"Scapegoat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a certain superstitious uneasiness, but was finally won over, and Ulie was unanimously elected the scapegoat—or in more modern ...
— Mrs. Budlong's Chrismas Presents • Rupert Hughes
... reconcile "houses," "tabernacles," "altars," as well as to reconcile men. It had simply a ceremonial significance. Such rites were common in many of the early religions. They were not the efficient cause of pardon, but were the formal condition of reconciliation. And then, in regard to the scapegoat, it was not sacrificed as an expiation for sinners; it merely symbolically carried off the sins already freely forgiven. All these forms and phrases were inwrought with the whole national life and religious language of the Jews. Now, when Jesus appeared, a messenger ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... World. It was a pretty beastly story, and I don't gather that Schwabing was as deep in it as some others. But the trouble was that those others had to be shielded at all costs, and Schwabing was made the scapegoat. His name came out in the papers and he had ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... to his English home just two years and one month from the time he had left it, and he brought back a picture of the goat upon which the Jews loaded their sins and then turned loose in waste-places to wander and die. "The Scapegoat" was a great picture, but before he left England he had painted a greater—the one we see here—"The ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... he could, they had been forced to bring him in guilty, but beg he may be spared. The discussions and difference of opinions, on the sentence is incredible. The cabinet council, I believe, will be to determine whether the King shall pardon him or not: some who wish to make him the scapegoat for their own neglects, I fear, will try to complete his fate, but I should think the new administration will not be biassed to blood by such interested attempts. He bore well his Unexpected sentence, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... on a moral question had exasperated the other side. But in the report which you give of the interview between this committee and Mr. Tait, all this is lost sight of, and the whole ground of complaint is made to rest on poor Brady, the 'scapegoat's' phraseology. 'The committee claimed that the ill-advised language used in Assistant Superintendent Brady's correspondence has caused great dissatisfaction on the part of ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... believe ill rather than good of a man, and no one, except in Rossmore's immediate circle of friends, entertained the slightest doubt of his guilt. It was common knowledge that the "big interests" were behind the proceedings, and that Judge Rossmore was a scapegoat, sacrificed by the System because he had been blocking their game. If Rossmore had really accepted the bribe, and few now believed him spotless, he deserved all that was coming to him. Senator Roberts was very active in Washington preparing the case against Judge Rossmore. ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... existence—Karma, again!—that I must perforce study the writings of impious men? Yet I submitted myself as a candidate for the task, to save my brethren in Christ from soiling their hearts. Heaven preserve me from the blight of spiritual pride, but I believe that I am now a scapegoat for the offences of my fellow-monks, and, thus, may redeem my own ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... chief ideal in fighting is taken away. Many a lad who moulders in a stagnant trench, laid down his life for this sole purpose, that no children of the future ages should have to pass through his Gethsemane. He consciously gave himself up as a scapegoat, that the security of human sanity should be safeguarded against a recurrence of this enormity. The spirit-man, framed in the dusky window above the applauding crowds in Quebec, was typical of all these men who have made the supreme sacrifice. His words ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... his Men—Crosses the River—Immense Herds of Buffalo—Death of their Favourite Hound—A Lost Trapper—A Prairie Burial—A Wolf-chase after a Buffalo—An Indian Lochinvar—The Crow Indians—Their Country —Rose, the Scapegoat Refugee—The Lost Trappers—A ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... thing to creep up from poverty and cunning to broadcloth and top-boots, to saddle horse, then a jaunting-car, to shake hands with the great parsons, who despised me all the while and made me their tool and scapegoat! Oh, yes, and to have my sons able to hunt in red coats and top-boots, and my daughters to ride on side-saddles—how do you do, gintlemen?—ladies, your most obedient! but, where are we?—what is this? Is this the light of hell, and these the ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Denton, in a tone of relief. "Whoever sent the candy is making my son the scapegoat! You say there was no writing on the package when you got it, young man, and no message or card when you opened it in ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... blameless the Prophet may have been, he suffered for a time, as Harrison had supposed he would. He was the scapegoat on whom all placed the responsibility for the battle of Tippecanoe. Even Tecumseh is said to have rebuked him bitterly for not holding the young ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... then felt that Sedgwick had been lacking in good-will, ability, or conduct, it is strange that there should not be some apparent expression of it. It was only when he was driven to extremity in explaining the causes of his defeat, that his after-wit suggested Sedgwick as an available scapegoat. ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... a scandal, for someone had to suffer as scapegoat for the aristocratic company privateers, and the lot fell to the luckless Kidd. Kidd was charged with piracy and with murder. The first charge of seizing two ships of the Great Mogul could have been met by the production of two documents which ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... courage. At Saratoga while that scapegoat Gates sulked in his tent, I burst from the camp on my big brown horse and rode like a madman to the head of Larned's brigade, my old command, and we took the hill. Fear? I never knew what the word meant. Dashing back to the center, I galloped up and down before the line. We charged ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... France meant the extinction of German independence up to the frontiers of the Prussian State. If, as it was held at Berlin, the cause of Great Britain was an unjust one, and if the connection of Hanover with the British Crown was for the future to make that province a scapegoat for the offences of England, the wisest course for Prussia would have been to deliver Hanover at once from its French and from its English enemies by occupying it with its own forces. The Foreign Minister, Count ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... reflection, decided to answer. "As far as it is stupid, yes. There's a lot of blame coming; there's bound to be a day of reckoning, and I suppose we've all got an instinctive disposition to find a scapegoat for our common sins. The Tory press is pretty rotten, and there's a strong element of mere personal spite—in the Churchill attacks for example. Personal jealousy probably. Our 'old families' seem to have got vulgar-spirited imperceptibly—in a generation or so. They quarrel and shirk and lay ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... and given just sufficient power to pay the marplot where the Divine plans are concerned, and just enough malevolence to find amusement in the occupation. What should we do, where should we be, without our Satanic souffre-douleur—our horned scapegoat, our black puppet, without whose suggestions we should never have erred, whose wooden head we bang when things go wrong with us," says Saxham bitterly. He reaches out a hand for the tobacco-pouch and his glance falls upon the day's issue of the Siege Gazette lying ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... missing about the place—and there seemed to be an abnormal amount—was attributed to the ha'nt. I do not doubt but that the servants made the ha'nt a convenient scapegoat to answer for their own shortcomings, but still there were several suggestive depredations—horse blankets from the stable, clothes from the line and more edibles than roast chicken from Nancy's larder. The climax of absurdity ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... our party, United States Senator Dunkirk, was a creature and servant of corporations. Silliman, the state boss of the opposition party, was the same, but got less for his services because his party was hopelessly in the minority and its machine could be useful only as a sort of supplement and scapegoat. ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... it might be added, near enough to the primitive savagery of the rustic New Englanders of the last generation, to find it perfectly a matter of course that a man should make of his womenfolk a sort of scapegoat upon whom to visit his wrath against the sins alike of ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... pledge of his sincerity, they would probably have been satisfied. But the telegraph spoiled all, especially as there were men in the local legislature who were fretting against his leadership. They felt themselves to be in a false position, from which they could escape by making Howe the scapegoat. For ten days the only fact that was made to stand out before all eyes was that the leader of the anti-confederate and repeal party had taken office under Sir John Macdonald. The cry was raised, Howe has sold himself; Howe is a traitor. They ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... almost for his life round the playground and up to the school. It was no use for him to protest that he was out-and-out yellow, that his father had been on Pony's committee. He was far too valuable a scapegoat to be let off; and when at last he managed to bolt headlong into the school and seek shelter in the master's cloak-room, it is safe to say that though he himself felt rather the worse for the adventure, Willoughby on the whole felt ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... heinous to me! It’s simply that they’ve got to find a scapegoat,”—and Stoddard’s voice was all sympathy and kindness. “It will blow over in time, and Donovan will become an ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... Southern curs, thinking to ingratiate themselves with the ruling powers. I could not deny this, but remarked that the curse of unexpected defeat and suffering was to develop the basest passions of the human heart. Had he escaped out of the country, it was possible he might have been made a scapegoat by the Southern people, and, great as were the sufferings that he had endured, they were as nothing to coward stabs from beloved hands. The attacks mentioned were few, and too contemptible for notice; for now his calamities had served to endear him to all. I think that he derived ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... viewpoint, Father; as I take not the Lord into partnership in my successes it seemeth to me to be but of a mean and poor spirit to saddle my sorrows and perplexities upon Him. I may be wrong, for I am ill-versed in religious matters, but my conception of God and scapegoat be ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... excited a strong suspicion that Dreyfus had been used as a scapegoat for some one higher up and had been unjustly condemned, the fact of his being a Jew being used to excite prejudice against him. Many eminent literary men of France advocated the revision of a sentence which did not appeal to the sense of justice of ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... doubt that Henry Pollard was at least guilty of criminal complicity in a scheme to send an innocent man to the penitentiary if not to the gallows; she was more than half persuaded that Pollard was in some way seeking to shield himself by using Thornton as a scapegoat; she had got to the point where she began to wonder if Henry Pollard and Ben Broderick shared share and share alike both in the profits of these crimes ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... way, thus imposing on the colonists a heavy and needless tax in time, money, temper, and, in the case of the expedition against Montreal, health and life.[136] What was left of Nicholson's force had fallen back before Sunderland's letter came, making a scapegoat of the innocent Vetch, cursing ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... find a scapegoat to suffer for this miserable muddle sent him outside with a stride and malignant intentions at heart. Never again while he toured with his family would he drink iced stimulants, however damnably hot it ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... Wiegandt for his other faults, and it was only for Lieutenant Landsberg that Klitzing remained nothing but a scapegoat. ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... to be reckoned with. The news of the priest's visit was soon carried to the Free Church minister, and down he swooped upon the luckless Fordyces that very afternoon. Poor Adam was the scapegoat. He it was who had to bear the whole of the blame. The minister congratulated himself, when he took his leave (without venturing into the sick-room, for the present), that he had successfully prevented any further ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... crying, swearing, and then weeping again." After dinner, his son being out of the room, he expresses his surprise to Hogg at finding him such a sensible fellow, and asks him what is to be done with the scapegoat. "Let him be married to a girl who will sober him." The wine moves briskly round, and Mr. Shelley becomes maudlin and tearful again. He is a model magistrate, the terror and the idol of poachers; he is highly respected in the House of Commons, and the Speaker could not get through the session ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... Examination Committee of the National Assembly, simply as his personal opinion and without proof, constituted more or less what was suggested to the Kaiser at this time. Briefly, they wished to make me the scapegoat for the United States' entry into the war, and this, despite the fact that all that I had prophesied in regard to American policy had proved correct, and all that my opponents had prophesied had proved wrong. In their efforts ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... You know that we could not come sooner. We arrived even at an earlier hour than I had promised. You will see that the whole blame for the loss of the battle will be laid at our door, and we shall be charged with undue tardiness. This pretended tardiness will be welcome to many a one. A scapegoat is needed, and I shall have to be this scapegoat!" [Footnote: The archduke's own words.—See Hormayr's work on "The Campaign ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... Yet even this was due to a revulsion of feeling in regard to Oscar himself rather than to any understanding of the greatness of his work. The best public felt that he had been dreadfully over-punished, and made a scapegoat for worse offenders and was glad to have the opportunity of repairing its own fault by over-emphasising Oscar's repentance and over-praising, as it imagined, the first fruits ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... from us, my bairn, because she was not of us," replied David. "She is a withered branch will never bear fruit of grace—a scapegoat gone forth into the wilderness of the world, to carry wi' her, as I trust, the sins of our little congregation. The peace of the warld gang wi' her, and a better peace when she has the grace to turn to it! If she is of His elected, His ain hour will come. What would her mother have said, that ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... I have put in the contracts with my partners, that no crookedness nor rowdyism will be permitted by attaches of the I show. We will assist the local authorities, too, in ridding the show of the sort of camp-followers who frequently make traveling shows the scapegoat for their misdoings. We propose to have our show efficiently and honestly policed, to give the people the worth of their money, and to give an entertainment that will show the frontiersman of my early ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... not believe that Bud had reached the point of seeing the full evil of his ways. Had he done so he would never have made that remark about simply being tired of proving the scapegoat; and that the lesson he had learned would only make him wiser about acting ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... pipe which shall "make a poet out of a man." And yet it may be doubted whether, on the whole, Clare's lot in life, and that of the wife and family who were dependent upon him, was aggravated by the poetic genius which we are thus trying to make the scapegoat for his misfortunes. It may be that the publicity acquired by the Northamptonshire Peasant Poet simply brings to the surface the average life of the English agricultural labourer in the person of one who was more than usually sensitive to suffering. Unhappily there is too good reason to believe ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... one of the stories it tells. Whatever strong situations I have in my books are not of my creation, but are taken from the Bible. The Deemster is a story of the Prodigal Son. The Bondman is the story of Esau and Jacob. The Scapegoat is the story of Eli and his sons, but with Samuel as a little girl; and The Manxman is the story of David and Uriah." Take up any of the novels of the day, even the poorer ones, but notably the better ones, and see how uniformly they show the Scriptural ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... made him that occasionally necessary part of our British system, a scapegoat. The explanation of his defeat given in the play is founded on a passage quoted by De Fonblanque from Fitzmaurice's Life of Lord Shelburne, as follows: "Lord George Germain, having among other peculiarities a particular dislike to be put out of his way on any occasion, had arranged to ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... "don't trust yourself to the counsels of this Hennessy, who, in my opinion, only wants to make a scapegoat of you. Allow me to go to the place he mentions, for I know the ravine well, but I never knew nor do I believe that there is a cavern at all in it, and that is what makes me suspect the scoundrel's ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... children upon the Indians, who had enough to answer for, and in this instance were but the tools of the Mormon Church. Brigham Young repudiated his accomplice, and allowed John D. Lee to become the scapegoat. The dying statement of this man is as pathetic as Cardinal ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... daughter to a middle-aged noble of Arezzo. They expect the exquisite repute of an aristocratic connection, and other tangible advantages. He, impoverished as he is, looks for a splendid dowry. No one thinks of the child-wife, Pompilia. She becomes the scapegoat, when the gross selfishness of the contracting parties stands revealed. Count Guido has a genius for domestic tyranny. Pompilia suffers. When she is about to become a mother she determines to leave her husband, whom she now dreads as well as dislikes. ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... way justly calculated to excite the derision of even the Chinese—of the whole world who had heard of our mode of procedure. It will be in vain for the late Government to endeavour meanly to make Captain Elliot their scapegoat. Let them, if they can, satisfy the nation that, in all he appears to have done so ineffectually and disgracefully, he did not act according to the strict orders of the late Government; that in all he would have done, and wished to have done, viz. to carry hostilities at once, with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... quiet and peaceable demeanour; and, under ordinary circumstances, perhaps I might have continued so. But the demon of discord got amongst them, and I became, in consequence of my non-resisting qualities, the scapegoat of their spleen; or rather, I became the safety-valve by which their passions found a harmless egress. But, to drop metaphor, my friends (said the melancholy gentleman), the club got to loggerheads on a certain ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... between the reviewers who reviled him, and the public who would have none of him. If they had only let him alone. But they didn't. There was no poet more pursued and persecuted than Owen Prothero. He trailed bleeding feet, like a scapegoat on all the high mountains. He brought reproach and ridicule on the friends who defended him, on Jane Holland, and on Nina Lempriere and Tanqueray, which was what ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... this rule. Wherever a citizen stands guard, the country stands guard with him: to-day it is the turn of the one, to-morrow of the other. When danger and devotion are common, flight is parricide. No one has the right to flee from danger; no one can serve as a scapegoat. The maxim of Caiaphas—IT IS RIGHT THAT A MAN SHOULD DIE FOR HIS NATION—is that of the populace and of tyrants; the two extremes of ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... abuse of Burr, Tyler, and Smith, acknowledging that he had been served gratis by Burr in the most handsome manner; that the others were more concerned against the government than I was; but swearing that he believed, if I did not follow his advice, they would make a scapegoat sacrifice of me ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... always loved Aubrey, but they had not suffered him to love me; and we had been so little together that we had in common none of those childish remembrances which serve, more powerfully than all else in later life, to cement and soften affection. In fact, I was the scapegoat of the family. What I must have been in early childhood I cannot tell; but before I was ten years old I was the object of all the despondency and evil forebodings of my relations. My father said I laughed at la gloire et le grand monarque the very first ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... teasing cobwebs which any spirited public servant was in duty bound to break; then he quietly stated his willingness to let the country take the benefit of his irregular proceedings and make him the scapegoat or martyr if such should be needed. How to treat this too successful chieftain was no simple problem. He had done what he ought not to have done, yet everybody in the country was heartily glad that he had done it. He ought not to have hung Arbuthnot and ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... had been lost Stanley would have been the scapegoat, but with the same skill with which that afternoon he had bluffed off ten-twelfths of Hood's army with a single division, Stanley that night saved the artillery and the trains. At 3 o'clock in the morning, when ...
— The Battle of Spring Hill, Tennessee - read after the stated meeting held February 2d, 1907 • John K. Shellenberger
... Morley has written (Diderot, vol. ii, p. 20): "The purity of the family, so lovely and dear as it is, has still only been secured hitherto by retaining a vast and dolorous host of female outcasts ... upon whose heads, as upon the scapegoat of the Hebrew ordinance, we put all the iniquities of the children of the house, and all their transgressions in all their sins, and then banish them with maledictions into the foul outer wilderness and the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... generosity. The movement across the Peninsula, whatever construction might possibly be put upon it, seemed in Washington a retreat, and was for the President a disappointment weighty enough to have broken the spirit of a smaller man. Yet Lincoln, instead of sacrificing McClellan as a scapegoat, sent to him on July 1 and 2 telegrams bidding him do his best in the emergency and save his army, in which case the people would rally and repair all losses; "we still have strength enough in the country and will bring it out," he said,—words full of cheering resolution unshaded by ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... general—round of gaiety than had been known for years. This brought the citizens and strangers more together, and naturally the result was a long season of more regular parties and unprecedented gaiety. Many still frowned at this, and, as usual, made unhappy Washington the scapegoat—averring that her pernicious example of heartlessness and frivolity had ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... than that you, the culprit, should have made me the scapegoat for the second time," was her ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... answer for her safety and see that none got away of a dozen men, whose one thought was to jump the boat and have a run on shore. Between times he passed hours at the mast-head in expiation of faults which he had committed—or ought to have committed, to afford a just scapegoat for his senior's wrath. As Marryat said, it made little difference: if he did not think of something he had not been told, he was asked what his head was for; if he did something off his own bat, the question arose what business he had to think. ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... people will not admit to any one else their deeply abhorrent desires. To all of us, or nearly all, come desires and temptations that we would not acknowledge for the world. If a wise examiner succeeds in getting us to admit them, it is very agreeable to find a scapegoat in the form of the subconsciousness. I have often said this to students: if all our thoughts and conscious desires could be exposed, the most of us would almost die of shame. True, we do not clearly understand ourselves and our conflicts and explanation is often necessary, but ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... boy was very little. At his birth he was scarcely bigger than a man's thumb, and he was called in consequence 'Little Tom Thumb.' The poor child was the scapegoat of the family, and got the blame for everything. All the same, he was the sharpest and shrewdest of the brothers, and if he spoke ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... of his rash act, and now, with incredible ingenuity and cool injustice, his father was using his son's acts of helpfulness to make it appear that he had done the deed. Without a scruple, his father had made him a scapegoat. ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... ingratitude, gained at the price of God knows what struggles, is it not, even apart from the divine vocation, the most equitable repartition of human love? Think that this elect creature becomes the scapegoat of sins committed, and like a lamentable daughter of Danaus she will unceasingly pour the offering of her mortifications and prayers, of her vigils and fastings, into the bottomless vessel of offences and crimes. Ah! if you knew what it was to repair the sins of the world. In regard to this ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... self-preservation on the part of the tribe. The King-God's functions were divine; to make magic for the victory of his warriors and principally to make rain, on which, of course, the alimentary needs of his subjects depended—an incarnation of a god who was in reality the scapegoat ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... horror if she should be compelled to tell her secret. But Tessibel stood in her place as mother to the little boy, and had taken an oath that nothing could force her to break. The squatter had been the scapegoat upon which had been heaped the sins of a girl no one had thought capable of doing wrong. Teola, resting in her father's arms, struggled with her conscience, trying to press down the moral weakness that had compelled her to keep the tragedy in ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... that some such simple and affectionate record of Bruno as a man still fails us, and alas, must ever fail. Fulgenzio, by his love, makes us love Sarpi, who otherwise might coldly win our admiration. But for Bruno, that scapegoat of the spirit in the world's wilderness, there is none to speak words ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... in a reprobate family an exquisitely delicate and refined sister may feel the whole weight of the debt and shame of the household to lie on herself, so He felt the unworthiness and hopelessness of the race as if they were His own; and, like the scapegoat on whose head the sins of the community were laid in the old dispensation, He went out into the ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... when he realized how things were going to develop Count Achrenthal tried to hush up the whole incident, but it was too late, and Dr. Friedjung insisted on doing what he could to save his reputation as a historian. In the end he was made the principal scapegoat, though the press of Vienna voiced its opinion of the Austrian Foreign Office in no measured tones, saying, amongst other things, that if the conductors of its diplomacy must use forgeries, they might at any rate secure good ones. ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... are very angry with this poor court. The misfortune is great indeed to see you men of learning day after day declaiming against it; making it responsible for all your troubles; calling it to account for its bad taste, and seeing in it the scapegoat of your ill-success. Allow me, Mr. Trissotin, to tell you, with all the respect with which your name inspires me, that you would do well, your brethren and you, to speak of the court in a more moderate tone; that, after all, ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... Shih-kai have been made the scapegoat of the court and the officials, and branded as a murderer in the face of the whole world? That may be another plot. The radical reformers, followers of Kang Yu-wei, have been making such a hubbub about the matter ever since the death of the Emperor and the Empress ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... beautiful, melodious, fragrant, savory, and soft; but this disease those contrary as well, not for the sake of suffering annoyance, but out of the lust of making trial of them!' Ah! ah! too curiously I planned my own damnation, too presumptuously I had esteemed my soul a worthy scapegoat, and I had gilded my enormity with many lies. Yet indeed, indeed, I had believed brave things, I had planned a not ignoble bargain—! Ey, say, is it not laughable, madame?—as my birth-right Heaven accords me a penny, and with that ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... the days when he prepared the army, he was well aware that an eventual success would be altogether attributed to Scott; but that he, McDowell, would be the scapegoat for the defeat. Already, when on Sunday morning the news of the first successes was known, Scott swallowed incense, and took the whole credit of it to himself. ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... Luigi straightened himself. Rag sprang upon her fawning and caressing; she shoved him aside roughly, for the dog was at that moment but the scapegoat for his master; Rag cowered at ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... manners of a gentleman. Not the swagger of the dude nor the cringing of a scapegoat, but the manners of a being permeated with the ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... rebellion ensures its success. When I walked out of the drawing-room to-day I felt that for once I had obtained the victory in a contest with my aunt; that in future I should no longer be the "wild, troublesome Kate," the "black sheep" of the family, the scapegoat on whom were laid the faults and misdemeanours of all, but the master-spirit, the bold, resolute woman, whose value others were able to appreciate, and who was ready and willing to assert her own independence. In the meantime poor Aunt Deborah had to be informed of what had taken place, ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... character is all in the detail, where the architect has bloomed into the sculptor. It is impossible to tell in words of the angels (although they are more like winged archbishops) that stand guard upon the door, of the cherubs in the corners, of the scapegoat gargoyles, or the quaint and spirited relief, where St. Michael (the artist's patron) makes short work of a protesting Lucifer. We were never weary of viewing the imagery, so innocent, sometimes so funny, and yet in the best ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... present strain, of the relation with the others. They thus tacitly put it upon her to be disposed of, the whole complexity of their peril, and she promptly saw why because she was there, and there just as she was, to lift it off them and take it; to charge herself with it as the scapegoat of old, of whom she had once seen a terrible picture, had been charged with the sins of the people and had gone forth into the desert to sink under his burden and die. That indeed wasn't THEIR design ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... still full of burning hatred for the Empress, but he had forgiven Rouher and the Emperor for making him the scapegoat. I discussed with him once more the origin of the war of 1870, and he maintained most stoutly that France had been driven into it by Bismarck, and had only put herself in the wrong by herself declaring war, and had done this because her army ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... are like that—a fierce, vengeful god to whom appeasing sacrifices must be offered from time to time. If the people demand a scapegoat, governments usually provide one. But be comforted." In his eagerness of reassurance he caught her delicate mittened hand in his own, and her anxiety rendering her heedless, she allowed it to lie there ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... never seen him since, and it is particularly desirable that I should know whether he tried and failed or what has become of him. If the man made his exact commission known it would cost me my place. The very people who would applaud me if successful would be the first to make a scapegoat of me otherwise." ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... to do? What ought she to do? If she went with her story to the district attorney, her sister's shame must inevitably be dragged forth to be flaunted before the whole world. She could not do that. She could not make little Esther the scapegoat of her conscience. Nor could she remain silent and let Kirby stay in prison. That was unthinkable. If her story would free him she must tell it. But ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... if he will consent to be made the scapegoat in this affair," said Lutera; "Unless we can make it exceptionally to his advantage;—he has the press at ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... 'My scapegoat and my drudge at school,' he said, raising his head to look after him; 'my friend of later days, who could not keep his mistress when he had won her, and threw me in her way to carry off the prize; I triumph in the present and the past. ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... Temperance men and women strongly urged this measure as they believed the Governor would have stamina enough to select commissioners who would enforce the prohibitory law. This board was abolished at the special session of the Legislature in 1897, as it was made a scapegoat for city and county officers who were too cowardly or too unfriendly to enforce the liquor ordinances, and it did not ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... never dared face these hard facts. We frantically scatter conscience money and invent systems of conscience banking, with expiatory penalties, atonements, redemptions, salvations, hospital subscription lists and what not, to enable us to contract-out of the moral code. Not content with the old scapegoat and sacrificial lamb, we deify human saviors, and pray to miraculous virgin intercessors. We attribute mercy to the inexorable; soothe our consciences after committing murder by throwing ourselves on the ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... Inanda's Kraal with sheer horror. Last night I had looked into the heart of darkness, and the sight had terrified me. What part should I play in the great purification? Most likely that of the Biblical scapegoat. But the dolour of my mind was surpassed by the discomfort of my body. I was broken with pains and weariness, and I had a desperate headache. Also, before we had gone a mile, I began to think that I should split in two. The paces of my beast were uneven, to say the best of it, ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... nullity." There was deep dissatisfaction throughout the country, and mutual recriminations between the various responsible authorities, but there was some justice in making the stadholder the chief scapegoat, for, whatever may have been the faults of others, a vigorous initiative in the earlier years of his stadholdership might have effected much, and would have certainly gained for him ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... usual, made the scapegoat for the unsuccessful attempt of his ministers to depose General Freire, and the consequence was that in three months after the attempt was made, General O'Higgins was deposed from his authority, and General Freire ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... A scapegoat had, of course, to be at once provided. He was found in Mr. Commissioner Pett, the most skilful ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... good night early and went to his own home, carrying a backload of trouble. He was plainly in for it. Whatever happened, he was the scapegoat-elect. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... taxed beyond possibility of payment, and lived, in Michelet's image, like a hare between two furrows. These very people now weeding their patch under the broad sunset, that very man and his wife, it seems to us, have suffered all the wrongs of France. It is they who have been their country's scapegoat for long ages; they who, generation after generation, have sowed and not reaped, reaped and another has garnered; and who have now entered into their reward, and enjoy their good things in their turn. For the days are gone by when the Seigneur ruled ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... would happen when she was no longer at hand to act as scapegoat, and yet it seemed to her that her mother longed to be rid ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... alone on the piazza. She was afraid of Jake Hoover; afraid of the mischief he might do, that is. No longer was she afraid of him as she had been in the old days on the farm, when he had bullied her and made her the scapegoat for all the offences he could possibly load on her slim shoulders. One night in the woods, when Bessie, wrapped in a sheet and playing ghost, had frightened Jake and his mischievous friends away before they could terrify ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the Farm - Or, Bessie King's New Chum • Jane L. Stewart
... you, old fellow!" whispered Dave Darrin, as he and Dick jostled on the way to a recitation. "But if he has—-humph—-it won't be long before he finds out that you had some help. You shan't be the scapegoat for all of ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... Van Loo had been stopped at Canyon Station, but that no warrant had yet been issued against him; that it was generally believed that the bank dared not hold him; that others openly averred that he had been used as a scapegoat to avert suspicion from higher guilt. And certainly Mrs. Van Loo's calm, confident air seemed to corroborate ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... it would be disloyal to her confidence to betray her, to pry into what she concealed, and expose what his superiors seemed to know. But after she was gone the story leaked out: she was not only a smuggler, but a very dangerous spy. Some one must be the scapegoat, and who so fit as the poor, friendless Tennesseean who had escorted her to head-quarters and acted for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... told to Hurlstone and confirmed on his debarkation with the ladies at Todos Santos, the Excelsior being now in the hands of the authorities. Hurlstone did not hesitate to express to Padre Esteban his disgust at the treachery which had made a scapegoat of Senor Perkins. But to his surprise the cautious priest only shrugged his shoulders as he took a complacent pinch ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... lips fed at your bosom. Mother! Mother, if you had known all, could you have seen the load of guilt and shame and woe laid on your innocent child, and bought the life of your first-born, by the sacrifice of a scapegoat? Dear mother, my mother, would you shelter him, and ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... haystack near by, and it burned down. I was scared and sorry. I was worse scared and sorry the next day, when I was arrested. Tompkins and his crowd had burned down some barns and an old mill. Their folks were rich, and they could hire good lawyers. I was a homeless orphan boy, and was made the scapegoat. They sent me to the reform school ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... but Charlotte. Don't you know by this time, Patricia, I'm only a scapegoat for the autocrat of ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... what he said,—a fact that accounts for so many repudiated interviews. In nine cases out of ten the newspaper man has reported the distinguished visitor exactly, but the write-up looks different from what the speaker expected. Then he denies the whole thing, and the reporter is made the scapegoat, because the man quoted is a public personage and the reporter ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... nay millions of times it is made the scapegoat by those who are too ignorant or too unfair to look their own weaknesses square in the face, and who instead of becoming imperial masters, remain cringing slaves. Think of it, what it means! A man created ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... decided that the King should be brought to trial. Nearly all parties, except the Girondists, no matter how bitterly opposed to each other, could agree in making him the scapegoat; and the first rumour of the approaching ordeal was conveyed to the Temple by Clery's wife, who, with a friend, had permission occasionally to visit him. "I did not know how to announce this terrible news to the King," he says; "but time was pressing, and he had forbidden my concealing ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... from Anna. As to Marusya, he always found a pretext to separate us whenever he met me in her company. I was very angry with him for that, but I could not tell him so openly. At last it came to such a pass that Marusya lost all patience, and made me the scapegoat. She stopped having ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... than the sculptor and would therefore make a more satisfactory witness, Dick decided. Him would he maneuver to have with him in the narrow trail when the Outlaw should be made the scapegoat. Martinez was no horseman. All the better. It would be well, Dick judged, to make the Outlaw act up in real devilishness for a minute or two before the culmination. It would give verisimilitude. Also, it would excite Martinez's horse, and, therefore, excite Martinez so that he ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... answer until you are questioned," the Scar-Cheek recommended briefly. And a round of laughter followed the poor scapegoat as he picked himself up, groaning, and crept away into the shadow. In the restlessness of their inactivity, and this swift breaking into passages of growling and tooth-play whenever, in their narrow confines, they chanced to jostle each other, they were like ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... inside, I feel convinced that the present popular estimates are largely superficial and will not stand the searching test of time. And I have no doubt whatever that Wilson has been harshly, unfairly, unjustly dealt with, and that he has been made a scapegoat for the sins of others. Wilson made mistakes, and there were occasions when I ventured to sound a warning note. But it was not his mistakes that caused the failure for which he has been ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan |
