"Compunction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hat and coat, taking the position already determined. After they had worked more than an hour with much less talk than the day before, Nick being extremely absorbed and Miriam wearing in silence an air of noble compunction for the burden imposed on him, at the end of this period of patience, pervaded by a holy calm, our young lady suddenly got up and exclaimed, "I say, I must see it!"—with which, quickly, she stepped down from her place and came round to the canvas. She had at Nick's ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... cigarette, and with it all compunction. "Well, I wasn't so much interested in the dishes as in getting something to eat," he apologized. "I saw several different kinds. One was a big, awkward looking thing and was pretty heavy, and had straight ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... got up to go; he had omitted, by accident, to say that he would sing to her if she would play to him. He thought of this after he got into the street; but he might have spared his compunction, for Catherine had not noticed the lapse. She was thinking only that "some other time" had a delightful sound; it seemed to spread itself ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... if Helen knows the grit there is in that man," pondered Savine, when, seeing all protests were useless, he turned away, divided between compunction and gratitude. Neither he nor the lawyer succeeded in finding out how the drawing fell into hostile hands, while, if Geoffrey had his suspicions, he decided that it might be better not ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... would "give" in the middle like a broken rail—bend till his belly almost touched the ground, and remain bent till mounted; then he'd crawl off and gradually straighten up as he became used to you. Were you tender-hearted enough to feel compunction in sitting down hard on a six-year-old sore, or if you had an aversion to kicking the suffering brute with both heels and belting his hide with a yard or two of fencing-wire to get him to show signs of animation, you would dismount and walk—perhaps, weep. ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... more clearly the darkness of the guilt in which he believed, and was more bitterly repelled by the motive at which he guessed. But now at least his zeal was awake again, and the sense of the hunt quickened. He would neither slacken nor spare; here need be no compunction. In the course of the day, he hoped, his net would be complete. He had work to do in the morning; and with very vivid expectancy, though not much serious hope, he awaited the answer to the telegram which he had shot into the sky, as it were, ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... in for the first time. Although he had been frowning with vexation, some touch of compunction had held him silent. "I will not allow you to say that, nor should you wish to speak so." He hesitated, rubbing his chin perplexedly. "I acknowledge that I experience the same disgust that you do; yet I am not altogether certain that we are right. I remember hearing my father say ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... circumstances do not press upon their notice and its results are dimly seen, they can bear to contemplate it. They may take the steps which lead to crime, impelled by the same sort of mental action as in working out a mathematical problem, yet be powerless with compunction at the final moment. They knew not what deed it was that they deemed themselves resolved to do. In truth, there is no such thing in man's nature as a settled and full resolve, either for good or evil, except at the very moment of execution. Let us hope, therefore, ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... had had too long a discipline in the art of smoothing things over not to make a special effort to hide from each other the ravages of their first disagreement. But, deep down and invisible, the disagreement remained; and compunction for having been its cause gnawed at Susy's bosom as she sat in her tapestried and vaulted bedroom, brushing her hair before ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... a custom when a person of either sex becomes so old and infurm that they are unable to travel on foot from camp to camp as they rome in surch of subsistance, for the children or near relations of such person to leave them without compunction or remose; on those occasions they usually place within their reach a small peace of meat and a platter of water, telling the poor old superannuated wretch for his consolation, that he or she had lived long enough, that it was time they should ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... affairs, shaking off his old serious friends, and keeping company with buffoons and pickpockets, his father's sworn enemies; that he had best throw himself upon the mercy of the court, repent, and change his manners. To say truth, Jack heard these discourses with some compunction; however, he resolved to try what his new acquaintance would do for him. They sent Habakkuk Slyboots,* who delivered him the following message, as the peremptory commands ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... thought behind Audrey's spiritual coquetry. His ministration to a living illusion was almost as touching as his devotion to a dead ideal. But Audrey herself was too completely the thrall of the illusion to feel compunction. ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... have no use fer Chinks," said the mucker, as though in extenuation of his suggestion that they murder the youth. For some unaccountable reason he had felt a sudden compunction because of his thoughtless remark. What in the world was coming over him, he wondered. He'd be wearing white pants and playing lawn tennis presently if he continued to grow much softer and ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... well knew now that he was in a nest of horse-thieves and desperadoes; but he dared not show his suspicions, as he felt assured they would kill him without the slightest compunction. ...
— Beadle's Boy's Library of Sport, Story and Adventure, Vol. I, No. 1. - Adventures of Buffalo Bill from Boyhood to Manhood • Prentiss Ingraham
... fancy, Theo!' cut in Geoff excitedly, and forgetting all his recent twinges of compunction. 'Jerry trains the bullfinches with a queer little musical instrument, a bird organ it is called. The notes are as like their own as they can possibly be, Jerry says so. He is going to show us the one he has got of his own. Old Frenchy, who taught him how to train, gave him ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... do so the whole race of rattle-snakes would rise up and bite them. Under the influence of the white man, however, their respect for their grandfather the rattle-snake gradually died away, till at last they killed him without compunction or ceremony whenever they met him. The writer who records the old custom observes that he had often reflected on the curious connection which appears to subsist in the mind of an Indian between man and the brute creation; "all animated nature," says he, "in whatever degree, is in their ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... also. Now that she was quite alone and free to think things out, as she had shrunk from doing heretofore, and as, in the rush of the London season, she had been able to avoid doing, she felt a sense of compunction toward ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... barbarous; he was a mighty hunter. Wherefore the children of blessed Shem, by this monster, had sore affliction (Judg 4:2,3). Noah therefore lived to see Nimrod, the mighty one, make havock of the children of his bowels, to his no little grief and compunction of spirit. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... tell thee, who is as wicked as he can be, is a worse man than I am. Let me ask any rake in England, if, resolving to carry his point, he would have been so long about it? or have had so much compunction as I ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... pale and sad. I cannot say that Mrs. Hazleton, when she beheld Emily's changed look, felt any great compunction. If she had no great desire to torture, which I will not pretend to say, she did not at all object to see her victim suffer; but Emily's pale cheek and distressed look afforded indications still more satisfactory; which Mrs. Hazleton remarked with the satisfaction ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... the doctor. "A nasty clawing; but these men get over far worse wounds than that. There, keep your eyes open; we must try and take revenge. I never feel any compunction in shooting a tiger. There isn't room for them in ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... figure was impressive there—high up on the edge of the slope; the still, shining sea far below her; and all around her and illumining her, as it were, the reddening glow flooding over from the westering sun. Nan—perhaps moved by some subtle compunction, perhaps only in token of friendly remembrance—took out her handkerchief and waved it twice; but there ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... spite and his cupidity; and the man of peace and letters, whose temperament shrank from contention of any kind, could not but congratulate himself upon an incidental triumph for which it was impossible to feel the smallest compunction. Moreover, he had gained his point. It was enough for him to know that there was a certain secret in Steel's life, upon which the wretch Abel had admittedly traded, even as his superior Minchin had apparently intended to do before him. Only those two seemed to have been in this secret, ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... I," rejoined the boy, doubling up his fist with intense enjoyment. "Wouldn't I like to pitch into her for marrying papa! But yet," with a sudden compunction, "she gave us lots of cake. And she looked rather ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... the child's face, the dark eyes brimming with rising tears, and the little mouth drawn and trembling, might have touched some men; indeed, even Caffyn felt a languid compunction for what he was doing. But his only chance lay in working upon her fears; he could not afford to be sentimental just then, and so he went on, carefully ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... that the threats held out are somewhat inconsistent with my only having a single ship, without a soldier in her; and I must even confess to some compunction at this off-hand sketch of an imaginary fleet and army—but the matter was of the last importance. On the one hand, if my demands were vigorously pressed, there was a strong probability of obtaining them without bloodshed; but, on the other hand, if any delay ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... bring that out himself?—of a repudiation, for pity and almost for shame, of everything that in Venice had passed between them. Not that she would confess to any return upon herself; not that she would let compunction or horror give her away; but it was in the air for him—yes—that she wouldn't want details, that she positively wouldn't take them, and that, if he would generously understand it from her, she would prefer to keep him down. Nothing, however, was more ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... who kills more babies than ever Herod did. Then there were minnows, and herrings, and lizards, and frogs, and weasels, and water-snakes, and other butchers of all sorts and sizes, too numerous to mention. And perhaps the worst of all were the older trout, who never seemed to have the least compunction about eating their small relations, and who were so nimble and lively that it was almost impossible to keep out of their way. Our friend spent most of his time in the shallow water near the banks, where larger fishes were not so likely to follow him, but even there he had many narrow escapes ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... Dick, who had naturally a tender heart, though hardened by his long familiarity with sin, could not help crying when he thought that Tom Price might perhaps be transported for a crime which he himself had helped to commit. He had had no compunction about the robbery, for he had not been instructed in the great principles of truth and justice; nor would he, therefore, perhaps have had much remorse about accusing an innocent boy. But, though utterly devoid of principle, he had some remains of natural feeling and of ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... weeks ago an admission like that would have been inconceivable. It was odd, he thought, how one thing led to another and produced an end that could not be foreseen. Now he could lie and dissemble with the best. He had no compunction about falsifying a requisition, or stealing what he could not obtain with apparent honesty. His character had sunk to an all-time low, he reflected with grim humor as he walked into the shadow of the main building. Neither Blalok's nor Jordan's frequent visits bothered him. Both men were creatures ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... warrior, and one or two others have features exceedingly resembling some of the Provencal noblesse of France: the common expression is, however, almost uniformly characteristic of their nature, cold, crafty, and cruel; I hardly found one face in which I could have looked for either mercy or compunction—always excepting the women, of whom here are a few specimens. It would be but gallant to add to the number, if there are many such amongst the tribes; for the features of these are pretty, their expression truly feminine and gentle, with the most ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... to the bureau and discover the loss before he got out of the house, which would make it awkward for him. Once out in the street, he breathed more freely. He had enough with him to pay his only debt, and give him four hundred dollars extra. It might be supposed he would feel some compunction at robbing his stepmother of her all. Whatever her faults, she was devoted to him. But Willis Ford had a hard, selfish nature, and the only thought that troubled him was the fear that he might be found out. Indeed, ...
— Helping Himself • Horatio Alger
... by her husband's hand she beheld the lad in a sweet slumber, murmuring a faint inarticulate word or two in his sleep, a faint blush quivering on his cheek, she owned he was a pretty lad indeed, and confessed with a sort of compunction that neither of her two boys—Jack who was at Oxford, and Charles who was just gone back to school after the Bartlemytide holidays—was half so handsome as the Virginian. What a good figure the boy had! and when papa bled him, his arm was ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... different from his preconceived ideas, as he thought he was going on a picnic, and he often grumbled and declared he would like to go back again. However, to remain at the camp, with nothing whatever to do and plenty to eat, admirably suited him, and I felt no compunction in leaving him by himself. I would not have asked him to remain if I were in any way alarmed at ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... from her son, presented herself early with a tray on which were coffee and toast, and the girl had more than a twinge of compunction at being waited on by the worn, ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... for this lady. D'Artagnan in vain sought to make out what caused her delay. She continued praying, and frequently pressed her handkerchief to her face, by which D'Artagnan perceived she was weeping. He beheld her strike her breast with the compunction of a Christian woman. He heard her several times exclaim as from a wounded heart: "Pardon! pardon!" And as she appeared to abandon herself entirely to her grief, as she threw herself down, almost fainting, exhausted by complaints and prayers, D'Artagnan, touched by this love for his ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Without fear—without compunction, she approached the bed. The body was laid out: stretched in its winding sheet, stiff and stark did it seem to repose on the mattress—the countenance rendered more ghastly than even death could make it, by the white band which ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... September, 1859. On that night, for the first time in his life, he did not say his prayers. "I suppose the sense of change was so great that it shook them quietly off. I was not then a sceptic; I had got as far as disbelief in infant baptism, but no further. I felt no compunction of conscience, however, about leaving off my morning and evening prayers—simply I could no longer ...
— Samuel Butler: A Sketch • Henry Festing Jones
... and the tears came into her eyes. She felt that she had been somewhat harsh to him; but she felt, too, with great thankfulness, that, despite this softening compunction, her heart was free and firm. She had great liking, but not a particle of ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... justice, who had heard of Sir Launcelot's family and fortune, though an utter stranger to his person, was seized with such pangs of terror and compunction, as a grovelling mind may be supposed to have felt in such circumstances; and they seemed to produce the same unsavoury effects that are so humorously delineated by the inimitable Hogarth, in his print of Felix on his tribunal, done in the Dutch style. Nevertheless, seeing Fillet retire ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... they rode off, a week later. She had no compunction about staying, while the Kaffir man was to come back with the empty wagon and team when the pilgrims reached the big town, from whence travelling was easy to ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... me last night," said King, drawing on imagination without any compunction at all, "that the fight in the Khyber was because a ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... men, America, with the unflinching directness that has marked her course, whether in good or in evil, responded with spontaneous loyalty to the inspiration of her highest instincts. Shamed into compunction and remorse at the solid fame and general sympathy secured for himself by a son of her soil, whom, in the wantonness of pride and power, she had denied all fostering care (not, indeed, for any conscious offending on his part, but ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... gathered together in their fastnesses, in which they knew themselves to be safe from Israel's attacks. [716] Their fear was in reality quite without foundation, for Israel never dreamed of transgressing God's command by waging war upon Lot's descendants. They might without compunction keep the former provinces of Moab and Ammon because they took them not from these, but from Sihon and Og, who had captured ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... directed us to a closed house on the bank of the canal where Tebureimoa lay unguarded. We entered without ceremony, being in some haste. He lay on the floor upon a bed of mats, reading in his Gilbert Island Bible with compunction. On our sudden entrance the unwieldy man reared himself half-sitting so that the Bible rolled on the floor, stared on us a moment with blank eyes, and, having recognised his visitors, sank again upon the mats. So ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that Omar deemed the child a useless encumbrance or a valueless article, or was visited by one of those touches of compunction which are well-known to assail at times the breasts of even the worst of pirates, we cannot tell; but no such clemency was extended to Jim's father. The Dey positively refused either to give him up or to promise his personal safety, nor would he ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... to gain an end, and to help one to break a vow solely for one's own gratification. The enormous responsibility of so taking fate into their own hands would frighten most people, if they gave themselves time to think—but they do not. Nine-tenths of them have no compunction in breaking vows, because they do not realise that by making them they have connected themselves with currents and assumed responsibilities the consequences of which to themselves they cannot possibly eventually avoid, no matter how they may try ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn
... Miss Pross's personal history had established the fact that her brother Solomon was a heartless scoundrel who had stripped her of everything she possessed, as a stake to speculate with, and had abandoned her in her poverty for evermore, with no touch of compunction. Miss Pross's fidelity of belief in Solomon (deducting a mere trifle for this slight mistake) was quite a serious matter with Mr. Lorry, and had its weight in ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... do, would it?" she said, still retaining Sylvia's hand. Then a little dim ripple of compunction broke in her mind. "Michael," she said, "we are only joking about your getting conceited. Miss Falbe and I are only joking. And—and won't you take off your hat, Miss Falbe, for you are not going to hurry away, are you? You are going to ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... me? Take up your sword, man, and do my bidding; thus shall you have a slender chance of life. Refuse and I pistol you without compunction. So now put on ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... stake. If thou canst not make men wise, do not make them merry at thy cost. We are not to be paganised any more. Having struck from our calendars, and unnailed from our chapels, many dozens of decent saints, with as little compunction and remorse as unlucky lads throw frog-spawn and tadpoles out of stagnant ditches, never let us think of bringing back among us the daintier divinities they ousted. All these are the devil's imps, beautiful as they appear in what we falsely call works of ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... a few hundred pounds for his favourite grandson; and, at all events, he felt that the ultimate resource of selling his commission was still reserved for him. If these vague prospects did not drive away compunction, the qualms of conscience were generally allayed in the evening assembly, in which his vanity was gratified. At length he paid his first visit to England. That was a happy meeting. His kind father, his dear, dear mother, and the faithful ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... the deliverance, while Mrs. Pennel was sobbing in her handkerchief, Miss Roxy was much scandalized by seeing the young cause of all the disturbance sitting upon his heels, regarding the emotion of the kneeling party with his wide bright eyes, without a wink of compunction. ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... willingness to undertake the task suggested. They felt no compunction over the seizure ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... burst out crying then and there, and ran away and hid. It was very silly of me, but I couldn't help it. That stings me yet. If I was ever to get a chance to pay Lou Carroll out for that, I'd take it without any compunction." ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... as he was, he did not like his secret to be divulged. He was angry with Cadet for referring to it in the presence of so many who knew not that a strange lady was residing at Beaumanoir. He was too thoroughly a libertine of the period to feel any moral compunction for any excess he committed. He was habitually more ready to glory over his conquests, than to deny or extenuate them. But in this case he had, to the surprise of Cadet, been very reticent, and shy of speaking of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... to be impertinent. I'm supposed to read all you fellows' letters before I stamp them. I'd be rather glad if they were liable to be censored again at the Base or somewhere else en route; it would relieve me of any compunction about the first reading, the text and preamble of the envelope would be good enough for me. You fellows ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... to-night?" he said. His fingers, always tenacious and masterful, continued to hold hers. The compunction that had driven him temporarily towards sacrifice had passed. His pride, his confidence, and with them his desire, had flowed back in ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... now. Rising, he leaned over the table and read the few words the other had spread out for his perusal. Then he slowly rose to his full height, as he answered, with some slight display of compunction: ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... opened into a yard, which seemed the storehouse for old rubbish—a safe enough place to alight in. When she returned to the street she saw the "Pretender" coming along, wheeling two bicycles; and her relief at seeing him was mingled with compunction at giving him such ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... nature, which Newton stole, as described in the Gentleman's Magazine, July, 1782, p. 329. These laws are illustrated in the whizgig. There is the harsh astringent, attractive compression; the bitter compunction, repulsive expansion; and the stinging anguish, duplex motion. The author hints that he has written other works, to which he gives no clue. I have heard that Behmen was pillaged by Newton, and Swedenborg[583] by Laplace,[584] ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... while Gibbie rose, tried to walk, but failed, and getting down on his hands and knees, crawled out after her. Angus caught a glimpse of his face as he crept past him, and then first recognized the boy he had lashed. Not compunction, but an occasional pang of dread lest he should have been the cause of his death, and might come upon his body in one of his walks, had served so to fix his face in his memory, that, now he had a near view of ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... Countess, "as well may you ask a hungry lion to feel compassion, as a prejudiced and furious people to do justice. They are like the madman at the height of frenzy, who murders without compunction his best and dearest friend; and only wonders and wails over his own cruelty, when he is recovered ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... still go home safe and sound to Burgundy. The grim champion answered that she wasted her words, and that he had sworn an oath not to show the hoard while any of his lords still lived. At that answer a terrible thought entered the mind of Kriemhild, and without the least compunction she ordered that her brother Gunther's life be taken. They struck off his head like that of a common malefactor, and by the hair she carried it to the Knight of Trony. Full sorrowfully he gazed upon it, then turning his eyes away from the haggard and distorted features, ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... my college aspirations was broken once for all. My Temple was destroyed. Nothing was left of it but vague yearnings and something like a feeling of compunction which will assert itself, ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... possibly have behaved better than Quentyns did during this trying time. A certain feeling of compunction had visited him when he discovered how real Judy's illness was. He was assailed by a momentary pricking of his conscience, but as the little girl quickly grew better, and was soon pronounced by the doctor to be quite out of danger, it was but natural that an active ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... differential thermometer, detecting the presence or absence of the divine sentiment in man. By fault of our dulness and selfishness, we are looking up to nature, but when we are convalescent, nature will look up to us. We see the foaming brook with compunction; if our own life flowed with the right energy, we should shame the brook. The stream of zeal sparkles with real fire, and not with reflex rays of sun and moon. Nature may be as selfishly studied as trade. Astronomy to the selfish becomes astrology; ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Slavery agitation in Congress over the admission of the State of Missouri, and how it eventuated in the Missouri Compromise. That compromise, we have seen, they afterward trod upon, and broke, with as little compunction as they would have stepped upon ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... and contradictory in his statements to Pike: no wonder he fancied the ghost of the man he could have saved and did not, might now and then be hovering about him. Pike learned the real truth at last; and a compunction had come over him, now that he was dying, for having doubted ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... muttered Paco, a slight expression of compunction coming over his features, "and I strung him up without priest or prayer. But, what then! those gitanos are worse than Jews, they believe neither in God nor devil. As for his death, he deserves it, the dog, ten times over. And if he didn't, Dona Rita's fate depends on my escape, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... round for a moment like some huge leviathan tossing its prey. He sank into its gorge, and the insatiate gulf swallowed him up for ever. Anthony drew back. He turned from the horrid scene, with some yet lingering tokens of compunction, in the expectation of rejoining his companions; but in vain—the babes and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... money he may have saved in his pocket, is allowed so much as half a biscuit beyond his proper ration. Any riotous person who endangered the safety of the rest would be bound, and laid in the bottom of the boat, without the smallest compunction, for such violation of the principles of individual liberty; and, on the other hand, any child, or woman, or aged person, who was helpless, and exposed to great danger and suffering by their weakness, would receive more than ordinary care and indulgence, not unaccompanied with unanimous self-sacrifice ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... "He feels no compunction," they declared, "about exposing the Holy Order of St. Francis to derision and disgrace. He deserves the most ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... of compunction swept over me. I went up to him and put my hand on his shoulder. 'Henry, dear old chap, I never thought you felt like this about things.' Certainly he was writing a play, but as he had been engaged on it now for over ten years (Henry is a conscientious writer), my interest in it was not so ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... Choisy at once. Come; be stirring. In God's name, girl, bethink you that we have not a moment to lose. I know these Republicans, and how far they are to be trusted. This fellow would betray me to save his skin with as little compunction as—" ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... offers of marriage which she accepted in succession, abandoning one suitor after the other without any adequate reason or any feeling of compunction. At length she unexpectedly accepted a man of whom she ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... he felt some compunction at having wounded my feelings; and swore a round oath that he was only joking, and I was a fool. "Did I think, for a moment, that Wally should get the start of him; no—I was an honest chap, and he'd put his fist to double the amount to serve me;" and then bade me "sit to the books," ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... that they were to be respected. In all, he had made only one serious blunder. He should never have permitted the vision of a face to deter him. He should have taken the things from the safe and vanished. It had not been, a matter of compunction. And yet . . . Ah, he was human, whatever his dream might be; and he loved this American girl with all his heart and mind. It was not lawless love, but it was ruthless. When the time was ripe he would speak. Only a little while ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... each other so gallantly with a trembling compunction. Mrs. Herrick, who trusted her, was giving her hand in sublime ignorance. It was vain that Flora told herself she had given warning. She knew she had thrown the softening veil of her spiritual crisis over the ugly material fact. Had she said, "I want you to uphold me while I ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... soldierly virtues. But, further, there was not a man in the room who would have felt the smallest compunction in cutting any man's throat if he had full pockets, or shaming any woman's honor if she had good looks. These were their brigand's vices. Fearless in their conduct, filthy in their lives, the assembled rogues were as ugly a bunch of brutalities as ever sprawled in a ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... we had tasted nothing that morning, and we had rode for eight hours, and were dying of hunger! Moreover we travelled with a cook, a very tolerable native artist, but without sentiment—his heart in his stew-pan; and he, without the least compunction, had begun his frying and broiling operations in what seemed the very vestibule of Pharaoh's palace. Our own mozos and our Indian guides were assisting in its operations with the utmost zeal; and in a few minutes, some sitting ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... who had dreamed what would come? Who could have believed that great nations would discard without compunction all the carefully built-up conventions of international law? That murder in the air, on land, on the sea, under the sea, would be rewarded by the highest military honours? That a supposedly friendly nation ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... own concerns. And because Helen was tender-hearted under all her social armor, and because she and Isabel were fonder of one another than one would have thought possible, considering the diversities between them, she was smitten with swift compunction and hastily withdrew so much of her protest as touched ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... in Mr. Judson the linen draper I had to deal with a very different person from the Rev. Jonah Goodge. He questioned me closely as to my motive in seeking information on the subject of the departed Haygarth, and I had some compunction in diplomatising with him as I had diplomatised with Mr. Goodge. To hoodwink the wary Jonah was a triumph—to deceive the confiding linen draper was a shame. However, as I have before set down, I suppose at the falsest I am not much farther from the truth than a barrister or a diplomatist. Mr. Judson ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... What, out of compunction for a certain sharpness with which she had spoken, Mrs. Halifax was about to wish, remained undeclared. For, just this minute, Guy entered, and leaning his handsome head and his tender petits soins over ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... thus abducting his novel-reading public I shall feel no compunction. His serious verse and his society dialogues bring him in so much that he cannot be ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... he behaved himself stupidly, not seeming to have a just concern for the offence which he had committed. He was sullen, would say very little, did not deny the crime for which he died, but yet did not seem to have that compunction which might have been expected from a ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... did; no sailor has the least compunction at even running down a privateer. Mercy to privateersmen is unknown. "Give them the stem," is the word, the curs being regarded by Jack at the best as highwaymen; so, when he found we still peppered away, and sailing two feet for our one, the ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... protracted snore, touched me on the back with the coarse velvet of his nose. Then followed two quick snorts of alarm; the horses shied simultaneously outward, while down on the ground between them came two souls with but a single thud, two hearts that squelched as one. In spite of the compunction and sympathy I felt, modesty compelled me to glide unobstrusively away, leaving the souls to disentangle themselves and catch their horses ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... the vision of early summer that the words called up; perhaps it was the smile, half-seen in the semi-dark, that curved her provoking lips; perhaps it was compunction for his share in the tragedy of the Connemara mare; but possibly without any of these explanations Rupert would have done as he did, which was to place his hand on Fanny Fitz's as it lay ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... placed before them, of which they offered their intended victim a share; but, it will readily be believed, he had little appetite. When this was removed, the party resumed their devotions. Macbriar, whose fierce zeal did not perhaps exclude some feelings of doubt and compunction, began to expostulate in prayer, as if to wring from the Deity a signal that the bloody sacrifice they proposed was an acceptable service. The eyes and ears of his hearers were anxiously strained, as if to gain some sight or sound which might be converted or wrested into a type of approbation, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the loss of five thousand pounds through the dog, and strange to say, what vexed him more, the loss of the dog's eye; and when he thought of all these things, his heart was elated, and he rejoiced in the death of Smallbones, and no longer felt any compunction. But a light is coming aft, and Vanslyperken is waiting the anticipated report. It is a solitary purser's dip, as they are termed at sea, emitting but feeble rays; and Vanslyperken's eyes are directed to the door of the cabin to see who carries it. To his horror, his dismay, it is brought in ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... community of his caste-fellows, and here absolutely no discredit is attached to grinding the faces of the poor, but on the contrary the honour and consideration accruing to him are in direct proportion to his wealth. The agent may have some compunction, but his first aim is to please his principal, and as he is often a sojourner liable to early transfer he cares little what may be said or thought ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... compunction helped him to put the Varr case, and even Miss Ocky, out of his mind for the balance of the morning while he laboriously worked through an accumulation of other matters that had been waiting for his personal attention. At one o'clock he went to the ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... first of men who have tried to find in vain how and when a relationship becomes an entanglement. He ought to break off now, and the riddle was just why he should feel this compunction in breaking off now. He had disappointed her, and he ought not to have disappointed her; that was the essential feeling. He had never realized before as he realized now this peculiar quality of his own mind and the gulf ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... comfort bring you? Speak cheerfully: how did my letter work On his hard temper? I am sure I wrote it So feelingly, and with the pen of sorrow, That it must force Compunction. ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... Compunction smote me. Her voice sounded more faint, as if from fatigue or discouragement. It seemed to me that the blade against my wrist had relaxed its menace of pressure and just rested in position. I seemed to read my lady's weariness in the slackened vigilance. Perhaps she was really frightened, ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... pause that might have been for pity. "No, I can't pretend I think she's finished—or that it's for more than to-night." She remained pensive as if with the same compunction. "It's only up to her chin." Then again for the fun of ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... of the play interested Howells, but he had twinges of conscience in the matter of using Orion as material. He wrote: "More than once I have taken the skeleton of that comedy of ours and viewed it with tears..... I really have a compunction or two about helping to put your brother into drama. You can say that he is your brother, to do what you like with him, but the alien hand might inflict an incurable hurt ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... seem to be a whit less at home than in fashion's gilded halls; and now they are at Newgate, seeing the irons knocked off the malefactors' legs previous to execution. What hardened ferocity in the countenance of the desperado in yellow breeches! What compunction in the face of the gentleman in black (who, I suppose, has been forging), and who clasps his hands, and listens to the chaplain! Now we haste away to merrier scenes: to Tattersall's (ah gracious powers! what a funny fellow that actor was who performed Dicky Green in that scene in the ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... compunction Price broke the seal of the intercepted letter and read it aloud to me. It was a shocking thing, accusing me with Martin, and taunting my husband with the falseness of ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... thing," he once said, "as real conversation but between two persons." He was free from malice, meanness, or jealousy, Pope to the contrary notwithstanding. He was absolutely loyal to his principles and to his friends, in a time when many men changed both with as little compunction as they changed wigs and swords. His personality was singularly winning; his features regular, and full of refinement and intelligence; his bearing dignified and graceful; his temper kindly and in perfect control; his character without a stain; his conversation enchanting, its charm confessed ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... are going to see your sister?" put in Ilinka with a smile, but without looking at me. "Well, I too have business to attend to." At this I felt even more put out, as well as pricked with compunction; so, to soften my refusal a little, I hastened to say that the reason why I should not be at home that day was that I had to call upon the PRINCE Ivan Ivanovitch, the PRINCESS Kornakoff, and the Monsieur Iwin who held such an influential post, as well as, probably, to dine with the ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... say it to my shame, but I cannot see you in this poor place without compunction. It is not my single thought, nor my first; and yet it's there! I would gladly see you delivered. I do not offer it in love, and far from that; but, as God judges me—and I wonder at ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stoop'd, and would have spoke; but he, Ere my beginning, by his ear perceiv'd I did him reverence; and "What cause," said he, "Hath bow'd thee thus!"—"Compunction," I rejoin'd. "And inward awe ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... covered the Laurentian fur trade for ten years. The condition was that he should convey to Canada fifty colonists a year throughout the full period of his grant. So far from carrying out this agreement either in spirit or letter, he shirked it without compunction. After three years the monopoly was withdrawn, less on the ground that he had failed to fulfil his contract than from an outcry on the part of merchants who desired their share of the trade. To {19} adjudicate ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... profit by it. Robin's divergence from his father's ways was, secretly, an acute disappointment to her. When she caressed Nelly with a warmth which none of her friends would have credited her with possessing, there was compunction with the tenderness. The child ought to have had the delight of marrying a soldier, a hero whom she could adore, as she herself had adored her Gerald. When she pressed the golden head to her angular bosom she was asking the girl's ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... to himself, "I can go forward with less compunction. I can gratify my desire for excitement and adventure with perfect safety. I will stay with them for a while, and when I am tired can leave them without any entanglements." When the situation had been regarded for a little while from this point of view, he felt happier ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... compunction in lifting the second, and this being replaced, he began to sound others with his knuckles, to find that they all gave forth the ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... bitterness was sweeping over her heart. In the first agony caused by Annabel's death Maggie had vowed a vow to her own heart never, under any circumstances, to consent to be Hammond's wife. In the first misery of regret and compunction it had been easy to Maggie Oliphant to make such a vow; but she knew well, as the days and months went by, that its weight was crushing her life, was destroying her chance of ever becoming a really strong and good woman. If she had loved Hammond a year ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... continued to possess, for Madam de Warrens; but for this very reason, our tete-a-tetes were a hundred times more delightful. When with Madam de Warrens, my felicity was always disturbed by a secret sadness, a compunction of heart, which I found it impossible to surmount. Instead of being delighted at the acquisition of so much happiness, I could not help reproaching myself for contributing to render her I loved unworthy: on the contrary, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... an unclean Humbug, in which Greed is God and Gall is recognized high-priest. We now consider our fortunes rather than our affections, acquire a husband or wife much as we would a parrot or a poodle, and get rid of them with about as little compunction. Cupid now feathers his arrows from the wings of the gold eagle and shoots at the stomach instead of the heart. Love without law makes angels blush; but law without love crimson even the brazen brow ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... few moments the long strain and reaction proved too much for her, and she sat, pale and panting, her head resting against Zany, who had rushed from her covert. The young men were overwhelmed with compunction and alarm, but she retained and silenced them by a gesture. "I'll be—better—in a moment," ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... cause of his race, without a trace of personal hope or fear; who laid his plans so shrewdly that they came at last with less warning than any earthquake on the doomed community around; and who, when that time arrived, took the life of man, woman, and child, without a throb of compunction, a word of exultation, or an act of superfluous outrage? Mrs. Stowe's "Dred" seems dim and melodramatic beside the actual Nat Turner, and De Quincey's "Avenger" is his only parallel in imaginative literature. Mr. Gray, his counsel, rises into ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... times with a soft regret to hopes, disappointments, experiences connected with neither, and now tinged with a tender melancholy, unalloyed by shame or remorse. As he drew nearer to Class Day he had a somewhat keener compunction for Cynthia and the hopes he had encouraged her to build and had then dashed. But he was coming more and more to regard it all as fatality; and if the chance that he counted upon to bring him and Bessie together again had occurred he could have ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... extremity Rosario was a first aid to the injured. She had betrayed the bandits without the least compunction, because they had ignored the oath of vengeance against the slayer of her son; but she nursed them all impartially and skillfully until the doctor ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... mere friction of contact may produce bad nicks. Nor is the fineness nor the excellence of the product an insurance against mishaps. From your factories or stores your output is at the mercy of carriers without compunction, and in our homes it is exposed to the heavy hands of servants without sentiment. The pleasure of many a dinner is impaired by the fear or the consciousness that inapt peasants are playing havoc with the treasures of art on which the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... care if I do," responded the youngster; "and I have the less compunction in taking it, as it belongs to us anyhow. In two hours you will be surrounded and bagged. You can't escape. How in the Devil's name you ever got here, is a wonder ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... I see," chattered away the old man, not without some slight compunction. "But in my opinion she's too dark for such somber dresses. I've told her so a score of times." Then as he watched the woman before him rolling up the goods he proceeded to ask with fussy importunity what she thought the express charges were likely to be, for he wanted to pay the whole ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... his own mind what he would take with him, but now it had come to the point he felt a strange compunction. Everything he possessed seemed to him as if it belonged to the doctor, and, finally, he resolved to take nothing with him but the clothes in ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... the fellow one of these days, though," exclaimed Captain Calder. "And if he proves to be a pirate, and I believe he is very little better, we'll hang him without compunction at his ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... not a shadow of a Kupelweiser. Kupelweiser, though the teacher of Steinle was considerably inferior to him in drawing—that firmness and elegance of outline, that harmony of composition, that piety, that genuine compunction which is dominant in the faces of the saints—that is Steinle, the purest Steinle, undoubted Steinle, whose collection of cartoons ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... to another, picking up little cakes filled with cream and soaked in syrup. They eat scores of them, and they do it every day and any hour of the day, in the morning or afternoon or whenever they happen to pass. No wonder they look pasty-faced! We are only here for once, so we need have no compunction about our digestions, especially as there is an empty place left after that tantalising bacon-less breakfast. We are soon provided with a plate each and a little implement which looks as if it had started ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... public, put forth a "Defence," in which he naturally declined to submit to the judgment of this reviewer. But my readers will remark, that Mr. Martineau, writing against me, and seeking to rebut my replies to him—(nay, I fear I must say my attack on him; for I have confessed, almost with compunction, that it was I who first stirred the controversy)—was very favourably situated for maintaining a calmly judicial impartiality. He thought us both wrong, and he administered to us each the medicine which seemed to him needed. He passed ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... blurred and he had no control over his muscles. Weakly he leaned against the table in front of the jury, the room swaying about him. The pains of hell gat hold upon him. He was dying. Even the staff felt compunction—all ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... his sole stock in trade. David was a handy man. He at once knew that he was capable of putting it in perfect repair. Strangely enough, for his sense of right and wrong was not blunted, he had no compunction whatever in keeping this umbrella, although he was reasonably certain that it belonged to one of the two young girls who had been so terrified by him. He had a conviction that this monstrous terror of theirs, which had hurt him more than ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Supreme Court of the United States has absolved her from all her feelings of humanity? "The parting!" Where has she lived not to know how, according to our lecturers, families are parted at the auction-block in the Southern States without the least compunction? We are constantly told,—has she not heard it?—that the slave at the South is a mere "chattel," and that a slave-child is bought and sold as recklessly as a calf, and that a parting between a slave-mother and her children, sold and separated for life, ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... Compositor (printer) kompostisto. Compound kunmeti. Comprehend kompreni. Comprehensible komprenebla. Comprehension kompreneco. Compress kunpremi. Compressible kunpremebla. Comprise enhavi. Compromise kompromiti. Compromise kompromiso. Compulsion devigo. Compunction memriprocxo. Computation kalkulo. Compute kalkuli. Comrade kamarado. Concave kaveta. Conceal kasxi. Consecutive intersekva. Concede cedi. Conceit malmodesteco. Conceited malmodesta. Conceive gravedigxi. Concentrate ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... is true, did not care much for anything that did not appeal to his taste and smell and delight in brilliant color; and he trod down the exquisite ferns and the wonderful mosses—without compunction. But he gathered from the crevices of the rocks the columbine and the eglantine and the blue harebell; he picked the high-flavored alpine strawberry, the blueberry, the boxberry, wild currants and gooseberries, and fox-grapes; he brought home armfuls ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... "Tell Mr. Maguire about this interview. Tell him that I spared you, because you are not the principal. But tell him from me, that if a word is breathed against Mrs. Rivington, I swear that I'll search for him till I find him, and when I find him I'll kill him with as little compunction as I would a rattlesnake." Peter turned and going to his dressing-room, washed away the ink from ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... reasons for believing that Haendel never took the trouble to examine any of Bach's clavichord music. He lived like a conqueror in a foreign land, writing operas, oratorios, and concertos to order, and stealing ideas right and left without compunction; whereas Bach wrote from conviction, and no charge of plagiarism was ever laid at his door. Haendel left a great fortune of twenty thousand pounds. Bach's small salary at the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig made it necessary for him to do much of his ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... in silence. Then compunction seized him and he remarked on the beauty of the foliage. She assented easily, but seemed no more relieved by the speech than embarrassed by the silence. It was impossible to treat her as a hired servant: one felt a strong personality ...
— In The Valley Of The Shadow • Josephine Daskam
... your unequall'd virtues, And wrung with deep compunction for your wrongs, By his own hand the wretched ...
— Percy - A Tragedy • Hannah More
... the picture. But the entire wardrobe costs less than the hat I wear on Sunday. Then the comfort of these inexpensive habiliments! I need not be fastidious in such a garb, but can loll on the grass without compunction. When I get mud upon my big shoes I simply scrape it off with a chip, and that's all there is to it. The dirt on my overalls is honest dirt, and honestly come by, and so needs no apology. I can talk to my neighbor ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... Correspondant, a review which attempted to cover the imperious theories of the Church with a varnish of tolerance. Veuillot, franker and more open, scorned such masks, unhesitatingly admitted the tyranny of the ultramontaine doctrines and confessed, with a certain compunction, the pitiless yoke of the ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans |
