"Palliate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the book; and it seems like blasphemy to intimate that the Spirit of God could have had anything to do with its composition. It is absolutely sickening to read the commentaries, which assume that it was dictated by the Holy Ghost, and which labor to justify and palliate its frightful narrative. One learns, with a sense of relief, that the Jews themselves long disputed its admission to their canon; that the school of Schammai would not accept it, and that several of the wisest and best of the early fathers of the Christian church, ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... on the road to the mountains. In the many miles, as he fared along, his thoughts could hardly have been pleasant company. As he sought to discover fault or flaw in himself, search as he might, he could find naught that might palliate the flippant faithlessness of his beloved, or the treachery of his brother. His ambition might have been too worldly a thing, but not a pulse of that most vital emotion beat for himself. He realized it now—he realized his life in looking back upon this completed episode, as he might have ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... probably it is in your morals, which cannot bear the truth of it. The violent on both sides will condemn the character of Absalom, as either too favourably or too hardly drawn. But they are not the violent whom I desire to please. The fault on the right hand is to extenuate, palliate, and indulge; and to confess freely, I have endeavoured to commit it. Besides the respect which I owe his birth, I have a greater for his heroic virtues; and David himself could not be more tender of the young man's life, than I would be of his reputation. But since ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... not? I thought that perhaps the one sin might palliate the other. You know, aunt, no young lady, let her be ever so ill-disposed, can marry two objectionable young men,—at the ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... from Northumbrian, died away beneath the common pressure of the stranger. The Conquest was hardly over when we see the rise of a new national feeling, of a new patriotism. In his quiet cell at Worcester the monk Florence strives to palliate by excuses of treason or the weakness of rulers the defeats of Englishmen by the Danes. AElfred, the great name of the English past, gathers round him a legendary worship, and the "Sayings of AElfred" embody the ideal of an English king. We see the new vigour drawn from this deeper consciousness ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... He talked unceasingly, making a running commentary upon every stroke he made; and he went on just the same at cards. However, he never blamed his companions, or lost his temper when his plan of action was defeated. He certainly talked incessantly, but it was always to explain or to palliate some point in the game, and the eternal repetitions, delivered in the same eloquent and persuasive tone, provoked a smile from ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... benefits on both, to give up a part of the benefit to soften the inconvenience. The perfect cure is impracticable; because the disorder is dear to those from whom alone the cure can possibly be derived. The utmost to be done is to palliate, to mitigate, to respite, to put off the evil day of the Constitution to its latest possible hour,—and may it ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... repulsive in his countenance and manner. What, then, was his surprise and momentary delight when he beheld before him his only daughter, and felt her arms entwining his neck! After the first transport of greeting she became sensible that, in order to palliate his misery, she must put a strong curb upon her own, and in a short time was calm enough to enter into conversation with her father upon the subject of his present situation, and to deliver a message from the old earl, her grandfather, by which he was informed that an appeal had ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... among you occupy my place;—and be surrounded by the same temptations,—and then comport himself wisely—if he can! Such an one would need to be either god or hero; and I profess to be neither. But I do not wish to palliate or deny the errors of the past. The present is my concern,—the present time, and the present People. Great changes are fermenting in the world; and of these changes, especially of those directly affecting our own country, I became actively ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... to gild the brief period with the light of your love. I would not have bound you always to me; and when I asked your hand a few minutes since, I knew that death would soon sever the tie and set you free. Let this suffice to palliate my 'unmanly' pleading. I have but one request to make of you now, and, weak as it may seem, I beg of you not to deny me. You are preparing to leave my house; this I know; I see it in your face, and the thought is harrowing to me. Electra, remain ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... done wrong, and deny or excuse their wrong-doing, the father of the family is the more moved to wrath; whereas, on the other hand, confession secures pardon or a lighter punishment. But it is the nature of hypocrites to excuse and palliate their sin or to deny it altogether and under the show of religion, ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... Norah tried hastily to palliate Vladimir's misdeed in their eyes, but it is doubtful whether they heard her. The Major's fury clothed and reclothed itself in words as frantically as a woman up in town for one day's shopping tries on a succession of garments. He reviled ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... sight of God he was a murderer made Blair collapse during the day. He was confined to his room; and it was then that he told the Fort Benton physician all that was haunting him, hour by hour. Blair did not attempt to palliate his sin, and although the doctor had known much and suspected more, he could hardly find it in his heart to forgive either Winifred's brother or the woman who had led him on. The only ray of mercy he felt was that matters were not so bad as he had feared between these ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... losing his senses upon the occasions, and in the manner to be afterwards stated, he may have committed improprieties which fill him with sorrow and regret: but he hopes, that in case he shall be able to show circumstances which abridge and palliate the guilt of his imprudent excess, the Venerable Court will consider these improprieties as the effects of that excess only, and not as arising from any radical vice in his temper or disposition. When a man is ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... something pathetic to me in the fables historians invent to excuse or palliate, or, perhaps it would be juster to say, make tolerable, the stained pages of the past. It is brought doubly nearer and distinct by this miserable war, and the strange fate that has fallen upon us—to be the guests of a family whose hopes are fixed upon what would ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... universal grin, Sees not a countenance there that speaks a joy Half so refined or so sincere as ours. Cards were superfluous here, with all the tricks That idleness has ever yet contrived To fill the void of an unfurnished brain, To palliate dulness and give time a shove. Time, as he passes us, has a dove's wing, Unsoiled and swift and of a silken sound. But the world's time is time in masquerade. Theirs, should I paint him, has his pinions fledged With motley plumes, and, where the peacock shows His azure eyes, is ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... by Colonel the Hon. FitzWilliam Elliot. He "hopes, though he cannot expect," that I will give my reasons for not sharing his belief that Sir Walter did a certain thing which I could not easily palliate.' ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... arose. But a man who loves England for being Anglo-Saxon may go against all facts for his fancy. He may end (like Carlyle and Freeman) by maintaining that the Norman Conquest was a Saxon Conquest. He may end in utter unreason—because he has a reason. A man who loves France for being military will palliate the army of 1870. But a man who loves France for being France will improve the army of 1870. This is exactly what the French have done, and France is a good instance of the working paradox. Nowhere else is patriotism more purely abstract and arbitrary; and nowhere ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... danger, and he knew it. The disease had taken on a form that usually baffles the skill of our most eminent physicians, and Dr. Hillhouse saw little chance of anything but a fatal termination. He could do nothing except to palliate as far as possible the patient's intense suffering and endeavor to check farther complications. But he ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... suspicion on all that was transacted on that occasion. But there is no force in such an objection. Your Committee has no concern in the defence of these witnesses, nor of the Lords who found their verdict on such testimony, nor of the morality of those who produced it. Much may be said to palliate errors on the part of the prosecutors and judges, from the heat of the times, arising from the great interests then agitated. But it is plain there may be perjury in witnesses, or even conspiracy unjustly to prosecute, without the least doubt of the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... proceeding, upon my word!" he remarked. Then he began to enlarge upon the enormity of the design. The most prominent impression in his mind evidently was that we were acting a base and treacherous part in deserting his party, in what he considered a very dangerous stage of the journey. To palliate the atrocity of our conduct, we ventured to suggest that we were only four in number while his party still included sixteen men; and as, moreover, we were to go forward and they were to follow, at least a full proportion of the perils he apprehended would fall upon us. But ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... pleasure, the great drama of vanities, with the little interludes of wisdom; these have been the occupations of my manhood; these will furnish forth the materials of that history which is now open to your survey. Whatever be the faults of the historian, he has no motive to palliate what he has committed nor to conceal what he ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... set for ever at rest. But it is only among the enlightened and benevolent that so great a sacrifice of appetite and prejudice can be expected, even though its ultimate excellence should not admit of dispute. It is found easier, by the short-sighted victims of disease, to palliate their torments by medicine than to prevent them by regimen. The vulgar of all ranks are invariably sensual and indocile; yet I cannot but feel myself persuaded that when the benefits of vegetable diet ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... be something which needed explanation. It was the only instance among the works of Shakspeare in which a direct copy, even to matters of detail, appeared to have been made; and, in spite of all attempts to gloss over and palliate, it was impossible to deny that an unblushing act of mere piracy seemed to have been committed, of which I never could bring myself to believe that Shakspeare had been guilty. The readiness to impute this ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various
... child had sought to escape; crept out into the backyard; tried to scale the wall; fallen back exhausted; and been found at morning on the stones in a dying state. But though there was some evidence of cruelty, there was none of murder; and the aunt and her husband had sought to palliate cruelty by alleging the exceeding stubbornness and perversity of the child, who was declared to be half-witted. Be that as it may, at the orphan's death the aunt inherited her brother's fortune. Before the first wedded year was out, ...
— Haunted and the Haunters • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... The effort to palliate Rossian cruelty, skilful as it is, by the alleged necessities of war, by denials, or by asserting it to be mere revenge for similar atrocities committed by Poles, must be appreciated according to the sources whence it emanates. What ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... consequence, have come not to be so much condemned as pitied, their perversion of character is regarded not so much in terms of iniquity as of disease, and as we thus condone transgression in others, so in ourselves we palliate our wrong. We regard it as the unfortunate but hardly blamable consequence of temperament or training. Our fathers, who thought that the trouble was the devil in them, used to deal sternly with themselves. Like Chinese Gordon, fighting ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... remembered, till it has faded into nothingness. Instead of the life being the main thing, and being absolutely necessary to give value and emphasis to the belief, it has come to pass that it is the belief, and the acceptance of the belief, that has been held to hallow the life and excuse and palliate its errors. ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... disabled, in a body, all the deponents themselves, whether on oath or not on oath by discrediting the whole province as a set of criminals who gave evidence to palliate their own rebellion. They administered interrogatories to the commissioner instead of the culprit. They took a base fellow, whom they had themselves ordered their commissioner to imprison for crimes, (crimes charged on him, not by the commissioner, but by themselves,) ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the Whig alliance, by democratic sympathy, and by the transference of our political capital to Westminster. Tracts, periodicals, and the whole horde of Benthamy rushed in. Without manufactures, without trade, without comfort to palliate such degradation, we were proclaimed converts to Utilitarianism. The Irish press thought itself imperial, because it reflected that of London—Nationality was called a vulgar superstition, and a general European Trades' Union, to be followed by a universal Republic, became ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... Chamber of Commerce at Liverpool to that of Bristol. The natural antipathy of the nation is such, that their passions being once fully excited, they will proceed to such acts of reprisal and mutual violence, as will occasion clamors and altercations, which no soft words can palliate. As I pretend to know something of the counsels of both nations, I know there are strong advocates for war in both. The more reasons they have to produce in favor of their system, the ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... to propose a new, crude, difficult, and unsympathetic game. They may all of them, or most of them, hate war, but they will cling to the belief that their method of operating may now, after a new settlement, be able to prevent or palliate war. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... has been little more than the quotation of his own confession. His tremulously susceptible nature, especially assailable by the delights of sense, led him astray. There are traces in his life of occasional craft and untruthfulness which even the exigencies of exile and war do not wholly palliate. Flashes of fierce vengeance at times break from the clear sky of his generous nature. His strong affection became, in at least one case, weak and foolish fondness for an ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... determined to be about the year 754 before Christ. As to Romulus himself, the tradition is that he was but eighteen or twenty years old when he commenced the building of it. If this is true, his extreme youth goes far to palliate some of the wrongs which he perpetrated—wrongs which would have been far more inexcusable if committed with the deliberate purpose of middle life, than if prompted by the unthinking impulses and passions ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... may appear, they were essential parts of the national belief. Yet, with the most extreme folly, Charles, acting like Henry VIII. as his own Pope, thrust the canons and this Liturgy upon the Kirk and country. No sentimental arguments can palliate such open tyranny. ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... saying mass in their house to the Indians, with considerable notoriety and scandal to them, and no little affliction to the fathers, they were ejected from the [illegible in MS.] at my instance; for I asked it, and chose to give them this punishment, in order to palliate their offense. Thereupon your Lordship [illegible in MS.] occasioned some disturbance to result. This is what I have done for this order, and the way in which I have favored them, which in truth I might have done in many things most deservedly, and very rightly and justly. But I protest ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume VIII (of 55), 1591-1593 • Emma Helen Blair
... asserting that such is our universal character. It is the character, I grant, that our inhuman masters have agreed to give us, and which they have so industriously and too successfully propagated, in order to palliate their own guilt, by blackening the helpless victims of it, and to disguise their own cruelty under the semblance of justice. Let the natural depravity of our character be proved—not by appealing to declamatory invectives, and interested ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... serve to palliate so atrocious a crime, or excuse the woman who first committed it, and the man who joined in the rebellion? Would they indeed have been less criminal, if a seraph of glory had proposed to them the impious ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... it. But I have it now. I could not resume my place as the husband of a now unknown wife—you know what I mean—and not lose the privilege of being near you. It may be—it is conceivable, I mean; no more—that a revelation to me of myself, a light thrown on what I am, would bring me what would palliate the wrench of losing what I have of you. It may be so—it may be! All I know is—all I can say is—that I can now imagine nothing, no treasure of love of wife or daughter, that would be a make-weight for what I should lose if I had to part from you." He paused a ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... negativd both by Bernard & Hutchinson the latter, who can smile sweetly even upon the Man he hates, when he is instructed or it is his Interest so to do, fawnd & flatterd one of the HEADS OF THE FACTION, & at length approvd of him when he was elected a Councellor last May. To palliate this inconsistent Conduct it was previously given out that Mr H had deserted the faction, & became as they term each other, a Friend to Governmt. But he had Spirit enough to refuse a Seat at the Board, & continue a Member of the House, where he has in every Instance joyned with the friends ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... I was free, but in fact I was bound," he acknowledged. "The words I spoke on the steps that night escaped me unaware. I was tortured by jealousy, and tempted by love. I had no right to speak them then; nothing can excuse or palliate the weakness which allowed me to. I should have waited until I could come to you untrammeled—as now. I attempt no justification of my madness, Princess. I have no excuse but my love, and can only sue for pardon. You will forgive me, sweetheart"—using the old word tenderly—"for ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... enjoy it. I like nothing better than to sit round after a heavy lunch with half a dozen heavy friends, smoking heavy cigars. I am well aware that that is wicked. I merely confess the fact. I do not palliate it. ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... to be lost; and, that the gentleman on whose account she was divorced had gained her heart while thus unhappily situated. Seduced, perhaps, by the charms of the lady in question, I thus attempted to palliate what I was sensible could not be justified; for when I had finished my harangue, my venerable friend gave me a proper check: 'My dear Sir, never accustom your mind to mingle virtue and vice. The woman's a whore, and there's an ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... his hands, and a storm of agony swept over him as he recalled the word "traitor," branded upon his brow as a badge of shame, and again he wandered along that devious path which had led him year by year downward. Too bitterly self-accusing to palliate his past, he only knew that in all the long years of social pariahhood he had learned to despise all men and to trust no woman! For had not Friendship been a lie to him, Love only a hollow cheat, and woman's vows of deathless loyalty but writ in sand to be washed out ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... profession, who seemed to regard or believe one syllable of the Gospel: And the same, at least, may be affirmed of the fleet. The consequences of all which upon the actions of men are equally manifest. They never go about, as in former time, to hide or palliate their vices, but expose them freely to view, like any other common occurrences of life, without the least reproach from the world, or themselves. For instance; any man will tell you he intends to be drunk this evening, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... accoy^; attemper^, contemper^; mollify, lenify^, dulcify^, dull, take off the edge, blunt, obtund^, sheathe, subdue, chasten; sober down, tone down, smooth down; weaken &c 160; lessen &c (decrease) 36; check palliate. tranquilize, pacify, assuage, appease, swag, lull, soothe, compose, still, calm, calm down, cool, quiet, hush, quell, sober, pacify, tame, damp, lay, allay, rebate, slacken, smooth, alleviate, rock to sleep, deaden, smooth, throw cold water ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... inquiry, and nearly expel Adam Smith for reading Hume's 'Essay on Human Nature;' let them be, as many allege, narrow-minded, hypocritical, and ignorant; we cannot charge them with wrong-dealing in expelling the originator of such open blasphemy, which nothing can be found to palliate, and of which its perpetrator did not appear to repent, rather complaining that the treatment of the Dons was harsh. The act of expulsion was, of course, considered in the same light by his numerous acquaintance, many ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... said he; "I have plenty of faults of my own: I know it, and I don't wish to palliate them, I assure you. God wot I need not be too severe about others; I have a past existence, a series of deeds, a colour of life to contemplate within my own breast, which might well call my sneers and censures from my neighbours to myself. I started, or rather ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... had formed an attachment, which you both say—with what truth I am unable to gauge —had not yet resulted in immoral relations, but which you both admit was about to result in such relationship. Your counsel has made an attempt to palliate this, on the ground that the woman is in what he describes, I think, as "a hopeless position." As to that I can express no opinion. She is a married woman, and the fact is patent that you committed this crime with the view ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... she was quiet and unobtrusive. She made no attempt to break down the wall thus established between us. And I was determined, on the whole, to be more than just with Rebecca. I would be kind to her in her disgrace. I would palliate her weakness as far as I could consistently with a pure and high standard of action. I even congratulated myself on the magnanimity of my intentions, except when I met the clear, sad gaze of those dispassionate eyes. Then I experienced an unaccountable sensation, as though I had received ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... treatment is contra-indicated, all that can be done is to palliate the symptoms by bromides, opium, phenacetin, caffein, ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... would rank highest in merit or saintliness will be assigned the same positions in the rewards of the last day; and it is just as unlikely that human estimates are right when they venture to assign the degrees of final condemnation. Two things it is our duty to do in regard to Judas: first, not so to palliate his sin as to blunt the healthy, natural abhorrence of it; and, secondly, not to think of him as a sinner apart and alone, with a nature so different from our own that to us he can be no example. But for the rest, there is only one verdict which is at once righteous, dignified ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... she say?—ha! that word would call my anger from the grave! She knew that I must become unhappy. Death and damnation! she knew it, and yet betrayed me! Look to it, serpent! That was thy only chance of forgiveness. This confession has condemned thee. Till now I thought to palliate thy crime with thy simplicity, and in my contempt thou hadst well nigh escaped my vengeance (seizing the glass hastily). Thou wert not thoughtless, then— thou wert not simple—thou wert nor more nor less ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... not prompted either by an idle curiosity, or by any wish to discover what prudence would dictate to conceal. It is necessary that I should be informed of these things, and I take the plain, open, candid method of acquiring information. To palliate or conceal any evils or disorders in our situation, can answer no good purpose; they must be known before they can be cured. We must also know what resources can be brought forth, that we may proportion our efforts to our means, and our demands ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various
... the conduct of the crew on deck, and he soon understood the whole matter. He was very severe upon Cleats for leaving the deck, declared that he could not be trusted, and that he should be discharged. The latter was very humble, acknowledged his error, and made no attempt to palliate it. He had always been faithful, so far as was known, and probably had never been guilty of any graver offence than that of leaving the deck for a few minutes during his watch. But he had been expressly cautioned not to do this, and had sent a hand ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... becoming his prize. He further added that many ridiculous tales had been propagated about the strength of the sides of these ships, and their being impenetrable to cannon-shot; that these fictions had been principally invented to palliate the cowardice of those who had formerly engaged them; but he hoped they were none of those present weak enough to give credit to so absurd a story. For his own part he did assure them upon his word that, whenever he met with them, he would fight them so near that they should find ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... public that they were not to go near or touch them, in twenty-four hours a mob would be raised to pull them down and ascertain what the planks contained." I mention this conversation, to shew in what a dexterous manner this American gentleman attempted to palliate one of the grossest outrages ever ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... two seperate principles I found them inextricably intwined together & I was again cast into perplexity & doubt—I might have considered the earth as an imperfect formation where having bad materials to work on the Creator could only palliate the evil effects of his combinations but I saw a wanton malignity in many parts & particularly in the mind of man that baffled me a delight in mischief a love of evil for evils sake—a siding of the multitude—a dastardly ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... whenever he ran counter to the predilections and passions of his countrymen. Gladstone succeeded when he attacked the Irish Church, and denounced the abominations of Turkish misrule: he failed when he tried to palliate his blunders in Egypt, and to force Home Rule down the throat of the "Predominant Partner." Bright succeeded when he pleaded for the Repeal of the Corn Laws and the extension of the Suffrage: he failed when he opposed the Crimean War, and lost his seat when he protested against ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... laws of optics and ingenuities of composition which may palliate this effect, but the fact remains that the floor should be covered in a way which will leave the mind tranquil and the eye satisfied, and this is hard to accomplish with what is commonly known as ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... prudent, and certainly not expedient, to proffer any information concerning the objects of royal indignation, except that which the newspapers afforded: nor was it perfectly safe, for a considerable time after the turbulent times in which the sufferers lived, to palliate their offences, or to express any deep concern for their fate. That there was much to be admired in those whose memories were thus, in some measure, consigned to oblivion, except in the hearts of their descendants; much which deserved to be explained ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... Nie fared differently. Japanese annals attempt to palliate his discomfiture by a story about the abuse of a flag of truce, but the fact seems to have been that Kawabe no Nie was an incompetent and pusillanimous captain. He and his men were all killed or taken prisoners, the only redeeming feature being the intrepidity of a Japanese officer, Tsugi no ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... a day, is a more useful benefactor than he who maintains in idleness for two. —I could not help wishing that the poor might no longer be tempted by the facility of a resource, which perhaps, in most instances, only increases their distress.—It is an injudicious expedient to palliate an evil, which great national works, and the encouragement of ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... demonstration was repeated on the Porta Pia; and the Vatican, indignant at its powerlessness to suppress these symptoms of disaffection, is anxious to stir up the crowd to some overt act of insurrection, which may justify or, at any rate, palliate the employment of violent measures. So in order to incense the crowd, the public executioner was sent out in a cart guarded by gendarmes to excite some active expression of anger on the part of the mob. It is hard for us to understand the feeling with which the Italians, and especially ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... To palliate this record (which grows worse as the Afro-American becomes intelligent) and excuse some of the most heinous crimes that ever stained the history of a country, the South is shielding itself behind the plausible screen of defending the honor of its women. This, too, in the face of the fact that ...
— Southern Horrors - Lynch Law in All Its Phases • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... the new age the State must provide them with something better than saloons. "Flowers and sunshine for all," in Richard Jefferies' wistful phrase-the State should make a determined and thoroughgoing effort, not merely to repress, to punish, to palliate conditions, but in every positive way that expert thought can devise and the people will vote to support, to add to the worth of human life. We may consider these paternal functions of government under three heads: the improvement of human environment, ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... the Irish Office, Lord CURZON made a long reply, the purport of which was that many of the reprisals were bogus, many were actions undertaken in self-defence, while the rest were generally due to men "seeing red" after their comrades had been brutally murdered. The Government did not palliate such cases, and had instituted inquiries and taken disciplinary action against the offenders, when known; but they were not prepared to set up a public inquiry such as Lord CREWE had demanded. It would only substitute "a competition ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... angrily. Oh, well, it was done and could not be undone now. It was mean, perhaps, to send him another girl's picture, but, considering that the whole world acknowledged that Mabel Moreley was far the better-looking of the two, did not this sacrifice of vanity palliate the offence? It seemed, after all, a very remote possibility that any harm could come to the other girl through this freak of hers. She could not, of course, have sent her own picture, and this was the only one in her collection ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... system. I am sure no theory can be correct which a mother is not willing for her daughter to practice. Decent women should not live with licentious husbands in the relation of wife. As society is now, good, pure women, by so living, cover up and palliate immorality and help to violate the law of monogamy. Women must take the social helm into their own hands and not permit the men of their own circle, any more than ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... because of lack of transportation to carry the food from the interior to the front, while the Union prisoners perished from hunger in the midst of abundance. Again, even assuming the plea of scarcity to be true, that would not palliate the numerous murders of helpless prisoners by volleys fired into the stockades at the pleasure of the guards.[1] There was a vindictiveness in these crimes which ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... idle and worthless; and the quality of her charity was, in fact, as admirable as its quantity. Her chief aim was the extension and improvement of popular education; but there was no kind of misery that she heard of that she did not palliate to the utmost, and no kind of solace that her quick imagination and sympathy could devise that she did not administer. In her methods, she united consideration and frankness with singular success. For one instance among a thousand:—A lady with whom she had had friendly relations some time before, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... this jury," said Dan Anderson, "I stand here before you to make no excuses for this Law, to palliate nothing in the way of its workings, to set no tentative or temporizing date for the time of the arrival at this place of the image of the Law. I say to you here to-day, at this hour, that image now sits there enthroned ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... the passage referred to, whereupon the prisoner undertook to show that the remark had been misunderstood. He had not said—at least, he did not intend to say—that; they had quite misinterpreted his words. With such remarks did he try to palliate the effect ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... me! My conscience never martyrs me so horribly, as when I catch my base thoughts in search of an excuse! No, nothing can palliate my guilt; and the only just consolation left me, is, to acquit the man I wronged, and own I erred without a cause ...
— The Stranger - A Drama, in Five Acts • August von Kotzebue
... fruit of his exertions would be shared by others, whether equally or unequally making them, and that the exertions of others would equally avail him, notwithstanding a deficiency in his own. Skilful arrangements might palliate this tendency, but it would be ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... distinguishing quality of this extraordinary man's mind, while he felt that a sort of disgrace ought to attach to his idleness on the occasion mentioned, the last thought that could occur would be to attempt to palliate ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... elements in us rise in irrepressible repugnance before such pageants of wickedness as have clothed the famous name of Wittenberg with infamy and made the story of naval warfare a continuing record of wanton crime. No man can think, without shame, of the so-called civilisation and culture which could palliate such perversions of justice as those recalled by the fate of Nurse Cavell and ...
— No. 4, Intersession: A Sermon Preached by the Rev. B. N. Michelson, - B.A. • B. N. Michelson
... all the consequences ought to fall on him; and, as far as my observation has gone, in nineteen out of twenty cases of infidelity in wives, the crimes have been fairly ascribable to the husbands. Folly or misconduct in the husband, cannot, indeed, justify or even palliate infidelity in the wife, whose very nature ought to make her recoil at the thought of the offence; but it may, at the same time, deprive him of the right of inflicting punishment on her: her kindred, her children, and the world, will justly ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... characters as Gomez Arias are unfortunately within the pale of human nature. I have endeavoured, however, to soften the character, as it is depicted, from that of an utterly abandoned libertine into a man of extraordinary ambition; for great passions, though they cannot palliate crime, are nevertheless not inconsistent with a dereliction ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... well-fought fields, you will find your soft theories corrected by hard experience, and you will know that in the case of a sentinel steeping upon, his post there can be no mitigating circumstances; that nothing can palliate such flagrant and dangerous neglect, involving the safety of the whole army; a crime that martial law and custom have very necessarily made punishable by death," said ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... Poodles had browbeaten and threatened him; and we were disposed to palliate Pearl's offence, in consideration of his poverty and his dependent position, after ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... apostle preaching Christ, he knew only humanity and humanity crucified. Tongue of the dumb, eyes of the blind, feet of the impotent, his voice alone, among the voices that were everywhere heard and heeded, was sent by God to challenge every word, or look, or deed that seemed to him possibly to palliate oppression or to ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... had not spoken to her one word of love. Love will excuse roughness. Spoken love will palliate even spoken roughness. Had he once called her his own Lizzie, he might have scolded her as he pleased,—might have abused her to the top of his bent. But as there had been nothing of the manner of a gentleman to a lady, so also had there been nothing of the lover to his mistress. That dream ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... were very indignant,—all except Miss Furnival, who did not say much, but endeavoured to palliate the crimes of Lady Mason in that which she did say. "I do not know that she is more to blame than any other lady who marries a gentleman thirty years ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... Greedy, M.A., whose case, as reported by precious Mr. Grant Allen, so painfully moved serious circles—I was sliding back to the level of the savagery around me. May these confessions be accepted in the same spirit as they are offered; may it partly palliate my guilt that I had apparently no chance of escape from the island, and no hope beyond that of converting the natives and marrying Doto. I trusted to do it, not (as of old) by open and fearless denunciation, but by slowly winning ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... worship of station? Is it not fitting that wealth should tender this homage to culture? Is it not touching to witness these efforts, if little availing, Painfully made, to perform the old ritual service of manners? Shall not devotion atone for the absence of knowledge? and fervour Palliate, cover, the fault of a superstitious observance? Dear, dear, what do I say? but, alas! just now, like Iago, I can be nothing at all, if it is not critical wholly; So in fantastic height, in coxcomb exaltation, Here ...
— Amours de Voyage • Arthur Hugh Clough
... the pure royalists to palliate the treachery of the government. They tried to persuade the people that the tranquillity and welfare of the nation depended but on the re-establishment of an absolute monarch, of a feudal aristocracy, and of all the trumpery of superstition. Such was the tendency of the ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... which will have more or less weight with the judgment, according as it may be more or less fastidiously disposed, in letting excuses for rapine and oppression pass muster. The incessant and urgent demands of the Directors upon him for money may palliate, perhaps, the violence of those methods which he took to procure it for them; and the obstruction to his policy which would have arisen from a strict observance of Treaties, may be admitted, by the same gentle casuistry, as ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... no cause to escape the undying penalty which history has the power to inflict on wrong 90. The plea in extenuation of guilt and mitigation of punishment is perpetual. At every step we are met by arguments which go to excuse, to palliate, to confound right and wrong, and reduce the just man to the level of the reprobate. The men who plot to baffle and resist us are, first of all, those who made history what it has become. They set up the principle that only a foolish Conservative judges the present ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... disgusting and improbable details named in the "Brief Declaration." Campbell also reports the stories, but adds, in regard to the wife murderer, "upon his trial it appeared that cannibalism was feigned to palliate the murder," p. 93. Neill quotes from the Records of the Virginia Company, "The Tragical Relation of Virginia Assembly," which was transmitted to England about 1621; this was intended as a reply to a petition of Alderman Johnson and others, ...
— Colonial Records of Virginia • Various
... became the slave of men who hated and despised him. No doubt the barbarous excesses of the followers of Gautier and Peter the Hermit made him look upon the whole body of them with disgust, but it was the disgust of a little mind, which is glad of any excuse to palliate or justify its own ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... monarch who was the host of his assailants, and with whom they were previously on the most friendly relations, it was an act of treachery, and reflects dishonor upon the fame of Cortez. At the same time, the position occupied by the Spaniards was so strange, and even desperate, as to palliate, though it cannot excuse, such a course ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... follow your train of thought," said he, with a melancholy shake of the head. "There are things which cannot be extenuated however we may try to palliate them." ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... composedly. "It is, however, justifiable in its place, although to me it signifies nothing, who know too well that you did commit both crimes, in your own person, and with your own hands. Far be it from me to betray you; indeed, I would rather endeavour to palliate the offences; for, though adverse to nature, I can prove them not to be so to the cause of pure Christianity, by the mode of which we have approved of it, and which we wish ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... most alive at midnight, rises at noon. Then the day began earlier with a long morning, followed by a pleasant period called the forenoon. Under modern conditions we spend the morning in bed, and to palliate our sloth call the forenoon and most of the rest of the day, the morning. These young men of Clement's Inn were a lively, not to say a rowdy, set. They would do anything that led to mirth or mischief. What passed when they lay all night in the ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... Finally the novelist turns against life itself. "Birth," he says, speaking of Tess, "seemed to her an ordeal of degrading personal compulsion whose gratuitousness nothing in the result seemed to justify and at best could only palliate." It is strange to find pessimism in a romantic setting; strange, too, to find a paganism which is so little capable of light ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... nineteen propositions we see very little to blame except the articles against the Catholics. These, however, were in the spirit of that age; and to some sturdy churchmen in our own, they may seem to palliate even the good which the Long Parliament effected. The regulation with respect to new creations of Peers is the only other article about which we entertain any doubt. One of the propositions is that the judges shall hold their offices during good behaviour. To this surely no ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... premises after their reconstruction. The accepted view seemed to be that as soon as Mr. Bartlett and his abettors cleared out and died away, the walls would begin to dry, and would make up for lost time. Everyone seemed inclined to palliate this backwardness in the walls, and to feel that they, themselves, had they been in a like position, could not have done much drying—with all them workmen in and out all day; ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... with an unlawful intent. The charge is not of a mistake in the exercise of supposed powers, but of the assumption of powers not conferred by the Constitution and laws, but in derogation of both, and nothing is suggested to excuse or palliate the turpitude of the act. In the absence of any such excuse or palliation there is only room for one inference, and that is that the intent was unlawful and corrupt. Besides, the resolution not only contains no mitigating suggestions, but, on the contrary, it holds up the act complained ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... stupid machine of war throws out, from minute to minute, bleeding men. We pick them up, and here they are, swathed in bandages. They have been crushed in the twinkling of an eye; and now we shall have to ask months and years to repair or palliate the damage. ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... Merrifield, as she said, 'lashed herself up' to go with Gillian, carry back the remnant of the unhappy 'Waif,' and 'have it out' with Constance, who would, she feared, never otherwise understand the measure of her own delinquency, and from whom, perhaps, evidence might be extracted which would palliate the poor child's offence in the eyes of Colonel Mohun. Both the Hacket sisters looked terribly frightened when she appeared, and the elder one made an excuse for getting her outside the door to beseech ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... all. But there is one misdeed, one which outweighs all others whatsoever—a crime which it is useless to palliate, let our other friend say what he pleased; and Reineke himself felt it so. It sate heavy, for him, on his soul, and alone of all the actions of his life we are certain that he wished it undone—the death and eating of that poor foolish Lampe, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... little parting courtesy was not appreciated, although it afforded the cheerful Jimmy some amusement as he made his way out of the station. Indeed, considering that inhospitable hour of the morning, he was made fairly happy by what the Judge said. Furthermore, to palliate the dreariness of the winter morning, was the thought that now he could break the news of his discharge to his mother because he could couple it with a ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... is aggravated in proportion to the pleasure which they are capable of affording to vindictive, turbulent, and unprincipled readers. Could it be supposed, though for a moment, that the author seriously wished what he had thus wildly imagined, 50 even the attempt to palliate an inhumanity so monstrous would be an insult to the hearers. But it seemed to me worthy of consideration, whether the mood of mind and the general state of sensations in which a poet produces such vivid and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... gave it justified the deed. My position as an officer of the King would palliate deserting the ship which had ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... desire to palliate my sin. Sin, I know it was, heavy and deadly; against God's law, against my trusting wife, and against that hapless creature on whom I brought a whole lifetime of misery. Ay, not on her alone, but on that innocent being who has received from me nothing but the heritage of shame, ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... find some reason or other to give for, or excuses to palliate. Men plead want to extenuate theft, and strong provocations to excuse murders, and many a lame excuse they will bring for whoring; but this sordid habit even those that practise it will own to be a crime, and make no excuse for it; ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... his fair liability to any. The intervals of rigour were meant to notify to the sceptical that the Government was at last on the track of evidence which would confirm the equity of everything from the beginning done against him. Constantly he had to stand on his defence against attempts to palliate the effrontery of the Winchester judgment by experimental accusations that he had been tampering with new conspiracies. For ten years the contest proceeded between him and the Court on that basis. He asseverated the right of an innocent man to freedom, and the Court ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... rendered uninteresting and unamiable by cares, temptations, and bursts of passion or folly, yet who still governs vigilantly and ably, our indignation should be modified, when the lower propensities are indulged. It is not pleasant to palliate injustices, tyrannies, and lusts. But human nature, at the best, is weak. Of all men, absolute princes claim a charitable judgment, and our eyes should be directed to their services, rather than to their defects. These remarks not only pertain to Tiberius, but to Augustus, and many other emperors ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... he had previously done or said or been could excuse or palliate his conduct. The fact that he was of a good family only rendered his alliance with "niggers" against his own race and class the more infamous. The fact that he was a man of substantial means, and had sought no office or aggrandizement by the votes of colored men, ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... consisteth in the general, in a man's taking to himself his transgressions, and standing in them, with the acknowledgement of them to be his, and that he cannot stir from under them, nor do any thing to make amends for them, or to palliate the rigour of justice against the soul. And this the Publican did when he cried, "God be merciful ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... he did know, had really known from the first, though now his fault stood before him in its unsightliness; all the pretexts by which he had attempted to palliate it fell from it like a veil, and showed the hateful thing it was. He could not bring himself to acknowledge it, however. Sullenly he set down the apples and peanuts, murmuring, "I ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... differently regarded by different persons; it shows that she was at least living human flesh and blood. In later life, we are told by Hotham, who was in the habit of frequently seeing her, up to her death, in 1831, "she continually talked of him, and always attempted to palliate his conduct towards her, was warm and enthusiastic in her praises of his public achievements, and bowed down with dignified submission to the errors of his ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... their native land. In the Eastern Hemisphere the African had always been in a servile condition. In Hayti and Jamaica experiments had been tried of freeing them, under the auspices of France and England. Miseries had resulted and ruin overwhelmed the islands. "Fanaticism may palliate, but could not conceal the utter prostration of the race." The best specimens of the race were to be found in the Southern States, in closest contact with slavery. The North does not want the negro, does not encourage his immigration. The great fact of ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... wedlock, until mutual inspection has satisfied each of the contracting parties that the other does not labor under any grave personal defect. If it were possible to regard the passage containing this proposal as an interpolation in the original romance, it might then be regarded as an attempt to palliate Henry VIII.'s conduct ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... Parton's "Life of Aaron Burr" with considerable severity at the time of its appearance; and we are the more glad to meet with a book of his which we can as sincerely and heartily commend. The same quality of sympathy with his subject, which led him in his former work to palliate the moral obliquity and overlook the baseness of his hero, in consideration of brilliant gifts of intellect and person, gives vigor and spirit to his delineation of a character in most respects so different as that of Jackson. This man, who filled so large a place in our history, and left perhaps ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... Rome, and became a matter of discussion in the senate, the former partisans of Jugurtha applied themselves, by interrupting the debates and protracting the time, sometimes exerting their interest, and sometimes quarreling with particular members, to palliate the atrocity of the deed. And had not Caius Memmius, one of the tribunes of the people elect, a man of energy, and hostile to the power of the nobility, convinced the people of Rome that an attempt was being made, by the agency of a small faction, to have the crimes ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... everywhere seen cause to condemn sex-antagonism, and it is my hope that no page or line or word of this book can be accused of illustrating or justifying or inciting to or even attempting to palliate either form of this wholly abominable spirit of the pit. If such places there be, there assuredly is misdirection and falsity. This spirit is one of the great enemies of mankind. As aroused in women against men, it has done and is doing no little harm; ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... nothing to palliate, wrote very frankly. "Look, my Lord," he said to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, "upon the country near Boston. It is all fortification." His mathematics has been already quoted; he adds that the army had nothing for transport in an active campaign of any duration. Proceeding, he ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... Allures the bee to hover round and round? Not small your wit, nor rugged and unkempt; 'Twill answer bravely to a bold attempt: Whether you train for pleading, or essay To practise law, or frame some graceful lay, The ivy-wreath awaits you. Could you bear To leave quack nostrums, that but palliate care, Then might you lean on heavenly wisdom's hand And use her guidance to a loftier land. Be this our task, whate'er our station, who To country and to self would fain ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... least to the dread, of being dragged in chains to the court of Milan or Constantinople, to defend his life and fortune against the malicious charge of these privileged informers. The ordinary administration was conducted by those methods which extreme necessity can alone palliate; and the defects of evidence were diligently supplied ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... rid of thoughts of Him. And when He is felt to be near, it is as a questioner, bringing sin to mind. The shuffling excuses, which venture even to throw the blame of sin on God ('the woman whom Thou gavest me'), or which try to palliate it as a mistake ('the serpent beguiled me'), have to come at last, however reluctantly, to confess that 'I' did the sin. Each has to say, 'I did eat.' So shall we all have to do. We may throw the blame on circumstances, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... obligations which no man can neglect without infamy. The conspirators condemned by the Special Commission—and among them are to be found the most prominent of the Irish leaders[124]—have been guilty of conduct which no wise man ought to forget and no good man ought to palliate. They have for years excited Irish ignorance against England and against English officials by a system of gross incessant slander; witness the pages of United Ireland when Lord Spencer and Sir George Trevelyan were in power at Dublin. The men whom we are told to trust are men who did enter into ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... to make my story as short as I can, so I will not attempt to offer any excuses for my conduct, or to seek to palliate it in any way. Irene had trusted herself to me, and I betrayed her trust. I did not marry her. She did not leave me; she did not even openly upbraid me; but nevertheless it hung like a dark cloud over her life. By degrees, she became altered. She tried to drown her memory by frivolity, by all manner ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... more than human fortitude. You resolve, in this particular, not to offend the prejudices of your family, and the world. I submit. To indulge sensibility but a little were to be heart-broken! But no personal grief can authorise me in deserting the post I am placed in; nor palliate the crime of neglecting its duties. To the end of time I shall persist in thinking you mine by right; but I will never trouble you more with an assertion of that right—Never!—Unless some new and unexpected claim should spring up, of which I see ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... position of the intruders somewhat uncomfortable. Mr. Keepum, whose designs Snivel would put in execution, sinks, cowardly, upon the sofa, while his compatriot (both are celebrated for their chivalry) stands off apace endeavoring to palliate the insult with facetious remarks. (This chivalry of ours is a mockery, a convenient word in the foul mouths of fouler ruffians.) Mr. Snivel makes a second attempt to overcome the unprotected girl. With every expression of hate and scorn rising to her face, she bids ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... want at this season in London. I have written to tell her that my Holidays commence on the 6th of August, but however, July the 1st is the proper day.—I beg that if you cannot find some means to keep her in the Country that you at least will connive at this deception which I can palliate, and then I shall be down in the country before she knows where I am. My reasons for this are, that I do not wish to be detained in Town so uncomfortably as I know I shall be if I remain with her; that I do wish to see my Sister; and ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... rain fall, and the grass look green upon his grave. Thou art perpetrating gradually, by the use of ardent spirits, what he has effected suddenly by opium or a halter. Considering how many circumstances from surprise, or derangement, may palliate his guilt, or that, unlike yours, it was not preceded and accompanied by any other crime, it is probable his condemnation will be less than yours at the day ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... endeavor to palliate Franklin's error in failing to detect the duplicity of de Vergennes. On the contrary, it would give a less agreeable idea of him had he been ready to believe so ill of an old and tried friend. For years Franklin had been the medium through whom had passed ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... No one wishes to palliate the crimes of which England has been guilty in Ireland. Her hand has been heavy, her whip one of braided scorpions, her rule emphatically of blood and iron. But all this is of the past, and the pendulum, not only of public feeling but of legal enactment, ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton
... there had been no rupture, he would be as blithe as a lark at this moment, and might outlive you and M. le President and me. . . . The ways of Providence are mysterious, let us not seek to fathom them," he added to palliate to some extent the hideous idea. "It cannot be helped. We men of business look at the practical aspects of things. Now you see clearly, madame, that M. de Marville in his public position would do ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... inexplicable, but we may understand why so much and such resplendent poetry is lavished on incidents so bare, meagre, and commonplace, and why they present both poet and patron with frailties and faults naked and repellant; and we can the better palliate and forgive the weakness and subjection which the Sonnets indicate on the part of their author. With such a reading the Sonnets become a chronicle of the modes and feelings of their author, resembling in this respect the In Memoriam of Tennyson; and their poetry becomes deeper ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... the choice cannot be doubtful. We are not defending coarseness in any guise. It is always to be assailed, and never to be defended. It is always a detriment, and never an ornament. No excellence can justify it. No occasion can palliate it. But coarseness is of two kinds,—one of the surface, and one in the grain. The latter is pervading and irremediable. It touches nothing which it does not deface. It makes all things common and unclean. It ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... commits an error, and he has sufficient address to conceal it, or sufficient ingenuity to palliate it, but he does neither; instead of availing himself of concealment and palliation, with the candor of a great mind, he confesses his error, and makes all the apology or atonement which the occasion requires. None has ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... to go away because he felt that he was in a dying state; but the response intimated that he had often expressed the same feeling before, and his fears had proved groundless. During the interval of these few hours of abandonment nothing can palliate or excuse, George Borrow died as he had lived—alone! His age was seventy-eight years ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... "I am ashamed, sir," said she, "that you should have taken this fresh piece of trouble about one so little worthy of it; but, to the humane, I know there is a pleasure in goodness for its own sake: if you have patience for the recital of my story, it may palliate, though it cannot excuse, my faults." Harley bowed, as a sign of assent; and ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... cruel and base in his treatment of her? And yet she recoiled from the application of such hard terms by another to Philip, by a cool-judging and indifferent person, as she esteemed Jeremiah to be. From some inscrutable turn in her thoughts, she began to defend him, or at least to palliate the harsh judgment which she herself had been ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... satisfaction in torturing to death any wretched victim whom they can have any pretext for destroying, especially if they can invent some new means of torment to give a fresh piquancy to their pleasure. These monsters do not act from passion. Men are sometimes inclined to palliate great cruelties and crimes which are perpetrated under the influence of sudden anger, or from the terrible impulse of those impetuous and uncontrollable emotions of the human soul which, when once excited, seem to make men insane; but the ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... or still more unjustly punished. My name and injuries will ever stain the annals of Frederic the Great; even those who read this book will perhaps suppose that I, from political motives of hope or fear, have sometimes concealed truth by endeavouring to palliate his conduct. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... Sophia, was charmed by her beauty and intelligence, and he proposed that her parents should place her under his care, and allow him to convey her to France. The misery to which the poor people were reduced, may perhaps palliate the shame of acceding to this extraordinary proposition; but, be this as it may, they consented to surrender up their daughter for the sum of 1,500 piastres, and Sophia was that same day conducted to the ambassador's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various
... me too long to dwell particularly on the punishments inflicted by the Court of Star-chamber in this reign. Such historians as have not written in order to palliate the tyranny of Charles, and especially Rushworth, will furnish abundant details, with all those circumstances that portray the barbarous and tyrannical spirit of those who composed that tribunal. Two or three instances are so celebrated that I cannot pass them over. Leighton, a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... artifice of some celebrated authors, whose writings have had a great share in forming the modern standard of political opinions. Being subjects either of an absolute or limited monarchy, they have endeavored to heighten the advantages, or palliate the evils of those forms, by placing in comparison the vices and defects of the republican, and by citing as specimens of the latter the turbulent democracies of ancient Greece and modern Italy. Under ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... rebellious boy take whatever punishment his mistaken course might bring, he now began to wish that the punishment would be light. His confidence that Jim needed only to be pushed a little to confess was somewhat shaken, and the charge was really serious. He felt a desire to explain, to palliate, to minimize. ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... many things he acted in a way that much displeased me, for he caused to be made for himself a folding chair such as bishops use, and gloves, and a cap of peacocks feathers, with a small gold cross; but I was well pleased with the cross. He had scabbed feet, which he endeavoured to palliate with ointments[3]; was very presumptuous in speech, was present at many of the vain and idolatrous rites of the Nestorians, and had many other vanities with which I was much displeased. Yet we joined his ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... billiard-room' was the damning answer. Thus, had John's single departure from the truth brought instant punishment. For no other purpose but to see Alan would he have entered a billiard-room; but he had desired to palliate the fact of his disobedience, and now it appeared that he frequented these disreputable haunts ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not shrunk from perpetrating the most horrid cruelty, endure more from the consciousness that no man will sympathise with their sufferings, than from apprehension of the personal agony of their impending punishment; and are known often to attempt to palliate their enormities, and sometimes altogether to deny what is established by the clearest proof, rather than to leave life under the general ban of humanity. It was no wonder that Nigel, labouring under the sense of ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... Christine is mild, and more than modest—she is meek. But what can meekness itself do to palliate such a calamity? Desirous of averting the stigma of his family from all he could with prudence, my father caused my sister, like myself, to be early taken from the parental home. She was given in charge to strangers, under such circumstances ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... robbed of their treasures, and the bones of their fathers were left to bleach upon the fields. And when exasperated by the brutality of their conquerors, and driven to deeds of vengence, there was very little appreciation of the motives which influenced them, and no attempt was made to palliate their cruelties. ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... be an odious and abominable thing, contrary to the holy nature of God, and awakening in that nature the most holy and awful displeasure. His knowledge upon this subject will be so identical with that of God, that he will be unable to palliate or excuse his transgressions, as he does in this world. He will see them precisely as God sees them. He must know them as God knows them, because he will "know even as he ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... the scandalous rout of Bull Run, the participants in the panic began to try to palliate the disgrace. The President, listening with revived sarcasm to ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... glory, not for dollars and cents; and the desire to win must be very strictly subordinated to the sense of honour and fair play. The book-making spirit has undoubtedly entered far too largely into many of the most characteristic of British sports, and I have no desire to palliate or excuse our national shortcomings in this or other respects. But the hard commercial spirit to which I have alluded seems to me to pervade American sport much more universally than it does the sport of England, and to form almost always a much larger factor in the interest ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... crime, its cause should be of interest to those who represent the State. I am not seeking to minimize or palliate or excuse whatever crime may have been committed in this case, but that society which is seeking its own safety and perpetuity cannot too strongly be urged to beware of the universal menace to its existence, as well as to guard against ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... George Sand in her love affairs was always the man. She treated Chopin as a child, a toy, used him for literary copy- -pace Mr. Hadow!—and threw him over after she had wrung out all the emotional possibilities of the problem. She was true to herself even when she attempted to palliate her want of heart. Beware of the woman who punctuates the pages of her life with "heart" and "maternal feelings." "If I do not believe any more in tears it is because I saw thee crying!" exclaimed Chopin. Sand was the product of abnormal ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... portion of the United Kingdom itself, which was a "serious disgrace to the age, and to the government, and the country in which we live," without endeavouring, by the enactment of more stringent laws, to correct it, the evasions, by means of which they now seek to palliate their neglect, and the strange want of perspicacity which they display in not being able to discover the real source of mischief, or their timidity in not daring to denounce it, must naturally excite our astonishment. Let any ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... with her wonderful tenderness, had bridged over the chasms between her stark peaks of discovery. She knew all that we knew. Further attempts at deception would have been vain cruelty. Barbara could palliate the offence; she could show how irresistible had been the temptation; she could prove how our love for Adrian had been unshaken by disastrous knowledge and urge that Doria's love should be unshaken likewise; she could apply all the healing remedies of which she only has the secret—but ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... proof of Johnson's malignity, is the manner in which he has treated the character and conduct of Milton. To enforce this charge has wearied sophistry, and exhausted the invention of a party. What they cannot deny, they palliate; what they cannot prove, they say is probable. But why all this rage against Dr. Johnson? Addison, before him, had said ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... the paltry excuse of an interested motive to palliate the offence. O God! that I should be brought so low!"—and the doctor wrung ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... evidence, which, though brought against Rebecca Nurse, bears harder, as we read it now, upon Ann Putnam than any one else, and makes it more difficult to palliate her conduct on the supposition of partial insanity. It is, all along, one of the obscure problems of our subject to determine how far delusion may have been accompanied by fraud and imposture. Edward Putnam testified, that ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... railway servants, having eaten his dinner, felt himself rather sleepy, and resolved to have a short nap. It was our friend Sam Natly, the porter, who came to this unwise as well as unfair resolution. Yet although we are bound to condemn Sam, we are entitled to palliate his offence and constrained to pity him, for his period of duty during the past week had been fifteen ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... doctrine of Thwackum served greatly to palliate the contrary errors in that of Square, which our good man no less saw and condemned. He thought, indeed, that the different exuberancies of these gentlemen would correct their different imperfections; and that from both, especially with his ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... kept out of such editions as are meant for general reading, and that the pedant-pride which now perpetuates it as an essential part of those poets shall no longer have its way. At the end of the ends such things do defile, they do corrupt. We may palliate them or excuse them for this reason or that, but that is the truth, and I do not see why they should not be dropped from literature, as they were long ago dropped from the talk of decent people. The literary histories might keep record of them, but it is loath some to think of those heaps ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... country, and were supported by the misguided natives; while the Spaniards who remained loyal, fearing conspiracies among the natives, had to keep under shelter of the fort, or in the strong houses which they had erected in the villages. The commanders were obliged to palliate all kinds of slights and indignities, both from their soldiers and from the Indians, fearful of driving them to sedition by any severity. The clothing and munitions of all kinds, either for maintenance or defence, were ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... transaction, the French court endeavoured to palliate it by forms of law. They pretended to justify the massacre by a calumny, and accused the admiral of a conspiracy, which no one believed. The parliament was commanded to proceed against the memory of Coligni; and his dead body was ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... field. Enveloped in the mists of receding years; obscured by the glamour of poetry; belied by the vivid imagination of stragglers and camp-followers who, on the first note of danger, made a frantic rush for Winchester, seeking to palliate their own misconduct by spreading exaggerated reports of disaster, the union army that confronted Early at Cedar Creek, for many years made a sorry picture, which the aureole of glory that surrounded its central figure ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... trouve"—"O divine Decretals, how good you make good wine taste!" "The miracle would be greater," said Pantagruel, "if they made bad wine taste good." The most that can now be done by the devout for the Decretals is "to palliate the guilt of their forger," whose name, like that of the Greek ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... may attempt to palliate the conduct of the French, but it might naturally be supposed that upon learning from his papers the errand of mercy upon which Lieutenant Thomas had been engaged, the French officer would have done all in ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... liars," and everybody deceives us a little sometimes, so that David's dictum hardly needs his apology of haste, it is a comfort to remember that many lies are not downright, but sympathetic; and an understanding of their nature, if it does not palliate them, may put us on our guard. Sympathetic we think a better name than the unfortunate title of white, which was given them by Mrs. Opie, because that designation carries a meaning of innocence, if not even ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... perfectly well—for he seems to have been sane—that nobody but the subjects of these biographies would seek them "with avidity," and he made these plausible, bombastic assertions to excuse himself for having sprung such a trap on an unsuspecting public. That he tries to palliate the offence is, sufficient proof ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various |
