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Contrite   /kəntrˈaɪt/   Listen
Contrite

adjective
1.
Feeling or expressing pain or sorrow for sins or offenses.  Synonyms: remorseful, rueful, ruthful.



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"Contrite" Quotes from Famous Books



... jokingly, "I can't imagine a friend going back on you. However, I'll not be curious about this chap. He appears contrite, and the incident is closed. But all the same, this is one of the queerest cases I've had in all my experience," and he went ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... And the troubled voice in which he spoke rang with so much pain that she was at once contrite with remorse. ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason

... that she will take her pudding—her pension, I mean (see 30th November), and is contrite, as H[enry] M[ackenzie] vouches. I am glad the stout old girl is not foreclosed; faith, cabbing a pension in these times is like hunting a pig with a soap'd tail, monstrous apt to slip through your fingers.[62] Dined at home with Lady ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... more than this. A sudden wild happiness seized her. She pressed the letter to her lips, and sobbed with relief. All the pent-up misery of the last few weeks were washed away in tears; the barriers of pride were broken down; she was as humble and contrite as a little child. She startled her maid by an unusual morning activity, and consulted the time-tables quite as eagerly as John. He wanted her; that was enough. She cared nothing now for the censorious tongues. Her gentle, sweet-spirited ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley

... properly, nor can we attain our salvation if God does not show mercy to us. For this reason we humbly implore God in the fifth petition: "Forgive us our trespasses." In these words we implore God to grant unto us and to our fellow men a sincerely contrite heart and to graciously forgive us our sins and the punishment due for them. As a condition of forgiveness, however, God exacts from us that we forgive those who have offended us, as fully as we desire that God forgive us. Therefore, ...
— The Excellence of the Rosary - Conferences for Devotions in Honor of the Blessed Virgin • M. J. Frings

... must be brought to the surface and, in the language of psychology, "abreacted"; in the language of religion, confessed. The whole doctrine of repentance really hinges on this question of abreacting painful or wrongful experience instead of repressing it. The broken and contrite heart is the heart of which the hard complexes have been shattered by sorrow and love, and their elements brought up into consciousness and faced: and only the self which has endured this, can hope to be established in ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill

... bring themselves to weep for their sins, they are then full of an ill-grounded confidence and security; never considering that all this may prove to be no more than the very garb and outward dress of a contrite heart, which another heart, as hard as the nether millstone, may as well put on. For tears and sighs, however in some persons they may be decent and commendable expressions of a godly sorrow, are neither necessary, nor infallible signs of a true and unfeigned repentance. Not necessary, because ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift

... say that her rig-out which Jevons had admired so much, the khaki tunic and breeches, made us terribly conspicuous) had come down in a contrite mood. I heard her telling Jevons that he must be kind to me, for I had had an awful time with her and I had been ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair

... betrothal. And for once in her life, so bottled and so sealed, she looked, as if through the magic crystal of her mother's words, absolutely, helplessly foolish. It is difficult for a genie in a bottle to look contrite or stricken with anything deeper than astonishment; nor is it practicable in such a situation to fall upon one's knees,—if a genie were to feel such an impulse of self-abasement. It was perhaps a comfort to all ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... was checked back to himself. He was instantly contrite, all soft humility, ears laid back with pleadingness for forgiveness and protestation of a warm throbbing heart of love. Instantly, from an open- mouthed, fang-bristling dog in full career of attack, he melted into a bundle of softness and silkiness, that trotted to the open hand and kissed ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London

... of such unusual conduct, and then to upbraid him for his disloyalty to her brother. She certainly meant that he should feel the weight of her displeasure; but then—then—after he had been made to suffer, if he was properly contrite, and said so, and looked it, and begged to be forgiven, why then, perhaps she might be brought to condone it in a measure and be good friends again. It was clearly his duty, however, to come and greet her, not hers to ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King

... and the shouting dies— The Captains and the Kings depart. Still stands Thine ancient Sacrifice, An humble and a contrite heart.[164-1] Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... heaves, Whose spurs so sharp, whose curb so hard have been. By these two contrary and mix'd extremes, With frozen or with fiery wishes fraught, To stand 'tween misery and bliss she seems: Seldom in glad and oft in gloomy thought, But mostly contrite for its bold emprize, For of like seed like fruit ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... from the arm of the great chair, in which he reclined. 'No—don't kiss me: it takes my breath. Dear me! Papa said you would call,' continued he, after recovering a little from Catherine's embrace; while she stood by looking very contrite. 'Will you shut the door, if you please? you left it open; and those—those detestable creatures won't bring coals to ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte

... then a violent agitation, and the trickle and drip of water, and a second and a third violent agitation of the liquid contents of what appeared to be a porcelain bowl—the whole indicating that the occupant of the chamber was washing her face in haste with a contrite determination to make a thorough success of the ablution. And there was silence, broken by gasps and stifled sobs—doubtless a vigorous rubbing was in course; and then the door was flung open from within, and Peggy Lacey ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan

... rebuke from a little child and forthright grace entered him and he was reclaimed. Wherefor he laid not a finger on the woman, but went out from her and returned to his own country, where he lived a contrite life till he died. "As for the story of the five-year-old child" (continued the Prince), "I have heard tell, O ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... come easily. His habits of thought would return and blind him as of old. He had laughed at himself; he had derided the new gods, he had disobeyed them and their strange commands—only to return crestfallen, contrite, feeling himself unworthy. He became aware that he had run a long and victorious race for a prize he had craved—only to find that the goal to which it brought him was not that of his old desires. That was but withered leaves, spattered with the blood of those ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford

... He was so contrite that I had to console him. Letting him know that no great harm was done, I saw him depart with his friends for Bale. For my part, I remained with the engineer, whose professional duties, such as they were, kept him for a short time in the capital of Alsace. In his turn, however, the latter ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... moment Edmund and Egbert appeared at the door of the hut. As he had expected from the nature of the colloquy Edmund saw King Alfred standing contrite and ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty

... saw again in his mind's eye the scene in the crevasse when Bower had raised his ax to strike. "Quite serious," he replied, and the gravity in his voice was so marked that Helen placed a contrite hand on his ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy

... had a new and strange experience—droll in one way, grotesque in another and when everything is said, tragic: at least an adventure. Harriet looks at me accusingly, and I have had to preserve the air of one deeply contrite now for two days (no easy accomplishment for me!), even though in secret I have smiled ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson

... faith, is self-distrust. 'I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit.' Rivers do not run on the mountain tops, but down in the valleys. So the heart that is lifted up and self-complacent has no dew of His blessing resting upon it, but has the curse of Gilboa adhering to its barrenness; but the low lands, the humble and the lowly hearts, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... furnishing an example to all the country; and although it is true that he was always an example during all his life, he seems on this occasion to have redoubled his acts of penitence—praying God, as a truly contrite man, that, if that lamentable case and one so worthy of sorrow throughout the islands had happened through his omissions. He would pardon him and regard those sheep which had been committed to him with eyes of pity and kindness; and that he might not be the cause that their punishments be ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various

... people are like a flock of sheep," said he; "they want a leader, never mind who. Only the leader must be there at the right hour; and if God has bestowed upon him the gift of eloquence, he can lead them either into the church to contrite prayer, or to the slaughterfield to bloody combat. The people are a flock ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach

... in their midst, feeling humble and contrite, and had been conscience-smitten at sight of her mamma's pale face; but the sneer on Betty's face, the cold, averted looks of Edward and Zoe, and then Rosie's taunt roused her quick temper to ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley

... of the contrite heart, Wherefore so soon decay? O, yet prolong your stay! Until my soul shall boldly rise, And claim its native ...
— Hymns, Songs, and Fables, for Young People • Eliza Lee Follen

... so much in earnest that her words, straight out of a very innocent and contrite heart, touched her hearers deeply, and put them into the right mood to embrace her proposition. No one spoke for a moment, then Maggie ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott

... tumult and the shouting dies— The Captains and the Kings depart— Still stands thine ancient sacrifice, An humble and a contrite heart. Lord God of hosts, be with us yet, ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... not by nature UMBRELLARIANS, have tried again and again to become so by art, and yet have failed—have expended their patrimony in the purchase of umbrella after umbrella, and yet have systematically lost them, and have finally, with contrite spirits and shrunken purses, given up their vain struggle, and relied on theft and borrowing for the remainder of their lives. This is the most remarkable fact that we have had occasion to notice; and yet we challenge the candid reader to call ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... sprang after him like a contrite child, and caught his arm. "Oh, Jake, forgive me! Do please forgive me! I'm a beast—a beast!" she ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell

... interpositions of Divine mercy in past extremities; and doubtless she relied upon those promises for the future which induced in Mordecai a confident hope of deliverance. She remembered that Jehovah—the God of Israel—hears the prayers of the humble and the contrite. She appointed a solemn fast of three days, in which the Jews of Shushan should humble themselves and remember her before the God of ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous

... will repair to the closet, many to the sanctuary; the faithful of every name will employ that prayer which has power with God; the feeble hands which are unequal to any other weapon will grasp the sword of the Spirit; from myriads of humble, contrite hearts, the voice of intercession, supplication, and weeping, will mingle in its ascent to heaven with the shouts of battle and the shock ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge

... is that of a sensible woman, as I always thought you; and of a truly contrite one, as I hope you will prove yourself to be: and I the rather hope it, as I shall be always desirous, then of taking every opportunity that offers of doing you real service, as well with regard to your present as future ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... remained meditating on her fate for hours during the day; it would rush into her mind in the gayest scenes and the happiest moments; it was one incessant incubus—one continual source of misery. Of her husband she thought less; for she knew how sincerely contrite he was for the deed he had done—how bitterly he had repented it ever since, and how it would, as long as he lived, be a source of misery—a worm that would never die, but gnaw till the last hour of his existence. But her ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat

... profit not thy soul, Thy consecrated wealth will but upraise The monument of thy despair. Once more, Ere yet the vesper lights shall fade away, I do adjure thee, on the church's bosom Pour forth thy contrite heart. ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli

... you amaze me at your words; Think with your self, sir, what a thing it were To cause a recluse to remove her vow: A maimed, contrite, and repentant soul, Ever mortified with fasting and with prayer, Whose thoughts, even as her eyes, are fixd on heaven, To draw a virgin, thus devour'd with zeal, Back to the world: O impious deed! Nor by the Canon Law can it be done ...
— The Merry Devil • William Shakespeare

... Felipe was stampeded and Pepe just escaped with his life. The result of this "heartening," process was that Imogen, in her weak state, conceived a horror of ranch work, and passed the hours of his absence in a subdued agony of apprehension concerning him. He was very surprised and contrite ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge

... with scrupulous rigidness fasts twice in the week, and gives tithes of all that he possesses? To him whose quick sensibility revels in all expressions of the beautiful, or whose graceful impulse moves him in all works of charity? No, to none of these, but, "To him that is poor, and of a contrite spirit; and that trembleth at ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King

... threw me down among the spruces. You really did everything that a contrite heart ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers

... "With these, and words like these, I moved the peer, When I such puissance in myself espied; And him so contrite made, in desert drear, Was never seen a saint more mortified. Before my feet the doleful cavalier Fell down, and snatched a poniard from his side; Which, he protested, I parforce should take, And for so foul ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... without clear convictions this age is nevertheless very active intellectually; it is studious, empirical, inventive, sympathetic. Its wisdom consists in a certain contrite openness of mind; it flounders, but at least in floundering it has gained a sense of possible depths in all directions. Under these circumstances, some triviality and great confusion in its positive ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... that yonder from the loft, With a solemn tone and soft, Beating on with muffled shock, Conscience-waking, speaks the clock. Holy scene, and dear as holy, Let me ponder thee this hour, Not in aimless melancholy, But in quest of Heaven-given power; Seeking here to win anew Contrite love and purpose true; Near the Font whose dew-drops cold Fell upon my brow of old, Near the well-remember'd seat Set beside my Mother's feet; Near the Table where I bent At that earliest Sacrament. Let me, through this narrow door, Climb ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule

... around is killing me." Again he would respond: "Don't forget that I love some one down there, old man. Maybe she's worrying about me, as well as about you." Once he gave poor Mr. Hobbs a frightful tongue-lashing and was afterward most contrite and apologetic. Poor Hobbs had been guilty of asking if he had ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... a visitor yesterday. You will be as surprised, when I tell you who it was, as I was to see him. Have you guessed? I'm sure you haven't. None other than our friend Sprudell—very apologetic—very humble and contrite, and with an explanation to offer for his behavior that was really most ingenious. There's no denying he has cleverness of a kind—craft, perhaps, is a ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart

... in the curve of the sphere. Nor does it matter how you gauge and try him. A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza;[194]—read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing. In this pleasing, contrite wood-life which God allows me, let me record day by day my honest thought without prospect or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though I mean it not, and see it not. My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... period of hesitation, in which he shrank from the thought that a mortal like himself, weak, youthful, and unlearned, should approach the Creator with a personal request, was followed by a humble and contrite resolution to act upon the counsel of the ancient apostle. The result, to which he bore solemn record (testifying at first with the simplicity and enthusiasm of youth, afterward confirming the declaration with manhood's increasing powers, and at last voluntarily sealing the testimony with ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage

... men, that ever were or ever shall be, as long as the world shall endure, were concentrated in one man, so great is the goodness of God that He would freely pardon them all, were he but penitent and contrite as I see thou art, and confessed them: wherefore tell me thy sin with a good courage." Then said Ser Ciappelletto, still weeping bitterly:—"Alas, my father, mine is too great a sin, and scarce can I believe, if your prayers do not co-operate, that God will ever grant me His pardon thereof." ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio

... Zephyrine's apartment. So distressing did this become that he was at last obliged to block up the spy-hole from his own side; and when he was thus secured from observation he spent a considerable portion of his time in contrite tears and prayer. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... came in heart-rending tones from the bowed face of the accused man. "It has all come down upon me together," he moaned, raising his trembling hands to his throbbing temples, then with one pitiful, appealing, contrite look he scanned the faces of all those present, and gave himself voluntarily up, a guilty man, a culprit. He was escorted out of the house where he had shone as a star in the days of his freedom, out of the spot which held all that his poor miserable ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... rang? Ev'n yet, methinks, its spiry turrets swim 95 Amid yon purple gloom ascending dim! For thither oft would my poor child repair, To ease her soul by penitence and prayer. I knew that peace at good men's prayers returns Home to the contrite heart of him that mourns, 100 And check'd her not; and often there she found A timely pallet when the evening frown'd. And there I trusted that my child would light On shelter and on food, one dreadful night, When there was uproar in the element, 105 And she was absent. To my rest ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... put this new paragraph on the wire just about the time that Bok's actual engagement was announced. Field was now deeply contrite, and sincerely promised Bok and his fiancee to reform. "I'm through, you mooning, spooning calf, you," he wrote Bok, and his friend believed him, only to receive a telegram the next day from Mrs. Field warning him that "Gene is ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)

... reigneth over the heathen: God sitteth upon the throne of his holiness."—Psa. 47:8. "For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit."—Isa. 57:15. "Be silent, O all flesh, before the Lord: for he is raised up out of his holy habitation."—Zech. 2:13. "Look down from heaven, and behold from the habitation of thy holiness ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers

... gentlemen of the jury," Villefort solemnly began, "you have heard the contrite words of the man who is unfortunately my son. Do not ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere

... don't stop that I'll give you a coffin before your time, keg of nails—you. Sorrow and prayer at the throne of grace that she may have a contrite heart"—he clutched the funeral bill tighter in his fingers—"is what we must feel for her. The day the Sieur died and it all came out, I wept. Bedtime come I had to sop my eyes with elder-water. The day o' the burial mine ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... Portiuncula when Jesus and the Virgin appeared to him with a retinue of angels. He made bold to ask an unheard-of privilege, that of plenary indulgence of all sins for all those who, having confessed and being contrite, should visit this chapel. Jesus granted this at his mother's request, on the sole condition that his vicar the pope ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier

... Andes and Himmaleh are insignificant in the curve of the sphere. Nor does it matter how you gauge and try him. A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza;—read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing. In this pleasing contrite wood-life which God allows me, let me record day by day my honest thought without prospect or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though I mean it not and see it not. My book should smell ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... the abbe, with contrite mien, "I wanted to do something in the defence of our cause, and what can a poor clergyman do?—he has ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach

... Lord, I have sinned; have mercy upon me, forgive me." Let me alone, that I may take comfort a little before I go whence I shall not return even to the land of darkness and the shadow of death.(2) What dost Thou so much require of a guilty and miserable sinner, as that he be contrite, and humble himself for his sins? In true contrition and humiliation of heart is begotten the hope of pardon, the troubled conscience is reconciled, lost grace is recovered, a man is preserved from the wrath to come, and God and ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis

... attention as if it had been an apostle's. My Brother and I had all the mind in the world to laugh; we tried hard to keep from laughing; but often we burst out. Thereupon reprimand, with all the anathemas of the Church hurled out on us; which we had to take with a contrite penitent air, a thing not easy to bring your face to at the moment. In a word, this dog of a Franke [he died within few months, poor soul, CE CHIEN DE FRANKE] led us the life of a set of Monks of ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... and I thank you for giving me the opportunity," said Bobby, really very contrite that he had been doing Sharpe such a mental injustice all these years. "By the way," he suddenly added, "has Silas Trimmer anything whatever to do ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester

... was; but with such a temptation to error"—and she smiled towards Lady Florence—"it is not wonderful that you made a mistake, and, as you look so contrite, you shall be forgiven. Agatha, there's a dear, just ask that man to go up to the band, and tell them to play another waltz, 'La Berceuse,' ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... allegorical colossi symbolising the mundane virtues of a mighty ruler's character, crowned by the portrait of the Pope, over whom Heaven rejoiced while Cybele deplored his loss—all this pomp of power and parade of ingenuity harmonised but little with the humility of a contrite soul returning to its Maker and its Judge. The new temple, destined to supersede the old basilica, embodied an aspect of Latin Christianity which had very little indeed in common with the piety of ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... certain utterances of the Council of Trent. By conscientiously preparing himself with the aid of actual grace, the sinner probably merits an additional claim (in equity) to justification. Cfr. Ps. L, 19: "A sacrifice to God is an afflicted spirit: a contrite and humbled heart, O God, thou wilt not despise."(1350) Dan. IV, 24: "Redeem thou thy sins with alms, and thy iniquities with works of mercy to the poor: perhaps he [God] will forgive thy offences."(1351) St. Augustine ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle

... STANTON: Your S.B.A. thinks she is very cunning. As if I did not see a huge pussy under that meal! She has been so modest, humble, ashamed, reluctant, apologetic, contrite, self-accusing whenever the last ten years she has asked me to do anything, go anywhere, speak on any topic! Now she makes you pull the chestnuts out of the fire and thinks I do not see her waiting behind. Ah, the hand is the hand of Esau, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... in repentance and humility, confessing, bewailing, and forsaking his worldliness and sinfulness, he shall indeed be broken: but of him it is written, 'The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.' And he shall find that Rock, even Christ, a safe standing-ground amid the slippery mire of this world's temptations, and the storms and floods of trouble which are coming— it may be in our children's days—it ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... me to see an ordinary melodrama at the Queen's Theatre, Dublin, and he delighted to see how the members of the company could by the vehemence of their movements and the resources of their voices hold your attention on a play where everything was commonplace. He enjoyed seeing the contrite villain of the piece come up from the bottom of the gulch, hurled there by the adventuress, and flash his sweating blood-stained face up against the footlights; and, though he told us he had ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats

... sacrifice, else would I give it, Thou delightest not in burnt offering, The sacrifice of God is a broken heart, A broken and a contrite heart, O ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent

... at his simplicity in taking such a journey. But no sooner did he reach his Melchester lodging than he found awaiting him a letter which had arrived that morning a few minutes after he had left the house. It was a contrite little note from Sue, in which she said, with sweet humility, that she felt she had been horrid in telling him he was not to come to see her, that she despised herself for having been so conventional; and ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... time they reached home she was contrite and spiritless. She was Mrs Angel Clare, indeed, but had she any moral right to the name? Was she not more truly Mrs Alexander d'Urberville? Could intensity of love justify what might be considered in upright souls as culpable reticence? She knew not what ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... grandfathers as Mr. Harry Robinson, you cannot find one original, independent, individualized gentleman like your Prince! Go to bed, miss, and pray to Heaven that he may be YOUR Prince indeed. Ask to have a contrite and grateful heart, and thank the Lord in particular for having sent you such a friend as Kate Van Corlear." Yet, after an imposing dramatic exit, she reappeared the next moment as a straight white flash, kissed Carry between ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... olives and lobster salad with mayonnaise dressing, French fried potatoes and cream puffs from the mess-tent of a roundup outfit. During the next week it fell to the lot of the Happy Family, however. When the salads and the cream puffs disappeared suddenly and the smile of Jakie became pensive and contrite, the Happy Family, acting ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower

... contrite. "But, Dolly dear, I don't want everyone here to know all about us, and the things that are happening to us. You won't mind waiting a little ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the March - Bessie King's Test of Friendship • Jane L. Stewart

... hour was late, and the poor man of genius went away contrite for having seemed curious, and for wounding the sensitive heart of that rare woman who had so strangely suffered. As for her, she had passed her life in amusing herself with men, and was another Don Juan in female attire, ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac

... such unseemly haste? If they are indeed in earnest to seek the truth and lay to heart the meaning of this experience into which their sinful hearts have led them, let them of their own accord and out of their humble and contrite hearts devote a year to meditation and prayer. Let them show to others they have learned that to live righteously and soberly, and not to grasp ill-gotten gains or enjoy unhallowed pleasures, is the chief end of human life! The hour ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... "Ah!" was Gubin's contrite cry. "It shall be as you say. Yet, though I should hate, I could not bear, to grieve you, I must confess that the ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... Then they were contrite, for Lorry almost never had anything, and their attentions and inquiries had to be endured most of ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... lacrymae! For these thou art now suffering, and that not by accident. The embarrassment thou now art in is verily a work of Higher Providence, to lead thee off from too great trust in thy own force; to make thee soft and contrite; that, laying aside all self-will, thou mayest follow more the counsel of thy Father and other true friends; must meet every one with due respectful courtesy and readiness to oblige; and become ever more convinced that our most gracious ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... disasters, a hint to direct his sword's point against his breast; a man of better faith would have turned his eye back on his own conduct, and having read, in his misuse of prosperity, the original source of those calamities, would have remained patient and contrite under the consequences of his ambition. Napoleon belonged to the Roman school of philosophy; and it is confidently reported, especially by Baron Fain, his secretary, though it has not been universally believed, that he designed, at this extremity, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various

... fresh courage, as the words of the great prayer began to return to her memory, the voices now mingled in the same majestic words from, oh, such different hearts—the one, pure and confiding, and the other now contrite and penitent. ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte

... under so manly and sweet an appeal straight to her woman's heart, she had not instantly subsided on the shoulder of her contrite lover, with grateful tears? Cally herself hardly understood. She was, truth to tell, secretly surprised and thrilled by her own high-handedness. To what degree she and her former betrothed had remet under permanently changed conditions, it was beyond her thought ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... on its tarnished hue, And mourned the fix he'd gotten in; Then filled his eyes with contrite dew, As in its folds his nose he blew, And thus addressed his model U- niversal ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... said Daniel, in a truly contrite tone, "I never should have done such an impudent thing against you, if I had only known what a nice gentleman you are. I took you for nothing but a haughty land-owner, without a word to fling at a poor fisherman. And now you go ever so far beyond what the Club doth, ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... tear of contrite sorrow, shed By penitence, cast down, Shall flash, when solar rays have fled, In an eternal crown; That tear shall scintillate, and shine, When comets cease to soar; If thou would'st wear that gem divine, Go, thou, and ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King

... heart and fevered brain! Unquiet and unstable. That holy well of Loch Maree Is more than idle fable! The shadows of a humble will And contrite heart are o'er it: Go read its legend—"TRUST IN GOD"— On Faith's ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... worlds below, "On earth I have a mansion too, "The humble spirit and contrite "Is an abode ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts

... stood within thy gates, O Jerusalem! From the sight of our own eyes are we conscious of the refulgent light that once shone brightly on our country, and which yet faintly glimmers, though she has become desolate. Thou hast inspired us with a contrite spirit to perceive and declare Thy Almighty power over all the inhabitants of the world, therefore has Thy servant found in his heart to offer this public thanksgiving for Thy past bounties, and earnestly to implore Thy future protection in this humble sanctuary. Out of Thine ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore

... with lifted hand, "And comrades of the meatless life, Shall the great cause for which we stand" (Here someone dropped a knife) "Fall into disrepute?" (Loud roars Of "No, not it," from contrite nucivores). ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various

... salvation or condemnation to those who receive or reject the Saviour. It is upon his shoulder the key of the house is laid (Isa 22:22). Christ only has the key, no MAN openeth or shutteth (Rev 1:18, 3:7). All that man can do, as to binding or loosening, is to warn the hardened and to invite the contrite. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... part of the Apostolic Church, which by its isolated position in the then almost inaccessible ravines had escaped the early innovations introduced by the church of Rome; albeit not altogether, for they admitted confession by contrite prayer to God and the mention aloud of their sins to a priest, the power of priests to bind and to loose, that sins were of two classes, mortal and venial, and the efficacy of fasts and penance. At the Reformation all ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black

... curiously abashed and contrite under the gaze of those calmly accusing eyes. "I'm sorry if—if I have been ...
— Only an Irish Girl • Mrs. Hungerford

... for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal, every other affliction to forget. Take warning by the bitterness of this thy contrite affliction over the dead, and henceforth be more faithful and affectionate in the discharge of thy duties to ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz

... half the pious people in town thought he shammed his emotion the night he came to the church merely to mock them and their revivalist. But we in the office knew that Mehronay's Easter sermon had come as the offering of a contrite heart. It is in so many scrapbooks in the town that it should be reprinted here that the town may know that Mehronay ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White

... worthy sir, and you my respected relative," returned Nicholas, with a contrite air; "neither can you reprove me more strongly than I deserve, nor than I upbraid myself. I allowed myself to be overcome by wine, and in that condition was undoubtedly guilty of follies I ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... glory by the most splendid liberalities, or the most costly offerings; but he solemnly requires, and graciously deigns to accept our penitence and our obedience. "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise." Whatever be the present state of the world, it is pleasing to reflect that an omnipotent Providence is hastening the triumphs of Christ; and to this wise and glorious King of Israel, all the tribes ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... Rome assumed an air of exemplary behavior which struck foreigners with mute astonishment. Cardinals were compelled to preach in their basilicas. The Pope himself, who was vain of his eloquence, preached. Gravity of manners, external signs of piety, a composed and contrite face, ostentation of orthodoxy by frequent confession and attendance at the Mass, became fashionable; and the Court adopted for its motto the Si non caste tamen caute of the Counter-Reformation.[28] Aretino, with his usual blackguardly pointedness of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... spirit of bravado and fight-to-the-last-ditch had died to a sullen stubbornness. Nobody had much, to say. Terry was very contrite as well he might be. A judge of the Supreme Court, who had no business being in San Francisco at all, sworn to uphold the law, had stepped out from his jurisdiction to commit as lawless and idiotic a deed of ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... She would rather have walked home with Sara, but she was very contrite over Jim's lonely afternoon, so she promised. Sara left the boat at the Battery to get a subway train home. When the others reached 23rd street, it was not difficult for Jim and Pen to drop well behind Uncle Denny and Jim's mother. Jim drew Pen's arm ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow

... psalm is one long cry for pardon and restoration, one can discern an order and progress in its petitions—the order, not of an artificial reproduction of a past mood of mind, but the instinctive order in which the emotion of contrite desire will ever pour itself forth. In the psalm all begins, as all begins in fact, with the grounding of the cry for favour on "Thy loving-kindness," "the multitude of Thy tender mercies;" the one plea that avails with God, whose love ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren

... beside is wiselier unrevealed, Witnessed that agony which spake no more; He dashed the charter on the pavement down; Then on it gazed a space. Remembering soon Whose name stood first on that dishonoured list, Contrite he raised that charter to his breast, And pressed it there in silence. Hours went by; Then dark was all that room, and dark around The windy corridors and courts stone-paved; And bitter blew the blast: his unlooped cloak Fell loose: ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere

... but the illumination of tears; she had never been told that earthly ethereality is necessarily ephemeral, nor that bonbons and glaces, whether of the palate or of the soul, nauseate and pall upon the taste. Dear God, forgive her, for she bent with contrite tears over her worn rosary, and glanced no more at the worldly ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar

... part of conversion, is sorrow for sin. It is a realizing sense of the nature and guilt of sin; of its heinousness and damnable character. True penitence is indeed a painful experience. A penitent heart is, therefore, called "a broken and a contrite heart." It takes from the sinner his self-satisfaction and false peace. It makes him restless, dissatisfied and troubled. Instead of loving and delighting in sin, it makes him hate sin and turn from it with aversion. It brings the sinner low in the dust. He cries out, "I am vile;" "I loathe ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding

... nervous, and said nothing. And looked at him, frightened, not knowing what to do. Then: "I wanted to see him—and now—it's you!" she stammered, and the man felt contrite that it was indubitably just himself. Contrite, then amused. But his look ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray

... The money's bad enough." And the trouble came out in a quick rush of words—explanatory, contrite, despairing—all in one breath. For the Boy had Irish blood in his veins; and the initial difficulty over, he found it an unspeakable relief to disburden his soul to the man who had "brothered" him ever since he ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... royal princess, thus enhancing the ties that bound him to the throne, and throwing to the winds his Perdita whose charms had once held him in folly's chains. Did he regret the step? Has ravening aspiration any compunction; any contrite visitings of nature? What did the player expect; that he would violate precedence; overthrow the fashionable maxims of good George IV; become a slave to a tragi-comic performer and cast his high destiny to the winds? Had ever a gentleman ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... for forgetting All thy loving care towards me, Evil child and disobedient, And for setting up an idol All of earth within thy temple. And receive from hands unworthy As a sacrifice accepted On Thine altar, Lord a bruised Contrite heart that ever suffers Daily pangs of disappointment Even than death itself more bitter. Take the one love of a lifetime, All the hopeless love and passion Dedicated to another Who with me Thy place had taken, As if they to Thee were rendered. Count it, Father, as sufficient Chastening, ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones

... not, when once her eyes had been opened to the wrongfulness of the deceit she was practising, to have known a single happy moment, but somehow she found it difficult always to feel ashamed and contrite, especially when she was playing croquet with Edward. For in return for some lessons in French conversation she was giving him he had offered to teach her croquet, and though Margaret had been afraid that she was far too stupid to learn any game, she was making astonishing ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler

... a contrite nod of the head, as one who knew all about it, for grandmamma had described ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri

... underived glory, than the tiny taper can add to the blaze of the sun at noonday, or a drop of water to the boundless ocean. Yet, wondrous thought! from this worthless soul of mine there may roll in a revenue of glory which He who loves the broken and contrite spirit will "not despise." "Herein is my Father glorified, ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff

... to do with it." "Ah!" Marinier replied, assuming a contrite expression, "if you intend ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro

... be angry," said Shakro in a contrite voice, touching my shoulder lightly. "Were you praying?' I didn't know it, for I never ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky

... felt a little contrite, as I was sincerely sorry to have offended him), "I've passed forty myself in some measurements, so youth no longer has any ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley

... "He's so contrite and so sweet, after one of his passions!" she said. "And yet, well, maybe it's his age, but he's so sort of casual about his temper. To-night, for instance, after he'd said the Lord's Prayer, he added, 'And please God, help me to find some pipe to make that engine and some ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie

... had not drunk too much, I should have stopped playing when I saw I was losing," went on Cedric in a contrite tone; "but they plied me with liquor, and I got reckless, and then I knew no more till I found myself in ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey



Words linked to "Contrite" :   rueful, penitent, repentant



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