"Remorse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... what many a man in the country was saying of her lord. And when she began to think it all over, she could not keep back the tears. Such was her grief and her chagrin that by mischance she let fall a word for which she later felt remorse, though in her heart there was no guile. She began to survey her lord from head to foot, his well-shaped body and his clear countenance, until her tears fell fast upon the bosom of her lord, and she said: "Alas, woe is me that I ever left my country! What did ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... thing by poison. The poison failed: for Agrippina, anticipating tricks of this kind, had armed her constitution against them, like Mithridates; and daily took potent antidotes and prophylactics. Or else (which is more probable) the emperor's agent in such purposes, fearing his sudden repentance and remorse on first hearing of his mother's death, or possibly even witnessing her agonies, had composed a poison of inferior strength. This had certainly occurred in the case of Britannicus, who had thrown off with ease the first dose ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... here is greatly to be commended for his Conduct. As consummate a Villain as this King of Denmark is represented to be, yet we find him stung with the deepest Remorse, upon the least Sentence that can any ways be supposed to relate to his Crime. How Instructive this is to the Audience, how much it answers the End of all publick Representations by inculcating a good Moral, I leave to the Consideration of ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous
... Mr. Edwards the young wife had a twinge of remorse for the manner in which she had evaded him—her first deceit for his sake. She had talked vaguely about visiting a friend at Moriches, and her husband had fallen in with the idea. New York was like a finely divided furnace, radiating heat from every tube-like street. ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... set before us, as surely vanishes to its latest shred. The little patches of puff-paste, smeared with preserve, sent to us as Sunday treat, or the curious production in imitation of our English pie, and filled with maccaroni, are immolated at once without misgiving or remorse. If we sup at all, it is upon pasty, German cheese, full of holes, as if it had been made in water, or a hot liver sausage, ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... consistent with the law of slavery? The presence and the power of this law are felt wherever the light of reason shines. They are felt in the uneasiness and conscious degradation of the slave, and in the shame and remorse which the master betrays in his reluctant and desperate efforts to defend himself. This law it is which has armed human nature against the oppressor. Wherever it is ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... story with great reluctance, but my heart was almost breaking from so long repressing its emotions. You are still boys. Try, then, while it is in your power, to make those who love you happy, instead of laying up years of remorse and misery by selfish indulgence of your own wishes, at the expense of their comfort and peace. Read now the book which I have so lately learned to prize, and you will not have to look back upon the grave of a father whom you never honored, ...
— Hurrah for New England! - The Virginia Boy's Vacation • Louisa C. Tuthill
... world counts illness. If remorse and shame and repentance can be called illness, I have my share. Ill deeds of more kinds than one are coming home to me. Anne," he added in a hoarse whisper; his face telling of emotion, "if there is one illumined corner in my heart, where ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... tasted. Do not poison the happiness of a life which I have often wept to think was solitary and abandoned, without other affection than that of which Heaven forbids us to be lavish. Let my filial ties compensate for the remorse which I sometimes feel for ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... had seen going out was Leonela's lover and not hers; but when he saw how she wept and suffered, and begged him to help her, he became convinced of the truth, and the conviction completed his confusion and remorse; however, he told Camilla not to distress herself, as he would take measures to put a stop to the insolence of Leonela. At the same time he told her what, driven by the fierce rage of jealousy, he had said to Anselmo, and how he had arranged to hide himself in the closet ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... before he could once strike him, Owen said in the most chill tone, "Barker, if you touch me, I shall go straight to Dr Rowlands." The bully well knew that Owen never broke his word, but he could not govern his rage, and first giving Owen a violent shake, he proceeded to thrash him without limit or remorse. ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... fears as she grows worse and worse, but it is with mournful restraint, and when I lift my look to his, or attempt those broken words of comfort that spring naturally to the lips, he turns away without reply, as if my attempt at consolation had only deepened his remorse. Was that wild confession on the raft all a dream? Had terror and privation rendered me delirious? Could these words, so deeply written in my memory, have been only a wild hallucination? Is this man the same ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... this grubby bedroom, smelling of teetotallers and grim, forbidding people in whom are to be found none of the genial foibles of ordinary, hearty men, he felt an excess of remorse for any unkind thing he had ever said to Eleanor. His pessimism about his play caused him to exaggerate the enormity of his offences. He pictured her, looking at him with that queer air of puzzled pathos that had so impressed him when he first saw her, and intense shame filled him ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... when there was a sharp, sudden ring at the door-bell. It was a messenger from the duke, with a letter, in which he stated, that, in reflecting on the incidents of the day before retiring to rest, he felt remorse for the taunt which he had uttered; that it was the ebullition of the moment, but cruel and unkind; and that he could not sleep until he had received forgiveness. It may be conceived in what ardent terms the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... next proceeding was to smoke a pipe—a dirty clay pipe, which a gentleman would have been ashamed to put between his lips. When he had done smoking he took out pen, ink, and paper, and sat down to write with a groan—whether of remorse for having taken the bank-notes, or of disgust at the task before him, I am unable to say. After writing a few lines (too far away from my peep-hole to give me a chance of reading over his shoulder), he leaned back in his chair, and amused himself by humming the tunes of popular songs. I recognized ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... vindicated, for he had treated his son abominably and driven Austen from his mother's home. To misunderstand and maltreat Austen Vane, of all people Austen, whose consideration for his father had been what it had! Could it be that Hilary felt remorse? Could it be that he loved Austen in some peculiar manner ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... constable should be concealed in the house, on a Sunday, when all the family, this servant excepted, would be attending divine service. The arrangement succeeded but too well. Concluding that all was safe, he applied his key, and, entering the room, was proceeding without any remorse to plunder it of such articles as he wanted; when the constable, seeing his prey within his toils, started from his concealment, and seized him in the act of taking ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... now had she brooded under a cloud of despair. She had scarcely stirred out of her room; she had eaten scarcely enough to sustain life. She had shut herself up, a prey to harrowing remorse and terror—a remorse which she knew to be as useless as her terror was nerve-racking. Her awakening had come, sudden, awful. And, like all such awakenings, it had come too late, so that the horror of her future ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... freedom, were visited by the most awful sufferings, pursued by the most vengeful fiends, and pushed to the most dire extremity of woe. Among the pale, haunted, shrieking shades flitting through that limbo of horrors, they were conspicuous in punishment. And if remorse is in reality the undying worm, the quenchless fire of that future state which recompenses for the deeds of this, surely the traitor to this good, free Government will be made to experience its unmeasured horrors. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... concerning the voices of the two remaining groups of animals—monkeys and birds. In the great family of the four-handed folk, more varieties of sound are produced than would be thought possible. Some of the large baboons are awful in their vocalisations. Terrible agony or remorse is all that their moans suggest to us, no matter what frame of mind on the part of the baboon induces them. Of all vertebrates the tiny marmosets reproduce most exactly the chirps of crickets and similar insects, and to watch one of these little human faces, see its mouth ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... all, but reflected nothing of this beauty in his thought. His animal nature satisfied, he craved nothing as yet. But presently memory and remorse knocked for admittance—the twain were seldom long banished. They sat like skeletons at every banquet. At a bound thought flew back to that day when his brother had fallen before ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... disaster by battle and tempest reaching Europe before the results of the expedition were accurately known, reports that the Emperor had been lost in a storm, and that the young Ottavio had perished with him, awakened remorse in the bosom of Margaret. It seemed to her that he had been driven forth by domestic inclemency to fall a victim to the elements. When, however, the truth became known, and it was ascertained that her husband, although still living, was lying dangerously ill in the charge of the Emperor, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... fear which Don Rafael had that the noise might be heard by his pursuers, he could not help feeling a joyful emotion at being thus saluted by his old companion in many a scene of peril; and, while caressing the horse, he felt a certain remorse at the role he had just designed him to play. It was, however, one of those crises, when the instinct of self-preservation is at variance with the desire ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... any remorse under his quiet, or impatience at fate, or gnawing homesickness, he did not show it. That was the last letter or message that came from his wife. The friends of other prisoners were admitted to visit them, but no one ever asked to see him; the five years went by; every day the same bar ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... My masters, are you mad? or what are you? Have you no wit, manners, nor honesty, but to gabble like tinkers at this time of night? Do you make an alehouse of my lady's house, that you squeak out your cozier's catches without any mitigation or remorse of voice? Is there no respect of place, person, ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various
... say that I suffered any remorse. I didn't. Not remorse in the ordinary, rather silly sense of the word. But I have paid conscience money many times. I had a wild hope that I might disarm destiny. The sum Baron Arnheim gave me I have distributed twice over in public charities ...
— An Ideal Husband - A Play • Oscar Wilde
... overtook John's army at the Wash the King ended his wretched career by death. He died on October 18, 1216, in the castle of Newark on the Trent, and the old chroniclers describe him as dying in an extremity of agony and remorse. ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... arguments, thy orthodox theories then? Proudly he struggled with his own man's heart of flesh, and tried to turn his eyes away; the magnet might as well struggle to escape from the spell of the north. In a moment, he knew not how, utter shame, remorse, longing for forgiveness, swept over him, and crushed him down; and he found himself on his knees before her, in abject ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... traits[47] of his character which have lately come to my knowledge, he seems to have been so hardened in crime, so lost to all sense of honour and shame, that, while his faculties still enable him to continue his sordid pursuits, there will be no time for remorse." ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... he was out again; but the parents, who were old folks, had received their death-blow. They never rallied from the shock. Perhaps they felt that it was their own hard-heartedness and obstinacy that had caused their daughter's ruin—and remorse is hard to bear. They waned perceptibly from day to day, and during the following year they were borne to the cemetery within two months ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... 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
... me, good remedy is my name That euery day doth take great .abor or payne 740 To amende all faultes, I am chosen to the same yf any mans conscience here doth grudge or shame Hauing in him self remorse, & mendes in tyme & space I am good remedy, and god is ful of mercy and grace Therfore I wyl stand asyde, & a lyttel whyle remaine Of welth, Helth and Lybertye, for to inquire How they be ordred, and yf any man complayne I wil ...
— The Interlude of Wealth and Health • Anonymous
... kisses. The sight seemed too much 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
... sufficiently checked the first symptoms of a bad habit. If this was so, too much may be easily made of it. The language in the homes of ignorant workmen is seldom select. They have not a large vocabulary, and the words which they use do not mean what they seem to mean. But so sharp and sudden remorse speaks remarkably for Bunyan himself. At this time he could have been barely twenty years old, and already he was quick to see when he was doing wrong, to be sorry for it, and to wish that he could do better. Vain the effort seemed to him, yet from ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... than have recourse to the justice of her country against the villain Lock, who had so basely treated her; and after extreme pain and difficulty, she succeeded in dragging her enfeebled limbs to the Office. During the detail of the foregoing particulars, she seemed overwhelmed with shame and remorse, and at times sobbed so violently as to render her voice inarticulate. Her piteous case excited the attention and sympathy of all present; and it was much to the general satisfaction that Mr. Bimie ordered Humphries, one of the conductors of the Patrol, to fetch Lock to ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... infinitely keener, a horrible chaw-bacon smack about it. Visions of a grinning lout, open from ear to ear, unkempt, coarse, splay-footed, rose before him and afflicted him with the strangest sensations of disgust and comicality, mixed up with pity and remorse—a sort of twisted pathos. There lay Tom; hobnail Tom! a bacon-munching, reckless, beer-swilling animal! and yet a man; a dear brave human heart notwithstanding; capable of devotion and unselfishness. The boy's better spirit was touched, and it kindled his imagination to realize the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... consolation and you owe your genius to me. Genius understands or divines everything, and knows what human weakness is. Ah, if you had been weak and I mighty, how gladly I would have pardoned you! Had you done any wrong—if you were wrung by remorse like most of us—what joy to make you forget it. But no, you are honor itself, ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... Antonia's white face and silent companionship to be just as unendurable. She would be alone. Not even Rachela would she have near her. She put out all the lights but the taper above a large crucifix, and at its foot she sat down in tearless abandon, alone with her reproaches and her remorse. ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... is the comradeship between God and man as they together work toward the highest goal, a comradeship which of itself brings relief to men burdened with the mystery of the universe and agonized by remorse over sin. This essay is quite as significant for what it has not said as for what it has said. In our omissions we have tried to keep clear the main outlines of scriptural revelation. We have sought to hold fast to principles rather than to discuss ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell
... of Balder's falling into such an error. The distinction was clear to him. Yet with remorse and abasement strove the defiant impulse to pluck and eat—forgetful of this world and the next the royal fruit so fairly held to his lips! For herein fails the divinity of nature,—she can minister as well ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... tears poured down my cheeks as Mr. Fontaine told me this,—the first, I think, that I had shed that week, for after that dreadful night, my sorrow had been of a dry and bitter kind,—and a stinging remorse seized me as I thought of the times I had been cross and disobedient to mammy. Ah, how I loved her now! It was the accustomed irony of my life that I was never to tell ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... the frightful news may not afflict you as it did me! Listen! you know that two days ago my servant Julio left my service because I severely reproved his irregularities. This disquieted me, because I had noticed that he was pursued by some secret remorse. Just now, hardly a half hour ago, I left my residence, and was going towards the Dominican church to pray for my poor friend. On the way I thought of my servant Julio, and feared that in his despair he might have taken his life. When I was near the bridge, I heard my ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... Kedzie revealed the horrible fact that her real name was Kedzie Thropp. He laughed aloud. He was so tickled by her babyish remorse that he made her say it again. He told her he loved it twice as well as the stilted, ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... "Then remorse took possession of me. Wasn't it enough to maim and disfigure poor Tamplin, why cook him to death—I'd shut off that cock. I fought with it, but it wouldn't close, and I ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... argument she's always owing her opponent an apology for some offence against manners. She has no savoir-faire." Here Brother Copas, relapsing, let the cloud of speculation drift between him and Brother Warboise's remorse. "Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus—I reverence the pluck of a man who can cut himself loose from all that; for the worst loss he has to face (if he only knew it) is the inevitable loss of breeding. For the ordinary gentleman in this world there's ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... did he drink to excess; no money was squandered at the gaming table. Carefully he avoided all views which he deemed vulgar and degrading; and he made it the general rule of his life, to avoid everything which would bring pain to his body, or remorse to his soul. ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... because I am beginning to hate the one for whom I have toiled, until I grew gray with the wearing away of mind and body; because the soul of life is gone. I do it out of revenge against that person. There is no remorse; no conscience; but it's revenge. Look at me; that person has blasted me. Do I not show it in every feature and limb? Now you understand me. My schemes are abandoned; and I shall soon be where neither man nor law can reach me. My secret can ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... to improve it, he would sometimes bribe Lord Westport's treacherous groom into misleading us, when floundering amongst bogs, into the interior labyrinths of these morasses. Deep, however, as the morass, was this man's remorse when, on leaving Westport, I gave him the heavy golden perquisite, which my mother (unaware of the tricks he had practised upon me) had by letter instructed me to give. He was a mere savage boy from the central bogs of Connaught, and, to the great amusement of Lord Westport, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... up? The remorse, the bitterness! "If only," I should tell myself—"if only we had run three instead of two for that cut to square-leg!" Suppose it were sixteen! "Why, oh why," I should groan, "did I make the scorer put that bye down ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... of you know, I try to be a good man. But the flesh is weak. I git tempted and fall into sin before I know it. I'm sufferin' remorse now beca'se I set my old dominique hen twice and cheated her into hatchin' two broods of chickens without givin' her a day's rest between settin's! My remorse is worse beca'se a man can't apologize to ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... not free. Night after night her sleepless pillow was wet with bitter tears of remorse, when the accusing angel stood before her and relentlessly revealed each act of shameful meanness, of cruel selfishness, of sordid immorality in her wasted life. And, lastly, the weight of her awful guilt ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... board the vessel, when I set myself to the work, and acted without scruple or remorse the part of an official of the black chamber, with this sole difference, that the letters were unsealed without taking any precautions. I found amongst them several dispatches, in which Admiral Collingwood signified ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... attempting to be counted among the faithful; and the conscience seared would indicate that they can distort the testimony of God and carelessly point other souls to the bottomless pit, without present remorse or regret. ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... the evening after the explosion, when a visitor was announced. Thinking it was some one from the mine, he said, faintly, "Admit him," and then his despondent head dropped on his breast; indeed, he was in a sort of lethargy, worn out with his labors, his remorse and his sleeplessness. ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... remorse. She valued Eda's devotion, she sincerely regretted the fact, on Eda's account as well as her own, that it was a devotion of no use to her in the present crisis nor indeed in any crisis likely to confront her in life: she had ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... brought this name to the lips of the guilty man? Was it remorse? or was it the last explosion of an unforgiving hatred? This is what history has neglected to ...
— The Story of a Cat • mile Gigault de La Bdollire
... in the Convent of Olivet, biting his nails in a red fume there. Hidden behind spires of cypress, Olivet stood outside the walls, a sun-dyed white building deep under brown eaves. Cesare, it was reported, was quite alone with his moods, now consumed by fidgety remorse for what he might have lost in his brother's blood, now confident and inclined to blusterous hilarity, now shuddering under an obsession of nerves. In any guise he was dangerous, but worst of all when the black fit of suspicion ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... 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! Gallop, ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... sense of being alone again in the forest, or nearly so, returned to him with depressing results. Rapidly and vividly did there pass through his memory the events of the last few days spent in the village just left behind; and especially did his singular dream come up before him, and a feeling of remorse filled his heart that he had yielded to the importunities of his pagan friends and had been persuaded to take any part in the dance. Then his thoughts went farther back, and he was with Memotas again, and the memory of their last walk came ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... bored already, listening to her. He was irritated by the naive tone, by this remorse, so unexpected and inopportune; but for the tears in her eyes, he might have thought she was jesting ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... have bared all my heart to the God of the just, He has witnessed my penitent tears; He has stilled my remorse, He has armed me with trust, He has pitied and calmed ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... She was not awake, but she was 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, filled ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... began to hope that the familiar influences of his country home were beginning already to breathe their blessed quiet over the disturbed mind of Romayne. In the presence of his faithful old servants, he seemed to be capable of controlling the morbid remorse that oppressed him. He spoke to them composedly and kindly; he was affectionately glad to see his old friend once ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... that, but meanwhile he continued to kill. "Bah!" he would say, "it is always an enemy the less." On one occasion he slew his four cousins. He was as sensual as cruel. His thick-skinned savagery did not appear to feel either shame or remorse; he was strong and had a weighty hand—that was sufficient. Ogier was scarcely any better, but notwithstanding all the glory attaching to his name, I know nothing more saddening than the final episode of the rude poem attributed to Raimbert of Paris. The son of Ogier, Baudouinet, had been slain ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... authors manage to scrape up enough comic subjects, when sadness is so generally prevalent, and how they succeed in making their public laugh spontaneously and heartily, without the slightest remorse or arriere pensee, has been a very interesting question ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... which has even been increased after the conclusion of the treaty of Tilsit, and, moreover, in the short space of two years. Oh, your majesty, the fate of the royal family of Prussia is truly pitiable and weighs down my soul with remorse. Do for my sake what you are unwilling to do for the sake of Prussia. Let me not return without consolation to that mourning royal family. Let me enjoy the triumph of proving to them that my words ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... that exists between laughter and tears; between joyful carelessness and melancholy reverie; between daring improvidence and serious, incessant anticipation of the future: between a nature exquisitely delicate, elevated, poetic, morbidly sensitive, incurably wounded by remorse, and a disposition gay, lively, happy, unreflective, although good and compassionate; for, far from being selfish, Miss Dimpleton only cared for the griefs of others; with them she sympathized entirely, devoting ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... and earnestly with him, but he called himself sacrilegious murderer again and again. Nay, he had even— when after that wretched night you wot of, Sir, he left our House—in his despair and hope to leave remorse behind, he had become a Moslem, and fought in the Saracen ranks. All hope he spurned. No mercy for him, was his cry! I would have deemed so—but oh! I thought of Richard's parting hope; I remembered our German brethren's tale, how ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... earnest, and wished he had been. We need be careful how we deal with those about us, when every death carries to some small circle of survivors, thoughts of so much omitted, and so little done—of so many things forgotten, and so many more which might have been repaired! There is no remorse so deep as that which is unavailing; if we would be spared its tortures, let us remember ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... to our excellent friend Mrs. Grote, I ventured to say that there was one person who wrote even worse than I did, and that it was you. Your last letter has filled me with remorse, for I could actually read it, and even without trouble. I beg, therefore, to make an amende honorable, and envy you your power ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... host, and from the priests, the stricken father consents at last to send a letter to Clytemnestra at Argos, bidding her bring their young daughter to the camp, on the pretext that she is to become the bride of the hero Achilles. The letter is no sooner despatched than, tormented with remorse, he tries to recall it. In vain. Mother and child arrive, with the babe Orestes; the mother full of exultant joy in such a marriage, the daughter thinking only of her father, on whose neck she throws herself with fond home prattle, lifting Orestes to him to kiss, saying tender, touching ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... transacted by merchants would be absolutely impossible were it not based on mutual confidence. The habit of keeping his word, the desire not to lose his credit, amply suffice to maintain this relative honesty. The man who does not feel the slightest remorse when poisoning his customers with noxious drugs covered with pompous labels, thinks he is in honour bound to keep his engagements. But if this relative morality has developed under present conditions, when enrichment is the only incentive and the only aim, can we doubt its rapid ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... coming towards the village the next day and his head might be taken. On the morrow the men lay in wait for the stranger, sprang on him and cut off his head, only to find that it was the head of their beloved missionary. Struck with remorse and realising the evil of head taking, the tribe gave ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... them the road where the stumps are The pleasures that end in remorse, And the game where the Devil's three trumps are, The woman, the card, and the horse. Shall the blind lead the blind — shall the sower Of wind reap the storm as of yore? Though they get to their goal somewhat slower, They ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... received the breath of Applause with avidity, and great delight, for Merrit which they are conscious they never had; and that many who have been the loudest in sounding their praises, had nothing in view, but their own private, and selfish interests, it will excite in them the feelings of shame, remorse, and ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... intercourse with the heathen, which has been very abundant, confirm them in their evil practices by a pernicious example, and hurry them by thousands to the grave by means of deadly poison and deadly disease—Oh! how will you endure the keen remorse and fearful looking for of judgment, which may ere long overtake you? When the impartial Judge shall appear, and your eyes shall meet his eye, what ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... received affects the heart which has lost it quite differently from a loss where the love has been bestowed. The remembrance of it warms the heart towards the dear lost donor; but if the recollection of life spent together is without remorse, if, as in Emily's case, the dead man has been wedded as a tribute to his acknowledged love, and if he has not only been allowed to bestow his love in peace without seeing any fault or failing that could give him one twinge of jealousy—if he has been considered, and liked thoroughly, and, in ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... to rest always on the beautiful, an agricultural population that touches its hat, eats plain victuals, and goes to church, is more picturesque and delightful than the thronged crowd of a great city, by which a lady and gentleman is hustled without remorse, which never touches its hat, and perhaps also never goes to church. And as we are always tempted to approve of that which we like, and to think that that which is good to us is good altogether, we—the refined ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... for help when disaster threatens. A planter caught a shark, and one of his christianized natives testified his emancipation from the thrall of ancient superstition by assisting to dissect the shark after a fashion forbidden by his abandoned creed. But remorse shortly began to torture him. He grew moody and sought solitude; brooded over his sin, refused food, and finally said he must die and ought to die, for he had sinned against the Great Shark God and could never know peace any more. He was proof against persuasion and ridicule, and in the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... raise to the trap. She tapped three times, and waited. Silence. She repeated the signal. This time it was answered. Cutty! In a little while she would be free, and Two-Hawks would not have to pay for her folly with his life. Terror and remorse ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... drummed on the window pane and became more and more confused although "God knows, there was no call for it." Then he turned around with his face burning red and said, "You ought to be ashamed, Mother, you ought to be ashamed!" Soon however not only remorse seized him but he began to curse at the folk, who see in the infant not his brother but only the "child of sin." "Do you think for a moment that I would bear a grudge against the little innocent worm? Curse you, anyone who would separate the children of one mother from each other!" After ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... Munster magistrates in 1803, and subsequently, the power of summary convictions which they possessed in '98; but they sent special Commissions of their own into the suspected counties, who sentenced to death with as little remorse as if they had been so many hydrophobic dogs. Ten, twelve, and even twenty capital executions was no uncommon result of a single sitting of one of those murderous commissions, over which Lord Norbury presided; but it must be added that there were other judges, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... there), with his whole will and fire, to do Crebillon's dead Dramas into living oues of his own. Dead CATILINA of Crebillon into ROME SAUVEE of Voltaire, and the other samples of dead into living,—that stupid old Crebillon himself and the whole Universe may judge, and even Pompadour feel a remorse!—Readers shall fancy these things; and that the world is coming back to its old poor drab color with M. de Voltaire; his divine Emilie and he rubbing along on the old confused terms. One face-to-face peep of them readers ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... thought. Stoic in his feelings and hardened in sympathies, he still felt all the tender anxieties of an affectionate parent. There are moments in the career of even the greatest sinners when sleeping conscience is roused to remorse. The shock the old man received in the loss of his amiable child opened his eyes to the unhappy state of his own soul; every act of ridicule he cast on the religious tendencies of Louis became arrows of memory to sting him ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... elasticity of her spirits, withering her glorious beauty, and making her aged before her time. Perchance she mourned the absence of one she loved, and was wearied with anxiety for his return; perhaps the canker-worm of remorse was at work within her, for a fault committed and irretrievable; perhaps she was the victim of lawless outrage, a captive against her will; perhaps she had been severed from all she loved on earth, and the bright hopes of ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... does not hold that, a true and complete strength and firmness which feels and bears inconveniences, but that which bears them and feels them not. He does not consider him perfect in divine heroic love, who feels the spur, the check, or remorse or trouble about other love; but him who has no feeling of other affections; so that being fixed in one pleasure, there is no displeasure that has any power to jostle him or dislodge him from his place. And this it is to touch the highest blessedness of this state, to ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... open door-way, still accompanied by "Little Pills." People looked at him with marked curiosity. He was questioned, re-questioned, cross-questioned, but the result was only a hopeless tangle. He really added nothing to the testimony of the hack-driver and Bonelli. In abject remorse and misery he begged them to understand he was drunk when he joined the party, got drunker, dimly remembered there was a quarrel, but he had no cause to quarrel with any one, and that was all; he never knew how he got home. He covered his face in his shaking ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... My remorse was unmeasurable as I realized the whole truth, but my heart out-caroled any lark that ever grew a feather. The boy's soul was as clean as our ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... and go back to school to-morrow," directed Grace. "If you keep on this way it will serve to create suspicion. You have done a very foolish and really criminal act, but your own remorse has punished you severely enough. None of us are infallible. The thing to do now, is to find a way to make up ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... have so opportunely come to my rescue, I know not, but thanking them as I do now, I think that you will yourselves, when you are calm, also thank them for having prevented you from committing an act which would have loaded you with remorse, and embittered your future existence. Gentleman, you are free to depart: you, Don Silvio, have indeed disappointed me; your gratitude should have rendered you incapable of such conduct: as for you, Don Scipio, you have been misled; but you both have, in one point, disgraced ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... under him a good horse, on which, if necessary, he could run away. The thought was comforting, and the sense of possible danger excited him delightfully. When he remembered Peter, sleeping stolidly and missing what was to come, he felt a touch of remorse. But he had been warned to bring no one with him, and of the letter to speak to no one. He would tell Peter later. But, he considered, what if there should be nothing to tell, or, if there were, what if ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... round-shouldered in his dusty homespuns. 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 something unendurable, and ran away, ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... keep it in this instance. That saloon property has been the temptation of the devil to me. It is the best paying investment at present that I have. And yet it was only a minute before you came in here that I was in an agony of remorse to think how I was letting a little earthly gain tempt me into a denial of the very Christ I had promised to follow. I knew well enough that He would never rent property for such a purpose. There is no need, Dr. Bruce, for you to ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... had left him when he was ill, because he had laid the lash upon her shoulders. Yet, her place was at his side. Netty was there, of course. But of what use could Netty be when John was ill? Dick, too, still needed her care. A wave of deep remorse swept over her when she remembered how ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... most anxious that his lord's strength and resolution should carry him successfully through a day so agitating. For although Varney was one of the few, the very few moral monsters who contrive to lull to sleep the remorse of their own bosoms, and are drugged into moral insensibility by atheism, as men in extreme agony are lulled by opium, yet he knew that in the breast of his patron there was already awakened the fire that is never quenched, and ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... gorgeous triumph; they were missed; they were mourned; hearts were breaking on their account; tears were being shed; accusing memories of unkindness to these poor lost lads were rising up, and unavailing regrets and remorse were being indulged; and best of all, the departed were the talk of the whole town, and the envy of all the boys, as far as this dazzling notoriety was concerned. This was fine. It was worth while to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... go so far as to exhibit hostility towards grief, and a marked hostility towards remorse—two states of mind which feed on the past instead of on the present. Remorse, which is not the same thing as repentance, serves no purpose that I have ever been able to discover. What one has done, one has done, and ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... and mother hoped nothing: grief entirely filled up their hearts. And with the grief arose a new feeling—bitter and poignant remorse. "This is the just punishment," they thought, "that offended Heaven has inflicted upon us, for having wrung our parents' hearts with anguish. Now we feel a parent's agony: now can we realize what we made them suffer. This was the tender spot on which a wound would penetrate to the heart; ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... together. It has been a record of errors and failures on our part; a record of heroic devotion and forbearance on the part of our wife. It is over now, and with nothing to remember that is not soaked full of bitterness and wrapped up in red flannel remorse, we go forth to-day and herald our shame by publishing to the world the fact, that as husband, we are a depressing failure, while as a red-eyed and a rum-soaked ruin and all-around drunkard, we are a tropical triumph. We print this without ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... premium, I'll have to let it go; It fills me with remorse and sorrow, not to mention woe. Though I'm quite strong and healthy, and will outlive you, perhaps, I cannot pay that premium; I'll have to let ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... excitement of a new sensation gripped me. I had a taste of it when I opened your safe. It seized me again, relentlessly. If I were successful, I might begin again; if I failed, I could shoot myself without imposing an atrocious remorse upon you. Well, the pluck of that driver upset my plans—the plans of an amateur. I ought to have held ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... from which every thing is calculated to prevent him emancipating himself. It is habit that attaches him either to virtue or to vice: experience proves this: observation teaches incontrovertibly that the first crime is always accompanied by more pangs of remorse than the second; this again, by more than the third; so on to those that follow. A first action is the commencement of a habit; those which succeed confirm it: by force of combatting the obstacles that prevent ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... discussed work together eagerly, while mathematical Hannah marched on a few feet ahead. Darsie felt a pang of remorse, because she could not help wishing that she would stay ahead, and so give the chance of a prolonged tete-a-tete with Margaret France. The feeling of attraction was so strong now that they were face to face that it was only by an effort of will that she ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Listening to him thus far, unnaturally calm and cold, Francine now showed that she felt the lash of his contempt. A hideous smile passed slowly over her white face. It threatened the vengeance which knows no fear, no pity, no remorse—the vengeance of a jealous woman. Hysterical anger, furious language, Mirabel was prepared ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... he came to the use of his senses, and with fear, amazement and remorse, beheld at least a dozen bottles burst, and the fine Worcestershire cider ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... young man, striking his hand hard against his forehead, while an expression of shame and agonizing remorse passed over ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... plight of Thady Quinlan as, leaving Lisconnel, soon lapt out of sight behind him amid the grey web of the rain-mists, he tramped haltingly away, with Mrs. Kilfoyle's cloak bundled under his arm, and the dread of pursuit on his mind, and in his heart a great remorse, the object of which you are perhaps guessing wrongly. But he had also a hope and a purpose, and is therefore not wholly to be pitied, although the one did wane until the other looked impossible, as mile after mile unrolled its drenched and dreary length without bringing ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... expedient to have told us what was unlawful than what was wearisome. As for the burning of those Ephesian books by St. Paul's converts; 'tis replied the books were magic, the Syriac so renders them. It was a private act, a voluntary act, and leaves us to a voluntary imitation: the men in remorse burnt those books which were their own; the magistrate by this example is not appointed; these men practised the books, another might perhaps have read ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... mother felt at once all that her son had suspected and concealed. She felt that beneath his haughty and wayward character there had lurked delicate and generous forbearance for her; that from his equivocal position his very faults might have arisen; and a pang of remorse for her long sacrifice of the children to the father shot through her heart. It was followed by a fear, an appalling fear, more painful than the remorse. The proofs that were to clear herself and them! The words of ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... habit of driving one up into corners, Alick, but it shall be purely, purely for my own selfish delight," and she clasped her hands in so droll an affectation of remorse, that the muscles round his eyes quivered with diversion, though the hair on his lip veiled what the corners of his mouth were about; "if only," she proceeded, "you won't let it banish you. You must come over to take care of this wicked little sister, or ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lookin' off onto the melancholy ocean, listenin' to her deep sithes, when onbid come the agonizin' thought, "Had Josiah Allen backslid so fur and been so full of remorse and despair, that his small delicate brain had turned over with him, and he had throwed himself into the arms of the melancholy Ocean? Wuz her deep, mournful sithes preparin' me for the heart-breakin' sorrow?" I couldn't abear the thought, and I riz up and walked away. As I did so ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... resolution; yonder he advances with hesitating step, and yet more hesitating purpose, his childish fear having already overcome his childish passion. He is in the plight of a mischievous lad who has fired a mine, and who now, expecting the explosion in remorse and terror, would give his life to quench the train which his own hand lighted. Yonder—yonder—But I forget the rest of the worthy cutthroats. Help ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... and threatenings, General Haldimand concluded in the following severe words: "These are facts, Brothers, that, unless you are lost to every sense of feeling, cannot but recall in you even a most hearty repentance and deep remorse for ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... 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
... Triumph you now exercise, by the Superiority of your Nature; and while I see you looking down upon the Distance of my Frailty, I am forc'd to own a Glory, which I envy you; and am quite asham'd of the poor Figure I am making, in the bottom of the Prospect. I feel, I am sure, Remorse, enough to satisfy you for the Wrong, but to express it, wou'd, I think, ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... ravage, and upon the effects of war, with which he is going to overwhelm mankind. After all, he is in the right to amuse himself in all ways, at the expense of the human race, which tolerates his existence. Man is only arrested in the career of evil by obstacles or remorse; no one has yet opposed to Napoleon the one, and he has very easily rid himself of the other. For me, who, solitary, followed his footsteps on the terrace from which the country could be seen to a great distance, I admired its fertility, and felt astonished at seeing how soon ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... gusts into the piazza. As Julius finished his story and we rose to seek shelter within doors, the blast caught the angle of some chimney or gable in the rear of the house, and bore to our ears a long, wailing note, an epitome, as it were, of remorse and hopelessness. ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... right and wrong. The principles of morality, when not at variance with some desire or worldly interest of our own, or with the opinion of the public, are hardly perceived by us; but in the conflict of reason and passion they assert their authority and are not overcome without remorse. ...
— Philebus • Plato
... me!" Bet tried to look innocent. "Was that there all the time? Imagine me not seeing it!" There was remorse in her voice but a merry twinkle in her eyes that ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... of hiding them, as I had done, in my own heart, and brooding on them till it became a kind of pleasure to do so, and till fancied evils produced real ones. I wept bitterly while she spoke, for to find how completely I had created misery for myself was no agreeable matter of reflection, and my remorse was heightened when mamma said, "You have disappointed us not a little, my dear Emmeline; for I will no longer conceal from you that the little tour we took on our way to London was originally planned ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... Not until this moment did she realize what she had done; not until now did the teeth of remorse clench upon her. To marry her—because he loved her—this boy at her side must suffer THIS. It was her doing....She had cheated him into it. She had cost him this and was giving nothing to pay for it. He had foreseen it. Last night he had cut adrift from his parents because of her— willingly. ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... lived, and I admitted the justice of the taunt and regretted in poignant misery the change from my old conditions. If to live is to have one's reason cast down and trampled under foot, one's heart aflame with a besotted passion and one's soul racked with remorse, then am I living in good sooth—and I would far rather be dead and suffering the milder pains of Purgatory. Men differently constituted get used to it, as the eels to skinning. They say "mea culpa," "damn," or "Kismet," according to their various traditions, and go forth comforted ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke |
