"Unworthiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... before her. Conscious himself of the insincerity and unworthiness of his declaration, he knew that she also had read him like an open book, and the knowledge made him fearfully angry; while to be foiled in his purpose and browbeaten by this girl, whom he imagined to be only what she seemed, was more ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... heart weak that will go on loving, through evil report and good report,—through the deep snows of long absence, and the howling storms of no love to meet it, and the black gulfs of utter unworthiness. ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... was the magic, the all-comprehending phrase that swept the past out of mind with one swift stroke: the acknowledgment of unworthiness, the child-like claim on the forgiving love that should be in every heart on such a night as this. Resentment melted away like mist before the sun. Her deep grievance—where had it gone? How could she speak anything but welcome? For what was the window open, ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... generously shared with me. Pere Paragot used to sweep into his pockets every sou and Blanquette had to subsist on whatever he chose to allow for joint expenses. Her new position of independence was a subject for much inward pride, mingled however with a consciousness of her own unworthiness. Monsieur Laripet, yes; she would grant that he was entitled to the same as the Master; but herself—no. Was not the Master the great artist, and she but the clumsy strummer? Was he not also a man, with more requirements than she—tobacco, ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... sweet head upon her gentle breast; Nor did she lift an eye nor speak a word, Rapt in the fear and in the wonder of it; So moving without answer to her rest She found no rest, and ever failed to draw The quiet night into her blood, but lay Contemplating her own unworthiness; And when the pale and bloodless east began To quicken to the sun, arose, and raised Her mother too, and hand in hand they moved Down to the meadow where the jousts were held, And waited ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... him that steady, scrutinizing glance that, from the first, had made him conscious of inner unworthiness. Her eyes were bright, and had lost the tired look; the cool breeze had brought back the rose-leaf tints to her face, and had blown one bronze curl across ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... of my life's hopes. I lounged about the rooms, read the stage bills upon the walls, looked over the register, and, finding the name of an acquaintance, sent to see if he was still there. What this hesitation arose from, I know not; perhaps it was a feeling of my unworthiness to enter this temple which nature ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... hands of the priest, and among them I went up and was blessed as they were. And we were all in rapture. Standing at the threshold afterwards, smiling peasants with wet shining eyes confessed to one another their unworthiness and their happiness; and a girl all in laughing tears fell down at our feet, kissing our dusty boots, and asking our forgiveness that she had ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... that comes back," assented Mary's mother); and for as little as she was, Mary continued, she'd rather bring her bones home with herself to Cunnock-a-Ceoil. (A cryptic phrase signifying that though she recognised, humorously, her own unworthiness, she still attached sufficient importance to her person to wish to bestow it upon the place of her birth.) Not long after her return and restoration to health, the episode of her marriage had occurred, and she had settled down into the ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... formed the question, "What on earth could have made a girl like that fall in love with a chump like me?" It was a question which he was continually asking himself, and one which was perpetually in the mind also of Mr. Brewster, his father-in-law. The matter of Archie's unworthiness to be the husband of Lucille was practically the only one on which the two men saw ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... and who mock every flight to higher worlds-upon these alternatives it is left to you to pass a final and decisive judgment. The ancient world with its magnificence and with its grandeur, and also with its faults, has sunk through its own unworthiness and through your fathers' prowess. If there is truth in what has been presented in these addresses, then, among all modern peoples, it is you in whom the germ of the perfecting of humanity most decidedly lies, and on whom progress in the development of this humanity is enjoined. If you perish as ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... actors had made irrevocable exit. What beauty had graced it for a century back! What honors its children had brought to it from councils of state and of war! What true human worth had sanctified it! Last and the least of the splendid throng, he felt his own unworthiness sadly; but he was young yet, only a boy, and he said to himself that Sonia had crowned the glory of the old house with her beauty, her innocence, her devoted love. In making her its mistress he had not wronged its ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... striking degree, exclusive to temptations to gross vice and scandalous behaviour. As a pastor, their curate did little or nothing for them; but what could more strikingly set forth the efficacy of the Church of England, through its Ordinances and Liturgy, than that, in spite of the unworthiness of the minister, his church was regularly attended; and though there was not much appearance in his flock of what might be called animated piety, intoxication was rare, and dissolute morals unknown? With the Bible they were, for the most part, well acquainted, and, as was strikingly shown when ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... to her and caught her disengaged hand in his, the glad light in her eyes telling him that his action was one which she reciprocated, yet some sense of her unworthiness of this great love causing ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... enjoyed giving out awful threats of what they would do if ever they had the opportunity. Oke had kept them in order without difficulty, for he had a vehement power of reproof, when fairly roused, that could make even the twins hide their faces in shame, as he pictured to them their unworthiness. ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... personal beauty is then first charming and itself when it dissatisfies us with any end; when it becomes a story without an end; when it suggests gleams and visions and not earthly satisfactions; when it makes the beholder feel his unworthiness; when he cannot feel his right to it, though he were Caesar; he cannot feel more right to it than to the firmament and the ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... and you, girls"—the major had begun to drop the use of the word 'sisters' when addressing both the young ladies—"Now, my dearest mother, and you, girls, I am about to give each her due. In the first place, I confess my own unworthiness, and acknowledge, that I do not deserve one-half the kind attention I have received in these various presents, after which ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... stillness of the darkening day. The woman is all happiness, confidence, and hope; the man, seared and blighted by conscious sin and subdued by long years of patient submission to the sense of his own unworthiness, is all gentleness, solicitude, reverence, and sorrow. At this supreme moment, when now it seems that everything is surely well, the one man in the world who knows Eugene Aram's secret has become, by seeming chance, a guest in ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... arguments are sound, it is already manifest that liability to punishment cannot be finally and absolutely determined by considering the actual personal unworthiness of the criminal alone. That consideration will govern only so far as the public welfare permits or demands. And if we take into account the general result which the criminal law is intended to bring about, we shall see that the ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... thy fire have not one spark the less, O Titan, born of her a Titaness, Across the sunrise and the sunset's mark Send of thy lyre one sound, thy fire one spark, To change this face of our unworthiness, Across this ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... this for herself, and it had converted life into an endless conflict between her love for Garth and her shamed sense of his unworthiness. And now, her return to Monkshaven, to its familiar, memory-haunted scenes, had quickened ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... stood—poor devil of a contrivance that it was!—with only the thinnest vesture of human similitude about it, through which was evident the stiff, ricketty, incongruous, faded, tattered, good-for-nothing patchwork of its substance, ready to sink in a heap upon the floor, as conscious of its own unworthiness to be erect. Shall I confess the truth? At its present point of vivification, the scarecrow reminds me of some of the lukewarm and abortive characters, composed of heterogeneous materials, used for the thousandth time, and never worth ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... is naught, and less than naught. 'T is but a new knowledge of mine own unworthiness. Sure 'never such a fool as an old fool' is ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... of this congregation; their emptiness, their ignorance of the divine indwelling, their want of anything in their experience that corresponds in the least degree to such words as these. Judge whether a man is not more likely to be bowed down in wholesome sense of his own sinfulness and unworthiness, if he has before him such an ideal as this of my text, than if it, too, has faded out of his life. I believe, for my part, that one great cause of the worldliness and the sinfulness and mechanical formalities that are eating the life out of the Christianity of this ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... relinquish his double hope of aiding the Netherlands and crippling the overshadowing power of Spain. Still did he implore help for the oppressed. Long did he carry in his heart a picture of the queen—whom he adored in spite of her unworthiness—as the zealous and devoted champion of a great cause. But Elizabeth was no zealot, nor could she be made one. When Sidney at length realized that the queen could not be induced to move in the cause of the Netherlands, he made up his ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... imagine that any woman's heart could be approached through print alone, he could not help feeling on revising his work that he had done that which, if successful, would remove something of his own unworthiness, and might give him a new recommendation to a girl of ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... in huge and most unkindly forests,—if, being but pawns in a mighty game, we are lost or changed, happy, however, in that the white hand of our Queen hath touched us, giving thereby consecration to our else unworthiness,—if we find no gold, nor take one ship of Spain, nor any city treasure-stored,—if we suffer a myriad sort of sorrows and at ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... vanity, delusion, wrath, unforgiveness, hostility towards all creatures, are regarded as the characteristics of Darkness. Whatever undertakings exist that are unmeritorious (in consequence of their being vain or useless), what gifts there are that are unmeritorious (in consequence of the unworthiness of the donees, the unreasonableness of the time, the impropriety of the object, etc.), vain eating,—these also appertain to Darkness. Indulgence in calumny, unforgiveness, animosity, vanity, and absence of faith are also said to be characteristics of Darkness. Whatever men there are in this ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... of Mr. Carmyle's nature could have cried aloud at the hideous unworthiness of these banalities. In the visions which he had had of himself as a successful wooer, it had always been in the moments immediately succeeding the all-important question and its whispered reply that he had come out ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... Communion of Saints, according to which we believe that the blessed in heaven are able and disposed to help the unfortunate here below. Subjectively they are based on human nature itself. In our self-conscious weakness and unworthiness, we choose instinctively to approach the throne of God through His tried and faithful friends rather than to hazard ourselves alone ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... she could say with the Psalmist, Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord. For several months she was in a state similar to that which the old divines depict so vividly as being "under conviction." Her sense of sin, and of her own unworthiness in the sight of God, grew more and more intense and oppressive. At times she abandoned all hope, accused herself of having played the hypocrite, and fancied she was given over to hardness of heart. At length she sought counsel of her pastor and confided to him her ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... afternoon; of the graveyard and the two strange women. But shame tied my tongue. I saw that this noble gentleman, in imparting his thoughts to me, was really condescending to ask my pardon; and the injustice of it was so monstrous that I felt a delicacy in letting him know the extent of my unworthiness. I temporized, and promised myself ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... her from me that you are marrying her,—so that she may not sink into the abyss of my unworthiness." ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... my desired intent! The end of my delectable hope to renew: My regeneration to this life present, Resurrection from death so excellent; Thou art above [all] other. I desire humbly To kiss thy hands, wherein lieth my remedy. But mine unworthiness maketh resistance; Yet worship I the ground that thou goest on, Beseeching thee, good woman, with most reverence On my pain with thy pity to look upon. Without thy comfort my life is gone; To revive my dead spirits thou may'st prefer me, With the words of thy ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... her before that mad March deed. True, her people called it "an understanding," and frowned even upon that, as well they might. But their authority was not direct; we bowed to it as an act of politic grace; between us, all was well but my unworthiness. That may be gauged when I confess that this was how the matter stood on the night I gave a worthless check for my losses at baccarat, and afterward turned to Raffles in my need. Even after that I saw her sometimes. But I let her guess that there was more upon my soul than she must ever share, ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... her hand and took some of the flowers, and smelt them, and then gave them to her Son, that He might smell them likewise. Dominica, full of delight, besought them ever thus to smell her flowers, and to forget the unworthiness of her who offered them. And then she remembered that she could not stand there looking at her beloved Madonna any longer; for it was the hour when she was accustomed to go to the cottage-door with the scraps she had ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... traitor, who had hitherto opposed to conscience and to public opinion the same cool and placid hardihood which distinguished him on fields of battle, had really begun to feel remorse, it would be absurd to reject, on account of his unworthiness, the inestimable services which it was in his power to render to the good cause. He sate in the interior council; he held high command in the army; he had been recently entrusted, and would doubtless again be entrusted, with the direction of important ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the holy unction of kings on the head of Saul and of David, by the ministry of thy prophet Samuel, vouchsafe to pour, by my hands, the treasures of thy grace and blessing on thy servant Napoleon, who, notwithstanding our own unworthiness, we this day consecrate ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... barking and snapping at her worn-down heels, she would have been sure to assert tenderly that she was afraid she was "not worthy." This was the natural habit of her mind, and in the weeks which followed the foggy afternoon when Tembarom "staked out his claim" she dwelt often upon her unworthiness of the ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a love which is not content to speak only the ordinary language of human affection, or to do its ordinary deeds, but is self-impelled to impart what transcends all other gifts of human tenderness, and to give its very self. And so a love that condescends, a love that passes by unworthiness, is turned away by no sin, is unmoved to any kind of anger, and never allows its cheek to flush or its heart to beat faster, because of any provocation and a love that is content with nothing short of entire surrender and self-impartation underlies all ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... full play. How would it be if he should take Hilma into his life, this beautiful young girl, pure as he now knew her to be; innocent, noble with the inborn nobility of dawning womanhood? An overwhelming sense of his own unworthiness suddenly bore down upon him with crushing force, as he thought of this. He had gone about the whole affair wrongly. He had been mistaken from the very first. She was infinitely above him. He did not want—he should not desire to be the master. It was ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... the time her own sense of unworthiness, and was smiling happily as friend after friend arrived, when suddenly her smile vanished. For coming up the path in a fine dress of pale yellow muslin and wearing a flower-trimmed hat was Lucia Horton. No one ...
— A Little Maid of Old Maine • Alice Turner Curtis
... luxurious lounges, the well-groomed old gentlemen smoking eighteenpenny cheroots, the suave, noiseless satellites, that Lancelot felt a sudden pang of bewildered shame. Why, the very waiter who stood bent before him would disdain her. He took his coffee hastily, with a sense of personal unworthiness. This feeling soon evaporated, but it left lees of resentment against Mary Ann which made him inexplicable to her. Fortunately, her habit of acceptance saved her some tears, though she shed others. And there remained always the gloves. When she was putting ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... 'unworthiness' and 'deficiences' of English history in his Advancement of Learning.[1] 'Some few very worthy, but the greater part beneath mediocrity' was his verdict on modern histories in general. He was not the first to express ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... Nydia, to Ione's house—they shall show thee the way. Take her the fairest flowers thou canst pluck; the vase which contains them I will give thee: thou must excuse its unworthiness. Thou shalt take, too, with thee the lute that I gave thee yesterday, and from which thou knowest so well to awaken the charming spirit. Thou shalt give her, also, this letter, in which, after a hundred efforts, I have embodied something of my thoughts. Let thy ear ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... future before him! Nor were his selfish regrets unmingled with annoyance that Isy should have yielded so easily: why had she not aided him to resist the weakness that had wrought his undoing? She was as much to blame as he; and for her unworthiness was he to be left to suffer? Within an hour he had returned to the sermon under his hand, and was revising it for the twentieth time, to perfect it before finally committing it to memory; for so should the lie ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... of his absence the girl had never been out of his mind, and he had striven hard to reconcile his unconquerable love for her with the sense of his own unworthiness. His unforgivable cowardice was a haunting shame, and the more he dwelt upon it the more unspeakably vile he appeared in his own sight; for the Blakes were honorable people. The family was old and cherished traditions common to fine ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... fountain of all wisdom, who knowest our necessities before we ask, and our ignorance in asking; We beseech thee to have compassion upon our infirmities; and those things, which for our unworthiness we dare not, and for our blindness we cannot ask, vouch safe to give us for the worthiness of thy Son Jesus Christ ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... perhaps whom you despise the most, but that you must found the whole of it upon your merit. Not being able to derive much consequence from the character of Doctor, you are obliged perhaps to attend more to your character as men, as gentlemen, and as men of letters. The unworthiness of some of your brethren may perhaps in this manner be in part the cause of the very eminent and superior worth of many of the rest. The very abuse which you complain of may in this manner perhaps be the real source of your present ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... in my own heart. I am content to love you and be forgotten. It is sweeter to love you and be forgotten than it would be to love any other woman and live in her lifelong remembrance: so humble has love made me, sweet, so great is my sense of my own unworthiness. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... that plays and hears High salutation of to-day. Tongue falters, hand shrinks back, song fears Its own unworthiness to play Fit music for those eight sweet years, Or sing their blithe accomplished way. No song quite worth a young child's ears Broke ever ...
— Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc - From Swinburne's Poems Volume V. • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... appeared determined to be ready with a military force to act promptly upon an emergency, if one should arise, as some persons, perhaps, hoped would be the case. All this, however, proved to be totally unnecessary. The fear of the Ministers arose solely from the sense of their own unworthiness; a conviction in their own breasts that they merited the hatred and the execration of the people. Every thing passed off quietly, and the dinner party broke up in peace, after having passed the day in the greatest ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... is a good word) as a dahlia. As a general rule, that society where flattery is acted is much more agreeable than that where it is spoken. Don't you see why? Attention and deference don't require you to make fine speeches expressing your sense of unworthiness (lies) and returning all the compliments paid ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... Duncan to his sister, and this sister was a remarkably pretty girl, and Duncan fell in love with her at first sight, and by the time he got to the top of Mount Washington he was so deep in love that he began to consider his own unworthiness, and to wonder whether she might ever be induced to care for him a little—ever ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... taking a great deal of trouble for the sake of a very discourteous person," she said. "I sent Minutia to tell a certain soldier that I am willing to bid him farewell, despite his unworthiness, and he comes and nearly strangles poor old Rhetus for trying to say that I was ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... of distrusting himself amazingly; perhaps most men have,—and ought to. His face grew grave just then. That little girl's clear eyes shone upon him like the lights upon an altar. In very unworthiness of soul he would have put the shoes from off his feet. The ground on which he ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... hand, neither had she treated her ex-governess with kindness or courtesy. She had been calm and cold in her reception of the visitor; that was all. But was she right? After all, she knew no positive evil of the woman. She had only strong circumstantial evidence of her unworthiness. She recalled an ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... gasp of surprise, a rapid turning of heads, and a surging of sable figures toward the corner in which Miss Stepney wailed out her sense of unworthiness through the crumpled ball of ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... the Christian doctrine and life, taking for granted the existence of God, was what the case required. And when, as is very frequently the case, they address the popular idolaters, it is a negative argument to show the unworthiness of idol-worship, and the superiority of their own doctrine, of which they naturally make use, and not a theistic argument which would have no significance to those who were ...
— The Basis of Early Christian Theism • Lawrence Thomas Cole
... within my own knowledge, they must be of more frequent occurrence than is usually supposed. Among such romances, those cases, perhaps, form an unusual proportion in which young, innocent, and high-minded persons have made a sudden discovery of some great profligacy or deep unworthiness in the person to whom they had surrendered their entire affections. That shock, more than any other, is capable of blighting, in one hour, the whole after existence, and sometimes of at once overthrowing the balance of life or of reason. Instances ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... depend entirely upon yourself, Walter, whether or not I despise you. If I ever do, it will be the result of your own unworthiness, not because ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... this truth the greater do our imperfections appear, and the clearer becomes our sense of the need of mercy, as well as help. But the King, who thus described His subjects, has also described His enduring love; and His invitation, still and for ever, applies to all who feel their unworthiness: "Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (S. Matt. ...
— The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it? • Edward Burbidge
... every wretch, pining and pale before, Beholding him, plucks comfort from his looks. A largess universal like the sun His liberal eye doth give to every one, Thawing cold fear, that mean and gentle all Behold, as may unworthiness define, A little touch of Harry in the night. And so our scene must to the battle fly, Where—O for pity!—we shall much disgrace With four or five most vile and ragged foils, Right ill-dispos'd in brawl ridiculous, The name of Agincourt. ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... exchanged vows of love and eternal fidelity. From such vows who could release them? Yet the vows were already broken by each, and of this each was conscious. Had Brooke met Dolores before this last scene with Talbot, he might have felt self-reproach, but he could not have felt such a sense of unworthiness. For before that he had, at least, kept a watch upon his tongue, and in words, at least, he had not told his love for another. But now his word had gone forth, and he had pledged himself to another, when there was ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... otherwise than grasp at his prize, and make his spring at his opportunity. His bitterness, his scorn, his rage, his subsequent misanthropy, are ascribed by some panegyrists to a deliberate conviction of mankind's unworthiness, and a desire to amend them by castigating. His youth was bitter, as that of a great genius bound down by ignoble ties, and powerless in a mean dependence; his age was bitter, like that of a great ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... when I was so; I have unveiled my interior such as Thou thyself hast seen it, Eternal Father! Collect about me the innumerable swarm of my fellows; let them hear my confessions; let them groan at my unworthiness; let them blush at my meannesses! Let each of them discover his heart in his turn at the foot of thy throne with the same sincerity; and then let any one of them tell thee if he dares: 'I was a ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... will not let such Quixotic ideals stand between us and happiness! You have your right to happiness, and so have I, and in the end 'twill be the same, your father's name will be cleared of any suspicion of unworthiness." ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... spiritual life must widen the soul; the more we live with Jesus, the more impossible will it be for any of us to be narrow. Our littleness takes refuge with God, and His greatness makes its abode with us; we bring Him our unworthiness and He imparts to us His righteousness; we offer to Him our hearts barren of sympathy and deficient in affection, and presently we find the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost that is ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... was a vagabond on the face of the earth, but she was tearing herself away from deep roots in the soil of home, as well as from the conventions of her circle and her sex. Once again he trembled with a sense of unworthiness, a sudden anxious doubt if he were noble enough to repay her trust. Mastering his emotion, he went on: "I reckon my packing and arrangements for leaving the country will take me all day at least. I must see my bankers ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... loved God—she loved her parents—she loved her companions—she loved everybody. It was the exuberant, gushing love of childhood, exalted by the influences of true piety. She seems never to have known what it was to be repelled by a sense of weakness or unworthiness in another, or to have had any of those dislikes and distastes and unchristian aversions which keep so many of us apart. She had no need to "unlearn contempt." This was partly the result of natural temperament, but not all. Such love is a Christian grace. He that "hath" ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... blessed of heaven, is in itself but human; and subject, like everything else, to errors and abuses. And have not errors and abuses crept into the most sacred places, and may there not be unworthy or incapable missionaries abroad, as well as ecclesiastics of similar character at home? May not the unworthiness or incapacity of those who assume apostolic functions upon the remote islands of the sea more easily escape detection by the world at large than if it were displayed in the heart of a city? An unwarranted confidence in the sanctity of its apostles—a proneness to regard them as ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... because he abounded more with thankfulness that any other that is mentioned in holy scripture, as may appear in his book of Psalms; where there is such a commixture, of his confessing of his sins and unworthiness, and such thankfulness for God's pardon and mercies, as did make him to be accounted, even by God himself, to be a man after his own heart: and let us, in that, labour to be as like him as we can; let not the blessings we receive ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... thus became prevalent that most dangerous condition of the soul of man, when he imagines that he sanctifies what he does; a frame of mind, by the way, that is by no means strange to very many who ought to be conscious of their unworthiness. With the morals of the colony, its prosperity, even in worldly interests, began to lose ground. The merchants, as usual, had behaved badly in the political struggle. The intense selfishness of ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... little towns. The inference was obvious. His thoughtless words would only add to her misery. Her sensitive mind would shrink from the contamination they implied. If Ahmed was going to die, she would be desolate enough without forcing on her knowledge the unworthiness of the man she loved. He pushed his chair back impatiently and went to the open doorway. He felt that she wanted to be alone. She watched him go, then slipped to her knees ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... of the miracle on Simon's mind was overwhelming. Instantly he felt that he was in the presence of divine revealing, and a sense of his own sinfulness and unworthiness oppressed him. "Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord," he cried. Jesus quieted his terror with his comforting "Fear not." Then he said to him, "From henceforth thou shalt catch men." This was another self-revealing. Simon's work as a ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... believed that whosoever came to Jesus Christ should he saved; but I had no deep sense of sin, of my sin. Since then I believe that I have passed through almost every phase of Christian experience that I have ever read or heard of; and now I have such a sight of my own utter vileness and unworthiness, that I feel that the great and holy God might well set His heel on me, so to speak, and crush me into nothing." This sense of absolute unworthiness was always a feature of her life. "A useless log" was the term she ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... for me was a mere fiction, or at any rate a secondary sentiment, although, even with such evidence before my eyes as what I have already described to you, I could scarcely realise it, and that the idol I worshipped was at best the very incarnation of falsehood and unworthiness, was altogether too much for me; I brooded and fretted over it until I could endure it no longer, and then, one day when she seemed striving to weave anew round my heart the fatal spell of her endearments, I broke ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... she was spared that trial. It is an awful thing for a child to awaken to a sense of a parent's unworthiness! ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... said, "a deep sense of my own unworthiness of the kindness and honour which the dear lord your father bestowed upon me; and were it not that many dangers threaten, and that it were difficult under the circumstances to find one more worthy of you, I would gladly resign you into the hands of ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... condemns the woman. Yet, ready as he was to attribute culpability to her conduct, it was hard even for him to reconcile her smooth, artless brow, her frank, limpid eyes, her delicate, sensitive lips, with any act that savored of unworthiness or deceit. ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... doubt that Victor Nevill spoke the truth, for once in his life; he loved Madge with a passion that dominated him, and he knew his own unworthiness. Stephen Foster paced the floor with a haggard ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... this scurvy condemnation, you will scarce find one, but, by some generous reading, will become to you a lesson, a model, and a noble spouse through life. So thinking, you will constantly support your own unworthiness, and easily forgive the failings of your friend. Nay, you will be wisely glad that you retain the sense of blemishes; for the faults of married people continually spur up each of them, hour by hour, to do better and to meet and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... omnipotence, ought to be everywhere visible in the religious effusions of a Christian Poet—wonder and awe for the greatness of God, gratitude and love for his goodness, humility and self-abasement for his own unworthiness. Passages may perhaps be found in "The Excursion" expressive of that spirit, but they are few and faint, and somewhat professional, falling not from the Pedlar but from the Pastor. If the mind, in forming its conceptions of divine things, is prouder of its own ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... blaming herself who was all innocent, touched his heart and filled him with shame at his unworthiness. ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... higher, he can rest in the consciousness that no man ever rose more rapidly at the Suffolk Bar than he has." And within a year he had put it all behind him,—a sinful and unworthy life,—and had set out to be a new man. That there was sin and unworthiness in the old life we, who look into our own hearts, need not doubt; but how much of sin, how much of unworthiness, happily we need not determine. Mr. Durant was ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... ought to be when you must act upon them; but see them as they are when you are tempted to act for them. Seek to owe their suffrage to their dignity; but to make them happy keep an account of their unworthiness; thus, on the one hand, the nobleness of your heart will kindle theirs, and, on the other, your end will not be reduced to nothingness by their unworthiness. The gravity of your principles will keep them off from you, but in play they will still endure ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... length givest me—me who dare scarcely use the words of Paul: 'Unto me who am less than the least of all saints is this grace given, that I should preach the unsearchable riches of Christ.' Felt somewhat solemnized, though unable to feel my unworthiness as I ought. ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... addressing had, of course, never seen Him. And yet the Apostle has not the slightest hesitation in taking that great benediction of Christ's love and spreading it over them all. That love is independent of time and of space; it includes humanity, and is co-extensive with it. Unturned away by unworthiness, unrepelled by non-responsiveness, undisgusted by any sin, unwearied by any, however numerous, foiling of its attempts, the love of Christ, like the great heavens that bend above us, wraps us all in its sweetness, and showers upon us all its light ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... the poet in one of the final hymns of the "Royal Crown," filled with a sense of his own unworthiness, hopefully ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... would not urge her a step beyond her actual feelings, but he must know whether her refusal was based solely on her view of his supposed interests. And with the true delicacy of frankness she admits that even the sense of her own unworthiness is not the insuperable obstacle. No—but is she not a confirmed invalid? She thought that she had done living when he came and sought her out. If he would be wise, all these thoughts of her must be abandoned. Such an answer brought a great calm to Browning's heart; he did not desire to press ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... much honoured by your proposal, Mr. Dryland. And no one can be more convinced than I of my unworthiness. But I'm ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... for him, and by her side, feeling her way to the altar rail, Mary, the little blind maid, repeating a fervent amen to her sister's petition; then—darkness about him, cold ashes on the hearth, and in his heart a shiver of regret and a feeling of unworthiness. ...
— A Few Short Sketches • Douglass Sherley
... me was wonderful, for who was I that she should love me? Was I not homeless and penniless? And had not the Tresidders beaten me again and again? Ah! but no one can describe the joy that surged within me, for the greater my unworthiness, the more happiness did the knowledge of her love give. In many respects we were strangers, for we had met only a few times, as all readers of this story know; but love laughs at the ways of men, and as she told me afterward, although she dared not tell me so when I saw her in ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... moment of exaltation, came the reaction. He was afraid. The thought of his stubby uninteresting figure came to him; and a deep sense of his unworthiness. What could she, accustomed to brilliant creatures of the wonderful city, of whom Gerald was probably but a mild sample, find in commonplace little Bobby Orde? He walked meekly home; and took a ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... season, and escape to England with his wife and stepson. In this scheme Louis, after he had obtained the evidence of the jockey's villany, went on board of the steamer which was to convey them all over the ocean, and succeeded, with no little difficulty, in convincing his mother of the unworthiness of her husband; and she returned with her son to Von Blonk Park. The young man went back to the steamer, and by skilful management obtained all the plunder of the villain, who sailed ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... in the darkness against her, and fighting desperately with such weak weapons as she possessed. It was characteristic that she did not blame herself for her failure; it was the baseness of van Tuiver, his inability to appreciate sincere devotion, his unworthiness of her love. And this, just after she had been naively telling me of her efforts to poison his mind against Sylvia while pretending to admire her! But I made allowances for Claire at this moment—realizing that the situation had been one to ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... me, may render one more meeting necessary; and so, sir, here ends our acquaintance."—Saying which, Sheringham, whose friendship even to my enlightened eye was nearly as sincere as any other man's, quitted my room, fully convinced of my meanness and unworthiness; my heart sank within me when I heard the door close upon him for the last time. I now possessed the power I had so long desired, and in less than an hour had lost a valued friend and a faithful servant. Nevertheless, Barton ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... defense of an untruth: who dare maintain that if she said the truth to her persecutors, but uttered it in womanly heroism, with a believing look to God, with the courage, the elevation of soul springing from a pure conscience, exhibiting to her persecutors the badness and unworthiness of their object, she might not have disarmed them by that might that lies in the good, the just cause, the cause whose defense and shield God himself will be? And even if she had to suffer what is ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... in our unworthiness, Thy sacrificial wine we press; If from thy ordeal's heated bars Our feet are seamed with crimson ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... writing the play, for Grace felt certain that the newspaper girl would enter the lists, she might gain what her classmates had been powerless to give her. Grace's face grew hot with shame at her own unworthiness of spirit. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... could get the feeling that his admirer might not be coming, we descended upon him in all our wretched nonchalance and unworthiness—out of hell, as it were. We were most brisk, familiar, affectionate. It was so fortunate to meet him so, so accidentally and peradventure. The night was so fine. We were out for a stroll in the park, to eat afterward. He ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... religious ceremonies he witnessed did not console him for that chill hour of dawn, when, in the chapel at Donnaz, he had served the mass for Don Gervaso, with a heart trembling at its own unworthiness yet uplifted by the sense of the Divine Presence. In the churches adorned like aristocratic drawing-rooms, of which some Madonna, wreathed in artificial flowers, seemed the amiable and indulgent hostess, and where the florid passionate ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... of the passengers in the Mayflower, and was, by annual election, several years Governor of the Plymouth colony. It has been stated above that the ship Fortune, of 53 tons burden, brought in the autumn of 1621 the Pilgrim passengers who had been left in England the year before by the sea-unworthiness of the Speedwell. The Fortune anchored in Plymouth Bay the 9th of November—just a year from the day on which the Mayflower spied the land of Cape Cod. Mr. Winslow prepared and sent back by the Fortune an elaborate "Relation" of the state and prospects ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... Morgan replied, rising into a rage as sudden as it was unwise, the unworthiness of the object considered. He made a quick movement toward Gray as he spoke, which brought upon him the ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... now got what he never before possessed. He understood the way of salvation through Jesus Christ, whom he loved and desired to serve. The more he saw of the love of God the more he felt his own sinfulness and unworthiness, and felt the need of a better righteousness than any good works of his own. The Holy Spirit was teaching him this and other truths from the Scriptures. Meta and Karl also were daily growing in knowledge and grace. They had before been contented and cheerful, but it was the mere happiness ...
— The Woodcutter of Gutech • W.H.G. Kingston
... her husband and her lover now for so many years that it would be strange indeed if any sense of strangeness were left in it. But when I first found out that she had fallen in love with me just as quickly as I with her, I could not get over the wonder of it, or the feeling of added unworthiness with which the knowledge burdened me. But, in truth, the very things which make a man feel so clumsy and coarse in the presence of the woman he loves are the things that take a woman's fancy, just as her sweetness and delicacy ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... asking, exquisitely hypocritical reader, why you have been forced to read this record of sinful life; in your exquisite hypocrisy, you have said over and over again what good purpose can it serve for a man to tell us of his unworthiness unless, indeed, it is to show us how he may rise, as if on stepping stones of his dead self, to higher things, etc. You sighed, O hypocritical friend, and you threw the magazine on the wicker table, where such things lie, and you murmured something about leaving the ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... not religious, yet in that moment he felt a mad impulse to cast himself at the other's feet—and to say he knew not what. It was an emotion that so deeply stirred him, rather than a coherent thought, and he was aware in some vague way of his own unworthiness and smallness in the presence of this other man who possessed the simplicity of a child and the gentleness ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... Wherefore, sinner, here is laid a necessity upon thee; one of the two must be thy lot: either thou must accept of God's grace, and be content to be saved freely thereby, notwithstanding all thy undeservings and unworthiness, or else thou must be damned for thy rebellion, and for thy neglecting of this grace. Wherefore consider with thyself, and think what is best to be done. Is it better that thou submit to the grace and mercy of God, and that thou accept of grace to reign for thee, ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... to expatiate on the utter impossibility of finding a trustworthy nurse anywhere in the South, to whom your children could be safely confided for a day or even an hour; as usual too, the causes of this unworthiness or incapacity for a confidential servant's occupation were ignored, and the fact laid to the natural defects of the negro race. I am sick and weary of this cruel and ignorant folly. This afternoon I went out to refresh myself with a row on the broad Altamaha and the conversation of ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... the story that so engrossed Mrs. Taine was—in her opinion—almost as great in literature as Conrad Lagrange, himself. By those in authority who pronounce upon the worthiness or the unworthiness of writer folk, he is, to-day, said to be one of the greatest writers of his generation. He is a realist—a modern of the moderns. His pen has never been debased by an inartistic and antiquated idealism. His claim to genius rests securely upon the fact ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... essay, Blinded and weak, to point and lead the way, Or solve the mystery in familiar speech? Yet, if it be that something not thy own, Some shadow of the Thought to which our schemes, Creeds, cult, and ritual are at best but dreams, Is even to thy unworthiness made known, Thou mayst not hide what yet thou shouldst not dare To utter lightly, lest on lips of thine The real seem false, the beauty undivine. So, weighing duty in the scale of prayer, Give what seems given thee. It may prove a seed Of goodness dropped in fallow-grounds ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... with his hearers to tolerate him, to "bear with him." Indeed, several times during his disjointed remarks he made use of the latter expression, promising that his discourse should be a short one. Very carefully he included himself among those aware of sin, very humbly he declared the unworthiness of any man to set himself up as a teacher and ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... new and strange and different from anything that he had ever experienced semed to settle down upon him, and as it grew heavier and heavier, he felt that he was being crushed to the earth. Then a feeling of unworthiness that even the earth should hold him up and keep him from instant destruction in hell until God in his mercy would deliver him swept over him, and in his desperate condition he cried out until his voice was heard all over the camp-ground, and the people in crowds came to discover, ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... with a humane accent, if he wanted to speak with any person in the house? To this interrogation the stranger replied, without lifting up his head, "Overwhelmed as I am with Count Melvil's generosity, together with a consciousness of my own unworthiness, it ill becomes a wretch like me to importune him for further favour; yet I could not bear the thought of withdrawing, perhaps for ever, from the presence of my benefactor, without soliciting his permission to ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... Book! for thy unworthiness, To show to her some pleasant meanings writ In winning words, since through her gentiless, [5] 300 Thee she accepts as for her service fit! Oh! it repents me I have neither wit Nor leisure unto thee more worth to give; For of all good she is ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... 'can no longer be realised. My conscience, my teachers, and my father-confessor, all persuade me that I have sinned in the outer world, and that if I desire to be absolved, I must repent without delay. Exhorted by the worthy nuns, I am daily becoming more alive to a sense of my unworthiness, and convinced of the urgent necessity for beginning a new life of holiness and virtue. Guided to this blessed convent by the finger of Providence, I have been enabled, with the assistance of the best of counsel, to reflect seriously over what has happened, and I have now ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... irritable, rebuke too severely an uninstructed man who has made a small, unintentional mistake, use any words unworthy of your position—and you demonstrate clearly to your men your unworthiness ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... Because of my unworthiness, O master, my heart's beloved, I have been allowed to come between you and the work you were given of the gods to do. The fault is all mine, and must come from my evil deeds in a previous life. By sacrifice of joy and life I now attempt to expiate it. I go ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... sposalizio struck me as tame and cheerless, the mass as irreverent and vulgarly conducted. At the same time there is something too impressive in the mass for any perfunctory performance to divest its symbolism of sublimity. A Protestant Communion Service lends itself more easily to degradation by unworthiness in the minister. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... perpendicular, his body bent in a courteous but dignified bow, he was to reply that his majesty did him too much honor. It would be necessary to deprecate, in some degree, the distinguished consideration awarded to him, and to declare his own unworthiness of ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... guests,' cried Leo, climbing on a chair," this pattern boy, called Paul Meyerhofer, has in the most inconsiderate manner withdrawn from the verdict of the assembly. As he foresaw, in his feeling of unworthiness, that most of the refusals would be gathered upon his undignified head, he has in ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... have any claim,—he could not have done better with it than to leave it to his widow in fault of any issue of his own. Then the lawyer explained that were she to give it up, the world would of course say that she had done so from a feeling of her own unworthiness. "Why should I feel myself to be unworthy?" she asked. The lawyer smiled, and told her that of course she would ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... with somewhat short of unanimity, not indeed to be one of themselves, for of that distinction I acknowledge and deplore my unworthiness, nor indeed to be a poor scholar, to which, unless it be a very poor one, I have almost as small pretension, but simply to undertake awhile the heavier office of burser for them, to cast up their accounts; to overlook the scouring of their plate; and to lay a list thereof, with a few ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... other supernatural event, to have enabled me to resist your love, but God would have wrought the miracle, and I should have been worthy of it, and a motive sufficient for its being wrought. You are wrong to counsel me to become a priest. I know my own unworthiness. It was only pride that actuated me in my desire to be one. It was a worldly ambition, like any other. What do I say—like any other? It was worse than any other; it was a hypocritical, a sacrilegious, ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... astronomy, music, geography, and other sciences. His treatise against Christianity was answered by Eusebius, St. Jerome, and others; the Emperor Theodosius the Great, however, silenced it more effectually by causing all the copies to be burned. Porphyry asserts his own unworthiness when compared with his master, saying that he had been united to God but once in eighty-six years, whereas Plotinus had been so united six times in sixty years. In him is to be seen all the mysticism, and, it may be added, all the piety of Plotinus. He ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... became historic because it revealed the most serious disturbance in the Republican party since the war. Little was heard save apology, indignant protest, and appeal to tradition. Whatever Republican hope existed was based upon the unworthiness of the Democratic party. In a letter to an Albany meeting Folger declared, after highly praising his opponent, that "There is one difference which goes to the root of the matter when we are brought to view as public men and put forward to act in public affairs. He is ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... doth he dedicate one jot of colour Unto the weary and all-watched night; But freshly looks, and overbears attaint With cheerful semblance and sweet majesty; That every wretch, pining and pale before, Beholding him, plucks comfort from his looks: Then, mean and gentle all, Behold, as may unworthiness define, A little touch of Harry in the night: And so our scene must to the battle fly; The field of Agincourt. Yet, sit and see; Minding true things[7] by ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... quite an objective one. As Jonas often remarked, "she had a feelin' sense of other folkses unworthiness." And the sins which she appreciated were generally sins against herself. Julia's disobedience to herself was darker in her mind than murder committed on anybody else would have been. And now she sat deliberating, ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... was only meant to refer to the parochial clergy. He discussed the matter with Dr. Pusey, and with Dr. Liddon. The latter said that "he thought a deacon might lawfully, if he found himself unfit for the work, abstain from direct ministerial duty." And so, with many qualms about his own unworthiness, he at last decided to prepare ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... naturally enough in ultra-Radicalism according to the fashions of the Reform Bill era. That is the right thing; and for that he will work day and night, body and soul, and if needs be, die. There, in the editor's den at Leeds, he "begins to see the truth of what you told me about the world's unworthiness; but stop a little. I am not sad as yet. . . . If I am hindered from feeling the soul of poetry among woods and fields, I yet trust I am struggling for something worth prizing— something of which I am not ashamed, and need not be. If there be aught on earth worth aspiring to, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... animadversions, when they were yet not all printed, either officiousness or malice informed Dr. Browne; who wrote to sir Kenelm, with much softness and ceremony, declaring the unworthiness of his work to engage such notice, the intended privacy of the composition, and the corruptions of the impression; and received an answer equally genteel and respectful, containing high commendations of the piece, pompous professions of reverence, meek acknowledgments ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... the way she should go," and taught her to "remember her Creator in the days of her youth." Crushing vanity, which soon rose hydra-headed in her path, she implanted in her daughter's heart a sense of her own unworthiness, and led her to the "fountain of ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... refuse of thy deeds There is such strength and warrantise of skill, That, in my mind, thy worst all best exceeds? Who taught thee how to make me love thee more, The more I hear and see just cause of hate? O! though I love what others do abhor, With others thou shouldst not abhor my state: If thy unworthiness rais'd love in me, More worthy I to ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... represented to have been. Writing to Courayer in 1726, Archbishop Wake laments the infidelity and iniquity which abounded, but is of opinion that 'no care is wanting in our clergy to defend the Christian faith.'[694] John Wesley, while decrying the notion that the unworthiness of the minister vitiates the worth of his ministry, admits that 'in the present century the behaviour of the clergy in general is greatly altered for the better,' although he thinks them deficient both in ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... confirm it, and grant them the investiture of their respective shares. In this very reasonable petition his Holiness, well drilled in the part he was to play, acquiesced without difficulty; declaring himself moved thereto solely by his consideration of the pious intentions of the parties, and the unworthiness of King Frederic, whose treachery to the Christian commonwealth had forfeited all right (if he ever possessed any) to the crown of ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... in America, preaching every Sunday for months, could have done very much in the way of seriously touching the imagination of the crowd on the moral unworthiness, the intellectual degradation, the national danger of picking out the one thing that nearly all the people all do, and had to do, all day, every day, and making that thing mean, incompetent, and small. No one had thought out what it ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... wretchedness. This it was that enervated his heart and threw him into agonies, which all that profusion of heroic tenderness that the most excellent of women intended for his comfort served only to heighten and aggravate: as the more she rose in his admiration, the more she quickened the sense of his unworthiness. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... of the mother whom she adored, and the unworthiness of her father—combined to change the current of her free and happy life, and to deepen a natural vein of melancholy. In her loneliness of soul the convent seemed to offer itself as the sole haven of peace and rest. ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... of her unfitness, her unworthiness, to occupy the place to which he pointed. Not a doubt, not a fear, had she to express. He loved her, and that she knew; and she had no thought of depreciating his choice, its excellency or its wisdom. Whatever ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... her little finger; that she had only to beckon to him and he would follow her to the ends of the earth. Now fear had entered her heart. She no longer felt sure, because she no longer felt worthy, of him, and feeling both uncertainty and unworthiness, her lips were sealed and she was rendered incapable of making any ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... certainty of possession was in his heart. It often happens that one receiving for the first time a great and long-desired blessing, can feel, for the moment, not joy and triumph so much as awe and fear at its sudden glory of fairness in contact with his unworthiness. ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Christian Ideas and Ideals, p. 52. 'Christianity does justice both to man's inherent instinct that he has been made for God, and to his sense of unworthiness and incapacity.' ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... then, we resent the indignity to which you have been exposed, and lament the pain and annoyance which the manifestation of yourself must have cost you, we cannot but rejoice that, in the fulfilment of a duty, you have allowed neither the unworthiness of your assailant to shield him from rebuke, nor the sacredness of your inmost motives to deprive that rebuke of the only form which could at once complete his discomfiture, free your own name from the obloquy which prejudice had cast ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... anguish, compunction of feeling and contrition of heart, whilst I revolved all these things within myself; and, as God the searcher of the reins is witness, for the space of even ten years or more, [my inexperience, as at present also, and my unworthiness preventing me from taking upon myself the character of a censor. But I read how the illustrious lawgiver, for one word's doubting, was not allowed to enter the desired land; that the sons of the high-priest, for placing strange fire upon God's altar, ...
— On The Ruin of Britain (De Excidio Britanniae) • Gildas
... knowledge without faith, and prosperity apart from virtue; assuming the title of the champions of modern civilization, and placing themselves in a station which they usurp with insolence, and from which they are driven by their own unworthiness. Where are we then? The religionists are the enemies of liberty, and the friends of liberty attack religion; the high-minded and the noble advocate subjection, and the meanest and most servile minds preach independence; honest ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... trial, in every misfortune, I have met with your helping hand; yet I never dreamed or dared to cherish thy love, till a voice impaired with age encouraged the cause, and declared they who acquired thy favor should win a victory. I saw how Leos worshiped thee. I felt my own unworthiness. I began to KNOW JEALOUSLY, a strong guest—indeed, in my bosom, —yet I could see if I gained your admiration Leos was to be my rival. I was aware that he had the influence of your parents, and the wealth of a deceased relative, which is too often mistaken for permanent ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... produced a new one, similar in design, but filled with other thoughts and fancies, which his teeming imagination had projected, in its sheer abundance, and not from any feeling, right or fastidious, of unworthiness in its predecessor. Of several of these very striking fragments, large and grand in their aspect as they each started ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... and one to which Alaric found it very difficult to give any immediate answer. He said a great deal about his affection for Mrs. Woodward, of his admiration for Miss Woodward, of his strong sense of Captain Cuttwater's kindness, and of his own unworthiness; but he left the captain with an impression that he was not prepared at the present moment to put himself forward as ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... of Lebanon.' It is all right; the Fire does not dwell in them. 'Unto this man will I look, and with him will I dwell, who is of a humble and a contrite heart, and who trembleth at My word.' Let no sense of poverty, weakness, unworthiness, ever draw the faintest film of fear across our confidence, for even with us He will sojourn. For it is 'the goodwill of Him that dwelt in the bush' that we ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... way beneath it, and that he should die, as indeed in this dark hour he would have rejoiced to do. Oh, how pitiful it was—how pitiful and how awful! To think of this love, so passionately pure, wasted on his own unworthiness. To think of this divine woman going down to lonely death for him—a strong man; to picture her crouching behind that gateway pillar and touching him as he passed, while he, the thrice accursed fool, knew nothing till too late; to know that ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard |
