"Self-reproach" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when his affairs were in the most embarrassed condition, and his absence from Vienna frequently caused by the pressure of creditors. He appears at this time to have experienced moments of poignant self-reproach. His love of dancing, masquerades, masked balls, &c., was so great, that he did not willingly forego an opportunity of joining any one of those assemblies, whether public or private. He dressed handsomely, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... domestics, they would have opined that 'she ought to be married.' In which they would have entirely agreed with Maryllia's 'dragon' Aunt Emily. But Maryllia's own mind was far from being set on such themes as love and marriage. Her meditations were melancholy, and not unmixed with self-reproach. She blamed herself for having stayed away so long from her childhood's home, and her ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... wearying. Hope, now, and excited wonder were giving the little one new life. Dave Patton cringed within at the thought of the awakening, the disillusionment, the desolation of sorrow that would come to the baby heart with the dawn of Christmas. He was overwhelmed with self-reproach, because he had not realized all this in time to make provision, before the deep snow had blocked the trail to the Settlement. ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... pang of keen self-reproach. Yes, it had been easy enough for a girl with a pretty face to make him forget his friend. He turned quickly toward the door. But Carrie moved even more rapidly, and by the time he reached it ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... self-reproach streaming from her eyes, Rebecca flew up the hill, sure of sympathy, and hoping against hope for help ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the woman he loved, and who loved him. He looked quickly at her; but the light of momentary excitement had died out of the face, and the expression was now perfectly serene. Several reflections passed rapidly through Mat's mind. He saw clearly that the girl had not a particle of self-reproach; not a doubt of the rectitude or even the nobility of her conduct; she had immolated herself with the same inflexible resolve and unquestioning faith as the sublime murderer of Marat. Then passing rapidly in mental review the history of so many self-murdered hearts, he asked ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... a man, And better 'tis we end this conference. Hear then my last resolve. Be priestess still Of the great goddess who selected thee; And may she pardon me, that I from her, Unjustly and with secret self-reproach, Her ancient sacrifice so long withheld. From olden times no stranger near'd our shore But fell a victim at her sacred shrine. But thou, with kind affection (which at times Seem'd like a gentle daughter's tender love, At times assum'd to my enraptur'd ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... them slips through his fingers, he breathes freely, but with a sigh of self-reproach for having doubted the woman who was to ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... her nurse's arms with a pretty gesture, like a pheasant's neck in a sort of reproof, as she said "Thank you" to her little self, when she had held out a flower to Mr. Keble, which, for once in his life, he did not notice; and his self-reproach produced the thoughts of thankfulness. One of the gems of the Lyra, "Bereavement," was the thought that came to the mind of the Pastor as he buried the little sister, the only child except the elder girl, of the bailiff at Dr. Moberly's farm. ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... a piece as a boy runs, no trace of disarray or feminine floundering in her action. More than ever, indeed, did she appear a fine nymph-like creature; so that, watching her flight Tom Verity was touched alike with self-reproach and admiration. For he had succeeded in asserting himself beyond his intention. Had overcome, had worsted her; yet, as it occurred to him, won a but barren victory. That she was alienated and resentful he could hardly doubt, while the riddle he ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... ("Pacchiarotto, and other Poems," 1876) might serve equally as a study for jealousy, self-reproach, contempt, and revenge; the love which is made to underlie these feelings, and the forgiveness with which it ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... deeper sense of sin. This will not begin with theology; that can only give expression to what God works in the life of His people. Nor does it mean that that deeper sense of sin will only be seen in stronger expressions of self-reproach or penitence: that is sometimes found to consist with a harbouring of sin, and unbelief as to deliverance. But the true sense of the hatefulness of sin, the hatred of it, will be proved by the intensity of desire for deliverance, and the struggle to know to the very utmost what ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray
... keen as the fickle air—so sharply did it bring back to him the overwhelming pictures of their happiness together. And out of his acute loneliness rose vague questionings and misgivings. He said to himself in bitter self-reproach that she would not have gone if he had been to her all he ought to have been in the crisis of that night. If harm should befall her now! How the thought clutched and dragged at his heart. Forebodings tortured him, and in the penumbra of his thoughts seemed to ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... instead, following the shore-paths lazily to shaded coverts dedicated to those happy silences which it takes two to make. Or, they climbed the bluffs and gazed at the impenetrable vast horizon, and thought perhaps of their errand with that pang of self-reproach which, when shared, becomes a subtler ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... exclaimed Bane, relaxing his grasp with a feeling of self-reproach, for he had a strong suspicion that his captive really was Salamander. "I do believe I've killed him. Wow! Shames, man, lend a hand to carry him to the fire, and plow up a bit flame that we may ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... his chair. At times he thought he would light another cigar, but the hand that he carried to his breast pocket dropped nervelessly to his knee again, and he did not smoke. Through his memories of disappointment pierced a self-reproach which did not permit him the perfect self-complacency of regret; and yet he could not have been sure, if he had asked himself, that this pang did not heighten the luxury of ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... just above one eye. I saw the blood trickle from a cut, as with a sharp cry of pain he ran away and disappeared. I was shocked at what I had done, but you know there are some conditions of mind in which self-reproach only makes anger hotter. I did not obey my impulse to follow the poor fellow, but threw off my jacket and plunged into the stream to recover the block I wanted. I suppose I had already been too long in the water, for when about half way over I was seized with a cramp. In a moment I became ...
— Harper's Young People, July 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... and lasting. He shut himself off from all his friends except Froude, who was to be his literary executor, and gave himself to collecting and annotating the memorials which she had left. Each letter is followed by some words of tender recollection or some cry of self-reproach. He has erected to her the most singular of literary monuments, morbid perhaps, but inspired by a feeling which was in his ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... on, and Tom Drift advanced inch by inch nearer the brink. He slipped, not without many an effort to recover himself, many a pang of self-reproach, many a vague ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... best to do, the things they know best already. 'O Richard! O Richard!' was all she could say, poor fond wretch; however, we go not by the sense of a bride's language, but by the passion that breaks it up. Every agony of self-reproach, of fear of him, of mistrust, of lurking fate, lay in those sobbed words, ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... them in their human weakness, or guided them in their blindness. And these most wonderful and providential beings their own waywardness had driven from them. At last, then, they met their enquiring friends with showers of tears, choking sobs, and expressions of the bitterest self-reproach and regret. ...
— Hydesville - The Story of the Rochester Knockings, Which Proclaimed the Advent of Modern Spiritualism • Thomas Olman Todd
... poor Mother a hard and lamentable time. Remembrance of the lately bright and safe-looking situation, now suddenly rent asunder and committed to the dubious unknown; anxiety about their own household and the fate of her Son; the Father's just anger, and perhaps some tacit self-reproach that she had favoured a dangerous game by keeping it concealed from her honest-hearted Husband,—lay like crushing burdens on her heart. And if many a thing did smooth itself, and many a thing, which at first ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... a week later that Esmay looked into Nanna's face bending over her, and knew that remembrance had come again. She had listened silently, as Nanna, between fits of weeping and stormy self-reproach, made her confession, of her eavesdropping at the door, of her jealous terror lest she should be separated from her darling, of her new-born hatred of this Constans, who dared to stand between herself and Esmay, of ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... sign I read a ruffled mood. He would dig thus in frozen snow on the coldest winter day, when urged inwardly by painful emotion, whether of nervous excitation, or, sad thoughts of self-reproach. He would dig by the hour, with knit brow and set teeth, nor once lift his head, or open ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... of those victims, whose death he lamented with a bitterness in which some remorse was mingled, from the impression that his own early errors in favour of the Revolution had unintentionally accelerated their untimely end. This was a source to him of deep and perpetual self-reproach. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... self-reproach and returning love overwhelmed him. "I swear to you," he said brokenly, through fast-flowing tears, "you are immortally ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... took hold upon May Rockett. She felt for the first time what she had done. Her heart fluttered in an anguish of self-reproach, and her eyes strayed as if seeking help. A minute's hesitation, then, with all the speed she could make, she set off up ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... tears, turned upward to the light. God! what a brute I felt! What had I done? I felt as if I had struck her. The first impulse of tenderness towards her welled up over my passion and turned it to a desperate self-reproach. A second later, Mrs. Grant ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... was overwhelmed with terror and self-reproach. The bolted door before me gave notice of danger as plainly as though the word had been painted upon its front. The dark and lowering walls of the passage in which the Wolf figure of Doddridge Knapp had appeared ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... friend!—his good angel. Her heart clamored for some warmer, gratefuller word—that might justify her to herself. And, instead, she realized for the first time the desert she had herself created, the loneliness she had herself imposed. And with prophetic terror she saw in front of her the daily self-reproach that her self-esteem might not be able ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Sardinia.—So much for my chronicle; but I write it with a certain feeling of repugnance and self-reproach. It was very well on the occasion of my first voyage, when I wished to share with you whatever charm the novelty of the scenes through which I was passing might supply to mitigate the pain of our separation. But ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... he called upon his wife, I doubt not, and gave mad words of self-reproach and of regret. And then he would mutter of his son, as though the lad could help him; and many times he cried out: "My God! the ship's going—hands, lower boats!" Or he raved with fierce threats and awful cries at the American he had buried, or made desperate appeals ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... Self-reproach darted through Lilac's heart. Why had she put off going home? But she must do the best she could now, ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... either in constitution or even in experience. I doubt whether any man under fifty would have been more anxious than myself to cut short our period of repose, broken as it was, when I refused to listen to her tearful penitence and self-reproach, by occasional words and looks of gratitude and admiration. I did, however, remember that it was expedient to refasten the window, and re-attach the seals, before departing. At the end of the hour's rest I allowed my charge and myself, I had ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... pride, was replaced by the cold, sad hues of wounded affections and proud despair. I could read in her countenance, as in a book, the sad record of long months of wearing sorrow, vain regrets, and bitter self-reproach. Her person, too, had lost its rounded, airy, graceful outline, and had become thin and angular. Her voice, albeit, was musical and gentle as ever, as she murmured, on recovering her senses, "You will protect me from my—from that man?" As I warmly pressed her hand, in emphatic assurance that I ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... and, mounting it, rode to where he could put it to the gallop. So men try to leave behind them the sneering demons of conscience and self-reproach. Some of them succeed in doing so, but find the pair waiting for them on their own doorstep. Herbert Courtland galloped his horse intermittently for an hour or two, and then rode leisurely back to his rooms. He felt that he had got the better of those two enemies of ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... firm and tender nature, wearing when it looked abroad the glow of sympathy, and when it looked within the bloom of modesty. They have seen, and not once or twice, a man forget himself; they have witnessed devotion, unselfish sorrow, unaffected delicacy, spontaneous charity, ingenuous self-reproach; and it may be that on seeing a human being surrender for another's good not something but his uttermost all, they have dimly suspected in human nature a glory connecting it with the divine. In these the passion of humanity ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... complaints of women, but from the lips of his own daughter they had come with a deeper pathos and power. At last, turning abruptly, he said: "Surely you have had a happy, comfortable life, with all your wants and needs supplied; and yet that speech fills me with self-reproach; for one might naturally ask, how can a young woman, tenderly brought up, who has had no bitter personal experience, feel so keenly the wrongs of her sex? Where did you learn this lesson?" "I learned it here," I replied, "in your office, when a child, listening to the complaints women made to ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... this grief that seemed no comfort. Mother dead! Father so often angry, so lately cruel (for it was a hard blow, and blistered and reddened Mary's soft white skin with pain): and then her heart turned round, and she remembered with self-reproach how provokingly she had looked and spoken, and how much her father had to bear; and oh, what a kind and loving parent he had been, till these days of trial. The remembrance of one little instance of his fatherly love thronged after another into her mind, and she began to wonder how ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... day passed as this had done, and so did the next. Hartley neither came nor sent a message of any kind. The maiden's heart began to fail. Grief and fear took the place of accusation and self-reproach. What if he had left her for ever! The thought made her heart shiver as if an icy wind had passed over it. Two or three times she took up her pen to write him a few words and entreat him to come back ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... am!" broke out O'Hara with smitten brow, and for half a day was on his knees in an affliction of self-reproach. Yet the same night he wrote a letter to Frankl containing the words: "You do not know, you cannot dream, the high and slippery road which H. has chosen for his feet: the future is big with events. Wait: his sublime path is not ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... he cared to say, and would have wished that there might then be an end of it; but he knew that his father had much on his mind, and would fain express, if he could express it without too much trouble, or without too evident a need of self-reproach, his own thoughts on the subject. "You have made up your mind, then, altogether that you do not like the church as a profession," ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... be entranced not only by the fair spectacle of her youth but by her delicious little air of shame and self-reproach. Evidently she had caught herself out in some small naughtiness—was both penitent and defiant, at once admitting her fault and pleading for indulgence. He suspected some thought at the back of her mind which he could neither exactly seize nor place. She baffled ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... away from her with humiliation and self-reproach, knowing, after the first flash of vexation, that it was unjust. Her fears rose towering and immense again; in the silence of the graying morning she shivered, drawing her cold feet up into the cot ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... distrust that made her afraid of Max Wyndham. She felt as if he were watching to catch her off her guard, ready at a moment's notice to turn to his own purposes any rash confidence into which she might be betrayed. And she told herself with passionate self-reproach that she had already been guilty of ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... of Sir Arthur, an hour or so after her release, did much to calm her. He had started post haste from Belgium as soon as he heard of the tragedy, which was not till three days after it had occurred, and had spent the long journey in incessant self-reproach that he had ever allowed Juliet to go alone among these murderous strangers. The sight of his familiar face was full of comfort to the distracted girl; and the knowledge that Mark was arrested and powerless to harm her, with the gladsome news that David was free again, combined ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... abandoned by both her husband and her lover, and driven from her father's home, had drowned herself after a brief struggle with circumstance. However Shelley may have felt that his conscience was free from blame, however small an element of self-reproach may have mingled with his grief and horror, there is no doubt that he suffered most acutely. His deepest ground for remorse seems to have been the conviction that he had drawn Harriet into a sphere of thought and feeling ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... think of that before?" she said in an extremity of self-reproach. She walked straight to the apoplectic gentleman, followed by the unhappy pair of ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... the bhikshu preached the Law to him, and he believed, and was made free. Forthwith he demolished the naraka, and repented of all the evil which he had formerly done. From this time he believed in and honored the Three Precious Ones, and constantly went to a patra tree, repenting under it, with self-reproach, of his errors, and accepting ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... away, passed his hand across his forehead and must have muttered audibly his self-reproach: for Mary looked up again with a faint gleam of the old ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... though tables mattered on a night like this!" Then with sudden self-reproach and quick solicitude: "Am I making you walk too far? Wouldn't you like to go ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... his own producing. This would have been fatuity if the optimism it expressed had not been much more a hope than a prejudice. It is beside the matter to say that he had a good conscience; for the best conscience is a sort of self-reproach, and this young man's brilliantly healthy nature spent itself in objective good intentions which were ignorant of any test save exactness in hitting their mark. He told Gertrude how he had walked over France and Italy with a painter's knapsack on his back, paying his way often by knocking ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... kept my peace, noting the bitter self-reproach of Wholesome, and having a lad's shyness before an older man's calamity; but now I said indignantly, "If it be Friends' creed to see the poor and old and feeble hurt without raising a hand, let us pray to be saved from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... friends, as well as secret longings, tried and tempted Christie sorely, but she withstood them all, carried her point, and renounced the profession she could not follow without self-injury and self-reproach. The season was nearly over when she was well enough to take her place again, but she refused to return, relinquished her salary, sold her wardrobe, and never crossed the threshold of the theatre after she ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... woman who had ceased to respect him, and whom he was ceasing to love. Though he called himself fickle and took all the blame of their marriage on his own shoulders, there remained in Agnes certain terrible faults of heart and head, and no self-reproach would diminish them. The glamour of wedlock had faded; indeed, he saw now that it had faded even before wedlock, and that during the final months he had shut his eyes and pretended it was still there. But now ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... dainty creatures poking long-necked scent-bottles at their noses. There is no beau whom it takes four men at once to shake into his buckskins, or who goes to see all the executions, or who is troubled with the self-reproach of having once consumed a pea. But is there dandyism in the brilliant and distinguished circle notwithstanding, dandyism of a more mischievous sort, that has got below the surface and is doing less harmless things than jack- towelling itself and stopping its own digestion, to which no rational ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... by some infantine instinct, the darling turned in her sleep, and came unconsciously nearer me. With a half-feeling of self-reproach, I drew around my neck, inch by inch, the little arms that tightened with a delicious thrill; and so I half reclined there till I myself dozed, and the watchful Janet, looking in, warned me away. Crossing the entry to my own chamber, I heard Kenmure and Laura down stairs, ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Europe and elsewhere, ladies of the great world that Beth had only dreamed about, would have given their ears (since ear puffs were in fashion) to receive such a note from Peter. It was a beautiful note besides—manly, gentle, breathing contrition and self-reproach. Beth merely ignored it. Whatever she thought of it and of Peter she wanted to deliberate ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... obdurate nature; and then, thinking I had produced the right impression, I came boldly to close quarters with him. I said, 'At the very time when you met us, sir, my unhappy friend was speaking in terms of touching, self-reproach of her conduct to the late Mrs. Armadale. She confided to me her anxiety to make some atonement, if possible, to Mrs. Armadale's son; and it is at her entreaty (for she cannot prevail on herself to face you) that I now beg to inquire whether ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... been repelled with something which approached to disdain; and if the Master of Ravenswood had sustained wrongs at the hand of Sir William Ashton, his conscience told him they had been unhandsomely resented towards his daughter. When his thoughts took this turn of self-reproach, the recollection of Lucy Ashton's beautiful features, rendered yet more interesting by the circumstances in which their meeting had taken place, made an impression upon his mind at once soothing and painful. The sweetness of her voice, the delicacy of her expressions, ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... least be said that his will was not concerned in this transaction. He acted in obedience to an impulse which he could not control nor resist. Shall we impute guilt where there is no design? Shall a man extract food for self-reproach from an action to which it is not enough to say that he was actuated by no culpable intention, but that he was swayed by no intention whatever? If consequences arise that cannot be foreseen, shall we find no refuge in the persuasion of our rectitude and of human frailty? ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... and more than all, Elton had said was true. She saw death unmistakable, inevitable, and close at hand, and reproached herself for not having come sooner. But in that strange calm and stillness, even self-reproach seemed to be curbed and repressed—even a quickened beating of the heart would have been out of place. So they remained until fully half an hour had passed, when the door of the room again opened; this ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... much suffering and grief I should have been saved had I attended to the precepts and warnings of my kind parent—how much of bitter self-reproach. And I must warn my young friends, that although the adventures I went through may be found very interesting to read about, they would discover the reality to be very full of pain and wretchedness were they subjected ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... more interested in watching the progress of the struggle than in guarding Brunow, and Brunow was watching the struggle too, but not in the least with any look of amazement, but only with one which I could not for the life of me help construing into fear and shame and self-reproach. It was like a scene beheld by lightning, divided and apart from everything else, ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... Sah, you hab no objection to we playin', Sah?"—which objection I disclaimed; but soon they all subsided, rather to my regret, and scattered merrily. Afterward I found that some other officer had told them that I considered the affair too noisy, so that I felt a mild self-reproach when one said, "Cunnel, wish you had let we play a little longer, Sah." Still I was not sorry, on the whole; for these sham-fights between companies would in some regiments lead to real ones, and there is a latent jealousy here between the Florida and South ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... brace of cracker boxes, two half-tamed Mohaves were heading for the heights to the north-east, where water would freeze in the canteens these December nights, and the rock tanks were nearly solid ice. Two hours later while Harris, nervous, irritable, and filled with nameless self-reproach, was pacing the narrow veranda at the doctor's quarters, there was a stir at the southward end of the post, a sound of hoofbeats and footfalls, a running to and fro and lighting up at the office. An orderly ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... for conscience' sake, my child,' said he, with a dignity that was only tremulous from the acute sensitiveness of his character; 'I must do what my conscience bids. I have borne long with self-reproach that would have roused any mind less torpid and cowardly than mine.' He shook his head as he went on. 'Your poor mother's fond wish, gratified at last in the mocking way in which over-fond wishes are too often fulfilled—Sodom apples as they are—has brought on this crisis, for which I ought to ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... wife's feelings of torture and self-reproach, but he pointed to the dead boy, whose face above the white shirt looked peculiarly refined, almost perfect, young and smooth and quite peaceful, and then drew her more closely towards him with the other ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... had happened. His heart sank, and, half out of bed already, he stopped; he did not know how he was going to face her; he was overwhelmed with a sudden rush of self-reproach, and bitterly, bitterly, he regretted what he had done. What would she say to him that morning? He dreaded meeting her, and he asked himself how he could have been such a fool. But the children gave him no time; Edward took his bathing-drawers and his towel, Athelstan tore the bed-clothes away; ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... that Jack had lost his life in the very enterprise Wesley had contemplated, Kate collapsed under the shock. Now, when it was too late, she convinced herself that he was innocent. If she could have recalled him to life, she cried in self-reproach, she would not ask whether he was all her first impulse had painted him. She had borne up with something like composure when Wesley's death came upon her; but now, tortured by a sense of responsibility in Jack's fate, she gave way to the grief she had so long repressed. If she ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... In the absorbing interest of her own renascence, the shock, more than the injury which her father had undergone, was ignored, if not neglected. Lanfear had not, indeed, neglected it; but he could not help ignoring it in his happiness, as he remembered afterwards in the self-reproach which he would not let the girl share with him. Nothing, he realized, could have availed if everything had been done which he did not do; but it remained a pang with him that he had so dimly felt his duty to the gentle old man, even while he did it. Gerald lived to witness his daughter's ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... she had begun. "To me," she meant to have said; then had retreated hastily, before her own sense of something unduly intimate and personal. Wharton stood quietly beside her, saying nothing, but receiving and soothing her self-reproach just as surely as though she had put ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... criticised, judged, condemned unsparingly, all mental courtesies in abeyance. When, therefore, at this juncture the three eyes of the Lovegroves' dining-room gaselier winked slowly, and closed their lids—so to speak—ceasing to watch and to supplicate, he suffered no self-reproach. The good, simple couple were shutting up house and going to bed, he supposed. They sought repose betimes; and, unless supper had been more aggressively cold and heavy than usual, slept, till broad day, a dreamless sleep. Decidedly it was well he had not taken his ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... seemed to have lost my tongue and my head together. I had expected tears, pale cheeks, a burst of self-reproach, and that I should have to comfort and be very gentle and sympathetic. I had dreaded the role; but here was a new turn of affairs; and, I own it, my self-love was not a little wounded. The play was played out, that was evident. The curtain had fallen, and here was ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... Frankland's own sudden elevation to the baronetcy, may be held to have conspired to force them into the situation for which Agnes was to pay by many a day of tears and Sir Harry by many a night of bitter self-reproach. ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... stood where he had left her, disconsolately fingering her roses, her delicate face marred with weeping. Honor went to her straightway; and putting both arms round her kissed her with a passionate tenderness, intensified by a no less passionate self-reproach. ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... his fate to die at Julie's side, was not that the fulfilment of the desire which he had expressed to himself a hundred times that morning? What did it matter, a few years sooner or later? He must lay down the burden at last. Why not then? A pang of self-reproach followed they thought. Could he so lightly throw aside the love that had bent over his cradle. The sacred name of mother rose involuntarily to his lips. Was it not cowardly to yield up without a struggle ...
— A Struggle For Life • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... lad was standing by the bedside of his dying father, watching eagerly for some indication, however slight, of returning life or reason. The hours of horror and self-reproach had entirely changed his feelings and ideas; for it was only at the instant when he saw his father raise the poisoned wine to his lips that he saw his crime in all its hideous enormity. His soul rose up in rebellion against his crime, and the words, ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... that the door was not shut, and he closed it tight, preventing my hearing any more. I now turned to Marble, whose countenance betrayed the self-reproach he endured, at ascertaining the injury he had done, by his ill-judged artifice. I made no reproaches, however, but squeezed his hand in token of my forgiveness. The poor fellow, I plainly saw, had great difficulty in forgiving himself; though he ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... and self-reproach were genuine enough, but he might have left off that last, for he had n't been looking anywhere else since he came into ...
— Hooking Watermelons - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... now left equally without gold and without shadow; but a heavy load was taken from my breast, and I felt cheerful. Had not my Minna been irrecoverably lost to me, or even had I been perfectly free from self-reproach on her account, I felt that happiness might yet have been mine. At present I was lost in doubt as to my future course. I examined my pockets, and found I had a few gold-pieces still left, which I counted with feelings ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... Newmark; with the outstanding obligations; with the new enterprise of the vessels ordered from Duncan McLeod, Newmark and Orde would be unable to raise anything like the necessary amount. To his personal anxieties Orde added a deep and bitter self-reproach at having involved his partner in what amounted ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... first awful glance of mingled deprecation and self-reproach was so touching that no one but a hardened monster could have withstood it; but the look, with the feelings which it implied, was short-lived. It passed like a summer cloud, and was replaced by an expression of supreme contentment and ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... cried, putting her hand on his shoulder, her voice full of self-reproach, 'I ought not to have told you. I am so sorry! Do forgive me, dear, kind Jack. I wish I could do something for you, Jack—I do wish I could. But for Goody's nursing and care and all your kindness, ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... the best kind of African hunting in one respect. One feels no self-reproach in having killed a lion, for there is always the comforting thought that by killing one lion you have saved the lives of three hundred other animals. Every lion exacts an annual toll of at least that number of zebras, hartebeests, or other forms of antelopes, all of ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... sharp touch of self-reproach what had made her say such a stupid thing—a thing which might have, and indeed had, two such different meanings? What she had meant had been that she must forget the hurt surprise she and her husband had felt that Godfrey Radmore, on two separate ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... softly and gently, and hardly to touch us until the moment is over; and then it is the positive feeling of something lacking that tells us of the happiness which has vanished; it is then that we observe that we have failed to hold it fast, and we suffer the pangs of self-reproach as well ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... a selfish man and a laggard officer of the Crown," he exclaimed with air of great self-reproach. "There are women in that company and wounded men, no doubt. We must take them ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... execute it. * * * * * * * * These and other similar arguments were pressed upon me; and after a week's deliberation, I yielded to their force. It is quite possible that I may have erred * * * * * * I shall, at least, have no cause of self-reproach." ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... The tears came into her eyes, and for the first time since the flower took root,—for the very first time,—she began to think of her mother, and of her promise to the fairy; and she stooped down, in an agony of terror and shame and self-reproach, to see how it fared with her forget-me-not. Alas! it had already begun to droop and wither; and the leaves were changing color, and the blossoms were dropping off, and she knew that her ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... And in her self-reproach and her humility, Diana wrote bitterer things against herself than there was any need. For she, too, was doing her daily work with a lovely truth of aim and simpleness of purpose. With all the joys of life crushed out, she was walking the way which had become so weary ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... while that he would destroy himself. His groans reached the ears of his mother, Thetis, far down in the deeps of ocean where she abode, and she hastened to him to inquire the cause. She found him overwhelmed with self-reproach that he had indulged his resentment so far, and suffered his friend to fall a victim to it. But his only consolation was the hope of revenge. He would fly instantly in search of Hector. But his mother reminded him that he was ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... headaches." Mrs. Beckman never lisped the details of those unhappy Saturday nights, and the loyal deception was so well carried out, with such devoted attention and nursing, that by early afternoon, Sunday, the invalid was quite restored and any possible self-reproach had been melted away. Headaches of the real kind did come later, and, as his habits changed not, the Brights which first appeared at fifty-eight progressed without interruption ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... one-talent man thought his trust not worth investing, and behold, the account of it was called for with the rest. He {135} had in his hands a trust from God and had wasted it, and there was nothing left for him but the weeping of regret and the gnashing of teeth of indignant self-reproach. ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... a sudden stab of self-reproach. I had been taking things too easily. I looked at my watch. It was a ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... been thought weakly charitable by all the rest of the family. Mr. Adderley had been forwarded by Sir Francis Walsingham like a bale of goods, and arriving in a mood of such self-reproach as would be deemed abject, by persons used to the modern relations between noblemen and their chaplains, was exhilarated by the unlooked-for comfort of finding his young charge at least living, and in ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... self-reproach at having quite forgotten that he had a father and a home, Leo said he was ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... uncertain. The pair knelt side by side with hands locked together, while notes of praise rose from all voices; and meantime Ebbo, close to that coffin, strove to share the joy, and to lift up a heart that WOULD sink in the midst of self-reproach for undutifulness, and would dislike the thought of the rude untaught man, holding aloof from him, likely to view him with distrust and jealousy, and to undo all he had achieved, and further absorbing the mother, the mother who was to him all the world, and for whose sake he ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that surged over Robert Morton! Joy rioted with shame, happiness with self-reproach. How feeble his faith had been. He hoped Mr. Galbraith did not read in his eyes the ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... please," she answered; "this can be only an abstract theory to me. I knew no want of love in my marriage, only a frequent self-reproach—to think that I was unworthy, because I could not ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... her head against him with a bewildered sense of self-reproach. "I'm sorry I'm silly, Eustace," she murmured "I expect I'm made that way too. Don't—don't take ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... to have lain down," he said, in tones full of self-reproach. "I might have known that the ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... these wretched doubts and questionings and complaints. I have been ill, seriously ill, and there is nothing to account for my illness save the misery of this apparently hopeless state of things existing between us. You have made me weep bitter tears of alternate self-reproach and indignation, and finally of complete miserable bewilderment as to this unhappy condition of affairs. Believe me, tears like these are not good to mingle with love, they are too bitter, too scorching, they blister love's wings and ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... and, to tell the truth, have not always been the most courteous in my opinions concerning him. It is a painful thing either to dislike others or to fancy they dislike us, and I have felt both pleasure and self-reproach at finding myself so mistaken with respect to Mr. Coleman. I like to out with a good feeling as soon as it rises, and so I have dropt Coleman a line ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Lola as the knowledge of it all flashed upon her was something deeper than thought, something more moving than any mere matter of perception. A passionate gratitude throbbed in her heart, confused with a passionate self-reproach. She desired to speak, but somehow her lips refused utterance. She trembled and turned white, ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... our luck!" he protested, in the keenest self-reproach. "There isn't a horse or a mule in camp that you could get a mile an hour out of. In fact, I'm thinking there isn't anny horses ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... shrank in horror from pursuing conjecture—it was worse than torture, worse than madness to him. Oh, blindness and frenzy; why had he not thought of these dangers so likely to beset her solitary path? Why had he so recklessly exposed her to them? Vain questions, alas! vain as was his self-reproach, his ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... to him—no movement; I approached—the animal was dead; his eyes protruded; his tongue out of his mouth; the froth gathered round his jaws. I took him in my arms; I brought him to the fire; I felt acute grief for the loss of my poor favourite—acute self-reproach; I accused myself of his death; I imagined he had died of fright. But what was my surprise on finding that his neck was actually broken. Had this been done in the dark?—must it not have been by a hand human as mine?—must there not have been a human agency all the while in that room? ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... assumed more for effect than for necessity. Above all, he possessed what the King conspicuously lacked—self-assurance, and with it a sort of moral ease as though any error he might fall into would be taken rather as an experience to profit by than as an occasion for self-reproach. His face showed as he talked that quality of humor which enables a man to laugh at his own enthusiasms, and one could not always be sure whether he were serious or merely indulging in dialectics. To any one out of touch with his intellectual origins, he was a man difficult to know; and the King, ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... angry countenance and demeanour." This painful obligation has been hereditary in my race. I have myself, on a perfectly amateur and unauthorised inspection of Turnberry Point, bent my brows upon the keeper on the question of storm-panes; and felt a keen pang of self-reproach, when we went downstairs again and I found he was making a coffin for his infant child; and then regained my equanimity with the thought that I had done the man a service, and when the proper inspector came, he would be readier ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... flattered, we cajoled, we appealed to him "as a sportsman," we said it was "only right," we looked unutterable things, and at last, half an hour before it was time for him to start for the station, he promised, with many misgivings and expressions of self-reproach, to see what he could do. Instantly, from being his suppliants, we became his governors; and the next twenty minutes were employed in pouring into his ears the most explicit directions regarding ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... always,—always. The scene with Hopkins cannot be described now, as it would take too many of our few remaining pages. It resulted, I am afraid I must confess, in nothing more triumphant to the squire than a treaty of mutual forgiveness. Hopkins acknowledged, with much self-reproach, that his feelings had been too many for him; but then, look at his provocation! He could not keep his tongue from that matter, and certainly said as much in his own defence as he did in confession of his sins. The substantial triumph was ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... torches, brandished in some licentious orgy. Nor did he think of her again, till he found himself saddened, and self-disgusted, plunged into peril—perhaps into ruin, by his own guilty conduct; and then, when he did think, it was with remorse, and self-reproach, and consciousness of disloyalty, so bitterly and keenly painful—yet unaccompanied by that repentance, which steadily envisages past wrong, and determines to amend in future—that he shook off the recollection, whenever it returned, with wilful stubbornness; ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... on to explain that, if the man had a wife and children, any one who had killed the husband and father would pity them as long as he lived, and could never see them or hear them spoken of without feeling pain, and even some degree of self-reproach; although, so far as the man himself was concerned, it might be that no injustice had been done. After the excitement was over, too, he would begin to make excuses for the man, thinking that perhaps he was poor, and his children were suffering for ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... at one end of the room now and gazed at them, he realized with a little pang of self-reproach that his latest exploit had been prompted by as much of a desire to set himself right with the company as to square the padrone's ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... speak no more, good child, about the past. Who is there then whose youthful memories Are altogether free from self-reproach; You know, the Norsemen are ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... alone which led On sacred manners to encroach; And made me feel what most I dread, JOHNSON'S just frown, and self-reproach. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... to save our neighbor from the self-reproach which might be his if he knew we were in such plight through desire to aid his son or himself, replied that we had been sent into the vicinity by General Herkimer, and then explained how we came across Jacob, as well was the manner in which ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis |
