All 39 Uses of
reproach
in
The Mill on the Floss
- That honest wagoner is thinking of his dinner, getting sadly dry in the oven at this late hour; but he will not touch it till he has fed his horses,—the strong, submissive, meek-eyed beasts, who, I fancy, are looking mild reproach at him from between their blinkers, that he should crack his whip at them in that awful manner as if they needed that hint!†
Chpt 1.1
- The feeblest member of a family—the one who has the least character—is often the merest epitome of the family habits and traditions; and Mrs. Tulliver was a thorough Dodson, though a mild one, as small-beer, so long as it is anything, is only describable as very weak ale: and though she had groaned a little in her youth under the yoke of her elder sisters, and still shed occasional tears at their sisterly reproaches, it was not in Mrs. Tulliver to be an innovator on the family ideas.†
Chpt 1.6
- But Maggie, gifted with that superior power of misery which distinguishes the human being, and places him at a proud distance from the most melancholy chimpanzee, sat still on her bough, and gave herself up to the keen sense of unmerited reproach.†
Chpt 1.6
- Meanwhile Tom, forgetting all about Maggie and the sting of reproach which he had left in her heart, was hurrying along with Bob, whom he had met accidentally, to the scene of a great rat-catching in a neighboring barn.†
Chpt 1.6
- Maggie seemed to be listening to a chorus of reproach and derision.†
Chpt 1.7
- You've got enough o' gells, Gritty," he added, in a tone half compassionate, half reproachful.†
Chpt 1.8
- "Ay, ay, Gritty," said the miller, with a new softness in his tone; "but I've allays done what I could for you," he added, as if vindicating himself from a reproach.†
Chpt 1.8
- Mr. Tulliver spoke his mind very strongly when he reached home that evening; and the effect was seen in the remarkable fact that Maggie never heard one reproach from her mother, or one taunt from Tom, about this foolish business of her running away to the gypsies.†
Chpt 1.11
- "You feel no interest in what you're doing, sir," Mr. Stelling would say, and the reproach was painfully true.†
Chpt 2.1
- "It's your brother's way, Mrs. Moss; I'd never anything o' that sort before I was married," said Mrs. Tulliver, with a half-implied reproach.†
Chpt 2.2
- For the first time Tom thought of his father with some reproach.†
Chpt 3.2
- The implied reproaches against her father—her father, who was lying there in a sort of living death—neutralized all her pity for griefs about tablecloths and china; and her anger on her father's account was heightened by some egoistic resentment at Tom's silent concurrence with her mother in shutting her out from the common calamity.†
Chpt 3.2
- "Don't say so, Bessy," said Mr. Tulliver, whose pride, in these first moments of humiliation, was in abeyance to the sense of some justice in his wife's reproach.†
Chpt 3.8
- It was not that any harm could be said concerning the vicar of that charming rural parish to which Dorlcote Mill belonged; he was a man of excellent family, an irreproachable bachelor, of elegant pursuits,—had taken honors, and held a fellowship.†
Chpt 4.1
- Tom felt intensely that common cause with his father which springs from family pride, and was bent on being irreproachable as a son; but his growing experience caused him to pass much silent criticism on the rashness and imprudence of his father's past conduct; their dispositions were not in sympathy, and Tom's face showed little radiance during his few home hours.†
Chpt 5.2
- "Then why wasn't I let to know o' such things before, Mr. Glegg?" said Mrs. Glegg, turning to her husband, with a deep grating tone of reproach.†
Chpt 5.2
- You have been reproaching other people all your life; you have been always sure you yourself are right.†
Chpt 5.5
- For Philip, who a little while ago was associated continually in Maggie's mind with the sense that Tom might reproach her with some justice, had now, in this short space, become a sort of outward conscience to her, that she might fly to for rescue and strength.†
Chpt 6.7
- It was quite in Maggie's character to be agitated by vague self-reproach.†
Chpt 6.7
- There seemed to be some reproach in the words; did Philip mean that?†
Chpt 6.7
- Emily would have nothing to reproach him with there, if she came back again from her grave.†
Chpt 6.8
- "Miss Tulliver," he said, with bitter incisiveness, "has the only grounds of rank that anything but vulgar folly can suppose to belong to the middle class; she is thoroughly refined, and her friends, whatever else they may be, are respected for irreproachable honor and integrity.†
Chpt 6.8
- I hope you'll reproach him for his shabby conduct."†
Chpt 6.9
- She looked playful reproach at Stephen, who was sauntering up and down, and was just singing in pianissimo falsetto,— "The thirst that from the soul doth rise Doth ask a drink divine."†
Chpt 6.13
- They glided rapidly along, Stephen rowing, helped by the backward-flowing tide, past the Tofton trees and houses; on between the silent sunny fields and pastures, which seemed filled with a natural joy that had no reproach for theirs.†
Chpt 6.13
- Stung by this reproach, he released her hands, moved back to his former place, and folded his arms, in a sort of desperation at the difficulty Maggie's words had made present to him.†
Chpt 6.13
- But the reproach was the unendurable thing; the one thing worse than parting with her was, that she should feel he had acted unworthily toward her.
Chpt 6.13 *reproach = criticism
- She had reproached him for being hurried into irrevocable trespass,—she, who had been so weak herself.†
Chpt 6.13
- "As if I shouldn't feel what happened to you—just the same," she said, with reproach of another kind,—the reproach of love, asking for more trust.†
Chpt 6.13
- "As if I shouldn't feel what happened to you—just the same," she said, with reproach of another kind,—the reproach of love, asking for more trust.†
Chpt 6.13
- He dreaded to utter another word, he dreaded to make another movement, that might provoke another reproach or denial from her.†
Chpt 6.13
- He had the uneasy consciousness that he had robbed her of perfect freedom yesterday; there was too much native honor in him, for him not to feel that, if her will should recoil, his conduct would have been odious, and she would have a right to reproach him.†
Chpt 6.14
- In the darkness of that night she saw Stephen's face turned toward her in passionate, reproachful misery; she lived through again all the tremulous delights of his presence with her that made existence an easy floating in a stream of joy, instead of a quiet resolved endurance and effort.†
Chpt 6.14
- All hard looks were pain to Maggie, but her self-reproach was too strong for resentment.†
Chpt 7.2
- The casuists have become a byword of reproach; but their perverted spirit of minute discrimination was the shadow of a truth to which eyes and hearts are too often fatally sealed,—the truth, that moral judgments must remain false and hollow, unless they are checked and enlightened by a perpetual reference to the special circumstances that mark the individual lot.†
Chpt 7.2
- Let no self-reproach weigh on you because of me.†
Chpt 7.3
- It is I who should rather reproach myself for having urged my feelings upon you, and hurried you into words that you have felt as fetters.†
Chpt 7.3
- Seated on a chair against the window, with her arm on the windowsill she was looking blankly at the flowing river, swift with the backward-rushing tide, struggling to see still the sweet face in its unreproaching sadness, that seemed now from moment to moment to sink away and be hidden behind a form that thrust itself between, and made darkness.†
Chpt 7.4
- From beginning to end it was a passionate cry of reproach; an appeal against her useless sacrifice of him, of herself, against that perverted notion of right which led her to crush all his hopes, for the sake of a mere idea, and not any substantial good,—_his_ hopes, whom she loved, and who loved her with that single overpowering passion, that worship, which a man never gives to a woman more than once in his life.†
Chpt 7.5
Definition:
-
(reproach) a criticism; or to express criticism or disappointment -- especially where a relationship makes the disapproval result in disappointment or shameeditor's notes: The expression "beyond reproach" is often used to indicate that one must not only be careful to do everything right, but must be careful not to do anything that might make people suspect they did something wrong. For example, politicians often need to behave in a manner that is beyond reproach.
"Beyond reproach" can also suggest that something is perfect. More rarely, it can also be used to suggest that someone is too powerful or too well-connected to criticize.