"Venial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that "the man with the dogs" had some years before given her, once for all, a lesson in fidelity, and that for a mere trifle, and that for a venial sin! He had surprised her for allowing herself to be kissed by some gallant; that was all! He had not taken any notice, but when the man was gone he brought two of his hounds into the room, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... victim, upon the Intendant, upon fate, and, with a last subterfuge to hide the enormity of it from her own eyes, upon La Corriveau, whom she would lead on to suggest the crime and commit it!—a course which Angelique tried to believe would be more venial than if it were suggested by herself! less heinous in her own eyes, and less wicked in ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... laid bare. Though there was little in him of the Calvinism of his maternal ancestors, he judged himself on this point with the severity of an austere moralist. In the world of pleasure in which he moved such offences were considered venial, but he looked upon them with the disgust of a man who reckons personal freedom beyond all earthly goods, and who sees himself in danger of becoming a slave. "The humiliating and degrading emotions of play" threaten, ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... peccadillo was of a venial nature, Mr. Douglas besought the Bailie to us his interest to procure the enfranchisement of this his vassal, which Mr. Broadfoot, happy to oblige a good customer, promised should be obtained on the following day; and Duncan's emotions ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... Deacon's theology fell off several points towards latitudinarianism in the course of the next ten minutes. He had a deep inward sense that everything was as it should be, human nature included. The little accidents of humanity, known collectively to moralists as sin, looked very venial to his growing sense of universal ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... concisely as it can be—without morbid prudery on the one hand, or morbid sentimentality on the other—in the coldest scientific language; the right course of action is pointed out for all the cases that may occur, and we are told what is lawful, what a venial sin, what a mortal sin. Now I do not consider that sexual matters concern the theologian alone, and I deny altogether that he is competent to deal with them. In his hands, also, undoubtedly, they sometimes become prurient, as they can scarcely fail to become on the non-natural and ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... priest; "there are spots in the sun, Mrs. O'Shaugh-nessy—we are not all immaculate. There never was one sent into this world without less or more sin upon them. Even the saints themselves had venial touches about them, but ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... de Rosa killed Fray Juan Zambrano, his vicar and superior; but the archbishop has not made any demonstration [of displeasure], although he has so often done so in the more venial offenses of the clerics. The Order of St. Dominic has honored the Dominicans who were most rebellious against the king with the best offices in the provincial chapter; and those of their following, like Aduna, Gonzalez, Carballo, Cervantes, and others, are now in high favor, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... was certainly aware of a stronger desire than he could altogether account for that Captain Filbert should not desert her post. The idea had an element of imitation oddly personal; he could not bear to reflect upon it. It may be wondered whether in any flight of venial imagination Arnold saw himself in a parallel situation with a lady. I am sure he did not. It may be considered, however, that among mirages there are unaccountable resemblances—resemblances without shape or form. He might fix his gaze, at all events, upon ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... adopt a policy of far greater secrecy and silence. If, however, we remember that Campion intended his paper to be published under quite different circumstances, we can see that he at least hardly deserves the reproach of being contentious, or if he does, his failing was venial when we consider the tastes of the age. The immediate result of the publication was without question ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... unearth any forgotten scandal, or, after so vast a lapse of time, and when the grave had shut out all but charitable thoughts, to point any moral censures at a simple case of natural frailty, youthful precipitancy of passion, of all trespasses the most venial, where the final intentions are honorable. But in this case there seems to have been something more in motion than passion or the ardor of youth. "I like not," says Parson Evans, (alluding to Falstaff ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... the habit of attending rehearsals and expressing his opinion at them. It is regrettable that criticism should be written in this fashion, since it causes a feeling of distrust. Probably the writer had no desire to be unjust, or even unfair in the comparatively venial way of doing rather less than justice to the author in his desire to do rather ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... to holier places. The parasite grows very quickly, and Christ had to deal with it more than once to keep down its growth. The sellers of doves and changers of money into the sacred shekel were venial offenders compared with many in the Church, and the race is not extinct. If Christ were to come to His house to-day, in bodily form, who doubts that He would begin, as He did before, by driving the traders out of His temple? How many 'most respectable' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... traitor, but always in conspiracy with Fortune, Talleyrand treats his enemies as if they were one day to become his friends, and his friends as if they were to become his enemies. He is a man of unquestionable talent, but venial in every thing. Nothing could be done with him but by means of bribery."[20] This is not complimentary; and it would be curious to compare such a sentence of condemnation with the judgment of Talleyrand on Napoleon which is contained in his memoirs, for that ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... position at the top, where the red coals of the perishing fire greeted her like living eyes in the corpse of day. There she stood still, around her stretching the vast night atmosphere, whose incomplete darkness in comparison with the total darkness of the heath below it might have represented a venial beside ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... subject of prevarication. He seemed never to tire of ringing the changes upon the theme of the lie, its utility, its convenience, and its consequences. Doubtless he chose to dabble in falsehood because it is generally winked at as the most venial of all moral obliquities—a fault which is the most thoroughly universal of all that flesh is heir to. The incident of George Washington and the cherry tree furnished the basis for countless of his anecdotes; he wrung from it variations innumerable, from the epigram to the anecdote. His distinction ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... question,—one of those questions pitilessly asked by husbands, the mere apprehension of which gives a chill, while the actual words enter the heart like the blade of a dagger. It is from such crises that the maxim has come, "All women lie." Falsehood, kindly falsehood, venial falsehood, sublime falsehood, horrible falsehood,—but always the necessity to lie. This necessity admitted, ought they not to know how to lie well? French women do it admirably. Our manners and customs teach them ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... tho' he acted on different Maxims. And the former having succeeded in reducing the first Order nearer the second, he was for bringing them both to an Equality, and raising the third to a Level with them, by making all Employments and Dignities venial; and, without any Regard to Merit, constantly bestowing them on the highest Bidder. Thus, as the same Posts and Honours were equally attainable by the Citizen and Gentleman, there was no material Distinction betwixt them. The Government which had flourished as Monarchical, ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... not intend people, and does not like people, to be too good. He likes them neither too good nor too bad, but a little too bad is more venial with him than a little ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... has once done a base thing is never again wholly reconciled to honour. And woe—thrice woe, if thou learn too late that thou hast exaggerated thy fancied wrong: that there is excuse, where thou seest none; that thy friend may have erred, but that his error is venial compared to ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of those who die in mortal sin, and of excommunicated persons are believed to go straight to hell. Thus practically the Intermediate State is cancelled for these two classes. There remains, therefore, only one class which is supposed to enter the Intermediate State, those namely, who have died in venial sin. And since it is part of the Romish doctrine to regard Paradise as the same thing as Heaven, and to hold that the souls which alone enter Purgatory, after suffering due torments, pass direct out of Purgatory into Paradise or Heaven, it follows that in the Intermediate State are ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... of this hindrance, especially in the country districts, is our ignorant, and, in too many cases, venial ministry, for ignorance is the greatest curse on earth, save sin. The Sunday-school is destined to be the most potent factor in the removal of this evil. As our children see the light as revealed in the Sunday-school by the teachers of God's word, they will demand ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... thanks to the spirit of English artists and to the patronage of the English public, what is in this country is already in a great measure recorded. To an Englishman, it is hoped it may be a source of venial self-congratulation, that the first publication upon Norman architecture originates in his own island: he will likewise probably not be displeased to find, that this collection of the finest remaining specimens of Norman art upon ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... he must be able to cope with difficulties as well as heresies; he must lead his men as well as guide his flock; he must be the Church's steward as well as her consecrated arch-head; he must be the reformer of manners as well as the preserver of faith; he must be the understander of men's venial mistakes as well as the censor of their ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... true Church, had insensibly recommended it to her confidence. At first, she deemed herself unworthy to enter the fold. She had broken, in thought, one of its stringent laws. What she had come to regard as but a venial error, now appeared to her as an unpardonable sin. So unpardonable, indeed, that left to herself, she might have despaired of forgiveness, and returned to it cherishingly, seven times worse than before. But this aged Missioner, ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... that I could make, to this inquiry, no answer that would not involve something of a sacrifice of my employer. Yet it appeared to me that we were all, at Bly, sufficiently sacrificed to make that venial. "I don't think your uncle ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... and to support them in venial errors Possible to do, only because we see that it has been done Repose in the other world, "Repos ailleurs" Soldiers enough to animate the good and terrify the bad To work, ever to work, was the primary law of his nature When ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... greatly moved. It was true that the request was remarkably silly; but what was that to him? So much the better. He could lock the door on Nydia, and, if Arbaces should learn his absence, the offence was venial, and would merit but a reprimand. Yet, should Nydia's letter contain something more than what she had said—should it speak of her imprisonment, as he shrewdly conjectured it would do—what then! It need ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... distinctions of yours on the subject of obscurity I am disposed to think reasonable; and, unless the contrary should appear in the course of our conversations, I will concede them to be applicable to the case of Mr. Ricardo; his obscurity may be venial, or it may be inevitable, or even none at all (if you will have it so). But I cannot allow of the cases of Kant and Leibnitz as at all relevant to that before us. For, the obscurity complained of in metaphysics, etc., is inherent in the ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... too severely arraign a fault that was venial in you. Your father gave himself to Edward, and his son accompanied ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... farming and labouring population in the Roman Catholic provinces of the country, it cannot be matter of surprise that any trick, or act of violence by which a landlord was deprived of his just rights, was regarded either as a "venial offence," or no offence, or even a patriotic and virtuous act, according as the conscience of the rude casuist was more or less under such influences. Had the landlords as a body administered their estates in a spirit of justice; used their power to bring land questions under the influence of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... do not deny the distinction of venial and mortal sins; but do think, that some sins are rightly said to be mortal and some venial; not for that some are worthy of eternal punishment and therefore named mortal, others of temporal only, and therefore judged venial ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... permitted no familiarity with any living being, no sympathies with any other heart, commanded but never indulged, rebuked but never applauded, she must have sunk beneath the severities imposed on her by her father, but for the venial disobedience committed in the pursuit of the solitary pleasure procured for her by her lute. Vainly, in her hours of study, did she read the fierce anathemas against love, liberty, and pleasure, poetry, painting, and music, gold, silver, and precious stones, which the ancient fathers ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... when the housekeeper appeared at the door, "I will have the coffee and FINE CHAMPAGNE up here, if it is no trouble. And—oh, Maggie—I was compelled this evening to turn the blameless visit of the framemaker into a venial sin, and that involves a needless wear and tear of conscience. I think that—hereafter—you understand?—I am not invariably at home when the Rev. Mr. Ware does me the honor ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... Thieves, you see, are not particular, unless, indeed, we may regard them as particularly indifferent to the injuries they inflict on their fellow-men—but, what did we say? their fellow-men?—a railway is not a fellow-man. Surely Jim's sin in robbing a railway must be regarded as a venial one. Honest men do that every day and appear to think nothing of it! Nobody appears to think anything of it. A railway would seem to be the one great unpardonable outlaw of the land, which does good ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... hilltop, the cool air of the night, the company of the great monuments, the sight of the city under his feet, with its hills and valleys and crossing files of lamps, drew him by all he had of the poetic, and he turned that way; and by that quite innocent deflection, ripened the crop of his venial errors for ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a perception of the ridiculous, perhaps to excess, is characteristic of the British mind, and is at the bottom of many defects in the national manners, commonly attributed to less venial feelings, our Transatlantic descendants err in just the opposite direction. The Americans seldom laugh at any body, or any thing—never at themselves; and this, next to an unfortunate trick of insolvency, and a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... he was to mourn over the decline of the study of the Torah, (18) and bare feet are a sign of mourning. The angel reproached Joshua in particular with having allowed the preparations for war to interfere with the study of the Torah and with the ritual service. Neglect of the latter might be a venial sin, but neglect of the former is worthy of condign punishment. (19) At the same time the angel assured Joshua that he had come to aid him, and he entreated Joshua not to draw back from him, like Moses, who ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... very powerful or universal. Few laws enforce it. No very severe reprobation follows untruthfulness. In all ages and countries, falsehood has been thought allowable in love, and laudable in war; while, at the present day, it is held to be venial by the majority of mankind, in trade, commerce, and speculation. A certain amount of untruthfulness is a necessary part of politeness in the east and west alike, while even severe moralists have held a lie justifiable, to elude an enemy or prevent a crime. Such ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... There are men no doubt whose natures are proof against kindness and consideration, but my experience is that they are few and far between. I have found also that if one refrains from fault- finding, gives praise where praise is due, and overlooks small or venial faults, when reproof becomes necessary, if it be temperately administered, it is always effective and productive of good. But even such reproof may be carried too far as on one occasion I found to my dismay. Pinion, one forenoon, came into my room to tell me he had discovered that the ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... was inditing the goodly matter which my readers have just perused, I might be said to go through a course of breaking-in to stand criticism, like a shooting-pony to stand fire. By some of those venial breaches of confidence, which always take place on the like occasions, my private flirtations with the Muse of Fiction became a matter whispered in Miss Fairscribe's circle, some ornaments of which were, I suppose, highly interested in the progress of the affair, while ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... as I have, you will learn that gratitude is rarely found on earth—least of all in such a brutified nature as that fellow's. But why do I blame him? He was but what the law made him. Punished for a venial fault—sent to herd with hardened malefactors, is it wonderful that he should become schooled in crime? And now the law will punish the criminal it made. We can do no good here—we had best proceed ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite
... stage provokes, and in none more than in the earliest. Or, if he retires as from a scene of contest that he had not anticipated, he retires as one confessing a human precipitance and a human oversight, weaknesses, venial in others, but fatal to the pretensions of a divine teacher. Starting besides from such pretensions, he could not (as others might) have the privilege of selecting arbitrarily or partially. If upon one science, then upon all,—if ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... the pulpit or the rostrum, half the battle is to know when you have said enough—the same rule applies with equal force to the tale-writer. There are two errors into which he may fall—he may say too little, or he may say too much. The first is a venial 473 sin, and easily forgiven—the second nearly unpardonable. Such, at all events, being my ideas on the subject, I shall merely proceed to give a brief outline of the fate of the principal personages who have figured ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... on the other hand,—the occasional omission of words, whether few or many,—especially that passing from one line to the corresponding place in a subsequent line, which generally results from the proximity of a similar ending,—is a purely venial offence. It is an evidence of carelessness, but it proves ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... pocket. I think the Duke ought not to have challenged him; it was very juvenile, and he stands in far too high a position, and his life is so much publica cura that he should have treated him and his letter with the contempt they merited; it was a great error in judgment, but certainly a venial one, for it is impossible not to admire the high spirit which disdained to shelter itself behind the immunities of his great character and station, and the simplicity, and almost humility, which made him at once ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... accomplished his purpose with diabolical deliberation. He must have been well aware that, had he acted on the natural impulse of the moment and revenged himself then and there on Aubert, he would have committed what is regarded by a French jury as the most venial of crimes, and would have escaped with little or no punishment. He preferred, for reasons of his own, to set about the commission of a deliberate and cold-blooded murder that bears the stamp of a more sinister motive than the vengeance ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... him, (those were the sad days before envelopes were known,) and he is desired to repeat the experiment till he succeeds. General Macaulay's fastidious nature led him to take my father's line regarding your uncle, and my youthful soul was often vexed by the constant reprimands for venial transgressions. But the great sin was the idle reading, which was a thorn in my father's side that never was extracted. In truth, he really acknowledged to the full your uncle's abilities, and felt that if he could only add his own morale, his unwearied industry, his ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... thoughts were far away, and the words of Clarimonde were ever upon my lips like an involuntary refrain. Oh, brother, meditate well on this! Through having but once lifted my eyes to look upon a woman, through one fault apparently so venial, I have for years remained a victim to the most miserable agonies, and the happiness of my life has been ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... and he quotes Horace, who tells us we should impute such venial errors to a pardonable inadvertency; and, as I recollect, Addison makes another very just remark, that the ancients, who were actuated by a spirit of candour, not of cavilling, invented a variety of figures of speech, on purpose ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... arrived at the painful conclusion that "spirits and patience may be as completely exhausted in perusing trifles as in following algebraical calculations." He condemns the authors of the Gothic romance, not for their extravagance, a venial offence, but for their monotony, ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... ingenuity of interpretation. To read between the lines was easier than to follow the text, and to suppose that Miss Stackpole wished the gentleman invited to Gardencourt on her own account was the sign not so much of a vulgar as of an embarrassed mind. Even from this venial act of vulgarity, however, Ralph was saved, and saved by a force that I can only speak of as inspiration. With no more outward light on the subject than he already possessed he suddenly acquired the conviction ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... not venial. Those that are such have not been mentioned, as they occur in almost every book, and appear to be unavoidable. Other errors, evincing a lack of knowledge of good usage in book-typography, ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... evident that when God forgives the guilt of sins and the eternal punishment due to such of them as are mortal, He does not remove the temporal punishment which must be satisfied in this life or in the life to come. That is true, the Church teaches, even of unrepented venial sin with its debt of temporal punishment. While venial sin does not destroy the supernatural life of the soul and while, therefore, it is not said to be punishable in Hell, still it is sin in the ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... watchful eye upon officers scattered throughout the length and breadth of the land, the wonder is, not that irregularities crept in, but that they should have been, upon the whole, so few and so venial. ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... direction, they could not allow any weak sentiment of pity or human consideration to influence their judgment. Their only error was in their failure to discern the authenticity of the girl's miracles, and we must call that a venial error, since it has taken the Church nearly five centuries to give a final decision on the point. The authenticity of miracles! Of all questions that is the most difficult for a contemporary to decide. In the case of Joan's judges, indeed, the solution of ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... hold that they sin like men. (I have heard it said that a man should sin like a gentleman; but I am much disposed to think that the gentleman nature appears in the non-sinning lucid intervals.)] When I speak of sin I will be understood to mean the venial offences of prevarication and sleeping in church. I am not thinking of sheep-stealing or highway robbery. My clever friend's work consists chiefly in reducing files of correspondence on a particular subject to one or two leading thoughts. Upon these he casts the ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... Catholic Church holds it better for the sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the millions on it to die of starvation in extremest agony, so far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul,—I will not say should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, tell one wilful untruth, or should steal one poor farthing without excuse.' I should steal the farthing and assume the 'excuse.' I confess that I would not only lie, but should think lying right under ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... seaman belonging to the fore-top—a mess-mate, though not a top-mate of mine, and no favourite of the Captain's,—who, for certain venial transgressions, had been prohibited from going ashore on liberty when the ship's company went. Enraged at the deprivation—for he had not touched earth in upward of a year—he, some nights after, lowered himself overboard, with the view of gaining a canoe, attached by ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... to that was the certainty that she would thence-forward be on guard against me without having given me any real information. I was perfectly convinced there was a deep plot underlying the foolishness she had proposed. The fact that she considered me so venial and so gullible was no proof that the hidden purpose was not dangerous. The mystery was how to seem to be fooled by her and yet get in touch with my friends. Then suddenly I recalled that she and the hag had been trying to use the gipsy's black art. Unless they can trick ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... graver musings that they served the cause of religion and morality. They were true sons of the Church; and if they did not go far below the surface, nor profess to do more as a rule than satirise follies and censure venial forms of vice, their tone was ever that of Christian moralists. They did no scanty service as mediators, so to say, between religion and the world. This phase of literature lived on later into the century, but it became duller and less popular. It never again was what it had ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... been both prudish and Pharisaic, the public opinion of the world is frankly cynical. Roughly speaking, the world expects the majority of women to be pure, acquiesces in the prostitution of the remainder, and treats masculine immorality as a venial offence. Numbers of would-be reformers—of the male sex—are not ashamed to advocate, in private if not in public, the establishment of licensed brothels on the continental model. It ought not to be necessary to say that no Christian man can possibly tolerate a proposal to give deliberate ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... undoubtedly a very naughty girl. We do not mean to say that she was merely rude and unlady-like in her manners; that she was occasionally angry without a just cause; that she had a few bad habits, and a few venial faults: she was impudent to her benefactors; she was untruthful, and even dishonest. Not only to Fanny and Bertha, but also to Mr. Grant, she was openly defiant. She used bad language, told falsehoods by wholesale, ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... Sally turned again to the clothes-press, by now so far gone in self-indulgence, her moral sense so insidiously sapped by the sheer sensual delight she had of all this pilfered luxury, that she could contemplate without a qualm less venial experiments with the law ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... furnished a supper of which the congregation partook in the evening. While the bear hunt had spoiled his sermon, Father Nash cheerfully asserted that it was a Christian deed to destroy so dangerous a brute even on a Sunday, and a venial offense against the canons of the Church. It is further related that Father Nash ate so much bear steak, on this occasion, as to ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... that he could ever have been intended for the popular personification of evil. Implacable hate, patient cunning, and a sleepless refinement of device to inflict the extremest anguish on an enemy, these things are evil; and, although venial in a slave are not to be forgiven in a tyrant; although redeemed by much that ennobles his defeat in one subdued, are marked by all that dishonours his conquest in the victor. Milton's Devil as a moral being is as far superior to his God, as one who perseveres ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... of an edition of "Phalaris," was but a venial offence, compared with that committed by the celebrated volume published ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... it so far as to hunt for a necklace in our neighbor's trunk! I have no luck as a criminal, my dear Orion. Twice have I deserved the name. Thanks to the generous and liberal use you made of my inexperience I sinned—sinned so deeply that it has ruined my whole life; and now, again, in a more venial way; but I was caught out, you see, in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... you, for I cannot love the woman I no longer respect. I do not hate you; but I do sincerely pity you, and humbly, and fervently do I pray that you may, ere too late, see the errors of your conduct. You, by your own confession, deem coquetry a venial error; can that be such, from which come such cruel and mischievous results. But no more. I forgive you most freely, and shall ever fervently pray that you may see and feel how inimical to peace here, as well as hereafter, is such conduct as you ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... consider them. You appear effeminate, I know that none are more daring—indolent, none are more actively ambitious—utterly selfish, and I know that no earthly interest could bribe you into meanness or injustice—no, nor even into a venial dereliction of principle. It is from this estimate of your character, that I am frank and open to you. Besides, I recognize something in the careful pride with which you conceal your higher and deeper feelings, resembling the strongest actuating principle in my own mind. All this interests ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... from precise correctness, the most venial trippings, the smallest inattention paid to doubtful rules and equivocal positions of criticism, inflames their anger, and calls forth their invectives. Regardless of the sage maxims of Cicero, Quintilian, and Horace, they not only ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... holy men and women were burned alive there for adhering to the principles of the Reformation—when it is known that men and women were imprisoned and whipped every day during the kirk-session's pleasure, for offences now considered venial—when it is known that, for a breach of the seventh commandment, some were carted through the streets, whipped, and thereafter banished from the town; that others, for a violation of the said commandment, ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... slowly, and I go chatting on,—a little too loquacious perhaps, about those young girls. But I know that Titbottom regards such an excess as venial, for his sadness is so sweet that you could believe it the reflection of a smile from ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... great extent—they being very imperfectly manageable on shore; all, moreover, having, I fear, a very low standard of morality in regard to stealing from the Chinese. There is a word called 'loot,' which gives, unfortunately, a venial character to what would, in common English, be styled robbery.... Add to this, that there is no flogging in the French army, so that it is impossible to punish men committing this class of offences.... On the other hand, these ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... to the new ideas, found that it could not attain to satisfactory representation merely by form and colour, but that it required light and shadow and effects of space. Indeed, venial faults of drawing are perhaps the least disturbing, while faults of perspective, of spacing, and of colour completely spoil a picture for people who have an every-day acquaintance with painting such as the Venetians had. We find the Venetian painters, therefore, ...
— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson
... in them all is not equally evil. Then again, not all sins are committed through pure malice, that is, with complete knowledge and full consent. Ignorance and weakness are factors to be considered in our guilt, and detract from the malice of our sins. Hence two kinds of sin, mortal and venial. These mark the extremes of offense. One severs all relation of friendship, the other chills the existing friendship. By one, we incur God's infinite hatred, by the other, His displeasure. The penalty for one is eternal; the other can ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... appear, it sits lightly on the majority, since, even the brawlers for liberty, forgetting "the air they breathe," are often to be found within its pale; but in this case they also forget, that being in legal debt is less venial than many other sins, since it cannot be cleared by any appeals to argument, or settled by shades of opinion. Subterfuge, lying, and loss of liberty, are not all the miseries of a conscious debtor: in the world he resembles a prisoner ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 277, October 13, 1827 • Various
... a collection of mud hovels with the name of "City," would be a keen irony; not greater, however, than is the name with which its Padres have baptized it. To call a place with its moral character, a very Sodom in iniquity, "Holy Faith," is scarcely a venial sin; it deserves Purgatory at least. Its health is the best in the country, which is the first, second and third recommendation of New Mexico by its greatest admirers. It is a small town of about two thousand ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... Liberty; and their open Gallantries perfectly countenance the Imagination: for tho' Adultery is look'd upon as a grievous Crime, and punish'd accordingly; yet Fornication is softened with the title of a Venial Sin, and they seem to ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... govern the world. Under such a regimen, which is actual in every community devoid of imagination, virtue must always remain suspect and vice tolerable; the one a hypocrisy, the other a secret and venial indulgence, and nature will take its revenge upon the law in violent or perverse compensations. Hence, instead of being a hindrance, art ought to be a help to a rational morality: its realism should foster sincerity, its imagination, ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... loved books so greatly. But because it is hardly granted to mortals to accomplish aught that is not rolled in the dust of vanity, we do not venture entirely to justify the zealous love which we have so long had for books, or to deny that it may perchance sometimes have been the occasion of some venial negligence, albeit the object of our love is honourable and our intention upright. For if when we have done everything, we are bound to call ourselves unprofitable servants; if the most holy Job was afraid of all his works; if according to Isaiah all our righteousness is as filthy rags, who ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... of talk where God or Angel Guest With Man, as with his Friend, familiar us'd To sit indulgent, and with him partake Rural repast, permitting him the while Venial discourse unblam'd: I now must change Those Notes to Tragic; foul distrust, and breach Disloyal on the part of Man, revolt And disobedience: On the part of Heav'n Now alienated, distance and distaste, Anger and just rebuke, and judgement giv'n, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... clean and the unclean. Its shade was denied them as long as they refrained from taking the prescribed ritual bath in the spring that flowed out from its roots, the waters of which rose at once for those whose uncleanness was of a venial character and could be removed forthwith, while others had to wait seven days for the water to come up. Accordingly, Abraham bade the three men lean against the trunk of the tree. Thus he would soon learn their ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... yet I dare not express it for fear of offending the notorious modesty of the senior service. So shy indeed is our Fleet of praise that I feel my apologies are due to their Chaplain for my perfectly honest commendation of his book. But he seems human enough to pardon the more venial sins. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 28, 1917 • Various
... was over, we drank, every one In a bumper, "the venial delights of Crim. Con.;" At which Headfort with warm reminiscences gloated, And Ellenb'rough chuckled ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... ardour and temerity. The true difficulty in the way of these confessions was the not having made them already. Ludlow had long been entitled to this confidence, and, though the existence of this power was venial or wholly innocent, the obstinate concealment of it was a different matter, and would certainly expose me to suspicion and rebuke. But what was the alternative? To conceal it. To incur those dreadful punishments awarded against treason in this particular. Ludlow's menaces still rung in my ears, ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... equal, and in genius their superior, John Bunyan. Bunyan had been bred a tinker, and had served as a private soldier in the parliamentary army. Early in his life he had been fearfully tortured by remorse for his youthful sins, the worst of which seem, however, to have been such as the world thinks venial. His keen sensibility and his powerful imagination made his internal conflicts singularly terrible. He fancied that he was under sentence of reprobation, that he had committed blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, that he had sold Christ, that he was ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... pride and delicacy, she disliked to confess to ignorant priests. She said that the half-learned did her more harm than good. The learned were probably more lenient to her, and more in sympathy with her, and assured her that those sins were only venial which she had supposed were mortal. But she soon was obliged to give up this confessor, since he began to confess to her, and to confess sins in comparison with which the sins she confessed were venial indeed. He not only told her of his slavery to a bad woman, but confessed a love for Theresa ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... is much more certain than that miracles do not happen; and he certainly knew Mr Arnold's case if not Mr Arnold, when he introduced a certain main episode in A Midsummer Night's Dream. To frown on Oberon and caress Bottom is venial compared with the dismissal of the Bible as popular legend, and the implicit belief in as, bhu, ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... selection that corresponds to the insistence and directness of the male. Coyness and caprice have in consequence become a heritage of the sex, together with a cohort of allied weaknesses and petty deceits, that men have come to think venial and even amiable in women, but which they would not tolerate ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... and really evil action? It's fair enough to reap evil where one has sown it. But I've never seen a good action get its reward. Never! It's a disgrace to Him who records all sins, however black or venial. No man could do it: men would forgive. The ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... the Induction to "Cynthia's Revels," "as to have his presence in the tiring-house, to prompt us aloud, stamp at the bookholder [or prompter], swear at our properties, curse the poor tireman, rail the musick out of tune, and sweat for every venial trespass we commit as some author would." While, in the Induction to his "Staple of News," Jonson has clearly portrayed himself. "Yonder he is," says Mirth, in reply to some remark touching the poet of the performance, "within—I was in the tiring-house awhile, to see ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... lawyer would never have spoken of obtaining "judgment from a jury," for it is the function of a jury not to deliver judgment (which is the prerogative of the court), but to find a verdict on the facts. The error is, indeed, a venial one, but it is just one of those little things which at once enable a lawyer to know if the writer is a layman ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... offend the young man; its immediate effect was that of allaying his agitation. The theatrical touch in her manner made his offense seem more venial than he had thought it ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... difference in our respective stations aboard the Julia; or else the planters must have considered him some illustrious individual, for certain inscrutable reasons, going incog. With this idea of him, his undisguised disinclination for work became venial; and entertaining such views of extending their business, they counted more upon his ultimate value to them as a man of science than ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... his jocular sportiveness, his shrewd knowledge of character and of society, and his scholar-like quaintness, he becomes a delightful presence; for his mendacity disappears in the sunshine of his humour; his faults seem venial; and we entertain him much as we do the infinitely greater and more disreputable character of Falstaff,—knowing him to be a vagabond, but finding him a charming companion, for all that. This is one great relief to the hollow and metallic sentimentality of the piece. Persons like ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... relief, the predetermined patron of what has been actually done may have taken his bias from the weight of these considerations, as well as from considerations of a sinister nature. The predetermined adversary, on the other hand, can have been governed by no venial motive whatever. The intentions of the first may be upright, as they may on the contrary be culpable. The views of the last cannot be upright, and must be culpable. But the truth is, that these papers are not addressed to persons falling under either of these characters. ...
— The Federalist Papers
... electric glare, fought out in a vast confusion by multitudes untrained in arms, led chiefly by acclamation, multitudes dulled by mindless labour and enervated by the tradition of two hundred years of servile security against multitudes demoralised by lives of venial privilege and sensual indulgence. They had no artillery, no differentiation into this force or that; the only weapon on either side was the little green metal carbine, whose secret manufacture and sudden distribution in enormous quantities had been one of Ostrog's culminating moves ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... results, in lines of tell-tale fire. The moral office of tragedy is to show us our own weaknesses idealized in grander figures and more awful results,—to teach us that what we pardon in our selves as venial faults, if they seem to have but slight influence on our immediate fortunes, have arms as long as those of kings, and reach forward to the catastrophe of our lives, that they are dry-rotting the very fibre ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... only point of difference has been as to the extent or enormity of the sin! By some it has been reckoned as a "deadly sin," punishable by eternal hell fire, if not duly absolved before death; by others it has been held to be only a "venial sin," one that must always be confessed to the priest when coitus is engaged in, and which can be pardoned by the practice of due penance. But, always, it was ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long
... leave their sin ere sin leave them, are accounted by Holy Church sure of their salvation, even though the repentance be at the last hour. There are three actions of penitence; that a man be baptized after he has sinned; that he do no deadly sin after receiving baptism; and that he fall into no venial sins from day to day. "Thereof saith St Augustine, that penitence of good and humble folk is the penitence of every day." The species of penitence are three: solemn, when a man is openly expelled from Holy Church in Lent, or is compelled by Holy Church ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... Chastity, He doubted not to retain the esteem of Men, and even the protection of heaven. He trusted easily to be forgiven so slight and natural a deviation from his vows: But He forgot that having pronounced those vows, Incontinence, in Laymen the most venial of errors, became in his person the ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... a special privilege of divine grace, man, even though he be in the state of sanctifying grace, is unable to avoid venial sin throughout life.* ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... when he spoke to them. Weakness of the flesh and fornication appeared to him the most monstrous of sins, and he would be very angry if I dared to assert that, in my estimation, they were the most venial of faults. His sermons were crammed with passages from the Greek authors, which he translated into Latin. One day I ventured to remark that those passages ought to be translated into Italian because women did not understand Latin any more than Greek, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... continue to be an amusement for idle people, whether more or less ingenious. A venial wickedness, a self-complacent malice, is an enjoyment for those who have neither resources in themselves nor a wholesome external activity. No age is quite exempt from such pruriences. We had often tricked each other in our childish years: many sports turn upon mystification and trick. ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... beginning, God was most gracious unto me. Though I was not so free from sin as the book required, I passed that by; such watchfulness seemed to me almost impossible. I was on my guard against mortal sin—and would to God I had always been so!—but I was careless about venial sins, and that was my ruin. Yet, for all this, at the end of my stay there—I spent nearly nine months in the practice of solitude—our Lord began to comfort me so much in this way of prayer, as in His mercy to raise me to the prayer of quiet, and now and then to that of union, though I understood ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... the restrictions on woman in the married relation are much greater than upon man.[208] Adultery, which is polygamy outside of the married relation, is everywhere held as more venial in man than in woman. In England, while the husband can easily obtain a divorce from his wife, upon the ground of adultery, it is almost impossible for the wife to obtain a divorce upon the same ground. Nothing short of the husband's bringing another woman into the house, to sustain wifely relations ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... paternal character, the finer feelings, the flashes of genius, the sallies of wit, the little touches of tenderness and romance, and so forth. Very likely; but the actual child does just the reverse of this. Is there a trivial weakness, a venial shortcoming, a microscopic spot of imperfection anywhere? The ruthless little imp has marked it for his own, and will infallibly reproduce it, certainly before your servants, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... was choice only between the devil of poverty or the deep sea of the Prisoners' Aid Society. He resorted to the latter (refusing Suffragettes), and came by Joan Murphy for wife who, with all her excellent capacity, was no lady. Manslaughter, however, may be a venial crime and physical beauty is a very saving grace, and, as these things all happened in the earliest chapters, I readily foresaw an ultimate end of the happiest nature and a solution of all difficulties worked out in defiance of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... of course, indispensable—a drunken car-driver being amongst the most dangerous of servants. The drivers must also be truthful, and the man found telling a lie, however venial, was instantly dismissed. Honesty was also strongly enforced, not only for the sake of the public, but for the sake of the men themselves. Hence he never allowed his men to carry letters. If they did so, he fined them in the first instance ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... her justice, the girl was consciously not much impressed by this alleged peril. She had never been aware of any failing such as Victor would have endowed her with; so far as she could remember she had never been tempted to commit more venial sins than inhered in lying to Mama Therese now and then in order to escape unmerited disciplining at the heavy hands of that industrious virago; and as for thieving, the very thought of anything of that sort was detestable ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... nothingness? Not at all. If we have any compunctions, they are quickly absorbed in the pride of our capture. And more often still, as in the present case, we set our foot upon the poor victim by pure accident or venial carelessness. ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... that deposed him from his place of equality with Newman and Keble and Pusey. Anthony was a sickly child, and from his earliest years lacked the loving care of a mother. He was brought up with Spartan severity by his father and his aunt. The most venial self-indulgence was regarded as criminal. From the age of three he was inured to hardship by being ducked every morning in a trough of ice-cold water. Hurrell Froude felt no tenderness for the ailing lad. Once, in order to rouse a manly spirit in his little brother, he took him by ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... applies most forcibly to that otherwise almost perfect work of art, Numa Roumestan, Daudet defended himself, but rather weakly. Nor does Mr. Henry James, who in the case of the last-named novel comes to his help against Zola, much mend matters. But the fault, if fault it be, is venial, especially in a friend, though not strictly ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... thousands of miles, to exist as best they might, and guarded as best might be by a class of men as nomadic as their herds. These cattle were cheap at that time, and they made a general source of food supply much appreciated in a land but just depopulated of its buffalo. For a long time it was but a venial crime to kill a cow and eat it if one were hungry. A man's horse was sacred, but his cow was not, because there were so many cows, and they were shifting and changing about so much ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... which adjudged her guilty, and its duly appointed administrators are either too timid or too negligent of duty to endeavor to enforce it.... It is doubtful whether they had the right to refuse those votes. In any event their offense is venial as compared with hers. It does not look well for the District Attorney thus to proceed against the lesser offenders, while the chief offender snaps her fingers at the law, and dares its ministers to make ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... young soldier seized his rifle, and advancing toward the front, prepared to atone for his venial remissness, by freely exposing his life in defense of those ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... observing the laws of God and the rites of the church. These rites were fasting, masses, saying of prayers, pilgrimages, and the like, and in practice crowded the moral law out of mind. The race of merit was hindered by daily sins, but not stopped, provided the sins were of a class denominated venial. These could be canceled by the rites of the church, the most important of which was the mass, or the consecration and oblation of the elements of the Lord's Supper. That ordinance is to be observed in remembrance of Christ, but the people of the Oriental Churches are taught ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... trade, ladies put poison-bottles on their dressing-tables as openly, and used them with as little scruple upon others, as modern dames use Eau de Cologne or lavender-water upon themselves. So powerful is the influence of fashion, it can even cause murder to be regarded as a venial peccadillo. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... Let us rather discuss this omelette, a dish worthy of the gods, and the bacon in it, the savour of which might imperil a saint. Sister Gabrielle, you tempt us this evening to commit the sin of gluttony, which is the most venial of all sins. And I will bear the burden ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... strength, the moral courage, to tell Lewis that cowardice and weakness lay in that very yielding, in the fear which led him into new sin sooner than to face the consequences of former misdeeds,—misdeeds more venial than that now proposed. It was not the doctor of whom Percy stood in such awe half so much as his parents, especially his mother. It is more than possible that he would have gone to the former and made confession of past offences rather than continue in such ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... plunder was considered by Rob Roy as a far more venial offence than if he had fought against Lord Mar, or offended Argyle, with whom he continued on such convenient terms, that he did not leave Perth until after the arrival of that General. He then retired with the spoils he had acquired, and continued for some years in the practice ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... discharged, and that in disgrace, to be rendered homeless, cast upon the world at a moment's notice, for that which—with but trifling, almost unconscious, manipulation of fact—could be made to appear as nothing worse than a venial error of judgment, did really sound and seem ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... to the warrant, to send Joan Bocher, a silly woman, to the stake. Yet Latimer never thought of his own conduct in his last moments; nor did Cranmer thrust his hand into the fire for a real crime, but for one which was venial, through the frailty of human nature. Our gracious Elizabeth could likewise burn people for religion. Two Dutchmen, Anabaptists, suffered in this place in 1675, and died, as Holinshed sagely remarks, with "roring and crieing." But let ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various
... fidelity. Polygamy, which once prevailed among them to a great extent, was now rarely indulged. All the crimes denounced by the Christian faith met with severe punishment among them. Even theft, so venial a crime among the Indians, had recently been punished with hanging, by sentence ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... fidelimm defunctorum), the day set apart in the Roman Catholic Church for the commemoration of the faithful departed. The celebration is based on the doctrine that the souls of the faithful which at death have not been cleansed from venial sins, or have not atoned for past transgressions, cannot attain the Beatific Vision, and that they may be helped to do so by prayer and by the sacrifice of the mass. The feast falls on the 2nd of November; or on the 3rd if the 2nd is a Sunday or ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... utterly abominated his deceitful deed, I could not but admit in my heart that the result was put of all proportion to the intent: he had never dreamt of doing me this injury, or indeed any injury at all. Intrinsically the deceit had been quite venial, the reason for it obviously the reason that Raffles had given me. It was quite true that he had spoken of this Lochmaben peerage as a new creation, and of the heir to it in a fashion only applicable to Alick Carruthers. He had given me hints, which I had been too ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... right good will. They had observed a large party of the enemy clearing out of Alexandersfontein, and were possessed of an hallucination that it portended an attack on Beaconsfield. These wolf-cries, however, were venial faults; they denoted watchfulness; we were not disposed to take umbrage at small things; it was a day of victory. No suspicion of the truth flashed through our minds to upset our comfortable conclusions. Our ignorance was bliss; the folly of wisdom was to manifest itself ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... story," and following it up by proof (in opposition to the assertion of Malone), that Sir Thomas Lucy had deer, which Shakespeare might have been concerned in stealing. I also, in the same place (vol. i. p. xcv.), showed, from several authorities, how common and how venial offence it was considered in the middle of the reign of Elizabeth. Looking over some MSS. of that time, a few weeks since, I met with a very singular and confirmatory piece of evidence, establishing that in the year 1585, the precise period when our great dramatist is supposed to have made free ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various
... has been so ill-advised as to take a liberty with her, one should hasten to make amends by repentance and confession. Events have been transposed to the extent of some few months in this narrative in order to preserve the continuity and evenness of the story. I hope so small a divergence may seem a venial error after so many centuries. For the rest, it is as accurate as a good deal of research and hard work could ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... have made a better defence. He might have said that as we often eat or drink or smoke for pleasure, so we may indulge in other sensualities. If he had argued that his sin was comparatively venial and so personal-peculiar that it carried with it no temptation to the normal man, I should ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... for a ham or a gooseberry dumpling: she values her receipts, not because they secure to her a certain flavour, but because they remind her that her neighbours want it:- a feeling laughable in a priestess, shameful in a priest; venial when it withholds the blessings of a ham, tyrannical and execrable when it narrows the boon ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... story of the young man's folly substantially as he had related it to her, but she skilfully showed how one comparatively venial thing had led to another, until an act had been committed which might have ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... a male sheep in regard to the other sin is venial blackness. Whether the teller of such a tale as this should say so outright, may be matter of dispute; but, unless he say so, the teller of this tale does not know how to tell his tale truly. Blackness such as that will be all condoned, and ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... heroes, the Gods of heaven and hell, abstractions of virtue or vice, might unblamed be made the objects of religious worship. Witchcraft therefore, and the invocation of the spirits of the dead, might be practised with toleration; or at all events were not regarded otherwise than as venial deviations from the religion ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... guilt, and as to the everlasting pain that was due to them; but who have on account of those sins still some debt of temporal punishment to pay; as also those souls which leave this world guilty only of venial sins."—"Catholic Belief," page 196 (ed. 1884; ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... has cultivated the habit of speaking correctly, as that habit is not apt to be found united with carelessness of observation. Such persons would, perhaps, look upon this sort of carelessness as a venial offence; but it is not so. Anything that interferes with, or diminishes the capacity for, perceiving or speaking the truth is of importance, and should never be passed over lightly. God is truth no less than love, and every variation ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... country town; I will not specify whether that town was Devizes or Doncaster, Beverley or Brighton: I think it highly reprehensible in a writer to be personal, and scarcely more venial do I consider the fault of him who presumes to be local. I will, however, state, that my residence lay among the manufacturing districts; but lest any of my readers should be misled by that avowal, I must inform them, that in my ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 404, December 12, 1829 • Various
... Young. Lady Mary Montagu declared that he was the best company she had ever known. He had two faults of which the world has heard much: he loved the company of men who flattered him, and at times he used wine too freely. The first of these defects was venial, and did not blind his judgment either of himself or his friends; the second defect was so common among the men of his time that Addison's occasional over-indulgence, in contrast with the excesses of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... from selfishness and self-will, and ready for obedience, to know when God speaks, though men may be His mouthpieces, and when men speak, though they may call themselves His messengers. The child's mistake was venial. It is less pardonable and more dangerous when repeated by us. If we would be guarded against it, we must be continually where Samuel was, and we must not sleep in the Temple, but 'watch and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... name is down in the will, is sufficient provocation to have it struck out: the hinting at an obligation, the consciousness of it on the part of the testator, will make him determined to avoid the formal acknowledgment of it at any expense. The disinheriting of relations is mostly for venial offences, not for base actions: we punish out of pique, to revenge some case in which we been disappointed of our wills, some act of disobedience to what had no reasonable ground to go upon; and we are obstinate in adhering to our resolution, as it was sudden and ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... straightener's treatment, but his friends did not choose to be over-curious upon the subject, and on his return to his affairs it was by common consent passed over as hardly criminal in one who was otherwise so much afflicted. For they regard bodily ailments as the more venial in proportion as they have been produced by causes independent of the constitution. Thus if a person ruin his health by excessive indulgence at the table or by drinking, they count it to be almost a part of the mental disease which brought it about, and so it goes for little, but they ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler |
