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More "Extenuate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said very easily on this side; nevertheless, I think I shall go on with my plea for the small verse-maker who has long fallen out; and though I may be unable to make a case out, the kindly critic may find some circumstance to extenuate my folly—to say, in the end, that this appears to be one of the little ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... this cause doth saye. He that hathe obserued the whole lawe / and dothe offend in one / is made giltye of all. Which sayinge truly is harde and sharpe / but most true / and teachith all men that they shuld not extenuate synne. But this place of Iames / is not to be vnderstonded / as thoughe that all ...
— A Treatise of the Cohabitation Of the Faithful with the Unfaithful • Peter Martyr
... Interspersed with Observations, Anecdotes and Remarks, tending to illustrate the moral and political characters of three nations. To which is added, a correct Engraving of Dartmoor Prison, representing the Massacre of American prisoners. Written by himself." "Nothing extenuate, or set ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... grew slow. Mme. de Marelle seemed to offer provocation by her remarks, while Mme. Forestier's charming reserve, the modesty in her voice, in her smile, all seemed to extenuate the bold sallies which issued from her lips. The dessert came and then followed the coffee. The hostess and her guests lighted cigarettes, but Forestier suddenly began to cough. When the attack was over, he growled angrily: "These parties are not good for me; they ...
— Bel Ami • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... softening influence of no other sorrows or experiences than those recorded in these leaves. If I did any wrong, as I may have done much, I did it in mistaken love, and in my want of wisdom. I write the exact truth. It would avail me nothing to extenuate ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... measure of this spirit, and is grieved at his heart, when he calls to mind his shameful denials of his Lord. If any, who think themselves his disciples are blind to their faults, or little affected with them—ready to excuse or extenuate them, especially if hidden from the world; or feel reluctant to take shame to themselves, when they have fallen, it nearly concerns them to examine the grounds of their hope toward God; there is ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... assented to, or even stated distinctly in their own minds, the proposition which it was your business to establish. Thus if a sophist has to defend one who has been guilty of some serious offense, which he wishes to extenuate, though he is unable distinctly to prove that it is not such, yet if he can succeed in making the audience laugh at some casual matter, he has gained practically the same point. So also if any one ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... this play is extraordinarily brilliant, does his best to extenuate the stiffness of it. But to my own ear, as I read it again after a quarter of a century, there rise the tones of the stilted, the unsmiling, the essentially provincial and boringly solemn society of Christiania ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... righteous gains, God's blessing upon labour: yet is there rightful hope to get those righteous gains. Who can condemn the poor man's care, though Faith should make his load the lighter? And who will extenuate the rich man's coveting, whose appetite grows with what it feeds on? "Having food and raiment, be therewith content;" that is the golden mean; to that is limited the philosophy of worldliness: the man must live, by labour and its earnings; but having wherewithal for him and his temperately, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... himself for man, and by whose atonement all mankind hope for salvation, has assured us that the greatest sinner who 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. ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... to you, Susan, that my parentage is as obscure as it well can be; and secondly, that the early part of my life was as vicious. I may, indeed, extenuate it when I enter into an explanation, and with great justice: but I have now only stated the facts generally. If you wish me to enter into particulars, much as I shall blush at the exposure, and painful as the task assigned will be, I shall not refuse, even at the risk of losing all ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... more melancholy results, so none was ever more atrocious than hers. The more we examine its nature, the more base it appears, and the more easy is it to exculpate religion from those reproaches which this statement has so often occasioned. Whatever tends to extenuate the guilt of other sins, is ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... been murdered before their eyes, but to wreak vengeance on Spencer's unoffending family, who had walked into their settlement under the protection of a friendly alliance, was an unparalleled outrage which nothing can justify or extenuate. With as little delay as possible after the horrible discovery, I returned to camp, had boxes made, and next day buried the bodies of these hapless victims ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... of a grim humor peculiarly his own, and partly to extenuate his severity toward the youth, had sent to his niece all the city papers containing unfavorable references to Haldane, and to her mind the associations created by those disgraceful scenes were still inseparable from him. She honestly respected him for his resolute ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... may we all show candor. Though, perhaps, nothing could ultimately have averted the strife, and though to treat of human actions is to deal wholly with second causes, nevertheless, let us not cover up or try to extenuate what, humanly speaking, is the truth—namely, that those unfraternal denunciations, continued through years, and which at last inflamed to deeds that ended in bloodshed, were reciprocal; and that, had the preponderating strength and the prospect of its unlimited increase lain on the other side, ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... is theft, whatever the circumstances that seem to extenuate it. Nothing, no need, gives a right to take what does not belong to you. But, for all that, I am certain the poor creature has been honest hitherto, and deserves help. She is committed to prison for stealing, and I promised her I ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... himself in their behalf, predicted over and over again by the prophets as to happen. The natural consequence of this conviction in the minds of those nations, would be a revulsion of the feelings to the opposite extreme. They would exaggerate the merits, and extenuate the demerits of "God's servant." They would reflect with astonishment and commiseration on their past sufferings. "We considered them," they might exclaim, "as a God- abandoned race, and devoted to wretchedness by him for having crucified ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... conscience-stricken. The enormity of his act flashed upon him. Still, he wanted to extenuate his conduct. ...
— Sam's Chance - And How He Improved It • Horatio Alger
... temper been different, it is very easy to see that she would have been continually quarrelling with Rachel; but, happily, she was one of those women with whom it is impossible to quarrel. With her broad mantle of charity, she was always seeking to cover up and extenuate the defects of her sister-in-law, though she could ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger
... himself; it was only in this last matter that the power, more than the will, to understand his own heart had failed him. His intellect now reasserted itself. He did not attempt to blink facts; he did not deny the truth of the revelation or seek to extenuate its force. He did not tell himself that the matter was a trifle, or that its effect would be transient. He recognized that he had fallen from the state of a priest vowed to Heaven, to that of a ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... who risked his own life to liberate them. Lieut. Corner, who would not have been likely to err on the side of hostility to Edwards, gives his evidence against him in this particular. But whether he is to be believed or not, the fact that four of the prisoners went down in irons is impossible to extenuate. ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... all, even my adherents, from so much as suggesting it to me; nevertheless, there are some who love me in England, to whom I would beg of you to relate the circumstances that I have told you. These may extenuate though they cannot justify the crime I have committed. I assure you, most solemnly, that almost up to the last I had no intention of doing more than making my own escape from the ship which the injustice and brutality of Bligh had made a ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... what you would say; If I have known her, You'll say, she did embrace me as a husband, And so extenuate the 'forehand sin: No, Leonato, I never tempted her with word too large; But, as a brother to his sister, show'd Bashful ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... "you wrong him. My sins and transgressions are my own. Mountain high as they are, they shall not crush another. Mine is the sorrow and guilt, and mine be the penalty. I do not extenuate my own offences, but I will not criminate others. I beseech you, sir, to recall what you have just uttered, for how can I close those doors upon a friend, which have so lately been opened ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... traverse the streets, when reason is well-nigh benighted; when the horrible promptings of despair can, alone, be listened to; and when vice itself assumes the aspect of virtue. Pardon what I have said, Madam. I do not desire to extenuate my guilt—far less to defend it; but I would show you, and such as you—who, happily, are exempted from trials like mine—how much misery has to do with crime. And I affirm to you, on my own conviction, that she who falls, because she has not strength granted ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the trend of her thoughts. He tried to find some excuse for his cowardly act; but with the realization of the true cowardliness and treachery of it that the girl didn't even guess he understood the futility of seeking to extenuate it. He saw that the chances were excellent that after all he would be compelled to resort to force or threats to win her hand at ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... lost the ball he would have lost the hole," I explained, anxious to extenuate Pepper's offense as much ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... to the crimes of Hastings, and by arguing that abuses so extraordinary justified extraordinary measures. Those who, by opposing that bill, had raised themselves to the head of affairs would naturally be inclined to extenuate the evils which had been made the plea for administering so violent a remedy; and such, in fact, was their general disposition. The Lord Chancellor Thurlow, in particular, whose great place and force of intellect ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... simply what I must do. I can scarcely think or feel yet. Only I know that I must get free. It isn't that I'm hard. It's just that I have no choice. Your case was different. You had to do it. But this—" her words sank, became scarcely audible—"Nick, could anything extenuate—this?" ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... justify what was positively bad. Thus his book contains the germs of that Byronic egotism which later became the fashion all over Europe. It is also, in parts, a morbid book. Rousseau was not content to extenuate nothing; his failings got upon his nerves; and, while he was ready to dilate upon them himself with an infinite wealth of detail, the slightest hint of a reflection on his conduct from any other person filled him with an agony and a rage ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... Roland sought to interrupt his son,—nay, by a feverish excitement which my heart understood in its secret sympathy, he had seemed eagerly to court every syllable that could extenuate the darkness of the offence, or even imply some less sordid motive for the baseness of the means. But as the son now closed with the words of unjust reproach and the accents of fierce despair,—closed a defence that showed, in its false pride ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... chanced to stumble, the girl thought she heard a groan from him. She began to wish that she had been able to believe him, but it was utterly impossible, although she suddenly found it in her heart to pity him, to extenuate the abomination of his conduct. Why that last sacrilegious lie he had uttered? The man was suffering; it looked as if the iron were entering his soul. Oh! the pity of it! If he had only acknowledged his offence and begged her pardon she might perhaps have forgiven. A moment ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... much to respect in his extraordinary devotion. How different indeed was he from those who, if their wives go mad, shut them in madhouses and give themselves up to concubinage, and nay, what is more, there are many who extenuate such conduct too. But Mr. Tebrick was of a very different temper, and though his wife was now nothing but a hunted beast, cared for no one ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett
... overcome the Curiatii one after another, (instead of being congratulated by his Sister for his Victory, being upbraided by her for having slain her Lover,) in the Height of his Passion and Resentment kills her. If any thing could extenuate so brutal an Action, it would be the doing of it on a sudden, before the Sentiments of Nature, Reason, or Manhood could take Place in him. However, to avoid publick Blood-shed, as soon as his Passion is wrought ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the Catholic Lord Baltimore and Catholic colonists of Maryland who in 1648 first proclaimed on these shores the glorious principle of universal toleration, while the Puritans were persecuting in New England and the Episcopalians in Virginia. 'Nothing extenuate nor aught set down in malice,' should be the rule of our souls. Humanity means eternal Progress, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry Peace, peace! But there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the North will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here 10 idle? What is it that gentlemen ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... ladies would remain and listen to me a few moments, I am sure I would make you aware that there is much to extenuate the apparent offence which I have ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton
... distinguishing between the names of the by no means identical Caliphs Al-Muntasir and Al-Mustansir." Quite true: it was an ugly confusion of the melancholy madman and parricide with one of the best and wisest of the Caliphs. I can explain (not extenuate) my mistake only by a ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... the compliment. But, Lionel, there is no time to be lost, as Mr Selwyn, the lawyer, is coming here at one o'clock, and before he comes I wish you to read over Lady R—'s confession, if I may so call it, which will explain the motives of her conduct towards you. I am afraid that it will not extenuate her conduct, but recollect that she has now made all the reparation in her power, and that we must forgive as we hope to be forgiven. Sit down and read these papers, while I unpack one or ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... send the stoutest African to his grave. But he can well be spared. While he is fast sinking into premature old age, negro boys in Virginia are growing up as fast into vigorous manhood to supply the void which cruelty is making in Louisiana. God forbid that I should extenuate the horrors of the slave trade in any form! But I do think this its worst form. Bad enough is it that civilised men should sail to an uncivilised quarter of the world where slavery exists, should there buy wretched barbarians, and should carry them ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... no devotedness, could efface the remembrance of her connivance at that deep-laid plot which had imposed her upon him as a wife. Yet the lot of Leah was peculiarly a lot of reproach and trial—and as we behold her wretchedness, we are led, not to extenuate her fault, nor to palliate her sin, but to forgive and ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... He knew the great aim of life; he saw things in their true light, and taught me to see them also; he called things by their proper names; and while he could make ample allowance for the faults of others, he never attempted to extenuate his own errors; nor did he mistake vice for virtue, or the semblance of virtue for the reality. From the companionship of such a person I could not fail to reap much benefit. I did not enjoy it long. We afterwards met under very different circumstances in a far-off region, which he at that time ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... conduct to the royal family of Oude;—these are acts, proved by the testimony of himself and his accomplices, from the disgrace of which no formal acquittal upon points of law can absolve him, and whose guilt the allowances of charity may extenuate, but never can remove. That the perpetrator of such deeds should have been popular among the natives of India only proves how low was the standard of justice, to which the entire tenor of our policy had accustomed them;—but ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... madame, you appear to extenuate some cases, and exaggerate others. Impostor, indeed!—M. Andrea Cavalcanti, or rather M. Benedetto, is nothing more ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the very first order, owe immensely to the form, the art, the stereotyped metres, and stock figures they find ready to hand. The form is suggestive,—it invites and aids expression, and lends itself readily, like fashion, to conceal, or extenuate, or eke out poverty of thought and feeling in the verse. The poet can "cut and cover," as the farmer says, in a way the prose-writer never can, nor one whose form is ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... at least, faithfully discharged some part of my duty. And wherever I have been inadequate to your wishes, attribute my demerits to some infirmity of mind, rather than to a negligence of your happiness. Yet, be the cause what it will, since these faults have existed, I do not attempt to disavow or extenuate them, and I beg ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... de Medicis from the charge of reckless extravagance unsparingly brought against her by the Duc de Sully. Richelieu himself, at the period at which this report was furnished to the ministers, was little disposed to extenuate the errors of the Regent; and cannot, consequently, be supposed to have volunteered any palliative circumstances. Moreover, it is worthy of notice that the enormous sums registered above were not lavished upon the personal favourites of the Queen, but were literally the price paid ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... present, no doubt the same impulse would have been experienced; but now it was my brother whom I was irresistibly persuaded to regard as the contriver of that ill of which I had been forewarned. This persuasion did not extenuate my fears or my danger. Why then did I again approach the closet and withdraw the bolt? My resolution was instantly ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... to face, as I shall tell it—bientot—to the good God. You shall bind me by any oath that you will, though it should be enough for you that I have nothing at all to gain, as you have said. I shall hide nothing from you. I shall extenuate nothing. I shall tell you only the truth, man to man, as my heart knows it. For her sake, ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... found himself on his recovery, and make no effort to lift his wife to that he had renounced. She was a child of Nature. He would learn life anew of her; but he failed of success in all his undertakings. Shall a man attempt to extenuate his failures? It seemed new to him; he acknowledged it in open court, that from the day of his entrance into Dalton to the day he left it, he was under some enchantment there. And if an insane man is not to be held responsible in law for his offences, he had the amplest title to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... efforts on the part of the acting-manager, Ambivius Turpio. The prologue written by Terence for this third performance is one of the most curious literary documents of the time. He is too angry to extenuate the repeated failure of his play. If we believe him, it fell dead the first time because "that fool, the public," were all excitement over an exhibition on the tight-rope which was to follow the play; at the second representation only one act had been ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... opera. To do these things he must forget, as much as he can, the sweet melodies and the sweeter women who are sinking into oblivion together. He must accept life as a Grand Piano tuned by a new sort of Tuning Master, and unless he can dance to its music he is a misfit. That is what my friend said to extenuate her. She fitted into this kind of life splendidly. He was in the other groove. She loved light, laughter, wine, song, and excitement. He, the misfit, loved his books, his work, and his home. His greatest joy would have been to go with her, hand in hand, through some wonderful cathedral, pointing ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... police of Paris, by exhibiting it with all its perfections and imperfections. Borrowing the language of MERCIER, I shall trace the institution through all its ramifications, and, in pointing out its effects, I shall "nothing extenuate, nor set ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... Dulcisonum reficit tristia corda melos, Eobanus Hessus. Many other properties [3473]Cassiodorus, epist. 4. reckons up of this our divine music, not only to expel the greatest griefs, but "it doth extenuate fears and furies, appeaseth cruelty, abateth heaviness, and to such as are watchful it causeth quiet rest; it takes away spleen and hatred," be it instrumental, vocal, with strings, wind, [3474]Quae, a spiritu, sine manuum dexteritate gubernetur, &c. it cures all irksomeness ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... her the magnitude of the misfortune, because so far from being a mere novice in sorrow, she has tasted it from her earliest years in all its varieties; and because his purpose was to conquer her grief, not to extenuate its causes. Those many miseries would indeed have been in vain, if they had not taught her how to bear wretchedness. He will prove to her therefore that she has no cause to grieve either on his account, or on her own. Not on his—because he is happy among circumstances which others ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... extended his hand again. "You are a worthy daughter of Athens. In years to come they will name you with King Codrus who sacrificed his life for the freedom of Attica, for have you not sacrificed what should be dearer than life,—the fair name of your husband? But courage. Your patriotism may extenuate his crime. Only the traitor must ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... as the writer has had an opportunity of remarking, the generality of professed Christians among the higher classes, either altogether overlook or deny, or at least greatly extenuate the corruption and weakness here in question. They acknowledge indeed that there is, and ever has been in the world, a great portion of vice and wickedness; that mankind have been ever prone to sensuality and ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... 'whiten' a wall, not by withdrawing some other colour, but by the superinducing of white; thus 'whited sepulchres.' When we 'palliate' our own or other people's faults, we do not seek 'to cloke' them altogether, but only to extenuate the guilt ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... suggestion, arguing that no explanation of the Joline letter could be made to Mr. Bryan that would wear the appearance of sincerity, or be convincing, and that the letter having been written there was nothing to do to extenuate it in any way and that the wise thing was to make a virtue of necessity. I suggested that on the following night, when the Governor was to deliver his address at the Jackson Day dinner, he could, in the most generous and kindly way, pay a handsome tribute to Mr. Bryan for his ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... old friend of mine." Isabel cared little more for him than for the tapestry that she held in her hand; but it was true that he was an old friend and that with her husband she felt a desire not to extenuate such ties. He had a way of expressing contempt for them which fortified her loyalty to them, even when, as in the present case, they were in themselves insignificant. She sometimes felt a sort of passion of tenderness for memories which had no other merit than that they belonged to her ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... unfortunate circumstances. I am very sensible nothing can be alledged sufficient to excuse so great a crime as I have been guilty of it, that of Rebellion. But I humbly beg leave to lay before your Excellency some particulars in the circumstance of my guilt, which, I hope, will extenuate it in some measure. It was my misfortune, at the time the Rebellion broke out, to be liable to legal diligence and caption, at the Duke of Montrose's instance, for debt alledged due to him. To avoid being flung ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... this false and unfounded suggestion, has built a series of observations equally false and unfounded. Let him now be confronted with the evidence of the fact, and let him, if he be able, justify or extenuate the shameful outrage he has offered to the dictates of truth and to the rules of ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... indicative of their circumstances in their finger nails. Such is the equivocal character of the greater part of their sect: but there are some who are mere honest dupes to the pretensions of the science; and others again, who have not one tittle of credulity to extenuate ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... for poor Maud, as a rule, but he felt a need to shed a little gaiety, to extenuate the accident as far as possible, to turn it into a joke, so as to prevent his girls from being panic-stricken. He talked of heads smashed to a jelly, of legs in smithereens, of a bicyclist who had had not one, but both eyes ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... in spite of every effort to reduce them under the Spanish dominion. The natives are strong, active, vigorous, and war-like, but are represented as cruel, vindictive, and treacherous, though perhaps the Spaniards have exaggerated their bad qualities, to extenuate their own tyranny and oppression. The Spanish garrison at this island at this time consisted of 300, relieved from time to time from Manilla, and the King of Spain is said to have allowed 30,000 dollars yearly for the maintenance of this port, the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... which is death, is the goal of the intellect. The mind seeks what is dead, for what is living escapes it; it seeks to congeal the flowing stream in blocks of ice; it seeks to arrest it. In order to analyze a body it is necessary to extenuate or destroy it. In order to understand anything it is necessary to kill it, to lay it out rigid in the mind. Science is a cemetery of dead ideas, even though life may issue from them. Worms also feed upon corpses. My own thoughts, tumultuous and agitated ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... mankind, that became the inspiration of this work—his story of devotion, valor and patriotism; of unmurmuring sacrifice; worthy the pens of the mighty, but which the historian, as best he may will tell: "NOTHING extenuate, nor set down ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... a proud little creature you were, Olive," he said, trying to extenuate his shabby conduct, "and that there was no chance of your listening to me if you found out Tom was a tradesman. What does it matter about the shop? Tom is as good a chap as ever breathed, and Susan is the best-hearted ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Right and Wrong, which is no lesse difficult, there is no man will pretend to, without great and long study. And of those defects in Reasoning, there is none that can Excuse (though some of them may Extenuate) a Crime, in any man, that pretendeth to the administration of his own private businesse; much lesse in them that undertake a publique charge; because they pretend to the Reason, upon the want whereof ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... differing so far from Philip. Philip was sullen, James jovial. Both were equally ferocious. James II. was an easy-minded tiger; like Philip II., his crimes lay light upon his conscience. He was a monster by the grace of God. Therefore he had nothing to dissimulate nor to extenuate, and his assassinations were by divine right. He, too, would not have minded leaving behind him those archives of Simancas, with all his misdeeds dated, classified, labelled, and put in order, each in its compartment, like poisons in the cabinet of a chemist. To set the sign-manual ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... speak the plain truth to each other," said Balder, after a pause. "You can have no cause to be friendly to me. I cannot extenuate what I did. I think ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... devoted, princely, but sanguine friend has been with me again and again. My time is expired and I find a relief beyond measure, for he has fully convinced me that no act of mine can mar the eternal counsel, or in the smallest degree alter or extenuate one event which was decreed before the foundations of the world were laid. He said he had watched over me with the greatest anxiety, but, perceiving my rooted aversion towards him, he had forborne troubling me with ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... understand!" he almost groaned. "Waymarsh won't in the least, at any rate, when I have it out with him, deny or extenuate. He has acted from the deepest conviction, with the best conscience and after wakeful nights. He'll recognise that he's fully responsible, and will consider that he has been highly successful; so that any discussion we may have will bring us quite together again—bridge the dark stream that has kept ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... complicated tenures, we become very sensitive to its violation, and acquire a proportionably intense sentiment of Justice. Again, association operates in modifying our approval and disapproval of actions according to their attendant circumstances; as when we extenuate ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... beg your attention to a melancholy tale, and which may, in some slight degree, extenuate the offence I was guilty of in assuming, or rather ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... confined, close dungeon! And was it possible that he had ever wandered at will in that fair scene with a companion fairer? Such thoughts might well drive a man mad. With all his errors, and all his disposition at present not to extenuate them, Ferdinand Armine could not refrain from esteeming himself unlucky. Perhaps it is more distressing to believe ourselves unfortunate, than to recognise ourselves ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... brings clearer vision, my child, and I cannot wish that your father's last years,—if, indeed, he be living—should be desolated by not knowing you. I want you to know that there were many things which, while they did not extenuate your father, yet might in some measure ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... marked him in private life, pervade his writings, except on some few occasions, when his mind is too much under the influence of party feelings. This bias inclined him, not only to treat the character of Milton with a most undue asperity, but even to extenuate the atrocities committed under the government of Mary, and somewhat to depreciate the worth of those divines, whose attachment to the reformed religion led them to ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... evidently affected her more than She ventured to express: But She believed that to extenuate my fault would make me less anxious to repent it. Often while her lips painted the enormity of my guilt in glaring colours, her eyes betrayed, how sensible She was to my sufferings. In fact I am certain that none of my Tormentors, (for the three other Nuns entered my prison occasionally) ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... those churches, where the said day is observed, it will fully answer the intent of the said Act; if the preacher shall commend, excuse, palliate, or extenuate the murder of that royal Martyr; and lay the guilt of that horrid rebellion, with all its consequences, the following usurpations, the entire destruction of the Church, the cruel and continual persecutions of those who could be discovered to profess its doctrines, with the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... unflinching fidelity to her creed. It makes her clear and resolute in her statement; but it often makes her as one-sided as the advocates of male supremacy whom she impugns. To be sure, her theory enables her to extenuate some points of admitted injustice to woman,—finding, for instance, in her educational and professional exclusions a crude effort, on the part of society, to treat her as a sort of bird-of-paradise, born only to fly, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... exercised absolute political power. "The state of France," said Burke, "is perfectly simple. It consists of but two descriptions, the oppressors and the oppressed." It is in vain that the attempt has been made to extenuate the atrocious and senseless cruelties of this time by extolling the great legislative projects of the Convention, or pleading the dire necessity of a land attacked on every side by the foreigner, and rent with civil war. The more that is ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery. Our chains are forged; their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston. The war is inevitable—and let it come! I repeat it. Let it come! It is in vain to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, peace—but there is no peace. The war is actually begun. The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ear the clash of resounding arms. Our brethren are already in the ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... words, driveth Adam to the point, either to confess or deny the truth of the case. If he confess, then he concludes himself under judgment; if he deny, then he addeth to his sin: Therefore he neither denieth nor confesseth, but so as he may lessen and extenuate his sin. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... do not think I want to extenuate sins of passion (though, in very truth, the sin of Magdalene is a light one compared to that of Judas); but observe, sins of passion, if of real passion, are often the errors and backfalls of ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... for not dating the publication of some of Gerson's treatises at Cologne earlier than the year 1470? and if good cause cannot be shown for withholding from them so high a rank in the scale of typographic being, must we not instantly reject every effort to extenuate Marchand's obtuseness in asserting with reference to Ulric Zell, "On ne voit des editions de ce Zell qu'en 1494?" (Hist. de l'Imp., p. 56.) {183} Schelhorn's opinion as to the birthright of these ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various
... of Scots as a beautiful sinner who has repented. Her sins are grievous and she does not deny or extenuate them. But they are in the distant past; so far as the present is concerned, she is in the right. She has come to England seeking an asylum, but instead of being treated as a queen she has been confined in one prison after another and finally brought ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... project of some power, Chiefly when opportunity attends her: She will infuse true motion in a stone, Put glowing fire in an icy soul, Stuff peasants' bosoms with proud Caesar's spleen, Pour rich device into an empty brain: Bring youth to folly's gate: there train him in, And after all, extenuate his sin. Well, I will not go, I am resolved for that. Go, carry it again: yet stay: yet do too, I will defer ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... courageous. It would, indeed, be difficult to deny or extenuate the appalling truth of Mr. Sinclair's indictment."— ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... in that village than the second in Rome." This has been justly called perverted ambition, and Milton stamped it with terrible condemnation when he put into the mouth of his arch fiend the sentiment—"better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." The passions of youth extenuate those errors which in ripened manhood are criminal; and it is not improbable that Mr. Cooper's own opinion at this day concurs with ours when we say that his refusal of the manager's offer seems to us to have been very injudicious. From Plautus, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... fore finger of his right hand to his lip, cast a look of inquiry at the bystanders, and then said he knew it would be no easy matter to apologize to ladies for so singular a transgression, but how his treating could extenuate an insult offered to another party, he could not exactly see. "By my word as a man of standing, I have spent much sweat and labor in getting the little Fortune has favored me with, and it seems to me that he who needs it most had better quench his thirst with what remains ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... But Charlton sat, pale and dejected, ready enough to converse about anything else, but declining to say one word in regard to his guilt or innocence of the crime charged. It is not strange that some of his best friends accepted the charge as true, and only tried to extenuate the offense on the ground that the circumstances made the temptation a very great one, and that the motive was not mercenary. Others stood out that it would yet be discovered that Plausaby had stolen the warrant, until half-a-dozen ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... that Lord Byron never spared himself. He invented faults rather than sought to extenuate them. And so he fully merits belief, when he happens to do himself justice. Let ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... seizes. What knows the laws That thieves do pass on thieves? 'Tis very pregnant, The jewel that we find, we stoop and take it, Because we see it; but what we do not see We tread upon, and never think of it. You may not so extenuate his offence For I have had such faults; but rather tell me, When I, that censure him, do so offend, Let mine own judgment pattern out my death, And nothing come in partial. Sir, he ...
— Measure for Measure • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... the householder, having begun so rightly, has now nothing to do to complete the main fabric of his garden but to carry this flow of natural draperies on round the domicile's back and farther side and forward to its front again. Thus may he wonderfully extenuate, even above its reach and where it does not conceal, the house's architectural faults, thus winsomely enhance all its architectural charm; like a sweet human mistress of the place, putting into generous shadow all the ill, ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... to extenuate my culpability towards you. I entreat your pardon for my fault. I desire you, if you please, to keep this transaction secret, in order that the world shall not have any opportunity to speak of an affair ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... aggravations. Warburton, whose heart was warm with his legacy and tender by the recent separation, thought it proper for him to interpose, and undertook, not indeed to vindicate the action, for breach of trust has always something criminal, but to extenuate it by an apology. Having advanced what cannot be denied, that moral obliquity is made more or less excusable by the motives that produce it, he inquires what evil purpose could have induced Pope to break ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... that their front trenches were down at the river. With the imperfect means at his disposal he did such scouting as he could, and if his fiery and impetuous spirit led him into a position which cost him so dearly it is certainly more easy for the critic to extenuate his fault than that subsequent one which allowed the abandoned guns to fall into the hands of the enemy. Nor is there any evidence that the loss of these guns did seriously affect the fate of the action, for at those other parts of the field where ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... resumed somewhat both of his own and his father's sins, particularly their cares for this world and worldly honours, and thinking his lordship designed to extenuate his fault in this, he drew several weighty propositions in way of conference about the fears of death and his eternal all, which depended upon his being in or out of Christ, and obtested him in these words,—"Therefore I intreat you, my lord, by the mercies of God, by ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... want to excite your pity or to extenuate my sin. I only want to tell the entire and complete truth, with all the sincerity of a woman who, in an hour's time, is ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... good qualities, and is a pattern of virtue, as well as of courage and conduct. His treachery we call policy: His cruelty is an evil inseparable from war. In short, every one of his faults we either endeavour to extenuate, or dignify it with the name of that virtue, which approaches it. It is evident the same method of ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... eyes as to the main points, he must, and would blame her weakness in first consenting to this deception—he who was above deceit. She had not absolutely told, but she had admitted a falsehood; she had acted a falsehood. This she could not extenuate. Her motive at first, to save Lady Davenant's life, was good; but then her weakness afterwards, in being persuaded time after time by Cecilia, could not well be excused. She was conscious that she had sunk step by ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... the people. But if he experience some of their sudden and terrific snow storms and showers, when the thunder and the lightning are such that a Northerner feels that all the storms he has ever witnessed are only infantile attempts, he is inclined to extenuate, on mere climactic principles, the outbursts of wrath, and "fire-eating" propensities of the people. He who is gendered of fire and brimstone must have some vim in his composition. We believe this study is not unworthy ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... down, and lay there before me strangling with sobs and cries. "Should Mr. Floyd know," he murmured, "should Mr. Floyd even guess, that I am the wretched wreck of a man that I am, he would not let Helen stay with me another moment. He would extenuate, he would pity, nothing: he does not know what it is for a man like me, once proud, witty, gay, to bear seclusion and depression and decay. I long at times for some of the inspiration of my youth: it comes with a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... becomes slightly more interesting, but also slightly less fair. Throughout the fourth century a few little remarks are interspersed in the dry list of names and dates, the general tendency of which is to praise up the Gothic nation or to extenuate their faults and reverses. The battle of Pollentia (402[36]) is unhesitatingly claimed as a Gothic victory; the clemency of Alaric at the capture of Rome (410) is magnified; the valour of the Goths is made the cause of ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... convinced, seemed to grow more wavering and doubtful. Such was his demeanor and conduct in company of his late companions; while, with his own family, he appeared moody, irresolute, and restless, and even, at length, he began to throw out occasional hints tending to defend or extenuate the conduct of the very man whom, a few weeks before, he had so confidently denounced as a thief and a robber. Alarmed at these indications of returning weakness and fatuity in her husband, Mrs. Elwood soon put herself on inquiry, to ascertain ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... of Our Brethren the Roman Catholics, whose interests they put on the same foot with their own: And some of Cromwell's officers took posts in the army raised against the Prince of Orange.[5] These proceedings of theirs they can only extenuate by urging the provocations they had met from the Church in King Charles's reign, which though perhaps excusable upon the score of human infirmity, are not by any means a plea of merit equal to ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... on me is so keenly sensible that I cannot trust myself in words to express my personal feelings. Desiring, as I do, to extenuate rather than accuse, nothing shall enter into a narrative of these circumstances which is ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... justify my action in refusing to marry them," said Father Tom, "nothing. Uncle John, I know that you can extenuate, that you are kind, but I do not see it is possible to look at it ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... good wholesome teaching is about the best antidote I have seen to much of the poison circulating about in magazines and alluring ignorant, unsound people with the specious name of philosophy. And he is always fair, and credits his opponents with all that can possibly be imagined to extenuate the injury they are doing by their false and ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that the monks should dare to shelter or to gloss over those sins which their priestly duty bound them to condemn, because forsooth some wealthy baron could spare a portion of his broad lands or coffered gold to extenuate them. But this forms one of the dark stains of the monastic system; and the monks, I am sorry to say, were more readily inclined to overlook the blemish, because it proved so profitable to their order. And thus ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... several times before his death, that he received his wound from Savage; nor did Savage at his trial deny the fact, but endeavoured partly to extenuate it, by urging the suddenness of the whole action, and the impossibility of any ill design, or premeditated malice; and partly to justify it by the necessity of self-defence, and the hazard of his own life, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... the self-doom'd victim be forgiven His final error, for his merits past; Could virtuous life, propitiating Heaven With former deeds, extenuate the last: ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... against Matilda. When Stephen had shaken off the chains with which he was loaded in Bristol Castle, the Bishop summoned a council at Westminster, on his legatine authority; and there "by great powers of eloquence, endeavored to extenuate the odium of his own conduct"; affirming that he had supported the Empress, "not from inclination, but necessity." He then "commanded on the part of God and of the Pope, that they should strenuously assist the King, appointed by the will of the people, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... his own responsibility; a fact which gives his statement the character of an incriminative and not of an exonerative confession; and that though he might possibly have wished, in his statement of the facts, to modify and extenuate his own share in the crime, yet there was no reason to suspect that he wished gratuitously to aggravate the guilt of his comrade;" and that also taking into consideration the villainous character of Volpi, it cannot be doubted, that he was the principal in the crime. The court at ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... that, in common with all his fellow creatures, he deserves censure for some part of his 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 ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... have to say to your honors is this [he spoke calmly and distinctly], and it may in a degree extenuate, though it cannot excuse, my crime. I went into that man's store an innocent boy, and if he had been an honest man I would not have stood before ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... Cousin Jenny, I was talking the other day about the perversity of your sex. You either cannot or will not understand your husbands: they hide nothing, extenuate nothing, yet you fail to grasp the idea of that side of their minds which is at once the best and the most dangerous. If Philip did not regard all women with interest, and some with particular interest, he could not have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... aloud. Gardiner gave a frank, explicit account of all that had happened since he parted with his owner, concealing nothing, and not attempting even to extenuate his fault. Of the Sea Lion of Holmes' Hole he wrote at large, giving it as his opinion that Captain Daggett really possessed some clue—what he did not know—to the existence of the sealing islands, though he rather thought that he was not very accurately informed of their precise position. As ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... myself, for when or where the letter will reach him—And I have written to old Mr Hamley. The relief is the one good thing come out of it all. It is such a comfort to feel free again. It wearied me so to think of straining up to his goodness. "Extenuate my conduct!"' she concluded, quoting Mr. Gibson's words. Yet when Mr. Gibson came home, after a silent dinner, she asked to speak with him, alone, in his consulting-room; and there laid bare the exculpation of herself which she had ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... an immense ascendancy over Madame d'Urfe, and I often abused my power over her. Now that I am no longer the victim of those illusions which pursued me throughout my life, I blush at the remembrance of my conduct, and the penance I impose on myself is to tell the whole truth, and to extenuate nothing in ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the fatal curiosity of Fatima and her sister Anne. We must extenuate here, nor aught set down in malice, remembering that Wagner knew only the women of his own day, before the sex was uplifted and purified by the vote, and he naturally depicted them with the man-engendered vices ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... hence I must be, and I am, debased, contaminated by the union, both in my own eyes and in the actual truth. I am so determined to love him, so intensely anxious to excuse his errors, that I am continually dwelling upon them, and labouring to extenuate the loosest of his principles and the worst of his practices, till I am familiarised with vice, and almost a partaker in his sins. Things that formerly shocked and disgusted me, now seem only natural. I know them to be wrong, because reason ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... taking place; which, indeed, I had before said, would be most atrocious when I so often petitioned concerning it(144) and which as you yourself show, by revoking it too late, you consider to be grave, and this I could not extenuate when committed.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... been exercised on the Aborigines of America, the wrong and outrage heaped on them from the days of Montezuma and Guatimozin, to the present period, while they excite sympathy for their sufferings, should extenuate, if not justify the bloody deeds, which revenge prompted the untutored savages to commit. Driven as they were from the lands of which they were the rightful proprietors—Yielding to encroachment after encroachment 'till forced to apprehend their utter annihilation—Witnessing the destruction ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... fierce young hero, who had overcome the Curiatii one after another (instead of being congratulated by his sister for his victory, being upbraided by her for having slain her lover), in the height of his passion and resentment kills her. If anything could extenuate so brutal an action, it would be the doing of it on a sudden, before the sentiments of nature, reason, or manhood could take place in him. However, to avoid public bloodshed, as soon as his passion is wrought to its height, he follows his sister the whole length ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... with all his fellow creatures, he deserves censure for some part of his 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 Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... has eaten five or six children, a relatively insignificant number, no doubt, but remarkable enough from another point of view. It is manifest that, pricked by remorse—for my client is religious, in his way, and has a conscience, as I shall prove later—and desiring to extenuate his sin as far as possible, he has tried six times at least to substitute lay nourishment for clerical. That this was merely an experiment we can hardly doubt: for if it had been only a question of gastronomic variety, six would have been ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... more distinctly; France is exasperated and rejects them more and more positively. You can have no idea of the effect produced throughout France by the conversation of M. de Bismarck with M. Jules Favre. Bismarck, indeed, seems to have some notion of it, for he attempts to extenuate what he said or allowed to be understood. Evidently the result of this interview has been to leave the belligerents mutually more embittered than they were before; and the intervention of the neutral Powers at the present time ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... compiling a stupendous autobiography, and made me forget that writing was a new art, to me, and that I was rather old to try my hand at a new art. My memory suddenly began to seem not so bad after all. For weeks I had hesitated between Othello's "Nothing extenuate, nor write down aught in malice," and Pilate's "What is truth?" as my guide and my apology. Now I saw that both were too big for my modest endeavor. I was not leaving a human document for the benefit of future ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... for she was conscious that she was offering something unreal to extenuate the fault of her brother—her ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... virtue, let fall a pitying tear on the past faults and sufferings of your late unhappy sister; since, now, she can never offend you more. The Divine mercy, which first inspired her with repentance (an early repentance it was; since it preceded her sufferings) for an error which she offers not to extenuate, although perhaps it were capable of some extenuation, has now, as the instant that you are reading this, as I humbly hope, blessed her with ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... would not have been likely to err on the side of hostility to Edwards, gives his evidence against him in this particular. But whether he is to be believed or not, the fact that four of the prisoners went down in irons is impossible to extenuate. ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... 'rare Ben Jonson,' I am sure," replied Alice. "If her pale ghost could have blushed, I think it would, at such lofty and exquisite praise. For my part, I could say, 'Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate, nor set down aught ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... engagement and all that, long ago." She looked down deeply at her hand; and then she gazed at her sister. "And, oh, Sancie, you've had your honeymoon!" Before the deadly simplicity of that last stroke Sanchia fell, and lay quivering. She could not ask for mercy, she could explain, extenuate, nothing. Huddled she lay. At this aching moment the one thing that the world held worth her having seemed to be the approbation of this butterfly child. For Vicky's happiness was specific. Nuptial bliss lay, as it were, crystallised within it. There are moments ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... Without attempting to extenuate the errors of Madame de Longueville, moral or political, it has been the author's endeavour to reconcile the apparent contradictions in her character, imputed in the passage above cited, by assigning the different incidents, which have doubtless ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... sincere and apparently well-grounded belief that a felony is about to be perpetrated will extenuate a homicide committed in prevention of it, though the defendant be but a private citizen" (25 Ala., 15.) See Wharton, above quoted, who embodies the doctrine in his text ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... all the time disliking me. It was a terrible blow, made all the harder by the fact that she was proving herself such a different girl from the one I loved—so different, in fact, that, despite what I had heard, I couldn't quite believe it of her, and found myself seeking to extenuate and even justify her conduct. While I was doing this, they came within hearing, ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... the 20th instant in regard to Judgment on the arrested Raths has been received. But do you think I don't understand your Advocate fellows and their quirks; or how they can polish up a bad cause, and by their hyperboles exaggerate or extenuate as they find fit? The Goose-quill class (FEDERZEUG) can't look at facts. When Soldiers set to investigate anything, on an order given, they go the straight way to the kernel of the matter; upon which, plenty of objections from the Goose-quill ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Lord Baltimore and Catholic colonists of Maryland who in 1648 first proclaimed on these shores the glorious principle of universal toleration, while the Puritans were persecuting in New England and the Episcopalians in Virginia. 'Nothing extenuate nor aught set down in malice,' should be the rule of our souls. Humanity means eternal Progress, and its path is ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of the duke's life which cannot be entirely passed over in silence, since it must be conceded, that much of his unpopularity may be traced to this source. Neither the court nor the people of England are so ascetic as not to extenuate the indiscretions of royalty; but this charitable estimate of misgivings does not extend to approbation of any culpable dereliction of social and moral duties. The fact of his royal highness having a large family, by a lady ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - No. 291 - Supplement to Vol 10 • Various
... is in vain, Sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace—but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the North will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... honourable place, in virtue of the accuracy of her observation and the clearness of her judgment. Moreover, she is always impartial: she has no preconceived theories to support, and consequently she is at liberty neither to extenuate nor set down aught in malice. In picturesqueness of description she has been excelled by many, in soberness and correctness of statement by none; and, after all, it is more important that our travellers should tell us what they have really seen, than what they would have wished ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... but little reply; but the impression sunk deep into his rancorous heart; every word in Edmund's behalf was like a poisoned arrow that rankled in the wound, and grew every day more inflamed. Sometimes he would pretend to extenuate Edmund's supposed faults, in order to load him with the sin of ingratitude upon other occasions. Rancour works deepest in the heart that strives to conceal it; and, when covered by art, frequently ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... to it," Beppo remarked, to extenuate his outwitted cunning, when he found each door of the room fast ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... not dating the publication of some of Gerson's treatises at Cologne earlier than the year 1470? and if good cause cannot be shown for withholding from them so high a rank in the scale of typographic being, must we not instantly reject every effort to extenuate Marchand's obtuseness in asserting with reference to Ulric Zell, "On ne voit des editions de ce Zell qu'en 1494?" (Hist. de l'Imp., p. 56.) {183} Schelhorn's opinion as to the birthright of these tracts is sufficient to awaken an interest concerning them, for he conceived that they should ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various
... you here to tell you the truth face to face, as I shall tell it—bientot—to the good God. You shall bind me by any oath that you will, though it should be enough for you that I have nothing at all to gain, as you have said. I shall hide nothing from you. I shall extenuate nothing. I shall tell you only the truth, man to man, as my heart knows it. For her sake, ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... not yet been repaid. Mr. Vernon wrote him a very gentle intimation, stating that it would be very convenient for him to receive the money. Franklin returned a contrite and magnanimous letter. He made no attempt to extenuate his fault, promised immediately to strain every nerve to meet the debt, and in a few months paid the ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, peace—but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale, that sweeps from the north, will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... absolute political power. "The state of France," said Burke, "is perfectly simple. It consists of but two descriptions, the oppressors and the oppressed." It is in vain that the attempt has been made to extenuate the atrocious and senseless cruelties of this time by extolling the great legislative projects of the Convention, or pleading the dire necessity of a land attacked on every side by the foreigner, and rent with civil war. The more that is known of the Reign of Terror, the more hateful, the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... exhibited, his person was committed to the deputy-usher of the black rod, but afterwards the lords admitted him to bail. Then he drew up an answer to the charge, in which he denied some articles, and others he endeavoured to justify or extenuate. The commons having sent up a replication, declaring they were ready to prove the charge, the lords appointed the twenty-seventh day of February for ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Lionel, there is no time to be lost, as Mr Selwyn, the lawyer, is coming here at one o'clock, and before he comes I wish you to read over Lady R—'s confession, if I may so call it, which will explain the motives of her conduct towards you. I am afraid that it will not extenuate her conduct, but recollect that she has now made all the reparation in her power, and that we must forgive as we hope to be forgiven. Sit down and read these papers, while I unpack one or two of my ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... of the very first order, owe immensely to the form, the art, the stereotyped metres, and stock figures they find ready to hand. The form is suggestive,—it invites and aids expression, and lends itself readily, like fashion, to conceal, or extenuate, or eke out poverty of thought and feeling in the verse. The poet can "cut and cover," as the farmer says, in a way the prose-writer never can, nor one whose form ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... author got a little the start of criticism, perhaps; but we should fail in our duty as reviewers, if he altogether escaped it. In all charity, we are bound, for that matter, to give him the full benefit of the speed he has exhibited, in so far as it may serve to explain, if it cannot extenuate, the wretched manner in which he has ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... three, agreeing as they do wonderfully together, were printed at Aix under the eye of her enemies, in a volume where, as I shall presently prove, an attempt was made to extenuate the guilt of Girard, and fasten the reader's gaze on every point likely to tell against Cadiere. And yet the editor could not help inserting depositions like these, which bear with crushing weight on the man he ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... its tragic features, wonderfully idyllic, with great beauty of scene and circumstance? And will you please to observe that almost all that is ugly is in the whites? I'll apologise for Papa Randal if you like; but if I told you the whole truth—for I did extenuate there!—and he seemed to me essential as a figure, and essential as a pawn in the game, Wiltshire's disgust for him being one of the small, efficient motives in the story. Now it would have taken a fairish dose to disgust ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and had no inkling that their front trenches were down at the river. With the imperfect means at his disposal he did such scouting as he could, and if his fiery and impetuous spirit led him into a position which cost him so dearly it is certainly more easy for the critic to extenuate his fault than that subsequent one which allowed the abandoned guns to fall into the hands of the enemy. Nor is there any evidence that the loss of these guns did seriously affect the fate of the action, for at those other parts ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... her visitor's; there was no emotion—that was excluded by the plan, to say nothing of conditions more primal. Rose had from the first a glimpse of her mother's plan. It was to mention nothing and imply nothing, neither to acknowledge, to explain nor to extenuate. She would leave everything to her child; with her child she was secure. She only wanted to get back into society; she would leave even that to her child, whom she treated not as a high-strung and heroic daughter, a creature of exaltation, of devotion, but as a new, charming, clever, useful ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... forgyuen greater fautes than this is. It shall also greatly auayle yf he can shewe that he hathe in tyme afore ben in auctoritie and bare a rule ouer other / in the whiche he was neuer but gentyll and glad to forgyue them that had offended vn[-] derneth hym. And than let hym extenuate his owne faute / and shew that there folo- wed nat so great damage therof / and that but lytle profyte or honesty wyll folowe of his punysshment. And finally than by co- mon places to moue the iudge to ...
— The Art or Crafte of Rhetoryke • Leonard Cox
... that might answer the purpose better.[26] At all events, I must see the lines again first, as there be two I have altered in my mind's manuscript already. Has any one seen or judged of them? that is the criterion by which I will abide—only give me a fair report, and 'nothing extenuate,' as I will in that ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... The subject is one of lively interest, and, though involved in much mystery, must not be disposed of without investigation; and, whilst we claim at the hands of others to "set down nought in malice," we must "nothing extenuate," nor allow any apprehension of consequences to suppress or soften the very truth. The Author feels himself bound to state not only the mere details of facts from which inferences might be drawn, but to offer unreservedly his own opinion, formed upon a patient research, and ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... village than the second in Rome." This has been justly called perverted ambition, and Milton stamped it with terrible condemnation when he put into the mouth of his arch fiend the sentiment—"better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." The passions of youth extenuate those errors which in ripened manhood are criminal; and it is not improbable that Mr. Cooper's own opinion at this day concurs with ours when we say that his refusal of the manager's offer seems to us to have ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... will conceal her faults; if not so there will be no occasion to bring them to light. And even if, after a long courtship, something wrong should be discovered, either you have proceeded too far in honour to retract, or are so blinded by your own feelings as to extenuate it. Now it is only the parents and near relations of a young woman who can be witnesses to her real character, unless it be indeed her own maid, whom one ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... at Mrs. Dick's. Bostwick had ousted him after all, before he could extenuate his madness, before he could ascertain whether Beth were angry or not—before he ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... illustrate the moral and political characters of three nations. To which is added, a correct Engraving of Dartmoor Prison, representing the Massacre of American prisoners. Written by himself." "Nothing extenuate, or set down aught ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... he chanced to stumble, the girl thought she heard a groan from him. She began to wish that she had been able to believe him, but it was utterly impossible, although she suddenly found it in her heart to pity him, to extenuate the abomination of his conduct. Why that last sacrilegious lie he had uttered? The man was suffering; it looked as if the iron were entering his soul. Oh! the pity of it! If he had only acknowledged his offence ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... I'm sure you were thinking of what would be best for both of us, but I've nothing to alter or extenuate. They must do as they think fit, these Christians, if they have the power. After all, it can make no difference to us; I can always get work enough to keep us, even if it isn't such congenial work. ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... been inadequate to your wishes, attribute my demerits to some infirmity of mind, rather than to a negligence of your happiness. Yet, be the cause what it will, since these faults have existed, I do not attempt to disavow or extenuate them, ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... though he were still expecting a sudden retractation. What was the good? Supposing he took it upon himself to extenuate the old man's statements, Morestal was the sort of uncompromising man who would give him the lie in public. And then the government would find itself in an ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery. Our chains are forged; their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston. The war is inevitable—and let it come! I repeat it. Let it come! It is in vain to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, peace—but there is no peace. The war is actually begun. The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ear the clash of resounding arms. Our brethren are already in the field! ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... is the substance of the evidence given by Bielaski. I have no wish to extenuate, in the slightest degree, the few serious offences against common law included in this list, but I imagine that the unprejudiced reader will not fail to observe that Mr. Bielaski found it necessary to rake up everything possible in order to be able to present the Committee ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... of information on the Borgia family; P. Villari's Machiavelli (English translation, new ed., 1892) deals with the subject at some length. Of the Catholic writers L. Pastor, Geschichte der Papste (Freiburg i. B, 1886) should be consulted, for although the author tries to extenuate the pope to some extent, on the whole he is fair. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... have done the state some service, and they know 't. No more of that. I pray you, in your letters, When you shall these unlucky deeds relate, Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate, Nor set down aught in malice. Then, must you speak Of one that loved not wisely but too well; Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought Perplex'd in the extreme; of one whose hand, Like the ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... much more affecting when we read it in confessions wrung out by remorse from the greatly gifted, the gloriously endowed! But it is not his faults that are remembered here—assuredly not these we meet to honour. To deny error to be error, or to extenuate its blame, that makes the outrage upon sacred truth; but to forget that it exists, or if not wholly so, to think of it along with that under-current of melancholy emotion at all times accompanying our meditations on the mixed characters of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... "genial" not so much profaned, were it not misused in easy good-nature, to extenuate lettered and sensual indolence, that worn old term might be applied, above all men, to "the Shirra." But perhaps we scarcely need a word (it would be seldom in use) for a character so rare, or rather so lonely, in its nobility and charm as that ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money." What does this passage mean? Surely this:—if the master gave his slave a hasty blow with a rod, and he died under his hand, he should be punished. But, if the slave lived a day or two, it would so extenuate the act of the master he should not be punished, inasmuch as he would be in that case sufficiently punished in losing his money in his slave. Now, sir, I affirm that God was more lenient to the degraded Hebrew master than Southern ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... poor Maud, as a rule, but he felt a need to shed a little gaiety, to extenuate the accident as far as possible, to turn it into a joke, so as to prevent his girls from being panic-stricken. He talked of heads smashed to a jelly, of legs in smithereens, of a bicyclist who had had not one, but both eyes caught in the chain. As for himself, when he was a small boy—that was ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... seemed to grow more wavering and doubtful. Such was his demeanor and conduct in company of his late companions; while, with his own family, he appeared moody, irresolute, and restless, and even, at length, he began to throw out occasional hints tending to defend or extenuate the conduct of the very man whom, a few weeks before, he had so confidently denounced as a thief and a robber. Alarmed at these indications of returning weakness and fatuity in her husband, Mrs. Elwood soon put herself on inquiry, to ascertain the cause; and ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... detestation of the wrong your father did me. But death brings clearer vision, my child, and I cannot wish that your father's last years,—if, indeed, he be living—should be desolated by not knowing you. I want you to know that there were many things which, while they did not extenuate your father, yet might in ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... I was talking the other day about the perversity of your sex. You either cannot or will not understand your husbands: they hide nothing, extenuate nothing, yet you fail to grasp the idea of that side of their minds which is at once the best and the most dangerous. If Philip did not regard all women with interest, and some with particular interest, he could not have had it in his head to be ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... that our virtues and our vices depend more upon circumstances than upon ourselves, and there are no circumstances which operate so powerfully upon us as government and climate. Let it not be supposed that, in the above assertion, I mean to extenuate vice, or imply that we are not free agents. Naturally prone to vices in general, circumstances will render us more prone to one description of vice than to another; but that is no reason why we should not be answerable for it, since it is ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... spirit of discord and inconstancy, which, in the course of a few years, erected eighteen different models of religion, and avenged the violated dignity of the church. The zealous Hilary, who, from the peculiar hardships of his situation, was inclined to extenuate rather than to aggravate the errors of the Oriental clergy, declares, that in the wide extent of the ten provinces of Asia, to which he had been banished, there could be found very few prelates who had preserved the knowledge of the true God. The oppression which he had felt, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... fanatical up to the point where fanaticism borders upon hypocrisy. He was possessed with a "great moral idea," the idea of making Catholicism the ruler of the world, that he might be the ruler of Catholicism. Why, it may be said, shall the charge of fanaticism be allowed to absolve Isabella and extenuate the guilt of Charles, while it only strengthens the case against Philip? Because Isabella persecuted heretics in order to save their souls from a worse fate, while Philip burnt them in order to get them out of his way. Isabella would perhaps have gone to the stake herself, if thereby she might have ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... enforced by the sword of the civil, power, dominated the world, and in this way account for their conduct; or apologize for it by the necessities of their situation, and the peculiarities of their creed; or combine these causes, and so extenuate what ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... some power, Chiefly when opportunity attends her: She will infuse true motion in a stone, Put glowing fire in an icy soul, Stuff peasants' bosoms with proud Caesar's spleen, Pour rich device into an empty brain: Bring youth to folly's gate: there train him in, And after all, extenuate his sin. Well, I will not go, I am resolved for that. Go, carry it again: yet stay: yet do too, I will defer it till some ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... sensibility, deprecate the serious and distressing consequences which followed such decision; yet we forbear to look with severity on the past, in consequence of judicial precedents, calculated in some measure to extenuate the conduct of the judges, and hope that for the future this explicit expression of public opinion will ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... means a pliant tool in his hands, and he then turned against Matilda. When Stephen had shaken off the chains with which he was loaded in Bristol Castle, the Bishop summoned a council at Westminster, on his legatine authority; and there "by great powers of eloquence, endeavored to extenuate the odium of his own conduct"; affirming that he had supported the Empress, "not from inclination, but necessity." He then "commanded on the part of God and of the Pope, that they should strenuously assist the King, appointed by the will of the people, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... every resource. A fatal idea occurred to me. Believing myself certain of impunity, I committed an infamous action. You see, my father, I conceal nothing from you. I confess the ignominy of my conduct. I seek to extenuate nothing. One of two resolutions remains for me to take, and I have now to decide which. The first is to kill myself, and to leave your name dishonored, for if I do not pay to-day even the twenty-five thousand francs, the complaint is made, the affair known, and, dead or living, I am ruined. ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... Mademoiselle Julie in marriage. I have not the slightest hope that you will grant this request; but I have to make it, nevertheless, for I am a good Christian, sir, and when a good Christian sees himself come to such a point of misery that he can no longer suffer life, he must at least, to extenuate his crime, exhaust all the chances which remain to him before taking the ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... predicted over and over again by the prophets as to happen. The natural consequence of this conviction in the minds of those nations, would be a revulsion of the feelings to the opposite extreme. They would exaggerate the merits, and extenuate the demerits of "God's servant." They would reflect with astonishment and commiseration on their past sufferings. "We considered them," they might exclaim, "as a God- abandoned race, and devoted to wretchedness by him for having crucified their king. But instead of being the victims of ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... you, Susan, that my parentage is as obscure as it well can be; and secondly, that the early part of my life was as vicious. I may, indeed, extenuate it when I enter into an explanation, and with great justice: but I have now only stated the facts generally. If you wish me to enter into particulars, much as I shall blush at the exposure, and painful as the task assigned ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of an anarchy, which was not the case. It may be replied that scathed gives the idea of ruin, waste, and desolation, which was not the case. It is unworthy a lover of truth, in questions of great or little moment, to exaggerate or extenuate for mere convenience, or for vanity yet less than convenience. Scattered naturally means divided, unsettled, disunited.—Next is offered with great pomp a change of sea to seize; but in the first edition the word is fee, for ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... princely, but sanguine friend has been with me again and again. My time is expired and I find a relief beyond measure, for he has fully convinced me that no act of mine can mar the eternal counsel, or in the smallest degree alter or extenuate one event which was decreed before the foundations of the world were laid. He said he had watched over me with the greatest anxiety, but, perceiving my rooted aversion towards him, he had forborne troubling me with his presence. But now, seeing ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... the result of that prosecution, whether those indicted be found guilty, or acquitted, of the misdemeanours laid to their charge; we feel assured, on the one hand, however long and grievous may have been the "provocation," that while there will be "nothing extenuate," neither will there be "set down aught in malice;" but that the measure of the retribution now demanded by the state, will be so temperately and equitably adjusted, that while the very semblance of oppression is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... wicked; he carries his persons indifferently through right and wrong, and at the close dismisses them without further care, and leaves their examples to operate by chance. This fault the barbarity of his age cannot extenuate; for it is always a writer's duty to make the world better, and justice is a virtue ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... declared several times before his death, that he received his wound from Savage; nor did Savage at his trial deny the fact, but endeavoured partly to extenuate it, by urging the suddenness of the whole action, and the impossibility of any ill design, or premeditated malice; and partly to justify it by the necessity of self-defence, and the hazard of his own life, if he had lost that opportunity of giving ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... "Whatever happens, it is best that we should be together." The girl was so agitated, fearing that in some way her adventures might be discovered, that she had no occasion to feign alarm. Mrs. Whately sought only to soothe and quiet, also to extenuate her son's words. "I don't suppose we truly realize yet, as Madison does, what ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... a good deal may be said to extenuate the fault of bad poets. What we call a genius, is hard to be distinguished by a man himself from a strong inclination: and if his genius be ever so great, he cannot at first discover it any other way than by ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... the Graces. For all these Hero made a friendly feast, Welcom'd them kindly, did much love protest, Winning their hearts with all the means she might. That, when her fault should chance t' abide the light 50 Their loves might cover or extenuate it, And high in her worst fate make pity sit. She married them; and in the banquet came, Borne by the virgins. Hero striv'd to frame Her thoughts to mirth: ay me! but hard it is To imitate a false ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... place, in order, in so far as we are enabled so to do, to exonerate Marie de Medicis from the charge of reckless extravagance unsparingly brought against her by the Duc de Sully. Richelieu himself, at the period at which this report was furnished to the ministers, was little disposed to extenuate the errors of the Regent; and cannot, consequently, be supposed to have volunteered any palliative circumstances. Moreover, it is worthy of notice that the enormous sums registered above were not lavished upon the personal favourites ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... word had Roland sought to interrupt his son,—nay, by a feverish excitement which my heart understood in its secret sympathy, he had seemed eagerly to court every syllable that could extenuate the darkness of the offence, or even imply some less sordid motive for the baseness of the means. But as the son now closed with the words of unjust reproach and the accents of fierce despair,—closed a defence that showed, in its false pride and ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... same unflinching fidelity to her creed. It makes her clear and resolute in her statement; but it often makes her as one-sided as the advocates of male supremacy whom she impugns. To be sure, her theory enables her to extenuate some points of admitted injustice to woman,—finding, for instance, in her educational and professional exclusions a crude effort, on the part of society, to treat her as a sort of bird-of-paradise, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... curiosity of Fatima and her sister Anne. We must extenuate here, nor aught set down in malice, remembering that Wagner knew only the women of his own day, before the sex was uplifted and purified by the vote, and he naturally depicted them with the man-engendered vices that were then a part of their unhappy heritage. This "NeugierdeMotiv" ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and would blame her weakness in first consenting to this deception—he who was above deceit. She had not absolutely told, but she had admitted a falsehood; she had acted a falsehood. This she could not extenuate. Her motive at first, to save Lady Davenant's life, was good; but then her weakness afterwards, in being persuaded time after time by Cecilia, could not well be excused. She was conscious that she had sunk step by step, dragged down that slippery path by Cecilia, instead of firmly making a stand, ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... Glory, and such a Strictness of Manners and Morality, as is difficult for Human Nature to comply with. Now when a clergyman, who pretends to preach the Gospel, puts such Constructions on the plainest texts, in which the Doctrine I spoke of is literally taught, as can only tend to extenuate and diminish the Force of them, and when moreover he leaves no Shifts or Evasions untied, till he has destroy'd the Observance of those Precepts; when a Clergyman, I say, is thus employ'd, it is no Wonder that his Doctrine should raise Doubts and Scruples in his hearers, when they compare it with ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... degradation, for it was humiliating to the child to reveal the parent's shame. Criminal he knew him to be, with regard to my mother, but Ernest had said, when gazing on her picture, he almost forgave the crime which had so much to extenuate it. The gambler, the profligate, the lost, abandoned being, who had thrown himself so abjectly on my compassion: in these characters, the high-minded Ernest would spurn him with withering indignation. Yet as the interview had been observed, and his suspicions excited, it was my duty to ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... she face you? To extenuate her act—to give you her version, because she feared his might be worse? Do you gather ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... know, young man, you plead your mother's wants in excuse for an act of desperation: but powerful as this plea might be in palliation of a fault, it cannot extenuate a crime like yours. ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald
... that every universal rule must have its exceptions. But he is so exceedingly accurate, that, if he only fancies he has said a word too precipitate, or too general, or only half true, he never ceases to qualify, to modify, and extenuate, till at last he appears to have said nothing at all. Upon this occasion, Albert was deeply immersed in his subject: I ceased to listen to him, and became lost in reverie. With a sudden motion, I pointed the mouth of ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... on such leading and general topics as are now called common places. Gorgias, he adds, did the same, and wrote panegyrics and invectives on every subject: for he thought it was the province of an Orator to be able either to exaggerate, or extenuate, as occasion might require. Antiphon the Rhamnusian composed several essays of the same species; and (according to Thucydides, a very respectable writer, who was present to hear him) pleaded a capital cause in his own defence, with as much eloquence ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... I am: nothing extenuate, Nor set down aught in malice: then, must you speak Of one that loved, not wisely, but too well; Of one not easily jealous, but, being wrought, Perplexed in the extreme; of one whose hand, Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes, ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... by those whom they more directly concern; and the author's aim has been to be just without severity, and truthful without personality. Humanity is so prone to error that the best men have their failings as well as their virtues; but while it is not desirable to extenuate the former, the biographer is still less warranted in setting them down in malice. Hence the writer has endeavoured to criticise in a kindly and temperate spirit, and to hold up virtues for imitation ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... now the towering oak and pine-tree flourish, instead of the corn and cotton which gladdened the heart and filled the purse. It was this gigantic iniquity which created that arrogant class who have exhausted the catalogue of violence to obtain power and the lexicon of sophistry for arguments to extenuate the exceeding heinousness of crime. How could it be otherwise? To tell a man he is free when he has neither money nor the opportunity to make it, is simply to mock him. To tell him he has no master when he cannot live except by permission of the man who, under favorable ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... scanty force on duty in the town. "Can you pick out the man who insulted you?" asked the sable autocrat. Captain H—— pointed him out; but beginning to fear the infliction of some punishment too severe, attempted to extenuate the offence. "Stop!" cried Christophe, and called the soldier near him. "Do you say this was the man of whom you have told me?" "Yes, sir, it is," replied the alarmed captain; "but"—In an instant Christophe had drawn his sword, and with one blow struck off the head of ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... these errors: and I once more beg the reader's pardon for accusing him of them. Only let him consider, that I live in an age where my least faults are severely censured; and that I have no way left to extenuate my failings, but by showing as great in those whom ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... now nothing to do to complete the main fabric of his garden but to carry this flow of natural draperies on round the domicile's back and farther side and forward to its front again. Thus may he wonderfully extenuate, even above its reach and where it does not conceal, the house's architectural faults, thus winsomely enhance all its architectural charm; like a sweet human mistress of the place, putting into generous shadow all the ill, and into open sunshine all the best, of a husband's ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... induced the inconsiderate Maria to betray, we will not say the confidence of her friend, but such facts as could only have come to her knowledge by the intimacy of unaffected association. If there were any thing to extenuate this breach of decorum by Maria, it was the manner in which it was effected. Miss Osgood had just returned from one of her frequent visits to the villa of Mr. Henley, when Delafield made his customary morning call: the absence of Maria, and the object of her visit, ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... reaction take place? and have I not in some degree deserved it? Yes, I have used deceit in persuading him of my mother's death. I began now to think that that was a false step, which, if ever discovered, might recoil upon me. I remained a long while in deep thought. I tried to extenuate my conduct in this particular, but I could not; and to rid myself of melancholy feelings, which I could not overcome, I wrote a letter, requesting leave of absence for a fortnight, and took it myself to the admiral's office. ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... like, which I was not able to prevent taking place; which, indeed, I had before said, would be most atrocious when I so often petitioned concerning it(144) and which as you yourself show, by revoking it too late, you consider to be grave, and this I could not extenuate when ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... It would, indeed, be difficult to deny or extenuate the appalling truth of Mr. Sinclair's indictment."— ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... deed; or that the monks should dare to shelter or to gloss over those sins which their priestly duty bound them to condemn, because forsooth some wealthy baron could spare a portion of his broad lands or coffered gold to extenuate them. But this forms one of the dark stains of the monastic system; and the monks, I am sorry to say, were more readily inclined to overlook the blemish, because it proved so profitable to their order. And thus it was, that the proud and noble monastery of St. ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... when reason is well-nigh benighted; when the horrible promptings of despair can, alone, be listened to; and when vice itself assumes the aspect of virtue. Pardon what I have said, Madam. I do not desire to extenuate my guilt—far less to defend it; but I would show you, and such as you—who, happily, are exempted from trials like mine—how much misery has to do with crime. And I affirm to you, on my own conviction, that ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... wrote to Mrs. Thrale on July 10, 1780:—'Last week I saw flesh but twice and I think fish once; the rest was pease. You are afraid, you say, lest I extenuate myself too fast, and are an enemy to violence; but did you never hear nor read, dear Madam, that every man has his genius, and that the great rule by which all excellence is attained and all success procured, is to follow ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... writer has had an opportunity of remarking, the generality of professed Christians among the higher classes, either altogether overlook or deny, or at least greatly extenuate the corruption and weakness here in question. They acknowledge indeed that there is, and ever has been in the world, a great portion of vice and wickedness; that mankind have been ever prone to sensuality and selfishness, in disobedience to the more refined and liberal principles of their nature; ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... cause doth saye. He that hathe obserued the whole lawe / and dothe offend in one / is made giltye of all. Which sayinge truly is harde and sharpe / but most true / and teachith all men that they shuld not extenuate synne. But this place of Iames / is not to be vnderstonded / as thoughe that all synnes ...
— A Treatise of the Cohabitation Of the Faithful with the Unfaithful • Peter Martyr
... twice produced as a dead failure. The third time it was pulled through by extraordinary efforts on the part of the acting-manager, Ambivius Turpio. The prologue written by Terence for this third performance is one of the most curious literary documents of the time. He is too angry to extenuate the repeated failure of his play. If we believe him, it fell dead the first time because "that fool, the public," were all excitement over an exhibition on the tight-rope which was to follow the play; at the second representation only one act had been gone through, when a rumour ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... have also said that "the fear of God and faith are wanting." This we have added with the following design: The scholastic teachers also, not sufficiently understanding the definition of original sin, which they have received from the Fathers, extenuate the sin of origin. They contend concerning the fomes [or evil inclination] that it is a quality of [blemish in the] body, and, with their usual folly, ask whether this quality be derived from the contagion of the apple or from the breath of the serpent, and whether it be increased by remedies. ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... with himself; it was only in this last matter that the power, more than the will, to understand his own heart had failed him. His intellect now reasserted itself. He did not attempt to blink facts; he did not deny the truth of the revelation or seek to extenuate its force. He did not tell himself that the matter was a trifle, or that its effect would be transient. He recognized that he had fallen from the state of a priest vowed to Heaven, to that of a man whose whole heart and mind had gone out in love ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... to your honors is this [he spoke calmly and distinctly], and it may in a degree extenuate, though it cannot excuse, my crime. I went into that man's store an innocent boy, and if he had been an honest man I would not have stood before you to-day ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... atonement all mankind hope for salvation, has assured us that the greatest sinner who 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 ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... wane, ebb, decline; descend &c. 306; subside; melt away, die away; retire into the shade, hide its diminished head, fall to a low ebb, run low, languish, decay, crumble. bate, abate, dequantitate|; discount; depreciate; extenuate, lower, weaken, attenuate, fritter away; mitigate &c. (moderate) 174; dwarf, throw into the shade; reduce &c. 195; shorten &c. 201; subtract &c. 38. Adj. unincreased &c. (see increase &c.35)[obs3]; decreased &c. v.; decreasing &c. v.; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... extenuate Hooker's misconduct, his supporters assert that he was struck, stunned, and his brains affected. Hooker was stunned on Friday, and his campaign was already lost on Tuesday before, when he wrote his silly proclamation, when he subsided with the army in a semi-lunar ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... was great," said Reginald. "If anything can extenuate killing a fellow-creature, it is that. Are you quite positive—But perhaps I have no right to speak on ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... done so good an action in coming as almost to extenuate his previous arbitrary conduct to nothing, went home; and Giles was left alone to the suspense of waiting for a reply from the divinity who shaped the ends of the Hintock population. By this time all the villagers knew of the circumstances, and being wellnigh like one family, a keen interest ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... "Healthes, Sicknesse; or a compendious and briefe Discourse, prouing, the Drinking and Pledging of Healthes to be sinfull and utterly unlawfull unto Christians ... wherein all those ordinary objections, excuses or pretences, which are made to justifie, extenuate, or excuse the drinking or pledging of Healthes are likewise cleared and answered." The pamphlet was dedicated to Charles I. as "more interessed in the theame and subject of this compendious discourse then any other that I ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... competition for which neither his antecedents nor his qualifications had prepared him. To this, coupled with the old habit of poverty, must be attributed his oft-cited passion for fine clothes, which surely arose less from vanity than from a mistaken attempt to extenuate what he felt to be his most obvious shortcomings. As a talker especially he was ill-fitted to shine. He was easily disconcerted by retort, and often discomfited in argument. To the end of his days he never lost his native brogue; ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... where the said day is observed, it will fully answer the intent of the said Act; if the preacher shall commend, excuse, palliate, or extenuate the murder of that royal Martyr; and lay the guilt of that horrid rebellion, with all its consequences, the following usurpations, the entire destruction of the Church, the cruel and continual persecutions of those who ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... eyes, but to wreak vengeance on Spencer's unoffending family, who had walked into their settlement under the protection of a friendly alliance, was an unparalleled outrage which nothing can justify or extenuate. With as little delay as possible after the horrible discovery, I returned to camp, had boxes made, and next day buried the bodies of these hapless victims ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... tell him so. That was merely as a relief to myself, for when or where the letter will reach him—And I have written to old Mr Hamley. The relief is the one good thing come out of it all. It is such a comfort to feel free again. It wearied me so to think of straining up to his goodness. "Extenuate my conduct!"' she concluded, quoting Mr. Gibson's words. Yet when Mr. Gibson came home, after a silent dinner, she asked to speak with him, alone, in his consulting-room; and there laid bare the exculpation ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... you choose to believe his further statement that he was constrained to it by Pope Alexander and the Duke of Valentinois, you are, of course, at liberty to do so. But you will do well first to determine precisely what degree of credit such a man might be worth when seeking to extenuate a fault admitted under pressure of the torture—and offering the extenuation likeliest to gain him the favour of the della Rovere Pope, whose life's task—as we shall see—was the defamation of the hated Borgias. You will also do well closely to examine the last part of his confession—that ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... those of Uncle Elkins; he would abide on that level where he found himself on his recovery, and make no effort to lift his wife to that he had renounced. She was a child of Nature. He would learn life anew of her; but he failed of success in all his undertakings. Shall a man attempt to extenuate his failures? It seemed new to him; he acknowledged it in open court, that from the day of his entrance into Dalton to the day he left it, he was under some enchantment there. And if an insane man is not to be held ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... be forgiven His final error, for his merits past; Could virtuous life, propitiating Heaven With former deeds, extenuate the last: ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... receive no stain: Till then, the curse pronounced on both precedes. He ended, and the heavenly audience loud Sung Halleluiah, as the sound of seas, Through multitude that sung: Just are thy ways, Righteous are thy decrees on all thy works; Who can extenuate thee? Next, to the Son, Destined Restorer of mankind, by whom New Heaven and Earth shall to the ages rise, Or down from Heaven descend.—Such was their song; While the Creator, calling forth by name His mighty Angels, gave them several charge, As sorted best with present things. The sun ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... knowledge, of Right and Wrong, which is no lesse difficult, there is no man will pretend to, without great and long study. And of those defects in Reasoning, there is none that can Excuse (though some of them may Extenuate) a Crime, in any man, that pretendeth to the administration of his own private businesse; much lesse in them that undertake a publique charge; because they pretend to the Reason, upon the want whereof they would ground ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... betrayed him; and to call his faults errors of genius is a mischievous fallacy. If they were, then they were no lesson for the rest of us; if they were not, to call them so is to encourage certain gin-and-water philosophers who would fain extenuate their unpleasant vices by the plea that they are the necessary complement of unusual powers,—as if the path to immortality were through the kennel, and fine verses were to be written only at the painful sacrifice of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... The noblest and the basest he not only seems to comprehend, but to personate and body forth in their most secret lineaments: hence actions and opinions appear to him as they are, with all the circumstances which extenuate or endear them to the hearts where they originated and are entertained. This also is the spirit of our Shakespeare, and perhaps of every great dramatic poet. Shakespeare is no sectarian; to all he deals with equity and mercy; because he knows all, and his heart is wide enough for all. ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... and decisive manner are punishments awarded for every class of crimes committed in society; and it was communicated to the English factory from the viceroy, that on no consideration was it left in the breast of the judge to extenuate or to exaggerate the sentence, whatever might be the rank, character, or station of ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... (Oh, shame to patriotism, and reproach to Great Britain!) who act as the emissaries of France, both in word and writing; who exaggerate our necessary burdens, magnify our dangers, extol the power of our enemies, deride our victories, extenuate our conquests, condemn the measures of our government, and scatter the seeds of dissatisfaction through the land. Such domestic traitors are doubly the objects of detestation;—first, in perverting truth; and, secondly, in propagating falsehood, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... the Turks because they did not introduce knives and forks at their tables," &c. Even Scripture—and this, be it remembered, by the sanction of The Christian Advocate—is blasphemously quoted to extenuate the American practice of expectoration. "What, after all, is there so unbearably revolting about spitting? Our Saviour, in one of his early miracles, 'spat upon the ground and made clay of the spittle, and anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay. And he said unto him, Go ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... character as it is, as the model of all that is generous, hospitable, and magnanimous, is in some degree fashionable; but although I am as warm an admirer of all that is really excellent and amiable in my countrymen as any man, yet I cannot, nor will I, extenuate their weak and indefensible points. That they possess the elements of a noble and exalted national character, I grant; nay, that they actually do possess such a character, under limitations, I am ready to maintain. Irishmen, setting aside their religious and political prejudices, ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... would open and swallow me up, but nothing so comfortable happened. I was obliged to gaze into Stevie's overflowing eyes and own up to the truth as well as I could, and explain it. It was the most humiliating hour that I ever spent, but I told Stevie exactly what I felt about her 'nothing extenuate, and naught set down in malice,' and what I had said about her to our mutual friend, who by the way, is not the mutual friend of either of us any longer. We were both crying by the time I had finished, but we understood each other. There were one ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... In the triumphant bearing of this witness, and in the malignant glance which he had shot toward him ere he began his tale, Richard read that the charge against him was to be pushed to the bitter end. It was in this man's power, more than in any other's (save one), to extenuate or to set down in malice; and there was no doubt in his rival's mind (though his rancor took so blunt a form that it might well have been mistaken by others for outspoken candor) which of the two courses Solomon ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... worthy daughter of Athens. In years to come they will name you with King Codrus who sacrificed his life for the freedom of Attica, for have you not sacrificed what should be dearer than life,—the fair name of your husband? But courage. Your patriotism may extenuate his crime. Only the ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... great things which the Lord hath done for your Honours, hath gone forth into many Lands, and it becometh us least of any either to smother or extenuate the same; We desire to be enlarged in the admiration of the Power & Mercie of God the Author, & to diminish nothing of that praise that is due unto you as Instruments. When the Lord set your Honours upon the Bench of Judgment, both the Kirk and Common wealth of England ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... yet. Only I know that I must get free. It isn't that I'm hard. It's just that I have no choice. Your case was different. You had to do it. But this—" her words sank, became scarcely audible—"Nick, could anything extenuate—this?" ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... read aloud. Gardiner gave a frank, explicit account of all that had happened since he parted with his owner, concealing nothing, and not attempting even to extenuate his fault. Of the Sea Lion of Holmes' Hole he wrote at large, giving it as his opinion that Captain Daggett really possessed some clue—what he did not know—to the existence of the sealing islands, though he rather thought ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... to discover what it was that had brought the Suffet just when circumstances were most unfavourable. They went on to talk over the situation, and Spendius, to extenuate his fault, or to revive his courage, asserted that ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... partisans, though the charge may be indisputably fixed upon the corruption of their politics. For my part, I follow their crimes to that point to which legal presumptions and natural indications lead me, without considering what species of evil motive tends most to aggravate or to extenuate the guilt of their conduct. But if I am to speak my private sentiments, I think that in a thousand cases for one it would be far less mischievous to the public, and full as little dishonorable to themselves, to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Breuer cannot possibly vindicate himself against this disparagement I feel obliged to extenuate Dr. Breuer in the eyes ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... of the morning I met—in the street. He is one of the justest-minded men of my acquaintance, and I have never known him attempt to exaggerate the ill conduct of his political opponents, or to extenuate the errors of those to whom he belongs. Speaking of this affair, he was of opinion that the government had endeavoured to bring it on, with the certainly that success would strengthen them, but, at the same time, he thought it useless to deny that there was a plot to overturn ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... in the course of this narrative to extenuate nothing, nor set down aught in malice. Like the gentleman who played euchre with the heathen Chinee, I state but the facts. I do not, therefore, slur over my scheme for disturbing the professor's peace of mind. I am not always ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... part I cannot say I am any judge of that, having seldom observed him open his mouth except for purposes very foreign to conversation. In short, sir, this young gentleman's failing is, an immoderate indulgence of his palate. The first time he dined with us, he thought it necessary to extenuate the length of time he kept the dinner on the table, by declaring that he had taken a very long walk in the morning, and came in fasting; but as that excuse could not serve above once or twice at most, he has latterly dropped the mask altogether, and chosen to appear in his ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... wrong him. My sins and transgressions are my own. Mountain high as they are, they shall not crush another. Mine is the sorrow and guilt, and mine be the penalty. I do not extenuate my own offences, but I will not criminate others. I beseech you, sir, to recall what you have just uttered, for how can I close those doors upon a friend, which have so lately been opened for ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... not made to extenuate Rousseau's faults, or to raise the popular estimate of his character, but simply in the interests of a greater precision of criticism. In England criticism has nearly always been of the most vulgar superficiality ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... McCombs' suggestion, arguing that no explanation of the Joline letter could be made to Mr. Bryan that would wear the appearance of sincerity, or be convincing, and that the letter having been written there was nothing to do to extenuate it in any way and that the wise thing was to make a virtue of necessity. I suggested that on the following night, when the Governor was to deliver his address at the Jackson Day dinner, he could, in the most generous and kindly way, ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... Our sins make us guilty and deserving of punishment, even though they be sins of weakness. We must not excuse or extenuate them. God never excuses any one. But if we penitently confess our sins, He will forgive us for Jesus' sake. ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump
... now arose, in which every word may be said to have been deposed upon oath; for the oaths were at least equal to all the other words spoken. In this controversy the whole company spoke together, and every man seemed wholly bent to extenuate the sum which fell to his share; so that the most probable conclusion which could be foreseen was, that a large portion of the reckoning would fall to the landlord's share to pay, or (what is much the same thing) ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... hath a measure of this spirit, and is grieved at his heart, when he calls to mind his shameful denials of his Lord. If any, who think themselves his disciples are blind to their faults, or little affected with them—ready to excuse or extenuate them, especially if hidden from the world; or feel reluctant to take shame to themselves, when they have fallen, it nearly concerns them to examine the grounds of their hope toward God; there is reason to fear that they "hold a lie in their right hands." Those who are Christ's discern their faults; ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... cannot act for him; and hence I must be, and I am, debased, contaminated by the union, both in my own eyes and in the actual truth. I am so determined to love him, so intensely anxious to excuse his errors, that I am continually dwelling upon them, and labouring to extenuate the loosest of his principles and the worst of his practices, till I am familiarised with vice, and almost a partaker in his sins. Things that formerly shocked and disgusted me, now seem only natural. I know them to be wrong, because reason and God's word declare them ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... hour—all he had never dared to say, more almost than he had ever dared to think. He did not spare himself. The tragic history of O Hara San he gave in all its pitifulness without attempting to extenuate or shield himself in any way; he sketched frankly the girl's loneliness and childish ignorance, his own casual and selfish acceptance of the sacrifice she made and the terrible catastrophe that ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... precipitate of the partisan animosity that inspires both parties and holds them to their duty of self-sacrifice and devastation, and at its best it will chiefly serve as a cloak of self-righteousness to extenuate any exceptionally profligate excursions ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... who inflicts an injury on a virtuous person, so far as he is concerned, disturbs him internally and externally; but that the latter is not disturbed internally is due to his goodness, which does not extenuate the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... stoutest African to his grave. But he can well be spared. While he is fast sinking into premature old age, negro boys in Virginia are growing up as fast into vigorous manhood to supply the void which cruelty is making in Louisiana. God forbid that I should extenuate the horrors of the slave trade in any form! But I do think this its worst form. Bad enough is it that civilised men should sail to an uncivilised quarter of the world where slavery exists, should there buy wretched barbarians, and should carry them away to labour in a distant land: bad enough! ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... numerous as well as most conspicuous instances, both of Beauties and Faults of all sorts. But this far exceeds the bounds of a Preface, the business of which is only to give an account of the fate of his Works, and the disadvantages under which they have been transmitted to us. We shall hereby extenuate many faults which are his, and clear him from the imputation of many which are not: A design, which, tho' it can be no guide to future Criticks to do him justice in one way, will at least be sufficient to prevent their doing him an ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... which have been exercised on the Aborigines of America, the wrong and outrage heaped on them from the days of Montezuma and Guatimozin, to the present period, while they excite sympathy for their sufferings, should extenuate, if not justify the bloody deeds, which revenge prompted the untutored savages to commit. Driven as they were from the lands of which they were the rightful proprietors—Yielding to encroachment after encroachment ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... unretarded years, shall come. May we all have moderation; may we all show candor. Though, perhaps, nothing could ultimately have averted the strife, and though to treat of human actions is to deal wholly with second causes, nevertheless, let us not cover up or try to extenuate what, humanly speaking, is the truth—namely, that those unfraternal denunciations, continued through years, and which at last inflamed to deeds that ended in bloodshed, were reciprocal; and that, had the preponderating strength and the prospect of its unlimited increase lain on the other ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... looking forward to the field which is now opened before me, I cannot but conceive that I shall often be reproached with being not your representative but the representative of the Duke of Newcastle. Now I should rather incline to exaggerate than to extenuate such connection as does exist between me and that nobleman: and for my part should have no reluctance to see every sentiment which ever passed between us, whether by letter or by word of mouth, exposed to the view of the world. I met the Duke of Newcastle ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry peace! peace!—but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field. Why stand we here idle? ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... suffered much, and that their wives and children had been murdered before their eyes, but to wreak vengeance on Spencer's unoffending family, who had walked into their settlement under the protection of a friendly alliance, was an unparalleled outrage which nothing can justify or extenuate. With as little delay as possible after the horrible discovery, I returned to camp, had boxes made, and next day buried the bodies of these hapless victims of ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... had Roland sought to interrupt his son,—nay, by a feverish excitement which my heart understood in its secret sympathy, he had seemed eagerly to court every syllable that could extenuate the darkness of the offence, or even imply some less sordid motive for the baseness of the means. But as the son now closed with the words of unjust reproach and the accents of fierce despair,—closed a defence that showed, in its ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... for god from a different root, yet coming so near to dewos as thewos? These internal difficulties seem to me nearly as great as the external: at all events it would not be right to attempt to extenuate either. ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... not his affections might be soothed, that in an unguarded moment he induced the inconsiderate Maria to betray, we will not say the confidence of her friend, but such facts as could only have come to her knowledge by the intimacy of unaffected association. If there were any thing to extenuate this breach of decorum by Maria, it was the manner in which it was effected. Miss Osgood had just returned from one of her frequent visits to the villa of Mr. Henley, when Delafield made his customary ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... that no explanation of the Joline letter could be made to Mr. Bryan that would wear the appearance of sincerity, or be convincing, and that the letter having been written there was nothing to do to extenuate it in any way and that the wise thing was to make a virtue of necessity. I suggested that on the following night, when the Governor was to deliver his address at the Jackson Day dinner, he could, ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... understood the trend of her thoughts. He tried to find some excuse for his cowardly act; but with the realization of the true cowardliness and treachery of it that the girl didn't even guess he understood the futility of seeking to extenuate it. He saw that the chances were excellent that after all he would be compelled to resort to force or threats to win her hand ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... forget that it was the Catholic Lord Baltimore and Catholic colonists of Maryland who in 1648 first proclaimed on these shores the glorious principle of universal toleration, while the Puritans were persecuting in New England and the Episcopalians in Virginia. 'Nothing extenuate nor aught set down in malice,' should be the rule of our souls. Humanity means eternal Progress, and its path is ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... mercenary troops, hired from several princes of Europe. It was found that the Queen's general subtracted two and a half per cent, out of the pay of those troops, for his own use, which amounted to a great annual sum. The Duke of Marlborough, in his letter already mentioned, endeavouring to extenuate the matter, told the commissioners, "That this deduction was a free gift from the foreign troops, which he had negotiated with them by the late King's orders, and had obtained the Queen's warrant for reserving and receiving it: That it was intended ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... debased, contaminated by the union, both in my own eyes and in the actual truth. I am so determined to love him, so intensely anxious to excuse his errors, that I am continually dwelling upon them, and labouring to extenuate the loosest of his principles and the worst of his practices, till I am familiarised with vice, and almost a partaker in his sins. Things that formerly shocked and disgusted me, now seem only natural. I know them to be wrong, because reason and God's word declare ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... weigh well the consequences of his accusation; but as he persisted in the same positive asseverations, Stanley was committed to custody, and was soon after examined before the council.[*] He denied not the guilt imputed to him by Clifford; he did not even endeavor much to extenuate it; whether he thought that a frank and open confession would serve as an atonement, or trusted to his present connections and his former services for pardon and security. But princes are often apt to regard great services as a ground of jealousy, especially ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... trying to discover what it was that had brought the Suffet just when circumstances were most unfavourable. They went on to talk over the situation, and Spendius, to extenuate his fault, or to revive his courage, asserted that ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... real merit) has had no inconsiderable share in the applauses of his party1; and who, upon this false and unfounded suggestion, has built a series of observations equally false and unfounded. Let him now be confronted with the evidence of the fact, and let him, if he be able, justify or extenuate the shameful outrage he has offered to the dictates of truth and to the rules of fair dealing. The second clause of the second section of the second article empowers the President of the United States ...
— The Federalist Papers
... objected that her ready avowal of weakness as common to all her sex is the undramatic epigram of a satirist, awkwardly ventriloquizing through the mechanism of a tragic puppet; but it is really quite in keeping with the woman's character to enlarge and extenuate the avowal of her own infamy and infirmity into a sententious reflection on womanhood in general. A similar objection has been raised against the apparent change of character implied in the confession made by the hero to the ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... indisputably fixed upon the corruption of their politics. For my part, I follow their crimes to that point to which legal presumptions and natural indications lead me, without considering what species of evil motive tends most to aggravate or to extenuate the guilt of their conduct. But if I am to speak my private sentiments, I think that in a thousand cases for one it would be far less mischievous to the public, and full as little dishonorable to themselves, to be polluted ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... The compassion which on these and all other occasions was manifested by Mr. Burke for the sufferings of those public delinquents, the zeal with which he advocated their cause, and the eagerness with which he endeavoured to extenuate their criminality, have received severe reprehension, and in particular when contrasted with his subsequent conduct in the prosecution ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... cardinal? If you choose to believe his further statement that he was constrained to it by Pope Alexander and the Duke of Valentinois, you are, of course, at liberty to do so. But you will do well first to determine precisely what degree of credit such a man might be worth when seeking to extenuate a fault admitted under pressure of the torture—and offering the extenuation likeliest to gain him the favour of the della Rovere Pope, whose life's task—as we shall see—was the defamation of the hated Borgias. You will also do well closely to examine the last part of his ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... stand clear in his eyes as to the main points, he must, and would blame her weakness in first consenting to this deception—he who was above deceit. She had not absolutely told, but she had admitted a falsehood; she had acted a falsehood. This she could not extenuate. Her motive at first, to save Lady Davenant's life, was good; but then her weakness afterwards, in being persuaded time after time by Cecilia, could not well be excused. She was conscious that she had sunk step by step, dragged down that slippery path by Cecilia, instead of firmly making ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... this serve to extenuate my culpability towards you. I entreat your pardon for my fault. I desire you, if you please, to keep this transaction secret, in order that the world shall not have any opportunity to speak of an affair which ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... the temple. We females were busy at the needle, while my brother and Pleyel were bandying quotations and syllogisms. The point discussed was the merit of the oration for Cluentius, as descriptive, first, of the genius of the speaker; and, secondly, of the manners of the times. Pleyel laboured to extenuate both these species of merit, and tasked his ingenuity, to shew that the orator had embraced a bad cause; or, at least, a doubtful one. He urged, that to rely on the exaggerations of an advocate, or to make the picture of a single family ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... I was obliged to gaze into Stevie's overflowing eyes and own up to the truth as well as I could, and explain it. It was the most humiliating hour that I ever spent, but I told Stevie exactly what I felt about her 'nothing extenuate, and naught set down in malice,' and what I had said about her to our mutual friend, who by the way, is not the mutual friend of either of us any longer. We were both crying by the time I had finished, but we understood each other. There were one or two things that she ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... will infuse true motion in a stone, Put glowing fire in an icy soul, Stuff peasants' bosoms with proud Caesar's spleen, Pour rich device into an empty brain: Bring youth to folly's gate: there train him in, And after all, extenuate his sin. Well, I will not go, I am resolved for that. Go, carry it again: yet stay: yet do too, I will defer it ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... have been playing false, and am now punished for it? What do the world care for your having returned to truth? You have offended by deceiving them, and that is an offence which your repentance will not extenuate." It was but too true, I had brought it all on myself, and this reflection increased my misery. For my dishonesty, I had been justly and severely punished: whether I was ever to be rewarded for my subsequent honesty still remained to be proved; but I knew very well that most people ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... his recovery, and make no effort to lift his wife to that he had renounced. She was a child of Nature. He would learn life anew of her; but he failed of success in all his undertakings. Shall a man attempt to extenuate his failures? It seemed new to him; he acknowledged it in open court, that from the day of his entrance into Dalton to the day he left it, he was under some enchantment there. And if an insane man is not to be held responsible in law for his offences, he had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... self-discipline, which will make us wiser and better men for the future. If we have made obvious mistakes, we should not try, as we generally do, to gloss them over, or to find something to excuse or extenuate them; we should admit to ourselves that we have committed faults, and open our eyes wide to all their enormity, in order that we may firmly resolve to avoid them in time to come. To be sure, that means a great ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... wasn't well when she went away," he whispered, turning his shoulder to the men and his face to Philip. He talked in a low voice, just above the rumble of the wheels, trying to extenuate Kate's fault and to ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... must do. I can scarcely think or feel yet. Only I know that I must get free. It isn't that I'm hard. It's just that I have no choice. Your case was different. You had to do it. But this—" her words sank, became scarcely audible—"Nick, could anything extenuate—this?" ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... pretend to extenuate the quality of my conduct. I was a young and fairly vigorous male; all my appetite for love had been roused and whetted and none of it had been satisfied by my love affair and my marriage. I had pursued an elusive ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... bearing of this witness, and in the malignant glance which he had shot toward him ere he began his tale, Richard read that the charge against him was to be pushed to the bitter end. It was in this man's power, more than in any other's (save one), to extenuate or to set down in malice; and there was no doubt in his rival's mind (though his rancor took so blunt a form that it might well have been mistaken by others for outspoken candor) which of the two ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... therfor in this cause doth saye. He that hathe obserued the whole lawe / and dothe offend in one / is made giltye of all. Which sayinge truly is harde and sharpe / but most true / and teachith all men that they shuld not extenuate synne. But this place of Iames / is not to be vnderstonded / as thoughe that all synnes wer ...
— A Treatise of the Cohabitation Of the Faithful with the Unfaithful • Peter Martyr
... and lesser slides of sounds. Divers instruments of music likewise to you unknown, some sweeter than any you have; with bells and rings that are dainty and sweet. We represent small sounds as great and deep, likewise great sounds, extenuate and sharp; we make divers tremblings and warblings of sounds, which in their original are entire. We represent and imitate all articulate sounds and letters, and the voices and notes of beasts and birds. We have certain ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... said that "the fear of God and faith are wanting." This we have added with the following design: The scholastic teachers also, not sufficiently understanding the definition of original sin, which they have received from the Fathers, extenuate the sin of origin. They contend concerning the fomes [or evil inclination] that it is a quality of [blemish in the] body, and, with their usual folly, ask whether this quality be derived from the contagion of the apple or from ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... presently, apologetic and abject, prepared at the same time to extenuate and deny. Trent ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in the attendant circumstances that were connected with the act of Nero in murdering his mother, which could palliate or extenuate the deed in the slightest degree. It was not an act of self-defense. Agrippina was not doing him, or intending to do him any injury. It was not an act of hasty violence, prompted by sudden passion. It was not required by any ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... Curetonian and Lewis,—among the Versions: of the copies Codd. B and [Symbol: Aleph]: and above all, coming later down still, Cod. D:—these venerable monuments of a primitive age occasionally present us with deformities which it is worse than useless to extenuate,—quite impossible to overlook. Unauthorized appendixes,—tasteless and stupid amplifications,—plain perversions of the meaning of the Evangelists,—wholly gratuitous assimilations of one Gospel to another,—the unprovoked omission of passages of profound interest and not unfrequently of high ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... were equally ferocious. James II. was an easy-minded tiger; like Philip II., his crimes lay light upon his conscience. He was a monster by the grace of God. Therefore he had nothing to dissimulate nor to extenuate, and his assassinations were by divine right. He, too, would not have minded leaving behind him those archives of Simancas, with all his misdeeds dated, classified, labelled, and put in order, each in its compartment, like poisons in the cabinet of a chemist. To set the sign-manual ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... languidly. "My doctor says it isn't so much nerves as lack of nerve with me; I don't know what you call it, but I confess I find the smoke-wreaths pleasant; you won't join me either, Jack? Well, let us have the story in all its native simplicity and be sure you nothing extenuate nor set ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... gladdened the heart and filled the purse. It was this gigantic iniquity which created that arrogant class who have exhausted the catalogue of violence to obtain power and the lexicon of sophistry for arguments to extenuate the exceeding heinousness of crime. How could it be otherwise? To tell a man he is free when he has neither money nor the opportunity to make it, is simply to mock him. To tell him he has no master when he cannot live except ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... my aim in the course of this narrative to extenuate nothing, nor set down aught in malice. Like the gentleman who played euchre with the Heathen Chinee, I state but facts. I do not, therefore, slur over my scheme for disturbing the professor's peace of mind. I am not always good and noble. I am the hero ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... that the arrest of Garibaldi could not be kept secret, the general thought it most prudent to be himself the herald of its occurrence, which he announced to the troops in a manner as little discouraging as he could devise. It was difficult to extenuate the consequences of so great a blow, but they were assured that it was not a catastrophe, and would not in the slightest degree affect the execution of the plans previously resolved on. Two or three days later some increase of confidence was occasioned by the authentic intelligence that Garibaldi ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... oppressor and redress the wronged, and they thus fixed in the wild elements of unsettled opinion a recognised standard of generosity and of justice. Their deeds became the theme of the poets, who sought to embellish their virtues and extenuate their offences. Thus, certain models, not indeed wholly pure or excellent, but bright with many of those qualities which ennoble a national character, were set before the emulation of the aspiring and the young:—and the traditional fame of a Hercules ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... are those who are and desire to be considered powerful theologians, though they extenuate original sin by sophistry. But vices so numerous and great cannot be extenuated. Original sin is not a slight disorder or infirmity, but complete lawlessness, the like of which is not found in other creatures, except in ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... really suffers in thought by the same unflinching fidelity to her creed. It makes her clear and resolute in her statement; but it often makes her as one-sided as the advocates of male supremacy whom she impugns. To be sure, her theory enables her to extenuate some points of admitted injustice to woman,—finding, for instance, in her educational and professional exclusions a crude effort, on the part of society, to treat her as a sort of bird-of-paradise, born only to fly, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... debates upon this impeachment, it must be confessed that his majesty gave many marks of his great lenity, often urging the services you had done him, and endeavoring to extenuate your crimes. The treasurer and admiral insisted that you should be put to the most painful and ignominious death, by setting fire on your house at night; and the general was to attend, with twenty thousand men armed with poisoned arrows, to shoot you on ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... I am very sensible nothing can be alledged sufficient to excuse so great a crime as I have been guilty of it, that of Rebellion. But I humbly beg leave to lay before your Excellency some particulars in the circumstance of my guilt, which, I hope, will extenuate it in some measure. It was my misfortune, at the time the Rebellion broke out, to be liable to legal diligence and caption, at the Duke of Montrose's instance, for debt alledged due to him. To avoid being flung into prison, ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... infinitely greater evils than the murderer, why is he not as proper an object of penal legislation as the murderer? We can give a reason, a reason, short, simple, decisive, and consistent. We do not extenuate the evil which the heresiarch produces; but we say that it is not evil of that sort the sort against which it is the end of government to guard. But how Mr. Gladstone, who considers the evil which the heresiarch produces as evil of the sort against which it is the end of government to guard, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... O troubled soul, from whom the vision of Christ is veiled. It is more than likely that some undetected or unconfessed sin is shutting out the rays of the true sun. Excuse nothing, extenuate nothing, omit nothing. Do not speak of mistakes of judgment, but of lapses of heart and will. Do not be content with a general confession; be particular and specific. Drag each evil thing forth before God's judgment bar; let the secrets ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... Reginald. "If anything can extenuate killing a fellow-creature, it is that. Are you quite positive—But perhaps I have no right ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... made all the harder by the fact that she was proving herself such a different girl from the one I loved,—so different, in fact, that, despite what I had heard, I couldn't quite believe it of her, and found myself seeking to extenuate and even justify her conduct. While I was doing this, they came within hearing, and ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... set down without omissions and with nothing extenuate the data on which is based the indictment that the clergy have been, and are, anti-national, and I ask the reader to say whether the charge is unsupported or not. That overtures have again and again been made sub rosa to the clergy ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... name you with King Codrus who sacrificed his life for the freedom of Attica, for have you not sacrificed what should be dearer than life,—the fair name of your husband? But courage. Your patriotism may extenuate his crime. Only the traitor ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... indignation which made an effectual obstacle to the pity of the senate. He had sought Julia; he had detailed to her the confession of Nydia; he had easily, therefore, lulled any scruple of conscience which might have led her to extenuate the offence of Glaucus by avowing her share in his frenzy: and the more readily, for her vain heart had loved the fame and the prosperity of Glaucus—not Glaucus himself, she felt no affection for a disgraced ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... which, in the course of a few years, erected eighteen different models of religion, and avenged the violated dignity of the church. The zealous Hilary, who, from the peculiar hardships of his situation, was inclined to extenuate rather than to aggravate the errors of the Oriental clergy, declares, that in the wide extent of the ten provinces of Asia, to which he had been banished, there could be found very few prelates who had preserved the knowledge of the true God. The oppression which ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... when people with the slightest excuse therefor have themselves regularly photographed, this old-fashioned youth refused to allow his 'likeness' to be taken,—this circumstance must do what it can to extenuate minuteness of detail in the picture, as well as over-attention to points of which a photograph would ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... scathed; for scattered, he says, gives the idea of an anarchy, which was not the case. It may be replied that scathed gives the idea of ruin, waste, and desolation, which was not the case. It is unworthy a lover of truth, in questions of great or little moment, to exaggerate or extenuate for mere convenience, or for vanity yet less than convenience. Scattered naturally means divided, unsettled, disunited.—Next is offered with great pomp a change of sea to seize; but in the first ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... Graces. For all these Hero made a friendly feast, Welcom'd them kindly, did much love protest, Winning their hearts with all the means she might. That, when her fault should chance t' abide the light 50 Their loves might cover or extenuate it, And high in her worst fate make pity sit. She married them; and in the banquet came, Borne by the virgins. Hero striv'd to frame Her thoughts to mirth: ay me! but hard it is To imitate a false and forced bliss; Ill may a sad mind forge a merry face, Nor hath constrained laughter any grace. ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... of the charges in which I am personally concerned. As to the other matters objected against me, which in their turn I shall mention to you, remember once more I do not mean to extenuate or excuse. Why should I, when the things charged are among those upon which I found all my reputation? What would be left to me, if I myself was the man who softened and blended and diluted and weakened all the distinguishing colors of my life, so as ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... occupied with this thought at present, no doubt the same impulse would have been experienced; but now it was my brother whom I was irresistibly persuaded to regard as the contriver of that ill of which I had been forewarned. This persuasion did not extenuate my fears or my danger. Why then did I again approach the closet and withdraw the bolt? My resolution was instantly conceived, and executed ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... careful to shew in the virtuous a disapprobation of the wicked; he carries his persons indifferently through right and wrong, and at the close dismisses them without further care, and leaves their examples to operate by chance. This fault the barbarity of his age cannot extenuate; for it is always a writer's duty to make the world better, and justice is a virtue independant on ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... war." After this preface (which should be read in connection with the Hornet's unaccepted challenge to the Bonne Citoyenne, a ship "a trifle superior in force") it can be considered certain that James will both extenuate and also set down a good deal in malice. One instance of this has already been given in speaking of the President's capture. Again, he says, "the Hornet received several round shot in her hull," which she did—a month after this action, from the Cornwallis, 74; James knew perfectly ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... drinking of healths, entitled, "Healthes, Sicknesse; or a compendious and briefe Discourse, prouing, the Drinking and Pledging of Healthes to be sinfull and utterly unlawfull unto Christians ... wherein all those ordinary objections, excuses or pretences, which are made to justifie, extenuate, or excuse the drinking or pledging of Healthes are likewise cleared and answered." The pamphlet was dedicated to Charles I. as "more interessed in the theame and subject of this compendious discourse then any other that ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... infinite treasure to such as are endowed with it: Dulcisonum reficit tristia corda melos, Eobanus Hessus. Many other properties [3473]Cassiodorus, epist. 4. reckons up of this our divine music, not only to expel the greatest griefs, but "it doth extenuate fears and furies, appeaseth cruelty, abateth heaviness, and to such as are watchful it causeth quiet rest; it takes away spleen and hatred," be it instrumental, vocal, with strings, wind, [3474]Quae, a spiritu, sine manuum dexteritate gubernetur, &c. it ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... question more, and that is concerning provocation. We have hitherto been considering self-defense, and how far persons may go in defending themselves against aggressors, even by taking away their lives, and now proceed to consider such provocations as the law allows to mitigate or extenuate the guilt of killing, where it is not justifiable or excusable. An assault and battery committed upon a man in such a manner as not to endanger his life is such a provocation as the law allows to reduce ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... of the great things which the Lord hath done for your Honours, hath gone forth into many Lands, and it becometh us least of any either to smother or extenuate the same; We desire to be enlarged in the admiration of the Power & Mercie of God the Author, & to diminish nothing of that praise that is due unto you as Instruments. When the Lord set your Honours upon the Bench of ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... my patience, hear 'em! Can cunning falshood colour an excuse With any seeming shape of borrowed truth? Extenuate this ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... that "it is clearly shown" that Starna "in this confession did not deny his own responsibility; a fact which gives his statement the character of an incriminative and not of an exonerative confession; and that though he might possibly have wished, in his statement of the facts, to modify and extenuate his own share in the crime, yet there was no reason to suspect that he wished gratuitously to aggravate the guilt of his comrade;" and that also taking into consideration the villainous character of Volpi, it cannot be doubted, that he was the principal in the ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... to stand among the many "witnesses" who shall establish "the truth," proud to write myself as one who faithfully served the defenders of the Cause which had and has my heart's devotion. I have tried to give a faithful record of my experiences, to "nothing extenuate nor aught set down in malice," and I have told the truth, but not always the whole truth. A few of these "Memories" were originally written for the Southern Bivouac, and are here republished because my book would have been incomplete ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... soothe and tranquilize your principal; do not see things in the same aggravated light in which he views them; extenuate the conduct of his adversary whenever you see clearly an opportunity to do so, without doing violence to your friend's irritated mind. Endeavor to persuade him that there must have been some misunderstanding in the matter. Check him if he uses opprobrious ...
— The Code of Honor • John Lyde Wilson
... that Adonis is alive, 1009 Her rash suspect sile doth extenuate; And that his beauty may the better thrive, With Death she humbly doth insinuate; 1012 Tells him of trophies, statues, tombs; and stories His victories, his ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... no retreat but in submission and slavery. Our chains are forged; their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston. The war is inevitable—and let it come! I repeat it. Let it come! It is in vain to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, peace—but there is no peace. The war is actually begun. The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ear the clash of resounding arms. Our brethren are already in the field! Why are we here idle? ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... been guilty of wanton cruelty, and I wished my aim had miscarried, proud as I had just before been of having done execution at what looked to be an impracticably long range. Not improbably I tried to extenuate my inhumanity by the argument that if I had not killed it somebody else would have done so. Be this how it may, I could never bring myself to shoot another, though I had many a fair chance. All things considered, then, I am disposed to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... neither could nor ought to be maintained; the internal feuds of Poland were more fatal to human happiness than the despotism of Russia; and the growth of improvement among its people was as slow as among the ryots of Hindostan." These are just remarks; but the causes of Poland's overthrow do not extenuate the guilt of the spoliators: the dismemberment of the country is a foul blot upon the historic page of Russia, Austria, and Prussia—a blot which can never ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... emotion—that was excluded by the plan, to say nothing of conditions more primal. Rose had from the first a glimpse of her mother's plan. It was to mention nothing and imply nothing, neither to acknowledge, to explain nor to extenuate. She would leave everything to her child; with her child she was secure. She only wanted to get back into society; she would leave even that to her child, whom she treated not as a high-strung and heroic daughter, ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... disposition of mind confined to painting only: but if it should prove extended to more serious subjects, we can only hope that the violent excess of the temptation may prove some excuse, or at least in a slight degree extenuate the offence: A wise man cannot believe half he hears in Italy to be sure, but a pious man will be cautious not to discredit ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... further extenuate the term, seven scenes; the utterance seven "acts" would sound horrific, full of extremities of weariness; but my meaning actually is none other than seven acts of one scene each: for the number seven, there always have been decent reasons, and ours may best appear ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... "God is most great! By Allah, the Commander of the Faithful pardons me!" Quoth he, "No harm shall come to thee, O uncle." And I, "O Commander of the Faithful, my offence is too great for me to attempt to extenuate it and thy pardon is too great for me to speak a word of thanks for it." And ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... his degradation, for it was humiliating to the child to reveal the parent's shame. Criminal he knew him to be, with regard to my mother, but Ernest had said, when gazing on her picture, he almost forgave the crime which had so much to extenuate it. The gambler, the profligate, the lost, abandoned being, who had thrown himself so abjectly on my compassion: in these characters, the high-minded Ernest would spurn him with withering indignation. Yet as the interview had been observed, and his ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... been justly called perverted ambition, and Milton stamped it with terrible condemnation when he put into the mouth of his arch fiend the sentiment—"better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." The passions of youth extenuate those errors which in ripened manhood are criminal; and it is not improbable that Mr. Cooper's own opinion at this day concurs with ours when we say that his refusal of the manager's offer seems to us to have ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... imperfect means at his disposal he did such scouting as he could, and if his fiery and impetuous spirit led him into a position which cost him so dearly it is certainly more easy for the critic to extenuate his fault than that subsequent one which allowed the abandoned guns to fall into the hands of the enemy. Nor is there any evidence that the loss of these guns did seriously affect the fate of the action, for at those other parts of the field ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... epoch in the Irish movement. It was determined at once to meet it boldly—to extenuate nothing, to retract nothing—to take advantage of no legal subterfuge; but dare the issue promptly, openly and fully. Mr. O'Brien at first refused to be defended by counsel. He was with great difficulty prevailed upon to change his determination; and, when it was known ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... I had exhausted every resource. A fatal idea occurred to me. Believing myself certain of impunity, I committed an infamous action. You see, my father, I conceal nothing from you. I confess the ignominy of my conduct. I seek to extenuate nothing. One of two resolutions remains for me to take, and I have now to decide which. The first is to kill myself, and to leave your name dishonored, for if I do not pay to-day even the twenty-five thousand francs, the complaint is ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... no memory recalls the like, which I was not able to prevent taking place; which, indeed, I had before said, would be most atrocious when I so often petitioned concerning it(144) and which as you yourself show, by revoking it too late, you consider to be grave, and this I could not extenuate when ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... in refusing to marry them," said Father Tom, "nothing. Uncle John, I know that you can extenuate, that you are kind, but I do not see it is possible to look at it ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... can, the sweet melodies and the sweeter women who are sinking into oblivion together. He must accept life as a Grand Piano tuned by a new sort of Tuning Master, and unless he can dance to its music he is a misfit. That is what my friend said to extenuate her. She fitted into this kind of life splendidly. He was in the other groove. She loved light, laughter, wine, song, and excitement. He, the misfit, loved his books, his work, and his home. His ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... What does this passage mean? Surely this:—if the master gave his slave a hasty blow with a rod, and he died under his hand, he should be punished. But, if the slave lived a day or two, it would so extenuate the act of the master he should not be punished, inasmuch as he would be in that case sufficiently punished in losing his money in his slave. Now, sir, I affirm that God was more lenient to the degraded ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... holding a hank of gray wool for Ma Pettengill to wind. While this minor war measure went forward the day's mail came. From a canvas sack Lew Wee spilled letters and papers on the table. Whereupon the yarn was laid by while Ma Pettengill eagerly shuffled the letters. She thought fit to extenuate this eagerness. She said if people lived forever they would still get foolishly excited over their mail; whereas everyone knew well enough that nothing important ever came in it. To prove this she sketched ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... Beppo remarked, to extenuate his outwitted cunning, when he found each door of the room ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... breeze. What a contrast to this dingy, confined, close dungeon! And was it possible that he had ever wandered at will in that fair scene with a companion fairer? Such thoughts might well drive a man mad. With all his errors, and all his disposition at present not to extenuate them, Ferdinand Armine could not refrain from esteeming himself unlucky. Perhaps it is more distressing to believe ourselves unfortunate, than to recognise ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... morning I met—in the street. He is one of the justest-minded men of my acquaintance, and I have never known him attempt to exaggerate the ill conduct of his political opponents, or to extenuate the errors of those to whom he belongs. Speaking of this affair, he was of opinion that the government had endeavoured to bring it on, with the certainly that success would strengthen them, but, at the same time, he thought it useless to ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... principles exalted; but rather regulated the wildness of audacities, in the attempts, grounds, and eternal sequels of death, wherein men of the boldest spirits are often prodigiously temerarious. Nor can we extenuate the valor of ancient martyrs, who contemned death in the uncomfortable scene of their lives, and in their decrepit martyrdoms did probably lose not many months of their days, or parted with life when it was scarce worth the living; for ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... Edmund, to whom she was under great obligations? He made but little reply; but the impression sunk deep into his rancorous heart; every word in Edmund's behalf was like a poisoned arrow that rankled in the wound, and grew every day more inflamed. Sometimes he would pretend to extenuate Edmund's supposed faults, in order to load him with the sin of ingratitude upon other occasions. Rancour works deepest in the heart that strives to conceal it; and, when covered by art, frequently puts on the appearance of candour. ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... will reach him—And I have written to old Mr Hamley. The relief is the one good thing come out of it all. It is such a comfort to feel free again. It wearied me so to think of straining up to his goodness. "Extenuate my conduct!"' she concluded, quoting Mr. Gibson's words. Yet when Mr. Gibson came home, after a silent dinner, she asked to speak with him, alone, in his consulting-room; and there laid bare the exculpation of herself which ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... judicious writer; yet he very often falls into these errors: and I once more beg the reader's pardon for accusing him of them. Only let him consider, that I live in an age where my least faults are severely censured; and that I have no way left to extenuate my failings, but by showing as great in those whom ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... 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, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... important. He knew the great aim of life; he saw things in their true light, and taught me to see them also; he called things by their proper names; and while he could make ample allowance for the faults of others, he never attempted to extenuate his own errors; nor did he mistake vice for virtue, or the semblance of virtue for the reality. From the companionship of such a person I could not fail to reap much benefit. I did not enjoy it long. We afterwards met under very different circumstances in a far-off region, which ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... excuse, extenuate, deny and palaver as he may, it remains true that the Socialist Party of America teaches the same treasonable doctrines of violence and insurrection as the Russian Bolshevists, but in a more covert way. We have a sample in the ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... life issued from the womb of nature after so long and painful a travail? The annihilation of the unfit is the seamy side, though the most real side, of natural selection. We ignore it, or extenuate it, and turn rather to consider the advances in organisation by which the survivors were enabled to outlive ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... devotedness, could efface the remembrance of her connivance at that deep-laid plot which had imposed her upon him as a wife. Yet the lot of Leah was peculiarly a lot of reproach and trial—and as we behold her wretchedness, we are led, not to extenuate her fault, nor to palliate her sin, but to ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... to pass, which must needes therefore be of great efficacie: seeing that the world & all things therein were so made of nothing; for he spake, and they were created, and thus practised to disgrace, and extenuate, that admirable and great worke of Creation, and cause men to make lighter account of the Creator, seeing that they also (instructed by him) were enabled thorow the pronunciation of certayne words contriued into a speciall forme, eyther ...
— A Treatise of Witchcraft • Alexander Roberts
... no longer. Once, as he chanced to stumble, the girl thought she heard a groan from him. She began to wish that she had been able to believe him, but it was utterly impossible, although she suddenly found it in her heart to pity him, to extenuate the abomination of his conduct. Why that last sacrilegious lie he had uttered? The man was suffering; it looked as if the iron were entering his soul. Oh! the pity of it! If he had only acknowledged his offence and begged ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... into a mistake by not distinguishing between the names of the by no means identical Caliphs Al-Muntasir and Al-Mustansir." Quite true: it was an ugly confusion of the melancholy madman and parricide with one of the best and wisest of the Caliphs. I can explain (not extenuate) my mistake only by a misprint ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... Mary Queen of Scots as a beautiful sinner who has repented. Her sins are grievous and she does not deny or extenuate them. But they are in the distant past; so far as the present is concerned, she is in the right. She has come to England seeking an asylum, but instead of being treated as a queen she has been confined ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... theft, whatever the circumstances that seem to extenuate it. Nothing, no need, gives a right to take what does not belong to you. But, for all that, I am certain the poor creature has been honest hitherto, and deserves help. She is committed to prison for stealing, and I promised her I would look to her children; so I ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... those indicted be found guilty, or acquitted, of the misdemeanours laid to their charge; we feel assured, on the one hand, however long and grievous may have been the "provocation," that while there will be "nothing extenuate," neither will there be "set down aught in malice;" but that the measure of the retribution now demanded by the state, will be so temperately and equitably adjusted, that while the very semblance of oppression is carefully avoided, the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... known that Lord Byron never spared himself. He invented faults rather than sought to extenuate them. And so he fully merits belief, when he happens to do himself justice. Let ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... savoured of contempt of court, Hinted of disrespect toward the Bench, That I should chuckle when your pitch was short Or smile to see you in the sanded trench; But Golf (so I extenuate my sin) Brings all men level, like the greens they putt on; One common bunker makes the whole world kin, And Bar may scrap with Beak, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various
... hitherto had endeavoured to extenuate or discredit the charges brought against Gilles do Retz, tried a last expedient to counterbalance the damaging confessions of Henriet, and to ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... was free from disease, and as long as I forbore any communication with the sick; yet I should have withdrawn to Malverton, merely to gratify my friends, if Thetford had not used the most powerful arguments to detain me. He laboured to extenuate the danger. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... Hemjunah, "your politeness cannot extenuate, though it may gloss over, my imprudence; and by delaying to unfold my little history to you, my crime may seem more black while hidden than when it shall ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... sorry for poor Maud, as a rule, but he felt a need to shed a little gaiety, to extenuate the accident as far as possible, to turn it into a joke, so as to prevent his girls from being panic-stricken. He talked of heads smashed to a jelly, of legs in smithereens, of a bicyclist who had had not one, but both eyes caught in the chain. As for himself, when he was a small boy—that ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... Jenny, I was talking the other day about the perversity of your sex. You either cannot or will not understand your husbands: they hide nothing, extenuate nothing, yet you fail to grasp the idea of that side of their minds which is at once the best and the most dangerous. If Philip did not regard all women with interest, and some with particular interest, he could not have had it in his head ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... plain truth to each other," said Balder, after a pause. "You can have no cause to be friendly to me. I cannot extenuate what I did. I think I meant ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... debates upon this impeachment, it must be confessed that his majesty gave many marks of his great lenity; often urging the services you had done him, and endeavouring to extenuate your crimes. The treasurer and admiral insisted that you should be put to the most painful and ignominious death, by setting fire to your house at night, and the general was to attend with twenty thousand men, armed with poisoned arrows, ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... do not in the least wish to suggest that any philosopher will ever find it an easy task to 'justify the ways of God to man'. As Timaeus says in Plato, 'to find the father and fashioner of the Universe is not easy', and I want rather to lay stress on the magnitude of the task than to extenuate it. But I am concerned to urge that the doctrine which accounts for what is by what ought to be is the only philosophical theory on which it ceases to be an unintelligible mystery that we should have—as I maintain we certainly ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... to the Colonna palace which refuge the Marchesa had packed with her friends. Their lives we saved and the palace from burning and plundering. Cardinal Pompeo himself paid the ransoms of many of its guests, and rescued from the Spanish soldiery upwards of five hundred nuns. Far be it from me to extenuate the life of that profligate prelate, but his brave and generous acts at this fearful time must be counted to ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... decisive manner are punishments awarded for every class of crimes committed in society; and it was communicated to the English factory from the viceroy, that on no consideration was it left in the breast of the judge to extenuate or to exaggerate the sentence, whatever might be the rank, character, or ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... shortly to open the history of this whole affair, that you may be better able to attend to and understand the evidence we have to lay before you. And though, in doing this, I will endeavour rather to extenuate than to aggravate, yet I trust I have such a history to open as will shock the ears of ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... her aunt. "Whatever happens, it is best that we should be together." The girl was so agitated, fearing that in some way her adventures might be discovered, that she had no occasion to feign alarm. Mrs. Whately sought only to soothe and quiet, also to extenuate her son's words. "I don't suppose we truly realize yet, as Madison does, what war ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... cast reproach upon any man without some necessary reason. In charity (that charity which "covereth all sins," which "covereth a multitude of sins") we are bound to connive at the defects, and to conceal the faults of our brethren; to extenuate and excuse them, when apparent, so far as we may in truth and equity. We must not therefore ever produce them to light, or prosecute them with severity, except very needful occasion urgeth—such as is the glory and service of God, the maintenance of truth, the vindication of innocence, ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... or heathen, we find the state of literature there as little satisfactory as it is in these islands; so that, whatever are our difficulties here, they are not worse than those of Catholics all over the world. I would not indeed say a word to extenuate the calamity, under which we lie, of having a literature formed in Protestantism; still, other literatures have disadvantages of their own; and, though in such matters comparisons are impossible, I doubt whether we should ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... the wrong your father did me. But death brings clearer vision, my child, and I cannot wish that your father's last years,—if, indeed, he be living—should be desolated by not knowing you. I want you to know that there were many things which, while they did not extenuate your father, yet might in ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... P. Villari's Machiavelli (English translation, new ed., 1892) deals with the subject at some length. Of the Catholic writers L. Pastor, Geschichte der Papste (Freiburg i. B, 1886) should be consulted, for although the author tries to extenuate the pope to some extent, on the whole he is ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Dartmoor Prison. Interspersed with Observations, Anecdotes and Remarks, tending to illustrate the moral and political characters of three nations. To which is added, a correct Engraving of Dartmoor Prison, representing the Massacre of American prisoners. Written by himself." "Nothing extenuate, or set down aught in ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... be held a common swearer, or a habitual talker of obscenity, because he has been guilty of using such expressions when intoxicated, than he can be termed an idiot, because, when intoxicated, he has spoken nonsense. If, therefore, the defender can extenuate the guilt of his intoxication, he hopes that its consequences will be numbered rather among his misfortunes than faults; and that his Reverend Brethren will consider him, while in that state, as acting from a mechanical impulse, and as incapable of distinguishing between ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... the afternoon was well advanced before the head of the portrait was approached. There had been so few interruptions, that the dealer felt called upon to extenuate the absence of custom by explaining more than once that it was a very dull season. He was evidently interested in his task, for he worked with a will till the light began to fail. "Never mind," he said; "I will get a lamp; now we have got so ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... host was celebrated for affording his guests. The major placed the fore finger of his right hand to his lip, cast a look of inquiry at the bystanders, and then said he knew it would be no easy matter to apologize to ladies for so singular a transgression, but how his treating could extenuate an insult offered to another party, he could not exactly see. "By my word as a man of standing, I have spent much sweat and labor in getting the little Fortune has favored me with, and it seems to me that he who needs it most had better quench his thirst ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... Whether unmasked by others, or by myself, is it not equally true that I have been playing false, and am now punished for it? What do the world care for your having returned to truth? You have offended by deceiving them, and that is an offence which your repentance will not extenuate." It was but too true, I had brought it all on myself, and this reflection increased my misery. For my dishonesty, I had been justly and severely punished: whether I was ever to be rewarded for my subsequent honesty still remained to be proved; but I knew very well that ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... heresiarch causes infinitely greater evils than the murderer, why is he not as proper an object of penal legislation as the murderer? We can give a reason, a reason, short, simple, decisive, and consistent. We do not extenuate the evil which the heresiarch produces; but we say that it is not evil of that sort the sort against which it is the end of government to guard. But how Mr. Gladstone, who considers the evil which the heresiarch produces as evil of the sort against which it ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... who are and desire to be considered powerful theologians, though they extenuate original sin by sophistry. But vices so numerous and great cannot be extenuated. Original sin is not a slight disorder or infirmity, but complete lawlessness, the like of which is not found in other creatures, ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... required to write the History of the Rye-house Plot; and, in 1685, published a true Account and Declaration of the horrid Conspiracy against the late King, his present Majesty, and the present Government; a performance which he thought convenient, after the revolution, to extenuate and excuse. ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... patrimonies have exempted them from the necessity of nice computations, and with an affected appearance of contempt by others, who, instead of paying taxes, may be said to receive them, and whose interest it is to keep the nation ignorant of the causes of its misery, and to extenuate those calamities by ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... hand; and then she gazed at her sister. "And, oh, Sancie, you've had your honeymoon!" Before the deadly simplicity of that last stroke Sanchia fell, and lay quivering. She could not ask for mercy, she could explain, extenuate, nothing. Huddled she lay. At this aching moment the one thing that the world held worth her having seemed to be the approbation of this butterfly child. For Vicky's happiness was specific. Nuptial bliss lay, as it were, crystallised within it. There are moments in one's life when ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... since found so important. He knew the great aim of life; he saw things in their true light, and taught me to see them also; he called things by their proper names; and while he could make ample allowance for the faults of others, he never attempted to extenuate his own errors; nor did he mistake vice for virtue, or the semblance of virtue for the reality. From the companionship of such a person I could not fail to reap much benefit. I did not enjoy it long. We afterwards ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... "however;"—for it is self-evident that every universal rule must have its exceptions. But he is so exceedingly accurate, that, if he only fancies he has said a word too precipitate, or too general, or only half true, he never ceases to qualify, to modify, and extenuate, till at last he appears to have said nothing at all. Upon this occasion, Albert was deeply immersed in his subject: I ceased to listen to him, and became lost in reverie. With a sudden motion, I pointed the mouth of the pistol to my forehead, over the right eye. "What do ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... idea of God is different each time that I conceive it. Identity, which is death, is the goal of the intellect. The mind seeks what is dead, for what is living escapes it; it seeks to congeal the flowing stream in blocks of ice; it seeks to arrest it. In order to analyze a body it is necessary to extenuate or destroy it. In order to understand anything it is necessary to kill it, to lay it out rigid in the mind. Science is a cemetery of dead ideas, even though life may issue from them. Worms also feed upon corpses. My own thoughts, tumultuous and agitated in the innermost ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... Jonson,' I am sure," replied Alice. "If her pale ghost could have blushed, I think it would, at such lofty and exquisite praise. For my part, I could say, 'Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate, nor ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... able to prevent taking place; which, indeed, I had before said, would be most atrocious when I so often petitioned concerning it(144) and which as you yourself show, by revoking it too late, you consider to be grave, and this I could not extenuate when committed.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... but Mrs. Farnham really suffers in thought by the same unflinching fidelity to her creed. It makes her clear and resolute in her statement; but it often makes her as one-sided as the advocates of male supremacy whom she impugns. To be sure, her theory enables her to extenuate some points of admitted injustice to woman,—finding, for instance, in her educational and professional exclusions a crude effort, on the part of society, to treat her as a sort of bird-of-paradise, born only to fly, and therefore not needing feet. Yet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... but nothing so comfortable happened. I was obliged to gaze into Stevie's overflowing eyes and own up to the truth as well as I could, and explain it. It was the most humiliating hour that I ever spent, but I told Stevie exactly what I felt about her 'nothing extenuate, and naught set down in malice,' and what I had said about her to our mutual friend, who by the way, is not the mutual friend of either of us any longer. We were both crying by the time I had finished, but we understood each other. There were one or two things that she said she didn't think ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... God, O troubled soul, from whom the vision of Christ is veiled. It is more than likely that some undetected or unconfessed sin is shutting out the rays of the true sun. Excuse nothing, extenuate nothing, omit nothing. Do not speak of mistakes of judgment, but of lapses of heart and will. Do not be content with a general confession; be particular and specific. Drag each evil thing forth before God's judgment bar; let the secrets be exposed, and the dark, sad story told. Begin at the ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... you would say: if I have known her, You'll say she did embrace me as a husband, And so extenuate theforehand sin: No, Leonato, I never tempted her with word too large; But, as a brother to his sister, show'd Bashful ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... he wrote without faltering for the best part of an hour—all he had never dared to say, more almost than he had ever dared to think. He did not spare himself. The tragic history of O Hara San he gave in all its pitifulness without attempting to extenuate or shield himself in any way; he sketched frankly the girl's loneliness and childish ignorance, his own casual and selfish acceptance of the sacrifice she made and the terrible catastrophe that had brought him to abrupt and horrible conviction ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... creditable finish. It is a precipitate of the partisan animosity that inspires both parties and holds them to their duty of self-sacrifice and devastation, and at its best it will chiefly serve as a cloak of self-righteousness to extenuate any exceptionally profligate excursions ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... driveth Adam to the point, either to confess or deny the truth of the case. If he confess, then he concludes himself under judgment; if he deny, then he addeth to his sin: Therefore he neither denieth nor confesseth, but so as he may lessen and extenuate his sin. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... humiliating to the child to reveal the parent's shame. Criminal he knew him to be, with regard to my mother, but Ernest had said, when gazing on her picture, he almost forgave the crime which had so much to extenuate it. The gambler, the profligate, the lost, abandoned being, who had thrown himself so abjectly on my compassion: in these characters, the high-minded Ernest would spurn him with withering indignation. Yet as the interview had been observed, and his suspicions ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... excite your pity or to extenuate my sin. I only want to tell the entire and complete truth, with all the sincerity of a woman who, in an hour's time, is ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... candour of disposition, which marked him in private life, pervade his writings, except on some few occasions, when his mind is too much under the influence of party feelings. This bias inclined him, not only to treat the character of Milton with a most undue asperity, but even to extenuate the atrocities committed under the government of Mary, and somewhat to depreciate the worth of those divines, whose attachment to the reformed religion led them to suffer death in ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... sweet melodies and the sweeter women who are sinking into oblivion together. He must accept life as a Grand Piano tuned by a new sort of Tuning Master, and unless he can dance to its music he is a misfit. That is what my friend said to extenuate her. She fitted into this kind of life splendidly. He was in the other groove. She loved light, laughter, wine, song, and excitement. He, the misfit, loved his books, his work, and his home. His greatest joy would have been to ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... well known that Lord Byron never spared himself. He invented faults rather than sought to extenuate them. And so he fully merits belief, when he happens to do himself justice. Let us ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... not plead guiltless; I am alone responsible for the mutiny, and I exonerate all, even my adherents, from so much as suggesting it to me; nevertheless, there are some who love me in England, to whom I would beg of you to relate the circumstances that I have told you. These may extenuate though they cannot justify the crime I have committed. I assure you, most solemnly, that almost up to the last I had no intention of doing more than making my own escape from the ship which the injustice and brutality of Bligh had made a place of torment to me. When you called me, Stewart, ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... be less perfect. It is a portion of the duke's life which cannot be entirely passed over in silence, since it must be conceded, that much of his unpopularity may be traced to this source. Neither the court nor the people of England are so ascetic as not to extenuate the indiscretions of royalty; but this charitable estimate of misgivings does not extend to approbation of any culpable dereliction of social and moral duties. The fact of his royal highness having a large family, by a lady now no more, is too well known to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - No. 291 - Supplement to Vol 10 • Various
... are usually made, we may observe in general, that, as they consist in comparing the iniquitous practice of slavery with other iniquitous practices in force among other nations, they can neither raise it to the appearance of virtue, nor extenuate its guilt. The things compared are in these instances both of them evils alike. They call equally for redress[098], and are equally disgraceful to the governments which suffer them, if not encourage them, to exist. To attempt therefore to justify ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... creator of what is popularly and generally understood as the Inductive Philosophy are most fairly examined; not in the spirit of the common biographer who always canonizes his subject through thick and thin, but in that of an impartial seeker for truth, resolved to naught extenuate and set down naught in malice. It is believed by many that BACON was simply so fortunate as to have his picture stand as the frontispiece of the new Philosophy, when in truth other contemporaries, who made great discoveries by following precisely his method, as, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... little the start of criticism, perhaps; but we should fail in our duty as reviewers, if he altogether escaped it. In all charity, we are bound, for that matter, to give him the full benefit of the speed he has exhibited, in so far as it may serve to explain, if it cannot extenuate, the wretched manner in which he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... to excuse the poor lady's fall; nothing can do that; because virtue is, and ought to be, preferable to all considerations, and to life itself. But, methinks, I love this dear lady so well for the sake of her edifying penitence, that I would fain extenuate her crime, if I could; and the rather, as in all probability, it was a first love on both sides; and so he could not appear to her ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... agreeing as they do wonderfully together, were printed at Aix under the eye of her enemies, in a volume where, as I shall presently prove, an attempt was made to extenuate the guilt of Girard, and fasten the reader's gaze on every point likely to tell against Cadiere. And yet the editor could not help inserting depositions like these, which bear with crushing weight on the ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... monstrosity. That this has not been more generally and more keenly recognized is little to the credit of the American people, and still less to the credit of the American press and of those who should be the leaders of public opinion. One circumstance may, however, be cited which tends to extenuate in some degree this glaring failure of political sense and judgment. There have long been Prohibition enactments in many of our State Constitutions, and this has made familiar and commonplace the idea of Prohibition as part ...
— What Prohibition Has Done to America • Fabian Franklin
... who would not have been likely to err on the side of hostility to Edwards, gives his evidence against him in this particular. But whether he is to be believed or not, the fact that four of the prisoners went down in irons is impossible to extenuate. ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... James jovial. Both were equally ferocious. James II. was an easy-minded tiger; like Philip II., his crimes lay light upon his conscience. He was a monster by the grace of God. Therefore he had nothing to dissimulate nor to extenuate, and his assassinations were by divine right. He, too, would not have minded leaving behind him those archives of Simancas, with all his misdeeds dated, classified, labelled, and put in order, each in its compartment, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... truth, however, compelled me to the insertion of these facts, which I have offered merely as facts, without presuming to connect with them any comment of my own; esteeming it the part of a faithful historian, 'to extenuate nothing, nor set down aught in malice.' The fatal accident happened at eight o'clock in the morning, about an hour after Captain Cook landed. It did not seem, that the king, or his sons, were witnesses to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... God's blessing upon labour: yet is there rightful hope to get those righteous gains. Who can condemn the poor man's care, though Faith should make his load the lighter? And who will extenuate the rich man's coveting, whose appetite grows with what it feeds on? "Having food and raiment, be therewith content;" that is the golden mean; to that is limited the philosophy of worldliness: the man must live, by labour and its earnings; but having wherewithal for him and his ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... still she wasn't well when she went away," he whispered, turning his shoulder to the men and his face to Philip. He talked in a low voice, just above the rumble of the wheels, trying to extenuate Kate's fault and to excuse ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... says it isn't so much nerves as lack of nerve with me; I don't know what you call it, but I confess I find the smoke-wreaths pleasant; you won't join me either, Jack? Well, let us have the story in all its native simplicity and be sure you nothing extenuate nor set down ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... only in this last matter that the power, more than the will, to understand his own heart had failed him. His intellect now reasserted itself. He did not attempt to blink facts; he did not deny the truth of the revelation or seek to extenuate its force. He did not tell himself that the matter was a trifle, or that its effect would be transient. He recognized that he had fallen from the state of a priest vowed to Heaven, to that of a man whose whole heart and mind had gone out in love for a woman and were filled with her image. ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... plaudits of mankind, that became the inspiration of this work—his story of devotion, valor and patriotism; of unmurmuring sacrifice; worthy the pens of the mighty, but which the historian, as best he may will tell: "NOTHING extenuate, nor ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... sunk in the grossest Fetichism,—Polytheism,—and every form of absurd and misshapen Monotheism;—the horrors of all which he proceeds faithfully, but not too faithfully, to describe, and sometimes, when he is in the mood, to soften and extenuate; in order that he may find that the "grim Calmuck," and even the savage, "whose hands are smeared over with the blood of human sacrifices," are yet in possession of the "absolute Idea" and the ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... the question is only one of political morality, this does not extenuate its importance. Questions of constitutional morality are of no less practical moment than those relating to the constitution itself. The very existence of some governments, and all that renders others endurable, rests on the practical observance of doctrines of ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... you, this is little better than an implicit confession of the parallel I intended. This gentleman of Valois sticks in your stomachs; and, though I do not defend his proceedings in the States, any otherwise than by the inevitable necessity which caused them, yet acknowledging his crime does not extenuate their guilt that forced him to it. It was bad on both sides, but the revenge was not so wicked as the treason; for it was a voluntary act of theirs, and a compelled one of his. The short on't is, he took a violent course to cut up the Covenant ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... be treated with judicious kindness, Angelina's heart was deeply touched by it, and she opened her whole mind to Lady Frances, with the frankness of a young person conscious of her own folly, not desirous to apologize or extenuate, but anxious to regain the esteem ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... has died during the investigation, after making a confession which removes all doubt as to the part played by Vauthier and the woman Bryond; if he attempted to extenuate that of his wife and his nephews Chaussard, his motives ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... or evil, nor is always careful to shew in the virtuous a disapprobation of the wicked; he carries his persons indifferently through right and wrong, and at the close dismisses them without further care, and leaves their examples to operate by chance. This fault the barbarity of his age cannot extenuate; for it is always a writer's duty to make the world better, and justice is a virtue independent on ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... share in the applauses of his party(1); and who, upon this false and unfounded suggestion, has built a series of observations equally false and unfounded. Let him now be confronted with the evidence of the fact, and let him, if he be able, justify or extenuate the shameful outrage he has offered to the dictates of truth and to the ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... well-grounded belief that a felony is about to be perpetrated will extenuate a homicide committed in prevention of it, though the defendant be but a private citizen" (25 Ala., 15.) See Wharton, above quoted, who embodies the doctrine in his ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... sake. Believe me, my dear cousin, if anything could increase the infinite affection with which I love you, it would be the consciousness that at all times, whenever my image crosses your mind, it is to muse for my benefit, or to extenuate my errors. ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... the barbarity of the civilized Europeans, and which, often conspicuous, has never been more destructively present than in their dealings with the Tasmanians. But I am convinced that this is an error. I certainly do not wish to apologize for or extenuate the crimes of the convicts and colonists, against which the most vigorous protests have been raised both in England and in the colony itself, but neither war nor social disasters have been the principal cause of the disappearance ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... power of wordes these things were brought to pass, which must needes therefore be of great efficacie: seeing that the world & all things therein were so made of nothing; for he spake, and they were created, and thus practised to disgrace, and extenuate, that admirable and great worke of Creation, and cause men to make lighter account of the Creator, seeing that they also (instructed by him) were enabled thorow the pronunciation of certayne words contriued into a speciall forme, eyther to infuse new strength into things, or depriue ...
— A Treatise of Witchcraft • Alexander Roberts
... of me as I am: nothing extenuate, Nor set down aught in malice: then, must you speak Of one that loved, not wisely, but too well; Of one not easily jealous, but, being wrought, Perplexed in the extreme; of one whose hand, Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes, ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... and he then turned against Matilda. When Stephen had shaken off the chains with which he was loaded in Bristol Castle, the Bishop summoned a council at Westminster, on his legatine authority; and there "by great powers of eloquence, endeavored to extenuate the odium of his own conduct"; affirming that he had supported the Empress, "not from inclination, but necessity." He then "commanded on the part of God and of the Pope, that they should strenuously assist ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... arguing that no explanation of the Joline letter could be made to Mr. Bryan that would wear the appearance of sincerity, or be convincing, and that the letter having been written there was nothing to do to extenuate it in any way and that the wise thing was to make a virtue of necessity. I suggested that on the following night, when the Governor was to deliver his address at the Jackson Day dinner, he could, in the most generous and ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... prosecution. I considered myself justified, therefore, in availing myself of such means as were in my power to evade the operation of laws I had never consciously violated. But in all this I may have been, and probably was, in error; I have no wish to extenuate or explain away any fault or crime of which I may have been guilty; I choose, rather, the language of penitence and confession; and although I may never perhaps be forgiven by society, I shall cherish the hope of being more mercifully dealt with by Him who said, ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... over, and now and then took him up and corrected him. He did not dare to show anger in his replies, yet he was foaming. He passed an eulogy upon Basville (father of the Intendant), talked of the consideration he merited; excused Courson, and babbled thereupon as much as he could to extenuate everything, and lose sight of the principal points at issue. Seeing that he did not finish, and that he wished to tire us, and to manage the affair in his own way, I interrupted him, saying that the father ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... ever extenuate the conduct of England in keeping in her employ and service such men as Alexander McKee, Matthew Elliott and Simon Girty. The chief rendezvous of the tribes after the revolution was at Detroit. Here were located ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... faithfully discharged some part of my duty. And wherever I have been inadequate to your wishes, attribute my demerits to some infirmity of mind, rather than to a negligence of your happiness. Yet, be the cause what it will, since these faults have existed, I do not attempt to disavow or extenuate them, and I ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... partly out of a grim humor peculiarly his own, and partly to extenuate his severity toward the youth, had sent to his niece all the city papers containing unfavorable references to Haldane, and to her mind the associations created by those disgraceful scenes were still inseparable ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... But he can well be spared. While he is fast sinking into premature old age, negro boys in Virginia are growing up as fast into vigorous manhood to supply the void which cruelty is making in Louisiana. God forbid that I should extenuate the horrors of the slave trade in any form! But I do think this its worst form. Bad enough is it that civilised men should sail to an uncivilised quarter of the world where slavery exists, should there buy wretched barbarians, and should carry them away to labour in a ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Arias, "your reproaches are just; for well I deserve the most bitter that language can invent; but I was compelled to that necessity by obligations so imperative, so sacred, that they may serve to explain, and perhaps, in some measure, to extenuate the disgrace, which my heart tells me I ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... so. That was merely as a relief to myself, for when or where the letter will reach him—And I have written to old Mr Hamley. The relief is the one good thing come out of it all. It is such a comfort to feel free again. It wearied me so to think of straining up to his goodness. "Extenuate my conduct!"' she concluded, quoting Mr. Gibson's words. Yet when Mr. Gibson came home, after a silent dinner, she asked to speak with him, alone, in his consulting-room; and there laid bare the exculpation of herself which she had ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... love, no devotedness, could efface the remembrance of her connivance at that deep-laid plot which had imposed her upon him as a wife. Yet the lot of Leah was peculiarly a lot of reproach and trial—and as we behold her wretchedness, we are led, not to extenuate her fault, nor to palliate her sin, but to ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... friend has been with me again and again. My time is expired and I find a relief beyond measure, for he has fully convinced me that no act of mine can mar the eternal counsel, or in the smallest degree alter or extenuate one event which was decreed before the foundations of the world were laid. He said he had watched over me with the greatest anxiety, but, perceiving my rooted aversion towards him, he had forborne troubling me with his presence. But now, seeing that I ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... pulled no longer. Once, as he chanced to stumble, the girl thought she heard a groan from him. She began to wish that she had been able to believe him, but it was utterly impossible, although she suddenly found it in her heart to pity him, to extenuate the abomination of his conduct. Why that last sacrilegious lie he had uttered? The man was suffering; it looked as if the iron were entering his soul. Oh! the pity of it! If he had only acknowledged his offence ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... warrant; be an excuse &c. n.for; lend a color, furnish a handle; vindicate; exculpate, disculpate[obs3]; acquit &c. 970; clear, set right, exonerate, whitewash; clear the skirts of. extenuate, palliate, excuse, soften, apologize, varnish, slur, gloze; put a gloss, put a good face upon; mince; gloss over, bolster up, help a lame dog over a stile. advocate, defend, plead one's cause; stand up for, stick up for, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... inkling that their front trenches were down at the river. With the imperfect means at his disposal he did such scouting as he could, and if his fiery and impetuous spirit led him into a position which cost him so dearly it is certainly more easy for the critic to extenuate his fault than that subsequent one which allowed the abandoned guns to fall into the hands of the enemy. Nor is there any evidence that the loss of these guns did seriously affect the fate of the action, for at those other parts ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... feel yet. Only I know that I must get free. It isn't that I'm hard. It's just that I have no choice. Your case was different. You had to do it. But this—" her words sank, became scarcely audible—"Nick, could anything extenuate—this?" ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... From the same.— The lady writes upon scraps of paper, which she tears, and throws under the table. Copies of ten of these rambling papers; and of a letter to him most affectingly incoherent. He attempts farther to extenuate his villany. Tries to resume his usual levity; and forms a scheme to decoy the people at Hampstead to the infamous woman's in town. The lady ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... tell him, as they rode, of some of the better traits of her father, traits that might extenuate his cold, hard brutality—as if to build him up a little in the eyes of one she wished not to ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... remembrance. I shudder at the thought lest my name should be branded with infamy, when I lie mouldering in the dust, as I know well that the tongue of malice is ever loud against the failings of the unfortunate. When, however, my character is insulted, and my poor reputation attacked, extenuate, I beseech you, the enormity of my crime, by relating the hardships of my sufferings. Tell to the giddy and affluent, that, strangers to the severity of want, they know not the pain of withstanding the almost irresistible calls of nature. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 285, December 1, 1827 • Various
... having resumed somewhat both of his own and his father's sins, particularly their cares for this world and worldly honours, and thinking his lordship designed to extenuate his fault in this, he drew several weighty propositions in way of conference about the fears of death and his eternal all, which depended upon his being in or out of Christ, and obtested him in these words,—"Therefore I intreat you, my lord, by the mercies of God, by your appearing ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... than the second in Rome." This has been justly called perverted ambition, and Milton stamped it with terrible condemnation when he put into the mouth of his arch fiend the sentiment—"better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." The passions of youth extenuate those errors which in ripened manhood are criminal; and it is not improbable that Mr. Cooper's own opinion at this day concurs with ours when we say that his refusal of the manager's offer seems to us to have been very injudicious. From Plautus, with whom ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... to Mrs. Thrale on July 10, 1780:—'Last week I saw flesh but twice and I think fish once; the rest was pease. You are afraid, you say, lest I extenuate myself too fast, and are an enemy to violence; but did you never hear nor read, dear Madam, that every man has his genius, and that the great rule by which all excellence is attained and all success ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... busy at the needle, while my brother and Pleyel were bandying quotations and syllogisms. The point discussed was the merit of the oration for Cluentius, as descriptive, first, of the genius of the speaker; and, secondly, of the manners of the times. Pleyel laboured to extenuate both these species of merit, and tasked his ingenuity, to shew that the orator had embraced a bad cause; or, at least, a doubtful one. He urged, that to rely on the exaggerations of an advocate, or to make the picture of a single family a model from ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... least purpose or wish to cover up or extenuate the follies, excesses, or outrages I am about to describe, into which the community suffered itself to be led in the witchcraft proceedings of 1692,—with a desire, on the contrary, to make the lesson then given of the mischief resulting from misguided enthusiasm, and which will always result ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... only one of the charges in which I am personally concerned. As to the other matters objected against me, which in their turn I shall mention to you, remember once more I do not mean to extenuate or excuse. Why should I, when the things charged are among those upon which I found all my reputation? What would be left to me, if I myself was the man who softened and blended and diluted and weakened all the distinguishing ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... face you? To extenuate her act—to give you her version, because she feared his might be worse? Do you gather ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... A fatal idea occurred to me. Believing myself certain of impunity, I committed an infamous action. You see, my father, I conceal nothing from you. I confess the ignominy of my conduct. I seek to extenuate nothing. One of two resolutions remains for me to take, and I have now to decide which. The first is to kill myself, and to leave your name dishonored, for if I do not pay to-day even the twenty-five thousand francs, the complaint ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... scattered, he says, gives the idea of an anarchy, which was not the case. It may be replied that scathed gives the idea of ruin, waste, and desolation, which was not the case. It is unworthy a lover of truth, in questions of great or little moment, to exaggerate or extenuate for mere convenience, or for vanity yet less than convenience. Scattered naturally means divided, unsettled, disunited.—Next is offered with great pomp a change of sea to seize; but in the first edition the word is fee, for hire, in the sense of having any one in fee, that is, at ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... himself in quite a childish light. Having in his Panegyrical Oration set himself to prove that the Athenian state has surpassed that of Sparta in her services to Hellas, he starts off at the very outset with these words: "Such is the power of language that it can extenuate what is great, and lend greatness to what is little, give freshness to what is antiquated, and describe what is recent so that it seems to be of the past."[2] Come, Isocrates (it might be asked), is it thus that you are going to tamper with the facts about Sparta and Athens? This flourish about ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... lines again first, as there be two I have altered in my mind's manuscript already. Has any one seen or judged of them? that is the criterion by which I will abide—only give me a fair report, and 'nothing extenuate,' as I will in that case ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... from Canada brought to the king fresh complaints of Duchesneau against Frontenac, and of Frontenac against Duchesneau; and the king replied with rebukes, exhortations, and threats to both. At first he had shown a disposition to extenuate and excuse the faults of Frontenac, but every year his letters grew sharper. In 1681 he wrote: "Again I urge you to banish from your mind the difficulties which you have yourself devised against the execution of my orders; to act with mildness and moderation towards all the colonists, and divest ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... and I often abused my power over her. Now that I am no longer the victim of those illusions which pursued me throughout my life, I blush at the remembrance of my conduct, and the penance I impose on myself is to tell the whole truth, and to extenuate nothing in ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... upon this impeachment, it must be confessed that his majesty gave many marks of his great lenity, often urging the services you had done him, and endeavoring to extenuate your crimes. The treasurer and admiral insisted that you should be put to the most painful and ignominious death, by setting fire on your house at night; and the general was to attend, with twenty thousand men armed ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... of the sensual and selfish attitude which Goethe held toward women all his life, it is perhaps not strange that he should have written the silly words just quoted. It was probably a guilty conscience, a desire to extenuate selfish indulgence at the expense of a poor girl's virtue and happiness, that led him to represent his hero, Werther, as using every possible effort in court to secure the pardon of that erotomaniac who had first attempted rape and then finished ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... donation to their partisans, though the charge may be indisputably fixed upon the corruption of their politics. For my part, I follow their crimes to that point to which legal presumptions and natural indications lead me, without considering what species of evil motive tends most to aggravate or to extenuate the guilt of their conduct. But if I am to speak my private sentiments, I think that in a thousand cases for one it would be far less mischievous to the public, and full as little dishonorable to themselves, to be polluted with direct bribery, than thus to become a standing ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... might be said very easily on this side; nevertheless, I think I shall go on with my plea for the small verse-maker who has long fallen out; and though I may be unable to make a case out, the kindly critic may find some circumstance to extenuate my folly—to say, in the end, that this appears to be one of the little foolishnesses ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... condition imperfectly understood, how much more affecting when we read it in confessions wrung out by remorse from the greatly gifted, the gloriously endowed! But it is not his faults that are remembered here—assuredly not these we meet to honour. To deny error to be error, or to extenuate its blame, that makes the outrage upon sacred truth; but to forget that it exists, or if not wholly so, to think of it along with that under-current of melancholy emotion at all times accompanying our meditations on the mixed characters of men—that is not only allowable, but it is ordered—it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... giving men counsel of comfort? If the faith were in our days as fervent as it hath been ere this in times past, little counsel and little comfort would suffice. We should not much need with words and reasoning to extenuate and diminish the vigour and asperity of the pains. For of old times, the greater and the more bitter the pain were, the more ready was the fervour of faith to suffer it. And surely, cousin, I doubt little in my mind but what, if a man had in his heart so deep a desire and ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... "what do you make of that? That's worth coming up for. That ought to extenuate a good deal." James was quick ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... received from Mr. Vernon, and which had not yet been repaid. Mr. Vernon wrote him a very gentle intimation, stating that it would be very convenient for him to receive the money. Franklin returned a contrite and magnanimous letter. He made no attempt to extenuate his fault, promised immediately to strain every nerve to meet the debt, and in a few months paid the ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... grasp, "is far worse than any reproach I might bring against you. You never loved him? Your heart had no part in this childish folly? That makes it all the uglier—then it becomes unpardonable. Love alone could extenuate such a fault to ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... objects of his literary admiration—Goethe and Byron and George Sand—could scarcely be regarded as moral exemplars; but, while he praised the genius, he marked his disapproval of the moral defect. In writing of George Sand, who had so profoundly influenced his early life, he did not deny or extenuate "her passions and her errors." Byron, though he thought him "the greatest natural force, the greatest elementary power, which has appeared in our literature since Shakespeare," he roundly accused of "vulgarity and effrontery," "coarseness and commonness," "affectation and brutal selfishness." ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... "great moral idea," the idea of making Catholicism the ruler of the world, that he might be the ruler of Catholicism. Why, it may be said, shall the charge of fanaticism be allowed to absolve Isabella and extenuate the guilt of Charles, while it only strengthens the case against Philip? Because Isabella persecuted heretics in order to save their souls from a worse fate, while Philip burnt them in order to get them out of his way. Isabella would perhaps have ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... his 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, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... quarter-sounds and lesser slides of sounds. Divers instruments of music likewise to you unknown, some sweeter than any you have; with bells and rings that are dainty and sweet. We represent small sounds as great and deep, likewise great sounds, extenuate and sharp; we make divers tremblings and warblings of sounds, which in their original are entire. We represent and imitate all articulate sounds and letters, and the voices and notes of beasts and birds. We have certain helps, which set to the ear do further the hearing ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... you appear to extenuate some cases, and exaggerate others. Impostor, indeed!—M. Andrea Cavalcanti, or rather M. Benedetto, is nothing more nor less than ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... is alive, 1009 Her rash suspect sile doth extenuate; And that his beauty may the better thrive, With Death she humbly doth insinuate; 1012 Tells him of trophies, statues, tombs; and stories His victories, ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... deal of information on the Borgia family; P. Villari's Machiavelli (English translation, new ed., 1892) deals with the subject at some length. Of the Catholic writers L. Pastor, Geschichte der Papste (Freiburg i. B, 1886) should be consulted, for although the author tries to extenuate the pope to some extent, on the whole he is ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... was thus placed at the disposal of the men who already exercised absolute political power. "The state of France," said Burke, "is perfectly simple. It consists of but two descriptions, the oppressors and the oppressed." It is in vain that the attempt has been made to extenuate the atrocious and senseless cruelties of this time by extolling the great legislative projects of the Convention, or pleading the dire necessity of a land attacked on every side by the foreigner, and rent with civil war. The more that is known of the Reign of Terror, the more hateful, the meaner ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... speak later," said Harley, strangely softened. "But before I say more of him, let me ask you to explain; let me hope that you can extenuate what—" ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... time to be lost, as Mr Selwyn, the lawyer, is coming here at one o'clock, and before he comes I wish you to read over Lady R—'s confession, if I may so call it, which will explain the motives of her conduct towards you. I am afraid that it will not extenuate her conduct, but recollect that she has now made all the reparation in her power, and that we must forgive as we hope to be forgiven. Sit down and read these papers, while I unpack one or two of ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... Mme. de Marelle seemed to offer provocation by her remarks, while Mme. Forestier's charming reserve, the modesty in her voice, in her smile, all seemed to extenuate the bold sallies which issued from her lips. The dessert came and then followed the coffee. The hostess and her guests lighted cigarettes, but Forestier suddenly began to cough. When the attack was over, he growled angrily: ...
— Bel Ami • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... the Curetonian and Lewis,—among the Versions: of the copies Codd. B and [Symbol: Aleph]: and above all, coming later down still, Cod. D:—these venerable monuments of a primitive age occasionally present us with deformities which it is worse than useless to extenuate,—quite impossible to overlook. Unauthorized appendixes,—tasteless and stupid amplifications,—plain perversions of the meaning of the Evangelists,—wholly gratuitous assimilations of one Gospel to another,—the unprovoked omission of passages of profound ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... excluded by the plan, to say nothing of conditions more primal. Rose had from the first a glimpse of her mother's plan. It was to mention nothing and imply nothing, neither to acknowledge, to explain nor to extenuate. She would leave everything to her child; with her child she was secure. She only wanted to get back into society; she would leave even that to her child, whom she treated not as a high-strung and heroic daughter, a creature of exaltation, of devotion, but as a new, charming, clever, ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... this clear and decisive manner are punishments awarded for every class of crimes committed in society; and it was communicated to the English factory from the viceroy, that on no consideration was it left in the breast of the judge to extenuate or to exaggerate the sentence, whatever might be the rank, character, ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... patriotism, and reproach to Great Britain!) who act as the emissaries of France, both in word and writing; who exaggerate our necessary burdens, magnify our dangers, extol the power of our enemies, deride our victories, extenuate our conquests, condemn the measures of our government, and scatter the seeds of dissatisfaction through the land. Such domestic traitors are doubly the objects of detestation;—first, in perverting truth; and, secondly, in propagating falsehood, to ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... which would have been doiwos or deiwos or dewos, had coined a new word for god from a different root, yet coming so near to dewos as thewos? These internal difficulties seem to me nearly as great as the external: at all events it would not be right to attempt to extenuate either. ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... Burke warmly supported the accused. The compassion which on these and all other occasions was manifested by Mr. Burke for the sufferings of those public delinquents, the zeal with which he advocated their cause, and the eagerness with which he endeavoured to extenuate their criminality, have received severe reprehension, and in particular when contrasted with his subsequent conduct in the ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... national guard, and particularly the cavalry, pursued the fugitives into the neighbouring fields, and made two hundred prisoners. Not a man was killed on the side of the national guard; the loss of the people is unknown. The one side diminished it, in order to extenuate the odium of an execution without resistance; the others augmented it, in order to rouse the people's resentment. At night, which was already fast approaching, the bodies were cast into the Seine. Opinions were divided as to the nature and details of this execution, some terming it a crime, and ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... not extenuate the subterfuge which at first concealed the truth from me," she answered, with an indignant blush, "nor atone for a want of confidence, which I had not deserved ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... when the lapse of a few years had shown the tendency of public opinion. The first boldly avow the deed as demanded by expediency, if not necessity; while they deal in no measured terms of reproach with the character of their unfortunate victim.44 The latter, on the other hand, while they extenuate the errors of the Inca, and do justice to his good faith, are unreserved in their condemnation of the Conquerors, on whose conduct, they say, Heaven set the seal of its own reprobation, by bringing ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... find some reason or other to give for, or excuses to palliate. Men plead want to extenuate theft, and strong provocations to excuse murders, and many a lame excuse they will bring for whoring; but this sordid habit even those that practise it will own to be a crime, and make no excuse for it; ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... closest inspection to deserve. Though it may be conceded to him, that criminal individuals are not more numerous in the Society Islands, than among other people, yet it is obvious, that the discovery of the universal prevelancy of vice does not warrant any person to extenuate its malignity in any particular instances where ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... not attempt to extenuate the heinousness of his offence, but he pointed out to him what were the fruits and the means of repentance. He exhorted him to let the sense of his past errors stimulate him to double future exertions. He told him of many ways ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... moderation; may we all show candor. Though, perhaps, nothing could ultimately have averted the strife, and though to treat of human actions is to deal wholly with second causes, nevertheless, let us not cover up or try to extenuate what, humanly speaking, is the truth—namely, that those unfraternal denunciations, continued through years, and which at last inflamed to deeds that ended in bloodshed, were reciprocal; and that, had the preponderating strength ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... to justify what was positively bad. Thus his book contains the germs of that Byronic egotism which later became the fashion all over Europe. It is also, in parts, a morbid book. Rousseau was not content to extenuate nothing; his failings got upon his nerves; and, while he was ready to dilate upon them himself with an infinite wealth of detail, the slightest hint of a reflection on his conduct from any other person filled him with an agony and a rage which, at the end of his life, developed into ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... remember, Cousin Jenny, I was talking the other day about the perversity of your sex. You either cannot or will not understand your husbands: they hide nothing, extenuate nothing, yet you fail to grasp the idea of that side of their minds which is at once the best and the most dangerous. If Philip did not regard all women with interest, and some with particular interest, he could not have had it in his head to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... who introduced it; Lord Loughborough; Holland; and Dr. Horsley, bishop of Rochester. The latter was peculiarly eloquent. He began his speech by arraigning the injustice and impolicy of the trade: injustice, he said, which no considerations of policy could extenuate; impolicy, equal in ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... of the Horatii and Curiatii, the fierce young hero, who had overcome the Curiatii one after another (instead of being congratulated by his sister for his victory, being upbraided by her for having slain her lover), in the height of his passion and resentment kills her. If anything could extenuate so brutal an action, it would be the doing of it on a sudden, before the sentiments of nature, reason, or manhood could take place in him. However, to avoid public bloodshed, as soon as his passion is wrought to its ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... man's good name. Moreover this must be taken as applying to these vices considered in their essential aspects: for other accidental points might be taken into consideration, which would aggravate or extenuate ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... that the caged bird had been brought by Henchard for her as a wedding gift and token of repentance. He had not expressed to her any regrets or excuses for what he had done in the past; but it was a part of his nature to extenuate nothing, and live on as one of his own worst accusers. She went out, looked at the cage, buried the starved little singer, and from that hour her heart ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... and general topics as are now called common places. Gorgias, he adds, did the same, and wrote panegyrics and invectives on every subject: for he thought it was the province of an Orator to be able either to exaggerate, or extenuate, as occasion might require. Antiphon the Rhamnusian composed several essays of the same species; and (according to Thucydides, a very respectable writer, who was present to hear him) pleaded a capital cause in his own defence, with as much eloquence as had ever yet ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... patience and humility have abased the spirits of men, which Pagan principles exalted; but rather regulated the wildness of audacities in the attempts, grounds, and eternal sequels of death; wherein men of the boldest spirits are often prodigiously temerarious. Nor can we extenuate the valour of ancient martyrs, ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... satisfaction of his relations, other circumstances connected with that unfortunate disaster, which, after their deaths, may or may not be laid before the public. And although they can implicate none but himself, either living or dead, they may extenuate but will contain not a word of his in defence of the crime he committed against the laws of ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... with his legacy and tender by the recent separation, thought it proper for him to interpose, and undertook, not indeed to vindicate the action, for breach of trust has always something criminal, but to extenuate it by an apology. Having advanced what cannot be denied, that moral obliquity is made more or less excusable by the motives that produce it, he inquires what evil purpose could have induced Pope to break his promise. He could not delight his vanity by usurping the work, which, though ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... Demetrius, come; And come, Egeus; you shall go with me; I have some private schooling for you both.— For you, fair Hermia, look you arm yourself To fit your fancies to your father's will, Or else the law of Athens yields you up,— Which by no means we may extenuate,— To death, or to a vow of single life.— Come, my Hippolyta: what cheer, my love? Demetrius, and Egeus, go along; I must employ you in some business Against our nuptial, and confer with you Of ...
— A Midsummer Night's Dream • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
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