WordNet
sackcloth and ashes
n. a display of extreme remorse or repentance or grief
Usage examples of "sackcloth and ashes".
The boundary was trod by the bishop and his clergy, barefoot, in sackcloth and ashes.
The prayers that did begin then, and the lamentations in sackcloth and ashes, and the holy processions, none of these have ceased nor night nor day.
While he groaned and prayed in sackcloth and ashes, his brother, the eunuch John, smiled at his remorse, and enjoyed the harvest of a crime of which himself was the secret and most guilty author.
I didn't know that that was what one meant by sackcloth and ashes--do please get up, father.
And a hermit's got to sleep on the hardest place he can find, and put sackcloth and ashes on his head, and stand out in the rain, and --”.