1 This is the last and deepest and most cruel sting of the worm of conscience.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man By James JoyceContextHighlight In Chapter 3 2 The first sting inflicted by this cruel worm will be the memory of past pleasures.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man By James JoyceContextHighlight In Chapter 3 3 They will repent indeed: and this is the second sting of the worm of conscience, a late and fruitless sorrow for sins committed.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man By James JoyceContextHighlight In Chapter 3 4 Thrust it out of men's sight into a long hole in the ground, into the grave, to rot, to feed the mass of its creeping worms and to be devoured by scuttling plump-bellied rats.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man By James JoyceContextHighlight In Chapter 3 5 Just as in dead bodies worms are engendered by putrefaction, so in the souls of the lost there arises a perpetual remorse from the putrefaction of sin, the sting of conscience, the worm, as Pope Innocent the Third calls it, of the triple sting.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man By James JoyceContextHighlight In Chapter 3 6 Just as in dead bodies worms are engendered by putrefaction, so in the souls of the lost there arises a perpetual remorse from the putrefaction of sin, the sting of conscience, the worm, as Pope Innocent the Third calls it, of the triple sting.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man By James JoyceContextHighlight In Chapter 3 7 There, by reason of the great number of the damned, the prisoners are heaped together in their awful prison, the walls of which are said to be four thousand miles thick: and the damned are so utterly bound and helpless that, as a blessed saint, saint Anselm, writes in his book on similitudes, they are not even able to remove from the eye a worm that gnaws it.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man By James JoyceContextHighlight In Chapter 3