"Extenuating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is not the only city in the United States in which defendants in grave criminal cases have recourse to every conceivable and possible means, without scruple, to procure their own acquittal, or the utmost modification of the penalty, by proving extenuating circumstances, or that the indictment magnifies the crimes. This was true of 1856; here, as elsewhere in the land; it is equally true now. Had the merchants and solid citizens then drawn as jurors, fulfilled their duty to the cause of justice, to the ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara
... indictment, and lose the advantage of those distinctions made by legislators on public grounds, between crime and crime; or the executive might delude a prisoner with fallacious hopes of mercy, to prevent the disclosure of extenuating facts to conceal official wrong; while ignorance of the details of a crime, might destroy the moral ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... revolution, came suddenly to lure men from an honorable social position, to expose them to the hazards of a popular movement. Before the laws, my companions are guilty of allowing themselves to be enticed. But never were circumstances more extenuating in the eyes of the country than those in their favor. When I saw Colonel Vaudrey and the other persons on the evening of the 29th, I addressed them ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... which followed the untoward affair of Waterloo young Tennyson fell much under the influence of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and the other offenders, and these are extenuating circumstances. By a curious practical paradox, where the realms of poetry and politics meet, the Tory critics seem milder of mood and more Liberal than the Liberal critics. Thus Mr William Morris was certainly a very advanced political ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... the keeper of the record of his own transgressions, even to the most minute exactness. It would of itself mete out perfect justice, since the sin would be seen amid its accompanying facts, every aggravating or extenuating circumstance. Each man would be strictly punished according to his talents. As no one is without sin, it makes the necessity of an atonement indispensable, and, in its most rigid interpretation, it exhibits the truth of the ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... success seemed hourly to diminish; for the jury, very much against the usual experience, appeared to be excessively severe. The bankrupt was sentenced to twenty years' hard labor. The man accused of murder could not even obtain the plea of "extenuating circumstances," ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... the meaning of Raoul's carelessly uttered words and they had hurt her poignantly, but it was no new sorrow. He had told her himself months ago, callously, brutally, sparing her nothing, extenuating nothing. She pressed her cheek against the hand she was holding. She did not blame him, she could only love him, no matter what his life had been. It was Ahmed as he was she loved, his faults, his vices were as much a part of him as his superb ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... inspired me with a curious conceit of impertinent respect. In person the very embodiment of that insignificant vulgarity, without extenuating circumstances, which is the type in caricature of the ultimate cockney, he possessed a force of mind and an earnestness of purpose that absolutely redeemed him on close acquaintanceship. I found him all he had stated himself to ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... the eyes of the moralist, there were extenuating circumstances in Pons' case. Man only lives, in fact, by some personal satisfaction. The passionless, perfectly righteous man is not human; he is a monster, an angel wanting wings. The angel of Christian mythology has nothing ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... who was poor, with few extenuating circumstances, and an admirer who, though comfortably rich, was cumbered with a sense of honour. His wealth made him welcome in Vanessa's eyes, but his code of what was right impelled him to go away and forget her, or at the most to think of her in the intervals ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... as to end in the production of Cornelias who entrust their child-jewels to Charlotte Winsors for the better keeping of them; and of sons like that one who, the other day, in France, beat his mother to death with a stick; and was brought in by the jury, "guilty, with extenuating circumstances." ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... law of such cases considers extenuating circumstances and defective bringing-up, but it has never yet occurred to a single criminalist that people might be likely to commit crime because they could not read or write. Nevertheless, we are frequently in touch ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... and unusual, but she also knew that in spite of some facility and much good teaching she had no genuine talent and never would fulfill the expectations of her friends. She looked back upon her mother's girlhood with positive envy because it was so full of happy industry and extenuating obstacles, with undisturbed opportunity to believe that her talents were unusual. The girl looked wistfully at her mother, but had not the courage to cry out what was in her heart: "I might believe I had unusual talent if I did not know what good ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... eyes, Flannery had him by the collar and had jerked him to the head of the stairs. It is true; he kicked him downstairs. Not insultingly, or with bad feeling, but in a moment of emotional insanity, as the defense would say. This was an extenuating circumstance, and excuses Flannery, but the professor, being a foreigner, could not see the fine point of ...
— Mike Flannery On Duty and Off • Ellis Parker Butler
... forget. I did not send for you: you came to me. You have forged bills to the amount of twelve hundred pounds. Yours is not the case of a ruined merchant, or an ignorant over-tempted clerk. In your case a jury" (she shuddered at that word) "would find no extenuating circumstances; and if you should fall into the hands of justice, you will be convicted, degraded, clothed in a prison dress, and transported for life. I do not want to speak harshly; but I insist that you find means to take up the bill which Mr. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... of having a definite policy, which Caroline gave, was far from a false one; but there was this to be said for her—that there were extenuating circumstances which ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... Sometimes we employ them for specific jobs, but we don't take them into the organization. There are certain extenuating circumstances which we recognize; self-defense, for example. But aside from that, we feel that a man who has committed premeditated murder on Earth is the wrong man ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... but slowly and distinctly—"You forget. I did not send for you; you came to me. You have forged bills to the amount of twelve hundred pounds. Yours is not the case of a ruined merchant or an ignorant over-tempted clerk. In your case a jury"—(she shuddered at that word)—"would find no extenuating circumstances; and if you should fall into the hands of justice you will be convicted, degraded, clothed in a prison-dress, and transported for life. I do not want to speak harshly; but I insist that ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... the trial, the 'prisoner's friend'—in this instance, Garth's colonel, who was very fond of him and had always thought very highly of him—pleaded extenuating circumstances. Garth's youth, his previous good record, the conditions of the moment—the continuous mental and physical strain of the days preceding his sudden loss of nerve—all these things were urged by the ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... clerk, and, if there was need, the broken-nosed reporter, were on hand to testify to all that had been said. The young man made no attempt to conceal, but tried to explain more fully the circumstances which led to the act, hoping that in them the justice would find such extenuating elements as would prevent ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... that no judges are so unflinching as very young people, who set a hard line between right and wrong, and are unwilling to acknowledge the existence of extenuating circumstances. During the next few weeks Pixie was sent to Coventry by her companions, to her own unutterable grief and confusion. No one offered to help her with difficult lessons; no one invited her to be ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the lips of every one. His strength had been revealed, but was for the time forgotten. When he left Quebec in 1682 he must {72} have thought that he would never see it again. Yet when need came he was remembered. This fact is a useful comment on his first term, extenuating much that had seemed ground for ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... negotiate treaties on my own responsibility. At the same time I dropped a hint that since the murder of a British officer was a prominent count in the bill Nisbet was presenting, it would undoubtedly be an extenuating circumstance if the said officer could be produced alive and only superficially damaged. We wrangled a good bit, but at last I agreed to act as mediator on the basis of the execution of Kharrak Singh's murderers, ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... saint—(s, a, i, n, t),—but, he flattered himself, just a plain man—(s, a, i, n),—a plain, sensible, reasonable human being,—he could find no reason for forgiveness: a man who, in such circumstances, could kill himself, was a wretch. The only extenuating circumstance he could find in Jeannin's case was that he was not responsible for his actions. With that he begged Madame Jeannin's pardon for having expressed himself a little emphatically about her husband: he pleaded the sympathy ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... them to their face and have created an admiration of their fearless daring, which has caused that they have been spared and dismissed unmolested. This sort of feeling had its influence on the present occasion in favor of the prisoners. Another extenuating influence was, that hostilities between the white and red men in the west had as yet been uncommon; and the mutual fury had not been exasperated by murder ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... 30). Such a confession of duty may be extorted from damned spirits, and therefore you would not draw this vail over the wretched wickedness of your natures, to the end that you may conceive well of yourselves. It is so far from extenuating or excusing, that the very conviction of the great obligation to love and obey God, is the greatest aggravation of the enmity. It is this which makes it the purest malice and perfectest hatred, that knowing the ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... If we are desirous of extenuating the vices of Paul, we must suspect the assembled bishops of the East of publishing the most malicious calumnies in circular epistles addressed to all the churches of the empire, (ap. Euseb. l. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... a degenerative make-up, a psychopathic constitution; but if these defects are such as to manifest themselves in crime, society must be given the inalienable right to protect itself from such defectives. The result is that either no extenuating circumstances are considered at all, and the individual is dealt with in the ordinary way, or he is adjudged insane and committed to a hospital for the criminal insane, whether or no insanity exists at the time of trial. Thus we have ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... Revolution, where theory was to crystalize into fact. Most historians have noted only the excesses of the Revolution,—and as always happens when the object is to cast stones at the people and arouse horror against them—have enormously exaggerated these to the end of all the more readily extenuating the shameful transgressions of the ruling class. As a rule, these historians have belittled the heroism and greatness of soul, displayed also by many women in both camps. So long as the vanquishers remain the historians of the vanquished, ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... different forms of utility fall very lightly in weight, and can not even be counted as an extenuating circumstance, when we compare them to the enormous evils brought on farmer and gardener by the hosts of those Coccides that visit plantations, hothouses, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... the same tribe he was taken up and tried by a council, and if it was found to be wilful murder, without any cause, he was condemned and put to death; but if there were any extenuating circumstances which showed that he had some reason for it, he was condemned and sentenced, by the chief, to sit on the grave of his victim for a certain length of time. That was his only hope and his "City of ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... Israelites, and he allows it to be seen a little too much. He embarrasses us sometimes. But there is one extenuating circumstance—he ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... was Ruth's final summary of him, after the manner of the swift judgment of women, with no consideration of the extenuating circumstances. Mr. Bigler had no idea that he had not made a good impression on the whole family; he certainly intended to be agreeable. Margaret agreed with her daughter, and though she never said anything to such people, ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... much depends on circumstances, and the highest questions often relate to mere matters of expediency, how easy it is to be "always finding fault," if we neglect to take notice of explanatory and extenuating circumstances! Anybody with a tongue and a most moderate complement of brains can call a thing stupid, foolish, ill-advised, and so forth; though it might require a larger amount of wisdom than the judges possessed to have done the thing better. But what do we want ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... correspondents should transmit to his papers whatever are the most striking items—revelations—accusations in an indictment such as was then framed against the packers. The more damning details are the best news. On the other hand he cannot, save to a ridiculously disproportionate extent, transmit the extenuating circumstances, the individual denials, the local atmosphere. Telegraph tolls are heavy and space is straitened while atmosphere and extenuating circumstances are not news at all. An Englishman is generally astonished when he reads the accounts of some conspicuous ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... example. He was precisely in that situation in which it is madness to attempt a vindication; for his guilt was so clear that no address or eloquence could obtain an acquittal. On the other hand, there were in his case many extenuating circumstances which, if he had acknowledged his error and promised amendment, would have procured his pardon. The most rigid censor could not but make great allowances for the faults into which so young a man had been seduced by evil example, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the encounter, even as it dribbled forth from Slocum, developed extenuating circumstances. Slocum was man grown, a big, muscular fellow, rather given to bullying. A heavy carriage whip was found lying in the alley, and this also supported Harold's story to his father. As told by Slocum, the struggle took place just where the alley from behind the parsonage came ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... philosophy is, that if when your poems come, you persist in giving too much importance to what I may have courage to say of this or of that in them, you will make me a dumb critic and I shall have no help for my dumbness. So I tell you beforehand—nothing extenuating nor exaggerating nor putting down in malice. I know so much of myself as to be sure of it. Even as it is, the 'insolence' which people blame me for and praise me for, ... the 'recklessness' which my friends talk of with ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... what I thought your sentence would be, and I told her I doubted very much whether you'd get more than a year or so, in view of all the extenuating circumstances,—that is to say, your self-restraint and all that when you had not only the jewels but the revolver as well. That seemed to cheer ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... Philadelphia, and yet, with all of these opportunities of making his trouble known, and escaping from the clutches of the man, the boy had taken advantage of none of them, but had sat silent and apparently a willing victim. In spite of these extenuating circumstances, it only took the jury a few moments to convict and send the guilty man to the penitentiary for a long period. Had the boy been a girl, and had she not made any more effort than he did to escape from her captor, and had ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... introduction, I will, as briefly as may be, relate my experiences, nothing extenuating, and ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... at times, as Gubetta says, to jingle words at the end of an idea, or to speak more modestly, at the end of certain measured syllables. The Marquise, cognisant of the offence, but not of the extenuating circumstances, launched forth into praise and flattering hyperbole that lifted me to the level of Byron, Goethe, Lamartine, discovered that I had a satanic look, and went on so that I ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... the police, regardless of the consequences that might recoil upon his own head. The case against Birchill depends largely on Hill's evidence, and the jury, when they have heard his story in the witness-box, and bearing in mind the extenuating circumstances of his connection with the crime, will have little hesitation in coming to the conclusion that the prisoner in the dock murdered Sir ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... whole affair with my unoffending self. When Barnwell began to go wrong, I declare that I felt positively apologetic, Pumblechook's indignant stare so taxed me with it. Wopsle, too, took pains to present me in the worst light. At once ferocious and maudlin, I was made to murder my uncle with no extenuating circumstances whatever; Millwood put me down in argument, on every occasion; it became sheer monomania in my master's daughter to care a button for me; and all I can say for my gasping and procrastinating conduct ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... the PRINCE OF WALES since he has proved his innocence in regard to Lady MORDAUNT. Chicago had begun to look upon him with mildly patronizing favor, when he was accused of a share in a really first-class divorce case; but now that his innocence is established, there is no longer any extenuating circumstance which can induce Chicago to overlook the infamous ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... considering a bill to remit the fine imposed upon General Andrew Jackson at New Orleans for contempt of court. It was a hackneyed theme. No new, extenuating circumstances could be adduced to clear the old warrior of high-handed conduct; but a presidential election was approaching and there was political capital to be made by defending "Old Hickory." From boyhood Douglas had idolized Andrew Jackson. With much the same boyish ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... creation of the book. In her, bigotry and its fellow-vice, hypocrisy, have done their perfect work, until she comes near to being a devil, and really does some devil's deeds. Yet even she is not without some extenuating traits. Her bigotry springs from her conscience, and she is truly devoted to her daughter's eternal welfare; she is of such a native frankness that at a certain point she tears aside her mask of dissimulation and lets Pepe see all the ugliness of her perverted ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... temperature undoubtedly decreases personal responsibility, it is a most difficult matter to decide whether this factor ought to be taken into consideration when passing sentence on criminal offenders. It is much more truly an extenuating circumstance than the majority of pleas which receive the name. In a variety of cases, such, for instance, as threats, assaults, manslaughter, murder, a high temperature unquestionably sometimes enters as a determining factor into the complex set of influences which produce these crimes. But ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... many kind things, which were great, like himself, and, extenuating our crime, intimated to me that he could no more part with me than I could with him; so we both, as I may say, even against our light and against our conviction, concluded to sin on; indeed, his affection to the child was one great tie ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... ruin and death or dishonour. As you also know, we did not need twelve hours to make our choice. This choice was no more than a cry of indignation and resolution, spontaneous, fierce and irresistible. We did not stay for a moment to ponder the extenuating circumstances which our weakness might have invoked. We did not for a moment consider the absolution which history would have granted us later, on realizing that a conflict between forces so completely disproportioned ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... readers my reminiscences of the late War, I feel that it is necessary to ask their indulgence and to plead extenuating circumstances for many ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... the maximum limit of punishment for the offenses named, and this limit is intended for those cases where the severest punishment should be awarded. In other cases the punishment must be graded down according to the extenuating circumstances. Offenses not herein provided for remain punishable as authorized by the Articles of War and the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... chatter was balanced on the other side of the room by an even more penetrating conversation unflaggingly maintained by a party of Americans, who were sitting in judgment on the cuisine of the country they were passing through, and finding few extenuating circumstances. ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... such effect. If I have candidly narrated the importunities, the indelicacies, of which my desire to possess myself of Jeffrey Aspern's papers had rendered me capable I need not shrink from confessing this last indiscretion. I think it was the worst thing I did; yet there were extenuating circumstances. I was deeply though doubtless not disinterestedly anxious for more news of the old lady, and Miss Tita had accepted from me, as it were, a rendezvous which it might have been a point of honor with me to keep. It may be said that her leaving the place dark ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... in committing the deed, and in the prospect of gratifying his avarice or his revenge? We are hardly so formed as to sympathise at the same moment with the assassin and his victim. The degree of pleasure the former may feel, instead of extenuating, aggravates his guilt, and shews the depth of his malignity. Now the mind revolts against this by mere natural antipathy, if it is itself well-disposed; or the slow process of reason would afford but a feeble resistance to violence ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... and sin was permitted in that fold. And Mrs. Tregenza had little pity herself for unfortunate or mistaken women. Let a girl lose her character and Thomasin usually refused to hear any plea of mercy from any source. Only once did she find extenuating circumstances: in a case where a ruined farmer's daughter brought an action for breach of promise and won it, with heavy damages. But money acted in a peculiar way with this woman. It put her conscience and her judgment out of focus, softened the outlines of events, ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... resentment for six long years, or refused the offender a right to speak! If I know my Evelyn, before a month had passed her heart would have softened, and she would be turning special pleader in his defence, racking her brain for extenuating explanations. And if there had been none—I can imagine you, Evelyn, shouldering your burden with a set, gallant little face, going back to your husband, and saying to yourself, 'Am I a coward to be daunted by the failure of one little month? He married me for my money—very well, he shall ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... admitted in general terms that they are sinners. He is bound to weigh the gravity of their errors and the strength of their repentance, to know the facts and details of the fall and the number of relapses, the aggravating or extenuating circumstances, and, therefore, to interrogate in order to sound the soul to its depths. If some souls are timorous, they surrender themselves to him spontaneously and, more than this, they have recourse ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... him; but in America, such is the feeling against taking life that, strange to say, Robinson was acquitted, and permitted to leave for Texas, where it is said, he still lives under a false name. I have heard this subject canvassed over and over again in New York; and, although some, with a view of extenuating to a foreigner such a disgraceful disregard to security of life, have endeavoured to show that the evidence was not quite satisfactory, there really was not a shadow of doubt in the whole case. ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... powerless to disturb him, had he not lost his own respect. He quailed before his own thoughts; he was dishonoured in his own eyes. His perplexity had not yet sufficiently cleared away to allow him to see the extenuating circumstances of the case; not to say the fact that the peculiar mental condition in which he was at the time, removed the case quite out of the class of ordinary instances of cowardice. He condemned ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... servitude! Better any death than that. It is good that my secret must die with me—that there will be no extenuating circumstances, no recommendation to mercy, no commutation of ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... only penalty for all crimes, for first-class misdemeanants and for the most atrocious of criminals alike, the distinction would not be very finely drawn by the interested; at the most, the severest treatment as an alternative to capital punishment would always savour of extenuating circumstances. ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... a stir as the murder had done, and gave rise, in that period when "extenuating circumstances" had not been invented, to long and angry discussions. Indeed, the marquis either was guilty of complicity or was not: if he was not, the punishment was too cruel; if he was, the sentence was too light. Such was the opinion of Louis XIV., who remembered the beauty of ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... sincere compassion for his old messmate, and obtained leave to pay him a visit, anxious to ascertain if there were any extenuating circumstances by which he might obtain a ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... had been so gratuitously imputed to him, of returning this money to the prosecutor, when once the object of his supposed scheme had been effected, he would be no less guilty of the crime that was laid to his charge. It was possible, indeed, in such a case, that there might be extenuating circumstances, but those would not affect the verdict of the jury, however they might influence his lordship's sentence after that verdict had been truly given. And this he would say, after what had just occurred in that court—after ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... It is due to Colonel B——— to say, that he acted in the investigation of his agent's conduct with the strictest honor and impartiality. He scrutinized every statement thoroughly, pleaded for him as temperately as he could; found, or pretended to find, extenuating motives for his most indefensible proceedings; but all would not do. The cases were so clear and evident against him, even in the opinion of the neighboring gentry, who had been for years looking ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... afraid of the truth?—But just one word, and I'm done. You no doubt knew, as every one else did, that Lulu was Schilsky's mistress. What you didn't know, was this;" and now, without the least attempt at palliation, without a single extenuating word, there fell from his lips the quick and witty narration of an episode in which Louise and he had played the chief parts. It was the keynote of their relations to each other: the story, grossly told, of ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... members of the court looked at each other, the Colonel whispered to the Judge-Advocate, the Judge-Advocate to the Prosecutor. The Judge-Advocate turned to the prisoner, "Do you realise," he asked, not unkindly, "that if you plead 'Guilty' you will not be able to call any evidence as to extenuating circumstances?" The prisoner pondered for a moment; it seemed to him that the ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... on any reduction in the average number of distant signal equivalents per subscriber. The copyright arbitration royalty panels may consider all factors relating to the maintenance of such level of payments including, as an extenuating factor, whether the industry has been restrained by subscriber rate regulating authorities from increasing the rates for the basic service of providing ...
— Copyright Law of the United States of America and Related Laws Contained in Title 17 of the United States Code, Circular 92 • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.
... extenuating. Genevieve Maud hesitated and sniffed. In the matter of being stripped, toys were more important ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... day, when Ravachol was brought to trial, some awful foreboding seemed to possess those who were present. All Paris was guarded. In spite of the efforts of the Public Minister, the jury spared Ravachol on the ground of extenuating circumstances. It is difficult to say whether it was fear or pity that determined the decision of the jurors. In any case, Ravachol was acquitted, only to be condemned to death a few months later for strangling the hermit of Chambles, ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... which enormous fibs are ever told, the registration. There are, however, occasional glimpses in their talk which would seem to intimate that they have another life outside the Houses of Parliament. But that extenuating circumstance does not apply to the sporting dinner. There they begin with odds and handicaps, and end with handicaps and odds, and it is doubtful whether it ever occurs to any one present, that there is any other existing combination of atoms than odds and handicaps. A dinner ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... why measles? and was told that there was a fear lest extenuating circumstances should prevent a jury from convicting me, if I were indicted for typhus or small-pox, but that a verdict would probably be obtained for measles, a disease which could be sufficiently punished in a person of my age. I was given to understand that unless some unexpected ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... orders of their superior officers and attempted to shake the allegiance of the troops for the purpose of overthrowing the Imperial power! A man who was at once soldier and autocrat, by nature as well as by position, could of course admit no extenuating circumstances. The incident stereotyped his character for life, and made him the sworn enemy of liberalism and the fanatical defender of autocracy, not only in his own country, but throughout Europe. In European politics ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... dangerous and considerably more heinous morally. It was hard in many cases to reconcile the exigencies of war with the call of humanity, and the sense of responsibility was only partially relieved by the knowledge that a higher authority would give due weight to the extenuating circumstances that appealed so often to one's compassion. The introduction of "suspended sentences" by the Army (Suspension of Sentences) Act 1915, with a view to keep a man's rifle in the firing line, and to give an offender the chance of retrieving his liberty by subsequent devotion to duty, ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... lady, and of her majesty's apprehension? And is it not more evident than demonstration itself, that whilst this impression continueth in her majesty's breast, you can find no other condition than inventions to keep your estate bare and low; crossing and disgracing your actions; extenuating and blasting of your merit; carping with contempt at your nature and fashions; breeding, nourishing and fortifying such instruments as are most factious against you; repulses and scorns of your friends and dependents that are true and ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... such that the dark secrets of this sinister affair were never brought from their murky depths. And with neither the guilt nor the innocence of the victim proven, the amazing verdict was rendered, "Guilty, with extenuating circumstances." ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... flight after commission of the crime, by the discovery of a blood-stained knife dropped on the threshold, by the deposition of the father before death, and lastly, by the confession of the prisoner himself, who admitted the crime, though under extenuating circumstances. The fact that the sister never heard the knife open, although it had three clasps, was asserted to be evidence that the prisoner entered the room with his knife open and intending to commit the crime. This charge of malice ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... it filthier than in the original, and that he has once and again scattered his satyr-like fancies in spots such as the Paradise of Milton, and the Enchanted Isle of Shakspeare, which every imagination and every heart previously had regarded as holy ground. The only extenuating circumstance we can mention is, that his pruriency was latterly in part relinquished and much deplored by himself, and that his poetry is, on the whole, free from it. In our critical paper, prefixed to the Second Volume, we intend ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... would be shocked," I said, "but she has the coolest head of anyone I know—I do not think of any man I would trust so fully to take a rational attitude in the end. We can explain to her what extenuating circumstances there are, and she will have to recognise them. She will see that we are considering ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... condition. It is the custom to admit five or six people at a time. I was at first surprised that nobody in the line outside had stirred at the appeal of the child, but I need not have expected individual initiative even under the most extenuating circumstances from people so slavishly disciplined that they would stolidly wait their turn. But the four women inside—why did they not help the woman? The spirit of self-preservation must be the answer. For them the main event of the day was to secure the half-pound of meat ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... I do!" cried Raffles, with such spontaneous heartiness that I could see he had never thought of it since mentioning the matter to me at our meal. What I could not see was any reason for such conspicuous relief, or the extenuating quality of a circumstance which seemed to me ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... of the Colonel's merit and services," remarked the Adjutant, "was dragged off before daylight, and disgraced for what was in its very worst light but a simple blunder, made under the most extenuating of circumstances. Boys, if there be faith in Stanton's pledged word, matters will be set right as soon as the record of the case reaches the War Department. I am informed that he denounced the whole proceeding as an outrage, and telegraphed the General; ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... the wilder parts of the Malay Peninsula. It will be found that the pictures thus drawn are not always attractive—what man's life, when viewed from the inside, ever is pretty to look at? But I have told my tales of these curious companions of my exile, nothing extenuating, but setting down nought ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... pleading also that there were extenuating circumstances in the case. We all know the story of the convict, who on the scaffold bit off his mother's ear. By doing so he did not deny the fact of his own crime, for which he was to hang; but he said ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... not do so? There is hope in that. The chaplain was your friend—your only friend in London, so far as they know. Surely that is an extenuating circumstance ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... not an attorney for Moses. I desire, however, to give a fair, clear and judicial account of the man. I will attempt to present a brief for the people, and neither prosecute nor defend. I will simply try to picture the man as he once existed, nothing extenuating, nor setting down aught in malice. As the original office of the State's Attorney was rather to protect the person at the bar than to indict him, so will I try to bring out the best in Moses, rather than hold up his mistakes ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... be allowed to visit ladies in their sleeping rooms, nor ladies to visit gentlemen in their rooms except under extenuating circumstances." ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... in spirit those battalion officers of the Old Army who fulfilled their heritage until it was overwhelmed by new forces, and I find extenuating circumstances even in remembrance of the high stupidities, the narrow imagination, the deep, impregnable, intolerant ignorance of Staff College men who with their red tape and their general orders were the inquisitors and torturers of the new armies. Tout comprendre c'est tout ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... talk of 'circumstances'; he heard the story from other sources; my confession came too tardily, it seems. I could no longer plead extenuating circumstances: I could not demean myself by ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... They were then easily overtaken, and separately arrested. Their trial and condemnation speedily followed at Lancaster; and in those days it followed, of course, that they were executed. Otherwise their case fell so far within the sheltering limits of what would now be regarded as extenuating circumstances—that, whilst a murder more or less was not to repel them from their object, very evidently they were anxious to economize the bloodshed as much as possible. Immeasurable, therefore, was the interval which divided them from the monster ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... prima-facie aspect of the case is, that he is guilty of the most monstrous impertinence; and, in point of fact, I confess the greatest disgust towards any person of whom I hear the assertion that he has written a story, unless I hear something more than that. He is bound to show extenuating or justifying circumstances, as much as the man who writes what he calls "poems." For, as the world is full of real histories, and every day in every great city begins and ends a score or half a dozen score of tragic dramas, it is a huge piece of assumption ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... who entrust their child-jewels to Charlotte Winsors for the better keeping of them; and of sons like that one who, the other day, in France, beat his mother to death with a stick; and was brought in by the jury, 'guilty, with extenuating circumstances.' ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Western Australia. He had, with others, been taken up to the northern coast to do some Government work, and had escaped in the dingey. His crime was stealing funds belonging to a Squatting and Mining Company. There was this extenuating circumstance: he could have replaced the money, which, as he said, he'd only intended to use for a few weeks. But a personal enemy threw suspicion on him, accounts were examined, and though he showed he'd only used the money while more of his own was on the way to him, the Company insisted ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... his impartial and unreserved opinion of your behaviour and condition. Our unwillingness to do this, often betrays to others, (not seldom it first discovers to ourselves) that we entertain a secret distrust of our own character and conduct. Instead also of extenuating to yourself the criminality of the vicious tempers under consideration, strive to impress your mind deeply with a sense of it. For this end, often consider seriously, that these rough and churlish tempers are a direct contrast to the "meekness ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... is also necessary to make many inquiries before we arrive at our conclusions; and I have no doubt, if this be done with calmness, and without prejudice, it will be generally found that there are many extenuating circumstances which may be brought to modify our judgment. I am anxious, if possible, to place a few of these before the public, in the hope, that by lessening in some degree the unfavourable opinion heretofore ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... of June, before Mr. Justice Yelverton. Sir Francis Bacon, the Solicitor-General, did what he could to save the revengeful Scot, but it was impossible to keep him from the gallows. Robert Creighton, Lord Sanquhar, therefore, confessed himself guilty, but pleaded extenuating circumstances. He had, he said, always believed that Turner boasted he had put out his eye of set purpose, though at the taking up the foils he (Sanquhar) had specially protested that he played as a scholar, and not as one able to contend with ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... revenues on the Legion of Honour; and a sixth, restoring to their authority all magistrates who had been displaced by the Bourbon government. These proclamations could not be prevented from reaching Paris; and the Court, abandoning their system of denying or extenuating the extent of the impending danger, began to adopt more energetic means ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... through the wall was not comforting. It was not a heroic soul that, stripped of its defenses, shivered beneath the scrutiny. In another mood he would have mended the breach, excusing and extenuating, but not now. He looked at himself without pity, and saw himself weak, slothful, devoid of all that was clean and fine, and a bitter ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... feeling that you have in reality been benefited instead of injured. When you have acquired greater power of controlling your thoughts, it will be serviceable to you to think over all the details of the annoyance from which you are suffering, and to consider all the extenuating circumstances of the case; to imagine (this will be good use to make of your vivid imagination) what painful chord you may have unconsciously struck, what circumstances may possibly have led the person who annoys you to suppose that the provocation originated ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... with respect to indictment Number 1, see prefatory notice. Extenuating circumstance Number 2—that I picked up "Atavism" in Pritchard years ago, and as it is a much more convenient word than "Hereditary transmission of variations," it slipped into equivalence in my mind, and I forgot all about ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... extreme penalty. "While he was in command at Winchester, in December 1861, a soldier who was charged with striking his captain was tried by court-martial and sentenced to be shot. Knowing that the breach of discipline had been attended with many extenuating circumstances, some of us endeavoured to secure his pardon. Possessing ourselves of all the facts, we waited upon the general, who evinced the deepest interest in the object of our visit, and listened with evident sympathy to our ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... To the court it must be,—'He did not do it: he never contemplated it: the evidence is false; the charge is fabricated'. If you tell me you sit but as the judge of the fact in this case, Caesar,—if you ask me where and when he served against you,—I am silent; I will not now dwell on the extenuating circumstances, which even before a judicial tribunal might have their weight. We take this course before a judge, but I am here pleading to a father. 'I have erred—I have done wrong, I am sorry: I take refuge in your clemency; I ask forgiveness for my fault; I ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... to Sunday, and his only comment on that day was "Pulled through." In the New England Primer we gather the solemn information that "In Adam's fall, we sinned all." I admit the fact freely, but beg to be permitted to plead extenuating circumstances. Adam could go to church just as he was, but I had to be renovated and, at times, almost parboiled and, in addition to these indignities, had to wear shoes and stockings; and the stockings scratched my legs, and the shoes were too tight. If Adam could barely manage to pull through, ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... into Louise's father, though that could hardly have been said to do any good either. Her report of the whole affair made him writhe, but when she had made him writhe enough she began to admit some extenuating circumstances. If Mrs. Maxwell was a country person, she was not foolish. She did not chant, in a vain attempt to be genteel in her speech; she did not expand unduly under Mrs. Hilary's graciousness, and she did not resent it. In fact, the ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... was the only creature who could suppose there might be any extenuating circumstances in the case, unknown to the society of Hertfordshire; her mild and steady candour always pleaded for allowances, and urged the possibility of mistakes—but by everybody else Mr. Darcy was condemned as the ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... to see how the kindler of the vitai lampada, supposing him to have been responsible for his actions, can claim from a jury of human beings a verdict of absolute acquittal. But we can, even now, see certain extenuating circumstances, which evidence not yet available may one day so powerfully reinforce as to enable him to leave the Court without a ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer |
