul holds dear. And now, as you hope to meet hereafter her, who, if angels can sorrow, still mourns over your transgressions, quit the dark path you are now treading, and devote your future life to penitence and prayer. Oh! by my mother's wrongs and woes, and by my own, by the mighty power of God and a Saviour's dying love, I entreat you to repent, forsake your sins, ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... He was too fond of Dot not to regret the unexpected degree of distress he had caused her; and Dot made much of his penitence in her ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the old professor could have bitten out his tongue for his unholy jest. His penitence was in no wise lessened by the quality of Scott's answering laugh. Best leave those fellows to their ministerial sackcloth, without questioning the quality of the flax from which it was spun. A man of Scott Brenton's calibre would ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... He grants To penitence a brief delay, That they might burst the bonds of lust And put their vanities away; His sentence given, He waits awhile And stays ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... for infants, and a cradle for the old man too, it seems!" *4 Notwithstanding the disinclination he had manifested to a confessor, he was attended by several ecclesiastics on his way to the gallows; and one of them repeatedly urged him to give some token of penitence at this solemn hour, if it were only by repeating the Pater Noster and Ave Maria. Carbajal, to rid himself of the ghostly father's importunity, replied by coolly repeating the words, "Pater Noster," ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... Prince Louis, who was heir to the crown. Eleanora's grandfather formed the scheme of marrying her to this Prince Louis, and thus to unite his kingdom to hers. He himself was tired of ruling, and wished to resign his power, with a view of spending the rest of his days in penitence and prayer. He had been a very wicked man in his day, and now, as he was growing old, he was harassed by remorse for his sins, and wished, if possible, to make some atonement for them by ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... command with great devotedness. The abstinence of the ancient Jews generally lasted from twenty-six to twenty-seven hours. On these days they wore sackcloth, laid themselves in ashes, and sprinkled them on their heads, in token of their great grief and penitence. Some spent the whole night in the synagogue; occasionally using with great effect a scourge as a penance for their sins, or as a stimulant to devout behaviour. We think it is not improbable that it is from the Jews that the Roman Catholics derived ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various
... of contrite sorrow, shed By penitence, cast down, Shall flash, when solar rays have fled, In an eternal crown; That tear shall scintillate, and shine, When comets cease to soar; If thou would'st wear that gem divine, Go, thou, ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... regret, repining; homesickness, nostalgia; mal du pays, maladie [Fr.]; lamentation &c 839; penitence &c 950. bitterness, heartburning^. recrimination (accusation) 938. laudator temporis acti &c (discontent) 832 [Lat.]. V. regret, deplore; bewail &c (lament) 839; repine, cast a longing lingering look behind; rue, rue the day; repent ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... grappling. An illustration may be too pathetic, and people may weep from the wrong cause, an event which often occurs in church. It is one thing to shed tears over a touching story and another to shed them from penitence. An illustration should not be more sublime than the lesson to be taught lest there follow a swift descent with loss of reverence by the way. There is a place for humour in the pulpit, if it be natural to the preacher and flow spontaneously, but a humorous illustration requires ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... have set before us in the text the one condition on which all Christian progress depends, and if by any slackness we loosen the girdle of truthfulness, and admit into our religious life any taint of unreality, if our prayers say just a little more than is quite true, and our penitence a little less, we shall speedily find that hypocrisy and trivial insincerity are separated by very narrow limits. God's truth in the Gospel cleanses the inner man, but not without his own effort, and, therefore, we are ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... charitable one, confessed his sins, was houselled and anhealed, and died on Passion Tuesday, April 6th. His brain and bowels were buried at Charroux, his heart at Rouen, and his body at his father's feet, in penitence, in the nunnery of Fontevrault. Hugh was on his way to the Cathedral at Angers to take duty the next day, Palm Sunday, when Gilbert de Lacy, a clerk, rode up to him and told him of the king's death and of the funeral next ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... executed, confessed in a moment of penitence, that many robberies had been concerted, and were to have been committed by him and some others. He mentioned, as their chief instigator upon these occasions, a woman of the name of Robley (the wife of a blacksmith at Sydney), who received all the property which they might ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... It was a violation of all the proprieties to permit such a woman to stay at his feet, making such demonstrations. If he had been a Jewish rabbi, he would have thrust her away with execrations, as bringing pollution in her touch. But Jesus let the woman stay and finish her act of penitence and love, and then spoke words which assured her of ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... and pray,' said another nun. 'We are taught to hope, that prayer and penitence will work our salvation. There is hope for all ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... the part he now took, Tichborne pleaded that what he had done was through ignorance, and that had he known more he would sooner have entered a "red hot oven" than the room in which the warrant was signed.(930) His penitence saved his life, and he, like Pennington, spent the remainder of his ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... repaid his elder brother's protecting care with a loyalty that knew no bounds. The Colonel, who was a strict disciplinarian, frequently punished him in his boyhood for wayward acts, and the little fellow made no resistance—only sobbed in deep penitence. Once, however, when Uncle Jim, as the boys and Polly called him, felt compelled to apply to rod to Dick—unjustly, as it afterward appeared—Bud burst into a tempest of passionate tears, and, leaping upon the Colonel's back, clung there clawing and striking ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... no doubt, after the Bishop's holy words, after so many years of repentance and abnegation, in the midst of a penitence admirably begun, if this man had not flinched for an instant, even in the presence of so terrible a conjecture, but had continued to walk with the same step towards this yawning precipice, at the bottom of which ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... and carelessly opened it. It was a letter three months old, signed "Julia." Catching sight of his name in it he read it. It was nothing very remarkable—merely a weak woman's confession of unprofitable sin— the penitence of a faithless wife deserted by her betrayer. The letter had fallen from the pocket of Captain Armisted; the reader quietly ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... However this may discredit such persons with the judicious, it helps them with the people, as it gives heat, pungency, and publicity to their words. A similar experience is not infrequent in private life. Each young and ardent person writes a diary, in which, when the hours of prayer and penitence arrive, he inscribes his soul. The pages thus written are to him burning and fragrant; he reads them on his knees by midnight and by the morning star; he wets them with his tears; they are sacred; too good ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... upon the very weapon wherewith to make an utter rout of all Caron's resolutions. For knowing nothing of the fountain from which those tears were springing, and deeming them the expression of a grief pure and unalloyed—saving, perhaps, by a worthy penitence—he stepped swiftly to ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... feelings are principally feelings of indignation as when an injustice is experienced by an individual, a feeling of fear as when an individual is affected by an inclination to do wrong, a feeling of penitence as when the individual has committed a wrong. With the feeling of indignation is joined a desire for vengeance, with the feeling of penitence a desire of atonement, the former tending towards an ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the city. Twenty more priests are necessary. The faith has had an excellent opening in this province of Camarines, and the preaching of the gospel has shed its rays far and wide therein. The natives are especially inclined to the sacrament of Penitence; and it is a thing to marvel at, to see the churches continually filled, especially during Lent, with people ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... repast, I cast a look on a long range of tables covered with very excellent realities, which the monks were coming to devour with energy, if one might judge from their appearance. These sons of penitence and mortification possess one of the most spacious islands of the whole cluster, a princely habitation, with gardens and open porticos, that engross every breath of air; and, what adds not a little to the charms of their abode, is ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... I am!" she cried with instant penitence, "and how very rude you will think me! I think I have the blues to-day, or, to be more French and more poetic, the black butterflies. It is so sweet of you to have let me talk to you. I know I've been as stupid as an owl. Won't you stay and dine with ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... was usually the case with those of her profession, might have a father, who, with the ardour, the disobedience, the remorse of his heroic master, had been, like him, a crusader and a captive; and in the after solitude of self-inflicted penitence, full of romantic and mournful recollections, fostered in the mind of his daughter, by nature embued with a portion of his own impassioned feelings, every tendency to that wild and poetical turn of thought which qualified her for a minstrel; and, after his ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... said the merchant, raising him, and quite melted at this show of penitence, "listen to me! are the bills safe? if so, you ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 559, July 28, 1832 • Various
... answer, and he gave them, hardly seeing where they fell, then threw the rule all across the room, and hugging the kind hand in both his own, laid his face down on it sobbing out in a passion of love, and shame, and penitence: ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... Agnes," said her brother, with a sad smile, "you want me to follow in the footsteps of all other offenders and criminals, who, after doing all the mischief possible, and living for their own selfish gratification while abroad in the world, spend the time of their imprisonment in acts of penitence and devotion, and go out of the world, as they all invariably do, in the full odor of sanctity, in peace with God, ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... only too glad that poor Joan's ignorance prevented her reading the exaggerated rhodomontade of penitence and despair with which the paper was filled, ignored the first question. "He says," she said, turning to read from the page, "'As you won't give me the opportunity of speaking to you, promise me that when we meet, which will be to-morrow night—' Oh, Joan, can that be true? ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... the very salve for weariness. Playing it, I often feel in the trance of rapture. I wish to God I could live my life upon the flute, for there I'm on the best and cleanest terms with myself, and no backwash of penitence. ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... Froude had made such an astonishing slip, there would have been more ground for imputing to him an incapacity to distinguish between truth and falsehood. Freeman's "Last Words on Mr. Froude" show no sign of penitence or good feeling, and they end with characteristic bluster about the truth, from which he had so grievously departed. But Froude was ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... Sins ye Remit, they are Remitted unto them; and whose soever Sins ye Retain, they are Retained." By which words, is not granted an Authority to Forgive, or Retain Sins, simply and absolutely, as God Forgiveth or Retaineth them, who knoweth the Heart of man, and truth of his Penitence and Conversion; but conditionally, to the Penitent: And this Forgivenesse, or Absolution, in case the absolved have but a feigned Repentance, is thereby without other act, or sentence of the Absolvent, ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... there and starve him out; and he must be asleep. Dylks stooped and peered into his face and knew the man for one of the Hounds who had often disturbed his meetings, and now he looked about in the rage that surged up through his penitence and self-pity for a stone or a club to strike him senseless, or dead if need be. But there was no such weapon that he could see, and the risk of a struggle was greater than the risk of trying to pass the man without waking ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... wilder youths, whose soul is sense, Profane the temple of delight, And purchase endless penitence, With the stolen ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... reflection that women who are thirty-five should never weep. She knew that her face had not been made ugly by her tears, and this gave her a perverse satisfaction in the midst of her misery. Of Marien she thought: "He sits there as if he had been put 'en penitence'." No doubt he could not endure scenes, and the one he had just passed through must have given him the downcast look which ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... street-processions, constitutional unmilitary exclamations and hurrahings. On which account the Regiment Picardie, for one, has to be drawn out in the square of the barracks, here at Metz, and sharply harangued by the General himself; but expresses penitence. ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... sin, are now attributed to scientific causes rather than to human guilt. When famines or pestilences came, our fathers thought them God's punishment for sin. When earthquakes shook the earth or comets hung threateningly in the sky, our fathers saw in them a divine demand for human penitence. Such events, referred now to their scientific causes, do not quicken in us a sense of sin. New democracy also has helped in this development of self-complacency. Under autocratic kings the common people were common people and they knew it ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... the wrong way every morning after prayers, by dropping something, or sniffling, or sneezing. Therefore, while they distractedly got together books, slates, and copy-books, their infantile eyes found time to dart deadly reproaches toward the corner of penitence, and their little lips, still shaped from their first nourishment, pouted anything but sympathy for the occupant ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... sought a cave in some distant desert, where, in the lair of some wild beast, with a stone for a pillow, a handful of herbs for a meal, and a cup of water for beveridge, they lived out the remnant of their days in a constant succession of mortifications, prayers, and penitence. ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... him in, and will not let him go without his tasting bread and wine. They are exceedingly loyal and devoted to their native land. They are very fond of proverbs, of which I quote a few: "The empty sack does not stand upright"; "Penitence does not make the madman well again"; "If you will not be a thief I will not watch"; "You can't shut out the sun with the palm of your hand"; "Be married by your ears and not your eyes"; "There is most milk in other people's cows"; ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... you haue done enough, and haue perform'd A Saint-like Sorrow: No fault could you make, Which you haue not redeem'd; indeed pay'd downe More penitence, then done trespas: At the last Doe, as the Heauens haue done; forget your euill, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... confidential talks and momentous interviews gone forward. Here, one morning, sitting on one of the battered green benches, Roderick, as he had promised, told his friend everything. He had arrived late the night before; he looked tired, and yet flushed and excited. He made no professions of penitence, but he practiced an unmitigated frankness, and his self-reprobation might be taken for granted. He implied in every phrase that he had done with it all, and that he was counting the hours till he could get back to ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... every sort of fault. When I once begin to write to you, I do not know how to stop; and I have had so much to do lately as scarcely to know how to begin to write to you. Hence these faults—not quite tears—in spite of my penitence ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... Park—in your companionship she went abroad, where she passed as your wife, you assuming a false name—under which you were recognized, nevertheless. The day came when you grew weary of your victim. When your funds were exhausted, when the girl's tears and penitence grew troublesome—in the hour when she was most helpless and miserable, and had most need of your pity and protection, you abandoned her, leaving her alone in Paris, with a few pounds to pay for her journey home, if she should have courage to go back to the friends who had sheltered her. In this ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... to his bed, tucked him up, and returned. We sat in silence—such an uncomfortable constrained silence, as had never before been between us. I had a book before me. I saw no word of it. I could not drive the vision away—the lovely, pleading face, the penitence. Good heavens! How could he repulse her as he had done? Her repeated request that he would take that money—what did it all mean? And, moreover, my heart was sore that he had concealed it all from me. About ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... young laughter, calling forth renewed remonstrance from Jane, and then the door of the room was flung open, and Molly Selwyn sailed in and overwhelmed Sara with apologies for her reception, or rather, for the lack of it. She was quite charming in her penitence, waving dimpled, deprecating hands, and appealing to Sara with a pair of liquid, disarming, golden-brown eyes that earned her forgiveness ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... investigations, and allegorical and oriental tales, that no mind can be thought very deficient that has, by constant study and meditation, assimilated to itself all that may be found there. No. 7, written in Passion-week on abstraction and self-examination[640], and No. 110, on penitence and the placability of the Divine Nature, cannot be too often read. No. 54, on the effect which the death of a friend should have upon us, though rather too dispiriting, may be occasionally very medicinal to the mind. Every one must ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Moore challenged him to fight. The police interfered, and as Jeffrey put it, "the affair ended amicably. We have since breakfasted together very lovingly. He has expressed penitence for what he has written and declared that he will never again apply any little talents he may possess to such purpose: and I have said that I shall be happy to praise him whenever I find that he has abjured these ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... excess of innocence, or just a role he adopted? Stop! His idle word is as good as an oath. He could not pretend to what he did not believe. He told her of his earnest and sincere admiration—words! words! hurry on! She asked how it was then—? Here he confessed, with a mixture of pride and penitence, that he had written me letters which absolutely required answers, and to which I had never deigned to reply by even a word. That, mortified beyond measure at my silent contempt, he had tried every means of ascertaining the cause of my coldness, but I had never vouchsafed an answer, but had ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... knelt down together. He prayed as he never prayed before; he entreated and interceded, in tones so tender and fervent that it melted the desperate man, who cried for mercy. And mercy came. He bowed in penitence before the Lord and lay down that night on his pallet of straw a ...
— Children's Edition of Touching Incidents and Remarkable Answers to Prayer • S. B. Shaw
... conduct and his learning, which had been rendered more solid by long and serious study, caused him to be admitted into the Protestant consistory; there, after an exemplary life, he died, and none but God ever knew whether it was one of hypocrisy or of penitence. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... cob-loaf; it does him goode. What a kind father he is! I wish my step-mother were as kind. I hate alle sneaping and snubbing, flowting, fleering, pinching, nipping, and such-like; it onlie creates resentment insteade of penitence, and lowers y'e minde of either partie. Gillian throws a rolling-pin at y'e turnspit's head, and we call it low-life; but we looke for such unmannerlinesse in the kitchen. A whip is onlie ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... when he found it almost impossible to please her. At these times she took offense when no offense was intended and he found himself apologizing when, to say the least, the fault, if there was any, was not more than half his. But she always followed those moods with others of contrition and penitence and then he was petted and ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... hand lay upon the snow where he had let it fall, another hand was laid upon it, and his fingers were gripped by a set of fingers which held it fast and gave it a firm, steady pressure, to which he warmly responded, his heart beating fast, and a genial glow of satisfaction running through him in his penitence for ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... his eyes as he murmured the name of the girl who had sailed so blithely from New York with his love as her only haven. He called himself the basest of wretches, the most graceless of lovers. He sobbed aloud at last in his penitence, and his heart went back to the night of the wreck. His love went down to the bottom of the sea, craving a single chance to redeem itself before the one it had wounded and humiliated. Before he fell asleep his conscience was relieved of part of its weight and the strong, sweet ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... heart suffered in its self-conquests, so that he did not grieve for Harold himself; but he gave me that sympathy of entire appreciation of my loss which is far better than compassion. For himself, he said his last link with the world was gone, he found the peace, and the expression of penitence, his soul required, in the course he was about to embrace, and I might look on this as a voice from the grave. I should never hear of him more, but I should know that, as long as life was left him, it would be spent in prayers for those ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... bosom or in the hair of Adele; but a new and late gift of this kind—a little tuft of the trailing arbutus which he has clambered over miles of woodland to secure—is not worn by Adele, but by Rose, who glances into the astounded face of Phil with a pretty, demure look of penitence. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... and send her back to the Asylum, so discouraged were they and so deeply did they regret having taken her. But each time these frightful scenes, which almost made the house tremble, ended in the same deluge of tears, and the same excited expressions and acts of penitence, when the child would throw herself on the floor, begging them so earnestly to punish her that they were ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... before His altars, we ask for early death to take us while yet youth and love are ours? Or that, musing together beneath the funereal trees of the churchyard, we yearned for one grave, smiling at the idea of death, and weeping at life? Or that, when thou kneelest before me at the tribunal of penitence, and, speaking in the presence of God, canst find naught of evil to reveal to me, so wholly have I kept thy soul in the pure regions of heaven? What, then, could offend our Creator? Perhaps—yes! perhaps some spirit of heaven may have envied me my happiness when on Easter morn I saw thee kneeling ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... agitated. "I thought every one knew. No, I did not, either," she avowed, in a sudden burst of shame and penitence. "I knew it was a secret; but—oh, Mr. Raymond, it was Eleanore herself who ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... that they did become such a pest because at the South they were likened to the plagues of Egypt, and the North reiterated and affirmed this cry and condoled with the victims of the oppression with much show of penitence, and an unappeasable wrath toward the instruments of the iniquity. Thus the voice of the people—that voice which is but another form of the voice of God—proclaimed these facts to the world, so that they must thenceforth be held indisputable and true beyond the utmost temerity of ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... compare the rank of the emperor with that of the pontiff. Between them the difference is as great as the charge of human and divine things. You, emperor, receive baptism from the pontiff, accept sacraments, request prayers, hope for blessing, beg for penitence. In a word, you administer things human, he dispenses to you things divine. If, then, I do not put his rank superior, it is at least equal. And do not think that in mundane pomp you are before him, for 'the weakness of God ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... the orator had referred was never officially known, but it may be said without exaggeration that there had been suspicions abroad against him. His present friendliness with the victim of those events, therefore, seemed the gauge and symbol of penitence and reconciliation. ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... matter of fact, I saw more sense than madness in this outburst, for it must have been very grievous for the poor girl to have to encounter my idle curiosity, in the place of her penitence. I was deeply moved, and in spite of myself a big tear rolled down my face. The count, who had known her, laughed, but I begged him ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... of course, sir—we know that. But I, at any rate, dare to hope that it was not all wasted—all our aspirations and penitence and praise. We mistook our God, but none the less it reached Him—it found its way to the Spirit of the World. It taught us that the individual was nothing, and that He ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... and her generous lover, the Captain was not a difficult penitent. He was indeed a man who, having lost the capacity and the need for sin, took very kindly to penitence, as a species ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... is long kept in suspence, Penitence may break his Spirit ever after. Besides, Certainty gives a Man a good Air upon his Trial, and makes him risk another without Fear or Scruple. But I'll away, for 'tis a Pleasure to be the Messenger of Comfort ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... temps a le rallumer. Souvent, en confession et dans certains cas de penitence publique, le clerge imposoit pour satisfaction un pelerinage a Jerusalem, ou un temps fixe de croisade. Plusieurs fois meme les papes employerent tous les ressorts de leur politique et l'ascendant de leur autorite pour renouer chez les princes ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... delights of courtship, and growing affection on Zoe's side—for a warm attachment of the noblest kind did grow, by degrees, out of her penitence, and esteem, and desire to repair her fault—I must now take up the other thread of this narrative, and apologize for having inverted the order of events; for it was, in reality, several days after this happy scene that Mademoiselle ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... community, can stop the flood of vice and crime at its source, by repressing in childhood those wild passions which are its springs. Nay, often will the mature mind, hard as adamant against the terrors of the law and the contempt of society, be softened to tears of penitence by the innocence of its educated child ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... are founded on the account given by Saxo-Grammaticus (Lib. VIII.) of the guilt, penitence, and death of Starkather, a fabulous Scandinavian hero, famous throughout the North for his bodily strength and warlike achievements, as well as for his poetical genius, of which traces are still to be found in the metrical traditions and phraseology ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... expedition of yours to the wildest misconceptions of your place in the world and of your duties and responsibilities. Even now, it seems to me, your present emotion is due not so much to a real and sincere penitence for your disobedience and folly as to a positive annoyance at our most ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... gift of self-control. You will not suffer her to learn that her mother has done that which dishonours alike mother and child? You will not consummate your wrong to Alice Darvil by robbing her of the fruit of a life of penitence and remorse? You will not unveil her shame to her own daughter? Convince yourself, and master yourself while you ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... slowly regained his strength, though Keating, and the authors he followed, think he was never the same man again, after the fright he received from the head of Conor O'Melaghlin. He died peaceably and full of penitence, at Kinkora, on the eve of the Ides of July, A.D. 1086, after severe physical suffering. He was in the 77th year of his age, the 32nd of his rule over Munster, and the 13th—since the death of Dermid of Leinster—in ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... beautiful murderess contains a pathetic narrative of the exertions of the worthy clergyman (its author) to bring her to repentance. At first, his ghostly comfort was very ill received, and she returned with taunts and derision his exhortations to penitence. But this humour only lasted while she had hopes of obtaining pardon through the interest of her family. When these vanished, it was no longer difficult to bring her, in all human appearance, to a just sense of her condition; her thoughts were easily ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 482, March 26, 1831 • Various
... confessional, while Henri carefully closed the door of the church by which she had entered. He made sure that it could not be opened on the outside, and then followed his betrothed to kneel within the place of penitence. Arrived an hour before her, with his old valet, he had found this open—a certain and understood sign that the Abbe Quillet, his tutor, awaited him at the accustomed place. His care to prevent any surprise had made him remain himself to guard ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... "either my heart, or my influence?" He replied, "I acknowledge your influence, and know your goodness to me; but I have an aunt who loves me in quite a different manner. That pious woman every day implores God to bestow on me disgrace, humiliation, and occasions for penitence, and she has more influence than you." As he said these words, the sound of a carriage was heard; "The king is coming!" said Madame de ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... walked home very slowly, for remorse, while softening into penitence, had sapped the foundations of his life; and he had grown a feeble old man in so short a time, that those who look upon God as an avenger, rather than a chastiser, might have supposed that old age had fallen as a judgment upon him. But ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... herself felt disinclined to talk. She was oppressed by the knowledge that this was the last night she and Magda would have with each other. To-morrow Magda would be gone and one chapter of their lives together ended. The gates of the Sisters of Penitence would close upon her and Friars' Holm would ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler |
