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Wrongdoing   /rˈɔŋduɪŋ/   Listen
Wrongdoing

noun
1.
Departure from what is ethically acceptable.  Synonym: error.
2.
Activity that transgresses moral or civil law.  Synonyms: actus reus, misconduct, wrongful conduct.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Wrongdoing" Quotes from Famous Books



... Americans surrendered none of their rights as neutral citizens in traveling through a war zone on merchant ships of a belligerent power. But Germany was willing to pay an indemnity for the loss of American lives, not as an admission of wrongdoing, but as ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... Mytilene, which would strike terror into the other subjects of Athens, and prevent them from yielding to the same temptation. But, reasoned Diodotus, experience had shown that intending criminals were not deterred from wrongdoing by the increased severity of penal statutes. For a long time lawgivers had framed their codes in this belief, thinking to drive mankind into the path of rectitude by appealing to their terrors. Yet crime had not diminished, but rather increased. And what was true of ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell

... and openly acknowledged the fact that it was not a case of deliberate wrongdoing, and he ordered the arrest of the superior young gentleman who had introduced the New York gamblers to their victim; and yet in the eye of the law it was a clear case of embezzlement; and, as Mr. Arnot's friend, the magistrate felt little disposition to prevent things from taking their ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... considered a punishment for wrongdoing, the more serious diseases coming from the supreme anito, the lesser ones from the lesser anitos. If smallpox visits a rancheria it is because someone has cut down a tree or killed an animal belonging to a spirit which has invoked the ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed

... occurs in his essay on 'Suicide') dazzled me as an audacious paradox. But there is truth in it. Verily the whole creation groaneth and travaileth, and man is a degraded monster, and sin is over all. Ah, my friend, I have shed many of my illusions since I came to this seething hive of misery and wrongdoing. What shall one man's life—a million men's lives—avail against the corruption, the vulgarity, and the squalor of civilisation? Sometimes I feel like a farthing rushlight in the Hall of Eblis. Selfishness ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, and on unselfish performance; without ...
— Franklin Delano Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address • Franklin Delano Roosevelt

... that are neutral sometimes fail to see fundamentals in the present conflict, and talk of "negotiations" between right and wrong. It is easy for people who have not suffered to be tolerant toward wrongdoing. This war is a long war because of German methods of frightfulness. These practices have bred an enduring will to conquer in Frenchman and Briton and Belgian which will not pause till victory is thorough. Because the German military power has sinned against women and children, it will ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason

... great Church of ours is based on the rightful condemnation of wrongdoing. There are times when forgiveness is a sin, Michael Strangway. You must keep the whip hand. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... both Tray and Tom caught sight of May's anxious face peering in at the shop door. Tray rushed to his mistress with a boisterously gracious greeting, which did not include the slightest self-consciousness or sense of wrongdoing in its affability. Tom took a couple of steps ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler

... young Harrison Lowder. Few young men have been so much reformed. He had a bright wit and genial manners, but moral endowments had been accidentally omitted in his makeup. Nothing that was pleasant could seem wrong to him. He was a magnificent sinner, with an artistic lightness of touch in wrongdoing, and he took his evil courses with such unfailing good ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston

... to them. At the age of twenty-two, after a year of unusually hard work, my nervous endurance gave way, and with this breakdown came a sense of fear and a horror of crime that I have been unable to overcome. I have never felt the slightest inclination toward wrongdoing. It is a feeling rather that my shrinking from any mention of evil makes it impossible for me to listen or think rationally when such things are discussed. This feeling has seemed to change my whole attitude ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg

... sinned, thou wouldst have watched me, Nor wouldst have acquitted me of my wrongdoing. Had I been wicked, woe unto me! And though righteous, I dare not to ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon

... I realise my wrongdoing, for what, after all, is Books in General as compared to Mr. Squire's Life and Letters? As a divertissement, compared to a tone poem; as a curtain-raiser to a three-act play. Life and Letters, though not lacking in the lighter ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton

... perceive the right thing to do. The application of principle to conduct is an advance on the mere recognition of virtue in the concrete, or even the possession of virtue in the abstract. The question whether any past act of wrongdoing was an act of insanity does not so much depend upon the great question whether the person doing it was insane as a whole being, or whether the deed done was the outcome of passion or error, the direct fruit of limited or special disease. In short, the insanity of the act must be ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various

... to do them good by driving home to them in some tangible and concrete form, through the skin and flesh of their bodies, what the thick skins of their moral natures were unable to comprehend. The resistance of wrongdoing is not opposed to the law of love. As in community life there is the occasional bully who has sometimes to be knocked down in order that he may have a due appreciation of individual rights and community amenities, ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine

... that there is prompt or general reaction to wrongdoing, either of one or of many. I might illustrate with two cases. In one a rich man perverted a public trust, openly, to his own advantage; and a conspiracy of silence hedged his wrong about. In the other, a youth entered in one ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson

... injudicious indulgence of her son in private, and the perpetual oscillations between the extremes of harshness and fondness thus experienced, rendered the poor boy a weak and unprincipled character, anxious only to escape the consequences of wrongdoing, without any regard to the motives of ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur

... a letter from a man who was openly doing wrong, and who repented a little of his wrongdoing. I thought it a letter from a stranger, from an Englishman who, perhaps, had not had such advantages of birth and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... it is. She could not properly imagine Jake's mental state, in which everything that happened alarmed him. Having done wrong, he fancied all the time that he was about to be haled up, and made to pay for his wrongdoing. And that, of course, was the explanation of his actions, when, as a matter of fact, he could have walked with entire safety into the station and the midst of the ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the March - Bessie King's Test of Friendship • Jane L. Stewart

... any way to cheat or to do any unworthy act was, I believe, quite beyond his understanding. Therefore, while his constant lack of interest in his studies goaded his teachers to despair, when it came to a question of stamping out wrongdoing on the part of the student body he was invariably found aligned on the side of the faculty. Not that Richard in any way resembled a prig or was even, so far as I know, ever so considered by the most reprehensible of his fellow students. He was altogether too ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis

... men. Indeed that earlier betrayal had become a little thing in comparison with this later evil, and I lamented the hurt to my fair name far more than the one to my body. The latter, indeed, I had brought upon myself through my own wrongdoing, but this other violence had come upon me solely by reason of the honesty of my purpose and my love of our faith, which had compelled me to write ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard

... was distressed: not about wrongdoing, for the girl had no more idea that she was doing wrong than you have when you write a letter on your own responsibility, and at your own dictation; not at the absence of friends, for in Dulcie's day friends were considered very much in the way on such occasions. ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... the breach between Class and Mass. He implicated many corporation heads and social leaders in a sorry tangle of wrongdoing. Other situations added fuel to the flame of economic war. The strike of the telephone girls had popular support, a sympathy much strengthened by the charges of bribery ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... (une querelle d'Allemand), and expelled him from the territory of the free city. Justice in Frankfort is no whit wiser nor more humane than elsewhere, albeit the city is the seat of the German Diet. It is not often that a magistrate traces back the stream of wrongdoing and misfortune to the holder of the urn from which the first beginnings trickled forth. If Brunner forgot his son, his son's friends speedily followed the ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... can imagine what a pretty, sweet, little country girl Huldy Mason is. My heart aches for Lindy, her martyrdom has been out of all proportion to her contemplated wrongdoing, if wrongdoing it really was. Had I been in her place I would have married Jones and left my clothes behind; and then," said Aunt Ella, "how my heart goes out to that dear, sweet girl that you call Alice! Do ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin

... these depressions often become very acute, so that the whole horizon of life is darkened. Sensitive women often torment themselves by wondering what they have done that is wrong, for of course all depression is apt to take the form of a sense of wrongdoing. Further, at this period the religious sensibilities of many seem to suffer eclipse. They can no longer respond in feeling to any of the sublime religious truths. They find they cannot pray. Nothing seems to matter. The memory ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray

... were prayers to the wind-gods, to the god of fire, to the god of pestilence, to the goddess of food, and to deities presiding over the sauce-pan, the caldron, the gate, and the kitchen. There were also purifications for wrongdoing.... But there was not even a shadowy idea of any code of morals, or any systematization of the simple notions of the people concerning things unseen. There was neither heaven nor hell—only a kind of neutral-tinted Hades. Some of the gods were good ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick

... dreadful for me to tell of. We know that the Gentle Shepherd has a special care for little lambs of His flock, but we can never expect God to take care of us when we have wilfully turned away from Him to follow our own wrongdoing, and refused to turn back. If the lambs will not listen to the voice of the Shepherd, but will stray far away from Him, they ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... statement that you know is absolutely false, sir!" exclaimed Merriwell. "I have never crowded any fellow, and I have never lost an opportunity to cover as far as possible and honorable any wrongdoing a fellow cadet may have been led into. You may not know that I could have caused Snell's expulsion in disgrace if I had wished, but ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish

... to the boat-house with a very decided step, and it soon appeared that she was not there by chance or accident; which leads us sorrowfully to remark, that in her wrongdoing she often found a ready companion and supporter in Noddy Newman. She was rather inclined to be a romp; and though she was not given to "playing with the boys," the absence of any suitable playmate sometimes led her ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic

... for a swift conscience that speaks! It is meant to ring an alarm-bell to us, to make us, as the Bible has it, 'flee for refuge to the hope that is set before us.' My imploring question to my young friends now is: 'Have you used that sense of evil and wrongdoing, when it has been aroused in your consciences, to lead you to Jesus Christ, or what have ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... slightest doubt of their complete conviction that each of these charges was well founded and true. The worst of it was that in every instance they had some circumstance, the result of mistake, misconception, or individual wrongdoing, on which to raise a formidable superstructure of generalised accusation. "We fired on the Red Cross"—they instanced Elandslaagte and the battle of Nicholson's Nek; in both instances their waggons were behind kopjes that our gunners could not possibly see through. ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch

... soldierly efficiency; and the general kind-heartedness and humanity of our troops have been strikingly manifested. There now remain only some fifteen thousand troops in the islands. All told, over one hundred thousand have been sent there. Of course, there have been individual instances of wrongdoing among them. They warred under fearful difficulties of climate and surroundings; and under the strain of the terrible provocations which they continually received from their foes, occasional instances of cruel retaliation ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... against America and American ideals is not thereby appreciably lessened; their reckless and irresponsible use of the wealth and other influential agents at their command adds to the sum of their shame and wrongdoing. The greatest and strongest Jewish Socialist organization in Russia and Poland, the "Bund," has stood in solid opposition to Bolshevism and the Bolshevist regime from the very beginning until now. Not only have leaders ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo

... clearly where his duty lay, and was fully conscious of the fact that he had no right to marry until he had committed the murder. This done, he could stand before the altar with Sybil Merton, and give his life into her hands without terror of wrongdoing. This done, he could take her to his arms, knowing that she would never have to blush for him, never have to hang her head in shame. But done it must be first; and the sooner the better ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde

... as now, stood in the center of the city. It was necessary to have it in a conspicuous place so that all might see the result of wrongdoing and be good. Along the front of the prison were strong iron gratings, where the prisoners crowded up to talk with their friends. Through these gratings the unhappy wretches called to strangers for alms, and thrust out long wooden spoons for contributions, that would enable them ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard

... by an effort, he repeated the too familiar name, and baptized the child, bending his head over it afterwards in deep compassion and mental entreaty both for its welfare, and his own guidance in the tissue of wrongdoing thus disclosed. A hasty, stealthy glance at the hands covering the mother's face, showed him the ring on her fourth finger, and as they rose from their knees, he said, 'I am to register this ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... restored in her eyes and justified so fully the man whom she had always trusted, her own shame and wrongdoing, and the perils which surrounded her, were ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... Christianity, but the politeness of the world. He enforced his points with many apt illustrations, and he treated the whole subject with so much fulness and fervour, that he fell into the error of the literary temperament, and almost felt that he had atoned for his wrongdoing by the force with which he had ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells

... aimed at the commission of some definite crime; they were rather described to be the conspiracies of great lords for the general "oppression" of a weaker neighbor, for which he sought refuge or protection in the court of chancery. Now, general oppression or wrongdoing, the exclusion from land or labor or property or trade, by a powerful combination, is precisely the moral injury suffered in modern boycotts when there is no actual crime committed. Indeed, one of the earliest kinds of conspiracy expressly mentioned and described in the English statutes ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... him this, Nasmyth sat thoughtfully silent a minute or two. Her courage and hatred of injustice had stirred him deeply, for he knew what it must have cost her to discuss the subject of her father's wrongdoing with him. He was also once more overwhelmingly sorry for her. There was nobody she could turn to for support or sympathy, and it was evident that if he succeeded in foiling Hames, it would alienate her from her father. ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss

... unconsciously she has turned to Dr. Maudsley for sympathy. Dr. Maudsley, as I said, is not only bearded, but somewhat of a social lion. He had called on her the day before. Of such stuff are all dream lions when there is no fear. But she shows that she has been guilty of no wrongdoing—she escaped, and ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... been very close to each other. Luck had been in the habit of saying smilingly that she was his majordomo, his right bower. Some share of his lawless temperament she inherited, enough to feel sure that this particular kind of wrongdoing was impossible for him. He was reckless, sometimes passionate, but she did not need to reassure herself ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine

... during long years until his term was over and he returned a broken and outcast man to what was once a home. Could not this lamentable issue at least be forestalled? But then there came a new light into our discussion. One of the students suggested that he must face the consequences of his wrongdoing, and that one of the consequences is the very suffering which he inflicts upon the innocent. He must see that day by day. That would be a part of his expiation, the purifying fire that may consume the dross of his nature. And, on the other hand, it would be right for the innocent to bear, ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler

... no means be brought to renounce her husband, she was sent to her father, and this in so pitiful a plight that all who beheld her pass wept to see her. And although she had done wrong, her punishment was so grievous and her constancy so great, that her wrongdoing was made to appear ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... graves). Heaven is weeping blood over your sins and your idolatry. Punishment shall be meted out, for those in authority have fallen into wrongdoing. Can't you see that the very graves ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg

... master, and by showing my private work. I then wrote a reply to my master, clearly refuting all his accusations, and exhibiting on the other hand his behaviour towards me; and with this I satisfied my father and my brother. But the latter reproached me for having suffered wrongdoing so long without complaint. To that I gave the simple answer, that my father, at the beginning of my apprenticeship, had told me not to come to him with any complaint, as I should never be listened to, but should be considered as wrong beforehand. My brother, ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel

... moment, Brian hesitated, but the good that was in him, or the evil—a consciousness of wrongdoing, or of retribution pending—respect for the law, or fear of its ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer

... the room. Even amongst such seemingly estimable and honest people as these could there be women of irregular conduct? With her provincial austerity she was astounded at the manner in which wrongdoing was winked at in Paris. She railed at herself for her own painful repugnance when Juliette had shaken hands with her. Madame Deberle had now seemingly become reconciled with Malignon; she had curled up her little plump figure in an easy-chair, where she sat listening gleefully to his jests. ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... father said it when Amos Hurd was redeemed. I never knew father to say it so impressively before, because Amos had been so bad, people really were afraid of him, and father said if once he got started right, he would go at it just as hard as he had gone at wrongdoing. I suppose I shouldn't have said it about a fox, when there were the Dorkings, and ham, and white wool dresses, and all that, but honestly, I couldn't remember that I cared particularly whether Amos Hurd was redeemed or not; he was always lovely to children; while I never ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter

... callous behavior it was sheer wrongdoing to spare the man. "I do not allude to the forgery, though that is bad enough," said Cuthbert, glancing round to see that the door was closed, "but to the murder of ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume

... together into one knot, as it were, so that it is one thing. In one aspect it is 'my transgressions'—'that thing that I did about Uriah, that thing that I did about Bathsheba, those other things that these dragged after them.' One by one the acts of wrongdoing pass before him. But he does not stop there. They are not merely a number of deeds, but they have, deep down below, a common root from which they all came—a centre in which they all inhere. And so he says, not only 'Blot out my transgressions,' but 'Wash ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... Devil acts in all cases only by God's permission, the latter is responsible for all the former's wrongdoing. The principal, and not the agent, must bear the guilt. And this suggests a curious problem. Readers of "Robinson Crusoe" will remember that when Man Friday was undergoing a course of theological instruction, he puzzled his master by asking why God did not ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote

... allows perfect use of every muscle, more especially of the breathing muscles. I am sure you would rather pay out your money for that which shall add to your health and real happiness than to pay physicians to help you from suffering the just penalty of your own wrongdoing, and that is why I am anxious to give you this needed instruction. I do not care to have you study much about diseases, but I want you to understand very fully how, through care ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen

... here, that I should like you to know this. It might explain, I have thought, something that used to help to harden me. I had heard so much, in my wrongdoing, of my neglected duty, that I took up with the belief that duty had not been done to me, and that as the seed was sown, the harvest grew. I somehow made it out that when ladies had bad homes and mothers, they went wrong in their way, too; but that their way was not so foul a one as mine, and they ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... doctor, as he pushed the package toward the young man, "there is only one right way, and that is to become truly sorry for wrongdoing, and cheerfully and bravely make retribution to all parties you have injured. Anything short of this is not fair, and will do you no good. If I take any hand in this matter, it must be to right the whole. But, Carl, don't you see, you make no sacrifice in sending back the money—money ...
— The Mystery of Monastery Farm • H. R. Naylor

... already entertained any definite conception of a tutelary relationship towards the peoples of India, or were animated by purely philanthropic solicitude for the moral welfare of India. But the passionate oratory of Fox and Burke and their fervid denunciation of oppression and wrongdoing in India awoke responsive echoes far beyond the walls of Westminster. In 1762, when France had claimed, in the course of the peace negotiations which led to the Treaty of Paris, the restitution of the possessions she had lost to the East ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... sour on them. He cut their allowance, he restrained them in various ways, some wise, some less so, he changed his will in their disfavor, he showed marked preference to other children of his. And one fine day, partly because he was annoyed at the discovery of some wrongdoing in which, despite his repeated warnings, a few of the railroads had indulged (though the overwhelming majority were blameless) and partly at the prompting of plausible self-seekers or well-meaning specialists ...
— Government Ownership of Railroads, and War Taxation • Otto H. Kahn

... at it," said Louise reflectively, "you are just two years old, Thursday, and innocent of any wrongdoing before that day ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne

... made by the Imperial German Chancellor it may be seen that the German Government is conscious of its wrongdoing. As one of the guarantors of Belgium's neutrality, it wanted to force Belgium to relinquish its neutrality for Germany's benefit. Because Belgium would not consent to this injustice and because Germany could not reproach her with ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various

... Kentucky, became Secretary of the Treasury, a man of superior ability, aggressive honesty, and moral firmness. He quickly uncovered a mass of various wrongdoing,—the safe-burglary frauds of the corrupt ring governing Washington, the seal-lock frauds, the subsidy frauds, and, most formidable of all, the frauds of the powerful whiskey ring having headquarters in St. Louis. The administration ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen

... their behavior as merely legal. When, on the other hand, an official inclined to extravagance faithfully manages the funds intrusted to him, or one who is oppressed by hopeless misery preserves his life, although he does not love it, then I may ascribe the abstinence from wrongdoing to moral principles. This, too, may be admitted. We are certain of the morality of a resolution only when it can be shown that no inclination was involved along with the maxim. The cases where the right action is performed in opposition ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... way, though, of blotting out in a moment our wrongdoing, our foolishness, our mistakes. They cannot be wiped off, as a sum off a slate, nor the results, nor the memory of them. There is nothing to be done but to face the consequences bravely, to live them down hour by hour; so, profiting ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... Happiness. When the individual can stay alone with his conscience and get its approval, without using force or specious logic, then he begins to know what real Happiness is. But the individual must be careful that he is not appealing to a conscience perverted or deadened by the wrongdoing and subsequent deafness of its owner. The man who is honestly seeking to live his life in Consecration, Concentration and Conquest, living from day to day as best he can, by the light he has, may rely explicitly on his Conscience. He can shut his ears to "what the world says" and find ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan

... desirous of securing their good will by acting toward them in a spirit of just and generous recognition of all their rights. But justice and generosity in a nation, as in an individual, count most when shown not by the weak but by the strong. While ever careful to refrain from wrongdoing others, we must be no less insistent that we are not wronged ourselves. We wish peace, but we wish the peace of justice, the peace of righteousness. We wish it because we think it is right and not because we are afraid. No weak nation that acts manfully and justly should ever have cause ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... had been perfectly frank with her, and she knew that as soon as he had saved up thirty-seven dollars he meant to carry it to the bishop for Mrs. Russell, and tell him the whole story. First, to stop all his wrongdoing and then as far as possible, to make up to those he had wronged—these were Theodore's firm purposes now, but he felt that he could never bear to face the bishop again until he could take with him the proof of his ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston

... Captain Corwin would bring him back and that it would take a long, long while. So she tried to be content and if not teasing or fretting was one of the ways of being good, she tried her utmost to keep to that. She was too brave to tell falsehoods to shield herself from any inadvertent wrongdoing, even if ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... more thoroughly. He wanted me to apologize to Sharp, and I said flatly that I wouldn't do it, because I hadn't anything to apologize for. He got mad at first, and threatened me with instant dismissal. Then I warmed up, and said I was innocent of all wrongdoing, and perhaps I'd be able to prove it some day, and if so, and I was dismissed, I'd sue the college for loss of reputation. That brought matters to a head, and I guess the doctor saw I was in deadly earnest. ...
— The Rover Boys at College • Edward Stratemeyer

... that characterized Popinot was necessarily bifrons; he could guess the virtues of a pauper—good feelings nipped, fine actions in embryo, unrecognized self-sacrifice, just as he could read at the bottom of a man's conscience the faintest outlines of a crime, the slenderest threads of wrongdoing, ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac

... vividly brought back to him the images of the past; he described his life, solitary, childless, joyless; he implored her to understand the grounds that had induced him to address her, not to let him carry to the grave the bitter sense of his own wrongdoing, expiated long since by suffering, but never forgiven, and to make him happy with even the briefest news of her life in the new world to which she had gone away. 'In writing one word to me,' so Sanin ended his letter, 'you will be doing ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev

... chapters—"Astraea Redux," "Windbags," "Broglie the War God"—do violence to our conception of history, and are more suggestive of Carlyle's individualism than of French history. He is here the preacher rather than the historian; his text is the eternal justice; and his message is that all wrongdoing is inevitably followed by vengeance. His method is intensely dramatic. From a mass of historical details he selects a few picturesque incidents and striking figures, and his vivid pictures of the storming of the Bastille, the rush of the mob to Versailles, the death of Louis XVI, and ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... forth sin.'[6] The essence of sin is selfishness. It is the deliberate choice of self in preference to God—personal and wilful rebellion against the known law of righteousness and truth. There are, of course, degrees of wrongdoing and undoubtedly extenuating circumstances which must be taken into account in estimating the significance and enormity of guilt, but in the last resort Christian Ethics is compelled to postulate the fact of sin, and to regard it as a personal rebellion against the holy will of God, the deliberate ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... in answer to my expostulation with him about taking too much wine, and said, 'Mother, you know I learned to drink at home.'" So many have said, "If I had only known then what I know now, how different my home would have been, I would not now have to reproach myself for the wrongdoing of husband or of sons." Recently a member of one of our Christian churches, a lady of wealth and refinement, whose home was a home of luxury, and on whose hospitable board the wine-glass was placed as a matter of custom, during the long years of married life, was called to pass through ...
— Why and how: a hand-book for the use of the W.C.T. unions in Canada • Addie Chisholm

... taint of the body in which it is imprisoned, and by which it is dragged down from its pristine nobility and purity. Saadia's opposition to the belief in the pre-existence of the soul at once does away with the Neo-Platonic view that the soul was placed in the body as a punishment for wrongdoing. The soul was created at the same time with the body, and the two form a natural unit. Hence complete life involves ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik

... against that which Walter Pater calls "the inexplicable shortcoming or misadventure on the part of life itself"; we were overwhelmingly oppressed by that grief of things as they are, so much more mysterious and intolerable than those griefs which we think dimly to trace to man's own wrongdoing. ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... that the Apostle "was grieved" to hear this possessed woman speaking favourably of him and his companion. He could not bear for it to be even suspected that his mission was tolerated by the devil. Her masters made money by her wrongdoing, and he would not have their patronage. He and Silas were happier in the cell, sore and hungry as they were, than in listening to the praise given by ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness

... for your wrongdoing. I want to protect my friends. If they are a lot of sheep as you say, that is precisely why I should warn them. They have implicit confidence in me. You have borrowed their money, cheated them at cards, stolen from them. Your acquaintance with me has given them the opportunity. But now I've found ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow

... our children—or of our neighbors' children—to a focus and throw them in high relief on the screen. Progress comes not alone in perpetual placidity. When temper slips from control, when angry passions rule, when the spirit under discipline rebels, when a course of petty wrongdoing comes to a head, when secret sins are discovered, and when we suddenly find ourselves confronted with a tragic problem in the higher life, it is still important to remember that the crisis is just as truly a part of the educational ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope

... there is comparatively little opportunity or inclination for wrongdoing. Whatever anybody does is noticed at once and everything that happens is immediately found out. The favorite haunt of vice and crime is not in a sparsely settled community, public opinion to the contrary notwithstanding, but in the centers of population, in, our large cities where ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk

... launched forth in speeches of singular terseness, eloquence, and vigour; but all this is specious and mischievous perversion of the truth—however admirably in character from Stephanie's lips. Every observer who has looked carefully upon the world is aware that the consequences of wrongdoing by a woman are vastly more pernicious than those of wrongdoing by a man; that society could not exist in decency, if to its already inconvenient coterie of reformed rakes it were to add a legion of reformed ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter

... sons' faults while they themselves commit the same, are really their own accusers, if they know it not, under their sons' name; and those who live a depraved life have no right to censure their slaves, far less their sons. And besides this they will become counsellors and teachers of their sons in wrongdoing; for where old men are shameless youths will of a certainty have no modesty. We must therefore take all pains to teach our sons self-control, emulating the conduct of Eurydice, who, though an Illyrian and more than a barbarian, to teach her sons educated ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... to make the guilty person return the new boat in time for the boat race. And to do this she tried a scheme that might have been fruitless had the culprit not been an amateur in deceit and wrongdoing. No real thief would have ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison

... courage, as he fell in behind the two men, and marched out of the shanty prison. Larry trotted along in the rear; for Phil purposely refrained from slipping his arm in that of his chum; wishing to make it appear that Larry at least was innocent of wrongdoing, and should not be ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne

... day, the handsome young Paris finally persuaded Helen to leave her husband and home. She got on board of his vessel, and went with him to Troy as his wife. Of course, this wrongdoing could not bring happiness; and not only were they duly punished, but, as you will soon see, the crime of Paris brought suffering and death ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber

... On the one hand, it creates a record of wrongdoing which has to be faced; on the other, it creates a disease in the moral system and spiritual make-up of a man. This disease creates desires for the evil thing, and so warps and weakens a man's force of resistance that when the temptation is presented, the inward craving asserts itself, and ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard

... transcendental philosophy required him to believe that human nature is saturated with divinity. He therefore felt that a misbehaving child in school would be most powerfully affected by seeing the suffering which his wrongdoing brought to others. He accordingly used to shake a good child for the bad deeds of others. Sometimes when the class had offended, he would inflict corporal punishment on himself. His extreme applications of the new principle ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck

... circumstances. He did not give their name nor place of residence, for it was unnecessary, but he admitted he had been wayward from early boyhood. He longed for wild adventure, and caused his family grief and anguish by his persistent wrongdoing. Finally, when he had matriculated at Yale, he ran away from home, taking what funds he could steal and fully resolved upon a life ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis

... understand, Thorwald," I asked, "that you believe all this rest from trouble and wrongdoing is coming to the ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan

... transgression which he had done against the fair lady the daughter of his lord, and against her husband also, whereby they were undone, both of them by occasion of his malice. Exceeding ill at ease was he of his wrongdoing, which was so great that ...
— Old French Romances • William Morris

... penning his grievances. Indeed, there are evidences gleaming through his memorandum that his reflections were harassed by the remembrance of his own conduct, which had plunged to epic depths of wrongdoing in other days. These and other considerations would doubtless have a restraining effect on the action that might have been taken under different circumstances. Sir William Hamilton must have pondered over the parentage of Horatia, who was born on the ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... to have to beg like this!) "do to save—do to ensure—whether you would have the kindness" It seemed out of all human power to gulp it down. The draught grew more and more abhorrent. To proclaim one's iniquity, to apologize for one's wrongdoing; thus much could be done; but to beg a favour of the offended party—that was beyond the self-abasement any Feverel could consent to. Pride, however, whose inevitable battle is against itself, drew aside the curtains of poor Tom's prison, crying a second time, "Behold your ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... she got her piano. How vain she was and self-willed; without any fine moral feeling or proper principle! He would be worse than a fool to give his life to such a woman. If she could drive her father—and such a father—to theft, in what wrongdoing might she not involve her husband? He was warned in time; he would not be guilty of such irreparable folly. He would match her selfishness with prudence. Who could blame him? That was what the hard glitter in her eyes betokened—cold selfishness; and he had thought ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris

... back a moan. Truly, he understood the art of dissimulation. If she had not known of his duplicity, of his guilt, his expression as he addressed her that morning would have proclaimed him innocent of all wrongdoing. His expression, ah, it had been that which had sowed a little seed of hope in her heart. Perhaps she could sketch his face as he appeared that morning, again catch the expression that inspired confidence in ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... to stupefy Mr. Langmore and then rob him. But the drug, being too powerful, or used too long, might have done its deadly work. Then the crime may have been discovered by Mrs. Langmore and the murderer might have turned on her to conceal his first wrongdoing." ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele

... violence and the eating of that which belongs to others seems at other times a wicked thing only on this account, that injustice is in the deed itself, as the saying is; but in the present instance so great an element of detriment is added to the wrongdoing that—if it is not too harsh to say so—we must consider the question of justice of less account and calculate the magnitude of the danger that may arise from your act. For I have disembarked you upon this land basing my ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius

... Absolution freed the sinner from the deadly guilt which would otherwise have dragged him down to hell, but it did not free him from the penalties which God, or his representative, the priest, might choose to impose upon him. Serious penances had earlier been imposed by the Church for wrongdoing, but in Luther's time the sinner who had been absolved was chiefly afraid of the sufferings reserved for him in purgatory. It was there that his soul would be purified by suffering and prepared for heaven. The ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... ordains by edicts, is clearly a statute: and these are what are called constitutions. Some of these of course are personal, and not to be followed as precedents, since this is not the Emperor's will; for a favour bestowed on individual merit, or a penalty inflicted for individual wrongdoing, or relief given without a precedent, do not go beyond the particular person: though others are general, and bind all ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian

... rested between her two companions. She knew Aunt Janet through and through, the stern loyalty, the unbending precision of a nature slow to anger, full of love, but more inclined to justice than mercy where wrongdoing was concerned. And Joan—well, she had only known Joan half an hour, but Aunt Janet had been talking of nothing else for ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson

... no intention of prosecuting him. If he is ever able I shall be glad to have him return the money he took from me. As to punishment, I am sure he has been punished enough by his enforced flight and sense of wrongdoing." ...
— Chester Rand - or The New Path to Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr

... know Miss Ballister fairly well, and I have met Madame Ybanca twice—once here in New York, once at Washington. And let me say now, that at first blush I do not find it in my heart to suspect either of them of deliberate wrongdoing. I don't think they are ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... Delafield needs are those which can provide for their operation without forcing workers to be idle so much of the time as to reduce apparent income, and so to cause poverty, sickness, and temptation to wrongdoing. The standard of income ought to be for the year, and not by the day; in the interest of homes rather than in the interest of ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt

... him as if he was in duty bound to remain at the farm during the remainder of that day at least; but there was in his mind the fact that he must continue his aimless journey that very night, or be willing to give a detailed account of his wrongdoing. ...
— Aunt Hannah and Seth • James Otis

... Nehemiah sinned not in being so, for it was anger at sin, anger at the wrongdoing which was bringing disgrace on his nation, anger at the conduct which was offending God and doing harm to God's cause. It was righteous anger against the cruelty and selfishness of those who, in those hard times, ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton

... heart that her Joe had proved unfaithful. He had stolen the piece of paper with the precious address, he had given over the purse of gold into the hands of the enemy. Not lightly had he done this thing, not lightly had he told her of his wrongdoing. Could she ever forget the agony in his eyes or the horror in his poor voice as he told her of the life from which he had thus freed himself. No, all through her illness she had seen that troubled face ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade

... things there, Rosamund," he told her quietly. "I learnt a little of the difference between right doing and wrongdoing. I learnt, too, that all the passions of life burn themselves out, save ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... the trail of the soldiers without casting a single glance behind her. Even Hist was passed unnoticed, that modest young creature shrinking from the averted face of Judith, as if guilty herself of some wrongdoing. ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... letter he tells them how he has made up his mind to amend his life in every way, and to atone for all the wrongs committed in the violence of youth. He forbids any person to use violence or to make the royal needs an excuse for wrongdoing, saying, "I have no need of money gathered by unrighteousness." He concludes by saying that he is sure they will all be glad to hear how he has fared, and that they know he has not spared himself any trouble, and never ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... it may be to the designs of the Spartans, that we should make the Arcadians our allies, they are surely bound to feel a gratitude towards us for saving them when they were in the utmost extremity, which will outweigh their vexation at our preventing their present wrongdoing. Must they not then either assist us to recover Oropus, or else be regarded as the basest of mankind? For, by Heaven, I can see no ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes

... mysterious, indeed, and some people thought so suspicious, that the town authorities took it up. The selectmen came to the Edwards farm and made careful inquiries into all the circumstances in order to make sure there had been nothing like wrongdoing. There was not, however, the least circumstance to indicate anything of that kind. Grandfather Jonathan had walked away no one knew where; Jotham and his wife knew no more than their neighbors. They did not know what to think. Perhaps they feared they had not treated their father well. ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens

... But this I tell you, that if they had not had a deep and sound belief that they were in the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven; and that they and all men must obey the laws of the kingdom of heaven; and that the first law of it was, that wrongdoing would be punished, and rightdoing rewarded, in this life, every day, and all day long, as sure as Christ the living Lord reigned in righteousness over all the earth; if they had not believed that, I say, and acted on it, we should probably have been heathen at ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... up in Katherine's throat, and her heart fluttered wildly, for she was thinking of that dark secret from the past which her father had told her about, and she was wondering if the work of to-day would in any sense help to wipe off that old score of wrongdoing which stood to ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant

... part, which had no bearing on anything or anybody beyond themselves. But when pointed out to them they readily admit that tobacco cultivation lessens the production of grain, and as readily admit that the wrongdoing in this misuse of land is likely to further harm the harvest by offending heaven into being unwilling to send rain. I myself never used to look on smoking as any great evil, till led into this district, and thus forced to study the subject. In England I had never seen tobacco ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour

... the only ones. Human pity awoke from its lethargy. The penalties for wrongdoing became less brutal, the prisons less terrible. No longer did gaping crowds watch shivering wretches brought out of the jails every Monday morning, in batches of twenty and thirty, to be hung for pilfering ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele



Words linked to "Wrongdoing" :   malfeasance, malpractice, maintenance, misfeasance, civil wrong, tort, misconduct, knavery, trespass, misbehavior, iniquity, encroachment, falsification, shabbiness, unfairness, dereliction, malversation, infliction, evilness, injury, evildoing, misrepresentation, misbehaviour, perversion, intrusion, dishonesty, usurpation, evil, transgression, injustice, activity, brutalization, misdeed, error, brutalisation, criminal maintenance, champerty, actus reus, wrongful conduct, infringement, violation



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