"Palliation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is necessary to state, that there has been some little difficulty concerning this word, presents. Bribery and extortion have been covered by the name of presents, and the authority and practice of the East has been adduced as a palliation of the crime. My Lords, no authority of the East will be a palliation of the breach of laws enacted in the West: and to those laws of the West, and not the vicious customs of the East, we insist upon making Mr. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the more complete, here was his discharged assistant setting up as his rival; and with every probability that the attempted rivalry would be crowned with success. Really there was something, perhaps, to be said in palliation of Gottlieb's ...
— A Romance Of Tompkins Square - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... Verdi's "Traviata," which has made the music of the second act and the finale of "Tristan und Isolde" the most powerful plea that can be made for Wagner's guilty lovers. Nowhere else is the ennobling and purifying capacity of music demonstrated as in the death song of Isolde. Without such palliation the vileness, the horror, the hideousness of a play like "Tosca" is more unpardonable in an operatic form than in the original. Its lust and cruelty are presented in their nakedness. There is little or no ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... rifle and bayonet. Among these was Miles Milton. Mindful of his recent thoughts, and re-impressed with the word Duty, which his friend had just emphasised, he sat down and wrote a distinctly self-condemnatory letter home. There was not a word of excuse, explanation, or palliation in it from beginning to end. In short, it expressed one idea throughout, and that was—Guilty! and of course this was followed by his asking forgiveness. He had forgiveness—though he knew it not—long before he asked it. His broken-hearted father and his ever-hopeful ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... of beer. "Are you 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 a ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... responsible for not only her own safety but that of her allies, and that this safety appeared to be menaced by a people who recognized few outward laws, was the only palliation of a course which in time showed itself as folly, even to the most embittered. The political consequences were of a nature, of which in their first access of zeal, they had taken no account. The complaints and ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... lenient eyes. It appeared to them that Ussher was not using any violence to the young lady, who had herself admitted in her evidence, that she was a willing party to Ussher's proceedings. Doubtless, there might be circumstances, which at the prisoner's trial would be properly put forward in palliation of the murder, by his counsel; but with that the jury before the Coroner could have nothing to do; and on these considerations, the jurors with very little delay had come to the conclusion which had so surprised and grieved Father John. Still, however, he looked forward ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... politely excused us to him, but Colville would have no palliation of our political and moral nakedness; and he framed a continuation of the letter he began on the Ponte Vecchio to the Post-Democrat-Republican, in which he made a bitterly ironical comparison of the achievements of Italy and America ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... an end. And how can an author do better than to quote Ibn Khallikan's own concluding words, which, though written so long ago about a biographical dictionary, may be borrowed by all literary hands as palliation for whatever shortcomings their work may have?—"If any well-informed person remark, in examining this book, that it contains faults, he should not hasten to blame me, for I always aimed at being exact, as far as I could judge; and, besides, God has allowed no book to be ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... an error, and he has sufficient address to conceal it, or sufficient ingenuity to palliate it, but he does neither; instead of availing himself of concealment and palliation, with the candor of a great mind, he confesses his error, and makes all the apology or atonement which the occasion requires. None has a title to true honor but he who can say with moral elevation, when truth demands the acknowledgment, I ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... we may be happy in so considering them, since they would betray a character, even in earliest manhood, too depraved and debased for honorable mention, although his errors were no doubt altogether beyond the palliation of a woman's pen. Yet we would fain look at him, in youth at least, as undebauched and uncorrupt, however stained may be the record of ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... blandishments, and had done that which had made him a felon. As to Eugene Pearson, the trusted, honored and respected official of the bank, who had deliberately planned and assisted in this robbery of his best friends, I had no words of palliation for his offenses; but for "Tod" Duncan, the weak and tempted victim of designing men and adverse circumstances, I experienced a sense of sympathy which I ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... for the general folly that makes the Poem as miserable in point of authorship, as in point of principle. We know that among a certain class this outrage and this inanity meet with some attempt at palliation, under the idea that frenzy holds the pen. That any man who insults the common order of society, and denies the being of God, is essentially mad we never doubted. But for the madness, that retains enough of rationality to be wilfully mischievous, we can have no ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... blaze,"—these show how far the word has departed from its origin. Nor, indeed, does it come down from English in an unbroken line. Overlooked for centuries, it was revived (or invented) in America some fifty years ago, and it is not to Dekker and Ben Jonson that we must look for palliation ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... magistrate named Rolleston, with a small body of soldiers, they fled across the fields, and the bubble of rebellion burst at a touch. Whether they were legally guilty of high treason, for which they were unwisely tried, may perhaps be doubted, but it would certainly be no palliation of their crime if it could be shown, as it never was shown, that Oliver had led them to rely on a jacobin revolution in London. What does appear very clearly is that Sidmouth was greatly alarmed by the reports of his agents on the disturbed ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... right to mention here (what however is no palliation of the crime, though a diminution of the extent of it) a circumstance which I do not recollect to have seen noticed by any author, and the truth of which I have too good authority to call in question. As every corpse great and small must be carried to a place of burial ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... policy so mild and conciliatory as to win them to the side of the government. Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri were excited by strong minorities who desired to aid the South, while no strong element in their population was ready to take decisive measures for the Union. Palliation, conciliation, concession, compromise, were the only words heard, and the almost universal opinion in the South, shared largely by the North, was that to precipitate war would be to abandon the last hope ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... others were imprisoned, whipped, and fined. We have no disposition to justify the Pilgrims for these proceedings, but we think, considering the circumstances of the age in which they lived, their conduct admits of much palliation. The following remarks of Mr. Hawes, in his tribute to the memory of the Pilgrims, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... beauties of the female form not apart from, but by the help of, drapery. It was reserved for the age of Praxiteles and Scopas to represent the Goddess of Love in the guise of a nude woman; and Praxiteles made an apology for the innovation by introducing the motive of bathing as an explanation and a palliation. And even the Aphrodite of Praxiteles is remarkably free from all attempt at sensuous attraction, or self-consciousness. Solid, noble, and stately in form, she is a type or model rather than an individual. ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... full way on his intellectual? Think of the manifoldness of his accumulated petty calls! Think, in short, on all that should be like a voice from heaven to warn thyself against this and this, and call it all up for pity and for palliation; and then draw the balance. Take him in his whole,—his head, his heart, his wishes, his innocence of all selfish crime, and a hundred years hence, what will be the result? The good,—were it but a single volume that made truth more ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... and my belief of your friendship, determine me to intreat your opinion and advice.'—'In this state I with great earnestness desire you to tell me what is to be done. Excision is doubtless necessary to the cure, and I know not any means of palliation. The operation is doubtless painful; but is it dangerous? The pain I hope to endure with decency[744]; but I am loth to put life into much hazard.'—'By representing the gout as an antagonist to the palsy, you ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... there can be no justification for the ferocity with which Cooper was assailed, there was some palliation. His course (p. 168) from his return to the country had been wanting in prudence, and at times in common sense. He had plunged at once as a combatant into one of the bitterest political controversies that ever agitated the republic. ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... unusual precautions have been common during the last winter, many persons locking up their negroes over night in the quarters, and most sleeping with arms at hand, ready for nocturnal conflict. Whoever considers the necessarily horrible nature of a servile insurrection will find in it some palliation for Southern violence toward suspected incendiaries and Southern precipitation in matters of secession, however strongly he may still maintain that lynch-law should not usurp the place of justice, nor revolution the place of regular ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... the shore of the gulf. But even here, the first painful shock over, we find it is not imperative. For the love of brother for sister, viewed from a standpoint sufficiently lofty, is a crime against morality, but not against human nature; and there is at least some measure of palliation in the youth of the pair, and in the passion that blinds them. Othello, too, the semi-barbarian who does Desdemona to death, has been goaded to madness by the machinations of Iago; and even this last can plead ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... the field of bibliography I cannot plead as palliation for any imperfections that may be discovered in this, that it is the work of a 'prentice hand. Difficult as I found my self-imposed task in the case of the Meredith and Hardy bibliographies, here my labour has ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... the wild grief of Wesley's death, she had hugged hatred of Jack to her heart as a sublime revenge for the murder. But with the hot partisanship allayed in the long weeks of reflection preceding the rumor of Jack's own death, she began dimly to admit of palliation in her lover's fatal act. Her father, the Boone faction, all who had access to her, held the shooting to be a craftily planned murder, calculated to bring advantage to the assassin. To check the sacrilegious love she felt ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... that his vice became conspicuous only in the light of one of his virtues. His frankness would never allow concealment. He scandalized his friends Boileau and Racine; still, it is matter of doubt whether they did not excel him rather in prudence than in purity. But, whatever may be said in palliation, it is lamentable to think that a heaven-lighted genius should have been made, in any way, to minister to a hell-envenomed vice, which has caused unutterable woes to France and the world. Some time before he died, he repented bitterly of this part ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... day following, Mr. Saulsbury took the floor. His speech, ostensibly against the pending measure, was a palliation of the conduct of the Southern States, and a plea for their right of being admitted to representation in Congress. All that the Senator said directly upon the subject under discussion was contained in the ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... disposition to run deeply into debt; and the other is, that she has not the credit to do it if she wished! If, however, she does involve herself in this way, the law exempts her from imprisonment. This, perhaps, is offered as a sort of palliation for the disabilities which she suffers in other respects. The only object of the petition is, I believe, that the husband and wife be placed upon a legal and political equality. If the law gives woman an advantage over man, we deprecate it as much as he can. Partiality ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Coleridge, and Lamb, were all joint parties; the two first as concerned in the composition, the last as a frank though friendly reviewer of it in his private correspondence with Coleridge. It is, however, some palliation of these oversights, and a very singular fact in itself, that neither from English authorities nor from French, though the two nations were equally brought into close connection with the career of that extraordinary girl, could any adequate ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... figure. So long as the earth revolves, he cannot be forgotten. If, therefore, there is a doubt affecting his case, he is entitled to the benefit of that doubt; and if he has suffered to any extent—if simply to the extent of losing a palliation, or the shadow of a palliation—by means of a false translation from the Greek, we ought not to revise or mitigate his sentence merely, but to dismiss him from the bar. The Germans make it a question—in what spirit Iscariot lived? My question is—how he ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... not wish to be misunderstood. I do not wish to be misrepresented in this matter. Let no man assert that I refer to the evils of those days as either excuse or palliation for the evils of ours. That generation was a frugal and honest generation in the main, and they would have visited with the swiftest condemnation and punishment, every breach of public trust, whether through dishonesty or usurpation. But they did not send to England ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... the most moral novels I have ever written. And it is for this reason that, with a full realization of the standards demanded by the English-reading public, I have not hesitated to authorize the present translation without palliation or amputation, fully convinced that the reader will not find anything in this novel objectionable or offensive to his moral sense. Morality is not to be found in words but in deeds and in the lessons ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Richard Johnson observes, "I put down at his [the Nabob Fyzoola Khan's] particular desire, but otherwise useless; as my orders" (which orders do not appear) "were, not to receive any palliation, but a negative or affirmative": though such palliation, as it is called by the said Johnson, might be, as it was, in the strictest conformity ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Louis had hotly defended him against everything the confidence man had said, and, of course, she now saw that the man who had spoken against Mr. Warner was of the most abandoned type of men. Somehow she felt that she owed him some palliation for the rudeness she had exercised. It would, perhaps, not be altogether according to the rules of etiquette; but if the opportunity offered she intended to say something in explanation. As he came on around her ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... of Congreve was not tenable; whatever glosses he might use for the defence or palliation of single passages, the general tenour and tendency of his plays must always be condemned. It is acknowledged, with universal conviction, that the perusal of his works will make no man better, and that their ultimate effect ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... drink, as well as those which spring from the pressure of great poverty and are accompanied by great ignorance. The causes of domestic anarchy are usually of such an intimate nature and involve so many unknown or imperfectly realised elements of aggravation or palliation that in most cases the less men attempt to judge them the better. On the other hand, public opinion is usually far too lenient in judging crimes of ambition, cupidity, envy, malevolence, and callous selfishness; the ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... the Vindication of an expression dictated by Resentment, an expression which deserves Censure, and demands the apology I now offer; for I think that Disposition indeed mean which adds Obstinacy to Insult, by attempting the Palliation of unmerited Invective from the mistaken principle of disdaining the Avowal of even self convicted Error. In regard to the other Declarations my Sentiments remain unaltered; the event will shew whether my Prediction is false. I know Mrs. Byron too well to imagine that ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... account of one who is evidently adverse to the political creed, no less than to the daring violence, of the clan Macgregor. Little can, it is true, be offered in palliation for the extraordinary career of spoliation and outrage which the history of this race of Highlanders presents; and which terminated only with the existence ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... ballot. In so far as the truth of this allegation is admitted, it is answered that in many places honest local government is impossible if the mass of uneducated negroes are allowed to vote. These are grave allegations. So far as the latter is true, it is the only palliation that can be offered for opposing the freedom of the ballot. Bad local government is certainly a great evil, which ought to be prevented; but to violate the freedom and sanctities of the suffrage is more than an evil. It ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... man to death. That would be his reading of his act, and, doubtless, it did not trouble his conscience much or long, but he would leave the judgment-seat tolerably satisfied with his morning's work. How little he knew what he had done! In his ignorance lies his palliation. His crime was great, but his guilt is to be measured by his light, and that was small. He prostituted justice for his own ends, and he did not follow out the dawnings of light that would have led him to know Jesus. Therefore he did the most awful thing in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... benignant expression on the old man's face, which had been more often fierce, as she remembered it through the years. She seated herself quietly, and then proceeded immediately to confession. There was no attempt at palliation of her offense, if offense it were. She gave the narrative of events starkly, from the moment when she had first seen Hodges descending Luffman's Branch to the time of her separation from him at ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... who ever talked or wrote encomiastic nonsense about Germany and the Germans. Of all infatuations connected with what is foreign, the infatuation about everything that is German, to a certain extent prevalent in England, is assuredly the most ridiculous. One can find something like a palliation for people making themselves somewhat foolish about particular languages, literatures, and people. The Spanish certainly is a noble language, and there is something wild and captivating in the Spanish character, and its literature contains ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... his daughter alone. The interview was long and earnest. On his part was the fullest disapproval of her conduct and the most solemnly spoken admonitions and warnings. She confessed her error, without any attempt at excuse or palliation, and promised a ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... people of the United States through the newspapers, but only for the purpose of pointing out that no warning that an unlawful and inhumane act will be committed can possibly be accepted as an excuse or palliation for that act or as an abatement of the responsibility ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... palliation. He said that Jeff was the son of the landlady at Lion's Head Mountain, which he had painted so much, and he was now in his second year at Harvard, where he was going to make a lawyer of himself; and this interested the lady. She asked if he had talent, and a number ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... one excuse, or rather palliation, for the superstition of that time. In periods of great public depravity—and few epochs have been more depraved than that in which Calmet lived—Satan has great power. With a ruler like the regent Duke of Orleans, with a Church governor like Cardinal ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... William III., who introduced into their bill for restoring the corporations which James II. had suppressed clauses manifestly intended to preserve the ascendency of the Whig party, "by keeping the Church or Tory faction out of"[238] them. But no such palliation (if, indeed, that had any right to be called a palliation) could be alleged for their abuse of the trusts committed to them; abuse which, if committed by single individuals, would have been branded, and perhaps punished, ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... that a time may come when they will be able to defray the expenses, and legitimate the children who may meanwhile be born. In some cases the parties disagree, the connection is broken off, and each one seeks a new mate. Whatever palliation there may be in particular instances, the moral effect of this custom is unquestionably bad; and the volume of statistics recently published by Herr Sundt, who was appointed by the Storthing to investigate the ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... incendiaries, and, to inflame matters to the highest pitch. These being, however, sensible, that the part assigned them was a very odious one, and inconsistent with the spirit of that religion for which they profess such zeal, one of them, by way of palliation, and in order to throw the blame on the English themselves, drew up the following state of the case, between our ...
— An Account Of The Customs And Manners Of The Micmakis And Maricheets Savage Nations, Now Dependent On The Government Of Cape-Breton • Antoine Simon Maillard
... the sad discovery that there was no longer any money wherewith to pay the bank notes, they being so prodigiously in excess of the coin. After this, each step had been but a stumble: each operation a very feeble palliation. Days and weeks had been gained, obscurity had been allowed to give more chance, solely from fear of disclosing the true and terrible state of affairs, and the extent of the public ruin. Law could not wash ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... otherwise; and this sudden qualm of conscience once quelled (I will say there seemed much of palliation in the matter), a kind of inebriate feeling of delight filled his mind, and Steady Acton plodded on to the meadow yonder, half a mile a-head, in a species of delirious complacency. Here was luck indeed, filling up the ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... odium which the king's enemies first threw out to make him contemptible; while his apologists imagined that, in perpetuating this accusation, they had discovered, in a weakness which has at least something amiable, some palliation for his own political misconduct. The factious, too, by this aspersion, promoted the alarm they spread in the nation, of the king's inclination to popery; yet, on the contrary, Charles was then making a determined stand, and at length triumphed over ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... canvas-backs." Again the old marvel, the old palliation that makes the seemingly unequal game fair. "But, Lord, how they do go; how anything alive can ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... its poisonous aggravation. But with a nature that sought for peace before all things, in this very worst of its aggravations was found a morbid cure—the effectual temptation to wilful blindness and forgetfulness. The sting became the palliation of the wrong, and the poison became its anodyne. For together with the five hundred hidden wrongs, arose the necessity that they must be hidden. Could he be pinned on, morning, noon, and night, to his wife's apron? And ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... the Bible, it seems to be wholly grounded on the idea that the sin of man is astonishing, inexcusable, and without palliation or cause, and the atonement is spoken of as such a wonderful and undeserved mercy that I am filled with amazement. Yet if I give up the Bible I gain nothing, for the providence of God in nature is just as full of mystery, and of the two ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... of the "New York Tribune" and "National Era," during their heroic and self-sacrificing fight against this organized scheme of bigotry and proscription, which can only be remembered as the crowning and indelible shame of our politics. It admits of neither defense or palliation, and I am sorry to find Henry Wilson's "History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power" disfigured by his elaborate efforts to whitewash it into respectability, and give it a decent place in ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... language, not excluding the masterpieces of Erskine. It is a plea for the life of a brutalized negro who butchered a whole family under circumstances of peculiar atrocity. The deed was without excuse or palliation, save in the insanity of the perpetrator, of which Seward became convinced, and volunteered as counsel amid the surprise, imprecations, and threats of the Auburn community, where the case was at issue. The moment was a supreme one for him, but he did not hesitate. Without ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... Villebecque, and serene on that of his wife. Stella was recalled from this world, where she had known much triumph and more suffering; and where she had exercised many virtues, which elsewhere, though not here, may perhaps be accepted as some palliation of one ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... of this same protection, dignity and power. This is the Gibraltar of our difficulties to-day. We can not make men see that women feel the humiliation of their petty distinctions of sex precisely as the black man feels those of color. It is no palliation of our wrongs to say that we are not socially ostracized as he is, so long as we are politically ostracized as he is not. That all orders of foreigners also rank politically above the most intelligent, highly-educated women—native-born Americans—is ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... from the to-day of his present devotion and love to the yesterdays of his hostility, avails himself indeed of the palliation, 'I did it ignorantly, in unbelief,' but yet is smitten with the consciousness that whilst as touching the righteousness that is of the law he was blameless, his attitude to that incarnate love was such as now, he thinks, stamps him as ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Tulliver were drowned together in a flood, we disbelieve her; just as we disbelieve Sir James Barrie when he invents that absurd accident of Tommy's death. These three instances of falsity have been selected from authors who know the truth and almost always tell it; and all three have a certain palliation. They come at or near the very end of lengthy stories. In actual life, of course, there are no very ends: life exhibits a continuous sequence of causation stretching on: and since a story has to have an end, its conclusion must ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... forbearance, was identified, in the minds of the people, with the Monarchy which they feared and detested." (History of Philosophy, Chap. 59.) The moral is that when injustice and evil are rampant, let us have no palliation, no weakness disguising itself as a virtue. What we cannot at once resist, we can always repudiate. To ignore these things is the worst form of imprudence—an imprudence which we, for our part at least, take the occasion ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... suppress them, but that he preserved them, with a view to their ultimate publication. This story was repeated by Warton and by Walpole; it has been accepted by Mr. Carruthers, who suggests, by way of palliation, that Pope was desirous at the time of providing for Martha Blount, and probably took the sum in order to buy an annuity for her. Now, if the story were proved, it must be admitted that it would reveal ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... priests and despots, against intellectual and political servility. What may be termed the historical plea, the excuse for ideas and institutions that they are the relics of evil days long past, is no palliation for them to his mind; he would stamp them out and utterly destroy them. In this respect his temperament has unconsciously a strong tincture of the intolerance which he denounces; he would sweep away Christianity as Christianity swept away polytheism. Toward its Founder, as ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... me all about it," said the judge, and the man in a few words told his story without any palliation. With a gleam of hope Mildred saw the expression of the judge's face change as he listened, and when at last he replied, in tones so low that none could hear them save he to whom they were addressed, she saw that look which wins all hearts—the ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... is principally made upon the authority of a terrified and flying soldier, it is alike due to the probabilities of the case, and more agreeable to the hopes of humanity, to lessen somewhat the horrors of a scene which has need of all the palliation which can be drawn from the slightest evidences of compassion on the part of the stern ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... of those who had been engaged in the war, ceased hostilities. Black Hawk, however, and his band, and some of the Pottawatamies, were not inclined to bury the tomahawk. Even as late as the spring of 1816, they committed depredations. Some palliation for these outrages may be found in the fact, that the British, on the north-west frontier, long after they were officially notified of the peace, continued to excite the Indians to acts of violence against ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... was a baby, and that you were his own. But I was sure that you were more than fourteen, and that he was simply putting it over on us so as to have this marriage go on without interference—and so I tried to get the story to you. Even now I thought you ought to know," he added, as if in palliation of his invasion here. ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... was this dream! Here was her husband needing her. And the children, whose inherent ungainliness, whose ungracious spirits demanded a perpetual palliation of culture and instilled deportment. What honest over-nurse was there for him or helper and guide and friend for them, if she withdrew? There was something undignified in a flight for mere happiness. There was something vindictive in flight from mere insult. To go, because she was disinherited, ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... no less an influence, notwithstanding his voluntary renunciation of his privilege to elevate the sinking minds of his countrymen by the great memories of the past or by ideal images, and his degradation of poetry to a mere palliation ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... perhaps taking them, with some of Dorothea's friends, to a restaurant for supper. He planned the little parties and excursions for which Dorothea's "budding" offered an excuse; and, while he recognized the subterfuge, he made his probable journey, with the long absence it would involve, serve as a palliation. Since, too, there was no danger to Diane, there could be the less reason for stinting himself in the pleasure of her presence, so long as he was prepared to pay ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... newspapers exist among us of which the description of Mr. Dickens is no very extravagant caricature. But their editors, if not of notoriously infamous life, are those whose minds are unenlarged by any generous education,—men whose lack of grammar suggests a certain palliation of their want of veracity and good-breeding. Such journals are seldom or never seen by the large class of cultivated American readers, and are in no sense representative of them. The "Saturday Review" and "Blackwood's Magazine" are said ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... commissioned by his party—from an individual not showing any readiness to face the whole charges, disingenuously dissembling the worst of them, and finally offering his very feeble disclaimer, which equivocates between a denial and a palliation—not until after he found himself in the position of a petitioner ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... having won her confidence, escorted her all through the Wicked Valley. By a continual palliation she yielded one point after another until her virtue was sacrificed ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... relieved in a degree from the difficulties occasioned by the general suspension of 1837 when a partial one, occurring within thirty months of the former, produced new and serious embarrassments, though it had no palliation in such circumstances as were alleged in justification of that which had previously taken place. There was nothing in the condition of the country to endanger a well-managed banking institution; commerce was deranged by no foreign war; every branch ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... upon the whole, rather a palliation, than a defence. All the skill of that writer could never make that poetical, or a fine panegyric, which is in its own nature removed from the very appearance of poetry; but friendship, good nature, or a coincidence of party, will sometimes ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... to-night, Miss Langdon, and I know it," he told her rapidly. "There is no excuse for the acts I have committed; there can be no palliation for them. I would not have dared to ask for your forgiveness; I can only say that I am sorry. It was not I, but a madman, who for a moment possessed me, who conducted himself so vilely toward you. I shall go back to my ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... may be much or little sanity in condemning a picture owing to a single fault. It depends on the kind. There are errors of selection, of presentation (technique) of natural fact, and of art principle. We can excuse the first, condone the second, find small palliation for the third, but he for whom art principles mean nothing, is ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... neither biass your judgment, nor pervert your integrity. An enemy may at any time obtain your commendation by only deserving it; and the utmost which the faults of your friends can hope for, is your silence; or, perhaps, if too severely accused, your gentle palliation. ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... diseases of the anal and rectal canals are usually of fifteen, twenty or more years' incubation before the annoying symptoms become apparent. This accounts for the slight attention to the maturing trouble and for the fact that such attention can afford nothing more than a palliation or postponement. A real cure requires a combination of means, all working harmoniously for the proper length of time. Proper treatment and the proper time are the two prime requisites; and the third and final requisite is, of course, ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... well as "the Lady," had some knowledge of that person, so much honoured and so much maligned; and although I do not defend his one great error (though in that, with some palliation, there were united elements of a generous and noble nature), I venture to say that whoever forms a notion of his manners and deportment in private life from this account of him, will labour under a very ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... ear of hearing any thing quoted from them. 'Such authors,' she used to say, 'were not honest to their own talents, nor grateful to the God who gave them.' Nor would she, on these occasions, admit their beauties as a palliation; on the contrary, she held it as an aggravation of their crime, that they who are so capable of mending the heart, should in any places show a corrupt one in themselves; which must weaken the influences of their good works; and pull ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... accession promoted her husband to a considerable office:—a circumstance which affords ground for suspicion that some important secrets were in her possession respecting later transactions between the princess and Seymour which she had faithfully kept. It should also be observed in palliation of the liberties which she accused the admiral of allowing to himself, and the princess of enduring, that the period of Elizabeth's life to which these particulars relate was only her ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... all its hideousness, without palliation or reserve, without comment or heightening, in that stern judicial fashion so characteristic of the Bible records of its greatest characters. Every step is narrated without a trace of softening, and without a word of emotion. ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... questionable habits in the management of property which were exposed by the visitors of 1535. Whether the cause of the phenomenon lies in an indifference to the things of the world, or in the more dubious palliation that successive incumbents have only a life-interest in their incomes, the experience of three centuries has proved the singular unfitness of spiritual persons for the administration of secular trusts; and the friends of the establishment may be ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... and shook her head, in a manner which manifested how far this went in palliation, and was aware that much of error remained unatoned. She inquired how Zebby was, ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... that the leaders of the reformed religions, whenever they gained the ascendency, exercised violence toward those who differed from them in faith. I mention this not by way of recrimination, nor in palliation of the proscriptions of the Spanish government; for one offence is not justified by another. My object is merely to show that "they who live in glass houses should not throw stones;" and that it is not honest to make Spain the scapegoat, bearing alone on her shoulders ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... created by Mr. James Board, the Labour Member, during the discussion of the Plumage Bill. After observing that fine feathers might make fine birds he went on to say that lawn sleeves were no palliation of the assumption of dictatorial and autocratic powers. The entire Liberal Party cheered the statement for twenty minutes, and then continued the demonstration with mouth-organs and megaphones for close upon ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... luxury) should be confounded. The princes were to become fools; there was to be general confusion, and no work was to be done in manufactures. Even Judah should become a terror to Egypt, and fear should overspread the land. To these calamities there was to be some palliation. Five cities should speak the language of Canaan, and swear by the Lord of Hosts; and an altar should be erected in the middle of the land which should be a witness unto the Lord of Hosts, to whom the people should cry amid their oppressions and miseries; and Jehovah should be known ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... groans, will it be forgotten that Slavery by its minions slew him, and in slaying him made manifest its whole nature and tendency. This blow was aimed at the life of the Government. Some murders there have been that admitted shades of palliation, but not such a one as this—without provocation, without reason, without temptation—sprung from the fury of a heart cankered to all that is ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... psychological study.... The reader will find in this book three things; an unbroken series of verified historical facts related in minute detail; a complete picture of the hero, with every virtue justly estimated but with no palliation of weakness or fault; and lastly a triumphant vindication of a theses novel and startling to most, that the earth's barriers are continental, its easy ad defensible highways those of the trackless ocean.... Captain Mahan has revealed ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... the writers leave loophole after loophole for escape from the miraculous, is alone sufficient proof of their sincerity; nevertheless, it is also proof that they were all more or less inaccurate; we can only say in their defence, that in the reappearance of Christ himself we find abundant palliation of their inaccuracy. Given one great miracle, proved with a sufficiency of evidence for the capacities and proclivities of the age, and the rest is easy. The groundwork of the after-structure of the other miracles is to be ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... would prefer to think he could see something at any rate in Dante, whom he could idealise more easily, inasmuch as he was more remote; in order to carry his countrymen the farther with him, he would endeavour to meet them more than was consistent with his own instincts. Without some such palliation as admiration for one, at any rate, of the tragedians, it would be almost as dangerous for Aristophanes to attack them as it would be for an Englishman now to say that he did not think very much of the Elizabethan ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... a man holding Fifth-Monarchy views, John Rogers prefers a lengthy indictment against lawyers, for whose delinquencies and heinous offence he admits neither apology nor palliation. In his opinion all judges deserve the death of Arnold and Hall, whose last moments were provided for by the hangman. The wearers of the long robe are perjurers, thieves, enemies of mankind; their institutions are hateful, and their usages abominable. ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... native city, but the Persians followed him, and it was with the greatest difficulty that he escaped from their hands. Deprived of their guide, the Persians gave up the expedition and sailed for Asia. In palliation of his flight, Democedes sent a message to Darius that he was engaged to the daughter of Milo, the wrestler, who was in high repute with ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... madam,' said the Reverend Mr. Timson, 'and we know that charity will cover a multitude of sins. Let me beg you to understand that I do not say this from the supposition that you have many sins which require palliation; believe me when I say that I never yet met any one who had fewer to atone for, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... often urged in palliation of Hooker's sluggishness, is that he was on Sunday morning severely disabled. Hooker was standing, between nine and ten A.M., on the porch of the Chancellor House, listening to the heavy firing at the Fairview crest, when a shell struck and dislodged one of the ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... gasping denial she had withdrawn, famous, to reappear now and then during her course always in similar roles. It happened that she had never heard of Eleanor Watson's stolen story until a week before the class-meeting, when some one had told her the unvarnished facts, with no palliation and no reference to Eleanor's subsequent change of heart or renunciation of one honor after another. Virtuous indignation and pained surprise struggled for expression upon ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... candor. My own heart would have told me, This is one in whom you may eternally trust, for she risked the forfeiture of your love in order that truth might be unsullied. How can I confide in one who values the esteem of man more than the approval of her own conscience? You have said her love was a palliation. No, you are wrong; it is an aggravation of her fault. She should have loved me too well to suffer me to discover by chance what should have been disclosed in confidence. Mary, her love is not greater than mine. None know how I have cherished her memory—how I have kept her loved ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... though Barbara's change of mood had overthrown the barrier which her stern refusal had raised between them. Calm and cheerful as in former days he sat before her, listening while, in obedience to his invitation, she told him, with many a palliation and evasion, about her married life and the children. She made her story short, in order at last to hear some further particulars concerning the welfare of her ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... year, from September 14th, which is the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, until Easter. These six months are a modification: the rule says all the year, but this drugget chemise, intolerable in the heat of summer, produced fevers and nervous spasms. The use of it had to be restricted. Even with this palliation, when the nuns put on this chemise on the 14th of September, they suffer from fever for three or four days. Obedience, poverty, chastity, perseverance in their seclusion,—these are their vows, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... to name your accomplices," cried the enraged commandant; "there is no palliation for a traitor, and if you do not name them at once, I shall subject you ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... those strong and unscrupulous men who appeared everywhere in Europe as reactionaries in opposition to the great revolution. On a smaller scale—perhaps because he represented a much smaller power—he is to be classed with Disraeli, Metternich, Cavour and Bismarck. In palliation of many of his doings, it should be remembered that he was not a priest; for the Cardinalate is a dignity not necessarily associated with the priesthood, and Antonelli was never ordained. He was a ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... of Brunswick, the unhappy woman whom the Prince of Wales married to get relief from his pecuniary necessities, and whom he insulted as soon as he saw her, although she was a princess of considerable accomplishments, and as amiable as she was beneficent. The only palliation of his infamous treatment of this woman was that he never loved her, and was even disgusted with her. No sooner was the marriage solemnized, than she was treated on every occasion with studied contumely, and scarcely had she recovered ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... palliation of which she felt herself undeserving, now lifted up her head, and forcing herself to speak, said "No, madam, I will not deceive you, for I have never been deceived myself: I presumed not to expect your approbation,—though in missing it I have for ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... I then meant to leave Naples," pursued Elgar, who had repeated this so often to himself, by way of palliation, that he had come to think it true. "It was not my fault that I couldn't when that visit was over. It happened that I saw Miss Doran alone—sat talking with her till her ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... might have no palliation, letters arrived leaving no doubt that the shores of the Bay of Fundy were entirely in the possession of the British; and yet at a council, at which Vice-Admiral Boscawen and Rear-Admiral Mostyn were present by invitation, it was unanimously determined to send the French inhabitants out of the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... which, though legally of no value, yet tended to diminish the moral guilt of the crime, and which, therefore, though they could not justify the peers in pronouncing an acquittal, might incline the Queen to grant a pardon. The Earl urged as a palliation of his frantic acts that he was surrounded by powerful and inveterate enemies, that they had ruined his fortunes, that they sought his life, and that their persecutions had driven him to despair. This was true; and Bacon ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... among the Tartar tribes, and to oppose the national enemy with troops not less brave or active than themselves. But the employment of mercenaries is always only a half remedy, and not free from the risk of aggravating the evil it is intended to cure. But Taitsong did not attempt any such palliation; he went to the root of the question, and determined to have a trained and efficient army of his own. He raised a standing army of nine hundred thousand men, which he divided into three equal classes of regiments, one containing one thousand two hundred men, another one thousand, and the third ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... prefer to be haughty than base, and I well recollect the expression of Kant, 'Man cannot think highly enough of man.' By this expression the profound thinker especially meant that mankind has to set itself great tasks. But the modern views are more a palliation of ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... and of curiosity in a fierce polemic shape. The very safest step in so deplorable a situation would be, instantly to recant. Already by this one may estimate the evil, when such would be its readiest palliation. For in what condition would the reputation of the teacher be left for discretion and wisdom as an intellectual guide, when his first act must be to recant—and to recant what to the whole body of his hearers would wear the character of a lunatic proposition. Such considerations might possibly ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... dictator, having occasion to quit the army and repair to Rome, strictly forbade Q. Fa'bius Rullia'nus, his master of the horse, to venture a battle in his absence. This order Fa'bius disobeyed, and gained a complete victory. Instead, however, of finding success a palliation of his offence, he was immediately condemned by the stern dictator to expiate his breach of discipline by death. In spite of the mutinous disposition of the army—in spite of the intercessions and threats, both of the senate and people, Papir'ius persisted in his resolution: but what menaces ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... of Churchill, as a man, there does not seem to exist any plea of palliation, except what may be found in the poverty of his early circumstances, and in the strength of his later passions. The worst is, that he never seems to have been seduced into sin through the bewildering and bewitching mists of imagination. It was naked sensuality that he ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... continued the Duke, "just try if you cannot find some palliation for what your old father has done. I am ready to ask your forgiveness, and to apologize, for a man of honor is never ashamed to acknowledge when he has been ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... dear, you are too good. But my folly admits of no excuse, no palliation," interrupted Lady Delacour; "mine ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... a false impression may be conveyed respecting the conduct of an individual,—by assigning motives which are entirely imaginary,—by connecting things together which have no relation,—by keeping out of view circumstances which would afford an explanation or palliation of his conduct,—or by attaching to his words a different meaning from that which he intended to convey by them. The common saying, that there are two ways of telling a story, does not therefore refer to what is strictly to be called fabrication or falsehood; but ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... be added, moreover, as a slight palliation for the enormous crimes committed by these men, that, becoming at last weary of their business, they urged Noircarmes to desist from the work of proscription. Longehaye, one of the commissioners, even waited ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... happiness of Ireland was sucked into the maelstrom of his ruin. He refused to retire from leadership at Gladstone's bidding, and Ireland staggered into civil war. The end is known—Parnell died as he had lived. Of his moral fault there is no palliation, but it may be said he held his country's honor dearer than his own, for he could not bear to see her win even independence by obeying the word of ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... The only excuse that offers itself in. behalf of Captain Cook's conduct on this occasion, is stated in what he immediately mentions of the anarchy existing in this island. But even that is only a palliation in part, and does not reach to the full amount of the case. Let the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... laughed. "Madam Vanity!" said he, "I repeat that to be descended of a line of czars or from a house of emperors is, at the worst, an empty braggartism, or, at best—upon the plea of heredity—a handy palliation for iniquity; and to be descended of sturdy and honest and clean-blooded folk is beyond doubt preferable, since upon quite similar grounds it entitles one to hope that even now, 'when their generation is gone, when their play is over, when their ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... one expression of our author too perverse, too grossly abused, to admit of any apology, of any palliation. It is not to be supposed, that he was ignorant of any word in the English language. And least of all can he be supposed ignorant of the meaning of a word, which, had it been ever so doubtful before, had a certain meaning impressed upon it by the authority of Parliament, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... seek both the explanation and palliation of Lorenzo's failure in the temper of his times. There was enough daring left in Florence to carry through a plan of brilliant treason, modelled on an antique Roman tragedy. But there was not moral force in the protagonist to render that act ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... of the case are thus far incontrovertibly established; and I deeply lament, that, heinous as the offences are which this narrative exhibits, I can discover no material palliation of them amongst the other ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... broken, desolation and bloodshed continually fomented in those unhappy people's country." It was also intended, said he, "to invalidate the false arguments which are frequently advanced for the palliation of this trade, in hopes it may be some inducement to those who are not yet defiled therewith to keep themselves clear; and to lay before such as have unwarily engaged in it, their danger of totally losing that tender sensibility to the sufferings of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... to reappear as only the servants of the evil one might do, and were heard by many to utter the blasphemies mentioned, I must adjudge you a sorcerer with the penalty of death by fire. If anything there be that you can advance in palliation of your black offense, however, you may now do so before final sentence is passed ...
— The Man Who Saw the Future • Edmond Hamilton
... if these men had remained sober, many lives might have been spared. There is so much cause for regret in the whole catastrophe, that we will not harshly impute blame to one party or another. We may see some palliation for the misconduct of the men in the awful situation in which they were placed—their fears, perhaps, made them forgetful alike of their duty to their king, their country, and themselves; but it is cheering to know that such cases are rare in the British ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... demand and a vast amount of toil endured. Among the blessings which the British constitution bestows foremost of all is the freedom of the judgment-seat; and few political faults are less capable of palliation than a deliberate attempt to subject a judge to the influence of ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... removal, others of a more serious and destructive character. It was this which produced the recognition of slavery in the constitution of our country; it is this which has justified its continuance to the present day; and it is in this only that we can find a palliation for the rigors of our laws, which might otherwise be considered as the cruel enactments of a dark and dismal despotism. There have not, I am aware, been found wanting individuals to deny both the existence and the ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... absent: 'To have the sense of the eternal in life is a short flight for the soul. To have had it, is the soul's vitality.' And also: 'Palliation of a sin is the hunted creature's refuge and final temptation. Our battle is ever between spirit and flesh. Spirit must brand the flesh, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... judicious reflections it contains, on the condition of the respectable class of literary men. The efforts for their relief, made by a society of private citizens, are truly laudable: but they are, as you justly observe, but a palliation of an evil, the cure of which calls for all the wisdom and the means of the nation. The greatest evils of populous society have ever appeared to me to spring from the vicious distribution of its ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... that. It was in the second year of the Countess Hurstmonceux's widowhood that I met her at Brighton. Oh, Hannah, it is not in vanity; but in palliation of my offense that I tell you she loved me first. And when a widow loves a single man, in nine cases out of ten she will make him marry her. She hunted me ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... it? Yes; from no morbid wish to dwell upon the frightful scenes which, alas! grew too common, but as some palliation of the acts of our men, against whom charges were plentiful ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... are cited in palliation of the doubts and surmises of Captain Thorn, which might otherwise appear strange and unreasonable. That most of the partners were perfectly upright and faithful in the discharge of the trust reposed in them we ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... too, acknowledges the all-potent power of luck, and soothes his humbled pride by deeming himself the victim of ill-fortune. In short, from the most venial offense to the most flagrant, there is hardly any wrong act or neglect to which this too fatally convenient word is not applied as a palliation." ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... consequently subjected not only to the inhalation of the smoke of linseed oil, but to that of gunpowder. For his chest complaint at this stage, he underwent a variety of medical treatment, which produced mere palliation in his symptoms, and though breathing a pure atmosphere in a country situation, he experienced a most painful sensation of want of air, or, as he himself expressed it, "a feeling as if he did not get enough down." By this time the countenance had become livid, the lips and ...
— An Investigation into the Nature of Black Phthisis • Archibald Makellar
... sublimating element which a revelation only can supply; and, secondly, in that of those ages in which the lights of knowledge and religion are contending with the gloom of barbarian rudeness. Perhaps there are still two other cases capable of palliation—that of a mind so constituted as to be nothing, if not a mirror of its age, and faithfully and irresistibly reflecting even its vices and pollutions; or that of a mind morbidly in love with the morbidities and the vile passages ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... university in a clear case and on clear evidence, it would be punished in the most exemplary way open to a limited authority; by rustication, at least—that is, banishment for a certain number of terms, and consequent loss of these terms—supposing the utmost palliation of circumstances; and, in an aggravated case, or in a second offence, most ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... dislike them for it in proportion as their allusions recall memories or merely puzzle us; we cannot all be expected to have agreeable memories stirred by insignificant Homer tags; and it is well to bear in mind by way of palliation that in Greek education Homer played as great a part as the Bible in ours. He might be taken simply or taken allegorically; but one way or the other he was the staple of education, and it might be assumed that every one would like the ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... pretended new science before the unguarded portion of the community; if they suffer their names to be coupled with it wherever it may gain a credulous patient; and deny all responsibility for its character, refuse all argument for its doctrines, allege no palliation for the ignorance and deception interwoven with every thread of its flimsy tissue, when they are questioned by those competent to judge and ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... antipathies, that can be called by no other name than that of ill-will. Look within and see. Watch within and see. And I am sure you will come to subscribe with me to the humbling and heart-breaking truth, that, even where there is no resentment, and no other explanation, excuse, or palliation of that kind, yet that festering, secret, malignant ill-will is working in the bottom of your heart. If you doubt that, if you deny that, if all that kind of self-observation and self-sentencing is ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... rear, and a great quantity of baggage. Peter hereupon turned round and marched back to Nissa, to demand explanation of the Duke of Bulgaria. The latter fairly stated the provocation given, and the Hermit could urge nothing in palliation of so gross an outrage. A negotiation was entered into, which promised to be successful, and the Bulgarians were about to deliver up the women and children, when a party of undisciplined Crusaders, acting solely upon ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... now been said in palliation of existing defects in education, that the whole business is a thing remote from immediate interests, and not less so from immediate perceptions and reasonings—a thing that, to all eyes capable of seeing in it something more than so many days devoted ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... As palliation of my error I may mention that it was the opponents of capital themselves—and Marx in particular—who confirmed me in it, or, more correctly, who prevented me from distinctly perceiving the basis upon which interest essentially rests. To tear oneself away from long-cherished ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... humanity which animated Smith beyond his fellows, and ran as warmly through his conversation in private life as we see it still runs through his published writings. Smith was always vigorous and weighty in his denunciation of wrong, and so impatient of anything in the nature of indifference or palliation towards it, that he could scarce feel at ease in the presence of the palliator. "We can breathe more freely now," he once said when a person of that sort had just left the company; "that man ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... bridegroom and his bride, I would like to kick him out of it.' Mostyn struck the table with some exclamation, and McLean continued, 'Especially when the wronged husband is a gentleman of such stainless character and unsuspecting nature as Basil Stanhope—a clergyman also! Oh, the thing is beyond palliation entirely!' And he walked away ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... have the opportunity of judging of this matter of slavery for myself; not, of course, that I ever doubted that to keep human beings as slaves was in itself wrong, but I supposed that I might, upon a nearer observation of the system, discover at any rate circumstances of palliation in the condition of the negroes: hitherto, however, this has not been the case with me; the wrong strikes me more forcibly every hour I live here. The theory of human property is more revolting to every sentiment of humanity; ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... out of your life. Before I do so, however, I should like to say a few words in palliation of my conduct. I have never known a mother. I early fell under my aunt's charge, who, detesting children, sent me away to school, where I was well enough treated, but never loved. I was a plain child, ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... war, and that in the pursuit of it, they displayed a compound spirit, which Machiavel might well think problematical, for whilst that country never averted its eye from the common enemy, it never ceased to groan under the inflictions of unremitting factions. Rather less can be said in palliation of the fatal confidence, which was placed by the english government in some of the french emigrants. I have mentioned these unhappy people in the aggregate, with the respect which I think they deserve. To be ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... God is utterly wanting. It is simply the plea of "not guilty," which even the most hardened culprit may make in court. In one of the Vedic hymns to Varuna there is something which looks like confession of sin, but it really ends in palliation. "It was not our doing, O Varuna, it was necessity; an intoxicating draught, passion, dice, thoughtlessness. The old is there to mislead the young. Even sleep brings unrighteousness." And the remission sought for is not one involving a change of character but only ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... all over the land, they said, such things was happening all the time from the same cause. And we knew it well, we knew of the wide open pit, veiled with tempting covering, wove by Selfishness and Greed, scattered over with flimsy flowers of excuse, palliation, expediency that tempts and engulfs our brightest youth, the noblest manhood, old and young, rich and poor—it ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... sorrow. The superb strength of the man was there in that simple confession, and it is in the nature of woman to admire strength. He had fought his fight, and gained, and paid the price without a murmur, seeking no palliation. Cynthia had not come to that trial—so bitter for her—as a judge. If the reader has seen youth and innocence sitting in the seat of justice, with age and experience at the bar, he has mistaken Cynthia. She came to Coniston inexorable, it is true, because hers was a nature impelled ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... should admonish us of the folly and wickedness of those who have sometimes taken upon themselves to supersede the regular course of law, and by rash and violent acts to punish supposed disturbers of the peace of society. This can admit of no justification or palliation whatever. Burke, I think, somewhere remarked something to this effect,—that when society is in the last stage of depravity—when all parties are alike corrupt, and alike wicked and unjustifiable in ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... to be led into the semblance of intimacy with such a man as his abominable lodger, appeared, in the cold light of day, a mystery of human weakness. True, he was caught in a situation that might have tested the aplomb of Talleyrand. That was perhaps a palliation; but it was no excuse. For so wholesale a capitulation of principle, for such a fall into criminal familiarity, no excuse indeed was possible; nor any remedy, but to withdraw at once ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... already in the box of the Old Bailey and heard myself sentenced to the treadmill, and was unable to offer the slightest explanation in palliation ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... subject of severe censure. Though he neither shared Tweed's corrupt counsels nor sanctioned his audacious schemes, Tilden's abhorrence of wrong, it was argued, seemed insufficient to break his silence. But the accusation that cut the deepest, because without palliation, illuminated his declination to attend the great indignation meeting that appointed the Committee of Seventy. This fact, established by abundant proof as well as by his conspicuous absence, created the belief that had the Times' exposure failed fatally to wound the Ring, he would have shrunk ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... papal advocates can soften the symbolic meaning of the banner and the keys; but the style of ad regnum dimisimus, or direximus, (Codex Carolin. epist. i. tom. iii. pars ii. p. 76,) seems to allow of no palliation or escape. In the Ms. of the Vienna library, they read, instead of regnum, rogum, prayer or request (see Ducange;) and the royalty of Charles Martel is subverted by this important correction, (Catalani, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... which he had practised in middle age. He was a man of tender feelings to his friends, ready and willing to assist them in distress, yet, as a warrior, his cruelties to his enemies perhaps were unparalleled, and will not admit a word of palliation. ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... say, in palliation of this fault, that Mr. Reade's insolent tone is not peculiar to him. It characterizes almost every prominent person who has attempted to mould the opinions of the age. We find it in Macaulay, Carlyle, Ruskin, and Kingsley, as well as in Reade. Modesty is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various |
