"Unworthiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... soul cling to Him! May His light always shine on your path! May I always, even in dark days and dark times, have His light in my heart and soul! Don't regard me as one always on the sunny heights, but as one often cast down, often in much feebleness, in much unworthiness, and falling so far short of my own ideal. But it is good to think that, in Christ, we are perfect, that He makes ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... perpetual failure, not only of others, but of himself, to live up to his imaginative ideals, his consequent cynical scorn for humanity, the jejune credulity as to the absolute validity of his ideals and the unworthiness of the world in disregarding them, his wincings and mockeries under the sting of the petty disillusions which every hour spent among men brings to his infallibly quick observation, he has acquired the half tragic, half ironic air, the mysterious moodiness, the suggestion of a strange ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... were yet not all printed, either officiousness or malice informed Dr. Browne; who wrote to sir Kenelm, with much softness and ceremony, declaring the unworthiness of his work to engage such notice, the intended privacy of the composition, and the corruptions of the impression; and received an answer equally genteel and respectful, containing high commendations of the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... self-reproaching Christian who sits by your side,—your devout father, your saintly mother, or sister,—whom you know, and who you know is a better being than you are. Why should they be weary and heavy-laden with a sense of their unworthiness before God, and you go through life indifferent and light-hearted? Are they deluded in respect to the doctrine of human depravity, and are you in the right? Think you that the deathbed and the day of judgment ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... together, yet I held the same conceit thereof that we all do of the body, that it rise again. Surely it is but the merits of our unworthy natures, if we sleep in darkness until the last alarm. A serious reflex upon my own unworthiness did make me backward from challenging this prerogative of my soul: so that I might enjoy my Saviour at the last, I could with patience be nothing almost unto eternity. The second was that of Origen; that God ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... only in my own heart. I am content to love you and be forgotten. It is sweeter to love you and be forgotten than it would be to love any other woman and live in her lifelong remembrance: so humble has love made me, sweet, so great is my sense of my own unworthiness. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... a trembling voice. "Before I cast my vote in this ballot, I wish to say that I have listened to my honored colleague from Chouteau County with mingled feelings of shame at my own unworthiness and admiration for the courage which had dared to say what every man of us should have said six weeks ago. Senator Danvers beseeches us to send to Washington a man who will guard the fair name of Montana, who will work ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... altar from which he led his wing of boys through the responses. The falsehood of his position did not pain him. If at moments he felt an impulse to rise from his post of honour and, confessing before them all his unworthiness, to leave the chapel, a glance at their faces restrained him. The imagery of the psalms of prophecy soothed his barren pride. The glories of Mary held his soul captive: spikenard and myrrh and frankincense, symbolizing her royal lineage, her emblems, ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... all remembrance of their surroundings, their possible peril, as instantly erased from his mind. He merely saw that girl face upturned to his in the starlight, so fair and pleading, he merely heard that soft voice urging her unworthiness, her sorrow. A great, broad-shouldered giant he towered above her, yet his voice trembled like that of ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... to Durdlebury. If women sent me white feathers before I joined, what would they send me now? It will always be my consolation to know that you once gave me your love, in spite of the pain of realizing that I have forfeited it by my unworthiness. ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... except to his own might, and being compelled to yield to nothing save the enigmatical, pitiless power of eternal laws or their co-operation, so incomprehensible to the human intellect, called "chance," which took no heed of merit or unworthiness. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Blessed Virgin, Mother of God, cast a glance from Heaven, where thou sittest as Queen, upon this poor sinner, your servant. Though conscious of his unworthiness.... he blesses and exalts thee from his whole heart as the purest, the most beautiful and the most holy of creatures. He blesses thy holy name. He blesses thy sublime prerogatives as real Mother of God, ever Virgin, conceived without stain of sin, as co-Redemptress of the human race. ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... made out of great sinners; and the memory of an odious and conspicuous sin like this may sometimes lend a passionate force to subsequent devotion and keep alive for a lifetime the sense of personal unworthiness. ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... Being, are common to them all.—Common—the determination to devote themselves without exceptions, to the service and glory of God.—Common—the desire of holiness and of continual progress towards perfection.—Common—an abasing consciousness of their own unworthiness, and of their many remaining infirmities, which interpose so often to corrupt the simplicity of their intentions, to thwart the execution of their purer purposes, and frustrate the resolutions of ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... vent of some thunderous cloud, upon the sad head of Job. We may turn a corner in life, and be confronted perhaps with an uncertain shape of grief and despair, whom we would fain banish from our shuddering sight, perhaps with some solemn form of heavenly radiance, whom we may feel reluctant in our unworthiness to entertain. But in either case, such times as those, when we wrestle all night with the angel, not knowing if he wishes us well or ill, ignorant of his name and his mien alike, are better than hours spent in indolent ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... life must widen the soul; the more we live with Jesus, the more impossible will it be for any of us to be narrow. Our littleness takes refuge with God, and His greatness makes its abode with us; we bring Him our unworthiness and He imparts to us His righteousness; we offer to Him our hearts barren of sympathy and deficient in affection, and presently we find the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost that is given ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... months of his absence the girl had never been out of his mind, and he had striven hard to reconcile his unconquerable love for her with the sense of his own unworthiness. His unforgivable cowardice was a haunting shame, and the more he dwelt upon it the more unspeakably vile he appeared in his own sight; for the Blakes were honorable people. The family was old and cherished traditions common to fine Southern houses; the men of his name prided themselves ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... such confidence. For the issue of all will be, 'He will save the humble person'; namely, the man who is of the character described, and who is 'lowly of eyes' in conscious unworthiness, even while he lifts up his face to God in confidence in his Father's love. The 'saving' meant here is, of course, temporary and temporal deliverance from passing outward peril. But we may permissibly give it wider and deeper meaning. Continuous ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... subject, and is still of great value, but must be used with the understanding that records and other original sources made available since his day disprove many of his statements about local conditions. This is especially true regarding his statements concerning the unworthiness of the colonial clergy. His expressed conviction that most of them were unworthy morally has been entirely disproved by the evidence ...
— Religious Life of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - The Faith of Our Fathers • George MacLaren Brydon
... their cost what she thinks of them. There is the pompous lady of a hundred committees. She has a passion for committees, and no sooner has she formed one or sat on one than she discovers the general unworthiness of the assembly. She comes to expose people, to prove how utterly incapable they are of ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... are set forth, and the rising of crops of erroneous conceptions just to this, that this generation has to a large extent lost—no, do not let me say this generation, you and I—have to a large extent lost, that wholesome consciousness of our own unworthiness and sin. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... our danger present and to come, let us look up to God, and every man reform his own ways. Besides we are come here amongst a Christian people, full of piety and humanity. Let us not bring that confusion of face upon ourselves, as to show our vices or unworthiness before them. Yet there is more, for they have by commandment (though in form of courtesy) cloistered us within these walls for three days; who knoweth whether it be not to take some taste of our manners and conditions? And if they find them bad, to banish us straightways; if good, to give us further ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... The end of my delectable hope to renew: My regeneration to this life present, Resurrection from death so excellent; Thou art above [all] other. I desire humbly To kiss thy hands, wherein lieth my remedy. But mine unworthiness maketh resistance; Yet worship I the ground that thou goest on, Beseeching thee, good woman, with most reverence On my pain with thy pity to look upon. Without thy comfort my life is gone; To revive my ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... but to those who even modestly succeed, the changes of their life bring interest: a job found, a shilling saved, a dainty earned, all these are wells of pleasure springing afresh for the successful poor; and it is not from these but from the villa-dweller that we hear complaints of the unworthiness of life. Much, then, as the average of the proletariat would gain in this new state of life, they would also lose a certain something, which would not be missed in the beginning, but would be missed progressively and progressively lamented. Soon there would be a looking back: ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gifts. It was fortunate for these men if Timon took a fancy to a dog or a horse, or any piece of cheap furniture which was theirs. The thing so praised, whatever it was, was sure to be sent the next morning with the compliments of the giver for Lord Timon's acceptance, and apologies for the unworthiness of the gift; and this dog or horse, or whatever it might be, did not fail to produce from Timon's bounty, who would not be outdone in gifts, perhaps twenty dogs or horses, certainly presents of far richer worth, as these pretended donors knew well enough, and that their false presents ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... fidelity. From such vows who could release them? Yet the vows were already broken by each, and of this each was conscious. Had Brooke met Dolores before this last scene with Talbot, he might have felt self-reproach, but he could not have felt such a sense of unworthiness. For before that he had, at least, kept a watch upon his tongue, and in words, at least, he had not told his love for another. But now his word had gone forth, and he had pledged himself to another, when there was ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... which made me at first think that perhaps something is going to ail me, though I was not alarmed, for I felt no pain. My heart increased in its beating, which soon convinced me that it was the Holy Spirit from the effect it had on me. I began to feel exceedingly happy and humble, and such a sense of unworthiness as I never felt before. I could not very well help speaking out, which I did, and said, Lord, I do not deserve this happiness, or words to that effect, while there was a stream (resembling air in feeling) ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... substitut de Clagny has a touch of nobility which contrasts happily enough with Lousteau's unworthiness. Bianchon is as good as usual; Balzac always gives Bianchon a favorable part. Madame Piedefer is one of the numerous instances in which the unfortunate class of mothers-in-law atones for what are supposed to be its crimes against the human race; and ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... my share of respect for Donald Roy's religion, but possessed of none of Donald's seriousness; and yet here was his belief in this special matter lying so strongly entrenched in the recesses of my mind, that no consideration whatever could have induced me to outrage it by obtruding my unworthiness on the Church. Though, mayhap, overstrained in many of its older forms, I fain wish the conviction, in at least some of its better modifications, were more general now. It might be well for all ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... live in a very narrow circle idly and obscurely. Still, Sir, I could not decline the honour your Society has been pleased to offer me, lest it should be thought a want of respect and gratitude, instead of a mark of humility and conscious unworthiness. I am so sensible of this last, that I cannot presume to offer my services in this part of' our island to so respectable an assembly; but if you, Sir, who know too well my limited abilities, can at any ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... is that plays and hears High salutation of to-day. Tongue falters, hand shrinks back, song fears Its own unworthiness to play Fit music for those eight sweet years, Or sing their blithe accomplished way. No song quite worth a young child's ears Broke ever even ...
— Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc - From Swinburne's Poems Volume V. • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... vagabond on the face of the earth, but she was tearing herself away from deep roots in the soil of home, as well as from the conventions of her circle and her sex. Once again he trembled with a sense of unworthiness, a sudden anxious doubt if he were noble enough to repay her trust. Mastering his emotion, he went on: "I reckon my packing and arrangements for leaving the country will take me all day at least. I must see my bankers if nobody else. I shan't take leave of anybody, that would arouse suspicion. ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... having a white woman with my children when she saw M——, and, as usual, went on to expatiate on the utter impossibility of finding a trustworthy nurse anywhere in the South, to whom your children could be safely confided for a day or even an hour; as usual too, the causes of this unworthiness or incapacity for a confidential servant's occupation were ignored, and the fact laid to the natural defects of the negro race. I am sick and weary of this cruel and ignorant folly. This afternoon ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... nothing to say of her unfitness, her unworthiness, to occupy the place to which he pointed. Not a doubt, not a fear, had she to express. He loved her, and that she knew; and she had no thought of depreciating his choice, its excellency or its wisdom. Whatever excess of wonder she may have felt was not communicated. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... lararium alongside of those of Abraham, Orpheus, and Apollonius. There we have the modern Indians who fully recognise Christ alongside of their own avatars. The whole parallel is complete.[105] In spite of the feebleness and, it may be, unworthiness of His Church, through the force of Christ's personality, the Roman history of the second, third, and fourth centuries has been repeating itself in India in the nineteenth and twentieth, and unless the force of Christ's personality ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... said to me in the church: 'How old are you?'—ah, I did not tell you that last night—the revulsion of feeling brought about by being turned at that moment in upon myself was so great, that my joy seemed to shrivel and die in horror at my own unworthiness." ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... which made me abandon the idea three years since, and which render it impossible for me to consider it now, have nothing to do with my mental and moral worthiness or unworthiness. The fact is simply, I cannot become a minister of a Church with many of whose doctrines I cannot agree, and to which, indeed, I can no longer say I belong. In your sense of the word, I am ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... thing, avoid! Hence, from my sight! If after this command thou fraught the court With thy unworthiness, thou diest. Away! Thou'rt poison ...
— Cymbeline • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... to a Society, where the SPECTATOR and Hecatissa have been admitted with so much Applause. I don't want to be put in mind how very Defective I am in every thing that is Ugly: I am too sensible of my own Unworthiness in this Particular, and therefore I only propose my self as a ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... its many virtues and perfections, and it behoves human genius to seek, accept, nourish, and preserve a love like that; but one should take great care not to bow down or become enslaved to an object unworthy and base, lest we become sharers of the baseness and unworthiness of the same: appositely the ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... I pity, indeed, those receding into the misty background, for nought of this squeak will they hear, and well for them! But as this second test is condemnatory and more and more convinces me of the unworthiness of the wood for a violin of high class (or of any violin destined to live), let me put it to a still more searching one, in fact, to two, neither of which, I venture to ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... the Reform Bill era. That is the right thing; and for that he will work day and night, body and soul, and if needs be, die. There, in the editor's den at Leeds, he "begins to see the truth of what you told me about the world's unworthiness; but stop a little. I am not sad as yet. . . . If I am hindered from feeling the soul of poetry among woods and fields, I yet trust I am struggling for something worth prizing— something of which I am not ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... feel it so!" agreed the professor eagerly. He was charmed to discover so understanding an appreciation of his fiancee, and rose to the bait with innocent alacrity. "I feel very deeply the responsibility attached to such a trust and my own unworthiness to possess it, but I know that Esther will be patient with me and help me to overcome my failings. She is so ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... David's life. Who denies his faults? He was loved because his soul was permeated with exalted loyalty, because he hungered and thirsted after righteousness, because he could not find words to express sufficiently his sense of sin and his longing for forgiveness, his consciousness of littleness and unworthiness when contrasted with the majesty of Jehovah. Let not our eyes be fixed upon his defects, but upon the general tenor of his life. It is true he is in war merciless and cruel; he hurls anathemas on his enemies. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... aspiration, on the affections which strew our path. Now, you and I have been utterly estranged from each other of late. Why?—for any dispute—any disagreement in private—any discovery of meanness—treachery, unworthiness in the other? No! merely because I dine with Lord Lincoln, and you with Lord Dawton, voila tout. Well say the Jesuits, that they who live for the public, must renounce all private ties; the very day we become citizens, we are to cease to be men. Our privacy is like Leo Decimus; ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... terrible silence, 'to take my leave. I feel that I am the cause of at least as much embarrassment here, as I have brought upon myself. But I am bound, before I go, to exonerate this gentleman, who, in introducing me to such society, was quite ignorant of my unworthiness, I assure you.' ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... our familiar inclination, or that it is for any other reason that we all take such trouble to make it out to be the chosen precept of our own interest well understood, but that we want to be free from the deterrent respect which shows us our own unworthiness with such severity? Nevertheless, on the other hand, so little is there pain in it that if once one has laid aside self-conceit and allowed practical influence to that respect, he can never be satisfied ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... hours in the vilest debauchery, and my soul was present only to be the witness of my sadness, of my remorse, of my unworthiness." ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... used to think that she could twist Stephen around her little finger; that she had only to beckon to him and he would follow her to the ends of the earth. Now fear had entered her heart. She no longer felt sure, because she no longer felt worthy, of him, and feeling both uncertainty and unworthiness, her lips were sealed and she was rendered incapable of making any bid ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... resist your love, but God would have wrought the miracle, and I should have been worthy of it, and a motive sufficient for its being wrought. You are wrong to counsel me to become a priest. I know my own unworthiness. It was only pride that actuated me in my desire to be one. It was a worldly ambition, like any other. What do I say—like any other? It was worse than any other; it was a hypocritical, a ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... have kept silence, I confess, with much mental anguish, compunction of feeling and contrition of heart, whilst I revolved all these things within myself; and, as God the searcher of the reins is witness, for the space of even ten years or more, [my inexperience, as at present also, and my unworthiness preventing me from taking upon myself the character of a censor. But I read how the illustrious lawgiver, for one word's doubting, was not allowed to enter the desired land; that the sons of the high-priest, for placing strange fire upon God's altar, were ...
— On The Ruin of Britain (De Excidio Britanniae) • Gildas
... conjured up by those who have in anticipation every wish of their heart gratified. The next day he replied to Mr Small's, acknowledging, with frankness, his feelings towards his niece, which a sense of his own humble origin and unworthiness had prevented him from venturing to disclose, and requesting him to use his influence in his favour, as he dared not speak himself; until he had received such assurance of his unmerited good fortune as might encourage him so to do. To Emma, his reply was ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... found. Bede argues quaintly that its disappearance was also an act of Divine Providence, since some of the sick who flocked to it might be unworthy, and, not being cured, might doubt its efficacy, while in reality, their own unworthiness was to blame. "Thus," he concludes, "was all matter for detraction removed from the malice ...
— Early Double Monasteries - A Paper read before the Heretics' Society on December 6th, 1914 • Constance Stoney
... the pride of rank and office, the pride of wealth and worldly accomplishments, which lives for the praise of men. On the contrary, the Savior imparts to all his worshipers the loveliest of all the graces, a heaven-born humility, a modest estimate of one's own worth, and a deep sense of unworthiness on account of human weakness. As Christians we learn to humble ourselves in view of the majesty and perfections of our heavenly Master. "Before honor is humility." The Savior commands an humble religion; its love ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 11, November, 1880 • Various
... off all customary disguise, let us be frank: you have been angrily asking, exquisitely hypocritical reader, why you have been forced to read this record of sinful life; in your exquisite hypocrisy, you have said over and over again what good purpose can it serve for a man to tell us of his unworthiness unless, indeed, it is to show us how he may rise, as if on stepping stones of his dead self, to higher things, etc. You sighed, O hypocritical friend, and you threw the magazine on the wicker table, where such things lie, and you murmured something about leaving the world a little ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... know that the fallow years are as good as the years of plenty; the silent Winter prepares the soil for Spring; and we know, too, that the sense of unworthiness and the discontent that Thorwaldsen felt during his first few weeks at Rome ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... wrath. The pity of it! The pity of it! It was that which made him sore of heart and faint of spirit. If he could have reproached her as cold, mercenary, unworthy, heartless, even though he had still loved her, he could have supported himself by his anger against her unworthiness. But as it was there was no such support for him. Though she had been in fault, her virtue towards him was greater than her fault. She still loved him. She still loved him,- -though she ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... Philip's hesitation for a silent commentary on his own unworthiness. "I know I'm only a sort of a waistrel," he said, "but, Phil, the way I'm loving that girl it's shocking. I can never take rest for thinking of her. No, I'm not sleeping at night nor working reg'lar in the day neither. Everything is telling of her, and everything is shouting ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... to fill his empty days. Everard Barett's heart had been his wife's all along. He knew it for a certainty, looking at the woman and her child together, kneeling before them, with a sudden conviction of his own unworthiness, ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... constitution were laid; or far away over boundless seas and deserts, to dusky nations living under strange stars, worshipping strange gods, and writing strange characters from right to left. The odd triviality of the last detail, its unworthiness of the sentiment of the passage, leaves the reader checked, what sets out as a fine stroke of imagination dwindles down to a sort of literary conceit. And this puerile twist, by the way, is all the poorer, when it is considered that the native writing is really ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... are at liberty within the law, like all good women; I shall control and direct your volatility; and your sense of worthiness must be re-established when we are more intimate; it is timidity. The sense of unworthiness is a guarantee of worthiness ensuing. I believe I am in the vein of a sermon! Whose the fault? The sight of that man was annoying. Flitch was a stable-boy, groom, and coachman, like his father before ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the might and the goodness of the Creator. The strong, rich hearts of their seers yearned for a diviner life, in the deep, true consciousness they felt that there can be peace and joy to man only through reconcilement with God. And feeling their own unworthiness and impurity, as well as that of their people, they uttered their spiritual desires, and their aspirations and disappointments and indignations and humiliations, in strains that make their great writings sound like one long, impassioned, rhythmic wail through the bars of a dungeon. Gloomy, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... under this scurvy condemnation, you will scarce find one but, by some generous reading, will become to you a lesson, a model, and a noble spouse through life. So thinking, you will constantly support your own unworthiness, and easily forgive the failings of your friend. Nay, you will be I wisely glad that you retain the sense of blemishes; for the faults of married people continually spur up each of them, hour by hour, ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Browning would not urge her a step beyond her actual feelings, but he must know whether her refusal was based solely on her view of his supposed interests. And with the true delicacy of frankness she admits that even the sense of her own unworthiness is not the insuperable obstacle. No—but is she not a confirmed invalid? She thought that she had done living when he came and sought her out. If he would be wise, all these thoughts of her must be abandoned. Such an answer brought a great calm to Browning's heart; he did not desire to ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... he wanted to speak with any person in the house? To this interrogation the stranger replied, without lifting up his head, "Overwhelmed as I am with Count Melvil's generosity, together with a consciousness of my own unworthiness, it ill becomes a wretch like me to importune him for further favour; yet I could not bear the thought of withdrawing, perhaps for ever, from the presence of my benefactor, without soliciting his permission to see his ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... here that in their wickedness they are unable to discern between the work of God and of Beelzebub. They are told of the application of Isaiah's prophecy, that they have ears and hear not and that on account of their unworthiness, the kingdom is taken from them. The blasting of the fig tree with which the miracles of Matthew ends shows what is to be the fate of the ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... historic because it revealed the most serious disturbance in the Republican party since the war. Little was heard save apology, indignant protest, and appeal to tradition. Whatever Republican hope existed was based upon the unworthiness of the Democratic party. In a letter to an Albany meeting Folger declared, after highly praising his opponent, that "There is one difference which goes to the root of the matter when we are brought to view as public men and put forward to act in public affairs. He is a Democrat. I am a Republican." ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... inferior parts of that fiery corporeity were veiled lest they should be seen by the Eyes that see all things. The wings made no screen that hid the seraph's feet from the eye of God, but it was the instinctive lowly sense of unworthiness that folded them across the feet, even though they, too, burned as a furnace. The nearer we get to God, the more we shall be aware of our limitations and unworthiness, and it is because that vision of the Lord sitting on ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... aspiring than he was, it is probable that although yet a mere youth he would have shrunk with disgust from so humiliating a proposition; but he remembered the career of De Luynes, and he disregarded in the greatness of the end the unworthiness of the means by which it was to be obtained. The brilliant page was accordingly presented to the unsuspicious monarch by the minister, and, as the latter had anticipated, at once captivated the fancy of Louis, who having satisfied himself that Cinq-Mars ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... Precisely how—in what circumstances—he had volunteered, we might never elucidate: but the act itself, when we came to consider it, was of a piece with his character. He had left us in chagrin, betrayed by our unworthiness, nursing a wound deeper than any personal spite. Summarily, by a stroke, in the simplicity of his greatness, he had at once rebuked us and restored our pride. Perishing, he had left us an imperishable boast; an example to which, though our own conscience ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... difference seemed to lie between those two—Jeanne, with her tender beauty, her sweet life, her idyllic dreams, and Thorpe, the gang-driver! In his own soul he had made a shrine for Jeanne, and from his knees he had looked up at her, filled with the knowledge of his own unworthiness. He had worshiped her, as Dante might have worshiped Beatrice. To him she was the culmination of all that was sweet and lovable in woman, transcendently above him. And from this love, this worship of his, she had gone that very night to Thorpe, the gang-man. He ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... what he has said that the Pharisee is condemned, even when he announces that he is not as other men. If conscious of unworthiness, and amazed at God's long-suffering, he had exclaimed, I am not like other men—I have been spared and instructed, and invited and taught and led with a paternal tenderness that others do not enjoy, his thanksgiving would ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... was at another time depressed by fear. If, when meditating upon the divine love and mercy, he was on some occasions filled with peace and joy, he was on other occasions, when contemplating his own guilt and unworthiness, a prey to grief and perplexity. If he was heard to exclaim, "Thou, Lord, hast made me glad through thy work, I will triumph in the works of thy hands," he was also heard to cry out, "Will the Lord cast off for ever? And will he be ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... the man may know that the object of infatuation is an unworthy one, he may despise her, he may hate her, he may pray for her death, he may do his utmost to overcome the infatuation. In short, infatuation is a feeling, chiefly physical, which the man can analyze, the unworthiness and absurdity of which he may acknowledge, but which he is unable to resist or overcome. He feels himself bewitched; he feels himself caught in a net, he is anxious to tear asunder the meshes of the net, but is not strong enough to ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... presence of God, the adoration of his being, became a passion of her soul. This state of mind was poetry, not religion. It involved no sense of the spirituality of the Divine Law, no consciousness of unworthiness, no need of a Savior. It was an emotion sublime and beautiful, yet merely such an emotion as any one of susceptible temperament might feel when standing in the Vale of Chamouni at midnight, or when listening to the crash of thunder as the tempest wrecks ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... irrevocable exit. What beauty had graced it for a century back! What honors its children had brought to it from councils of state and of war! What true human worth had sanctified it! Last and the least of the splendid throng, he felt his own unworthiness sadly; but he was young yet, only a boy, and he said to himself that Sonia had crowned the glory of the old house with her beauty, her innocence, her devoted love. In making her its mistress he had ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... evermore in huge and most unkindly forests,—if, being but pawns in a mighty game, we are lost or changed, happy, however, in that the white hand of our Queen hath touched us, giving thereby consecration to our else unworthiness,—if we find no gold, nor take one ship of Spain, nor any city treasure-stored,—if we suffer a myriad sort of sorrows and at the last we ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... Lady Margaret," he said, "a deep sense of my own unworthiness of the kindness and honour which the dear lord your father bestowed upon me; and were it not that many dangers threaten, and that it were difficult under the circumstances to find one more worthy of you, I would gladly resign you into ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... truth the greater do our imperfections appear, and the clearer becomes our sense of the need of mercy, as well as help. But the King, who thus described His subjects, has also described His enduring love; and His invitation, still and for ever, applies to all who feel their unworthiness: "Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (S. ...
— The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it? • Edward Burbidge
... and learnt by my own demerits, with a shame I never have forgotten, yet with some profit too, I would fain hope, from one,' he glanced at Marion, 'to whom I made my humble supplication for forgiveness, when I knew her merit and my deep unworthiness. In a few days I shall quit this place for ever. I entreat your pardon. Do as you would be done by! ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... sit out a dance with you, that east of the fifteenth meridian the situation is reversed, and the man who wasn't swift about his wooing would stand no chance at all. Modesty of approach is reckoned a sure sign of unworthiness, and deference as cowardice that ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... warped the Editor's taste, and induced him to consider that as curious which was only scarce, and to reprint quotations, from the adversaries or contemporaries of Dryden, of a length more than sufficient to satisfy the reader of their unworthiness. But, as the painter places a human figure, to afford the means of computing the elevation of the principal object in his landscape, it seemed that the giant-height of Dryden, above the poets of his day, might be best ascertained ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... introduced Duncan to his sister, and this sister was a remarkably pretty girl, and Duncan fell in love with her at first sight, and by the time he got to the top of Mount Washington he was so deep in love that he began to consider his own unworthiness, and to wonder whether she might ever be induced to care for him a little—ever ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... and less than naught. 'T is but a new knowledge of mine own unworthiness. Sure 'never such a fool as an old ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... Nora, Ethel's conscience troubled her. She seemed to feel her own unworthiness. Mrs. Hollister suggested to Mr. Casey that Nora should visit them for a couple ...
— Ethel Hollister's Second Summer as a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... am going no further with the matter now; except to say that in something like an hour Mr. Amidon departed much perturbed by the prospect of the nearness of his happiness, fully convinced of his unworthiness, and quakingly uncertain as to many things, but most of all, just then, as to ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... and who didst pour holy oil of kings upon the head of Saul and of David, through the prophet Samuel, send down through my hands, the treasures of thy grace and of thy blessings upon thy servant Napoleon, whom, in spite of our unworthiness, we consecrate to-day as Emperor, in ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... issue? They seem to believe, and they act as if they believed, that our union, our peace, our liberty, are invulnerable and immortal; as if our happy state was not to be disturbed by our dissentions, and that we are not capable of falling from it by our unworthiness. Some of them have, no doubt, better nerves and better discernment than mine. They can see the bright aspects and happy consequences of all this array of horrors. They can see intestine discords, our government disorganized, our wrongs aggravated, multiplied, and un-redressed, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... vii. that David had to carry on his most bloody wars. We must not, by any means, entertain the idea that these words express anything blameworthy in David, and that the permission to build the temple was refused to him on account of his personal unworthiness. David stood in a closer relation to God than did Solomon. His wars were wars of the Lord, 1 Sam. xxv. 28. It is in this light that David himself regarded them; and that he was conscious of his being divinely commissioned for them, is seen, e.g., from Ps. xviii.: it was ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... from you, mother," replied Amabel. "In spite of his perfidy, in spite of my conviction of his unworthiness, I still love the Earl of Rochester. Nor can I compel myself to feel any regard, stronger than that of friendship, for ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Archbishop Wake laments the infidelity and iniquity which abounded, but is of opinion that 'no care is wanting in our clergy to defend the Christian faith.'[694] John Wesley, while decrying the notion that the unworthiness of the minister vitiates the worth of his ministry, admits that 'in the present century the behaviour of the clergy in general is greatly altered for the better,' although he thinks them deficient ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... she saw Margaret thus convinced of La Mole's utter unworthiness, and knew that injured pride and offended dignity had usurped in her heart the place, where, so shortly before, love alone had throned, Catherine ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... surge of unworthiness which swept her, lifting her heart like hope. The best of us is unworthy at times; the best of us is base. Selfishness is the festering root of more evil than gold. In that flash it seemed to her that Providence had raised up an arm to save her. She leaned ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... that He was to make the Messiah manifest to Israel by His baptism, for God had told him so. He did not know Jesus to be the Christ till after His baptism, yet he shrank back from the idea of baptizing him, and pleaded his unworthiness. He was worthy, and specially appointed of God, to make manifest the Messiah, but gave way under a sense of unworthiness at the thought of baptizing his cousin, Jesus of Nazareth! What a flood of light does this pour ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... with me. Pere Paragot used to sweep into his pockets every sou and Blanquette had to subsist on whatever he chose to allow for joint expenses. Her new position of independence was a subject for much inward pride, mingled however with a consciousness of her own unworthiness. Monsieur Laripet, yes; she would grant that he was entitled to the same as the Master; but herself—no. Was not the Master the great artist, and she but the clumsy strummer? Was he not also a man, with more requirements than she—tobacco, absinthe, ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... over the face of the globe for the benefit of his creatures. Our midnight watches have not been unprofitable. Often and often in the calm night we have gazed upward at the starlit sky and thought upon God. We have had time for reflection. We have felt our own unworthiness. We have asked ourselves the serious question, Do we make a good and complete use of the advantages we possess—of the instruction afforded us—of the great examples set before us—of the Word of God laid freely open for us? But I might go on for ever ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... Because of my unworthiness, O master, my heart's beloved, I have been allowed to come between you and the work you were given of the gods to do. The fault is all mine, and must come from my evil deeds in a previous life. By sacrifice of joy and life I now attempt ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... witnessed the sorrow that deeply shadowed the face of the Genoese, he almost felt that Providence, in summoning his own boys to early graves, might have spared him the still bitterer grief of mourning over the unworthiness ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... of origin to her unknown, but suspected to be of an heretic father and mother, people inimical to God, has truly been placed in religion in the convent of which the government had canonically come to her in spite of her unworthiness; that the said sister had properly concluded her noviciate, and made her vows according to the holy rule of the order. That the vows taken, she had fallen into great sadness, and had much drooped. Interrogated by her, the abbess, ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... them; and the very plotters of the iniquity began to tremble for the consequences which might accrue to themselves. They fasted, they prayed, and they wrote pages of their peculiar cant, which would be ludicrous were it not profane. They talked loudly of their unworthiness for so great a service, but expressed no contrition for wholesale robbery. Meanwhile, however, despite cant, fasts, and fears, the work went on. The heads of each family were required to proceed ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... them all. It is now (June 4, 1846) 212 days since I first began to pray about this work, and day after day, since then, have I been enabled to continue to wait upon God, and I am more than ever assured that, notwithstanding all my exceeding great unworthiness, God will condescend to use me, to build this House. Had it been the excitement of the moment, the difficulties which have already come upon me in connexion with this work, (which are not stated here, on account of their occupying too much room) would have overwhelmed me; but as God ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Fourth Part • George Mueller
... pray. Suddenly the idea struck me that surely it was selfish to ask Heaven for anything; would it not be better to reflect on all that had already been given to me, and to offer up thanks? Scarcely had this thought entered my mind when a sort of overwhelming sense of unworthiness came over me. Had I ever been unhappy? I wondered. If so, why? I began to count up my blessings and compare them with my misfortunes. Exhausted pleasure-seekers may be surprised to hear that I proved the joys of my life to have far exceeded my sorrows. I found that I had ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... very much honoured by your proposal, Mr. Dryland. And no one can be more convinced than I of my unworthiness. But I'm afraid I ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... all other earthly ties, and it is used as a type of His love for His Church, which should guard us from two errors in connection with it. If married love is to be a type, however faint, of Christ's love for His Church, there must be no unworthiness connected with it; "no inner baseness we would hide;" no marrying for the sake of being married, for the dignity and position, or the worldly advantages it may bring; and there must be no matchmaking or flirtation that a woman need be ashamed of afterwards. "Let the wife see that ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby |
