"Extenuation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "it appears that Tom Beazeley has deserted twice; still there is much extenuation; at all events, the punishment of death is too severe, and I don't like it—I can save him, and I will. By the rule of the services, a deserter from one service can be claimed from the other, and must be tried by his officers. ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and vindicate himself impressed her as no attempt at extenuation could have done. Perhaps, in that moment, her quick instinct divined something of his case, something of the mental suffering he strove to conceal. Contrition shone ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... off suddenly a stream of extenuation that was welling in her mind; for David did not look like a man about to be cut off in the heyday of his ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... to for insubordination. In a weak moment the Government Advocate asked one question too many, "Beggin' your pardon, sir," Ortheris replied, "'e was callin' me a dam' impudent little lawyer." The Court shook. The jury brought it in a killing, but with every provocation and extenuation known to God or man, and the Judge put his hand to his brow before giving sentence, and the Adam's apple in the prisoner's throat went up and down mercury-pumping ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... made it a point to select old rickshaws, pulled by broken down men. They looked habitually underpaid, and were probably used to it, and were therefore less likely to raise objections at the end of the trip than one of the swift young runners who stood about the European hotels. Remember, in extenuation, that Rivers was living on credit at this time, on borrowed money, and he did not like to be more extravagant than he ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... necessities, but she dismissed it with the shadow of a smile—it was absurd for a woman of her age to dwell on such frivolous things. Yet she still lingered to wonder if men too kept intact among their memories the radiant image of their youth, if they ever thought of it with tenderness and extenuation. She decided in the negative, convinced that men, even at the end of many years, never definitely lost connection with their early selves, there was always a trace of hopefulness, of jaunty vanity—sometimes winning ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... odious office of Provost Marshal General showed him to be fittest of tools for their purpose. Their selection—considering the end in view, was eminently wise. Baron Haynau was made eternally infamous by a fraction of the wanton cruelties which load the memory of Winder. But it can be said in extenuation of Haynau's offenses that he was a brave, skilful and energetic soldier, who overthrew on the field the enemies he maltreated. If Winder, at any time during the war, was nearer the front than Richmond, ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... so in the life of George Villiers, we find him kind-hearted, and free from hypocrisy. His old servants—and the fact speaks in extenuation of one of our wildest Wits and Beaux—loved him faithfully. De Grammont, we all own, has little to redeem him except his good-nature: Rochester's latest days were almost hallowed by his penitence. Chesterfield ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... committed this base action under the menace of some great danger to save the fortune, the honor, probably the life of Madame de Campvallon. This, though a poor excuse in the mother's eyes, still was an extenuation. Probably also he had in his heart, while marrying her daughter, the resolution to break off this fatal liaison, which he had again resumed against his will, as often happens. On all these painful points ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... suppose the reader will dub me a fool to have married Sylvia. Well, he or she may do so. My only plea in extenuation is that I loved her dearly and devotedly. My love might have been misplaced, of course, yet I still felt that, in face of all the black circumstances, she was nevertheless true to those promises made before the altar. I ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... runners, were all bad enough, but on the other hand, the delay and confusion in the quartermaster's department, the dereliction of the contractors, and the want of discipline among the militia and the levies, were all matters of extenuation. To win was hopeless. To unjustly denounce an old and worthy veteran of the Revolution, who acted with so much manly courage on the field of battle, ill becomes an American. A committee of Congress ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... a longer route, that should end in the Pyramids, when Fay was well and strong again. It would not matter then; but he was a brute, he confessed, to have left her just at that time. Then he added in self-extenuation that he ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... boy who had given him small strength upon which to lean, was absent. He had gone idly and thoughtlessly before the emergency arose, and the man lying on the four-poster bed tried to argue for him, in extenuation, that he would have returned had he known the need. But in his bruised and doubting heart he knew that had it been Alexander, she would have read the warning in the first brook that she saw creeping into an augmented stream, and ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... again, over the same bare, brown, unpeopled wilderness. Once we saw a badger zigzagging along a side-hill, and Frosty whipped out a big revolver—one of those "Colt 45's," I suppose—and shot it; he said in extenuation that they play the very devil with the range, digging holes for cow-punchers to break their ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... withall, and grafted too, Accompanie the greatnesse of thy blood, And hold their leuell with thy Princely heart? Prince. So please your Maiesty, I would I could Quit all offences with as cleare excuse, As well as I am doubtlesse I can purge My selfe of many I am charg'd withall: Yet such extenuation let me begge, As in reproofe of many Tales deuis'd, Which oft the Eare of Greatnesse needes must heare, By smiling Pick-thankes, and base Newes-mongers; I may for some things true, wherein my youth Hath faultie wandred, and irregular, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... at school so long, Martha, dear," she answered in extenuation, "that I hate to interfere in anything she wants to do. She is very happy; let her alone. I wish, though, she would return some of the calls of these good people who have been so kind to her. Perhaps she will if you speak to her. But don't worry about Bart; that will wear ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... this extenuation of the rashness of these young men, that Dr. Mason, to whom was attributed the attempt to suppress certain passages in Stevenson's oration, was himself in the habit of giving free expression to his political sentiments in the pulpit. He belonged to the federal ...
— A Discourse on the Life, Character and Writings of Gulian Crommelin - Verplanck • William Cullen Bryant
... advance. Their own officer could do nothing with them. At Detroit two hundred of them refused to cross the river, on the ground that they were not obliged to serve outside the United States. Granted such extenuation as this, however, Hull showed himself so weak and contemptible in the face of danger that he could not expect his fighting men to ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... turned aside. Meantime Elfride's countenance wore a look indicating utter despair of being able to explain matters so that they would seem no more than they really were,—a despair which not only relinquishes the hope of direct explanation, but wearily gives up all collateral chances of extenuation. ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... series of conventions. With a Republican mayor in every other city, there had been no attempt at official protection; and yet it may be remembered, in extenuation, that it is always easier for the party out of power than for the one in power to stand for principle; the former has nothing to lose. The Republicans at this time were panic-stricken and staggering under the weight ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... government, become united by a common cause; and by offending against the latter clause of this cautionary code, a perilous confidence is placed in the triumph of gratitude, and private pique, over that great love which nature plants and warmly cherishes in the breast of every man, for his country. In extenuation of a departure from these political maxims it may be urged, that the french excited the war, and that in the pursuit of it, they displayed a compound spirit, which Machiavel might well think problematical, for whilst that country never averted its eye from the common enemy, it never ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... and himself placing the bridal veil upon her brow. The Count sees through Figaro's trick, but believing it will be frustrated by Marcellina's appeal, he promises to honor the bride, as requested, in due season. Cherubino has begged for the Count's forgiveness, and Susanna has urged his youth in extenuation of his fault. Reminded that the lad knows of his pursuit of Susanna, the Count modifies his sentence of dismissal from his service to banishment to Seville as an officer in his regiment. Figaro playfully inducts him into the ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... generally. The devices to which they have recourse in conducting a bargain are often exceedingly ingenious; and to be reputed rich might materially interfere with their success on such occasions. There is nothing more common than to hear a plea of poverty set up and most pertinaciously urged, in extenuation of the terms of a purchase, by persons whose outward condition, comfortable well-furnished houses, and large mercantile credits, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... countless numbers already existing, and daily appearing in the world, the following Diary has been committed to the press, trusting that, as it was not written WITH INTENT to publication, the unpremeditated nature of the offence may be its extenuation, and that as a faithful picture of travel in regions where excursion trains are still unknown, and Travellers' Guides unpublished, the book may not be found altogether devoid of interest or amusement. Its object is simply to bring before the ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... tired and exasperated, and I laughed. I don't defend my laugh—it was in wretched taste. But I must plead in extenuation that the boy was a fool, and that I'd done my best for him—I ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... Paracho, and Pedro Mina were among those who were shot. General Mendez was one of the best and most brilliant officers in the imperial army, and it may be said in extenuation of his personal share in the tragedy that the cruelty of the mode of warfare carried on by Arteaga and his lieutenants seemed to warrant stern treatment. It is stated that only a short time before Arteaga had caused ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... poured out the story of how Felston had sworn to lay him out in the Three Cock, and how Hazlitt and others had flung the words "Three Cock" into his face for half a term, it would have been certainly an extenuation. But he realised that Hazelton was present. It would not be the proper thing, it would indeed be unpardonable cheek, for him to talk in the presence of the House captain as though his chances of playing in the Three Cock were to be taken for granted. ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... should light upon these lines, and he should thereupon feel disposed to curl his lip with unutterable scorn and say: "This fellow was a milksop and ought to have been fed on Christian Commission and Sanitary goods, and put to sleep at night with a warm rock at his feet;"—I can only say in extenuation that the soldier whose feelings I have been trying to describe was only a boy—and, boys, you probably know how it was yourselves during the first year of your army life. But, after all, the soldier had ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... she repent of her folly, and bitterly would the others upbraid her, telling again of the joys and wonders she had squandered. Then loudly would she bewail her weakness and plead in extenuation: "I seen the candy. Mouses from choc'late und Foxy Gran'pas from sugar—und I ain't never ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... themselves from the fate of the guilty. The several charges on which the demands for redress were founded had been publicly known to all for some time, and were again announced to them. They did not deny any of these charges; they offered no explanation, nothing in extenuation of their conduct, but contumaciously refused to hold any intercourse with the commander of the Cyane. By their obstinate silence they seemed rather desirous to provoke chastisement than to escape it. There is ample reason to believe that this conduct of wanton defiance ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin Pierce • Franklin Pierce
... in the second, filled with an unreasoning fear that caused her to flee whenever she had seen him approach. This is the only excuse for what she did; for while her mother was feebly murmuring, as if in extenuation, "We thought it was John coming in," Cora Cordelia clasped her hands in delirious delight, and cried aloud, "It's Santa Claus! Oh, it's Santa Claus!" Could anything more awful happen to a cross man, a very cross man, than to ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... always been his fate to have women say such things of him: the fact should be set down in extenuation. What struck me now was that, for the first time, he resented the tone. I had seen him, so often, basking under similar tributes—was it the conjugal note that robbed them of their savour? No—for, oddly enough, it became apparent that he was fond of Mrs. Gisburn—fond enough ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... ship was ultimately destined. On the other hand, the material of the ship's company is credibly stated to have been extremely inferior, a condition frequently complained of by British officers at this late period of the Napoleonic wars. It has also been said, in apparent extenuation of her defeat, that although six weeks out from England, having sailed November 12, and greater part of that time necessarily in the trade winds, with their usual good weather, the men had not been exercised ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... I know, are not money. Still, they should be considered as some extenuation in a debtor, and at least exempt him from unnecessarily harsh treatment. No man can tell how it may be with him in the course of a few years, and that, if nothing else, should make every one as lenient towards the ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... of the old Syracusan in life. His human nature is of the kind that makes the nymphs and swains of Alexander Pope dull and artificial. There are flies in this delicious ointment, one must admit, touches of corruption which a degenerate paganism condoned and palliated, but we must remember, as an extenuation of the Greek attitude, that the oracle of Delphi protested against them. The cyprus plains of Theocritus yet echo with the call of the cicada, and the anemones still bloom. The pipes of Pan are not all silent. The world would lose some of its beauty if Theocritus and the Sicilian poets did not ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... God was an orphan," Hannah pleaded in extenuation. "But, what about God's papa?" she demanded with sudden inspiration. "You're so smarty, tell ...
— The Little Mixer • Lillian Nicholson Shearon
... as this must necessarily be selective. No doubt omissions will be noted of poems or stories that many teachers deem indispensable. Others will find selections included that to their minds are questionable. The editors can only plead in extenuation that they have included what they have found by experience to offer a sound basis for discussing with training classes the nature of this basic material and the form in which it should be presented to children. To accomplish these ends it has sometimes seemed well ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... former sentences are cognizable in my court. The merits of the case are all I look to, and I believe I have never failed to judge of the actions by themselves, and of the actor by his motives; and to allow manners, opinions, circumstances, &c., their full weight in extenuation. What other merit my historical works may have, others must find out for themselves, but this will I vouch for, that never was the heart of any historian fuller of purer opinions; and that never any one ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... my oath in extenuation of my conduct, and that I was bound to return. This was not held in law to be any excuse. I had no business to take an oath of that nature, it was asserted by the counsel for the Government. The sentence of death against ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... drink without him and of which he did not know. I STOLE that other drink, and, worse than that, I began the habit of drinking alone when there was a guest, a man, a comrade, with whom I could have drunk. But John Barleycorn furnished the extenuation. It was a wrong thing to trip a guest up with excess of hospitality and get him drunk. If I persuaded him, with his limited calibre, into drinking up with me, I'd surely get him drunk. What could ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... his eulogies of these gentle savages, probably never dreamed that they were anthropophagi, and if he had known the fact, his kindly nature would have found some extenuation for them. Cannibals, as a rule—certainly those of New Caledonia—do not eat each other indiscriminately. For example, they dispose of their dead with tender care, though they despatch with their clubs even their best ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... of the chest, and any other indication of a liability to a pulmonic disease. 9. Impaired or inadequate efficiency of one or both of the superior extremities on account of fractures, especially of the clavicle, contraction of a joint, extenuation, deformity, etc., etc. 10. An unusual excurvature or incurvature of the spine. 11. Hernia. 12. A varicose state of the veins of the scrotum or spermatic cord (when large), sarcocele, hydroccle, hemorrhoids, ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... the utmost perplexity between her inclination to urge something in extenuation for the poor girls, and her fear of dissenting from Lady Maclaughlan, or rather of not immediately agreeing with her; she therefore steered, as usual, the middle course, and kept saying, "Well, children, really ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... plea of love can be offered in extenuation. The truth is far otherwise: he loved her no more. And this forms the most dreadful part of the story. We have seen how cruelly he drugged her; we have now to see her utterly forsaken. He owed her a grudge ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... preface, there is one point on which I am anxious to appeal to the indulgence of my readers. It is obvious that the work being written in English by a Spaniard, must bear some traces of its foreign descent. In extenuation of these unavoidable faults of style and language, I can only entreat that the English public will extend the same generous sympathy and benevolence to the errors of the author, which it has already evinced, in far ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... Consequently, juries (in bulk, be it understood; individual jurors may, perhaps, retain the emotional equipment of a Chatterton) are skeptical when asked to accept the vagaries of the artistic temperament in extenuation ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... hunting at all, or find the least of permanent satisfaction in shooting partridges and baiting sows,—"with such an expenditure of industry and such damage to the seedfields," he would sometimes allege in extenuation. In later years he has been known to retire into some glade of the thickets, and hold a little Flute-Hautbois Concert with his musical comrades, while the sows were getting baited. Or he would converse with Mamma and her Ladies, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... deny our situation as editor and author. Of Peter Simple, therefore, we say nothing, but we take this opportunity of saying a few words to the public.... The Naval Officer was our first attempt, and its having been our first attempt must be offered in extenuation of its many imperfections; it was written hastily, and before it was complete we were appointed to a ship. We cared much about our ship and little about our book. The first was diligently taken care of by ourselves, the second was left in the hands of others to get on how it could. ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... stoutly opposed the insetting tide, but as the waves of commercial life grew strong and swept around her, the power of resistance grew more feeble from year to year, until finally some of her own people began to plead extenuation and even tolerance. The conflict was now open, and the result seemed questionable. With the conscience of the Southern portion of the Church asleep or dormant, the anti-slavery side of the issue came finally ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... my having been some little time in your debt. I could plead many things in extenuation, the chief, that old one of the state of my eyes, which never leaves me at liberty either to read or write a tenth part as much as I could wish, and as otherwise ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... a man likes to fall in love with one woman and continue to love her all his days; it is more romantic. It annoys him to face the fact that he is about to fall in love with another. In my case I felt that there was some extenuation. Gretchen looked like Phyllis. When I saw Gretchen in the garden and then went to my room and gazed upon the likeness of Phyllis, I was much like the bachelor Heine tells ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... deaf; the brain will have ceased from all wants as well as from all work. Then your charitable speeches may find vent; then you may remember and pity the toil and the struggle and the failure; then you may give due honour to the work achieved; then you may find extenuation for errors, and ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... that stood arrayed against each other; then and there they came to be courted by both of the great parties, especially by the Whigs, who had become the weaker party of the two. Fanaticism, to which is usually accorded sincerity as an extenuation of its mischievous tenets, affords the best excuse to be offered for the original abolitionists, but that can not be conceded to the political associates who joined them for the purpose of acquiring power; with them it was but hypocritical cant, intended to deceive. Hence arose ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... she had taken milk from the same place at other times. When asked what she had to say in extenuation, she held her child up and said, "I did not take it for myself, I took it for this!" She did not call it her child. The magistrate looked, shuddered, and ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... below the usual type of middle-class solicitors. What they did was in the ordinary course. With Mr. Pickwick they were most forbearing, and even indulgent. There was one rather doubtful passage, but even here he offers extenuation. This was their treatment of poor Ramsey, which, at first ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... seen that Victoria, notwithstanding her widely-diffused material well-being, is just as much addicted to crimes against person and property as some of the poor and squalid States of Europe. It may be said in extenuation of this condition of things, that Victoria contains a larger grown-up population, and therefore a larger percentage of persons in a position to commit crime than is to be found in older countries. This is, to a certain extent, true, but the difference is not so great as might at first sight ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... though now universally execrated by Christian people and pronounced murder by their laws. Even at that time Hamilton held it in abhorrence. In a paper drawn for publication in the event of death, he announced his intention of throwing away his fire, and in extenuation of yielding, he adds: "To those who, with me, abhorring the practice of duelling, may think that I ought on no account to have added to the number of bad examples, I answer that my relative situation, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... every quarter, if we did not set our face against all that is under the surface of things, unless, that is to say, the going beneath the surface is, for some special chance of profit, excusable or capable of extenuation. ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... render without extenuation the impressions received: of dignity, plenty, and peace at Malie, of bankruptcy and distraction at Mulinuu. And I wish I might here bring to an end ungrateful labours. But I am sensible that there remain two points on which it would be improper to be silent. I should ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sound itself, especially of vowels, as there is a form of augmenting them by enlarging or even lengthening it; and that sometimes not so much by change of the letters, as of their pronunciation; as, sup, sip, soop, sop, sippet, where, besides the extenuation of the vowel, there is added the French termination et; top, tip; spit, spout; babe, baby; booby, [Greek: Boupais]; great pronounced long, especially if with a stronger sound, grea-t; little, pronounced long lee-tle; ting, tang, tong, ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... appetite for pleasure—all these might, perhaps, be pleaded in extenuation—for virtue often survives honor—and many who once trod the paths of infamy have subsequently reconciled themselves to society by the performance of noble deeds, and have thus thrown a halo of glory round their evil doings—but if this were so, whence ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... of others. And it is not strange that such friendships should have ripened into love, and that one thus tempted should have fallen. Catharine in her memoirs does not deny her fall, though she can not refrain from allowing an occasional word to drop from her pen, evidently intended in extenuation. Much which is called virtue consists ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... with so much fervor that something perilously close to a smile touched her lips. He told her who he was, and the information appeared to surprise her, so it is safe to assume she knew it already. He pleaded in extenuation that they had been neighbors for a year; but she had not, apparently, been aware of this either; and ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... persons. When brought into the presence of the magistrate, he learned, to his consternation, that the root upon which he had been experimentalising was worth four thousand florins; and, notwithstanding all he could urge in extenuation, he was lodged in prison until he found securities for the payment ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... description of the rage Lulu was thrown into at the sight of Rosie galloping away on the pony she had expected to ride, repeated her angry retort in reply to Aunt Dinah's reproof, and told, without any extenuation of the hard facts, how the baby girl, escaping from her nurse's watchful care for a moment, had toddled along to her sister, caught at her skirts for support, and received a savage kick, that sent her down the ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley
... hand out. Her mother took it, drew her in, and kissed her forehead. "Good-bye, my child"; she could not, for her life, be more cordial than that. The offence itself seemed a pinprick beside the rankle of the wound to her pride. This child had set up for herself, and was now returned—without extenuation, without plea for mercy. Mrs. Percival was one of those people who cannot be happy unless their right to rule be unquestioned. Had the girl humbled herself to the dust, grovelled at her feet, she would have taken her to her breast. ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... sing Come to Christ. I am credibly informed that "at least half a dozen" of my meek and lowly Baptist brethren are but awaiting an opportunity to assassinate me, and that if successful they will plead in extenuation that I "have slandered Southern women." I walk the streets of Waco day by day, and I walk them alone. Let these cur-ristians shoot me in the back if they dare, then plead that damning lie as excuse for their craven cowardice. ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... John's speech and the bitter comments of Cobden and Roebuck. Whether he was right or wrong in his views of peace, or in not resigning when they were rejected by the Cabinet, he has nobly told the simple truth without gloss or extenuation. ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... education, Dr. John," said I. "Tossed about all her life from one foreign school to another, she may justly proffer the plea of ignorance in extenuation of most of her faults. And then, from what she says, I believe her father and mother were brought up much as she has ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... busy," said Harlan, in extenuation. "Will you come in?" She was evidently a friend of Dorothy's, and, as such, ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... protest to Lord Bathurst, provoked by the petty tyranny of Sir Hudson Lowe, said of the "Proscriptions," and (by negative inference) in extenuation of them, that they "were made with the blood yet fresh upon the sword." A sentence, which, falling from the lips of one of the most imperturbably cool and calculating of mankind, under circumstances superinducing peculiar reflection ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... hand, there was nothing whatever to be advanced in extenuation of her folly in thus inviting indigestion—a passion for pastry is its own punishment no less than any other infatuation to which mortal flesh is prone. Sally was morally certain she would suffer, and that ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... revolutions effected in 1820 were undisgraced by the scenes of outrage which had followed the capture of the Bastille and the overthrow of French absolutism thirty years before. [316] The gentler character of these southern movements proved, however, no extenuation in the eyes of the leading statesmen of Europe: on the contrary, the declaration of soldiers in favour of a Constitution seemed in some quarters more ominous of evil than any excess of popular violence. The alarm was first sounded at St. Petersburg. As soon as the Czar heard of Riego's ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... result of any desire of systematic persecution, but of a sense of wounded dignity. It was a thing unheard of, and unpardonable in his eyes, for a private soldier to assert, in his presence, his honour and his respectability in extenuation, even while admitting the justice of a specific charge; and when he remarked the Court listening with that profound attention, which the peculiar history of the prisoner had excited, he could not repress the manifestation of his anger. In justice to him, however, it must be ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... from his own peculiar point of view was morally justified in twice marrying, is a question of casuistry which has often haunted me. The reasons he alleged in extenuation of his conduct with regard to Harriet prove the goodness of his heart, his openness to argument, and the delicacy of his unselfishness. But they do not square with his expressed code of conduct; nor is it easy to understand how, having found it needful ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... extenuation of the little that is known of the fresh-water fishes of Ceylon, it may be observed that very few of them are used at table by Europeans, and there is therefore no stimulus on the part of the natives to catch them. The burbot and grey mullet are occasionally ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... commendation. And while we view with satisfaction those bright spots, shining more brilliantly from the gloom which surrounds them, their want of learning and the absence of every opportunity for refinement, should plead in extenuation of their failings and their vices. Some of the most flagrant of these, if not encouraged, have at least been sanctioned by the whites. In the war between the New England colonies and the Narragansetts, it was the misfortune of the brave ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... never saw them this way before! I didn't know people ate raw fish at Parties! I.... This is the Very First Party I ever went to," she explained. It was surely extenuation enough for any ignorance of the customs of ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... 'Mean' Aristotle 'obliterates the awful and absolute difference between right and wrong.' If we substitute, as Kant suggested, 'law' for 'mean,' some of the ambiguity is obviated. Still, after all extenuation is made it may be questioned whether any term implying quantity is a fit expression ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... them to see seven of their most flourishing missions arbitrarily broken up, the Indians driven from their homes, and their territory occupied by those very Portuguese who for a hundred years had been their persecutors. There was much to say in extenuation, even for 'duplicity of language', when one remembers that the Jesuits alone (no matter how mistaken their views of treatment may seem to modern eyes) stood out against the assumption that the Indians were a mere flock of sheep, who might be driven from their homes on any pretext, or at the ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... open robbery of the rich, taxes of all sorts were laid and unlimited oppressions enforced. The new edicts of the emperor were written so small and posted so high as to be unreadable, yet no excuse of ignorance of the law was admitted in extenuation ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... inlaying tesserae of borrowed metaphor—a mosaic of bits culled from extensive reading, carried along by a retentive memory, and pieced together so as to produce a new whole, with the exquisite art of a Japanese cabinet-maker. It is sometimes admitted that Milton was a plagiary, but it is urged in extenuation that his plagiarisms were always reproduced in ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... room, where his wife was. We did not fail to converse kindly with him and his wife in relation to those matters in which we believed they were sinning, notwithstanding all the little reasons which pious people of that description are accustomed to advance in extenuation of their sin and avarice. As there were plenty of books around, my comrade inquired of him what book he liked or esteemed the most. Upon this he brought forward two of the elder Brakel, one of which was, De Trappen des Geestelycken Levens.[133] He also took down another ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... shows that, while living there, he read the whole service of the Church of England to that little community every Sunday, and his diary in many places exhibits a reverence for Divine things. It may, however, be said in extenuation of the lack of hospitality on the part of the missionaries of which he complains, that many of the early residents and European visitors to New Zealand were of an undesirable class, and that they exercised ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... doubtless, but one for which much extenuation might have been found in her easily influenced, affectionate nature, in the adroitness and knavery of her accomplice, who talked constantly of marriage, concealing from her the fact that he was not free himself, and when at last he was obliged ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... very hard to forgive, and that is, that as the two went together under the flaming white lights towards Chiswick High Street, she turned to Frank a little nervously and asked him if he would mind walking just behind her. (Please remember, however, in extenuation, that Gertie's new pose was that ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... were preposterous; but there were some that she found brilliantly successful, and a few that charmed her with their delicate and tender poetry. He said something about most of them, in apology or extenuation; Cornelia believed that she knew which he liked by his ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... telling me how many regiments the "old Nawth State, suh," had furnished to the "suhvice," and I had the names of some thirty colonels, in order. The young Captain gave me a sketch of General Branch, and was anxious that I should publish something in extenuation of North ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... reply, I took the opportunity to put in some Gospel teaching, which was supposed to be very irrelevant matter, and counted evasive. I did not deny that I had said something to the effect of which he complained, but I pleaded in extenuation that I was justified in doing so. He was more enraged by my letter than by the report he had heard, and threatened to publish the correspondence. This he did, with a letter to his parishioners, in which he warned them against revivals in general, and me in particular. ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... these writers are indebted. Their endeavour has been to collect together the scattered material that was worth collecting relating to what might be called the naval period of Australia. This involved some years' study and the reading of scores of books, and we mention the fact in extenuation of such faults of commission and omission as may be discerned in the work by the ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... theory, which proclaims itself "good sense"; Philintus against Alcestis; mediation offered between the false and the true; explanation, admonition, rather haughty extenuation which, because it is mingled with blame and excuse, thinks itself wisdom, and is often only pedantry. A whole political school called "the golden mean" has been the outcome of this. As between cold water and hot water, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... obstinate and ineradicable as grave disease. If out of the long frustration of our efforts to be whole some strain of bitterness passes into our nature; if sometimes we burn with unjust resentment against the fate which, suffers such lives as ours to be prolonged, let it be remembered in extenuation that to those who bear a double burden human charity owes the larger kindliness. For though like you we bear our share of common troubles, O happier men and women, the common pleasures and compensations which are as wings upon your shoulders are heavy packs on ours. The cheerful ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... said by some, in extenuation of this wrong, that the slaves are well fed and clothed, and are kindly, even affectionately, looked after. This is true, in some cases,—with the house-servants, particularly,—but, as a general thing, their food and clothing are coarse and insufficient. ...
— Step by Step - or, Tidy's Way to Freedom • The American Tract Society
... to prove worthy," he said, earnestly. "You must remember, in extenuation, that I have not seen the ladies of our family for a ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... written partly, it may be imagined, to suit the English taste of the day. In that object they must have succeeded, for they were frequently transcribed into contemporary periodicals. In extenuation of Smollett's honesty of purpose, however, it may be urged that he was always a thoroughgoing patriot, [Witness his violently anti-French play, the Reprisal of 1757.] and that, coming from a Calvinistic country where a measure of Tartufism ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... effect upon all to whom it became known, but it nevertheless failed to shake the confidence of Marie de Medicis in the innocence of a courtier who had, in the short space of a few days, by his energy and devotion, rendered himself essential to her; while thus much must be admitted in extenuation of her conduct, reprehensible as it appeared, that every rumour relative to the death of her royal consort immediately reached her, and that two of these especially appeared more credible than the ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... intensely if I had not learned about them in the way God thinks best to teach us his abhorrence of them. I never read any book in which a sin was fully delineated that I did not feel some of the excitement of the sin—some extenuation, perhaps, some glossing over, some excuse for the sinner,—but in the record God gives I always intensely hate the sin and feel how abominable it is in his sight. The first book I ever cried over was ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... responsive to human kindness, was touched. He felt a note of sincerity in McPhail's tone. Perhaps he had judged him harshly, overlooking the plea in extenuation which Phineas had set up—that in every man there must be ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... thought of one of those mutinous seamen, if, when brought before the bar of his country, he had pleaded in his defence, that, after the revolt, he had been faithful to his new commander? Would any person have regarded that as an extenuation of his sin? No! He would at once have been led to the scaffold. And the voice of an indignant public would have said that he ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... and to reduce them to a situation which no man can hear of without shuddering. When you consider, that, while he was thus entertained himself, he was famishing fourteen hundred of the nobility and gentry of the country, you will not conceive it to be any extenuation of his crimes, that he was there, not upon a visit, but upon a duty, the harshest that could be executed, both to the persons who executed and the people who ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... joy I took from the recurring thought that I was particeps criminis with the Princess of Burgundy in the commission of a crime. At times I wished the crime had been greater and its extenuation far less. We hear much about what happens when thieves fall out, but my observation teaches me that thieves usually remain good friends. The bonds of friendship had begun to strengthen between Yolanda and me before she sought my help in the perpetration of her great crime. After that black ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... Again, there is the case of those who have been thrown down precipices and lost their arms; and of those who at sea, and in stormy places, have been suddenly overwhelmed by floods of water; and there are numberless things of this kind which one might adduce by way of extenuation, and with the view of justifying a misfortune which is easily misrepresented. We must, therefore, endeavour to divide to the best of our power the greater and more serious evil from the lesser. And ...
— Laws • Plato
... violence and outrage had been productive of public advantage, I conceive his Lordship might have held them forward in extenuation of his conduct; but whilst he cloaks his justification under the veil of your records, it is impossible to refute his assertions or to expose to you their fallacy; and when he is no longer able to support his conduct by argument, he refers ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... tell, the supper had been waiting a most unreasonable time. Neither Mrs. Maylie, nor Harry, nor Rose (who all came in together), could offer a word in extenuation. ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... no apparent heed of the remark, but passed on. But the child's pleading reminded him of the low, broken voice he had so lately heard, penitently and humbly urging the same extenuation of his great guilt. ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... and Herrera's squadron, no cavalry was forthcoming. Lopez remained unpardonably inactive, for want of orders, as he afterwards said; but, under the circumstances, this was hardly an extenuation. The position of the Carlists had been, in the first instance, from the nature of the ground, scarcely attackable by horse, at least with any prospect of advantage; but now the want of that arm was great and obvious. Cordova's conduct ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... fellahs, a moor cock doesn't fly that way," Willis drawlingly explained, in extenuation of the poor shooting. "He doesn't go right up and down, you 'now. He has wings, don't you 'now, and flies straight away, like a shot. I could hit a grouse without any trouble, but this kind of shooting! The best shot in England would ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... especially for the selection of jurymen not likely to be troubled with scruples in political cases. He had been deeply concerned in those dark and atrocious parts of the Whig plot which had been carefully concealed from the most respectable Whigs. Nor is it possible to plead, in extenuation of his guilt, that he was misled by inordinate zeal for the public good. For it will be seen that after having disgraced a noble cause by his crimes, he betrayed it in order to escape from his well ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... this be a proof of the justice of the charge brought against me by my accuser of having "turned round upon my Mother-Church with contumely and slander," in this sense, but in no other sense, do I plead guilty to it without a word in extenuation. ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... Cooper Union speech of 1860 he exhibited a familiarity with the theory and history of the Constitution which amazed the young lawyers who prepared an annotated edition of the address. "He has wit, facts, dates," said Douglas, in extenuation of his own disinclination to enter upon the famous joint debates, and, when Douglas returned to Washington after the debates were over, he confessed to the young Henry Watterson that "he is the greatest debater I have ever met, ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... of having administered the inhuman castigation, Landry (the owner of the girl) pleaded guilty, but urged in extenuation that the girl had dared to make an effort for that freedom which her instincts, drawn from the veins of her abuser, had taught her was the God-given right of all who possess the germ of immortality, no matter what the color of the casket ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... staunch drinker, according to the testimony of Lord Cockburn, There is a remarkable corroboration of this opinion in a current anecdote which is traditionary regarding the same learned judge. A case of some great offence was tried before him, and the counsel pleaded extenuation for his client in that he was drunk when he committed the offence. "Drunk!" exclaimed Lord Hermand, in great indignation; "if he could do such a thing when he was drunk, what might he not have done when he was sober!" evidently implying that the normal condition ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... fierce inflamed visage as suddenly disappeared, leaving horrid imprecations upon the ears of the listeners, who never supposed the fearful tale could be true. Mrs. Tyler's friend offered the only extenuation possible—the man had "been on board the Alabama and was very bitter." But in Mrs. Tyler's memory that fearful deed is ever mingled with that fiendish face ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... a fuss about a trivial thing, and proposed that the Art official should throw his lunch—steak and kidney pudding—across the room at him, Lewisham, and so get immediate satisfaction. He then apologised to the official and pointed out in extenuation that it was a very long and difficult shot he had attempted. The official then drank a crumb, or breathed some beer, or something of that sort, and the discussion terminated. In the afternoon, however, Lewisham, to his undying honour, felt acutely ashamed of himself. Miss ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... of them so far as I can see; and if I am expected to judge of His purposes when they appear to be beneficent, I am in consistency obliged also to judge of them when they appear to be malevolent. And it can be no possible extenuation of the latter to point to the "final result" as "order and beauty," so long as the means adopted by the "Omnipotent Designer" are known to have been so [terrible]. All that we could legitimately assert in this case would be that, so far as observation can extend, "He cares for animal ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... no use fer Chinks," said the mucker, as though in extenuation of his suggestion that they murder the youth. For some unaccountable reason he had felt a sudden compunction because of his thoughtless remark. What in the world was coming over him, he wondered. He'd be wearing white pants and playing lawn tennis presently ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... forgive or to remember me. Look on me as one wholly unworthy even of resentment! Do not think that I write this in madness or in fever or excitement. Judge me not by my seeming illness this morning. I invent no excuse, no extenuation, for my broken faith and perjured vows. Calmly, coldly, and deliberately I write; and thus ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... down utterly. Many years before he had served a short term in prison. After his release he had married, raised a family, "lived a respectable life," as he pleaded in hysterical extenuation. He kept a ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... underestimated his chances of success. It is obvious that at about that time everybody was inclined to underestimate his chances. Strictly speaking he didn't seem to have any. I know this was Cornelius's view. He confessed that much to me in extenuation of the shady part he had played in Sherif Ali's plot to do away with the infidel. Even Sherif Ali himself, as it seems certain now, had nothing but contempt for the white man. Jim was to be murdered mainly on ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... excuse of sympathy for the old man and her desire to save him from the consequences of his crime, which she offered in extenuation of her own criminal avowal of having first found and then reburied the ill-gotten gains she had come upon in her persistent pursuit of the flying criminal. So impulsive an act might be consistent with the blind compassion ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... are quite safe when we state that the drama, in its present form, was written when the authoress was not more than seventeen." Yet it should be added that the above statement is not made by way of extenuation; for, to say the truth, it needs no such ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... my Thanks for the remaining L50 which came in extremely apropos, and on my visit to Town about the 19th will give you a regular receipt. In your Extenuation of Mrs. Byron's Conduct you use as a plea, that, by her being my Mother, greater allowance ought to be made for those little Traits in her Disposition, so much more energetic than elegant. I am afraid, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... who should bear the blame did not enter into Dic's perturbed cogitations. He took it all upon his own broad shoulders, and did not seek to hide his sin under the cloak of that poor extenuation, "she did tempt me." If Rita's love should turn to hatred (he thought it would), he would marry Sukey and bear his burden through life; but if Rita's love could withstand this shock, Sukey's troubles would go unrighted by him. Those were the only conclusions he could reach. ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... events of this unfortunate day, and by the unexpected violence of the Indians in the canoe, as to lose somewhat of that self-possession, by which his character in general was eminently distinguished. Candour, however, requires, that I should relate what he hath offered in extenuation, not in defence, of the transaction; and this shall be done in his own words. "These people certainly did not deserve death for not choosing to confide in my promises, or not consenting to come on ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... truants heavily. One case which is reported displays the grim and costly humor of the illegal tribunal which dealt with such cases. Poor Mr. Palmer of Sussex, a gay bachelor, being called upon to show cause why he had been residing in London, pleaded in extenuation that he had no house, his mansion having been destroyed by fire two years before. This, however, was held rather an aggravation of the offence, inasmuch as he had failed to rebuild it; and Mr. Palmer ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... silence. Much of this kind of gossip came from those of her own sex whom she had supplanted in the chivalrous attentions of Wingdam, which, like most popular chivalry, was devoted to an admiration of power, whether of masculine force or feminine beauty. It should be remembered, too, in her extenuation that since her arrival, she had been the unconscious priestess of a mythological worship, perhaps not more ennobling to her womanhood than that which distinguished an older Greek democracy. I think that Brown was dimly ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... questions with blushes; and they did not leave his face when he confessed that all he could say in extenuation of what he had done was to plead his youth, and having ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... worse,' retorted Fanny, determined not to admit anything in extenuation, 'for then you have no excuse. If they had known about us, you might have felt yourself called upon to conciliate them. That would have been a weak and ridiculous mistake, but I can respect a mistake, whereas I can't respect a wilful and deliberate abasing of those who ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... of an orderly and an ordered scheme of things, whereas whatever happens beyond the British domains must necessarily be highly unusual and exceedingly disorganizing. If so be it happens on English soil he can excuse it. He always has an explanation or an extenuation handy. But if it happens elsewhere—well, there you are, you see! What was it somebody once called England—Perfidious Alibi-in', wasn't it? Anyhow that was what he meant. The party's intentions were good ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... person. Swift was then about forty-seven, at an age when vanity is strongly excited by the amorous attention of a young woman. If it be said that Swift should have checked a passion which he never meant to gratify, recourse must be had to that extenuation which he so much despised, "men are but men:" perhaps, however, he did not at first know his own mind, and, as he represents himself, was undetermined. For his admission of her courtship, and his indulgence of her hopes, after ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... shrank from them. The curse of Nathan was upon him; like David, he had condemned his friend to absence and danger, and had then promptly fallen in love with his wife. But not willingly, he pleaded, in extenuation; it had crept upon him unawares. It was his own secret, he had never betrayed himself, and so help his God, he would trample it down till he gained the mastery. Not for one moment would he tolerate disloyalty to his friend, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... has most at stake in this discussion, and that, indeed, is most involved in its issue, is the ministerial, or clerical, profession. While it was Jewish rabbis who affirmed most positively, in olden time, the unwavering obligations of truthfulness, it was Jewish rabbis, also, who sought to find extenuation or excuse for falsehoods uttered with a good intention. And while it was Christian Fathers, like the Shepherd of Hermas, and Justin Martyr, and Basil the Great, and Augustine, who insisted that no tolerance should be allowed to falsehood ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... man sit up for her husband the night before; and she had heard her mother, as she happened to be passing in the hall when Mrs. Grey did not see her, finding fault with him for being late in the morning; to which the servant answered, in extenuation, that he had been up so late for Mr. Wentworth that he ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... we have settled here—a period of ten months. Still, not all with me are true men. Some few, on their visits to Fort Simpson, have fallen, and two, whose cases were clearly proved and admitted of no extenuation, I ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock
... arises from their extreme love of spinning out an infinite deal of nothing. Now, as "brevity is the soul of wit," their productions can be looked upon as little else than phantasmagorial skeletons, ridiculous from their extreme extenuation, and in appearance more peculiarly empty, from the circumstance of their owing their existence to false lights. This fault does not exist with all the master spirits, and, though "many a flower is born to blush unseen," we now proceed to rescue ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... first example of that base emigration which eventually left the king defenseless in the midst of his enemies. The Baron de Breteuil and some of the ministers made similar provision for their own safety; though it may be said, as some extenuation of their ignoble flight, that they had no longer any official duties to detain them, since the king had already dismissed them, and on the evening of the 16th had written to Necker to beg him to return ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... and declared himself unwilling to bind a pair of children by ties so solemn and indissoluble; but the license was triumphantly exhibited as a release from ministerial responsibility, and grandmother urged in extenuation that in the event of her death I would be thrown helpless upon the world, and she as my sole surviving protector and guardian desired to see me entitled to a husband's ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... been in all the history of murder and plunder. Liberty! the People! these are the sacred objects with which tyrants cloak their usurpations, and which assassins plead in extenuation of their brazen disregard of life, of virtue, of all that is dear and sacred to the race. The dagger of Brutus and the sword of Cromwell, were they not drawn in the name of Liberty—the People? The guillotine of the French Commune and the derringer of J. ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... asked he, half in extenuation, "why don't you try to look pleasant and cheerful? Why won't you be jolly, as Tom ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... began a war-dance, waving the bloody scalp in the air with frenzied gestures as they circled around and around the lifeless body, and many of the drunken white men applauded heartily, although it must be set down in extenuation that they were so drunk as not really to understand ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... he cried, "what is this thing that I have done! Forgive me, and let the greatness and the purity of my love for you plead in extenuation ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... impossible for Lockhart, a political sympathiser and a personal friend, to treat him harshly in an obituary notice. There was no danger of his setting down aught in malice; but there might be thought to be a considerable danger of over-extenuation. The danger was the greater, inasmuch as Lockhart himself had certainly not escaped, and had perhaps to some extent deserved, one of Hook's reproaches. No man questioned his integrity; he was not a reckless spendthrift; he was not given to excesses in living, or to hanging about great houses; nor ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... really," said Napoleon, to Gohier, in this interview, "advocate a general peace! You are wrong. The Republic should never make but partial accommodations. It should always contrive to have some war on hand to keep alive the military spirit." We can, perhaps, find a little extenuation for this remark, in its apparent necessity, and in the influences of the martial ardor in which Napoleon from his very infancy had been enveloped. Even now, it is to be feared that the time is far distant ere the nations of the earth ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... quaestor at Vaga was really meant as a guarantee of good faith, and perhaps he was regarded as a hostage for the personal security of Jugurtha.[939] Shortly afterwards the king rode into the Roman camp and was introduced to the consul and his council. He said a few words in extenuation of the hostile feeling with which his recent course of action had been received at Rome, and after this brief apology asked that his surrender should be accepted. The conditions, it appeared, were not for the full council; they were for the private ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... him beyond the scope of generally received laws; although, in a single instance, he had so fearfully transgressed one of the most sacred of them.... Were such a man once more to fall, what plea could be urged in extenuation of his crime? None; unless it avail him somewhat, that he was broken down by long and exquisite suffering; that his mind was darkened and confused by the ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... his surrender in extenuation of his sentence, and beseeching the intercession of the Lords with his Majesty, Lord Kilmarnock concluded—"It is by Britons only that I pray to be recommended to a British monarch. But if justice allow not of mercy, ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... accepted," replied Mr. Ryfe loftily. "Nor, indeed, does his lordship consider that his injuries admit of extenuation. Shall I tell you his very words, Mr. Stanmore, addressed to me ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... veracity, loyalty in a man's personal relations, or financial integrity. The politician who ruins his career in climbing down a waterspout, or the engineer who prevents his employers from trusting his judgment and conscience in money matters, cannot plead in extenuation any other sort of instrumental excellence. They have deserved to fail, because they have trifled with their job; and it may be added that serious moral delinquencies are usually grave hindrances to a man's ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... respects he dealt harshly with the English clergy, and connived at their wholesale deprivation. We must own, in extenuation, that their lives and conduct had not been such as to do honour to God, that they were said to be the most ignorant clergy in Europe; and that the sins of the nation under their guidance were owned, even by the English, to have brought the heavy judgment of the Conquest ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... her, who had grown up to look upon Maria Braccio as a holy woman, cut off in her youth by a frightful death, the truth was overwhelmingly awful. She strove within herself to find something upon which she could throw the merest shadow of an extenuation, ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... and wriggled, for giving up his forty dollars a month was like a surgical operation. He saw that his master was incensed, and in no mood for extenuation; ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... said Aunt Martha to the burglars, "I would like very much to hear what any one of you can say in extenuation of having broken into a gentleman's house ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton
... leaned across the corner of the table and put my case before her without suppression or extenuation. Her breathing tightened over my sketch of the duel with Goguelat; and again more sharply as I told of my descent of the rock. Of Alain she said, "I ken his sort," and of Flora twice, "I'm wonderin' will I have seen her?" For ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... table and said, that although he had not been employed or deputed to appear for Mr. Boland and the young masters and misses, his fine sons and daughters, yet justice to the accused compelled him to come forward, and offer a few words in extenuation of the punishment, if any, which should be inflicted for their alleged misdeeds. "First, then," he asked, "was it possible that they, the men then present, should be angry or offended at seeing one of their ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... what meekness she could muster. She admitted that the monitress had reason for wrath, and that she had really no excuse worthy of urging in extenuation of her crime. It was hard to be debarred the use of the library for more than a fortnight, but, Helen, she knew, would enforce that discipline rigidly. The unfortunate motto-cards had come in for the bulk of the ink, ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... the revolver in my pocket, and the presence of the little weapon was curiously reassuring. I have endeavored, perhaps in extenuation of my own fears, to explain how about Dr. Fu-Manchu there rested an atmosphere of horror, peculiar, unique. He was not as other men. The dread that he inspired in all with whom he came in contact, the terrors which he controlled and hurled at whomsoever cumbered ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer |
