"Self-justification" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for the uncertain discovery that was to secure her dowry, but by a private marriage with Frank escape at once into freedom and security. While, though he had first held out to young Hazeldean the inducement of Beatrice's dowry as reason of self-justification in the eyes of the Squire, it was still easier to drop that inducement, which had always rather damped than fired the high spirit and generous heart of the poor Guardsman. And Randal could conscientiously say, that when he had asked the Squire ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... flowing quietly from his eyes as he lay, thinking. Sometimes it was the badness of the faults as he saw them now, looking so very different from what they did when they were committed in the carelessness of fun and high spirits, or viewed afterwards in the hardening light of self-justification. Now they did look so wantonly hard and rude—unkind to his sister, ruinous to Harold, regardless of his widowed mother, reckless of his God—that each one seemed to cut into him with a sense of its own badness, and he was quite as much grieved as afraid; he hated the fault, and hated ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... shrinking, too sensitive, it may do it a world of good cheerfully to spank its posterior. Not brutally, not cruelly, but with real sound, good-natured exasperation. And let the adult take the full responsibility, half humorously, without apology or explanation. Let us avoid self-justification at all costs. Real corporal punishments apply to the sensual plane. The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack. The pained but resigned disapprobation of a mother is usually a very bad thing, much worse than the father's shouts of ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... him when he was shown the pocket-book and the broken box. He stammered out excuses, prevaricated, lied; until at last Luttrell lost all patience, and insisted upon a definite reply to his question. And then Hugo muttered his last desperate self-justification—that he had "meant ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... that the impressions you are uttering are likely to meet with his sympathy, considering that the day before he himself gave you the example which your mind is following. He is at least free from those fetters of self-justification which are the curse of parliamentary speaking, and what I rather desire for him is that he should produce the great book which he is generally pronounced capable of writing, and put his best self imperturbably on record for the advantage of society; because I should then have ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... ordered by the Republic," she began in a tone of self-justification; then stopped with a ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... expressed, or been led away by the disturbing forces of a nature calm only on the surface. Nothing is more baffling than the incomplete revelations of a very complex order of mind, with its many-sided sympathies and its apparent contradictions. The self-justification she puts forward for her errors is sometimes sophistical, but not for that insincere. She is not trying to make us her dupes; she is the dupe herself of her dangerous eloquence. But her moral worth so infinitely outweighed the alloy as ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... Mrs. Condor's voice had dropped from its original tone of petty rancor to one of petulant self-justification. Stillman knew at once that her ill-temper had caught her off-guard and she was already trying to crawl slowly back into his favor. She had meant, no doubt, to soften her news over a glass or two of chilled white wine ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... much diplomacy in her interview with her aunt. Seated at the good lady's feet in an attitude of childlike humility, she related the story of her adventures in simple, unexaggerated language, without any attempt at self-justification. ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... devotion and fidelity on either side: but the South lost because slavery had eaten out the enduring vigour of its resources; the North won because free labour and the rights of man had given it the greater effective power. At last, the theory on which the South stood for self-justification crumbled under ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... her side, was not a bad woman, she was simply a stupid one. She disliked Maggie for what seemed to her most admirable reasons and, as that dislike slowly, slowly turned into hatred, her self-justification only hardened. ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... to make these solemn resolutions your own, can you assign any reason for such refusal, which you will be willing to utter in self-justification when facing ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... the will of the State. In modern times, on the contrary, we demand an individual opinion, an individual will and conscience. The ancients had none of these in the modern sense; the final thing for them was the will of the State. While in Asiatic despotisms the individual had no inner self and no self-justification, in the modern world man demands to be honored for the sake of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... been, I am still (if a poor recluse forced by the world to renounce the world is still remembered) accused of such light conduct, and so many evil things, that it may be allowed me to find in one strong heart a haven from which I cannot be driven. Hitherto I have always considered self-justification an insult to innocence; and that is why I have disdained to defend myself. Besides, to whom could I appeal? Such cruel things can be confided to none but God or to one who seems to us very near Him—a priest, or another self. Well! I do know this, if my secrets are not as safe there," she ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... away, perhaps even wounded her, momentarily, but she had recovered herself quickly. Her smile had been full of the smug satisfaction of one who has washed his hands in public self-justification. ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... mine—the devil take it!—a button of mine that was hanging by a single thread suddenly broke off, and hopped and skipped and rattled and rolled until it had reached the feet of his Excellency himself—this amid a profound general silence! THAT was what came of my intended self-justification and plea for mercy! THAT was the only answer that I had ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... to the young man's forehead, and he burned to say something in self-justification, but his uncle's wrath was great and so he merely ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera |
