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Criminality   /krˌɪmənˈælɪti/   Listen
Criminality

noun
1.
The state of being a criminal.  Synonyms: criminalism, criminalness.






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"Criminality" Quotes from Famous Books



... of a loosening and deleterious nature: namely, to ruin Christian faith, to change all the old social and political axioms held by Christendom, and to create a new society imbued with what now goes by the name of modern ideas. It is not necessary to point out the frightful imprudence as well as criminality of many of those who were the pioneers of the movement. We must only take the new principles as a great fact, destined yet to effect a radical change in the ideas of men of all races, a change ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... been argued that an actual intent is all that can give the act a criminal character in such instances. /1/ But if the views which I have advanced as to murder and manslaughter are sound, the same principles ought logically to determine the criminality of acts in general. Acts should be judged by their tendency under the known circumstances, not by the actual intent which ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

... wholly deficient in elegance, and the artificial beauties of composition, justice requires that their defects should not be exaggerated. Still less should an intention to deceive, even on the pretence of edification, be imputed to them. Whatever may have been either the error or the criminality of some of her members, the church herself, in this, as in every other instance, has always inculcated the duty of sincerity and truth, and reprobated a deviation from them, even on the specious pretence of producing good. On this subject ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... nearly seventy years of age Garrison addressed his rebuke in tones of singular solemnity. It seemed to him that the aged statesman had transgressed against liberty "under circumstances of peculiar criminality." "Yet at this solemn period," the reprobation of the prophet ran, "you have not scrupled, nay, you have been ambitious, to lead and address an excited multitude, in vindication of all imaginable wickedness, embodied in one great system ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... at least tacitly have encouraged, otherwise the benefits would seldom have been conferred. The important rank, among human evils and wrongs, of the disappointment of expectation, is shown in the fact that it constitutes the principal criminality of two such highly immoral acts as a breach of friendship and a breach of promise. Few hurts which human beings can sustain are greater, and none wound more, than when that on which they habitually and with ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill

... into such abysses of turpitude. But he had let them grow up in ignorance of their own origin, with the vague stain of a possible illegitimacy hanging over their heads; and what wonder if they forgot in the end how noblesse oblige, and sank at last into foul depths of vice and criminality? ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen

... compromised by his ruin, and who, to their equal surprise and satisfaction, discovered that, while he had unguardedly preserved all the papers which could tend to his own destruction, he had destroyed every vestige of their criminality, rejoiced at their escape, and flattered themselves that their participation in his treachery would for ever remain undiscovered; a circumstance which rendered them ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... another full stop in thinking. Turning culprits over to the police was out of the question, an admission that such crimes had happened, and could happen again. Firing the few detected could not impress the undetected and unfired ones enough to discourage them from their profitable criminality. ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye

... repents shall be forgiven, and, indeed, is more acceptable in the eyes of Heaven than him who has never erred. Far be it from me to attempt to exculpate you in your own eyes, or extenuate your former criminality. You have sinned deeply, so deeply that you may well shrink aghast from the contemplation of your past life—may well recoil in abhorrence from yourself—and may fitly devote yourself to constant prayer and acts of penitence. But having cast off your iniquity, and ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... plainest language, of Porter's outrages upon his parents, exhibiting it in details that could not but shock every sentiment of humanity and decency; holding up the commissioners as the abettors and protectors of criminality of the deepest dye; and planting themselves fair and square against them on the merits of Porter's case. The commissioners tried to explain and extricate themselves; but they could not escape from the toils in which, through ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... been here in this country about three days, and all that time my chief reading has been the "Address to Lochlomond" you were so obliging as to send to me. Were I impannelled one of the author's jury, to determine his criminality respecting the sin of poesy, my verdict should be "guilty! a poet of nature's making!". It is an excellent method for improvement, and what I believe every poet does, to place some favourite classic author in his own walks of study and composition, before him as a model. Though your ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... held it to be unnecessary that indictments should charge, as by the common law they were required to do, that an act was done "wickedly," "feloniously," "with malice aforethought," or in any other manner that implied a criminal intent, without which there can be no criminality; but that it is sufficient to charge simply that it was done " contrary to the form of the statute in such case made and provided." This form of indictment proceeds plainly upon the assumption that the government is absolute, ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner

... whatever authority, stands upon two principles: first, an incapacity arising from the supposed incongruity of two duties in the commonwealth; secondly, an incapacity arising from unfitness by infirmity of nature or the criminality of conduct. As to the first class of incapacities, they have no hardship annexed to them. The persons so incapacitated are paid by one dignity for what they abandon in another, and for the most part the situation arises from their own choice. But ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... having no counsellor to assist him, desired me to draw up his defence in such a manner that he might not implicate any person, and, at the same time, clear my brother and himself from any criminality of conduct. With God's help I accomplished this task to his great satisfaction, and to the surprise of the commissioners, who did not expect to find them so well prepared ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various

... on the floor of Congress, that we should wait until the people of that District themselves demand the abolition of the system of slavery. This doctrine we conceive to be fallacious. The people there are not exclusively responsible for the national disgrace and criminality attending it. The United States government, and of course, the people in every section of the Union, must bear the odium and meet the consequences:—and if so, it follows, that they have a perfect ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various

... hand removed the children from their vicious and criminal surroundings known as one of the crime-cradles of the State of New York. Neither church nor school took them under its protecting care. Born and reared in the haunts of vice and crime, nothing but viciousness and criminality could be expected as a result. Without going, so far as a wellknown ex-member of our State Legislature, whose antagonism to the humanitarian treatment of prisoners led him to the belief that "there wasn't ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence

... at least "get by." Given a hard environment they will fail, or "go down." Tens of thousands of men live in a comparatively easy environment and pass their lives as useful citizens with no taint of criminality to their names, who under a hard environment would be found in prison. On the other hand, perhaps most of the inmates of prisons would have lived as respected citizens if their environment had not been so hard. Heredity has everything to do with making the machine strong and capable, or ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow

... behavior, including veracity. But even here one would have to classify carefully, for it is obvious that the typical swindler would find lying his best cloak of disguise. On the other hand, a bold safe-blower may look down with scorn upon a form of criminality which ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy

... the pusillanimity of those who endured them unresistingly; for there were not wanting instances of magistrates honest enough to detest, and courageous enough to chastise, such outrages; and wherever the effort was made it succeeded so completely as to fix no slight criminality on those who submitted to them. In Dauphiny, the States of the province raised a small guard, which quelled the first attempts to cause riots there, and hanged the ringleaders. In Macon, a similar force, ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... acknowledged that Virginia had a right to take the life which he had staked and lost; although it would have been better for her, in the hour that is fast coming, if she could generously have forgotten the criminality of his attempt in its enormous folly. On the other hand, any common-sensible man, looking at the matter unsentimentally, must have felt a certain intellectual satisfaction in seeing him hanged, if it were only in requital of his preposterous miscalculation of possibilities. [Footnote: ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... connection with this controversy, represents that two United States citizens attached to the legation were arbitrarily seized at his Side, when leaving the capital of Paraguay, committed to prison, and there subjected to torture for the purpose of procuring confessions of their own criminality and testimony to support the President's allegations against the United States minister. Mr. McMahon, the newly appointed minister to Paraguay, having reached the La Plata, has been instructed to proceed without delay to Asuncion, there to investigate the whole subject. The rear-admiral commanding ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson

... told of the iniquities of Catholicism such as are told of no other of the sects of Christendom? Allow for all the exaggeration you like, all the prejudice of historians, all the spitefulness of enemies, yet there surely remains sufficient Catholic criminality to show that at the best the Church is no better than any other religious body, and at the worst, infinitely worse. The Catholic Church, then, is not holy enough to be ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson

... "what course I should have taken if pressed to give judgment at the trial, and had given it. If nothing had taken place respecting the validity of any part of the indictment—but much more if its validity had been disputed, but established—I should leave apportioned the sentence to the degree of criminality that was stated in all the counts which were proved in evidence."—"I see no inconvenience in compelling a judge to form an opinion on the validity of the counts, before he proceeds to pass judgment. He ought to take care that a count is good before he allows a verdict to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... slaves, in honour of their deceased friend. On other occasions, it is likely that the life of the slave can only be taken when he has been convicted of some delinquency; although, as the chief is the sole judge of his criminality, he will find this, it may be thought, but a slight protection. The domestic slaves of the chiefs, however, it is quite possible, and even likely, are much more completely at the mercy of their caprice and passion than the general body of the common ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik

... confused with the perception has induced many falsely to imagine that the mind is active in belief,—that belief is an act of volition,—in consequence of which it may be regulated by the mind. Pursuing, continuing this mistake, they have attached a degree of criminality to disbelief; of which, in its nature, it is incapable: it ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... to be exempt from punishment. He who is sane enough to conceive an act of wickedness, to plan its execution, and to attempt to perpetrate it, although he may be in other respects of unsettled mind, is equally amenable to the law, and ought equally to suffer for his criminality with him who has a wiser and sounder head ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... the influence of the social and educational psychologists and behaviorists could child-labor, the hobo, unemployment, poverty, and criminality be given their just emphasis; and it seems accurate to ascribe the social sterility of Economic theory and its programme to its ignorance and lack of interest in ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... though mild in language, was pretty sharp on the "criminality" of such conduct as was imputed to the accused, yet certainly left some margin to the jury for the exercise of their opinion upon "the law and ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan

... what I was hired for!" he mused, "a fence; a wretched mask put up to hide the trickery and chicanery and criminality—the crookedness which has never been put aside; which nobody ever meant to put aside! My God! they've let me stultify myself in a thousand ways; let me sit here day after day with a lie in my mouth, ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... tombstone, a small specimen of the latter forming a unit of this heterogeneous whole. This form of mental dyscrasia is much more frequent than people suppose, and the antecedents of shop-lifters and the like should be carefully examined before a judgment on their criminality is passed. ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir

... causeless assault from the Christian nations of Europe, who have so much to lose and nothing to gain by war, and who have already, in their groaning, tax-burdened people, a sufficient reminder of the folly and criminality of war? They have not money for another war, which would bring on the dangers of bankruptcy and the revolt ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various

... same religion as her mother, and every wife to be of the same religion as her husband: for, though such religion should be false, that docility which induces the mother and daughter to submit to the order of nature, takes away, in the sight of God, the criminality of their error'.* As they are not in a capacity to judge for themselves, they ought to abide by the decision of their fathers and husbands as confidently as by that ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

... much wider discretion than we allow." Neither in Rome nor in England has the advocate been held to be disgraced by undertaking the defence of bad men who have been notoriously guilty. What an English barrister may do, there was no reason that a Roman advocate should not do, in regard to simple criminality. Cicero himself has explained in the passage I have quoted how the Roman practice did differ from ours in regard to treason. He has stated also that he knew nothing of the first conspiracy when he offered to defend Catiline on the score of provincial peculations. No ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope

... which I do not deny—was it not open to cite him, even though the citer were a bishop? Why, yes—uneasily one answers, yes; but still the case records a strange alteration, and still one could have wished to hear such a doctrine, which ascribes human infirmity (nay, human criminality) to every book of the Bible, uttered by anybody rather than by a father of the Church, and guaranteed by anybody rather than by an infidel, in triumph. A boy may fire his pistol unnoticed; but a sentinel, mounting guard in the dark, must remember the trepidation that will ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... may a good motive be tortured, by the appearance of evil, into the most despicable criminality! Colonel Dumont in this will had devised large sums of money to various charitable institutions, and in the event of his life being prolonged, did not wish to be pointed at and lauded for this act. True charity is modest, and Colonel Dumont ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton

... rolled on. Gradually she found herself seeing more and more of Tom Peters, and gradually, strange to say, he grew less repulsive. From the talks they had together, she began to see that there was really no reason to put faith in Everard; his criminality, his faithlessness, were too flagrant. Gradually she grew ashamed of her early mistrust of Peters; remorse bred esteem, and esteem ultimately ripened into feelings so warm, that when Tom gave freer vent to the love that had been visible ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various

... irretrievable, stares him in the face. He can be saved now. Imprison him as a criminal, and I affirm to you that he will be lost. He has neither the face nor the manner of one who can survive that terrible ordeal. Weigh in the scales his criminality and the suffering he has undergone. The latter is ten times heavier already. He has lain in prison under this charge for more than two months. Is he likely ever to forget that? Imagine the anguish of his mind during that time. He has had his punishment, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... highly dependent on foreign aid, agriculture, and trade with neighboring countries. Much of the population continues to suffer from shortages of housing, clean water, electricity, medical care, and jobs. Criminality, insecurity, and the Afghan Government's inability to extend rule of law to all parts of the country pose challenges to future economic growth. It will probably take the remainder of the decade and continuing donor aid and attention ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... peculiar resolution was introduced to punish the usurpation of the executive authority of the government of the United States in carrying on correspondence with the government of any foreign prince or state. Gallatin thought this resolution covered too much ground. The criminality of such acts did not lie in their being usurpations, but in the nature of the crime committed. There was no authority in the Constitution for a grant of such a power to the President. To afford aid and ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens

... suddenly thrown into your hands the final interests of another,—a fellow creature shuddering between the gates of life and death: this, to a man of apprehensive conscience, would mingle the misery of an atrocious criminality with the misery of a bloody calamity. You are called upon, by the case supposed, possibly to die, but to die at the very moment when, by any even partial failure or effeminate collapse of your energies, you will be self-denounced as a murderer. You had but the twinkling of an eye for your ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey

... Philosophy, which long years after the celebrated Dr. Binney of the Weigh-house in Thames Street issued with my leave as a tractate useful to the present generation. And while there was so much fuss made as to the criminality of a false quantity in Greek, or a deficient acquaintance with those awkward verbs in "Mi," or above all a false concord (every one of which derelictions in duty involved severe punishment), let us remember that all this time Holywell Street was suffered to infect Charterhouse ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... convicts under the soft and gentle name of absentees, is really unaccountable, unless we suppose it possible that his Excellency as a native of Ireland, and as having a well-grounded Hibernian antipathy to his absentee countrymen, uses the term as one expressive both of the criminality of the absentee and of his own abhorrence ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... that he was as far as any one from wishing his faults to pass for virtues. Deer-stealing, however, was then a kind of fashionable sport, and whatever might be its legal character, it was not morally regarded as involving any criminality or disgrace. So that the whole thing may be justly treated as a mere youthful frolic, wherein there might indeed be some indiscretion, and a deal of vexation to the person robbed, but no stain on the party engaged ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... of Ireland during this year was a continuation of the want, misery, criminality, and sedition which made up its history for so many previous years. The causes already noticed so fully in previous chapters operated in producing famine and its attendants, disease and social discontent. Notwithstanding all the efforts of government by parliamentary ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... the better; and social morality seems to have been at its worst during the past century when Sonnini travelled (A.D. 1717). The French officer, who is thoroughly trustworthy, draws the darkest picture of the widely spread criminality, especially of the bestiality and the sodomy (chaps. xv.), which formed the "delight of the Egyptians." During the Napoleonic conquest Jaubert in his letter to General Bruix (p. I9) says, "Les Arabes et les Mamelouks ont traite quelques-uns de nos prisonniers ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... arrived at by Hume and Mrs. Eastham, Capella must be deemed capable of murdering his wife's brother, of bringing about the death of his wife after securing the reversion of her vast property to himself, and of falling in love with Helen—all in the same breath. This species of criminality was only met with in lunatics, and Capella impressed the barrister as an emotional personage, capable of supreme good as of supreme ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy

... stopped in the office yesterday to lecture me on the criminality of tissue-paper hats," said Uncle Fred at supper the next evening. Although his voice was solemn, the twinkle in his eyes told much to the ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne

... prefect Titianus, had taken advantage of the oppressed people to extract money, and Andreas, by the payment of a large sum, had succeeded in persuading him to sign a document which exonerated Polybius and his son from all criminality, and protected their person and property against soldiers and town guards alike. This safe-conduct secured a peaceful future to the genial old man, and filled the measure of what he owed to the freedman, even to overflowing. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... says, 'Pecorantes et Sodomise in terra, vivi confodiantur.' The Mirror makes it treason. Bestiality can never make any progress; it cannot therefore be injurious to society in any great degree, which is the true measure of criminality in foro cirili, and will ever be properly and severely punished, by universal derision. It may, therefore, be omitted. It was anciently punished with death, as it has been latterly. LI AElfrid. 31. and 25 H. 8. c. 6. see ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... excitement. She put her hand upon her forehead for a few moments, as if collecting her faculties, or endeavouring to remember the purport of their previous conversation. A slight moisture had broken through her skin, and altogether, notwithstanding her avowed criminality in entering into an unholy bond, she appeared an object of ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various

... kiss; and, without much straining of words, 4. Merely to refrain from angry expostulation and a rupture of acquaintance when one is kissed—this last partaking rather of the nature of the ratification of an unauthorized act, and being, in fact, the measure of Dora's criminality. But the other shades of meaning caught ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope

... ever-occurring political corruption in the Northern and the chief factor in the race troubles in the Southern States, where the leaders in this disregard and unlawful action allow the honors and emoluments of office to shut out from their view the constitutional rights of others; and by the criminality of their conduct and subterfuge strive to make selfish ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

... little shocked at the unimaginative and superfluous criminality in him that had turned old cramped and stagnant Fishbourne into a blaze and new beginnings. (I wish from the bottom of my heart I could add that he was properly sorry.) But something constricting and restrained seemed to have been destroyed by ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... at the present time I have had the honour of being elected an honourary member of numerous humanitarian organisations such as "The League of Peace," "The League for Combating Juvenile Criminality," "The Society of the Friends of Man," and others. Besides, at the request of the editor of one of the most widely read newspapers, I am to begin next month a series of public lectures, for which purpose I am going on a tour together ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev

... night and day about his cousin, certain of her criminality and profoundly convinced of her moral rectitude. What had Muhlen done? He had probably threatened her with some exposure. He was her legal husband—he could make himself abominable to her and to ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... Carelessness, slipshodness, lack of thoroughness, are crimes against self, against humanity, that often do more harm than the crimes that make the perpetrator an outcast from society. Where a tiny flaw or the slightest defect may cost a precious life, carelessness is as much a crime as deliberate criminality. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... to avow that his own individual convictions are opposed to those of his fellows. We are compelled to regard their joint labours as one production. It is the corporate efficacy of the several contributions which constitutes the chief criminality of the volume. It is to the respectability and weight of the conjoined names of its authors, and to their combined efforts, that 'Essays and Reviews' are indebted ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... thus disowned, they may be restored to membership—Generally understood, however, that they must previously express their repentance for their marriages—This confession of repentance censured by the world—But is admissible without the criminality supposed—The word repentance misunderstood by ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... great enemy breathed his last. He was not exactly the monster of iniquity that he has been painted; not a criminal for the love of criminality. He was a Tiberius rather than a Nero; a morbid influence, not a devouring pestilence. A perfectly sombre bigot; an example of what the Greeks would have called [Greek: hubris] of a very exceptional kind, who believed devoutly in himself as the instrument chosen by the Saints for the overthrow ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... promising. Indeed, it was afterward ascertained to be the unanimous opinion of the judges that the charge of high-treason could not be legally sustained, since the individual who was alleged to be the partner in the criminality imputed to her was a foreigner, and therefore, "owing no allegiance to the crown," could not be said to ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... imagined that their mutual animosity had extorted the discovery of their common guilt" ("Decline and Fall," Gibbon, vol. ii., pp. 204, 205). It was fortunate, the historian concludes, that some of the magistrates reported that they discovered no such criminality. It is, be it noted, simultaneously with the promulgation of these charges that the persecution of the Christians takes place; during the first century very little is heard of such, and there is very little persecution [see ante, pp. 209-213]. In the following ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... intelligence tests. Such tests have demonstrated, beyond any possibility of doubt, that the most important trait of at least 25 per cent of our criminals is mental weakness. The physical abnormalities which have been found so common among prisoners are not the stigmata of criminality, but the physical accompaniments of feeble-mindedness. They have no diagnostic significance except in so far as they are indications of mental deficiency. Without exception, every study which has been made of the intelligence ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman

... bitter tears of hopeless grief and helpless anger, not the soul-refreshing tears which are sometimes distilled from sorrow by the sunshine of love. But of all the cruelties to which he has been subjected, the most devilish has been that of making him believe in his own criminality, in the corruption of his innocent heart. In the deadly shade of that chilling cloud, the flower of his opening life has too often withered before it has had time to expand. For what is most cruel in cruelty is its tendency to demoralise its victims, especially those who are of tender ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... add also, in the language of Captain Hall, that the "slaveholders ought not (immediately) to disentangle themselves from the obligations which have devolved upon them, as the masters of slaves." We believe that a master may sustain his relation to the slave, with as little criminality as the slave sustains his relation to the master.' * * * 'Slavery, in its mildest form, is an evil of the darkest character. Cruel and unnatural in its origin, no plea can be urged in justification of its continuance but the plea ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison

... on mature reflection, we may recognise their tact and Christian prudence in these features of their communication. Fornication was one of the crying sins of Gentilism, and, except when it interfered with social arrangements, the heathen did not even acknowledge its criminality. When, therefore, the new converts were furnished with the welcome intelligence that they were not obliged to submit to the painful rite of circumcision, it was well, at the same time, to remind them that there were lusts of the flesh which they were bound to ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... say the mere supineness of the English workmen has put them in the capitalist slave-yard. The capitalist has put them in the capitalist slaveyard; and very cunning smiths have hammered the chains. It is just this creative criminality in the authors of the system that we must not allow to be slurred over. The capitalist is in the dock to-day; and so far as I at least can prevent him, he shall ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton

... instantly suspect him of trading upon it. He rode on in a deep study. Was he reviewing his past life? A vagabond by birth and education, a swindler by profession, an outcast by reputation, without absolutely turning his back upon respectability, he had trembled on the perilous edge of criminality ever since his boyhood. He did not scruple to cheat these Mexicans,—they were a degraded race,—and for a moment he felt almost an accredited agent of progress and civilization. We never really understand the ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte

... in vain that Everett, with the precision of a hypocrite, and Dangerfield, with the audacity of a bully, narrated, with added circumstances of suspicion and criminality, their meeting with Julian Peveril in Liverpool, and again at Martindale Castle. It was in vain they described the arms and accoutrements which they pretended to have discovered in old Sir Geoffrey's ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... maid-servants, and the direct warning from the old specialist which had long since faded from her mind, had been forcibly revived by the happenings at the school; and being one of those who invariably plump for the worst, and without giving the slightest thought to the criminality of the proceeding, she had definitely decided, if she could coerce the girl into falling in with her plans, to marry her to the highest bidder before worse ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest

... distribution. The great majority of citizens who are engaged in the processes that go to make up this portion of food costs are employed in an obviously essential economic function, and they do not approach it in a spirit of criminality, but as a very necessary, proper, and honorable function. They have, since the European War began, rather over-enjoyed the result of economic forces that were not of their own creation. That a considerable margin is necessary to cover the legitimate costs of, and profits on, distribution is ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg

... property in one State, and fleeing to another, shall be delivered up in the same manner as persons committing crimes against other property, and that the laws of the State from which such persons flee shall be the test of criminality." That is another one of the demands of an extremist and rebel. The Constitution of the United States, article ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various

... the prisoners, all three of whom stared at him. He incorporated into his speech all the latest ideas then in vogue in the circle of his acquaintances, and what was then and is now received as the last word of scientific wisdom. He spoke of heredity, of innate criminality, of Lombroso, of Charcot, of evolution, of the struggle for existence, of hypnotism, of hypnotic suggestion, ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... Marsay is a much more ambitious and a much more interesting figure. In him are combined the attractions of criminality, beauty, brains, success, and, last of all, dandyism. It is a well-known and delightful fact that the most Anglophobe Frenchmen—and Balzac might fairly be classed among them—have always regarded the English dandy with half-jealous, half-awful ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... and Lacassagne, the former looking upon society as the preparer of crime, and the criminals as instruments that execute them. The latter find that "the social environment is the cultivation medium of criminality; that the criminal is the microbe, an element which only becomes important when it finds the medium which causes it to ferment; EVERY SOCIETY HAS ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman

... independently brought an accusation against Buckingham relating to the failure of the Spanish marriage. The conduct of which he is accused may rather have shown ambition and foolish assumption than any real criminality; and Buckingham's defence is not without force. The Lower House, to whom it was communicated, nevertheless expressed their opinion that a formal prosecution must take place. It seemed that Buckingham must surely but sink under the combined weight ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... church. Philip was a sceptic, most of his friends were the same. Virginia listened to their talk, and, in time, her faith began to waver; she liked to think they were right, and that the Bible was a string of fables; it lessened her sense of criminality and remorse, but it cut her off forever from the only consolation a woman can know, when her hour of trial comes. If man could supply the place of God and Saviour now, whither should she fly when he was torn from her ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various

... widening of the influence of supernaturalism on practice, with the onward flow of time. On the contrary, the various religions are, to a great extent, mutually exclusive; and their adherents delight in charging each other, not merely with error, but with criminality, deserving and ensuing punishment of infinite severity. In singular contrast with natural knowledge, again, the acquaintance of mankind with the supernatural appears the more extensive and the more exact, and the influence of supernatural doctrines upon conduct ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... of Ireland, in their bitter hours of misfortune, have the strongest right to impeach the criminality of the ministers of the crown, inasmuch as it has pleased a merciful Providence to favour Ireland in the present season with a most abundant crop of oats. Yet, whilst the Irish harbours are closed against the importation of foreign food, they ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... before the world. Had one simultaneous and compact movement characterized the expedition, the American authorities would never have interfered with it; but when it was rubbed under their nose for days, through the blundering or criminality of those who undertook to direct it from the War Department, what was to have been expected other than is now ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh

... the villainous conduct to which I had sacrificed her. All those whose life's happiness, whose entire existence, I had ruined with heartless indifference were like tormenting spirits of vengeance, and I heard their hoarse hollow voices echoing from the grave, upbraiding me with all the guilt and criminality, the seed of which I had planted in their bosoms. It was only my wife who was able to drive away the unutterable distress and horror that then came upon me. I made a vow never to touch a card more. I lived in retirement; I rent asunder all ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... first sight presents a problem, I admit," he said, "but not so complete as to look absolutely insoluble. I have, as you may be aware, made a study of criminology, and in my researches, which have included criminality, have come across incidents which to the smartest detective brains were at the outset quite as baffling. Clement's tragic end is a great blow to me, and I am not going quietly to accept the easy, obvious conclusion ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William

... the most remarkable and interesting histories of human folly, credulity, and criminality which the present day has produced. Comment upon its teaching is scarcely necessary; but the thoughtful reader will not fail to perceive how important a bearing it has upon the whole subject of belief without full ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond

... broke forth; "Unhappy brother!" cried he, "for whom no man would intercede—yet ye all can be intercessors for a villain!" If Richard had been instigator or executioner, it is not likely that the king would have assumed the whole merciless criminality to himself, without bestowing a due share on his brother Gloucester. Is it possible to renew the charge, and not recollect ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole

... moral obligations tending to unfit an officer for the proper discharge of his office, or to bring the office into public contempt and derision, is, when charged and proven, an impeachable offense. And the nature and criminality of the offense may depend on the official character of the accused. A judge would be held to higher official purity, and an executive officer to a stricter observance of the letter of the law. The President, bound as a citizen to obey the law, and specially sworn to execute the law, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... should be laid before the Prince of Parma. It does not appear that this personage, "an excellent man and a learned," attempted to dissuade the young man from his project by arguments, drawn from any supposed criminality in the assassination itself, or from any danger, temporal or eternal, to which ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... object; but the result of this most fatal error has been the increase of impiety in an astonishing manner, and there are a great number of villages where few go to mass, and more than the third part refuse to take the communion—which is probably also the cause of the increase in criminality which has been noted. But a short time ago, during the government of General Lardizabal, the religious presented a petition through the archbishop, asking that they be allowed to administer corrective punishment at the door of the church, as had always been their custom with those ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various

... correspondence with an evolution in the character of Satan. "Satan appears in Scripture under four leading characters:—first as the tempter of freedom, who desires to bring to decision, secondly as the accuser, who by virtue of the law retorts criminality on man; thirdly as the instrument of the Divine, which brings evil and death upon men; fourthly and lastly he is described, especially in the New Testament, as the enemy of God and man." He supposes "a change in Satan in the course of the history of the divine revelation, in conflict with which ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various

... for doubt that the reports on this point were constantly corrected, brought under review of the governing elders, councils, judges, princes, or king, according to the historical circumstances, so that the need and the criminality of such a census would vanish at the same moment. But this was not the census ordered by David. He wanted a more specific return, probably of the particular wealth and nature of the employment pursued by each individual family, so that upon this return he might ground a permanent ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... Congress alone to decide. It is by the laws already made criminal in our citizens to embarrass or anticipate that decision by unauthorized military operations on their part. Offenses of this character, in addition to their criminality as violations of the laws of our country, have a direct tendency to draw down upon our own citizens at large the multiplied evils of a foreign war and expose to injurious imputations the good faith and honor of the country. As such they deserve to be put down with promptitude and decision. I can ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson

... the young mother spoke so eloquently in her words and looks, that Mrs. Leslie, on hearing her tale, found much less to forgive than she had anticipated. Still she deemed it necessary to enlighten Alice as to the criminality of the connection she had formed. But here Alice was singularly dull—she listened in meek patience to Mrs. Leslie's lecture; but it evidently made but slight impression on her. She had not yet seen enough of the social state to correct the first impressions of the natural: and all ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... sound," said the Cadi, "and I must acquit you of criminality. Unfortunately, Allah has made me so that I must also take off your head—unless," he added, thoughtfully, "you offer me half of the gold; for He ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce

... are true, whatsoever things are beautiful, whatsoever things are of good report," these seek, say, and do, but when the man who would discover a continent robs a merchant ship or steals a cargo of slaves, or when a poet teaches gross vulgarity, then the thinker is hemmed and degraded by criminality. It is the glory of our age that it is washing white much of old thought. What is the emancipation of woman but the filtration of old thought? Did not Columbus study and read and think, and then go out and load his ship with slaves? Did not the ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... great many objections to it. In the first place, in order that the complaint be received at all, you must produce a certain amount of proof; then, supposing it is received, and the authorities are determined to pursue the case, you must have more evidence of criminality than you have now; and, moreover, supposing that you can show that the so-called Marquis de Sallenauve committed a fraud, how will you prove that the so-called son was privy to it? He might have been the dupe of ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac

... the midst of this national criminality, we shall be struck again and again by the evidences of the most noble individual feeling. The tears of Dandolo were not shed in hypocrisy, though they could not blind him to the importance of the conquest of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... they need not do them. They all know it. They know that what they are doing is wrong, and would not do it for anything in the world if they had the power of resisting the forces which shut their eyes to the criminality of their actions and impel ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy

... glance at Philip's camp, had been hostilely considering the discouraging effect of Aunt Agatha's presence upon the rival camper. That Aunt Agatha would presently discern degenerative traces of criminality in his face by reason of his reprehensible proximity to her niece's camp, Diane did not doubt. That the aggrieved lady would call upon him within a day or so and air her rigid notions of propriety and convention, was well within the range ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple

... dreadfully he was altogether unprepared for it. Knowing the consequences of heresy, he was also alarmed for her, and came near betraying himself. How interesting it would be to learn precisely and from the excellent authority before him, in what the heresy of the Princess consisted. If there was criminality in her faith, what was to be said of ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... good deal of dispute as to whether or not poverty is a direct cause of crime, it is quite generally agreed that a bad economic situation gives rise to social conditions which can be definitely connected with criminality. The strain and artificiality of urban life, together with the difficulty of obtaining inexpensive and wholesome recreation in the poorer sections of large cities, has a close connection with crime. The overcrowding so common in tenement districts renders ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson

... Christianity; and is, therefore a sin against God, which acquires additional enormity when committed by nations professedly Christian, and in an age when the subject has been so generally discussed, and its criminality ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge

... unlikely to be cherished by his habits of life. Amongst these habits was the excess of his social kindness. He scorned so much to deny his company and his redundant hospitality to any man who manifested a wish for either by calling upon him, that he almost seemed to think it a criminality in himself if, by accident, he really was from home on your visit, rather than by possibility a negligence in you, that had not forewarned him of your intention. All his life, from this and other causes, he must have read in the spirit of one liable to sudden interruption; like a dragoon, ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... torments me, and not the unlikely, and you cannot but recognize that what I fear is possible. I was at Caffies the day of the crime. I lost there a button torn off by violence. This button picked up by the police proves, according to them, the criminality of the one who lost it. They will find that I am ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot

... royal palace of Frederiksborg, with its chapel where are crowned the Kings of Denmark, and its pane of glass on which Caroline Matilda [Footnote: Sister of George III, Queen of Christian VII. She was entrapped into a confession of criminality to save the life of her supposed lover Struensee, who was afterwards beheaded. She was condemned to imprisonment for life in the Castle of Zell, and died there aged twenty-four in 1775.] had scratched, 'O keep me innocent; make others great.' His professional interest was ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury

... words used in their religious services is incredible; thus, in chiding anyone for levity during a solemn worship, they say, Che hakeet Kana, "you resemble those reproved in Canaan," and, to convey the idea of criminality, they say Hackset Canaha, "the sinners of Canaan." They call lightning eloah, and the rumbling of thunder rowah, ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... somewhat staggered the preconceptions of the old soldier concerning Edward's supposed accession to the mutiny in the regiment; and in the unfortunate state of the country, the mere suspicion of disaffection, or an inclination to join the insurgent Jacobites, might infer criminality indeed, but certainly not dishonour. Besides, a person whom the Major trusted had reported to him (though, as it proved, inaccurately) a contradiction of the agitating news of the preceding evening. According to this second edition of the intelligence, the Highlanders had ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... could not discover historical and scientific reasons for its existence. And it is indeed a strange contrast that Italy should have arrived at a perfect theoretical development of a classical school of criminology, while there persists, on the other hand, the disgraceful condition that criminality assumes dimensions never before observed in this country, so that the science of criminology cannot stem the tide of crime in high and low circles. It is for this reason, that the positive school of criminology arises out of the very nature ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri

... involved, and the narrative long-winded and tiresome. It is, perhaps, an adaptation, though not a literal translation, of a German historical romance. But the motif—a son predestined to evil by the weakness and sensuality of his father, a father punished for his want of rectitude by the passionate criminality of his son, is the very key-note ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... know who I mean, ma'am." Then Emily covered her face with her hands and burst into violent tears. She had not determined whether she did or did not believe this last accusation made against her husband. She had had hardly time to realise the criminality of the offence imputed. But she did believe that the woman before her had been ruined by her husband's speculations. "It's very bad, ma'am; isn't it?" said Mrs. Parker, crying for company. "It's bad all round. If you had five children as hadn't bread you'd ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... all the enthusiasm natural to a lover of books. He was a book-lover, a man full of fine tastes and cultured elegant ways of thinking. If he had been extravagant (which he was not) it would have been in the most innocent, nay delightful and laudable way. To attach any notion of criminality, any suspicion of wrong-doing to such a virtuous indulgence, how unjust it would be! There was no company upstairs that evening. Copperhead had strolled out with Reginald to smoke his cigar, much against the will of the latter, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... consultation upon the arrival of Malluch. The latter began the search at the Tower of Antonia, and began it boldly, by a direct inquiry of the tribune commanding. He gave the officer a history of the Hurs, and all the particulars of the accident to Gratus, describing the affair as wholly without criminality. The object of the quest now, he said, was if any of the unhappy family were discovered alive to carry a petition to the feet of Caesar, praying restitution of the estate and return to their civil rights. Such a petition, he had no doubt, would result in an investigation ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... of so important a judicial determination, and to enable the friends of the convicted parties to understand precisely the degree of criminality which attaches to them in consequence of these convictions, the following pamphlet has been prepared—giving a more full and accurate statement of the proceedings than can ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous

... men, women, and children, whose slavery is none the less slavery because they are driven by the fear of starvation instead of the overseer's lash. Perhaps two hundred years from now our descendants will see the criminality of our industrial system to-day, as clearly as we see the wrong in that of our forefathers. The utmost piety was observed in setting out a slave-buying expedition. The commissions were issued "by the Grace of God," divine guidance was implored ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... vagueness of my replies increased his alarm. Nor did I protest at the abuse he heaped upon your absent head. For I know how wickedly and unscrupulously you acted in the felony of my love, and there was a certain humorous satisfaction in hearing father give a "philosophic proposition" to your criminality. My only prayer was that he might not ask me if I loved you. Philip, I would rather live on bread and water a week than confess it to any living man besides yourself. But father has dwelt too long outside the realm of romance to ask that very natural question. Finally I protested ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More

... Camillo's and Isabella's murders, and throws her before marriage into Brachiano's arms. Added to this ambition, she is possessed with the cold demon of her own imperial and victorious beauty. She has the courage of her criminality in the fullest sense; and much of the fascination with which Webster has invested her, depends upon her dreadful daring. Her portrait is drawn with full and firm touches. Although she appears but five times on the scene, she fills it from the first line of the drama to the last. Each appearance ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... concluded all the particular observations which I had to address you upon this paper; and having shown you that by the least liberal construction, no criminality of intention can be imputed to the author, how can I doubt of your acquittal? For it is your duty to construe the author's words so as to give them an innocent meaning if they will bear it, and not come to a conclusion ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper

... who conspires to do a crime may approach the most upright man in the world with whom he had been, before the criminality was known to the world, on terms of intimacy, and whose position in the world was such that he might be on terms of intimacy with reputable gentlemen. It is the misfortune of a man that is approached in that way; it is not his crime, ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... miseries endured by the unfortunate Africans excite our pity on the one hand, the vices, which are connected with them, provoke our indignation and abhorrence on the other. The Slave Trade, in this point of view, must strike us as an immense mass of evil on account of the criminality attached to it, as displayed in the various branches of it, which have already been examined. For, to take the counterpart of the evil in the first of these, can we say that no moral turpitude is to be placed to the account of those, who, living on the ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... the marquis of Pescara can never rank among the votaries of vice and folly. It is not against the greater instances of criminality that I wish to guard you. I am not apprehensive of a sudden and a total degeneracy. But remember, my lord, you will, from your situation, be inevitably surrounded with flatterers. You are naturally fond of commendation. Do not let this generous ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin

... the instrument out and dropped it in my cabin. Actually, the thing needn't be too serious if we stay on guard. But of course we shouldn't go back to the Fleet station after we have the stuff. Gadgetry of that kind suggests bad intentions ... also a rather sophisticated level of criminality for an I-Fleet. We'll return directly to the Hub. We might have to go on short rations for a few weeks, but we'll make it. And we'll keep those two so-called crew ...
— The Star Hyacinths • James H. Schmitz

... that he recognised his criminality, only in the fact that he had been unsuccessful and had ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... a shriek, "That's the man," and incontinently went off into a fit of hysterics in front of thirty-six seamen. I must say that never in my life did I see a ship's company look so frightened. Yes, in this tale of guilt, there was a curious absence of mere criminality, and a touch of that fantasy which is often a part of a seaman's character. It wasn't greed that moved him, I think. It was something much less simple: boredom, perhaps, or a bet, or the ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad

... air of a jail; his certainty of the doom to be passed against him; his knowledge that the uncle of Lucy Brandon was to be his judge, that Mauleverer was to be his accuser, and that in all human probability the only woman he had ever loved must sooner or later learn the criminality of his life and the ignominy of his death; let us but glance at the above blackness of circumstances that surrounded him, and it would seem that there is but little doubt as to the complexion of his thoughts! ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... by whatever authority, stands upon two principles: first, an incapacity arising from the supposed incongruity of two duties in the commonwealth; secondly, an incapacity arising from unfitness by infirmity of nature, or the criminality of conduct. As to the first class of incapacities, they have no hardship annexed to them. The persons so incapacitated are paid by one dignity for what they abandon in another, and, for the most part, the situation arises from ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke

... on the outside, he closed it again, and locked it. I instantly resumed my station; and I saw the minister approach my mother, (who appeared spell-bound,) and clasp her in his arms. He was about to proceed to the usual extreme of his criminality when my father uttered an expression of rage; I instantly ran into the room which had before served me as a hiding place, and in a moment more my father was at the door of my mother's chamber, demanding admission. After a short delay, the door was opened; and then a scene ensued which defies ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn

... coarse and blasphemous to be produced here. The whole scene, with all its attendants, was revolting and shocking, to the last degree; and when the motives of this brutal castigation are considered,—language has no power to convey a just sense of its awful criminality. After laying on some thirty or forty stripes, old master untied his suffering victim, and let her get down. She could scarcely stand, when untied. From my heart I pitied her, and—child though I was—the outrage kindled in me a feeling ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... was evidently not acquainted with even the rudiments of knavery. I wanted to get up and instruct him in them. I felt that there were little subtleties of rascaldom, little touches of criminality, that I could have put that man up to, which would have transformed his Judas from woodenness into breathing life. As it was, with no one in the village apparently who was worth his salt as a felon to teach him, his performance ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome

... villainy under a new name, a name with no very odious associations attached to it; just as they called lying "cramming," under which title it sounded much less repulsive. In fact, these young Noelites took a most Spartan view of these petty larcenies, confining the criminality to the incurring of detection. But they had never succeeded in making Charlie take this view; he never would adopt the change of language by which they altered the accepted meaning of words in accordance with their own propensities and dispositions, and ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... means; unlawful act is the combining, not any action done; actual result unimportant; intent the question; punishment far more severe than for offences done under it; always unlawful, may not amount to criminality; principle of extended to trades unions and their by-laws; of masons, etc., forbidden in 1425; against the law or customs of the staple town made criminal in 1333; general discussion of law of, chapter XII; continuing ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... said Bill, by holding forth a tender of pardon, implies a criminality in our justifiable resistance, and consequently, to treat under it, would be an implied acknowledgment, that the inhabitants of these States were, what Britain had declared them ...
— A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal, on the Affairs of North America, in Which the Mistakes in the Abbe's Account of the Revolution of America Are Corrected and Cleared Up • Thomas Paine

... homicidal than the Austrian Teutons living under a similar climate. While these facts point to the conclusion that race has apparently some influence on the amount of crime, they fail to show that race characteristics alone are sufficient to explain the differences in criminality between the same peoples when settled in different quarters of the globe. The Mongoloid type in Finland is less criminal than the same type in Hungary, and the Teutonic type in Scandinavia is less murderously disposed than the same type in the empire of Austria. It has also been ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison

... if you knew that in his present frame of mind he is much more likely to be relieved by such proofs of innocence as you can give him than overwhelmed by such as show the lack of kinship between you. For two weeks Mr. Sutherland has been bending under the belief of your personal criminality in this matter. This was his secret, which was shared ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green

... undertakes to speak upon, told us her creed. She told us she did not blame anybody, really, and did not hold any man to be criminal, or any individual to be responsible for public sentiment, as regards the difference of criminality of man ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... is all-embracing," I explained. "It is reasonably held that in such a case either that there is an inherent strain of criminality which must be eradicated at all hazard, or else that those who are responsible for the virtuous instruction of the young have been grossly neglectful of their duty. Whichever is the true cause, by this unfailing method we reach the desired ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah

... brigands made nightly sorties from Saint-Savin, and the whole region was alarmed by their depredations. There is no doubt that the outrages committed at la Sartiniere, at Vonay, and at the chateau of Saint-Seny, were committed by this band, whose boldness equals their criminality, though they were able to so terrify their victims that the latter have kept silence, and the authorities have been unable to obtain any ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac

... rise to perform a painful but, nevertheless, to me, an imperative duty; a duty which I think ought not longer to be postponed, and which cannot, without criminality on our part, be neglected. I had hoped, sir, that this duty would have devolved upon an older and more experienced member of this House than myself. Prior to our adjournment I asked a number of gentlemen to offer the resolution which I introduced, but ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross

... conduct in life, so candour, and indeed common integrity, enjoin it upon us to accompany that acknowledgment with all such circumstances, and the reasonings upon them that occur to us, as may serve to extenuate the criminality of those acts, and to show that his misconduct was the natural, or rather the necessary and inevitable result of the circumstances to which he was exposed, and nothing more than the every-day issues of human infirmity. If in discharging the office of a biographer, and canvassing the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various

... pressing for more rapid structural reforms. Benin continues to be hurt by Nigerian trade protection that bans imports of a growing list of products from Benin and elsewhere. As a result, smuggling and criminality along the Benin-Nigeria border ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... that all that the latter possess is of the Philippines and consequently theirs. But do not believe that they have any consideration for their fellow-countrymen. In its proper place we shall see that theft is the greatest part of the criminality of the islands.... It is to be noted that they generally rob on a small and rarely on a large scale; for their ambition is limited to satisfying a vice or to bettering their present condition, but not ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin

... virtues. With a weak nature, and the tastes of a sybarite, he required a great deal of money to render him happy. Like the immortal Becky Sharp, he could have been fairly honest if possessed of a large income; but not having it he stopped short of nothing save actual criminality in order to indulge his luxurious tastes to the full. Candidly speaking, he had already overstepped the mark when he altered the figures of a check his brother-in-law had given him, and, had not Pine been so generous, he would have undoubtedly occupied an extremely unpleasant ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume

... may be said as to the problems of law. A kind of popular psychology was naturally involved whenever judges or lawyers analyzed the experience on the witness stand or discussed the motives of crime or the confessions of the criminal or the social conditions of criminality. But when every day brought new discoveries in the psychological laboratory, it seemed natural to make use of the new methods and of the new results in the interest of the courtroom. The power of observation in the witness, the exactitude ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg

... a great deal for him; for if anybody in the world could understand a man, it was Baron Martin. Whether it was the Prime Minister or the unhappy thief in the dock, he knew all classes and all degrees of criminality. He was not poetical with regard to landscapes, for if one were pointed out to him by some proprietor of a lordly estate, he would say, "Yes, a vera fine place indeed; and I would ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton

... connotation of "incorrigible" in prison psychology. I became an incorrigible because I abhorred waste motion. The prison, like all prisons, was a scandal and an affront of waste motion. They put me in the jute-mill. The criminality of wastefulness irritated me. Why should it not? Elimination of waste motion was my speciality. Before the invention of steam or steam-driven looms three thousand years before, I had rotted in prison in old ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... here, his case would have been sufficiently awful, but he blackened his guilt by proceeding to take me into custody, with a right of patronage that left all his former criminality far behind. ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... of taking a drink except by climbing up on the roof, lying flat on one's stomach, and taking a suck out of a flask. But in England in any dining car one actually sees a waiter approach a person dining and say, "Beer, sir, or wine?" This is done in broad daylight with no apparent sense of criminality or moral shame. Appalling though it sounds, bottled ale is openly sold on the trains at twenty-five cents a bottle and dry sherry at ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock

... of Leisure Time.—In the fourth place, the agencies of social protection of child-life must cooeperate with all parents, whether those parents are wise or foolish, strong or weak, in preventing occasional criminality and preventable vice. ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer

... solicitously tried to imbue him or her. But this lapse during the critical growing period is so widespread, so common among boys and girls who afterward become fine men and women, that special students of the problem have come to believe that semi-criminality is quite normal, at least for boys, at this age. Now, while some children are perhaps by nature incapable of attaining to a satisfactory moral level, most children will, under suitable surroundings, ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg

... criminal when exercised towards the white people, and the impression, consequently excited in their minds is, that these acts only excite our detestation when exercised towards ourselves, and that their criminality consists, not in having committed a certain odious action, but in ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... the national fete day, but nevertheless the list of casualties kept creeping to higher figures. Bok decided to help by arousing the parents of America, in whose hands, after all, lay the remedy. He began a series of articles in the magazine, showing what had happened over a period of years, the criminality of allowing so many young lives to be snuffed out, and suggested how parents could help by prohibiting the deadly firecrackers and cannon, and how organizations could assist by influencing the passing of city ordinances. Each recurring January, ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)

... in the street, presumably immediately under her window, begins to play the tune of "Bon-Bon Buddie, My Chocolate Drop." There is something in this ragtime melody which is particularly and peculiarly suggestive of the low life, the criminality and prostitution that constitute the night excitement of that section of New York City known as the Tenderloin. The tune,—its association,—is like spreading before LAURA'S eyes a panorama of the inevitable depravity that awaits her. She is torn from every ideal that she so weakly endeavoured ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter

... people in their irregular proceedings,—under all these circumstances, I think it time to deliberate whether his majesty's service does not call me to retire to the castle, where I may, with safety to my person, more freely give my sense of the criminality of these proceedings than whilst I am in the hands of the people, some of whom, and those most active, don't scruple to declare their ...
— Tea Leaves • Various

... it," answered Barker, with a perfect placidity. "Suppose he is a tyrant—he is still a check on a hundred tyrants. Suppose he is a cynic, it is to his interest to govern well. Suppose he is a criminal—by removing poverty and substituting power, we put a check on his criminality. In short, by substituting despotism we have put a total check on one criminal and a partial check ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... to find that it was dangerous to go near the capital without an escort, but later I have been much more surprised to see that in provinces distant from the capital a complete security is enjoyed. In order to show the condition of the criminality of the island we shall present the following data drawn from the clerk's office of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various

... fourth act," says Mr. Warrington. In the fourth act the young King's attentions towards Sybilla grow more and more marked; but her husband, battling against his jealousy, long refuses to yield to it, until his wife's criminality is put beyond a doubt—and here he read the act, which closes with the terrible tragedy which actually happened. Being convinced of his wife's guilt, Carpezan caused the executioner who followed his regiment to slay her in her own palace. And the curtain of the act ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... sorrow are. Would it not be more tender and tactful, from the Christian point of view, to leave to them their consoling belief that those whom they loved acted from a sense of duty or a sentiment of patriotism; and not, just at a time of heart-rending sorrow, to press upon them the criminality of all and every one concerned in any way with war? I commend this suggestion to those who are not strangers to the value of personal sympathy and gentleness towards those ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler

... sees his own superiority in his ideas, and will fight for them; but herein I perceive his folly, for this warlike idealism is a disease peculiar to him, and its effects are similar to those of alcoholism; they add enormously to wickedness and criminality. This sort of intoxication deteriorates the brain, filling it with hallucinations, to which the living ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain

... brother's criminality had entered his heart for the first time, and it had come with the shock of certainty. The sudden recognition of the handwriting, the strange revelations of the foreign letters, had not only in themselves been a terrible disclosure, but had struck the whole "electric chain" of ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... one thing, however, is certain, he lost this jewel in his contest with Stenio Salvatori, who, having obtained possession of it, placed it in the hands of his Excellency the Duke of Palma, as a positive and incontestable evidence of the criminality of the Count. This mute witness is here," said the Grand Judge, who as he spoke exhibited a sparkling ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... masturbated. Stanley Hall knew a reform school in America where masturbation was practiced without exception, and he who could practice it oftenest was regarded with hero-worship.[299] Ferriani, who has made an elaborate study of youthful criminality in Italy, states that even if all boys and girls among the general population do not masturbate, it is certainly so among those who have a tendency to crime. Among 458 adult male criminals, Marro (as he states in ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... happiness, the frolic of the mind was so habitually chastened, that persons have gained a nook in history by the mere possession of animal spirits, too exuberant to be confined within the established bounds. Every vain jest and unprofitable word was deemed an item in the account of criminality, and whatever wit, or semblance thereof, came into existence, its birthplace was generally the pulpit, and its parent some sour old Genevan divine. The specimens of humor and satire, preserved in the sermons and controversial tracts of those ...
— Dr. Bullivant - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... intelligence which marked the conduct of those who stood ready to combat it. Society, he declared, owed its safety to the fact that the criminal class, as a rule, was made up of its least intelligent members. When criminality went allied with a shrewd mind and a sound judgment—and a smile curled about Keenan's melancholy Celtic mouth as he spoke—it became transplanted, practically, to the sphere ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer

... it gives reason for hating not a hero but a villain; unluckily it is also a reason for refusing to believe in his existence. The improbability of a thoroughpaced scoundrel writing daily elaborate confessions of his criminality to a friend, even when the friend condemns him, expatiating upon atrocities that deserved hanging, and justifying his vices on principle, is rather too glaring to be admissible. And by another odd inconsistency, Lovelace is described as being all the time a steady believer in eternal punishment ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... aware that certain countries which are much exercised over the criminality of slavery and the slave-trade, have recently adopted a system, the horrors of which are not surpassed by those of the middle passage. I refer to the importation of coolies and other persons from China and the East. In my judgment, this ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... to the ranche. They still chafe at being thwarted of a vengeance; by every man of them keenly felt, after learning the criminality of the Lancer Colonel. Such unheard of atrocity could not help kindling within their breasts indignation ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... tendency to crime, while not among the foreign born themselves. The probable explanation of this is that the children of the foreign born are often reared in our large cities, and particularly in the slum districts of those cities. Thus the high criminality of the children of the foreign born is perhaps largely a product of urban life, but it may be suggested also that the children of the foreign born lack adequate parental control in their new American environment. Certain elements among our immigrants, however, seem strongly predisposed to crime. ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood

... the solemn indictment brought by God's own voice against us all. The criminality of our unlikeness to Him rests upon our ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... Ned!—I feel all your kindness, but if you would consult my peace of mind, and wish me to regain my self-respect, you will allow me to disburthen my soul of the weight that oppresses it. This is strong language; but, while I have no confessions of deliberate criminality, or of positive vice to make, I feel it to be hardly too strong for the facts. My tale will be very short, and I crave your patience, Ned, while I expose my former weakness to these young people." Here John Effingham paused, as if to recollect himself; then ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... instincts nor his hereditary passions, and that at times—for this to happen it need only be badly directed—it is much more pernicious than useful. Statisticians have brought confirmation of these views by telling us that criminality increases with the generalisation of instruction, or at any rate of a certain kind of instruction, and that the worst enemies of society, the anarchists, are recruited among the prize-winners of schools; ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon

... committing himself to a criminality which the law would visit? Hardly that—until he entered into possession of ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing

... the closing of Philadelphia shops on his arrival, the imposition of menial offices upon the sons of freemen performing military duty, the use of wagons furnished by the State for transporting private property; but misdeeds of a far graver nature were traced to him, savoring of the criminality that prisons are built to punish. The scandalous gain with which he sought to fill a spendthrift purse caused wide and vehement rebuke. For a man of such high and peculiar place his commercial dabblings and speculative schemes argued ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... those of the countryman, so it is with his "morals." In positive attainments of conscience, virtue, and vice, the townsman shows considerable advance. This point is commonly misunderstood. The annals of crime afford irrefutable evidence of the greater criminality of the towns. London, containing less than one-fifth of the population of England and Wales, is responsible for more than one-third of the annual number of indictable crimes.[284] In France the criminality of the urban population is just double that of the rural population.[285] ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson



Words linked to "Criminality" :   guilt, criminalness, criminal, guiltiness



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