"Enormity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... conceivable enemy. The enemy—the tail—the salt—these were all in nubibus; the only thing certain was the leap, and the thousand miles. And then, having achieved this first stage on the road, why not go on to St Petersburg, and take the Czar by the beard? The enormity of this extravagance showed from what mint it came. Ever since we have harboured the Czar's rebels in England, there has been a craze possessing our newspaper press, that Russia was, or might be, brewing evil against India. We can all see the absurdity of such reveries ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... and these two affectionate young women so earnestly and frequently impressed upon George Osborne's mind the enormity of the sacrifice he was making, and his romantic generosity in throwing himself away upon Amelia, that I'm not sure but that he really thought he was one of the most deserving characters in the British army, and gave himself up ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... monster of cruelty and depravity. The reputation of the object of his choice for every possible virtue, was now turned against him by his assailants, as if the excellences of the wife were proof positive of every enormity they chose to charge upon the husband. Meanwhile, the unmoved silence of Lady Byron under the repeated demands made for a specification of her charges against him, left to malice and imagination the fullest range ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... He realized that he was safe and only then did he appreciate the full enormity of ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... enormity of such an offense in a court the etiquette of which is so exacting that none of her own subjects ever dared appear in her presence until they had been properly instructed in court etiquette in the 'Board ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... enormity of the crime of parricide in China; yet it is to the Chinese who approves of the severity of this punishment that the missionary has to preach, "And the children shall rise up against their parents and cause them ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... of blowing it up with a match and train, is rarely successful; and after three or four other and much guiltier victims than Lenny had been incarcerated in the stocks, the parish of Hazeldean was ripe for any enormity. Pestilent Jacobinical tracts, conceived and composed in the sinks of manufacturing towns, found their way into the popular beer-house,—Heaven knows how, though the tinker was suspected of being the disseminator by all but ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... homesteads and your herds, Bow in submission to the tyrant's yoke, I'll call the herdsmen on the hills around me, And there beneath heaven's free and boundless roof, Where men still feel as men, and hearts are true Proclaim aloud this foul enormity! ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... frank and firm in her unexpected confidential interview with her new friend. She placed before him clearly the enormity of his conduct, which no provocation could justify; it was a violation of divine law, as well as human propriety. She found the little lord attentive, tractable, and repentant, and, what might not have been expected, ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... other things now, having regained the use of his senses. Thus he saw that she wore her hair, which was of a wonderful chestnut brown color, parted at the side like a boy's, and that she had not committed the horrible enormity of cutting it short. He observed, too, that while her lips were quivering and her cheek was blushing, her look was steadfast. Are dove's eyes, he asked himself, ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... assimilate safely new forms of thought when given enough time for digestion, as if he were assimilating food. If he be plied with new thought too rapidly he fails to digest. He has a surfeit, serious in proportion to its enormity. That is to say, his power of drawing correct conclusions from the premises submitted to him fails, and we have all sorts of crude experiments in sociology attempted, which end in that form of chaos which we call a violent revolution. The ordinary result is infinite waste ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... afterwards on Judaism in Music, by way of atonement, as it were, to this man, who had died in the meantime. The arrival of Alexander Ritter with my niece Franziska helped to enliven us. My niece, indeed, found constant entertainment and excitement in the enormity of Weisheimer's compositions, while Ritter, who was acquainted with the text of my Meistersinger, described a highly unintelligible melody given to the basses in Ritter Toggenburg as 'the lonely gormandiser mode.' [Footnote: Meistersinger (English version), Act 1, scene ii.] Our good-humour ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... could spend three days on this continent, his love of Country and of Liberty could not fail to be quickened and intensified, if only by an experience of the enormity of the Passport nuisance. It has cost me precious hours already, not to speak of dollars, and is certain to cost many more of each. I have nearly concluded to given up Germany on account of it, while Italy ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... practising every violence, and, are frequently engaged in wars. When I suggested to a chief of very considerable intelligence, and one of the Foolah king's head men, whom I met in the Rio Pongo, the enormity of their injustice to the surrounding tribes, and how displeasing it was to the God they prayed to, his reply was, "True, this be bad fashion to Foolah, or Mandingo man, but these people we make war against ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... plain: The divine law, as well as most of the State laws, says, in substance: "He that sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." A highwayman commits murder, and when the officers of the law undertake to arrest, try, and punish him commensurate with the enormity of his crime, he straightens himself up to his full height and defiantly says to them: "Let me alone; I will not be arrested, I will not be tried, I'll have none of the execution of your laws, and in the event you attempt to execute your laws upon me, I will see to it many more ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... left, Forney ascertained that the Tory informer was one of his near neighbors with whom he had always lived on terms of friendship. Considering the heavy losses he had sustained attributable to his agency, he could not overlook the enormity of the offence, and accordingly sent a message to the Tory that he must leave the neighborhood, if not, he would shoot him at first sight. The Tory eluded him for several days by lying out, well knowing that the stern message he had received meant action. At length Forney, still ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... disobeying a father, who is unjustly enraged against you, and resolved on your destruction, but at last I abhor this barbarity. Be comforted, your evil days are over. I will endeavour by better treatment to make amends for all my crimes, of the enormity of which you will find I am duly sensible. You have hitherto regarded me as an infidel; henceforth believe me one of your own religion; having been taught it by a slave, I hope your lessons will complete my conversion. To convince you of my sincerity, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... the deceptive kind of knowledge which, promising to make man God, banishes him from the paradise of experience. His sin has been transmitted to his descendants, though hardly in its magnificent and simple enormity. "The whole is one," Xenophanes had cried, gazing into heaven; and that same sense of a permeating identity, translated into rigid and logical terms, brought his sublime disciple to the conviction ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... diverted from the legitimate uses of the family—all the debauchees who rolled drunk through our streets, and all the offences directly originating in this degrading vice. Now, what conceivable order of mind could prompt a man to engage in such a laborious research? Who either doubts the enormity of drunkenness or its frequency? It is a theme that we hear of incessantly. The pulpit rings with it, the press proclaims it, the judges declare it in all their charges, and a special class of lecturers have converted it into a profession. None ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... could this gentleman's repeated assurances that no violence should be offered his person, convince him for a considerable time that his life was in safety from the vengeance of the populace: so conscious was he of the enormity of his conduct, and of the justice of an ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... full enormity of the cant about Penny Dreadfuls can best be perceived by travelling to and fro for a week between London and Paris and observing the books read by those who travel with first-class tickets. I think a fond belief in Ivanhoe-within-the-reach-of-all ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... next morning Dr. Rowlands spoke to his boarders on the previous day's discovery, and in a few forcible vivid words set before them, the enormity of the offence. He ended by announcing that the boys who were caught would be birched,—"except the elder ones, Bull and Brigson, who will bring me one hundred lines every hour of the half-holidays till further notice. There are some," ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... enduring life, which shows no decline or abatement after the effect of the monologues by the other speakers has been produced and the speakers themselves almost forgotten. Count Guide Franceschini is not a miracle of evil rendered credible, like Shakespeare's Iago, nor a strange enormity of tyrannous hate and lust like the Count Cenci of Shelley. He has no spirit of diabolic revelry in crime; no feeling for its delicate artistry; he is under no spell of fascination derived from its horror. He is ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... the power of inflaming it. But, alas! neither his magnetic force nor his haughty spirit could stem the whirlwind of hatred, rage, and calumny that took possession of the virtuous and capricious public. The story of cruelty to his wife grew in its enormity, his reported liaisons multiplied beyond all human reason. The bleached, white hearts of the oligarchal party had been lashed into fury by his withering ridicule and charge of hypocrisy, but the climax came like a tornado when ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... law, for man cannot break any one law unless he breaks first this fundamental Law of all Laws. This implies that the demoralizing effect of sinning or law-breaking, on any one of the planes of being, does not depend so much upon the enormity of the deed as upon the loss of self-control. Continued weakening of self-control in trivial things may therefore, in the end, prove more destructive than a murder committed in the heat of passion. If there is not self-control ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... the particular care and attention of Heaven. Nor did her anxiety abate, when she was undeceived in this her supposition, and understood it was no phantom, but the real substance of the stranger, who, without staying to upbraid her with the enormity of her crimes, commanded her, on pain of immediate death, to produce his horse, to which being conducted, he set her upon the saddle without delay, and, mounting behind, invested her with the management of the reins, swearing, in a most peremptory tone, that ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... unwilling to recognize a fault, or by the fault itself which biases the judgment. The faculty, or passion, which misleads one becomes a part of his judging faculty, and cannot condemn itself. The miser cannot realize the baseness of his avarice, nor the mercenary soldier the enormity of war. Nor can a defective faculty assist in realizing the defect. The color-blind cannot appreciate painting, the thief cannot appreciate integrity, the brutal wife-beater cannot appreciate love, and a ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... Above all, when he and his descendants have adroitly disguised his villainy with the varnish of incorruptible patriotism, why should the hand which has the power to tear off the mask, and expose the enormity of guilt, be made to fall, self-withheld and self-paralyzed, from the effort? These are questions which admit of but one reply. I shall go on, and in continuation of my developments, I here subjoin another letter ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... was over, greatly relishing its satiric elements, must be forgiven the trick of the burial and his still greater enormity in coming to life again. And then, duke or no duke, it was understood that he willed that things should in no case be precisely as they had been. He would never again be quite so near people's lives as in the past—a ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... Australia, an unhappy omen of the future. According to the instructions issued to Tasman, on his second voyage, he was directed to "enquire at the continent thereabout" (i.e., the neighbourhood of the Abrolhos) "after two Dutchmen, who, having by the enormity of their crimes forfeited their lives, were put on shore by the Commodore Francisco Pelsart, if still alive. In such case, you may make inquiries of them about the situation of those countries, and if they entreat you to that purpose, give them passage thither." He was also instructed ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... to follow her counsels. In the summer of 1522, he had, through the agency of Adrian de Croy, Lord of Beaurain, entered into negotiations not only with Charles V., but also with Henry VIII., King of England, deploring the ill behavior of Francis I. and the enormity of existing abuses, and proposing to set on foot in his own possessions a powerful movement for the reformation of the kingdom and the relief of the poor people, if the two sovereigns would send "persons of trust and authority into the vicinity of his principality of Dombes, to Bourg-en-Bresse, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... had not even asked if he had escaped unhurt, but had concentrated all her interest upon the man who had insulted her. As to his own father's wrath—that he had expected. It was his way to break out, and this he knew would continue until he realized the enormity of the insult to Kate and heard how he and St. George had tried to ward off the catastrophe. Then he would not only change his opinion, but would commend ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... melodrama, its childish presentments of human character, its endless digressions and—running through all this—its evidences of immense and disordered power, make the book perhaps the most magnificent failure—the most 'wild enormity' ever produced by a man of genius. Another development of the romantic spirit appeared at about the same time in the early novels of George Sand, in which the ardours of passionate love are ecstatically idealized in a loose and lyric ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... things like that, things done and things said with an incorruptible sweetness and affection, but things accentuated with lapsed aitches and with gestures that only Jimmy was unaware of. Those years are marked for me more than anything by the awful increase in his solecisms. Their number, their enormity and frequency rose with his income, and for the best of reasons. It was as if, his object being gained, he could afford them. He was no longer on his guard. He had no longer any need to be. The strain was over—he relaxed, and in relaxation he ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... and song combined, meant nothing more to her than if it had been Medoc. She drank it because it was there at her hand, as she would have drunk water, without savouring it, without any realisation of the enormity of the crime. Yet though it meant nothing, nothing at least of which she was aware, the royal cru was affecting her. It modified and mollified, admonishing her that this man was an inoffensive insect who, circumstances favouring, might, as Ma Tamby when inserting ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... little Dumps, now that the enormity of her sin was brought home to her, and the articles eaten so carefully enumerated, began to feel very much like a boa-constrictor, and the tears fell from her ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... animal, a creature of faunish activity and grace. Mrs. Payne always encouraged this passion of his as a natural and admirable thing, until, one day, the keeper, who was no more humane than the majority of keepers, came to her with a shocking story of Arthur's cruelty: an enormity that it would have taken the mind of a devil, rather than a man, to imagine. When she taxed the boy with it he only laughed. She thrashed the matter out; she pointed out to him that he had done a devilish thing; but in the ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... benign and amiable manner and lordly bearing," it is certainly not the elaborately villainous Francesco Cenci of Shelley, boasting like another Satan of his enormous wickedness, exhausting in his picture of himself the rhetoric of horror, committing his final enormity merely to complete the crown of atrocities in which he glories; it is no such tragic impossibility of moral hideousness as this; it is the Giovanni of Ford, the pearl of virtuous and studious youths, the spotless, the brave, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... introduce without reason a disgusting object, personally taking part in the proceedings without the intervention of the magician or his wand. Of the officials not one has raised his voice against it: of the Censors[666] not one has pointed out the enormity of such an act. Therefore your servant, overwhelmed with shame for the Censors, implores your Majesty that these bones may be handed over for destruction by fire or water, whereby the root of this great evil may ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... I had better go,' said Mark; 'I don't quite see what enormity I have been guilty of, but if you look at things in that light, there is no more to be said. I have chosen my life, and I don't mean to go back from it. I will see about finding lodgings as soon as I can, and you shall not be troubled ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... latter against the former, as the only possible method by which a spiritual theism can be intellectually, and therefore successfully, defended in this age of science. Only one who has read and digested the two books can fully appreciate the enormity and the unscrupulousness of the initial misrepresentation, slipped in, as it were, quite casually, and without any argument, in the apparently incidental and matter-of-course statement that my "conclusion" is "essentially idealistic." It is not "idealistic" ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... horizon expanded towards the southeast, and beyond the arches of Titus and Constantine he perceived the Colosseum. Ah! that colossus, only one-half or so of which has been destroyed by time as with the stroke of a mighty scythe, it rises in its enormity and majesty like a stone lace-work with hundreds of empty bays agape against the blue of heaven! There is a world of halls, stairs, landings, and passages, a world where one loses oneself amidst death-like silence and ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... a geisha? What difference can it make to me whether they are geishas or not?" Later, no doubt, when I understand Japanese affairs better, I shall appreciate myself the enormity of my proposal: one would really suppose I had ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... alderman "Don't you know that that sort of murder (suicide) is as bad as any other?" If such be the case—and we would as soon doubt the testimony of Balaam's quadruped as Sir PETER—we can only say, that the law has most shamefully neglected to provide a sufficing punishment for the enormity. Sir PETER speaks with the humility of true wisdom, or he would never have valued his own throat for instance—that throat enriched by rivulets of turtle soup, by streams of city wine and city gravies—at no more than the throat of a hungry tailor. There never in our opinion ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... defendant doesn't realize the enormity of the offence. However, we'll pass that by. The sentence, Miss Baker, brings me back to the starting-point. You are directed to answer the question just propounded, the question which for some inexplicable reason you didn't hear. What do you ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... not a very small place; but I could not meet with a silver thimble, and bought a halfpenny brass one. Slept at the Graham's Arms, a large inn. Here, as everywhere else, the people seemed utterly insensible of the enormity of Hatfield's offences; the ostler told William that he was quite a gentleman, paid every one genteelly, etc. etc. He and 'Mary' had walked together to Gretna Green; a heavy rain came on when they were there; a returned chaise happened to pass, and the driver would have ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... minister's hand with greater dismay and astonishment. The strong barrier of guilt seemed breaking down. Conscience aroused, as if at once the veil that concealed his iniquities had been withdrawn, they rose in all their unmitigated horror and enormity. An arrow, drawn at a venture, had pierced the joints of the harness. He stood powerless and without defence—motionless as the image of despair. By a strange coincidence a thick white cloud seemed to coil itself heavily round ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... such as they were he walked according to them, and hence they burnt ever more and more clearly, till in later life they served to show him what is vouchsafed to such men and to such only—the enormity of his own mistakes. Better that a man should feel the divergence between Christian theory and Christian practice, that he should be shocked at it—even to the breaking away utterly from the theory until he has arrived at a wider comprehension ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... shall be reconciled to this enormity. Truly may it be said that the world looks darker for it. In one way or another, here and there and all around us, the inventions of mankind are fast blotting the picturesque, the poetic, and the beautiful out of human life. The domestic ...
— Fire Worship (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... other offenses," continued the little man, "of which I now find my scoundrel of an apprentice to have been guilty, was the enormity of picking the lock of my desk, and prying into ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... other streams; and over the yellow rim of cane-hills the long blue bar of the sea appears, edged landward with a dazzling fringe of foam. The heights you have passed are no longer verqant, but purplish or gray,—with Pele's cloud-wrapped enormity overtopping all. A very strong warm wind is blowing upon you—the trade-wind, always driving the clouds west: this is the sunny side of Martinique, where gray days and heavy rains are less frequent. Once or twice more the sea disappears and reappears, always ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... infanticide is most prevalent In those localities where the system of moral education has been longest neglected. This inhuman crime might be compared to the murder of the innocents, except that the criminals, in this case, exceed in enormity the cruelty of Herod. ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... course, their own churches. In every town there are places of worship for Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Anabaptists, and every denomination of Christianity; and the meeting-houses prepared for these sects are not, as with us, hideous buildings, contrived to inspire disgust by the enormity of their ugliness, nor are they called Salem, Ebenezer, and Sion, nor do the ministers within them look in any way like the Deputy-Shepherd. The churches belonging to those sects are often handsome. This is especially the case in New York, and the pastors are not unfrequently ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... have taken of the history of our Society, in reference to this deeply interesting subject, and the feeling which prevails with us, under a sense of the enormity of the evil, urges us, and we desire that it may have the same effect upon you, still to persevere; and in every way that may be pointed out to us of the Lord, that we may continue to expose the evil of ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... then," inquired Gaddo, "may be guilty of any enormity sooner than wedlock, which money ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... be successful as an appeal to the court of public opinion, as it is intended. The case is ably and seriously put and is supported by adequate evidence to warrant the author's conclusions as to the enormity of the crimes against the natives. In making this bold agitation for economic equality, this book may materially influence future events in South Africa and in England. It will doubtless lead British statesmen to conclude that the imperial power cannot ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... Tenderloin in blushes. Both kinds are equally popular in the camps, and both are of the most astounding naivete. Of the worst of them, even, the simple-minded woodsmen are not in the least ashamed. They seem unconscious of their enormity. Nevertheless, it came about that, without a word said by any one, from the hour of Rosy-Lilly's arrival in camp, all the indecent "chanteys" were dropped, as if into oblivion, ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... young mother detected her baby boy in a deliberate lie. With tears in her eyes, and a catch in her voice, she sought to impress upon him the enormity ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... suspicion and dread. The prevailing impression is that they are bad and dangerous men,—that no reliance is to be placed on their word,—that they are naturally licentious, dishonest, deceitful, cruel,—that they are prepared for any enormity,—that they are enemies to domestic purity and civil order, and that no one is safe in their power. If ever they were regarded by mankind with favor, the time is forgotten. There is not a nation on earth ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... sinful, and therefore may expose him who harbors them to punishment. And lest any one should be disposed to look upon evil thoughts as an offense too trivial to awaken any concern, mark the company in which this sin is found. Learn from those offenses with which it is classed something of the enormity to which it may rise. "Out of the heart proceedeth evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... there is none more profitable: but beware of advancing any doubtful propositions, on which the doctors are divided: take for the subject of your sermons clear and unquestionable truths, which tend of themselves to the regulation of manners: set forth the enormity of sin, by setting up that infinite Majesty which is offended by the sinner: imprint in souls a lively horror of that sentence, which shall be thundered out against reprobates at the last judgment: represent, with all the colours of your eloquence, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... is Lord Campbell who has preserved the following specimen of a judge's concluding remarks to a prisoner convicted of uttering a forged one-pound note. After having pointed out to him the enormity of the offence, and exhorted him to prepare for another world, added: "And I trust that through the merits and the mediation of our Blessed Redeemer, you may there experience that mercy which a due regard to the credit of the paper currency of the country ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... he understood it less clearly. He was quite conscious of the enormity of his misdeed in telling a lady, and a great lady, according to his view, that he loved her, and in daring to touch the sleeves of her dress with his rough hands. He could not find it in him to regret what he had done, but he was prepared for very hard treatment as his just reward. It would not ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... classmate in college, who was going to Saratoga this very summer, for the purpose of meeting Anna Ruthven and deciding if she would do to become Mrs. Thornton Hastings, and mistress of the house on Madison Square. With a bitter groan at the enormity of his sin, and a fervent prayer for forgiveness, the rector had torn the slips of paper in shreds and given himself so completely to his work that his sermon was done a full hour earlier than usual, and he was free to indulge in reveries of Anna for as ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... his command, and even to defect to the side of the enemy on these grounds,—on the strength of steadfastly adhering to his ancient principles. He knew well that she had counseled such a step and was enthusiastic in urging its completion, nevertheless he sensed that the enormity and the depravity of his base design was too revolting, too shocking, for even her ears. He would not even acquaint her with Anderson's letter nor with the purpose he had of concurring with ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... value of the role. "Men like myself don't get a chance to know women like you. I wish to heaven—" He stopped, a lump in his throat, and gazed into the sentimental night. Great heavens, what a depraved character he really was! For the first time he saw himself in the enormity of his sinning. It was not only the cigarettes and the one black cigar, purloined from his father, but the orgies at penny-ante, the occasional game of craps back of Mather's barn. Then he remembered other damning episodes in his black record—the time he had gone into a mathematics ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... perhaps—and accept the situation. And the situation was this: Canterbury had kicked off and gained over thirty yards without losing possession of the ball! But in one way that play was ill-advised. Brimfield had stood all sorts of jokes and pranks from the enemy with fairly good grace, but this enormity was too much. Brimfield was peeved! More than that, she was really angry! And, being angry, she forgot that for twenty minutes she had been outplayed and started in then and there to administer a licking to the obstreperous ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... enormity of London increased with the twilight, and began to prevail a little against my intense personal wretchedness. I remember wastes of building enterprise, interminable vistas of wide dark streets, with passing trams, ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... off his guard, blinked at the enormity of the prospect; but, remembering his dignity as a business man, he shook his head sadly ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... his enormous crimes, was dreadful. The infatuation of political rancor on one side, an infatuation which could perceive nothing but the virtue of high and resolute Protestantism in his conduct, blinded his supporters to the enormity of his conduct, and, as a matter of course, they left no stone unturned to save his life. As we said, however, they were outnumbered; but still they did not despair. Reilly's friends had been early in the legal market, and succeeded in retaining some of the ablest men at the bar, ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... are taken from the report. They are said to be conservative. For the purposes of this discussion we could well lower the 27,000,000 by half. All I am concerned about is in arriving at a sense of the enormity of the impulse behind the "social evil." For it is this that the Commission proposes to ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... the prince; he had not estimated till that time the enormity of the misfortunes brought on people of Egypt by those merchants. His horror was all the more vivid, since he had rented out his own subjects to Dagon, and was himself witness of the way in which the banker collected his ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... made, it is to be lamented, as Irish reporters will make, sad mistakes at times. The once poor injured lady had been attired in canary-colored lute-string, and an ostrich plume remarkable for its enormity while she, the libeled one, had been becomingly arrayed in blue bombazine, and of any plumage imported from Araby the ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... really nothing to eat! Green biscuit with acrid spots of alkali,—sour yeast-bread,—meat slowly simmered in fat till it seemed like grease itself, and slowly congealing in cold grease,—and above all, that unpardonable enormity, strong butter! How often I have longed to show people what might have been done with the raw material out of which all these ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... my jewel, kicked over my pan of fat and jumped into the fire. Which, being put into straight English, I swiped a horse and rode off with the rest of the boys on the tail of the serpent." Weldon gasped, as he realized the enormity of the crime. Then he laughed. In his haste to gain possession of a mount, Paddy had taken no thought for his armament. His sole weapon was the huge iron spoon, still grasped ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... of no fleeting impulse, but of steadfast desire; therefore they were persistent. The likeness of the great bass horn remained upon the retina of his mind's eye, losing nothing of its brazen enormity with the passing of hours, nor abating, in his mind's ear, one whit of its fascinating blatancy. Penrod might have forgotten almost anything else more readily; for such a horn has this double compulsion: people cannot possibly keep themselves ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... in his brain; sitting there on high before the eyes of his fellows, the men to whom he had been preaching the doctrines of soviet sovereignty—the supremacy of the people—he had just suffered what his distorted views held as the enormity of ignominy; he had been used as a clothes-tree for discarded ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... listens to my discourse, on most occasions, with a commendable patience, and seems kindly disposed toward my efforts. Still I could wish much to see in her a little more burdensome sense of sin and of the enormity of her transgressions. We hope that she may yet be brought to a realizing sense of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... a thing looked wrong, then wrong it must be, and it was of no use to talk to him about it. That he should have found Elizabeth, who had been ordered to come home at eight o'clock, running in the opposite direction at half-past eight, was in his eyes an enormity which admitted of no explanations. That she either had been in mischief, or was then on her way to it, were the only two alternatives possible to the ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... brought him to the tree where he had hidden, and proceeded to sit in judgment on him, Sir Henry explaining to him in the very best French the unheard-of cowardice and enormity of his conduct, more especially in letting the oiled rag out of his mouth, whereby he nearly aroused the Masai camp with teeth-chattering and brought about the failure of our plans: ending up with ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... And now, Teancum saw that the Lamanites were determined to maintain those cities which they had taken, and those parts of the land which they had obtained possession of; and also seeing the enormity of their number, Teancum thought it was not expedient that he should attempt to attack them ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... the crime, and own the enormity of its consequences, and the danger of its example. Nor have I the confidence to petition for impunity; but humbly hope, that publick security may be established, without the spectacle of a clergyman dragged through the streets, to a death of infamy, amidst ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... chairs were bought for the use of the Committee room. There was also a rule about attendances, and any member failing to put in an appearance was fined sixpence, and if he happened to be the overseer, the enormity of his offence was marked by a fine of a shilling—"unless a note be sent to the meeting" [explaining cause of absence]. Here was a model authority, the like of which the town of Royston has never had since, considered as a working ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... defenceless prisoners, and had instructed him to prepare a school book for the use of American children, to be illustrated by thirty-five good engravings, each to picture some scene of horror, some enormity of suffering, such as should indelibly impress upon the minds of the school children a dread of British rule, and a hatred of British ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... The enormity of the offense crushed his irritation; it struck at the very foundations of his trust in Deena's judgment, at her whole future usefulness to him; he almost felt as if his bank account were not ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... philosopher to the more general teaching. In this popular religion all morality is conditioned by the castes,[28] which is true also to a certain degree of the earlier Sutras, but the evil fruit of this plant is not there quite so ripe as it is in the later code. The enormity of all crimes depends on who commits them, and against whom they are committed. The three upper castes alone have religious privileges. The lowest caste, outcasts, women, and diseased persons are not allowed to hear the holy ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... said. Seth's remark had, in his own way of thinking, "struck him all of a heap." He realized in a flash where his blundering had led him. He had run past himself in his enthusiasm, and given Ma's little scheme away, and, for the moment, the enormity of his offence robbed him of the power of speech. However, he pulled himself together ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... the severer punishment dwelt on the enormity of the offence. It was "one of the highest crimes man could commit," and "a captain of a ship engaged in this traffic was guilty of murder."[34] The law of God punished the crime with death, and any one would rather be hanged than be enslaved.[35] It was a peculiarly deliberate ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... the promise, or extension of responsibility through time, is what chiefly distinguishes us, I will not say from savages, but from brutes and reptiles. This was noted by the shrewdness of the Old Testament, when it summed up the dark irresponsible enormity of Leviathan in the words, "Will he make a pact with thee?" The promise, like the wheel, is unknown in Nature: and is the first mark of man. Referring only to human civilisation, it may be said with seriousness that in the beginning was the Word. The vow is to the man what the song is to the ...
— The Barbarism of Berlin • G. K. Chesterton
... of woe which comes from the repentant consciousness of having been guilty of an enormity. 'But he wasn't good enough to take me, sir!' she said, almost crying; 'and he isn't absolutely my master until I have ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... my efforts, going for nothing, just like your mother!" He no more than murmured it, and as Perona pushed him, he sank to the bench beside Jetta. But did not touch her, just sat staring. And she stared back, both of then aghast at the enormity of this, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... Highness the Prince Regent, in the name and on the behalf of His Majesty, was pleased, under all the circumstances of the case, to acquiesce in the sentence of the court. The court, in passing a sentence so inadequate to the enormity of the crime of which the prisoner has been found guilty, have apparently been actuated by a consideration of the novel and extraordinary circumstances which, by the evidence on the face of the proceedings, may have appeared to them to have existed during the administration of Governor Bligh, ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... the town with a hundred and sixty horse and forty musketeers, fell, as might be expected, into total confusion. The rout was complete; all the arms of the insurgents were seized; and the constable, after having been compelled to abjure his principles, and confess the enormity of his offence, was committed ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... upon the enormity of the offence of making love without the approval of a parent, the writer exhorts me, by my 'mother,' and by other people whom I 'hold dear,' to return her letters, and all other evidence of the past, with the assurance that by ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... a long chatelaine hung from her neck to her waist, to which were attached a bunch of trinkets of all shapes and sizes. She was laced very tight, and her poor nose was conscious of it, as it showed by blushing at the enormity. Under her left arm was a very small, very fat, very blunt-nosed Dutch pug. Phoebe at once guessed that the lady was Mrs Vane, and that ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... another. Let us dwell together, my brethren, in amity," said the Doctor, putting down his glass, and forgetting that he was in Mr. Gray's study; "and please give me your ears while I show you this morning the enormity of burning widows upon the funeral pyres of ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... poems imitated SHAKSPEARE and COLLINS rather too closely for all three to be original. 'PIERPONT is crowded with coincidences which look very like plagiarisms;' 'but,' adds the reviewer, 'it is reserved for CHARLES FENNO HOFFMAN to distance all plagiarists of ancient and modern times in the enormity and openness of his thefts. He is MOORE hocused for the American market. His songs are rifaciamentos. The turns of the melody, the flowing of the images, the scintillating conceits, are all MOORE. Sometimes he steals his very words.' Mrs. SIGOURNEY'S poetry is said to be characterized ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... of exterminating me. But, since I have reason to believe that no sufficient opportunity has been afforded you of realising the enormity of your conduct, I rally the profoundness of nobility which I discover within me—I calm myself. I go further, I explain. Living in retirement, you may not have learned that I am in Naples. I followed your cousin here—Madame de Vallorbes. My connection ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... thing to heare [of] the enormity of outcryes of those different nations. The Iroquoits sung like devils, & often made salleys to make us decline. They gott nothing by that but some arrows that did incommodat them to some purpose. We foresee that ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... sometimes the more gentle race of dogs and cats, are guilty of this horrid and preposterous murder. When I hear now and then of an abandoned mother that destroys her offspring, I am not so much amazed, since reason perverted, and the bad passions let loose, are capable of any enormity; but why the parental feelings of brutes, that usually flow in one most uniform tenor should sometimes be so extravagantly diverted, I leave to abler philosophers than myself ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... rode away with her so swiftly that it seemed as if the storm was his servant, and lent wings to his steed. When the talk at table or in company turned upon Bastide Grammont and his murderous crime, of which no one stood in doubt, Clarissa never occupied herself with the enormity of the deed, which must forever separate such a man from the fellowship of the good. Enveloped in a voluptuous mist, she was sensible of the influence of his compelling force, of the heroic soul that spoke in his gestures, of the reality of his existence and ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... had fallen upon him with the disclosure of a man's desires. His boyhood seemed suddenly to have gone from him like the light of a lamp blown out by a puff of wind. He felt old, and responsible to answer now for himself, since the enormity of his offense was ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... laugh, looking around him with defiance and an assured contempt upon the circle of his schoolmates, who were, one and all, regarding him with suspicion and unconcealed scorn. The most careless and reckless among them were shocked at the enormity of the offence with which he stood charged, a theft of such magnitude, and then the scoundrelly attempt to make it appear that another had been ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... others, holding commissions in the rebel service, to burn New York city. If ever a man deserved his fate, this man Kennedy certainly did, and the public, having been saved, unscathed, can never fully appreciate the enormity of his crime. One, knowing the facts of these men being in the North for this purpose, can readily appreciate the punishment awarded them; but upon reviewing all the facts in the case, will as readily say that they are now less guilty ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... Germany most human faults and follies sink into comparative insignificance beside the enormity of walking on the grass. Nowhere, and under no circumstances, may you at any time in Germany walk on the grass. Grass in Germany is quite a fetish. To put your foot on German grass would be as great a sacrilege as to dance a hornpipe on a Mohammedan's praying-mat. The very dogs respect ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... mill owner's desk, there was already waiting a powerful explosive, which Fayette had purloined from the store of the workmen who were excavating for the new wing of the building. In a moment more the fuse would have burned unnoticed to its fatal end, and an awful crime, of whose enormity the dull criminal had no real comprehension, ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... and digging proceeded. Then began a scurrying of lawyers to the door of one friendly judge after another. There were apoplectic cheeks, blazing eyes, and gasps for breath while the enormity of the offense was being noised abroad. Law is law, however. Procedure is procedure, and no writ of injunction was either issuable or returnable on a legal holiday, when no courts were sitting. Nevertheless, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... stove without unscrewing the stopper. I arrived in my tent quite late and seeing the thing on the stove quickly unscrewed it. The steam blew out with terrific force and filled the tent. A moment or two more and the bottle would have burst with disastrous consequences. When I told Stephenson of the enormity of his offence and that he might have been the cause of my death, and would have sent me to the grave covered with dishonour for having been killed by the bursting of a hot water-bottle—an unworthy end for one about to enter the greatest war the world has ever ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... it is, Tom," said one of the captains; "I will not have you in my company if you do that again. The man who would make a bad pun and a hackneyed pun in such beautiful scenery as this, would—I don't know what enormity he would not commit. Come late on parade, ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... religion by decree. Once only, by the arbitrary folly of the Ashikaga shogun, the imperial cult had been seriously interfered with; and the social earthquake consequent upon that division of the imperial house, apprised the usurpers of the enormity of their blunder.... Only the integrity of the imperial succession, the uninterrupted maintenance of the imperial worship, made it possible even for Iyeyasu to clamp together ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... to the enormity of his conduct, turned guiltily to greet the officer, while the Sergeant abruptly hunted the genial Private Bogle back into ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... until he entered his own door, and paused at the sound of Harriet's voice, that he began to realize the enormity of the tragedy that ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... he suspects. That is just where you are to come in, papa thinks so much of you—I want you to sound Paul's praises in his ear—to prepare him for what must come.' Was ever rejected lover burdened with such a task? Its enormity kept me still. 'Sydney, you have always been my friend,—my truest, dearest friend. When I was a little girl you used to come between papa and me, to shield me from his wrath. Now that I am a big girl I want you to be on my side once more, and ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... composition of Fiesco, Schiller derived the main part of his original materials from history; he could increase the effect by gorgeous representations, and ideas preexisting in the mind of his reader. Enormity of incident and strangeness of situation lent him a similar assistance in the Robbers. Kabale und Liebe is destitute of these advantages; it is a tragedy of domestic life; its means of interesting ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... inseparable from their existence. Their crimes themselves had become their punishment, and it was not necessary that greater should be inflicted. They haunted them like hideous spectres, and continually started up before them in all their enormity. They wished for a second death, that might separate them from these ministers of vengeance, as the first had separated their spirits from the body,—a death that might at once extinguish all consciousness and sensibility. They called upon the depths of hell to ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... against all sins, yet has never made war upon this giant sin, but has fondled and caressed it so kindly that the pious and conscientious, believing it no sin or crime, have lost all conception of its enormity, and may never realize it until an enlightened people shall pour their hot indignation upon the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... system of ethics which lays down with perfect precision the moral code on literary forgeries, or enables us to judge of the exact enormity of such offences. The world looks leniently on them, and sometimes sympathises with them as good jokes. Allan Cunningham, who, like Ramsay, was called "honest Allan," did not lose that character by the tremendous "rises" which he took out of Cromek about those remains of Nithsdale ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... said, "that one thing at least should be immediately done. Those responsible for the disgraceful riot of last evening, and I mean more than the actual ringleaders in the affair, should be brought to justice." He proceeded to elaborate upon the enormity of the crime, the danger to the State of mob rule, the necessity for stern measures to prevent the recurrence of such disorders. He suggested a special citizens' committee for the preservation of ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... whether it be the seeming enormity of the action, or the glare of new authority. Yet the sane sense follows in the next lines, (see 1765, I, ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... solitary confinement might perhaps be beneficial," said Bonaparte. "It will enable you, Waldo, to reflect on the enormity of the sin you have committed against our Father in heaven. And you may also think of the submission you owe to those who are older and wiser than you are, and whose duty it is to check and ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... his way. From 1636 to 1644 his genius soared on steady pinions. During the eight years that followed he triumphed, but he also faltered. Rodogune (1644), which he preferred to all his other plays, is certainly, by virtue of the enormity of the characters, the violence of the passions, the vastness of its crimes, the most romantic of his tragedies; it is constructed with the most skilful industry; from scene to scene the emotion is intensified ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... agree; and weeping all but echo hard-hearted Nulli. Tears are not swords and wrongs seem almost natural as rights. For the righteous to suppress an evil, is sometimes harder than for others to uphold it. Humanity cries out against this vast enormity:— not one man knows a prudent remedy. Blame not, then, the North; and wisely judge the South. Ere, as a nation, they became responsible, this thing was planted in their midst. Such roots strike deep. Place to-day those serfs in Dominora; and with them, all Vivenza's Past;— and serfs, for many ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... "if any thing could relieve my feelings, the enormity of that sum would. My husband was a man of ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... hours before, the death-warrant of sixty victims, was the very next day brought before the same tribunal, composed of his accomplices, or rather his creatures, and by them condemned to die. Thus did experience confirm the general observation, that the multiplicity and enormity of punishments announces an approaching revolution. The torrents of blood which tyrants shed, are, in the ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... greasy legs—and stumbling gait of the worn-out animal are all put into agonized motion by belabouring him upon the raw! The expression is Hibernian, but the brutality is our own. A few ill-gained pounds reconcile the enormity to the owner—and the cheapness and expedition of the conveyance give it public sanction: but humanity is outraged by the same: human sympathies are seared; and the noble precept, that "the merciful man is merciful to his beast," is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various
... Richmond. Were the whole produce of this imposition but a shilling a year, the iniquitous principle would be still the same; but when it amounts, as it is said to do, to no less than twenty thousand pounds per annum, the enormity is too serious to be permitted to remain. This is one of the effects ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... les fleurs de lis, and to obtain hereditary privileges. The hereditary transmission of office from father to son dealt a heavy blow at the popularity of the parliamentary body, which had already deeply suffered through shameful abuses, the enormity of the fees, the ignorance of some of the members, and the dissolute habits of ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... with her a bit and that turned her head completely. In lonely dreams her yearning for elegant and phantastic sin had grown to enormity. She was now so wholly and irresistibly intoxicated that he received next morning a deliciously scribbled note in which she begged him for a secret meeting—somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Arkona Place or Weinmeisterstrasse, regions ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... without these outcries and tearings of hair, and don't be for ever goading the Karls and other trodden-down creatures till they get their carbines in order (very rationally) to abate the nuisance—when you make the man a long speech against some enormity he is about to commit, and adjure and beseech and so forth, till he throws down the aforesaid carbine, falls on his knees, and lets the Frederic go quietly on his way to keep on killing his thousands after the fashion that moved your previous indignation. ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... sentiments neither consoled nor convinced. Stover was too firmly persuaded of the enormity of his offense and the depth ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... her husband's also. What the priest said to her it is not necessary to repeat. She had had the same sort of things said before, and had not been shocked. He now, however, before he allowed her to depart, brought the enormity of her conduct fully before her, and told her that he could not afford her absolution, because she was married to one who held heretical notions, unless she could manage to get him duly punished. She had made her confession; but, after all, she had to go ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... after carrying their conviction to the cannon's mouth, to acknowledge their error before the world. Hence, while he has endeavored truly to depict—or to let those who made history at the time help him to depict—the enormity of the offence of the armed Rebellion and of the heresies and plottings of certain Southern leaders precipitating it, yet not one word will be found, herein, condemnatory of those who, with manly candor, soldierly courage, ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... which is that of a Broker, leading me often into Taverns about the Exchange, has given me occasion to observe a certain Enormity, which I shall here submit to your Animadversion. In three or four of these Taverns, I have, at different times, taken notice of a precise Set of People with grave Countenances, short Wiggs, black Cloaths, or dark Camlet trimmd with Black, and ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... plantation, and my slaves treated as in general they are here, never could I rest in peace; my sleep would be perpetually disturbed by a retrospect of the frauds committed in Africa, in order to entrap them; frauds surpassing in enormity everything which a common mind can possibly conceive. I should be thinking of the barbarous treatment they meet with on ship-board; of their anguish, of the despair necessarily inspired by their situation, when torn from their friends and relations; ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... girl strove to throw the guilt of the sin she premeditated upon her victim, upon the Intendant, upon fate, and, with a last subterfuge to hide the enormity of it from her own eyes, upon La Corriveau, whom she would lead on to suggest the crime and commit it!—a course which Angelique tried to believe would be more venial than if it were suggested by herself! less heinous in her own eyes, and less ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... day, he called in agony upon the Virgin Mother, who took compassion on him and released him. He sought a village church, and to priest after priest confessed his sin, without obtaining absolution, until finally he had recourse to the Pope. But the holy father, horrified at the enormity of his misdoing, declared that guilt such as his could never be remitted sooner should the staff in his hand grow green and blossom. "Then Tannhauser, full of despair and with his soul darkened, went away, ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... the fatigue-uniform in which he was still dressed. Another moment, and the doctor had come in, and with him half the young officers of the garrison. Rayner was led away to his own quarters. Buxton, dazed and frightened now, ordered the guards back to their post, and stood pondering over the enormity of his blunder. No one spoke to him or paid the faintest attention other than to elbow him out of the way occasionally. The doctor never so much as noticed him. Blake had briefly recounted the catastrophe to those who first arrived, and as the story went from mouth to mouth it ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... was a lunatic. Mad, by Jove! Still gasping as he thought of the enormity of the situation, he left without another word, diving below to try and drown his confusion in a whisky and ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... walking-staff and stood erect, as if to spring on Mr Pamphlett. But of a sudden the enormity of the charge seemed to overcome him, and he passed a hand ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... already murdered, and that this ruffian was appointed to decoy herself to some secret place, where her life also was to be sacrificed to the avarice of Montoni, who then would claim securely the contested estates in Languedoc. The consideration of the enormity of such guilt did, at length, relieve her from the belief of its probability, but not from all the doubts and fears, which a recollection of Barnardine's manner had occasioned. From these subjects, her thoughts, at length, passed to others; and, as the evening advanced, she remembered, with somewhat ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... quarter of an hour before; for she had his open manuscript in one hand and was nervously pulling it about with the other. She looked frightened and pretty, and if, in invading the privacy of a fellow-lodger, she had been guilty of a departure from rigid custom, she was at least conscious of the enormity of the step and incapable of treating it with levity. The levity was for Peter Baron, who endeavoured, however, to clothe his familiarity with respect, pushing forward the seat of honour and repeating that he rejoiced in such a visit. The visitor came in, leaving the door ajar, and after a minute ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... prompted by the voice of conscience, long hushed and hidden in the master's breast. It was the protest of Christianity and morality against that which it had witnessed with complacency for many a generation. All at once it was perceived to be a great enormity that four millions of Christian people, in a Christian land, should dwell together without marriage rite or family tie. While they were slaves, the fact that they might be bought and sold had hidden this evil from the eye of morality, which had looked unabashed upon ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... astonishing, but what he has undertaken is more so; and whatever he may have undertaken is far surpassed by what he has imagined. However vigorous his practical faculty, his poetical faculty is stronger; it is even too vigorous for a statesman; its grandeur is exaggerated into enormity, and its enormity degenerates into madness. In Italy, after the 18th of Fructidor, he ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... former had passed from her mind; and her father, while he was living, had been away from her so much that she hardly knew him as a parent. Her antecedents, therefore, did not qualify her to comprehend the loathsome enormity of the course she proposed ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... loved, into slavery, seemed to him monstrous beyond belief. Why, if this were true, what a hypocrite the girl was! As coarse and unfeeling as the rest of them. Yet she had some shame left; she had blushed to be caught in the act by him. It showed her worse than those who justified this thing, the enormity of which she had seemed ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... shock of the enormity that I should be her executioner, I made my resolve: to drop shot, too, at the moment after she dropped shot, so disposing my body, that it would fall half upon her, and half by her, so that we might be close always: and that would not be so ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... eye alone, and sometimes by the most commonly informed mind; but architectural defects are only recognisable by those who have studied the principles of this fine art. Poetry, I am sorry to say, is not exempt from bulls and blunders, of various kinds and degrees of enormity; many of which have been, from time to time, exposed in a very amusing manner. I shall therefore, in conclusion, crave the liberty of producing one which has lately come under my own cognizance. A modern poet, whose compositions ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various
... our old maids?" he would ask, and then answer the question himself—"Oh, enlist them. With a little training they would make first-rate soldiers." He was also prejudiced against saints, and said of one, "I presume she was so called because of the enormity of her crimes." ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... he turned, frowning at the interruption, and then sprang up with a troubled eye. It was his father certainly; but what a remarkable change since he had seen him last! For the first time Andrew realized the full enormity of his conduct in growing younger. His very appearance ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... could hardly prevent myself from there and then kneeling down at his feet and telling him what I had done. But that again would mean a confession of the past. I came to you that morning in order to understand the full enormity of my offence. From the instant that I grasped it my whole mind was turned to the one thought of getting back my husband's paper. It must still be where Lucas had placed it, for it was concealed before this dreadful woman entered the room. If it had not been for her coming, I should not have known ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... embodied in those acts of Congress has hardly been appreciated by even the most enlightened and conservative people of the North. Only those who actually suffered the baneful effects of the unrestrained working of those laws can ever realize their full enormity. The radical Congress was not content to impose upon the Southern States impartial suffrage to whites and blacks alike. They were not content even to disfranchise the leading rebels, according to the terms of the Fourteenth ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... in degree, and not at all in kind, that he differed from the general run of successful wealth builders. The Vanderbilts committed thefts of as great an enormity as he, but they gradually managed to weave around themselves an exterior of protective respectability. All sections of the capitalist class, in so fiercely reviling Gould, reminded one of the thief, who, to divert attention from himself, joins with the pursuing ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... no comprehension of a man who could be so quiet when he was angry, and she believed that she might impress him with a due sense of the enormity of his offense. "Mr. Holcroft, I scarcely feel that I can meet a girl who has no more sense of decorum than to—" But Jane, striking a match, revealed the fact that she was ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... hypocritical cant with which British judges usually preface their awards, however infamous. He alluded to the personal condition of Mr. Mitchel, and expressed his regrets that a person of such merits should be in such circumstances, Then having dilated on the enormity of the offence, he assured Mr. Mitchel that he had been found guilty of many heinous charges against the Queen and the Imperial Crown, and among others, of felonious intending to levy war upon that gentlewoman, and that the evidence was furnished by the prisoner's self. "How, therefore," ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... her to believe somewhat of this, to hope that it might not be altogether false. Could any girl loving such a man not have had some such hope? But then the stories of these revelries became worse and worse, and it was dinned into her ears that these doings had been running on in all their enormity before that day of his banishment. And so, silently and sadly, with no outspoken word either to mother or brother, she had ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... this enormity. She had made a discovery which interested her infinitely more. Little Theodore, hitherto so inanimate, had sat up, listened, looked with a dawning of expression in the eyes that had hitherto been clear and meaningless as blue porcelain, and as the music ceased, his inarticulate ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... methods of acquiring influence which offend a clear-sighted conscience, that if a party cannot prevail but by using the weapons with which it is attacked, it must resort to these means of self-preservation. What is this but another way of expressing the doctrine on the enormity of which we have just remarked? Self-preservation should not be the object most studied by a party. The preservation of a character which will stand the test of moral principle should be far dearer. If a party cannot live without adopting what it condemns, let it perish; let falsehood and shamelessness ...
— The Religion of Politics • Ezra S. Gannett
... the book of Job would have been very different. His perplexity would then have been—how God being just, could require of a man more than he could do, and punish him as if his sin were that of a perfect being who chose to do the evil of which he knew all the enormity. For me, I will call no one Master but Christ—and from him I learn that his quarrel with us is that we will not do what we know, will not come to him that we may have life. How endlessly more powerful with men would be ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... have great respect for the judges of their courts and the latter show much wisdom and discretion in their decisions, though they do not always place the white man's estimate upon the relative enormity of offenses. I was present at a session of the Cheyenne river court in 1892, when two parties accused with crime were brought before it. One was charged with stealing a picket pin of the value of thirteen cents and he got thirty days in the guard-house, while ...
— Sioux Indian Courts • Doane Robinson |
