"Guilty conscience" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Marie's true and dreadful plan—to give her life for mine! She was sure that once he had slain his victim, Hernan Pereira would not stop to make examination of the corpse. He would ride away, hounded by his guilty conscience, and meanwhile ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... saw in him, not darkly or dimly, the sword which was being drawn by avenging Heaven to cut off his family root and branch, perhaps his own head, and break up for ever his blood-cemented kingdom. These suspicions of a guilty conscience came at length to such a pitch, that the day arrived when the innocent youth was to be strangled, so snatching violently away the instrument of vengeance from the hands of inexorable justice! But, on that very day, the Bashaw received intelligence of a threatened ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... feeling due to a guilty conscience, she asked herself, or was an implacable hatred that was biding its time, ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... Zeus. Ask your own guilty conscience, what harm. The pranks you have played me! Satyr, bull, swan, eagle, shower of gold,—I have been everything in my time; and I have you to thank for it. You never by any chance make the women in love with me; no one ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... sure hit the mark, whether yuh meant to or not," Pink asserted. "He was the jasper, all right. Look how he was glaring at yuh while you were telling about it. He knew he was the party, and having a guilty conscience, he naturally supposed yuh recognized him from ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... But Sylvia made no sign. She never afterwards made any sign. She never intimated to Henry in any fashion that she knew of his return to the shop. She was, if anything, kinder and gentler with him than she had been before, but whenever he attempted, being led thereto by a guilty conscience, to undeceive her, Sylvia lightly but decidedly waved the revelation aside. ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... as if in glee: and he even heard him chuckle. Perhaps Percy may have caught the same sound, for he turned his head after dropping down into his seat, and scowled darkly at Andy. There is nothing like a guilty conscience to bring about a self-betrayal; and somehow Percy seemed to know what the Bird boy was thinking about ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... who once called so enthusiastically for deeds?" exclaimed Gentz, indignantly. "Listen to me, Johannes von Mueller! I tell you once more, it is for your sake that I have come. I wanted to appear before you either as your guilty conscience or as your friend, as your judge or as your ally. I refused to believe in all that was told me about you. I would trust only my own ears, my own eyes. Johannes von Mueller, I have come to ask you: Do you still remember the oath we took in so solemn ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... you blow up a happy home, by encouraging him to come without her? I bet anything she is feeling jealous and ill-used. You ought—I am sure you ought—to have a guilty conscience; but you look ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... in largely on my nerve. When the Prof. looked over my papers I thought I heard him mutter to himself something that sounded like: 'All Gaul is divided into three parts and you've got two of them.' But that may simply have been my guilty conscience. At any rate I got away with it, and the old sport gave me ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... are—whether to mark our own dignity, or to avoid further scrutiny on the part of our fellow-worshipers—almost the last to issue from the church. At the porch we find Mr. Musgrave waiting. A sort of mauvaise honte and a guilty conscience combine to disable me from promptly introducing him to my people, and before I recover my presence of mind, Algy has walked on with Barbara, and I am ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... Ere my consent was given! Avoided then the gates of hell And urged my way to heaven! Lord, give me strength now to resume My former confidence; Remove my terrors, bid me come With hopeful penitence. In mercy hear my humble cry, Redeem my soul from sin, My guilty conscience pacify And ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... just providence that killed him. But, mind you this, that if I had knocked his brains out, as it was in my heart to do, he would have had no more than his due from my hands. If his own guilty conscience had not struck him down it is likely enough that I might have had his blood upon my soul. You want me to tell the story. Well, I don't know why I shouldn't, for there's no cause for me to be ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... at last, "there may be nothing in it. It may be only his guilty conscience. Knowing himself to be a traitor, he may have read the accusation in ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... not be very easy for me to give you any idea of the pleasure I found in your present. People who write for the magazines (probably from a guilty conscience) are apt to suppose their works practically unpublished. It seems unlikely that any one would take the trouble to read a little paper buried among so many others; and reading it, read it with any ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for the guilty—is sleep! Many seem to think of the body only as a clog, impeding mental action—as a weight, chaining the spirit down. Were the mind, in its activity, independent of the body—were the wounded spirit unable to forget its pain—could the guilty conscience sting incessantly—then the chief human industry would come to be the erection of asylums for the insane. But by an unfathomable mystery the tireless regal spirit has been blended with the flesh and blood ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... home at the Honorable Freddie's guilty conscience. Had they, too, tracked him down? And was he now to be accused of having stolen that infernal scarab? A wave of relief swept over him as he realized that he had got rid of the thing. A decent chappie like that detective would not give him away. All ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... interview between Luis Enius and the Skeleton, says a recent writer, "is a scene truly Calderonic — the hour, the place, the intended assassin, and the sudden reflection of himself, with his guilty conscience impersonate before him; it reminds us of that wild fable of Jeremy Taylor or Fuller, about the bird with a human face, that feeds on human flesh until it chances to see its reflection in a stream, and then it pines away for grief that it has killed ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... Beggar Girl The Good Son The Sick Mother Cornelia's Prayer Forgiveness The Guilty Conscience Acorn Hollow Industry ...
— No and Other Stories Compiled by Uncle Humphrey • Various
... the pangs of a guilty conscience will not suffer him to sleep; and death only will end his ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... Maggot had a guilty conscience might have been inferred from her future proceedings, which, to one unacquainted with the habits of her husband, would have appeared strange, if not quite unaccountable. When baby was borne off, as related, she seized a small keg, which stood in a corner near the door and smelt ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... swimming teacher, his guilty conscience pricking him, and the knowledge of having been false to his superior strong within him, came sneaking into the kitchen, he was startled and horrified to find the lightkeeper awake and dressed. Mentally he braced himself for the battery of embarrassing questions which, he felt sure, he should have ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... devotion, but it cannot buy one genuine heart-throb, one thrill of true feeling. All the wealth of this world cannot buy peace for Henry Dunbar, or forgetfulness. So long as I live he shall be made to remember. If his own guilty conscience can suffer him to forget, it shall be my task to recall the past. I promised my dead father that I would remember the name of Henry Dunbar; I have had good ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... went not unpunished. Neither business, nor pleasure, nor flattery, could defend Caracalla from the stings of a guilty conscience; and he confessed, in the anguish of a tortured mind, that his disordered fancy often beheld the angry forms of his father and his brother rising into life, to threaten and upbraid him. [25] The consciousness of his crime should ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... "Guilty conscience is making sinners of us all, or something like that. They expect us to give in before the carnage gets out of hand." He considered for a moment. "It's not so crazy, actually. On Earth, armies don't usually fight until every last man is slaughtered on one side. Someone surrenders ...
— Warrior Race • Robert Sheckley
... his body increased, the horrors of his guilty conscience tortured his soul. The remembrance of the many crimes he had committed arose before him; the spirit of his murdered wife hovered over him, ghastly, pale and bloody. Then he recollected that an innocent ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... to be confessed, then, of my guilty conscience, before retiring? It boded well for ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... "A guilty conscience, monsieur. Your affair is a bad one, and when the public shall learn all about it, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... third day, and found his wife and daughter gone. His guilty conscience told him in the first instant why. For he went into the chamber, and there, upon the floor, lay the letter which he had looked for ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... was a tone that cowed the chairman, struggling with his guilty conscience. "I have warned you that I'm not here to argue this matter with you. I'll not be drawn into any discussion. What I have, I have!" He waved his papers above his head. "What I can do that I'll do! I would remind you, gentlemen, ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... more of a culprit than you imagine, and I suppose it is the tortures of a guilty conscience that caused me to make this explanation. I shall now confess without reserve. As you sat there with your head in your hand looking at the falls, I deliberately and with malice aforethought took a timed picture, which, if developed, will reveal ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... at length hit upon the idea of working upon the superstitious terrors and guilty conscience of the mate. It will be remembered that one of the crew, Hartman Rogers, had died during the morning, having been attacked two days before with spasms after drinking some spirits and water. Peters had expressed to us his opinion that this man had been poisoned by the mate, and for this belief ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... guilty conscience! When I look into the fish-ponds in my garden, Methinks I see a thing armed with a rake That seems to strike ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... knew little and cared less about the different corps of the army, or about the value of class standing. I became quite indignant when a distinguished friend rather reproved me for not trying to graduate higher—perhaps in part from a guilty conscience, for it occurred just after we had graduated. I devoted only a fraction of the study hours to the academic course—generally an hour, or one and a half, to each lesson. But I never intentionally neglected any of ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... me?—what good am I for life? Then why live? A guilty conscience only means a living death. You have been very good to me—both you and your wife. But I am going to end it all. Let me confess. It will bring me some small comfort even now in the dying hour I have given to myself. You remember ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Peace, with guilty conscience, "I scratched the corn out of the holes so's I could watch the gophers die. And I let the hens out, too, 'cause they looked so hot shut up in that mite of a yard after they have been running loose for ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... Arthur Morton, her brother, was talking of horse-whipping him. In what particular respect the doctor had behaved badly was unknown—some surmised one thing and some another; but it was observed, and taken as the obvious sign of a guilty conscience, that he would go for miles round rather than pass the windows of Leigh Hall, and that he gave up attending morning service upon Sundays where he might have met the young lady. There was an advertisement also in the Lancet as to the sale of a practice which ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... fury, his manner one of reckless savage abandon. There was but little delay. The rumors of vengeance stored up for the raiders, the paralyzing effect of the failure of the raid, the condemnation of a guilty conscience, but above all else the overmastering rage of Cameron, made anything like resistance simply impossible. In a very few minutes Cameron had his prisoners in line and was riding to the Fort, where he handed them over to the Superintendent ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... crier straightway ordered me to begin my defense, if I had any to make. At first I could not sufficiently control my voice to speak, although less overcome, alas, by the harshness of the accusation than by my own guilty conscience. But at last, miraculously inspired with courage, I made ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... my soul with conscious guilt, and place me in that deplorable situation which is so beautifully expressed by a sublime author: "of all mortals, those are the most exquisitely miserable, who groan beneath the pressure of a melancholy mind, or labour under the stings of a guilty conscience; a slave confined to the gallies, or an exile to punish—living and labouring for the mutual benefit ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... had been so blind for so long; and was now in this tumult of change. One moment, and she was still the Nelly of yesterday, cheerful, patient, comforted by the love of her friends; and the next, she had become this poor, helpless thing, struggling with her conscience, her guilty conscience, and her sorrow. How had it happened? There was something uncanny, miraculous in it. But anyway, there, in a flash it stood revealed—her treason to George—her unkindness ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... she was out of sight. Then he made his way happily to the house to receive, with a guilty conscience but with a light heart, congratulations and compliments upon ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... the little dumb-waiter spread for his supper and passed his hand over his face. 'Charley,' he says, 'I must have a shave first. The pangs of a guilty conscience,' he says, 'are piffle compared with the miseries of a beard. ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... looked over the rock to see if the fish was clear of the water, to come behind him and throw him off into the sea. He could not swim, I knew, and after waiting a minute or two, I looked over and saw his body, just as it sank, after his last struggles. I then hastened away, and my guilty conscience induced me to ascend the ravine, and collect a faggot of firewood to bring home, that no suspicions might be entertained; but my so doing was the very cause of suspicion, as you will afterwards perceive. I returned with the wood, and the captain observed, when ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... said nothing. When he spoke it was evident that the lust for vengeance and a guilty conscience were fighting ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... guilty conscience, and the heart that ticks the time Of the clockworks of my nature, I desire to say that I'm A weak and sinful creature, as regards my daily walk The last five years and better. It ain't worth while ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... was amazed at their actions, and then, as the ridiculousness of the situation presented itself, I smiled. "A guilty conscience needeth no accuser," it is said, and this truth ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer
... "A Guilty conscience needs no accuser," said Archie Maine to himself. "There's a splendid proverb. It can't mean a wigging this time. But if that pompous old pump, that buckled-up basha, lets the Major know that he caught poor old Pegg in my room to-day, I'm sure to get a lecture about making too free with the ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... once, did not have a guilty conscience in connection with a piece of mischief, and he was delighted to have an opportunity to call ...
— Four Little Blossoms and Their Winter Fun • Mabel C. Hawley
... lessened when he arrived, evidently in a strange mood, a quarter of an hour before the appointed time. His eyes travelled over her face with a consuming scrutiny to which she was unaccustomed and for which she found herself unprepared. For a moment she experienced the disadvantages of a guilty conscience, and although she had, so far, merely considered various plans for using his devotion without peril to her own independence, she felt that the moment for deliberation was past, that the duel between them ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... there's a won't there's a way. Nonsense makes the heart grow fonder. A word to the wise is a dangerous thing. A living gale is better than a dead calm. A fool and his money corrupt good manners. A word in the hand is worth two in the ear. A man is known by the love-letters he keeps. A guilty conscience is the mother of invention. Whosoever thy hands find to do, do with thy might. It's a wise child who knows less than his own father. Never put off till to-morrow what you can wear to-night. He who loves and runs away, may live to ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... doth not much care for the company of the physitian or chirurgian; but if he perceive a malady that threatens him with death, he will gladly entertaine him, whom he slighted before: so he that never felt the sicknes of sin, nor the wounds of a guilty conscience, cares not how far he keeps from him that hath skill to cure it; but when he findes his diseases to disrest him, and that he must needs perish if he have no remedy, will unfeignedly bid him welcome that brings a plaister for his sore, or ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... of customary law; so it occurred to our enquirer that the ghost of his dead brother might have afflicted him with the sore on his finger for not marrying his widow. Accordingly he put the question to the image, and in doing so the compunction of a guilty conscience caused him to tremble. This trembling he took for an answer of the image in the affirmative, wherefore he went off and took the widow to wife ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... never leave Hades save to pursue and torture some guilty conscience. They wear black raiment, like the wings of a bat; their hair writhes with serpents fierce as remorse, and in their hands they carry flaming torches that make all shapes look greater and more fearful than they are. No sleep ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... fulfilled. Not long after, as we read in the second lesson, he was killed in battle, and that not bravely and with honour (for if he had been, that would have been but a slight punishment, my friends), but shamefully by a chance shot, after he had disguised himself, in the cowardice of his guilty conscience, and tried to throw all the danger on his ally, good King Jehoshaphat of Judah; 'and they washed his chariot in the pool of Samaria, and the dogs licked up his blood, according to the word of the Lord, which he spake by Elijah ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... wickedness of Nineveh? As he had spoken he had been aware that those sincere, somewhat matter—of-fact and far from unfriendly eyes that were fixed on him had undergone no change whatever. Here was no vile creature who would start up with a guilty conscience to repel the remotest hint of an accusation; and indeed, quite unconsciously to himself, he had been led on to ask for her help. Not that he feared her. Not that he could not have said the harshest things to her which there was any reason for saying. But somehow ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... light streams into his home through panes of beautifully stained glass. Pillows of the softest down are placed beneath his head, beautiful cushions lie at his feet that will never take another step on the errands of sin, but no appliances of wealth can give peace to his guilty conscience. He looks back upon the past and the retrospect is a worse than wasted life; and when the future looms up before him he shrinks back from the contemplation, for the sins of the past throw their shadow over the future. He has houses, money and land, but he is a ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... about two hours, and they hoped he had come to spend the whole day with them." There, the whole truth was out. And how do you suppose that boy felt? He had disobeyed his parents; told a lie to conceal it; had for weeks suffered the pangs of a guilty conscience; and now the whole truth was discovered. He stood before his parents overwhelmed with shame, convicted of ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... awful wound that disfigured me I made light of it. Two days later my enemy appeared on the scene. I heard his voice outside the gate calling to some one, and peering out I saw him sitting on his horse. His guilty conscience made him afraid to dismount, but he was anxious to find out what was going to be done about his treatment of me, also, if he could see me, to discover my state of ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... place, and kept getting more and more excited. Finally, however, he conquered his emotions and came to a standstill. He cast a determined look at the future bride and wanted to move toward her, but glanced about first. Then, as if with a guilty conscience, he stepped over to the child on tip-toe, smiling, and bent down and kissed ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... Met, I can fancy the whole female peerage of Willis's time in a shudder; and the melancholy marchioness, and the abandoned countess, and the heart-stricken baroness trembling as each gets the volume, and asks of her guilty conscience, "Gracious goodness, is the monster ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... It was her guilty conscience, of course, that caused this burst of rage. And yet, just because it was not for the money's sake that she had done that evil act, but because she so hated the woman to whom it should have been given, she tried to convince herself that she had acted rightly, as the instrument of ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... her belief that Marian had written the disquieting letter, Jane was fairly sure that the former's guilty conscience would warn her against making a protest to Mrs. Weatherbee that her cousin had been ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... pricked by a guilty conscience. For to expose Miss Felicia's inadequacies and enlarge on her ineligibility for the position of feminine Chief of the Staff, struck her as unworthy, a meanness to which, under existing circumstances, she could ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... her guilty conscience pricked her. Oh, I am sure of it, Mr. Denzil! My stepmother and the count are ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... would be exchanged of what went on there under the shadow of night. Was it not already beginning to be remarked by his neighbours that you met him wandering about lonely places at unholy hours, and that he shunned you, like one with a guilty conscience? Let him advance in years, his face lose its broad colour, his hair grow scant and grey, his figure, per chance, stoop a little, his eyes acquire the malignity of miserly old age—and there you have the hero of a Dunfield legend. Even thus ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... among them. Their minds will be in a state of perpetual calm, the contentment of a spirit that knows no wants, is disturbed by no regrets. Ambition will never torture them. Ingratitude will never cause them the uneasiness of a moment. The guilty conscience, the hope deferred, the pains of exile, the insolence of office, and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes—these will be entirely unknown to them. If they want "feeding" (by the use of which very word we betray our recognition ...
— Samuel Butler's Canterbury Pieces • Samuel Butler
... welcome it. That is, the sodium ion will want to go toward places where there are extra electrons. In the same way the chlorine ion will go toward places where electrons are wanted as if it could satisfy its guilty conscience by giving up the electron which it stole from the sodium atom, or at least by giving away some other electron, for they ...
— Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son • John Mills
... had but one other occupant, a huge man with heavy shoulders who lowered the paper he had been reading and looked at Jimmy through a pair of clear, gray, appraising eyes that conveyed such a sense of directness as to slightly disconcert one with a guilty conscience. ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... long pause, and Mr. Townsend's pipe emitted short puffs with surprising rapidity. A guilty conscience needs no accuser, and the widow's cheek was dyed with blushes as she thought of ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... impulsively upon the royal platform, leaned against the arm of the throne, and with the charming blush of consciousness turned to him with the quickness of a guilty conscience, eager to hear his praise but fearful lest he secretly condemned her conceit. His eyes were burning with the admiration that knows no defining, and his breath came quick and sharp through parted lips. He involuntarily placed a foot upon ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... A guilty conscience made Lulu very uneasy as she hurried through her preparations for bed, and as she heard her father's step approach the door she ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley
... Etta; I am not going to be hushed up when I choose to speak; and who is to hear us, I should like to know? only it is your guilty conscience that is always starting at shadows. I mean to speak to you pretty plainly, for I am getting sick of the whole business. You are playing fast and loose with me about that money. Are you going to give it ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... referring now to McKay, but Ledantec, misled by a guilty conscience, was thinking of Lord Lydstone, and his ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... arrived, the sole relic of the fight with the Latookas; he had been left for dead, but had recovered, and for days and nights he had wandered about the country, in thirst and hunger, hiding like a wild beast from the sight of human beings, his guilty conscience marking every Latooka as an enemy. As a proof of the superiority of the natives to the Khartoumers, he had at length been met by some Latookas, and not only was well treated and fed by their women, but they had guided him ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... not go to the so-called best parents: he took his material wherever he could find it. From the street, the hovels, the orphan and foundling asylums, the reformatories, from all those gray and hideous places where a benevolent society hides its victims in order to pacify its guilty conscience. He gathered all the dirty, filthy, shivering little waifs his place would hold, and brought them to Cempuis. There, surrounded by nature's own glory, free and unrestrained, well fed, clean kept, deeply loved and understood, the little human plants ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... that load, with 95,000l., knowing the heavy oppression they were sinking under, and leave all the rest untouched? You will judge of what is concealed from us by what we have discovered through various means that have occurred, in consequence both of the guilty conscience of the person who confesses the fact with respect to these provinces, and of the vigor, perseverance and sagacity of those who have forced from him that discovery. It is not, therefore, for me to say that the 100,000l. and 95,000l. only were taken. Where ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... ill humor condemns a doctrine merely because the man whom he considers his enemy vindicates it; and though he should afterwards be clearly convinced, yet he believes it to be beneath his dignity to make a recantation, and thus throughout all his days he is tormented with a guilty conscience. In the days of the Reformation public debates were highly conducive to manifest the errors of the papists. When Luther confronted his opponents in the presence of multitudes, it was that many souls got convinced ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... solemnly address himself to the condemned woman, quoting 1 Tim. v. 20: "Them that sin, rebuke before all, that others also may fear." The woman was greatly moved, for no doubt the sharp words of the preacher did prick her guilty conscience, and the terrors of hell did take hold of her, so that she was carried out, looking scarcely alive. They took her, when the lecture was over, to the Court, where the Governor did pronounce sentence of death upon her. But uncle tells me there be many who are ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... be appointed to investigate the charges preferred against the Camden and Amboy Transportation Company. The resolution was adopted, but it was virtually left to the accused to select the members of the commission. That the directors had a guilty conscience appeared from the fact that the last annual report of the company, which had just been printed, was withdrawn and destroyed. To silence their unknown accuser, they threatened him with criminal prosecution. He now gave his name. It was Henry ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... the country. Ah! unhappy shilling that I was! Of what use were my silver, my stamp, and my real value here, where all these qualities were worthless. In the eyes of the world, a man is valued just according to the opinion formed of him. It must be a shocking thing to have a guilty conscience, and to be sneaking about on account of wicked deeds. As for me, innocent as I was, I could not help shuddering before their eyes whenever they brought me out, for I knew I should be thrown back again up the table as a false pretender. At length I was paid away to a poor old woman, ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... a guilty conscience! What could it mean? Surely Mr. Wrenn, of the Clarion, was either the coldest and deepest-dyed rogue in the world ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... of Tom running hard, uttered a yelp, tucked its tail between its legs, and began to run. Then Pete turned to see what had startled the dog, caught sight of Tom racing along, and, a guilty conscience needing no accuser, took it for granted that he was being chased; so away he ran, big stick in hand, his long arms flying, and his loose-jointed legs shambling over the ground at a pace which ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... delimiting the northern frontier started. The Russian, troubled doubtless by a guilty conscience, had feared to start without a strong military escort, and lack of forage made this impossible. Hence much delay. Our military attache from Rome represented England, but it was reported that France and Russia were out to grab all they could for ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... as much composure as her guilty conscience would allow her to assume; "she read an account of the death of a—a friend, in ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... seek to detract from the glory and honour of Him in whom I profess to trust, upon whom I profess to depend? All my confidence towards God, all my leaning upon Him in the hour of trial will be gone, if I have a guilty conscience, and do not seek to put away this guilty conscience, but still continue to do the things which are contrary to the mind of God. And if, in any particular instance, I cannot trust in God, because of the guilty conscience, then my faith is weakened by ...
— Answers to Prayer - From George Mueller's Narratives • George Mueller
... I said with asperity; for I am not a person to inaugurate a dinner hour one day and change it the next. Bates wished to make conversation,—the sure sign of a guilty conscience in a servant,—and I was not ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... comment upon the fact that no client, male or female, consults a lawyer with regard to what he ought to do. Women, often having decided to do that which they ought not to do, attempt to secure counsel's approval of the contemplated sin; but while a lawyer is sometimes called upon to bolster up a guilty conscience, rarely is he sincerely invited to act as spiritual adviser. Most men being worse than their lawyers, prefer not to have the latter find them out. If they have made up their minds to do a mean thing they do not ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... If the party examined be Unconstant, or contrary to himself, in his deliberate Answers, it argueth a Guilty Conscience, which stops the freedom of Utterance. And yet there are causes of Astonishment, which may befal the Good, as well ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... pretends that truth is to be without force in the mouths of the Representatives of the French people? Doubtless, truth has its power, its rage, its despotism, its accents, touching, terrible, which resound in the pure heart as in the guilty conscience; and which Falsehood can no more imitate than Salmoneus could forge the thunderbolts of Heaven. What am I whom they accuse? A slave of liberty,—a living martyr of the Republic; the victim as the enemy of crime! All ruffianism affronts me, and actions legitimate in ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Smallbones, whose guilty conscience flew into his pallid face at the mention of the paving-stones, immediately made a hasty retreat; and Vanslyperken turned into his bed and ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... returned this day, and having remembered glimpses of our conversation, I came to apologize to you, and to explain the nature of my unhappy distemper, and to beg a little bread, which I have not tasted for two days. I at times conceive myself attended by an evil spirit shaped out by a guilty conscience, and this is the only familiar which attends me, and by it I have been dogged into madness through every turning of life. Whilst it lasts I am subject to spasms and convulsive starts which are exceedingly painful. The lump on ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... voyage home, there was time for thought. A severe gale, while lashing the sea into threatening waves, had also disturbed his guilty conscience. He had amassed sufficient to satisfy even his greed of gold for the present, and his calculating soul hinted that it was time to begin to put away a little stock in heaven as well as on earth. He resolved ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... turned adrift immediately under my unfavourable circumstances, with the additional disadvantage of the wound I had received; and yet I could scarcely have ventured to remain under the same roof with a man, to whom my appearance was as a guilty conscience, perpetually reminding him of his own offence, and the displeasure of his leader. His profession accustomed him to a certain degree of indifference to consequences, and indulgence to the sallies of passion; and he might easily have found ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... Was it a guilty conscience, the dull slow agony of remorse, which had stricken this man down—this strong powerfully-built man, who was a stranger to illness and all physical suffering? Was the body only crushed by the burden of the mind? ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... him so desperate hurried to get away from here. Look at the knees on him clappin' together with the cold, and with the great fear that's in him he'll be catchin' a sickness in this place! (Nicholls, his guilty conscience stabbed to the quick, turns pale ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... noise outside which terrified the guilty conscience of the murderer. He did not know that the officers of justice were at the door, not did the bishop, but the unexpected sound turned their blood to water, and made their hearts, the innocent and the guilty, knock at their ribs. A sharp knock came at ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... her house. As for Max, the thought of him, his jealousy and the way he groveled before me the last time I had seen him, would give me a bad taste in the mouth. I both pitied and despised him, and I hated my guilty conscience; so I would try to keep him out of my mind. What I missed almost as much as I ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... working of a guilty conscience once or twice before at Draven's, but never knew it to work in quite so strange a manner as it did ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... "Thus speaks a guilty conscience," he retorts. "I could sum up my life on a sheet of foolscap. 'Preface; apparent folly, covering intents and purposes. A boyhood of ambition, a manhood ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... softly as an infant—"so tranquil, helpless, stirless, and unmoved;" in the next, we remark with surprise sundry violent twitches and contortions of the limbs, as though the sleeper were under the operation of galvanism, or suffering from the pangs of a guilty conscience. Of what hidden crime does the memory thus agitate him—breaking in upon that rest which should steep the senses in forgetfulness of the world and its cares? On a sudden he starts from his couch with an appearance of frenzy!—his nostrils dilated, his eyes gleaming with immoderate excitation—an ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various
... appeared. Doubtless the cause of his disappearance before our arrival had been the easily discernible presence in our midst of the brass buttons of Corporal Gamarra. Possibly he who had selected this remote corner of the wilderness for his abode had a guilty conscience and at the sight of a gendarme decided that he had better hide at once. More probably, however, he feared the visit of a recruiting party, since it is quite likely that he had not served his legal term of military service. At all events, when his wife discovered that we were not ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... had been told about the little affair on the road at the time the barn hop was in progress; but he was a wise pedagogue, and made no mention of it in his address. Nick writhed in his seat every time he saw the principal look his way, his guilty conscience causing his fears to rise, with the thought that he might be further ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... youthful impatience, to penetrate into the secret feelings of the man of sorrows. Inattentive to every other subject, Dr. Beaumont perceived that he was roused by the name of Walter De Vallance, and therefore led Eustace to describe his present situation. The tortures of a guilty conscience, added to his constitutional timidity, had totally extinguished those faint beams of hope and ambition which led him, in every previous change of affairs, to project his own security or advancement. To usurpers and mal-contents of every description ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... there find that rest in the very enjoyment of his poor, miserable, wretched self. But Christ Jesus calls us into our own spirits, not to dwell there. For O what a loathsome and irksome habitation is a defiled heart and a guilty conscience! But rather, that finding nothing of that joy and refreshment within, we may then freely and fully forsake ourselves, as well as the world without, and transport into God in Christ, the only habitation of joy and delight, that ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... I selected was a blend of mystery regarding my business, breezy chat on non-committal topics, and an occasional oddity of conduct, such as might have been caused by a guilty conscience or a harmless strain of eccentricity (and I left ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... frightened and ran faster than ever. Lucia did not know why she was afraid, but she remembered that she had not been asked to the party, that she had spoken insultingly to Rebby, and—she had dropped the mug purposely. So it was small wonder that her guilty conscience accused her, and that she was eager to reach home ...
— A Little Maid of Old Maine • Alice Turner Curtis
... guilty conscience," he said. "I ought not to come back and dine with you to-night. I ought to put you into a cab and myself into another, go home for my bag and take the night-express to Paris. The House only rises for ten days and I have to be in my place on ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... combustible in the visceral grate of the stomach. The mutton-eater is eupeptic. His dreams are airy and lightsome. Somnus descends smiling to his nocturnal pillow, and not clad in the portentous panoply of indigestion, which rivals a guilty conscience in its night visions. The mutton department of Quincy Market is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... safe. A guilty conscience pursued, overtook, and sat upon him. Shame and confusion overwhelmed him. Up to that date he had been honourable, upright, straightforward; as far as the world's estimation went, irreproachable. Now, in his own estimation, he ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne |
