Let me tell you that the dearest thing in life to me is my
self-respect; wherefore, in informing you of my misfortunes and misconduct, I would add that none of my superiors know of my doings, nor ever will know of them, and that therefore, I still enjoy a measure of respect in that quarter.
The Firm to which I was brutally consigned, as if I was a bale of merchandise, has worn out my patience by a series of petty insults; and I have felt compelled, from motives of
self-respect, to withdraw my services, which were undervalued from the first.
"
Self-respect!" said Levin, stung to the quick by his brother's words; "I don't understand.
At the present moment her effort was to preserve what she could of the wreck of her
self-respect, for such she deemed that momentary glimpse of her love so involuntarily revealed to Ralph.
Yet he is a talented, an original-minded man, and even he does not like you; your
self-respect defies you to like him; he has always seen you to disadvantage; he always will see you to disadvantage; your positions are unequal, and were they on the same level your minds could not; assimilate; never hope, then, to gather the honey of friendship out of that thorn-guarded plant.
Are you inclined to ask whether this can be the same Arthur who, two months ago, had that freshness of feeling, that delicate honour which shrinks from wounding even a sentiment, and does not contemplate any more positive offence as possible for it?--who thought that his own
self-respect was a higher tribunal than any external opinion?
I have forfeited my own
self-respect." She paused for a moment, and suddenly seized my hand in a perfect frenzy of friendship.
He thought of the home he might at that moment have been seeking with pleasure and pride; of the different man he might have been that night; of the lightness then in his now heavy- laden breast; of the then restored honour,
self-respect, and tranquillity all torn to pieces.
'I shall never repent the preservation of my
self-respect, sir,' said Edward.
In this painful position something is due to my own
self-respect. I cannot, and will not, permit Mercy Merrick to claim the merit of restoring me to my proper place in this house.
"It seems to me," he said, "we spend money enough in this house to procure at least one meal a day which a man could eat and retain his
self-respect."
But it was not that which hurt so much as what she took to be his lack of pride and
self-respect. Further, and keenest of all, she read into the incident the impossibility of his living down his working-class origin.