"Remorse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was both futile and unjust. Ollie did not intend to keep her part in the agreement. She must be burning with remorse for ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... repulse. Very likely he had walked in from Kilbogie, perhaps without breakfast, and had now started to return to his cheerless manse. It was a wetting spring rain, and he remembered that the Rabbi had no coat. A fit of remorse overtook Carmichael, and he scoured the streets of Muirtown to find the Rabbi, imagining deeds of attention—how he would capture him unawares mooning along some side street hopelessly astray; how he ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... said, "feels no remorse. He was not serving Norah's interests when he went to his death: he was ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... it completely and was filled with remorse on that afternoon when I sat dejectedly in Kensington Gardens and reviewed, in the light of the Registrar's pertinent questions my first two years ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... said, "my blood surged through my veins, but even then I did not speak a word of complaint or anger. Had I done so, I might have been spared the years of anguish and remorse which have ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... Tulkinghorn. One by starvation, with phthisis Joe. One by chagrin Richard. One by spontaneous combustion Mr. Krook. One by sorrow Lady Dedlock's lover. One by remorse Lady Dedlock. One by insanity Miss Flite. One ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... iniquity.—To what cause are we to impute this frigid silence—this torpid indifference—this cold inanimated conduct of the otherwise warm and generous Americans? Why do they remain inactive, amidst the groans of injured humanity, the shrill and distressing complaints of expiring justice and the keen remorse of polluted integrity?—Why do they not rise up to assert the cause of God and the world, to drive the fiend injustice into remote and distant regions, and to exterminate oppression from the face of the fair fields ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... took his death for it. And he had, I doubt not, both strength and comfort in his pain, and died a very good man. Yet, if he had never come in tribulation, he would have been in peril never haply to have had just remorse in all his whole life, but might have died wretchedly and gone to the devil eternally. And thus made this thief a good medicine of his ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... at last, and had time to attend to her, he pronounced her to be a fine child, and declared that she had made a good beginning, and would do well for herself, which words the nurse declared to be of happy omen. Her father was not fit to appear until late in the day. He came in humbly, filled with remorse for that mis-spent night, and was received with the feeble flicker of a smile, which so touched and softened him that he made more of the new child, and took a greater interest in her than he had done in any of the others at the time of ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... and read the letter sent from the train and was surprised and hurt by the knowledge. The act seemed like a betrayal. He said nothing, going about his work with a troubled mind and watching with growing anxiety her alternate fits of white anger and fearful remorse. He thought her growing worse daily and ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... your brethren the little debts of this little world. A certain king of France said that nothing smelt so sweet as the dead body of an enemy. And there are people among us now who tell us that revenge is sweet. But it is false. To forgive is sweet, is blessed, to hate brings only the remorse of devils. But you tell me it is so hard to forgive sometimes. So it is, but the greater the pardon given the greater the blessing. And remember that forgiveness must not be measured, and stinted, but free, and full. We must not say, "I will forgive him this once, but never more." S. Peter asked ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... for "Burnham." His face worked and twisted with rage; he ground out curses and blasphemy between his clinched teeth; he even strove to rise from the sofa, but Gleason forced him back. Meantime, the poor woman's wild remorse and lamentations were poured into the ears of ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... of a place of security which they cannot reach; they perish with the bitter remorse of having despised and rejected the means of escape, like the rich man in hell, whose torment was grievously augmented by the sight of Lazarus, afar off, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... "Grief and remorse. Do you remember the disclosure he made to us this afternoon? It is a matter which might well have ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... a most innocently amusing man he had become an obstinate and bibulous publican. He would have nothing to say to Lambert and declared that getting to Oxford was our business and that we ought to have thought about it before. The best thing to do with such a man was to leave him to the remorse of the following morning, but Lambert had an insane desire to talk and, I must admit, a forcible way of talking. There seemed to be a reasonable chance of a row, for Mr. Plumb wasn't without supporters who were as tired of us ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... believe you read, and the Margrave in whom you evidently think that Grayle is existent still? The one represented, you say, as gloomy, saturnine, with vehement passions, but with an original grandeur of thought and will, consumed by an internal remorse; the other you paint to me as a joyous and wayward darling of Nature, acute yet frivolous, free from even the ordinary passions of youth, taking delight in innocent amusements, incapable of continuous ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... widowed Hecuba, Andromache with her child dashed to death, Cassandra ravished and made mad—yet does he show that theirs are the unconquered and unconquerable spirits. The victorious men, flushed with pride, have remorse and mockery dealt out to them by those they fought for, and go forth to unpitied death. Never surely can a great tragedy seem more real to us, or purge our souls more truly of the unreality of our thoughts and feelings concerning vital issues, than can The ...
— The Trojan women of Euripides • Euripides
... in humiliating him, and he had longed for the opportunity of reprisal. Now it had come, and Westby was humiliated, and the audience were not unsympathetic with Irving for the achievement; yet Irving felt already the sting of remorse. Westby was only a boy, and he was a master; it was not well for a master to mortify a boy in the presence of other boys—a boy ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... of the second rank, in small squares, not bigger than a playing card, and sometimes less. By the second rank in gems I mean, carnelion, agate, jasper, serpentine, and verd antique; on which you place your feet without remorse, but not without a very odd sensation, when you find the ground undulated beneath them, to represent the waves of the sea, and perpetuate marine ideas, which prevail in every thing at Venice. We were not ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... begins the fourth act of this strange tragedy. Queen Elizabeth dies; and dies of grief. It has been the fashion to attribute to her, I know not why, remorse for Essex's death; and the foolish and false tale about Lady Nottingham and the ring has been accepted as history. The fact seems to be that she never really held up her head after Burleigh's death. She could not speak of him without tears; forbade his name to be mentioned in the ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... unformed spectre, in a far more terrific guise than any which ever yet have overpowered the imagination and subdued the fortitude of man. Going straight forward to its end, unappalled by peril, unchecked by remorse, despising all common maxims and all common means, that hideous phantom overpowered those who could not believe it was possible she could at all exist, except on the principles which habit rather than Nature ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the storm had spent itself, there was no sign of softening upon her face. Remorse and regret she could understand and condone, but this excusing of self, as she called Joan's explanation, struck her as being ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... rushed in among us, and stood motionless with astonishment at finding neighbours they had not reckoned upon. We, however, gave them no time to recover from their surprise, our knives and tomahawks performed quickly and silently the work of death, and little remorse did we feel, after the scene we had witnessed in the morning. We would have killed, if possible, the whole band, as they slept, without any more compunction than we would have ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... what {92} he is trying to explain, and for that reason the being whom he creates is portentous, but not human. To understand this, you need only compare Richard with Macbeth. In Macbeth we have a host of different forces—ambition, superstition, poetry, remorse, vacillation, affection, despair—all struggling together as they might in you or me; and it is this mingling of feelings with which we all can sympathize that makes him, in spite of all his crimes, a human being like ourselves. But in Richard there is no human ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... No one had offered to speak to him. It was he who had induced the patient woman to follow him on the long journey. They all knew this was now the matter of his thoughts. His ragged figure and down-drooped, miserable face were dignified with the tragedy of a useless remorse. As Lucy passed him he raised his eyes, but said nothing. Then, as the others drew together round the circle of tin cups and plates, a groan came suddenly from the tent. He leaped up, made a gesture of repelling ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... Vine Street Station out it came—Lord Belpher was the culprit's name. But British Justice is severe alike on pauper and on peer; with even hand she holds the scale; a thumping fine, in lieu of gaol, induced Lord B. to feel remorse and learn he mustn't punch ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... the mid-day clouds appear, And fell deceit obliterates truth; Black tempest in the evening lowers, The rain descends with whirlwind force, And long ere midnight's hour nears Full is the heart of deep remorse. ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... was little time or space to give remorse an inning. The Cherokees, checked but for the moment, were storming hotly at our heels. And as we ran I heard the shouted command of Falconnet to his mounted men: "A rescue! Right oblique, and head them in the road! ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... believes it. He did not say so, indeed; but, cunning as he is, I think I've quite seen through his plot; and even in what he said to me, there was something that half betrayed him every moment. And, Dolly, if you allow this sale, you deserve the ruin you are inviting, and the remorse that will follow you ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... which, provided with a solid new iron door, is set apart for the reception of the priceless M.S.S. of the society. The oak flooring of the passages to the cells exhibit many initials, telling a tale of more than one guilty life—of remorse—let us ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... Conqueror, the Conquered, and the Negro. Some see all significance in the grim front of the destroyer, and some in the bitter sufferers of the Lost Cause. But to me neither soldier nor fugitive speaks with so deep a meaning as that dark human cloud that clung like remorse on the rear of those swift columns, swelling at times to half their size, almost engulfing and choking them. In vain were they ordered back, in vain were bridges hewn from beneath their feet; on they trudged and writhed and surged, until they rolled into Savannah, a starved ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... him." And another brief pause followed. "Yes," continued the voice. "He is suffering because he has left you. He suffers remorse. He cannot be happy unless he ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... Marvellous is the completeness of the pictures it presents—its mastery over emotions the most opposite—its fidelity to nature in its exposition of the disordered and despairing mind in which tenderness becomes cruelty, and remorse for error tortures itself into scarce ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... suffering excellence! be witness heaven! the monster that I was, no longer has a life; thy tears have drowned it quite, and now it strangely melts in pity and remorse. Come, lady, let me bestow thee in a safe retreat: the hoarded wages of my sinful youth, I'll use as offerings to redeem thy peace: far hence in foreign lands a certain refuge waits our flight, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... another ten? She who had let me be little enough to her while she felt her wound—how much less could I be when the hurt was healed? Before she might have been in want. At least that was conceivable. Now her want was met. Not only was there this to fill her heart, but remorse, the tenderest a woman may know, it seems ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... with her, was willing to marry her and she consented. You wouldn't think she could, quite, with those eyes, but she did! The man was good to her; but the city, and other things, were too much, and she lived only a short time. There was a child! I wanted to do something for it; I had a passion of remorse then, but Thorndyke told me that the child's best interest lay in my letting her alone. She was respected and comfortable. For me to interfere would be to throw dishonor upon the dead mother and a cloud upon the child. All had been buried and forgotten ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... no peace of victory or of defeat. The open sea was like a blank and unscalable wall imprisoning the eternal question of conduct. Right or wrong? Generosity or folly? Conscience or only weak fear before remorse? The magnificent ritual of sunset went on palpitating with an inaudible rhythm, with slow and unerring observance, went on to the end, leaving its funeral fires on the sky and a great shadow upon the sea. Twice I had honourably stayed my hand. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... principle of being; but He is not in all after the same manner. God is in the pure heart by the joy which He gives to it; He is in the frivolous heart by the void and the vexation which urge it to seek a better destiny; He is in the corrupt heart by that merciful remorse which does not permit it to wander, without warning, from the springs of life. God makes use of all for the good of His creatures. He is everywhere by the direct manifestation of His will, except in the acts of rebellious liberty, and in the shadow of pain which follows that evil ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... now enemies. Sin had united, crime and remorse had disunited them. Monckton registered a vow of future vengeance upon his late associate, but in the meantime, taking a survey of the present circumstances, he fell back upon a dark project he had conceived years ago ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... he continued. "Did the duck swallow the June-bug? And then I take up the case of Old Boy Redruth. There's where you are all wrong again, according to my theory. What turned him into a hermit? One says laziness; one says remorse; one says booze. I say women did it. How old is the old man now?" asked the speaker, turning to ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... man whose heart has truly bled over another's sin, and watched another's remorse with pangs as sharp as if the crime had been his own, has said it. Every parent has said it who ever received back a repentant daughter, and opened out for her a new hope for life. Every mother ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... necessary. He will be arrested at the castle. Knowing his antecedents, the police will not stand upon any ceremony with him. You will be filled with remorse. You have plunged back into a career of crime again a being who was slowly climbing into the straight path once more. You take the blame upon yourself—it was at your instigation that Merritt pawned ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... "When his tragedy of 'Remorse,' which had a run of twenty-one nights, was first brought out, Washington Allston, Charles King, Leslie, Lamb, Morse, and Coleridge went together to witness the performance. They occupied a box ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... didn't impress me as being over-enthusiastic," admitted Jack. "You see, he had done his whole duty in the heat of action, and after he had a chance to cool off and realize what he had lost, he may have felt a touch of remorse, for he certainly does love that poor mother of his a heap. I can understand just how he must be having a terrible struggle in his mind as to what is the right course ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
... whole soul was full of remorse that he had begun this conversation with Stepan Arkadyevitch. A feeling such as his was profaned by talk of the rivalry of some Petersburg officer, of the suppositions and ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... injures individuals by prescribing useless and painful practices: fasting, celibacy, voluntary self-torture, and so forth. It suggests vague terrors which often drive the victim to insanity, and it causes remorse for harmless enjoyments.[621] Religion injures society by creating antipathies against unbelievers, and in a less degree against heretics and nonconformists. It perverts public opinion by making innocent actions blameable; by distorting the whole science of ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... me: dont blaspheme. [She snatches up the book and presses it to her heart in a paroxysm of remorse, exclaiming] Oh, my ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... best of tempers, and I worked strenuously to keep him so. My scheme had been so successful that its iniquity did not worry me. I have noticed that this is usually the case in matters of this kind. It is the bungled crime that brings remorse. ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... wild with remorse and grief. I seized a chair and sent it crashing into the hallway to attract attention. To this noise I added my voice, and yelled for help with lungs that had aroused the echoes on many a hunting-field. There were whisperings below, and apparently a hurried consultation, and then a young ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... conjunction with other Popish Bishops, such principles of stubbornness were distilled into him" that he refused to take the oath of supremacy, and was accordingly deprived of his bishopric the following May. His death, which occurred 31st December 1559, is said to have been hastened by his remorse at having crowned Elizabeth—an enemy of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. King Eley
... this, that awful night when he told me—the rest; but I felt it. I saw that I, with all else that had meant anything to him, was included in his shame; and the new nature that had evolved from the agony and remorse—had nothing to do with us ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... cherished them, and now stole the rope or the spar from their straining hands, that they might save themselves therewith whilst they left these to perish; but still, whatever shape the frenzy of that perishing crew might take, whether their cries were of remorse, or prayer, or impotent rage, but one desire and instinct seemed to animate them all—the desire into which every energy of their soul was gathered up and concentrated—for the mortal life that was being ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... time for self-analysis, for remorse, for the fierce probings of conscience. One minute he regretted that he had run away without confessing to the major; the next, remembering Sue's advice, he was glad. He tried to shut out the girl's ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... week and sate all the longer ... allowed everybody in the house (and a few visitors) to see and hear him in fits of hysterical sobbing, and sate on unabashed, the end being that he sits now sole regnant, my poor sister saying softly, with a few tears of remorse for her own instability, that she is 'taken by storm and cannot help it.' I give you only the resume of this military movement—and though I seem to smile, which it was impossible to avoid at some points of the evidence as I heard it from first one person ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... rankled within him. And the pains with which he justifies his historical pursuits indicate a stifled anxiety to enter once more the race for honours, which yet experience tells him is but vanity. The profligacy of his youth, grossly overdrawn by malice, [79] was yet no doubt a ground of remorse; and though the severity of his opening chapters is somewhat ostentatious, there is no intrinsic mark of insincerity about them. They are, it is true, quite superfluous. Iugurtha's trickery can be understood without a preliminary discourse on the immortality ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... councils, and retired in haste to their country seats. Sydney on the scaffold told those sheriffs that his blood was on their heads. Neither of them could deny the charge; and one of them wept with shame and remorse. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... even thought of it." I was filled with remorse. "Upon my word, Rich, I hadn't an idea beyond getting away from that place. If you ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... rout. In conjugal struggles of this kind, a man prefers a woman should speak and defend herself, for then he may show elation or annoyance; but as for these women, not a word. Their silence distresses you and you experience a sort of remorse, like the murderer who, when he finds his victim offers no resistance, trembles with redoubled fear. He would prefer to slay him in self-defence. You return to the subject. As you draw near, your wife wipes ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... though he was, had not yet lost all conscience. He was in an agony of remorse and doubt. It kept him sober longer than he had been for five years, for he was a professed drunkard and idler, scarcely considered responsible. He could not be sure that he had experienced aught which ...
— Who Crosses Storm Mountain? - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... a traitor, if you are pleased to so stigmatize him. He first betrayed his benefactor, James, to ally himself with the Prince of Orange; and then, on the pretext of remorse, broke faith with William; acted the part of a spy in his court and camp; offered to corrupt his troops and lead them over to James; and still all was forgotten in the real service which he rendered to his country, and his name has ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... she—even if he were other than the man he was, even if he were of the lowest type! Fear—of that! A yearning, so intense as for an instant to leave her weak, swept upon her—a yearning full of pain, of shame, of remorse, of hopelessness—oh, God, if only she might have had the right to fear! Then passion seized her in wild, turbulent unrestraint—hatred for this clean-limbed, pure-minded man, who flaunted all that his life stood for in her face—hatred for everybody in this life of hers, for all were good ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... Like Shakspere's Prince Hal, he was so much interested in the varieties of the outcome of human character, that he would not willingly lose a chance of seeing "more man." If the individual proved a bore, he would get rid of him without remorse; if amusing, he would contrive to prolong the interview. There was a great deal of undeveloped humanity somewhere in his lordship, one of whose indications was this spectacular interest in his kind. As to their bygone history, how they fared out of his sight, or what might become of them, ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... heavenly manna were rained down To feed my hungered soul. His guilt was mine. What angel had been sent to stay mine arm Until the fateful moment passed away That would have ushered an eternity Of withering remorse? I found the germs In mine own heart of every human sin, That waited but occasion's tempting breath To overgrow with poisoned bloom my life. What God thus far had saved me from myself? Here was the lofty truth revealed, that each Must feel himself in all, must know where'er The great soul ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... rounded face was charmingly pretty; her features, so regular that no emotion seemed to alter their beauty, suggested the lines of a statue miraculously endowed with life: it was easy enough to mistake for the repose of a happy conscience the cold, cruel calm which served as a mask to cover remorse. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... eyes with burning wrath aglow, Satrughna, shatterer of the foe, Dragged on the ground the hump-back maid Who shrieked aloud and screamed for aid. This way and that with no remorse He dragged her with resistless force, And chains and glittering trinkets burst Lay here and there with gems dispersed, Till like the sky of Autumn shone The palace floor they sparkled on. The lord of men, supremely strong, Haled in his rage the wretch ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... beautiful things meant forgetfulness of what must be a lifelong sorrow. "I am often worse than depressed. I sleep very badly, and in the night I often shed wretched tears. Though I did only what conscience compelled me to do, I suffer all the miseries of remorse. And how can I wish that it should be otherwise? It is better, surely, to be capable of such suffering, than to go one's way in light-hearted egoism. I'm not sure that I don't sometimes encourage despondency. ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... If remorse, mental or physical, affected any of the dwellers at Jefferson Barracks on the morning following the officers' ball, at least neither was in evidence. By noon all traces of the late festivities had been removed from ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... as a sufficient sanction. Few, indeed, were they, who lived so much under a proper self-control, as to hesitate; and this rank injustice was done a private citizen, as much without moral restraint, as without remorse, by those, who, to take their own accounts of the matter, were the regular and habitual champions ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... dreaming. A faint rose tint visited each cheek, and she clenched one hand, then moved it, and laid it over the other. Presently tears stole from under the black eyelashes and rolled down her cheeks. She opened her eyes wide; she was awake again; unutterable regret, remorse, which might never be quieted, ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... multiplies the oath, and swears "by the five crashes," that is by his own five fingers, placing at the same time his four fingers and his thumbs across each other in a most impressive and vehement manner. Don't believe him then—the knave is lying as fast as possible, and with no remorse. "By the crass o' Christ" is an oath of much solemnity, and seldom used in a falsehood. Paddy also often places two bits of straws across, and sometimes two sticks, upon which he swears with an appearance of great heat ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... against which we cannot provide? Alas! is there not misery horrible enough hanging over our heads daily in this mortal life without our making more for ourselves by our own folly? We shall have grief enough before we die without adding to that grief the far bitterer torment of remorse! ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... though thou visitedst my sinfulness among, With pestilent plagues, and other unquietness; Yet never tookst thou from me thy plenteousness Of thy godly spir't, which thou in me didst plant. I having remorse, thy grace could never want. For in conclusion, thy everlasting covenant Thou gavest unto me for all my wicked sin; And hast promised here by protestation constant, That one of my seed shall such high fortune win, As never did man since this world ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... parson, mindful of his promise to L'Estrange not to reveal his own interview with that nobleman, and yet not knowing otherwise how to explain or to soothe; but still believing Leonard to be Harley's son, and remembering all that Harley had so pointedly said of atonement, in apparent remorse for crime, Mr. Dale was wholly at a loss himself to understand why Harley should have thus prefaced atonement by an insult. Anxious, however, to prevent a meeting between Harley and Leonard while both were under the influence of such feelings towards each other, he made an effort ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Were it not for the sights of helpfulness and pity that we can always see, many of us would give way to despair, and think that man is indeed no more than a two-legged brute without feathers. The savage even now kills aged people without remorse, just as the Sardinian islanders did in the ancient days; and there are certain tribes which think nothing of destroying an unfortunate being who may have grown weakly. Among us, the merest lazar that crawls is sure of some succour if he can only contrive ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... made it out; yet I'd say he was given to sentiment, and to turning out poetry like a corn-shucker, and singing it to misfit and uneducated tunes, and given to joyfulness and depression by turns, and to misleading his fellow-man when he was joyful, and suffering remorse for it afterward pretty regular, taking turns, like fever and chills; which qualities, when you take them apart, don't seem likely to fit together again, and I'm not saying they did fit in Sadler. They appeared to me to project over the edges. ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... up to that time heterogeneously divided, but in which, after the conversion crisis, the higher loves and powers come definitely to gain the upper hand and expel the forces which up to that time had kept them down to the position of mere grumblers and protesters and agents of remorse and discontent. This broader view will cover an enormous number of cases psychologically and leaves all the religious importance to the result which it has on ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... off of the spear and the cruse was a couch of almost humour, and it, with the ironical taunt flung across the valley to Abner, gives relief to the strain of emotion in the story. Saul's burst of passionate remorse is morbid, paroxysmal, like his fits of fury, and is sure to foam itself away. The man had no self-control. He had let wild, ungoverned moods master him, and was truly 'possessed.' One passion indulged had pushed him over the precipice into insanity, or something like it. Let us take care not ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Oliver's remorse, the judge's discovery of his guilt (a discovery which may have been soon but probably was late—so late that the penalty of the doing had already been paid by the innocent), can only be guessed from the terrible ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... a common danger, or a common anxiety; and in the past twelve years these two had stood shoulder to shoulder through both many times over. But their zeal produced no manifest results. Denvil's temperature rose steadily, and his stress of mind broke out in a semi-coherent babble of remorse and self-justification, of argument and appeal, of desperate reckonings in regard to ways and means. Desmond left his station by the bed and crossed over to his friend, who was noiselessly washing a ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... imagine himself a King; or any other passion in an unreasonable way: for all unnecessary grief is unwise, and therefore will not be long retained by a sound mind[397]. If, indeed, the cause of our grief is occasioned by our own misconduct, if grief is mingled with remorse of conscience, it should be lasting.' BOSWELL. 'But, Sir, we do not approve of a man who very soon forgets the loss of a wife or a friend.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, we disapprove of him, not because he soon forgets his grief, for ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... thing—this is enough to vitiate profoundly institutions and morals. The sovereignty of the idea, when it has laid hands on the sovereignty of the people, is in a position to go to great lengths, and to sink very low. Moral maxims and written laws are trodden under foot, a struggle without pity or remorse begins, a struggle of life and death. Social passions easily acquire a degree of perversity which political passions do not possess; the former are without conscience and without compassion; they will be satisfied, cost what it may; triumph is in their ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... sudden remorse, seeing her hunchback shape writhing with sobs. For Deborah was crying thankless tears, according to the fashion ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... accordance with their opinions; and it came to be whispered in certain circles that he had resigned, or was resigning, or would resign, the leadership of his party. Men said that his passions were too much for him, and that he was destroyed by feelings of regret, and almost of remorse. ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... all she had done for him before, penetrated his heart and filled him with admiration and remorse. He yielded to Mrs. Vint's suggestions, and told her she was right; he would tear himself away, and never see the dear "Packhorse" again. "But oh! Dame," said he, "'t is a sorrowful thing to be alone in the world again, and naught to do. If I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... the trust in her of a little living thing, was the one rope to which Mother Sub-Prioress clung in those first moments, during which the black waters of remorse and despair passed over her head—a rope made of frail enough strands, God knows: bright eyes alert, small clinging feet, a pair of folded wings. Yet do the frailest threads of love and trust, make a safer rope to which to cling when shipwreck threatens the heart, ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... the tale of a success. In his youth he took thought for no one but himself; when he came ashore again, his whole armada lost, he seemed to think of none but others. Such was his tenderness for others, such his instinct of fine courtesy and pride, that of that impure passion of remorse he never breathed a syllable; even regret was rare with him, and pointed with a jest. You would not have dreamed, if you had known him then, that this was that great failure, that beacon to young men, over whose fall a whole society had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... grew more feeble. Her remorse and her feeling of the dire necessity for confessing her sin had sustained her hitherto. But now her duty was done, she had no longer any mental stimulant. In spite of Isa's devoted and ingenious kindness, the sensitive vanity of Mrs. Plausaby detected ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... retire, why not occupy Miss * * *'s 'Cottage of Friendship,' late the seat of Cobbler Joe, for whose death you and others are answerable? His 'Orphan Daughter' (pathetic Pratt!) will, certes, turn out a shoemaking Sappho. Have you no remorse? I think that elegant address to Miss Dallas should be inscribed on the cenotaph which Miss * * * means to ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... room she locked the door and gave free rein to the fury of passion and remorse that held her in its thrall. Jim's visit had brought out all her nobler impulses. She had caught a glimpse of herself as she would have looked in his eyes, and the scorn of her act that she had felt at intervals all through the fall and winter—that had prevented ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... of his best manhood oozing away into empty nothingness—why? Sleeplessness and tortured nerves drove him to do things that his will disowned; he would storm at his wife and children if a heel so much as scraped on the floor, and the remorse that followed, sometimes ending in childish tears, did no good, for the next time the same thing, or worse, would happen again. This was the burden of his days. This was the life he was ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... creed is no longer possible, but it is equally impossible to surrender it. I refer now not to those who select from it what they think to be in accordance with their reason, and throw overboard the remainder with no remorse, but rather to those who cannot endure to touch with sacrilegious hands the ancient histories and doctrines which have been the depositaries of so much that is eternal, and who dread lest with the destruction of a story something precious should also be destroyed. The so-called superstitious ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... the loss of your benefactress, your love it may be, rather than forsake or disown me, that little thing, so great as it was—ah, well, Lucien, that in itself would bind me to you forever if we were not brothers already. Have no remorse, no concern over seeming to take the larger share. This one-sided bargain is exactly to my taste. And, after all, suppose that you should give me a pang now and again, who knows that I shall not still be your debtor all ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... her animated behaviour, that all his resolution forsook him, and he found himself not only incapable of obstructing her retreat, but even of uttering one syllable to deprecate her wrath, or extenuate the guilt of his own conduct. The nature of his disappointment, and the keen remorse that seized him, when he reflected upon the dishonourable footing on which his character stood with Emilia, raised such perturbation in his mind, that his silence was succeeded by a violent fit of distraction, during which he raved like a bedlamite, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... had not been there before, a barrier of coldness and reserve which I could not penetrate. Some hostile influence had been at work; in death, even more than in life, perhaps, her father's will weighed upon her. I could imagine how a feeling of remorse might grow and deepen, and urge her toward foolish ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... enchantress, but by the light of this true, and simple, and severe reflector,—his hair tricked out with flowers and unguents, his soft mantle of exquisitest dye, and his very sword rendered undistinguishable for what it was by a garland,—shame and remorse fell upon him. He felt indeed like a dreamer come to himself. He looked down. He could not speak. He wished to hide himself in the ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... man, and that which he gathered from others, he found all, from the highest to the lowest, most shamefully given to the sin of lust, and that not only in the way of nature, but after the Sodomitical fashion, without any restraint of remorse or shamefastness, insomuch that the interest of courtezans and catamites was of no small avail there ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... f., grief, remorse, mourning springing from hostile cunning: nom. sg., 1737; acc. ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... horse on the crest of the cedar ridge, and with remorse and dread beginning to knock at her heart she gazed before her at the wild ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... that the office would not have been fulfilled according to his instructions, by running me through the midriff. But, with all his pomposity, he had the national good-nature; and when we sat down to our chicken and bottle of Tinto in one of those delicious valleys, he was full of remorse for his burst ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... to describe what hell was like, and told them a story of a godless death-bed he had stood beside, where he had heard the sinner's groans of remorse—useless then, for God had said he must perish. Jane's eyes never for a moment wandered from the man's face. Even when he turned to her she still looked at him, though she was cold with fear. "The young too will perish except they ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick
... as death: Anon the dreadfull Thunder [Sidenote: 110] Doth rend the Region.[11] So after Pyrrhus pause, Arowsed Vengeance sets him new a-worke, And neuer did the Cyclops hammers fall On Mars his Armours, forg'd for proofe Eterne, [Sidenote: Marses Armor] With lesse remorse then Pyrrhus bleeding sword Now falles on Priam. [12] Out, out, thou Strumpet-Fortune, all you Gods, In generall Synod take away her power: Breake all the Spokes and Fallies from her ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... The King, the Queen, Buckingham, Wolsey, Cromwell, all were given in turn; for with the happiest knack, the happiest power of jumping and guessing, he could always alight at will on the best scene, or the best speeches of each; and whether it were dignity, or pride, or tenderness, or remorse, or whatever were to be expressed, he could do it with equal beauty. It was truly dramatic. His acting had first taught Fanny what pleasure a play might give, and his reading brought all his acting before her again; nay, perhaps with greater enjoyment, for it came unexpectedly, and with no such drawback ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... them back to the road, and, taking his place again, turned towards Millicent. It appeared necessary that he should soothe her, too, for, though generally a self-possessed person, the emotions of the last few minutes had proved too much for her. She had suffered from remorse, disgust with herself, rage against her husband, and to these there had also been added the fear ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... to that faded old man and that comely girl, who sat by a roadside fire to be fed by a stranger. They did not know this; but Ghysbrecht knew it, and carried in his heart a scorpion of his own begetting; that scorpion is remorse—the remorse that, not being penitence, is incurable, and ready for fresh misdeeds upon ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... with bent head and drooping eyelids. None, save himself, knew how bitter were the feelings within him, or the remorse that was his portion for having behaved unkindly to his brother within the last few hours of life. He had rebelled at his state of debt becoming known to Dr. Ashton; he had feared to lose Anne: it seemed to him ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... honored as a saint?" His malice received a signal check; the wing of the fowl which he exhibited, appeared to the bystanders to be fish, and he was thought to have lost his wits. He himself perceiving that what he held up was nothing but fish, was ashamed of what he had said, was touched with remorse, and published himself what had happened. After which, one miracle succeeded another; it was found that what had appeared to be fish, was in reality flesh. Thus did the Lord vindicate the virtue of His Servant, punish envy, and convert ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... there That told what lashing fiends her inmates were; Within—there was no thought to bid her swerve From her intent—but every strained nerve Was settled and bent up with terrible force, To some deep deed, far, far beyond remorse; No glimpse of mercy's light her purpose crost, Love, nature, pity, in its depths were lost; Or lent an added fury to the ire That seared her soul with unconsuming fire; All that was dear in the wide earth was gone, She loved but two, and these she doted on With passionate ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... successful and glorious defence of La Rochelle, Charles IX. died, at the age of twenty-four, in awful agonies,—the victim of remorse and partial insanity, in the hours of which the horrors of St. Bartholomew were ever present to his excited imagination, and when he beheld wild faces of demons and murdered Huguenots rejoicing in his torments, and heard strange voices ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... Frederick Graves arrived in Paris with his young wife. There had been for him but few hours since that last evening upon the ragged rocks, during which Tessibel's face had not haunted him, the brown eyes, sometimes smiling, more frequently shadowed with tears. Impotent remorse possessed his days and filled his wakeful nights with anguish. At such times when life seemed intolerable, the thought of the comfort he had supplied for his mother and sister was ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... weeping family, and his sorrowing compeers were there. He surveyed the scene and knew at once its fatal import. He had left no duty unperformed; he had no wish unsatisfied; no ambition unattained; no regret, no sorrow, no fear, no remorse. He could not shake off the dews of death that gathered on his brow. He could not pierce the thick shades that rose up before him. But he knew that eternity lay close by the shores of time. He knew that his Redeemer lived. Eloquence, ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... that Hamilton sat alone beside the bed of the stricken woman, did not leave her mother. The immortal happiness of the last month was forgotten. She was prostrate, literally on her knees with grief and remorse, for she believed that her mother's discovery had hastened ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... own marriage with his cousin, Virginia Clemm. I am aware that there exists with the public but one view of this union, and that so lovely and touching in itself, that to mar the picture with even a shadow inspires almost a feeling of remorse. Yet since in the biography of a distinguished man of genius truth is above all things desirable, and since in this instance the facts do not redound to the discredit of any party concerned, I may be allowed to state what I have been assured ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... see? Even that poor groping old land-crab, with his skull full of pulp, had pride. Isn't it wonderful? And more—he had conscience; he had a sense of right and wrong, such as it was; he was able to find remorse. It looks impossible, it looks incredible, but it is not. I believe that some day it will be found out that peasants are people. Yes, beings in a great many respects like ourselves. And I believe that some day they will find this out, too—and then! Well, then I think they will rise ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... remorse is horrible. He thinks not of defrauded, murdered ward. Paul's victims raise no spectral hands of menace. To Pierre all other crimes shrink aghast at this most heinous incarnation of a father's guilt. He becomes indifferent ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... restful sleep, little thinking how that deadly peril was indeed hovering round the island he had left, and that he and his companions were going to march on and on, not to encounter tigers alone, but men even more cruel in their nature, and quite as free from remorse when dealing with those whom ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... anticipated remonstrances. "Look with the eyes of my country; not with your own, my friend. I am disgraced if I do not go out. My friends are disgraced if I do not head them in. Brescia—sacrificed!—murdered!—how can I say what? Can I live under disgrace or remorse? The king stakes on his army; I on the king. Whether he fights and wins, or fights and loses, I go out. I have promised my men—promised them success, I believe!—God forgive me! Did you ever see a fated man before? None had plotted ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Hepworth was destined never to learn, for Mrs. Stacy, overcome by a fit of conjugal remorse, leaned forward and placed one substantial hand in the flame-colored glove of ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... error he had committed. His hotel was filled with citizens, whose rebukes were loudly heard as he passed through the hall to his apartment, and as he nervously paced backward and forward in his parlour, 'the victim of remorse that comes too late,' he perceived both the depth and the darkness of the political pit into ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... thought it best to let her come; singular as this now seems to me I thought it diminished my guilt. Yet as she sat there so visibly white and weary, stricken with a sense of everything her husband's death had opened up, I felt an almost intolerable pang of pity and remorse. If I didn't tell her on the spot what I had done it was because I was too ashamed. I feigned astonishment—I feigned it to the end; I protested that if ever I had had confidence I had had it that day. I blush as I tell my story—I take it as my penance. There was nothing indignant I ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... doubt to bang upon the table; but being seated at the corner, very close to the wall (the party being a large one for the room), he drove his elbow clean through a wooden panel beside the fireplace. He swung back, full of consternation and remorse. ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... comfort? Will nothing soften that stony heart of thine? Not all my tears! not all my affliction! not the inevitable ruin thou hast brought upon me! Where are thy vows, thou faithless, perjured man? Hast thou no honour—no conscience—no remorse for thy perfidious conduct towards me? Answer me, wilt thou at last do me justice, or must I have recourse to heaven or hell for my revenge?" If poor Wagtail was amazed before she spoke, what must his confusion be on hearing this address! His natural paleness changed ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... could not find words in which to thank him. My remorse and gratitude, my sense of the wrong I had done him, and of the honour he was doing me, were such that I stood mute before him as I had stood before the king. 'You accept, then?' he said, smiling. 'You do not deem the adventure beneath ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... perfection, the method selection. Science is its minister, ethics its lord. It spares no prejudice, respects no habit, honours no tradition. Institutions are stubble in the fire it kindles. The present and the past it throws without remorse into the jaws of the future. It is the angel with the flaming sword swift to dispossess the crone that sits on her ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... miserable victims and outcasts of a world which dares to call itself virtuous, whom that very society whose pernicious institutions first caused their aberrations,—consigning them, without one tear of pity or one struggle of remorse, to penury, infamy, and disease,—condemns to bear the burden of its own atrocious absurdities! Thus, the youth of one sex is consumed in slavery, disappointment, and spleen; that of the other, in frantic folly and selfish intemperance: till at length, ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock |
