"Enormity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I was afraid of disobeying a father who is unjustly enraged against you, and resolved on your destruction; but at last I loathe and abhor this barbarity. Be comforted; your bad days are over; I will endeavour to make amends for all my crimes, of the enormity of which, by my future behaviour, you will find I am convinced. You have hitherto looked upon me as an infidel; but having been converted by a slave who is a Mussulman, you must henceforth believe me one of your own religion. I hope your lessons will finish my conversion. To show my good intentions, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... clearly and positively, when he felt it his duty to speak, although evasion or silence would have been the more comfortable alternative. "I doubt," says Mr. Chadwick,[129] "if Garrison or Parker had a keener sense than his of the enormity of human slavery. Before the first Abolitionist Society had been organized, he was one of the organizers of a committee for the discussion and advancement of emancipation. I have read all of his principal writings upon slavery, ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... hundred flourishing Abolition societies of the North, with all the supporters they have in unassociated individuals. If it be found that the five Abolitionists who first met in a little chamber five years ago, to measure their moral strength against this national enormity, have become a host beneath whose assaults the vicious institution is rocking to its foundations, it is time that slavery was ceasing to be ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... waiting a powerful explosive, which Fayette had purloined from the store of the workmen who were excavating for the new wing of the building. In a moment more the fuse would have burned unnoticed to its fatal end, and an awful crime, of whose enormity the dull criminal had no real ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... fasting man, to prison for smelling at a saveloy and a slice of ham, Sir Robert has laid down a graduated—we mean a sliding—scale of penalties for the crime of eating, proportioning, with the most delicate skill, the exact amount of the punishment to the enormity of the offence. By his profound wisdom he has discovered that the great increase of crime in these countries is entirely attributable to over-feeding the multitude. Like the worthy Mr. Bumble, in "Oliver Twist," he protests ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 4, 1841 • Various
... to an event in this history which I find difficult to place before you in its true light. For Dorothy's sake I wish I might omit it altogether. But in true justice to her and for the purpose of making you see clearly the enormity of her fault and the palliating excuses therefor, if any there were, I shall pause briefly to show the condition of affairs at the time of which I am about to write—a time when Dorothy's madness brought ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... speaks a noble heart, ever thinking generously of those who despitefully use you, my Lord Archbishop," said Count Winneburg. "But no, no, I cannot accept such a sacrifice. The Emperor showed me plainly the enormity of my offence. In the presence of all I insulted you, wretch that I am, and in the presence of all ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... the world to come. Nine-tenths of those who make a parade of their piety, are rotten at heart, as that Cardinal de Crema, Legate of Pope Calixtus 2nd, in the reign of Henry 1st, who declared at a London Synod, it was an intolerable enormity, that a priest should dare to consecrate, and touch the body of Christ immediately after he had risen from the side of a strumpet, (for that was the decent appellation he gave to the wives of the clergy), ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... you of a distinguished Judge who had to sentence a dishonest butler for robbing his master of some silver spoons. He considered it his duty to say a few words to the prisoner in passing sentence, in order to show the enormity of the crime of a servant in his position robbing his master, and by way of warning to others who might be tempted to follow ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... confessed to being obliged to leave the Van Heigens in haste. Julia retorted that that fact was known to the housekeeper when she engaged her, and was the reason of the starvation wage offered. Marthe then inquired what enormity it was that she had committed at the Van Heigens', and intimated that it must be disgraceful indeed for a person, pretending to be a lady-help, to be thankful to accept the situation of cook. Julia's answer was scarcely polite, and very well calculated to rouse the old woman ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... though it was so odd to realise it. Mr Wentworth, for his part, saw no humour whatever in the scene. He thought nothing less than that some fresh complication had taken place. Jack had committed some new enormity, or there was bad news from Charley in Malta, or unpleasant letters had come from home. "Bless my soul, sir, something new has happened," said the Squire; and he was scarcely reassured, when Miss Dora ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... and sometimes the more gentle race of dogs and cats, are guilty of this horrid and preposterous murder. When I hear now and then of an abandoned mother that destroys her offspring, I am not so much amazed, since reason perverted, and the bad passions let loose, are capable of any enormity; but why the parental feelings of brutes, that usually flow in one most uniform tenor should sometimes be so extravagantly diverted, I leave to abler philosophers than myself ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... own the enormity of its consequences, and the danger of its example. Nor have I the confidence to petition for impunity; but humbly hope, that publick security may be established, without the spectacle of a clergyman dragged through the streets, to a death of infamy, amidst ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... before the court on his trial was about to plead guilty, and there would accordingly be no need for him to direct the gentlemen of the Grand Jury on this matter—what he had to say respecting the gravity and even enormity of the offence he would reserve. The Recorder then addressed himself to the Grand Jury on the merits of two minor cases, which came before the court at a later period of the morning, after which they retired, and having formally returned a true bill against the prisoner, and a petty jury, ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... that men are governed by routine and by the example of familiar things. Render possible to the mass of men the conception that the road, they habitually follow is not a necessity of their lives, and you may exact of them almost any sacrifice or hope to see them witness without disgust almost any enormity. ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... were detained awaiting Mr. Seward's advices) still more elaborate and masterly instructions are given out to these gentlemen. The paper to Mr. Adams will in future years be quoted and referred to as a model history of the rise and progress of the secession enormity. It may be asked, Why are such dispatches and instructions needed? Why such elaborate briefs and compendiums required for gentlemen each of whom may have said, respecting his connection with subject-matter of the Secretary (none more emphatically ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... if one undertook to sleep for a night in a tree. Then there was a devil-dog, a little black-and-tan terrier in a blanket gorgeous and belled, whose duty it was to stand on the top of the coach and bark incessantly to keep the driver fully aroused to the enormity of his occupation. To have this cur silenced either by strangulation or ordinary clubbing, Coleman struggled with his dragoman as Jacob struggled with the angel, but in the first place, the dragoman was a Greek whose tongue could go quite drunk, a Greek who became a slave to the ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... had investigated the cruelties perpetrated by the English upon their defenceless prisoners, and had instructed him to prepare a school book for the use of American children, to be illustrated by thirty-five good engravings, each to picture some scene of horror, some enormity of suffering, such as should indelibly impress upon the minds of the school children a dread of British rule, and a hatred ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... find words suitable to the enormity, he stood up and began striding about. He muttered: 'Can you understand anything so horrible, doctor? Oh, if I had only known it while she was alive, I should have had her thrown into prison. I promise you she would ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... her. To be otherwise comforted was out of the question. The case admitted of no comfort. Lady Bertram did not think deeply, but, guided by Sir Thomas, she thought justly on all important points; and she saw, therefore, in all its enormity, what had happened, and neither endeavoured herself, nor required Fanny to advise her, to think little of guilt ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Blade gambles; but over the gambling of the Blade it is well to draw a veil—a partially translucent and coquettish veil, through which we can see the thing dimly, and enhanced in its enormity. You must patronise the Turf, of course, and have money on horses, or you are no Blade at all, but a mere stick. The Harrow Blade has his book on all the big races in the calendar; and the great and noble game of Nap—are not Blades its worshippers ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... his guard, blinked at the enormity of the prospect; but, remembering his dignity as a business man, he shook ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... of robbery of arms; there were 89 cases of bands appearing in arms; there were more than 200 cases of administering unlawful oaths; and there were 1,944 cases of sending threatening letters. By the end of the year, the general crime of Ireland had doubled in amount and enormity ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... brothers? Of course they were; of course we must be. Little children, love one another. Let us dwell together, my brethren, in amity," said the Doctor, putting down his glass, and forgetting that he was in Mr. Gray's study; "and please give me your ears while I show you this morning the enormity of burning widows upon the funeral pyres ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... aborigines of Central India, and, with the Coolies, Goands, and Ramooses, are bold, daring, and predatory marauders—occasionally mercenaries, but invariably plunderers. There are, however, many shades of difference in the extent of the depredations of these several people, in which the balance of enormity is said to be considerably on the side of the Bheels. They are, nevertheless, described as faithful when employed and trusted; and the travellers who pay them their choute, or tribute, may leave untold treasure ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Commentator adds—If the brahman, or any of the other casts, cannot pay the fine, he must suffer imprisonment and the labour proper to his cast. He explains the enormity of the offence described in this sloka to consist in the contempt ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... Cardinal Wolsey, but Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, who delivered to them a fiery oration, descanting to them on the enormity of their offences, and calling upon them to abjure their hateful heresy. His ringing voice carried all over the open space, though Anthony Dalaber could only catch an occasional phrase here and there, which perhaps was as well. But the reply, if reply there ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... "'Tis monstrous! 'Tis an enormity," bellowed Monceux, flying out. "Already you have stolen my plate, and now would strip me utterly! 'Tis rank villainy, and ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... laboriously reached the end of the veranda when he noticed the open window of Louise's room, and stopped as a perfunctory duty to look in. And then Richelieu Sharpe stood for an instant utterly confounded and aghast at this crowning proof of the absolute infamy and sickening enormity of Man. ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... descanted at length upon the enormity of young Billings's early liaisons; and then he told his own, in the year four, with a burgomaster's daughter at Ratisbon, when he was in the Elector of Bavaria's service—then, after Blenheim, ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... thought it politic to pronounce it a gross fabrication. The danger of an attempted rescue of Lentulus brought on a debate as to what should be done with the prisoners. Caesar, from whatever motive, spoke forcibly against any unconstitutional action which, however justified by the enormity of the prisoners' guilt, might become a dangerous precedent. In his opinion, the wise course would be to confiscate the property of the prisoners, and to place their persons in custody not in Rome, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... rose higher and the plain grew spectral, the town a dream town, and the ships dream ships. Ferne turned slightly so that he might behold the Cordillera. In mystery and enormity the mountains reared themselves, high as the battlements of heaven, deep as those of hell. The Elizabethan looked long upon them, and he wreathed that utter wall, that sombre and terrific keep, with ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... before a Court in which the best known personage was to have been M. de Martens, the hereditary librarian of the Russian Foreign Office, whose opinion on such points was hardly likely to be impartial. Luckily, the French added a condition, the enormity of which was such that the arbitration has never taken place, and it may be hoped ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... vilest arts of the gambler by profession, and, having become an adept in his despicable science, to practise it habitually as a means of increasing my already enormous income at the expense of the weak-minded among my fellow-collegians. Such, nevertheless, was the fact. And the very enormity of this offence against all manly and honourable sentiment proved, beyond doubt, the main if not the sole reason of the impunity with which it was committed. Who, indeed, among my most abandoned associates, would not rather have disputed the clearest ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... practice of all our priests, they never once preach to you to love your neighbour, to be just in your dealings, or to be sober and temperate. The streets of London are full of common whores, publicly tolerated in their wickedness; yet the priests make no complaints against this enormity, either from the pulpit or the press: I can affirm, that neither you nor I, sir, have ever heard one sermon against whoring since we were boys. No, the priests allow all these vices, and love us the better for them, provided we will promise not "to harangue upon a text," nor ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... language failed Hank entirely, and the enormity of the proposed undertaking once more sweeping over him, Hank searched for his bandanna and wiped the beads of cold sweat from around his mouth and the back of his ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... thing was over, greatly relishing its satiric elements, must be forgiven the trick of the burial and his still greater enormity in coming to life again. And then, duke or no duke, it was understood that he willed that things should in no case be precisely as they had been. He would never again be quite so near people's lives as in the past—a fitful, intermittent visitor—almost as if ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... husband's anguish at the loss of his paper went to my heart. I could hardly prevent myself from there and then kneeling down at his feet and telling him what I had done. But that again would mean a confession of the past. I came to you that morning in order to understand the full enormity of my offence. From the instant that I grasped it my whole mind was turned to the one thought of getting back my husband's paper. It must still be where Lucas had placed it, for it was concealed before this dreadful woman entered the room. If it had not been for her ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Jack knew that Big Bob was making a mountain out of molehills, but he could readily understand how that came. The big fellow was extremely sensitive, and the possible enormity of his offense kept standing out before him all the time and constantly ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... the minute hand on the hour dial slid up to the point which marked the end of the first year in Earth time he had spent in the cabin. Watching it happen, he was suddenly overwhelmed again by the enormity of his solitude, and it looked as if it were going to turn into another of those periods when he sat with the gun in his hand, sobbing and swearing in a violent muddle of self-pity and helpless fury. He decided to knock off the lamenting ...
— Gone Fishing • James H. Schmitz
... him last; his voice was more dissonant, his neckcloth more alarming, his jewellery more prominent, his hat closer shaved and the flower in his mouth less like a flower than ever. How came I there? Why, because I was piqued, and hurt, and reckless. I was capable of almost any enormity. John's manner to me in the train had well-nigh driven me mad. So quiet, so composed, so cold, so kind and considerate, but a kindness and consideration such as that with which one treats a child. He seemed to feel he was my superior; he seemed ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... epigrammatically laconic, as to be often obscure and unintelligible. Their characters are neither ideal nor real beings, but misshapen gigantic puppets, who are set in motion at one time by the string of an unnatural heroism, and at another by that of a passion equally unnatural, which no guilt nor enormity can appal. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... the character of Marat, with whom we would now have to treat, that I object; it is not to the horror of those crimes which have stained their legislators—crimes in every stage rising above another in enormity—but I object to the consequences of that character, and to the effect of those crimes. They are such as to render a negociation useless, and must entirely deprive of stability any peace which could be concluded in such ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... crossed the room to the side of my writing-chair, her great dark eyes fixed on me, and her hands dutifully behind her back. She looked a Greuze picture of innocence. I believed less than ever in the enormity of ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... all, everyone is a foreigner somewhere and ignorant about something—once committed the enormity of asking his host, just back from cub-hunting, whether the hedgerows, when he went out of a morning, were not quite lovely with those dewy cobwebs which the French call Veils of the Virgin. It had to be explained that such a sight was the most unwelcome you could imagine, since ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... nothing in his mind or heart. That the man he had struck down was his own father, did not count; every fibre of his being was absorbed, to the exclusion of everything else, in the desire for his own safety. So gigantic was his selfishness, that the working of his mind was not disturbed by the enormity of the crime he had committed; he saw now that, as events had turned out, he had acted unwisely in taking the jewels from their box; and, alertly and with something like calmness, he unlocked the safe, replaced the jewels in the box and left the safe door open; he ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... flaps an exasperated wasp-nest with a silk pocket-handkerchief, instead of blowing it up with a match and train, is rarely successful; and after three or four other and much guiltier victims than Lenny had been incarcerated in the stocks, the parish of Hazeldean was ripe for any enormity. Pestilent Jacobinical tracts, conceived and composed in the sinks of manufacturing towns, found their way into the popular beer-house,—Heaven knows how, though the tinker was suspected of being the disseminator by all but Stirn, who still, in a whisper, accused the Papishers. ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... speaking to him of the matter again, it appeared yet more impossible to bring it before the Vervains. Like a man of the imaginative temperament as he was, he exaggerated the probable effect, and pictured their dismay in colors that made his interference seem a ludicrous enormity; in fact, it would have been an awkward business enough for one not hampered by his intricate obligations. He felt bound to the Vervains, the ignorant young girl, and the addle-pated mother; but if he ought to go to them and tell them what he knew, to which ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... at the realization of the enormity of this favor he had demanded. "That's all right," he said and held her soft hand in his; "just forget ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... the Big Show," he said with a little answering thrill in his own voice, as the enormity of the scene he had witnessed night after night broke on him for the ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... of Fiesco, Schiller derived the main part of his original materials from history; he could increase the effect by gorgeous representations, and ideas preexisting in the mind of his reader. Enormity of incident and strangeness of situation lent him a similar assistance in the Robbers. Kabale und Liebe is destitute of these advantages; it is a tragedy of domestic life; its means of interesting are comprised ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... beam, was in the course of being laid open by the butcher's knife, that I might mark the forms of the viscera, and the positions which they occupied. To my dislike of the annual cock-fight my uncles must have contributed. They were loud in their denunciations of the enormity; and on one occasion, when a neighbour was unlucky enough to remark, in extenuation, that the practice had been handed down to us by pious and excellent men, who seemed to see nothing wrong in it, I saw the habitual respect for the old divines give way, for at least ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... forgotten it nor am likely to. The remembrance of that affair has followed me night and day. I cannot—even now that I am pardoned—rid myself of its horror. I cannot eat; I cannot sleep. I see my crime in its true light, and am appalled by its enormity. And yet—God help me!—I thought at the time I was saving my country. Gentlemen, you, who have faced no such responsibility as then confronted me, will be apt to judge me without mercy. I know not if I can persuade you that my remorse is honest. ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... indiscriminately; they all kneel in a row, and he touches them in succession. In the churches there seem to be no distinctions of rank; no one, however great or rich, is contaminated by the approximation of poverty and rags. But to return to the Confessional. There are some crimes of such enormity that absolution for them can only be granted by the Pope himself, who delegates his power to the Grand Penitentiary, and he receives such confessions in the chair in which he was seated to-day. They are, however, very rare; but this evening, after he had ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... gentleman at the depot remark that the very enormity of the crimes committed by the Romanists, is their best protection. "For," said he, "some of their practices are so shockingly infamous they may not even be alluded to in the presence of the refined and the virtuous. And if the story of their guilt were told, who ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... made that picture! How, sir Upon my word, young man, you are in a bad way. The youngster who stops to make designs upon a copy of a deed in a law office, is on the high-road to the gallows. It is an enormity, sir—horrible! dreadful!" ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... dark stain on our national character, which is inflicted by the existence of slavery in the District of Columbia. That district being the common property of the nation, and immediately under the control of congress; whatever enormity may be legally permitted therein, becomes the common concern of the whole confederacy. Furthermore if slavery be an evil both moral and political as is generally admitted at the present day, it would seem that the whole ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... dare say, very whimsical about it, probably very absurd, judged at least by the canons of fashion, and old Cousin Monica Knollys, in whose eye the London fashions were always fresh, was palpably struck by it as if it had been some enormity against anatomy, for she certainly laughed very heartily; indeed, there were tears on her cheeks when she had done, and I am sure my aspect of wonder and dignity, as her hilarity proceeded, helped to revive her merriment again and again as ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... two points I have because my time will very soon expire, but I must be allowed to say that Judge Douglas recurs again, as he did upon one of two other occasions, to the enormity of Lincoln—an insignificant individual like Lincoln—upon his ipse dixit charging a conspiracy upon a large number of members of Congress, the Supreme Court, and two Presidents, to nationalize slavery. I want to say that, in the first place, I have made no charge of this sort upon my ipse ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... convenient place for hearing, and seeing all that passed. The accusateur general who sat on the left, wore a costume similar to that of the judges, without the scarf. He opened the trial by relating the circumstances, and declaiming upon the enormity of the offence, by which it appeared that the prisoner stood charged with robbery, accompanied with breach of hospitality; which, in that country, be the amount of the plunder ever so trifling, is at present capital. ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... America, there being but few slaves, they can easily disencumber themselves of them; and emancipation is put into such a train, that in a few years there will be no slaves northward of Maryland. In Maryland, I do not find such a disposition to begin the redress of this enormity, as in Virginia. This is the next State to which we may turn our eyes for the interesting spectacle of justice, in conflict with avarice and oppression: a conflict wherein the sacred side is gaining daily recruits, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... soon as the fact became known, the Amidei and the Uberti, whose families were allied, were filled with rage, and having assembled with many others, connections of the parties, they concluded that the injury could not be tolerated without disgrace, and that the only vengeance proportionate to the enormity of the offence would be to put Buondelmonti to death. And although some took into consideration the evils that might ensue upon it, Mosca Lamberti said, that those who talk of many things effect nothing, using that trite and common adage, Cosa fatta capo ha. ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... close of Othello. In saying this I do not in the least mean to criticise Coriolanus. It is a much nobler play as it stands than it would have been if Shakespeare had made the hero persist, and we had seen him amid the flaming ruins of Rome, awaking suddenly to the enormity of his deed and taking vengeance on himself; but that would surely have been an ending more strictly tragic than the close of Shakespeare's play. Whether this close was simply due to his unwillingness to contradict ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... man, with a good wife, as he had, an honest wife, as he had, a Christian wife, as he had, could have got into such an enormity if he had consulted in regard to her wishes? Consultation ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... he did not at all comprehend the enormity of the offence he was about to commit. Of course the Orangemen anticipated some trouble among their Catholic brethren, but rather looked forward to it as part of their entertainment. For though Pat Murphy and his friends prophesied death and destruction ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... was a somewhat inconvenient friend for men who desired to stand well with the powers that be. They all fell off lamentably from the principles of primitive Christianity,—Hoadly sealing his defection by the crowning enormity of marrying a ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... "nine days' wonder" is the excess to which gaming is carried among the higher circles of this country; but I much doubt whether the present expositions of such enormity in a neighbouring nation will work the desired ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various
... mutilated bodies in the rooms close below us, with the ghastly probability, almost the certainty, that another hour or two would join us in their horrid fate. To myself, the reckless, wasted past presented itself, in that situation of appalling terrors, in all its enormity. There was I, after throwing away the high advantages of fortune and prosperity, a ruined and degraded man, about to meet an appropriate ending to such a career by a bloody death at the hands of some brutal soldier, in an unknown land, at the ends of the earth, where scarcely a human being knew ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... saw his cap at his feet, he looked at the brute tamer with an air of stupefaction, as if he hesitated to believe so great an enormity. Dagobert, regretting, his violence, and feeling that no means of conciliation note remained, threw a rapid glance around him, and, retreating several paces, gained the topmost steps of the staircase. The burgomaster stood near the bench, in ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... straggling hairs upon the cheeks; and this is a severe mortification, especially to Shaykhs and elders, who not only look upon the beard as one of man's characteristics, but attach a religious importance to the appendage. Hence the enormity of Kamar al-Zaman's behaviour. The Persian festival of the vernal equinox was called Kusehnishin (Thin-beard sitting). An old man with one eye paraded the streets on an ass with a crow in one hand and a scourge and fan in the other, cooling himself, flogging the bystanders ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... a Guecha? What odds can it be to me, whether they are Guechas or not?" Later on, no doubt, when I understand Japanese affairs better, I shall appreciate myself the enormity of my proposal: one would really suppose I had talked of marrying ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... against all sins, yet has never made war upon this giant sin, but has fondled and caressed it so kindly that the pious and conscientious, believing it no sin or crime, have lost all conception of its enormity, and may never realize it until an enlightened people shall pour their hot indignation upon the crime and ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... everything announced that the states were not assembled as tax- payers, but as legislators. The right of regenerating France had been granted them by opinion, was devolved on them by public resolutions, and they found in the enormity of the abuses and the public encouragement, strength to undertake and accomplish ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... was badder than all that." Badder seemed to admit more enormity than simply bad, "I—I went in the park to walk and I staid ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... Charles-Norton, horrified at the very possibility, and suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of the enormity of his past conduct. "Good ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... attention you have shewn in executing my commissions: the different articles arrived in the very best order, with the exception of the cocked hat, which has not been received—a most distressing circumstance, as, from the enormity of my head[26], I find the utmost difficulty in getting a substitute in ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... admirable a law, amid excessive rain, storm, wind, tempest, and whirlwind, amid thunder and lightning; it was that we might have those men for our judges whom no one would like to have for guests. It is the enormity of his wickedness, the consciousness of his crimes, the plunder of that money of which the account was kept in the temple of Ops, which have been the real inventors of this third decury. And infamous judges were not sought for, till all hope of safety for the guilty was ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... that description, they are continually practising every violence, and, are frequently engaged in wars. When I suggested to a chief of very considerable intelligence, and one of the Foolah king's head men, whom I met in the Rio Pongo, the enormity of their injustice to the surrounding tribes, and how displeasing it was to the God they prayed to, his reply was, "True, this be bad fashion to Foolah, or Mandingo man, but these people we make war against never pray ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... opening of the court, this young man was the first called upon, and, with trembling limbs, he rose to hear the sentence of the judge. After some remarks upon the enormity of his crime, and the clear evidence upon which he had been convicted, the judge sentenced him to five years' imprisonment in the penitentiary. When those words, five years, reached him, he dropped back upon the seat, as if struck with a bullet, and then ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown
... prince; he had not estimated till that time the enormity of the misfortunes brought on people of Egypt by those merchants. His horror was all the more vivid, since he had rented out his own subjects to Dagon, and was himself witness of the way in which the banker collected his ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... no longer inconsolable for his wife's death; and desires to testify to the happiness of conjugal relations, by a renewal of the sweet bondage; a curiously subtile compliment to the deceased. If I may be pardoned the enormity of the heresy, I think Shakspeare blundered supremely, when he gave Iago's soul to a man. Diabolical cunning, shrewd malevolence pure and simple, armed with myriads of stings for hypodermic incisions that poison a man's blood, should be appropriately costumed ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... committing habitually some monstrous crime,—as murder,—and doing this without the sense of guilt, but with a peaceful conscience,—habit, probably, reconciling him to it; but something (for instance, discovery) occurs to make him sensible of his enormity. His ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... his abrupt, uncertain way), "man of iron; not only he declares that the spy must be beheaded, but also the entire family—a man of iron that, ha, ha; and then, no you cannot, it is impossible for you to understand the enormity of the calamity—a thousand years before the conquest by the Moors, a Spaniard alone could—there is no one here, ha, ha, I was forgetting—the utter extinction of a great family of the name, the oldest and noblest ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... had passed a restless, wakeful night, and only fallen asleep towards morning, was not yet up when the Marquis de Bruyeres, upon reaching his house, told the servant who admitted him to announce him immediately to his master. The valet was aghast at the enormity of this demand, which was expressed in rather a peremptory tone. What! disturb the duke! before he had called for him! it would be as much as his life was worth to do it; he would as soon venture unarmed into the ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... afterwards on Judaism in Music, by way of atonement, as it were, to this man, who had died in the meantime. The arrival of Alexander Ritter with my niece Franziska helped to enliven us. My niece, indeed, found constant entertainment and excitement in the enormity of Weisheimer's compositions, while Ritter, who was acquainted with the text of my Meistersinger, described a highly unintelligible melody given to the basses in Ritter Toggenburg as 'the lonely gormandiser mode.' [Footnote: Meistersinger (English version), Act 1, ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... to me through good and evil report—and I prepared for her a cruel death! Dreadful contrast! Who shall describe the shame, the sorrow, the humiliation, of the ingrate whose crime has risen to the fearful altitude of this enormity; and who, by the tenderness and love of his devoted victim, is forced to turn his eye on the grim reward of death for love, riches, and life? Gentle, beloved, injured Espras! that emaciated form, these ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... seem to be the only visible ruling power. Two young natives had made complaint to the padre that a certain damsel had entered into vows or engagements to marry both; she was accordingly brought up before the padre, Mr. Sturges being present. The padre first lectured her most seriously upon the enormity of her crime, then inflicted several blows on the palm of her outstretched hand, again renewing the lecture, and finally concluding with another whipping. The girl was pretty, and excited the interest of our friend, who looked ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... enormity to take the bishop prisoner in his own cathedral. And yet we have won the victory. I shall let the 'Peace of God' be rung out over the land, and that will protect the bishop from all danger and also give my son Brand time ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... own cure. As seamen improve, punishment will become less necessary; and as the character of officers is raised, they will be less ready to inflict it; and, still more, the infliction of it upon intelligent and respectable men, will be an enormity which will not be tolerated by public opinion, and by juries, who are the pulse of the body politic. No one can have a greater abhorrence of the infliction of such punishment than I have, and a stronger conviction that severity is bad policy with a crew; yet I would ask every reasonable ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... haven't spent it?" The latter question was a croaking shriek, which seemed to forebode, while it scarcely admitted, the possibility of such an enormity. ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... soon enveloped his books and papers, and the poor author on his return went mad, beating his head against the door of his palace, and raving blasphemous words. In vain his friends tried to comfort him, and the poor man wandered away into the woods, his mind utterly distraught by the enormity of his loss. ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... the intensity of his vulgarity, and shocked at the sacrilege, I left; and from that moment Hardy Gripstone became a study. Every step in his tortuous course, every phase of his ostentation, every enormity on good taste, was followed with ceaseless vigilance. Excesses that would have startled the most thoughtless were pursued with restless activity; absurdities that drew forth a shout of ridicule were committed ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... were dismissed, and all the students were disposed to laugh at the mildness of the punishment, compared with the enormity of the offence. ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... each other since the wedding-day,—even had not the precontract of marriage between the groom's father and the bride's mother rendered a consummation of the childish oath an obvious and a most heinous enormity,—why, that, in a sentence, and for all his coy verbosity, the new pontiff ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... a plantation, and my slaves treated as in general they are here, never could I rest in peace; my sleep would be perpetually disturbed by a retrospect of the frauds committed in Africa, in order to entrap them; frauds surpassing in enormity everything which a common mind can possibly conceive. I should be thinking of the barbarous treatment they meet with on ship-board; of their anguish, of the despair necessarily inspired by their situation, when torn from their friends and ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... dwindles into novels. How ignoble seems the current material of London literary life, for instance, compared with the noble simplicity which, a half-century ago, made the Lake Country an enchanted land forever! Is it worth a voyage to England to sup with Thackeray in the Pot Tavern? Compare the "enormity of pleasure" which De Quincey says Wordsworth derived from the simplest natural object with the serious protest of Wilkie Collins against the affectation of caring about Nature at all. "Is it not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... man is rich shall we condone his base acts? A poor man is as likely to commit crime as a rich one; but he would do so for very different reasons. The rich man in politics, sins for his own self-gratification; the poor man, to better himself or his family, often not comprehending the enormity ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... cried, "avail me here—after, and may my blood wash out my guilt. I feel the enormity of my offence, and acknowledge the justice of my punishment. Pardon me, O injured Catherine—pardon me, I implore thee! Thou seest in me the most abject pitiable woman in the whole realm! Overthrown, neglected, despised—about ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... twenty or thirty years ahead. It seemed very wicked to have brought the little tender thing into the midst of cares and perplexities we had not feared in the least for ourselves. I imagined everything;—he was to be in danger of every enormity the Croats were then committing upon the infants of Lombardy;—the house would be burned over his head; but, if he escaped, how were we to get money to buy his bibs and primers? Then his father ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... contrast and in full relief, the pagan and Roman world, the life of the day, especially in the baths, at the circus, in the theatre, the gratuitous supplies of food, of physical enjoyments and of spectacles to the idle populace of the towns, the excesses of public and private luxury, the enormity of unproductive expenditure, and all this in a society which, without our machines, supported itself by hand-labor; next, the scantiness and dearness of available capital, a legal rate of interest at twelve per cent, the latifundia, the oberati, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... families from father to son, and from husband to wife, and the possessions of the Church served for dowry to the daughters of bishops. Absolution was at a low quotation in the market, and redemption for sins of the greatest enormity cost scarcely the price of founding a church or a monastery. Horror-stricken at the sight of such corruption in the only things they at that time recognized as holy, men no longer knew where to find the rule of life or the safeguard of conscience. But ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... mental vision the sinfulness of my past life, and convinced me of the necessity of repentance and reformation. I would gladly amend my ways, and lead a new and better life, but my way is hedged up before me. I am an outcast of society, made so by my own acts, the dark enormity of which I now behold with astonishment, and, unless some great influence is brought to bear in my favor, I dare not return to a Christian community, and if I remain here among the heathens, I may give up all hope at once, as it will be impossible for me, as one of the savages, to become a moral ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... of religion,—it may be for the first time, in his unreflecting and heedless life,—he is oftentimes terribly excited. He is now brought suddenly into the midst of the most solemn things. That sin of his, the enormity of which he had never seen before, now reveals itself in a most frightful form, and he feels as the murderer does who wakes in the morning and begins to realize that he has killed a man. That holy Being, of whose holiness he had no proper conception, now rises ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... except a small portion which was granted to his wife, who was well known to be strongly opposed to the course he had pursued, and who had lost considerable property which she held in her own right. I say that the fact of Nelson's case being always brought up as the great enormity carried more conviction to my mind of the utter weakness of the opponents' cause than anything else; and it also proved to me how ignorant many of them were of the truth, for several of them who vilified the Bill, the ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... few hours, that he might be sacrificed under circumstances of peculiar enormity. A hole being dug in the ground of a depth sufficient to enable him to stand upright, with his head only exposed, his arms were pinioned to his body, he placed in it, and the loose earth thrown in and rammed closely around him. He was then scalped and permitted ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... punishment great enough for the enormity of the crime; and if it remain unpunished, the most sacred ...
— The Miser (L'Avare) • Moliere
... especially after carrying their conviction to the cannon's mouth, to acknowledge their error before the world. Hence, while he has endeavored truly to depict—or to let those who made history at the time help him to depict—the enormity of the offence of the armed Rebellion and of the heresies and plottings of certain Southern leaders precipitating it, yet not one word will be found, herein, condemnatory of those who, with manly candor, ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... once seeing me drink a dram with the doctor, at a small eating-house; and, as nothing is more offensive to the Spaniards than drunkenness, I had much ado to apologise for this step. Yet they admit of gallantry in the utmost excess, thus only exchanging one enormity for another. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... him to understand a great many words, insomuch that I am positive that the communication betwixt the canine species and ourselves might be greatly enlarged. Camp once bit the baker, who was bringing bread to the family. I beat him, and explained the enormity of his offence; after which, to the last moment of his life, he never heard the least allusion to the story, in whatever voice or tone it was mentioned, without getting up and retiring into the darkest corner of the room, with great appearance of distress. ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... dangerous traitor, whose life was forfeit. But there was no getting over the fact that his father had sworn "before the Almighty and His judgment seat'' to pardon him and let him live in peace if he returned to Russia. From Peter's point of view the question was, did the enormity of the tsarevich's crime absolve the tsar from the oath which he had taken to spare the life of this prodigal son? This question was solemnly submitted to a grand council of prelates, senators, ministers and other dignitaries on the 13th of June 1718. The clergy left the matter to the tsar's own ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... I have heard, Have read bold fables of enormity, Devised to make men wonder, and confirm The abhorrence of our nature; but this hardness Transcends all fiction. LAW ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Powala of Taczew testified to everything he could before the court of the castellan, that would lessen the enormity of Zbyszko's offence. But in vain did he attribute the deed to childishness and lack of experience; in vain he said that even some one older, if he had made the same vow, prayed for its fulfillment and then had suddenly perceived in front of him such a crest, would ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... draw of Phalaris and Dionysius, in which, as in the lives of mediaeval saints or mythic heroes, the conduct and actions of one were attributed to another in order to fill up the outline. There was no enormity which the Greek was not today to believe of them; the tyrant was the negation of government and law; his assassination was glorious; there was no crime, however unnatural, which might not with probability be attributed to him. In this, Plato ...
— The Republic • Plato
... a man, but a demon in human shape, as I have already said, may be abundantly proved by considering the enormity of the evils which he inflicted upon mankind, for the power of the acting cause is manifested in the excessive atrocity of his actions. I think that God alone could accurately reckon the number of those who were destroyed by him, and it would be easier for a man to count the grains ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius
... ordered the usher to bring in the accused, who had been summoned to appear by a mandat d'amener. He was a stout, dark, convivial-looking soul, with a merry eye, not altogether convinced of the enormity of his delict, and inclined at first to deprecate these proceedings. But the dialectical skill of the magistrate soon tied him into knots, and reduced him to a state of ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... Miller, who made particular inquiries on this subject, ascertained that the total amount, including cellars and closets, capable of receiving a bed, was fifteen thousand.] chambers, were to take fire—for a considerable space of time the fire would be retarded by the mere enormity of extent which it would have to traverse. But there would come at length a critical moment, at which the maximum of the retarding effect having been attained, the bulk and volume of the flaming mass would thenceforward assist the flames in the rapidity ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... for the little girl, to ask what she was doing now, and what she would like sent up for dinner, but he had not the courage. The aghast countenance which Mrs. Forbes had exhibited at the moment when the enormity of Jewel's conduct transpired remained in his memory. The housekeeper's appearance at present was noncommittal. Mrs. Evringham sent her piercing and questioning ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... as he arranged them upon his table; not that he was aware of the enormity of the act he contemplated, but he was afraid the goddess might revisit the marble while he was engaged ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... that was wanted. "Won't do it again?" echoed the Squire. "No, you won't do it again. I'll take good care of that." He then went on to bring home to her the enormity of her offence, which seemed to have consisted chiefly in upsetting the whole house, which he wouldn't have, and so on. But when he had repeated all he had to say twice, and most of it three or four times, he suddenly took his seat in the chair opposite to her and said in quite a different ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... given jurisdiction over any man who kills or attempts to kill the President or any man who by the Constitution or by law is in line of succession for the Presidency, while the punishment for an unsuccessful attempt should be proportioned to the enormity of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... through this scene, Caesar is made to speak quite out of character, and in a strain of hateful arrogance, in order, apparently, to soften the enormity of his murder, and to grind the daggers of the assassins to a sharper point. Perhaps, also, it is a part of the irony which so marks this play, to put the haughtiest words in Caesar's mouth ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare |
