mock-sacrifice

Updated: May 23, 2025

It was the gleam that lights up every labyrinth where our feet wander and stumble, but it is not always easy to know it from those false lights of feeble-hearted pity, of mock-sacrifice, of sick conscience, which dance before us to betray to worse misery yet. Some sense of this, broken and faltering, reached Lemuel where he stood, and tried to deal faithfully with his problem.

William Dean Howells - The Minister's Charge