"Palliate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not a full excuse for insult, but it will greatly palliate. If it was a full excuse, it might be well counterfeited to ...
— The Code of Honor • John Lyde Wilson
... of the best captains of his time. And, in truth, if a zealous patriotism, a fiery valor, and skilful leadership are worthy of honor, then is such tribute due to Dominic de Gourgues, despite the shadowing vices which even the spirit of that wild age can only palliate, the personal hate that aided the impulse of his patriotism, and the implacable cruelty that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... not to be lost; and, that the gentleman on whose account she was divorced had gained her heart while thus unhappily situated. Seduced, perhaps, by the charms of the lady in question, I thus attempted to palliate what I was sensible could not be justified; for when I had finished my harangue, my venerable friend gave me a proper check: 'My dear Sir, never accustom your mind to mingle virtue and vice. The woman's a whore, and ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... hospitable, witty, magnificent,—a most accomplished gentleman, one of the best men of all antiquity. What if he was vain and egotistical and vacillating, and occasionally weak? Can you expect perfection in him who "is born of a woman"? We palliate the backslidings of Christians; we excuse the crimes of a Constantine, a Theodosius, a Cromwell: shall we have no toleration for the frailties of a Pagan, in one of the worst periods of history? I have no patience with those critics who would hurl him ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... But there is one misdeed, one which outweighs all others whatsoever—a crime which it is useless to palliate, let our other friend say what he pleased; and Reineke himself felt it so. It sate heavy, for him, on his soul, and alone of all the actions of his life we are certain that he wished it undone—the death and eating of that poor foolish Lampe, the hare. It was a paltry ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... reason shall be convinced; until prejudice shall be overcome by the power of conviction; until men are constrained, from very shame, to withdraw from a position which no argument, no experience can justify, which no consideration of decency will palliate. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... are above mentioned, a sort of evil-speaking about our neighbour may be allowable or excusable. But, for fear of overdoing, great caution and temper is to be used; and we should never apply any such limitations as cloaks to palliate unjust or uncharitable dealing. Generally it is more advisable to suppress such eruptions of passion than to vent it; for seldom passion hath not inordinate motions joined with it, or tendeth to good ends. And, however, it will do well ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... well-fought fields, you will find your soft theories corrected by hard experience, and you will know that in the case of a sentinel steeping upon, his post there can be no mitigating circumstances; that nothing can palliate such flagrant and dangerous neglect, involving the safety of the whole army; a crime that martial law and custom have very necessarily made punishable by death," ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... descriptions, which morality can never justify, and, only with reference to the author himself, and only as being the effect or rather the cause of the circumstances in which he wrote, can consent even to palliate. ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... Incredulity gave to him. Catherine II. of Russia kept up a close correspondence with him; his expressions to her were confiding, even tender. She required that trumpet to celebrate her exploits, and palliate the crimes committed in the pursuit of her ambition. 'My Catau (his name for the Empress) loves the philosophers, her husband will suffer for it with posterity.' At the same time, she respected him more than Frederick, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... to palliate the effect of their own mistake, or rather of the defeat their hopes, which the deeper sagacity of the king had contrived, they began to fill the emperor's ears, which were at all times most ready to receive all kinds of reports with false accusations against ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... sentimental and sympathetic tone led one to repose confidence in her. Her continual repinings seemed too long to attract other repinings. Sidonie told her of Georges, of their relations, attempting to palliate her offence by blaming the cruelty of her parents in marrying her by force to a man much older than herself. Madame Dobson at once showed a disposition to assist them; not that the little woman was venal, but she had a passion for passion, ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... others? Unhappy, did she say?—ha! that word would call my anger from the grave! She knew that I must become unhappy. Death and damnation! she knew it, and yet betrayed me! Look to it, serpent! That was thy only chance of forgiveness. This confession has condemned thee. Till now I thought to palliate thy crime with thy simplicity, and in my contempt thou hadst well nigh escaped my vengeance (seizing the glass hastily). Thou wert not thoughtless, then— thou wert not simple—thou wert nor more nor less than a devil! (He drinks.) ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... injuries will ever stain the annals of Frederic the Great; even those who read this book will perhaps suppose that I, from political motives of hope or fear, have sometimes concealed truth by endeavouring to palliate his conduct. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... to the sceptical that the Government was at last on the track of evidence which would confirm the equity of everything from the beginning done against him. Constantly he had to stand on his defence against attempts to palliate the effrontery of the Winchester judgment by experimental accusations that he had been tampering with new conspiracies. For ten years the contest proceeded between him and the Court on that basis. He asseverated the right of an innocent man to freedom, and the Court went on searching ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... mass of Americans had not yet risen sufficiently above local traditions and interests to discern clearly the noble ideal of national unity, and vagueness of apprehension resulted inevitably in lukewarmness of sentiment. This condition goes far to palliate actions which it cannot excuse; the reproach of helping the enemies of one's country is somewhat less when the nation itself has scarcely emerged to recognition, as it afterwards did under the inspiring watchword, ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... said. "You are a British subject, I suppose, and you must obey the laws of the country. A man has confessed to you a murder—no matter whether it was committed twenty years ago or two minutes; no matter whether it was a savage, cold-blooded, premeditated crime, or whether there were things to palliate it. Your course is the same; you must hand him over. In fact, you ought never to have let ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... slaves in their native land. In the Eastern Hemisphere the African had always been in a servile condition. In Hayti and Jamaica experiments had been tried of freeing them, under the auspices of France and England. Miseries had resulted and ruin overwhelmed the islands. "Fanaticism may palliate, but could not conceal the utter prostration of the race." The best specimens of the race were to be found in the Southern States, in closest contact with slavery. The North does not want the negro, does not encourage his immigration. The great fact of the inferiority of ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... something your father said to me just before the strike,—that, for the first time in his life, he didn't know what to do, because right seemed to be hopelessly entangled with wrong, and wrong with right. When a man does evil in order that good may come, one tries to find an excuse for him, tries to palliate his offense in any reasonable way. That is human instinct. That is what accounts for the petition there, with the signatures of many of the most conscientious men in Alleghenia attached. They have managed to find the excuse, or they think they have, which, so far ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... fear be thus irresistible, what remains but to acquiesce with silence, as in the other insurmountable distresses of humanity? It remains that we retard what we cannot repel, that we palliate what we cannot cure. Life may be lengthened by care, though death cannot be ultimately defeated: tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration; we have long preserved our constitution, let us make some struggles ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson
... qualified to judge as to what are evil uses than the physician, who has made them the study of his life? The men and women who are violating the laws of life cannot see that such violations injure them; for such violations palliate the sufferings which they cause, and make the transgressors feel better every time they indulge. The true physician, by precept and example, is qualified to lead all who are willing to be led to a higher life and to protect the ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis
... most friendly relations, it was an act of treachery, and reflects dishonor upon the fame of Cortez. At the same time, the position occupied by the Spaniards was so strange, and even desperate, as to palliate, though it cannot excuse, such ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... this outrage was reported at Rome, and became a matter of discussion in the senate, the former partisans of Jugurtha applied themselves, by interrupting the debates and protracting the time, sometimes exerting their interest, and sometimes quarreling with particular members, to palliate the atrocity of the deed. And had not Caius Memmius, one of the tribunes of the people elect, a man of energy, and hostile to the power of the nobility, convinced the people of Rome that an attempt was being made, by the agency of a small faction, to have ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... and helped to hide it, she felt sure that it would be a better world. In detail it was not so bad now, but the whole was a violent effect of porches, gables, chimneys, galleries, loggias, balconies, and jalousies, which nature had not yet had time to palliate. ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... ground Allures the bee to hover round and round? Not small your wit, nor rugged and unkempt; 'Twill answer bravely to a bold attempt: Whether you train for pleading, or essay To practise law, or frame some graceful lay, The ivy-wreath awaits you. Could you bear To leave quack nostrums, that but palliate care, Then might you lean on heavenly wisdom's hand And use her guidance to a loftier land. Be this our task, whate'er our station, who To country and to ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... meanness. He married, in 1803, Madame Leclerc, who, between the death of a first and a wedding with a second husband—a space of twelve months—had twice been in a fair way to become a mother. Her portion was estimated at eighteen millions of livres—a sum sufficient to palliate many 'faux pas' in the eyes of a husband more sensible and more delicate than her present Serene Idiot, as she styles the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... by precious Mr. Grant Allen, so painfully moved serious circles—I was sliding back to the level of the savagery around me. May these confessions be accepted in the same spirit as they are offered; may it partly palliate my guilt that I had apparently no chance of escape from the island, and no hope beyond that of converting the natives and marrying Doto. I trusted to do it, not (as of old) by open and fearless denunciation, but by slowly winning hearts, in a secular and sportive capacity, ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... of some celebrated authors, whose writings have had a great share in forming the modern standard of political opinions. Being subjects either of an absolute or limited monarchy, they have endeavored to heighten the advantages, or palliate the evils of those forms, by placing in comparison the vices and defects of the republican, and by citing as specimens of the latter the turbulent democracies of ancient Greece and modern Italy. Under the confusion of names, ...
— The Federalist Papers
... starving not because ordinary food was not plentiful in the Confederacy, but because of lack of transportation to carry the food from the interior to the front, while the Union prisoners perished from hunger in the midst of abundance. Again, even assuming the plea of scarcity to be true, that would not palliate the numerous murders of helpless prisoners by volleys fired into the stockades at the pleasure of the guards.[1] There was a vindictiveness in these crimes ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... and thus acknowledge his guilt? No, signor, no excuse can palliate such misdeeds. I burn with indignation at the thought that such signal favors have met with such cold and base ingratitude. The idea of your affliction restrains me from speaking of the outrage done my daughter. Fortunately, the reputation and social position of ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... paralytic masher of the present day, who is most alive at midnight, rises at noon. Then the day began earlier with a long morning, followed by a pleasant period called the forenoon. Under modern conditions we spend the morning in bed, and to palliate our sloth call the forenoon and most of the rest of the day, the morning. These young men of Clement's Inn were a lively, not to say a rowdy, set. They would do anything that led to mirth or mischief. What passed when they lay ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... from this to think lightly of sin? or, by example and conduct, to palliate and overlook its enormity? Not so; sin, as sin, can never be sufficiently stamped with the brand of reprobation. But we must seek carefully to distinguish between the offence and the offender. Nothing should be done on our part, ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... the Spanish Inquisition exercise enormous cruelties against heretics and Jews? I am not the apologist of the Spanish Inquisition, and I have no desire to palliate or excuse the excesses into which that tribunal may at times have fallen. From my heart I abhor and denounce every species of violence, and injustice, and persecution of which the Spanish Inquisition may have been guilty. And in raising my voice against coercion for conscience' ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... such a social excess as may happen without much moral blame; and recollected that some physicians maintained, that a fever produced by it was, upon the whole, good for health: so different are our reflections on the same subject, at different periods; and such the excuses with which we palliate what we know ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... information concerning the objects of royal indignation, except that which the newspapers afforded: nor was it perfectly safe, for a considerable time after the turbulent times in which the sufferers lived, to palliate their offences, or to express any deep concern for their fate. That there was much to be admired in those whose memories were thus, in some measure, consigned to oblivion, except in the hearts of their descendants; much which deserved to be explained in their motives; ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... Nie fared differently. Japanese annals attempt to palliate his discomfiture by a story about the abuse of a flag of truce, but the fact seems to have been that Kawabe no Nie was an incompetent and pusillanimous captain. He and his men were all killed or taken prisoners, the only redeeming feature being the intrepidity of a Japanese ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... The long sanction they have received from the proper authorities and from the people, not less than the unexampled growth and increasing prosperity of so many millions of freemen, attest that no such oppression as would justify, or even palliate, such a resort can be justly imputed either to the present policy or past measures of the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... man of the world, and, in the phrase of that day, impudent to boot. But then and there he stammered and hesitated. The fierce question was repeated. Lee gathered himself and tried to excuse and palliate what had happened, but although the brief words that followed are variously reported to us across the century, we know that Washington rebuked him in such a way, and with such passion, that all was over between them. Lee had committed the one ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... Beverley, Stith, Keith and Burke, but not one of them go into the disgusting and improbable details named in the "Brief Declaration." Campbell also reports the stories, but adds, in regard to the wife murderer, "upon his trial it appeared that cannibalism was feigned to palliate the murder," p. 93. Neill quotes from the Records of the Virginia Company, "The Tragical Relation of Virginia Assembly," which was transmitted to England about 1621; this was intended as a reply ...
— Colonial Records of Virginia • Various
... under arrest, still sitting at the table where Huerta had been his guest, Huerta sought to palliate his action by claiming that Gustavo Madero had tried to poison him by putting "knock-out" drops into Huerta's after-dinner brandy. At the same time Huerta claimed that President Madero had tried to have him assassinated, on the day before, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... was the damning answer. Thus, had John's single departure from the truth brought instant punishment. For no other purpose but to see Alan would he have entered a billiard-room; but he had desired to palliate the fact of his disobedience, and now it appeared that he frequented these disreputable haunts upon ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... would be the same to her, that though he might not understand he would be loyal, that his love only grew greater with his pain, that in everything that awaited her he would be ready with eager service and friendship unimpaired. None of this came from Marchmont's lips; he made no effort to amend or palliate his last bitter speech. He could not conquer his resentment, and it bred an answering resentment in her. "You must think what you like of me," she said, her voice ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... serious wound to the manners of the nation in a point affecting the most awful of the household charities: and he fails to perceive that for this whole charge his sole ground is— that it would be very agreeable to him if he had a ground. Such is the power of the esprit de corps to palliate and recommend as colorable the very weakest logic to a man of acknowledged learning and talent!—In conclusion I must again disclaim any want of veneration and entire affection for the Established Church: the very prejudices and injustice, with which I tax the English ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... taking any part in the present war, or to avoid, upon the justest grounds, the execution of those engagements which the court of Vienna claimed by a manifest abuse of obligations, which they employed to palliate their unlawful views. It wholly depended upon the empress of Russia to extinguish the flames of the war, without unsheathing the sword, by pursuing the measures suggested by the king. This conduct would have immortalized her reign throughout ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... crime of being a young man, which the honorable gentleman has, with such spirit and decency charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny; but content myself with wishing,—that I may be one of those whose follies cease with their youth; and not of that number who are ignorant ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... beneath the common pressure of the stranger. The Conquest was hardly over when we see the rise of a new national feeling, of a new patriotism. In his quiet cell at Worcester the monk Florence strives to palliate by excuses of treason or the weakness of rulers the defeats of Englishmen by the Danes. AElfred, the great name of the English past, gathers round him a legendary worship, and the "Sayings of AElfred" embody the ideal of an English king. We see the new vigour drawn from this deeper consciousness ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... culminating horror of St. Bartholomew's Massacre was reached,—chargeable directly to her, despite the strenuous denials of Brantome. Henry IV., the royal son-in-law who suffered so much at her hands, was broad-minded enough to palliate her offences on the ground of this family loyalty. Claude Grouard quotes him as saying to a Florentine ambassador in regard to Catherine: "I ask you what a poor woman could do, left by the death of her husband, with five little children ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... to excuse and palliate his conduct toward Scotland. They have glossed over his crimes and tried to explain away the records of his deeds of savage atrocity, and to show that his claims to that kingdom, which had not a shadow of foundation save from the submission of her Anglo-Norman ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... against life itself. "Birth," he says, speaking of Tess, "seemed to her an ordeal of degrading personal compulsion whose gratuitousness nothing in the result seemed to justify and at best could only palliate." It is strange to find pessimism in a romantic setting; strange, too, to find a paganism which is so little capable ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... to palliate the calamity," exclaimed the king. "The enemy is here, and you know it. He is dogging every step of ours; he is listening to every word of mine, and watching every movement. An inconsiderate word, an imprudent step, and the French gendarmes will rush upon me and conduct ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... was openly and freely to discover every point of their faith, to detect the falsehood of their accusers, and to charge nothing upon their adversaries but what they were sure to make good. This example has been ill followed of later times; the Papists since the Reformation using all arts to palliate the absurdities of their tenets, and loading the Reformers with a thousand calumnies; the consequence of which has been only a more various, wide, and inveterate separation. It is the same thing in civil schisms: a Whig forms an ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... embroils his lord's affairs, Will soon grow necessary to his heirs. His policy consists in setting traps, In finding ways and means, and stopping gaps; He knows a thousand tricks whene'er he please, Though not to cure, yet palliate each disease. In either case, an equal chance is run; For, keep or turn him out, my lord's undone. You want a hand to clear a filthy sink; No cleanly workman can endure the stink. A strong dilemma in a desperate case! To act with infamy, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... the end. She has attained the crown of her woman's existence, and she can bear no resentment towards him whose cruelty embittered, and whose vengeance has cut it short. The motherly heart in her goes out to the wicked husband who was also once a child, and strives to palliate what he has done. "He was sinned against as well as sinning. Her poor parents were blind and unjust in their mode of retaliating upon him. She was blind and foolish in doing nothing to heal the breach. ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... wisdom; these have been the occupations of my manhood; these will furnish forth the materials of that history which is now open to your survey. Whatever be the faults of the historian, he has no motive to palliate what he has committed nor to ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... because I knew that my life must be short at best, that I urged you to gild the brief period with the light of your love. I would not have bound you always to me; and when I asked your hand a few minutes since, I knew that death would soon sever the tie and set you free. Let this suffice to palliate my 'unmanly' pleading. I have but one request to make of you now, and, weak as it may seem, I beg of you not to deny me. You are preparing to leave my house; this I know; I see it in your face, and the thought is harrowing to me. Electra, ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... by offering large premiums; to promote education and the mechanical arts among the free people of color, and to recover their lost rights. Religious professors, of all denominations, must bear unqualified testimony against slavery. They must not support, they must not palliate it. No slaveholder ought to be embraced within the pale of a christian church; consequently, the churches must be purified 'as by fire.' Slavery in the District of Columbia is sustained in our national capacity: ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... possible; they lighten hearts, if but for a moment; they inculcate habits of order and self-restraint, which may be useful when the poor man finds himself in Canada or Australia. And it is a cruel utilitarianism to refuse to palliate the symptoms because you cannot cure the disease itself. You will give opiates to the suffering, who must die nevertheless. Let him slip into his grave at least as painlessly as you can. And so you must use these charitable societies, remembering all along what ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... nineteen propositions we see very little to blame except the articles against the Catholics. These, however, were in the spirit of that age; and to some sturdy churchmen in our own, they may seem to palliate even the good which the Long Parliament effected. The regulation with respect to new creations of Peers is the only other article about which we entertain any doubt. One of the propositions is that the judges shall hold their offices during good behaviour. To this surely no exception will be ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... begged him to prescribe a course for my adoption, and frankly to tell me if my evidence could be of service. He assured me it could not; there was no question of the fairness of the duel, and the sole crime was in the breach of military discipline. This crime my testimony could in no way palliate. He requested me to see M. de Berg, and to tell him that, to avoid the possibility of the cause of the duel becoming known, he should refuse to answer questions, plead guilty to the charge, and state, as sole extenuation, that the quarrel occurred off ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... justice, though equally balanced in the courts, get so bruised and bespattered in the minds of the fickle multitude, that time alone will bring them to their proper equilibrium. Let us travel back to the impeachment of the DUKE OF YORK, in the case of the celebrated MRS. CLARK. To attempt to palliate the acts of His Royal Highness was to commit an overt act of treason against the sovereign people; to admit his indiscretions, but deny his guilty participation, or even knowledge of the peculations committed in his name, would expose one to the reputation of being either a fool ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... other, were constantly exhibiting. A few instances of this suffering and of that barbarity, may not be improperly adduced here. They will serve to illustrate the condition of those who were within reach of the savage enemy; and perhaps, to palliate the enormities ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... that he did not wince. He knew and she knew that, coming suddenly upon them as Armstrong had that tropic night on the Queen, he must have heard her words, must have realized that some compact or understanding existed between them, which neither Gray nor Mrs. Frank could palliate or explain. It had not needed that episode to tell her that Armstrong held her in contempt; and yet, when they chanced to meet, she could smile up into his eyes as beamingly, as guilelessly, as though no shadow of sin had ever darkened her winsome face. But not so Gray. He moaned ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... went on just the same at cards. However, he never blamed his companions, or lost his temper when his plan of action was defeated. He certainly talked incessantly, but it was always to explain or to palliate some point in the game, and the eternal repetitions, delivered in the same eloquent and persuasive tone, provoked ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... regard to the conduct of the crew on deck, and he soon understood the whole matter. He was very severe upon Cleats for leaving the deck, declared that he could not be trusted, and that he should be discharged. The latter was very humble, acknowledged his error, and made no attempt to palliate it. He had always been faithful, so far as was known, and probably had never been guilty of any graver offence than that of leaving the deck for a few minutes during his watch. But he had been expressly cautioned not to do this, ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... this jury," said Dan Anderson, "I stand here before you to make no excuses for this Law, to palliate nothing in the way of its workings, to set no tentative or temporizing date for the time of the arrival at this place of the image of the Law. I say to you here to-day, at this hour, that image now sits there ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... carrying on violent flirtations with other gentlemen while her husband was in Italy, and subsequently, when he was in Egypt swiftly forging his way to fame and to his destiny. So that when Napoleon was accused of cruelty in putting her from him, there were ever some champions ready to palliate the act by putting her unfaithful conduct before their opponents. But the Emperor's divorce of the little Creole was never quite approved by his sailor admirers, more especially as they had a strong dislike to Marie Louise, the Austrian arch-duchess who took the ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... because we would palliate Henry's vices, if such there be on record, or disguise his follies, or wish his irregularities to be forgotten in the vivid recollections of his conquests, that we would try "our immortal bard" by the test of rigid fact. We do so, because he is the authority on which ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... answered the widow. "The magistrate is a great friend of the Colonel's, plays cards with him every evening, and to palliate the affair, and silence public indignation, he made an official visit to the commandant's house. Francis Mordaunt was examined, and, as might be expected beforehand, came out of the affair snow-white—at least, according to the magistrate's report," added ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... greatest moment she grew more absent, more strained, more restless, more intently listening, more easily starting at the lightest sound; until, at last, when the late day touched the rooms with fiery sunset colors, her friend, watchful of her changing mood, ready at every point to palliate circumstance, drew her out into ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... things were not normal. It had seemed that Robin would die, though not as Alixe did. If she lived and he might watch over her, there lay hidden in the back of his mind a vague feeling that it would be rather as though his care of all detail—his power to palliate—to guard—would be near the semblance of the tenderness he would have shown to Alixe. His old habit of mind caused him to call it an obsession, but ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... his varied brilliancy and in his fatal debauchery, his character stands forth as the completest type of the period of the Regency. Many memoirs have been written, among which those of his friend Moore, and his granddaughter the Hon. Mrs. Norton, although they unduly palliate his faults, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... duty, this true Queen, this impersonated sovereignty, whom her Poet crowns with his choicest graces, on whom he devolves the task of prefacing this so critical, and, one might think, perhaps, perilous exhibition. But her description does not disguise the matter, or palliate its extremity. ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... conspiracy with the enemies of their queen and country against her government and personal safety; against the public peace, and the religion by law established; and nothing can excuse the blindness, or palliate the guilt, of their perseverance in a course so perilous ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... the world & wished to divide them into two seperate principles I found them inextricably intwined together & I was again cast into perplexity & doubt—I might have considered the earth as an imperfect formation where having bad materials to work on the Creator could only palliate the evil effects of his combinations but I saw a wanton malignity in many parts & particularly in the mind of man that baffled me a delight in mischief a love of evil for evils sake—a siding of the multitude—a dastardly applause which in their ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... last rag and turns them out to shiver in the road. The despotism of Louis XVI. was not the despotism of Philippe le Bel, or of Nadir Shah, or of Caligula; but it was bad enough to justify the French Revolution, and to palliate even its horrors. If an appeal be made to the intense attachments which exist between wives and their husbands, exactly as much may be said of domestic slavery. It was quite an ordinary fact in Greece and Rome for slaves to submit to death by torture rather than betray ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... resolute consistency with their first principles he is to follow her early legislators, has reason to limit their aim and motive at the start, that he may not assume for them more than he can make good. Especially if he intend to palliate, and, still more, to justify, some of the severer and more oppressive elements of their policy, he will find it wise to qualify their purpose within the same limitations which they themselves set for it. Dr. Palfrey parts ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... moments of temptation, but I suppose, also, that they act more sensibly and honourably than I did then. Her hand had dropped gently on the chair-arm, near to my own, and though our fingers did not touch, I felt mine thrilled and impelled toward hers. I do not seek to palliate my action. Though the man I believed to be her husband was below, I yielded myself to an imagined passion for her. In that moment I was a captive. I caught her hand and kissed ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... all publick Assemblies, except in a Court of Justice. I shall say nothing of those Silent and Busie Multitudes that are employed within Doors in the drawing up of Writings and Conveyances; nor of those greater Numbers that palliate their want of Business with ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Haggart," and he laid his hand very kindly on the boy's shoulder, "you must remember that the injustice came from you—no one would have doubted you if you had not first accused yourself! I had my doubts always, but I did not know enough to understand. You told a lie; nothing can palliate or do away with that! No motives can make a lie anything but a lie, and a lie is always a cowardly thing, whether we try to shield ourselves ...
— Brave and True - Short stories for children by G. M. Fenn and Others • George Manville Fenn
... fertile in generating flattering illusions and artful sophisms. George Sand was indeed a great sophist. She had always in readiness an inexhaustible store of interpretations and subterfuges with which to palliate, excuse, or even metamorphose into their contraries the most odious of her words and actions. It is not likely that any one ever equalled, much less surpassed, her expertness in hiding ugly facts or making ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... language sometimes produced surprise rather than sympathy. The right, notwithstanding its losses at the elections, was still very strong, and speedily assumed the offensive. The King's speech on opening the session was mild and somewhat indistinct, as if tending rather to palliate the decree of the 5th of September, than to parade it with an air of triumph: "Rely," said he, in conclusion, "on my fixed determination to repress the outrages of the ill-disposed, and to restrain the exuberance of overheated zeal." "Is that all?" observed M. ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... poets shall be kept out of such editions as are meant for general reading, and that the pedant-pride which now perpetuates it as an essential part of those poets shall no longer have its way. At the end of the ends such things do defile, they do corrupt. We may palliate them or excuse them for this reason or that, but that is the truth, and I do not see why they should not be dropped from literature, as they were long ago dropped from the talk of decent people. The literary histories ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... were essential parts of the national belief. Yet, with the most extreme folly, Charles, acting like Henry VIII. as his own Pope, thrust the canons and this Liturgy upon the Kirk and country. No sentimental arguments can palliate ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... to say the least," Annabel replied, laughing. "And a charming host," she added, to palliate ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... masters. If he had merely met Harrison out of bounds, and it had been possible to have overlooked him, he would have done so. But such a proceeding in the interior of a small shop was impossible. There was nothing to palliate the crime. The tobacconist also kept the wolf from the door, and lured the juvenile population of the neighbourhood to it, by selling various weird brands of sweets, but it was only too obvious that ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... such as Sir Thomas More, of the highest authority, agree in treating Perkin as an impostor.—Answer. When Sir Thomas More wrote, Henry the Seventh was still alive: that argument therefore falls entirely to the ground: but there was great necessity, I will not say to defend, but even to palliate the titles of both Henry the Seventh and Eighth. The former, all the world agrees now, had no title(49) the latter had none from his father, and a very defective one from his mother, If she had any right, it could only be ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... freely plunge into gayeties which were sparingly allowed her at home. I know she does not love Eugene; she never did; and, assuredly, his future is dark enough. I believe, if she could reform him she would not; his excesses sanction, or at least in some degree palliate, hers. Oh, Beulah, I ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... of Lilla than she had yet done, for she thought their long years of intimacy demanded candour on her part; and each year, while it increased the evil of Lilla's present situation heightened her earnest desire to draw the father and child more closely together. She did not palliate her faults, but she proved that they were increased by the constant contradiction and irritation which she had to encounter. She repeated all that had passed between them the preceding day, unconsciously and cautiously condemning ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... of having it; and the world seems agreed patiently to submit to this tyrant, lest a worse should come in its room." It is not difficult to account for such absurdity, though it be quite impracticable to palliate it; and what is worse, from its being founded on something more congenial to human nature than even prejudice, it is almost impossible to remove it. A single quotation more from the same author, so much in repute ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... an universal grin, Sees not a countenance there that speaks a joy Half so refined or so sincere as ours. Cards were superfluous here, with all the tricks That idleness has ever yet contrived To fill the void of an unfurnished brain, To palliate dulness and give time a shove. Time, as he passes us, has a dove's wing, Unsoiled and swift and of a silken sound. But the world's time is time in masquerade. Theirs, should I paint him, has his pinions fledged With motley plumes, and, where the peacock shows His azure eyes, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... Work of Creation itself, or the Effect of Adam's Sin, and Abuse of his intellectual Powers. We are what we are by Necessity, strict Necessity: and though it may be called moral Necessity, in order to palliate and distinguish it from that which is natural; it operates on us, to all Intents and Purposes, equally the same; and the giving it a milder Name, looks like a sophistical Artifice. If Man's Nature be impaired by the Act of another, God, as a just and good Being, will either ...
— Free and Impartial Thoughts, on the Sovereignty of God, The Doctrines of Election, Reprobation, and Original Sin: Humbly Addressed To all who Believe and Profess those DOCTRINES. • Richard Finch
... to palliate your conduct, Gascoyne," said Mr Mason, earnestly. "The blackness of your sin is too great to be deepened or lightened by what men may have said of you. You are a pirate. Every pirate is ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... have justified him; and, forgetting the difficulties of personal investigation in such a case, she blamed herself for having omitted herself to question the confidential clerk, and having left all to Lord Ormersfield, who, cool and wary as he ordinarily was, would be less likely to palliate Mr. Ponsonby's errors than those of any other person. Her heart grew sick as she counted the weeks ere she ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... railways, by the Whig alliance, by democratic sympathy, and by the transference of our political capital to Westminster. Tracts, periodicals, and the whole horde of Benthamy rushed in. Without manufactures, without trade, without comfort to palliate such degradation, we were proclaimed converts to Utilitarianism. The Irish press thought itself imperial, because it reflected that of London—Nationality was called a vulgar superstition, and a general European Trades' Union, to be ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... covenant too low to be thought on in a controversy about church government, "O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou united." It is in vain for them to palliate or shelter their covenant-breaking with appealing from the covenant to the Scripture, for subordinata non pugnant. The covenant is norma recta,—a right rule, though the Scripture alone be norma recti,—the rule of right. If they ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... only man who had successfully bearded him, was the only friend not mentioned in his will. If anything could palliate his remorseless selfishness it is the candour with which he confessed it. He had made a vast private fortune out of his countrymen's misery. When he surrendered his dictatorship he offered a tenth of his property to Hercules, and gave a banquet to the people on so profuse a scale that ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... the dumb, eyes of the blind, feet of the impotent, his voice alone, among the voices that were everywhere heard and heeded, was sent by God to challenge every word, or look, or deed that seemed to him possibly to palliate oppression ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... an oppressed people, whom he had taken under his protection and whose cause it was the mission of his life to sustain and defend. The violation of divine and human justice had been erected into a system by the conquerors and discoverers and nothing, in his eyes, could palliate the evils which that system fostered, and by which the colonists prospered, while the native races were dwindling to extinction. Beyond these primary facts, he refused to see; of them, he had seen more than enough to inflame his indignation and start him upon the crusade for which ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... time before his execution Lee made a confession in which he attempted to palliate his guilt by throwing the burden of the crime on his accomplices, especially on Haight and Higbee, and to show that the massacre was committed by order of Brigham Young and the High Council, all of ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... danger he was in, he immediately sent a galley with messengers to demand him of Dionysius; alleging that he stood engaged for his safety, upon the confidence of which Plato had come to Sicily. Dionysius, to palliate his secret hatred, before Plato came away, treated him with great entertainments and all seeming demonstrations of kindness, but could not forbear breaking out one day into the expression, "No doubt, Plato, when you are at home among the philosophers, your companions, you will complain ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... seemed to be something which needed explanation. It was the only instance among the works of Shakspeare in which a direct copy, even to matters of detail, appeared to have been made; and, in spite of all attempts to gloss over and palliate, it was impossible to deny that an unblushing act of mere piracy seemed to have been committed, of which I never could bring myself to believe that Shakspeare had been guilty. The readiness to impute this act to him was to me but an instance of the unworthy manner ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various
... it on the king. The omnipotence of parliament appeared no longer a mere hyperbole. Let it not be supposed, that to mention the good thus finally educed from such evils, is intended or calculated to palliate crimes, or to lessen our just abhorrence of criminals. Nothing, on the contrary, seems more to exalt the majesty of virtue than to point out the tendency of the moral government of the world, which, as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... part of the benefit to soften the inconvenience. The perfect cure is impracticable, because the disorder is dear to those from whom alone the cure can possibly be derived. The utmost to be done is to palliate, to mitigate, to respite, to put off the evil day of the Constitution to its latest possible hour, and may it be a very ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... one-fifth of the peasant households had no longer any land of their own, and of those who still possessed land a large proportion had no longer the cattle and horses necessary to till and manure their allotments. No doubt M. Witte was beginning to perceive his mistake, and had done something to palliate the evils by improving the system of collecting the taxes and abolishing the duty on passports, but such merely palliative remedies could have little effect. While a few capitalists were amassing gigantic fortunes, the masses were slowly and surely advancing to the ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... of madness and extravagance. You shall hear everything. And listen,—as a witness that I shall speak truth, I will say my say before the face of Hiero Glyphic yonder, and upon the steps of his altar! See, I desire neither to palliate nor ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... is a defence of his relation, sir Richard Greenville, whom lord Clarendon has shown in a form very unamiable. So much is urged in this apology to justify many actions that have been represented as culpable, and to palliate the rest, that the reader is reconciled for the greater part; and it is made very probable that Clarendon was by personal enmity disposed to think the worst of Greenville, as Greenville was also very willing to think the worst of Clarendon. These pieces were published ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... to palliate a single inconsistency or to deny one dubious act. Anticipating surprise at numerous apparently weak performances, he neither minimized nor ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... not fail of becoming his prize. He further added that many ridiculous tales had been propagated about the strength of the sides of these ships, and their being impenetrable to cannon-shot; that these fictions had been principally invented to palliate the cowardice of those who had formerly engaged them; but he hoped they were none of those present weak enough to give credit to so absurd a story. For his own part he did assure them upon his word that, whenever he met with them, he would fight them so near that ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... myself, wore gradually away, and by the time I reached Chicago I had resolved to climb high. "I will carry mother and Jessie to comfort and to some small share, at least, in the world of art," was my resolve. In this way I sought to palliate my ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... them. Henry's mind was oddly perverse; he had been as fierce in his denunciation of convention as ever Gilbert Farlow had been, but nevertheless he clung to conventional things with something like desperation. It was characteristic of him that he should palliate his submission to the conventional thing by inventing a sensible excuse for it. He would say that such things were too trivial to be worth the trouble of a fight or a revolt, and declare that one should save one's energies for bigger battles; but the truth was that ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... oaths. Of course, those who have done so look out for pretexts. Nobody expected them to do otherwise. I do not think I ever saw a perjurer, however bald and naked, who could not invent some pretext to palliate his crime, or who could not, for fifteen shillings, hire an Old Bailey lawyer to invent some for him. Yet this requirement of the Constitution is another one of the extreme demands of an extremist and ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... weeps aloud upon the neck of his dear brother Benjamin, that all the house of Pharaoh heard him, at that instant none of his brethren are introduced as uttering aught, either to express their present joy or palliate their former injuries to him. On all sides there immediately ensues a deep and solemn silence; a silence infinitely more eloquent and expressive than anything else that could have been substituted in its place. Had Thucydides, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... assuredly, Selma," Lyons answered. His predilection to palliate equivocal circumstances was never proof against clear, evidence of moral delinquency. When his religious scruples were finally offended, ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... Gillian, carry back the remnant of the unhappy 'Waif,' and 'have it out' with Constance, who would, she feared, never otherwise understand the measure of her own delinquency, and from whom, perhaps, evidence might be extracted which would palliate the poor child's offence in the eyes of Colonel Mohun. Both the Hacket sisters looked terribly frightened when she appeared, and the elder one made an excuse for getting her outside the door to beseech ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his exertions would be shared by others, whether equally or unequally making them, and that the exertions of others would equally avail him, notwithstanding a deficiency in his own. Skilful arrangements might palliate this tendency, but it would be difficult ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... like this. All the journals approve, palliate, or keep silent; nobody dares offer resistance.[31130] Property as well as lives belong to whoever wants to take them. At the barriers, at the markets, on the boulevard of the Temple, thieves, decked with the tricolor ribbon, stop people as they pass along, seize whatever they carry, and, under ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... He had earnestly requested them not to go away because he felt that he was in a dying state; but the response intimated that he had often expressed the same feeling before, and his fears had proved groundless. During the interval of these few hours of abandonment nothing can palliate or excuse, George Borrow died as he had lived—alone! His age was ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... a conviction, indeed, that all will be made up to the victims in the end; that "what is untried and afterward" will fail no one, not even "the old man who has lived without purpose and feels it with bitterness worse than gall." But this is not to palliate our sense of what is hard or melancholy in the present. Pangloss, smarting under one of the worst things that ever was supposed to come from America, consoled himself with the reflection that it was the price we have to pay for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... into the back-yard—tried to scale the wall—fallen back exhausted, and been found at morning on the stones in a dying state. But though there was some evidence of cruelty, there was none of murder; and the aunt and her husband had sought to palliate cruelty by alleging the exceeding stubbornness and perversity of the child, who was declared to be half-witted. Be that as it may, at the orphan's death the aunt inherited her brother's fortune. Before the first wedded year was out, the American quitted England abruptly, and ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... I suppose:— All scribbled in the worst of times, To palliate his friend Oxford's crimes; To praise Queen Anne, nay more, defend her, As never favouring the Pretender: Or libels yet concealed from sight, Against the court to show his spite: Perhaps his travels, part the third; A lie at every second word— Offensive to a loyal ear:— But—not ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... them all! Tis that dauntons me." His eyes seemed to swim in blood, as he looked at me, or through me, aghast at the horror of his situation, and sweat stood in blobs upon his brow. "That," he went on, "weighs me down like lead. Here about me my people know me, and may palliate the mistake of a day by the recollection of a lifetime's honour. I blame Auchinbreac; I blame the chieftains,—they said I must take to the galley; ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... sea, Gilbert tells us the four chief indications are to prevent nausea, to allay vomiting, to palliate the foul odor of the ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... treatment is contra-indicated, all that can be done is to palliate the symptoms by bromides, opium, phenacetin, ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... imaginable pretext serve to palliate so atrocious a crime, or excuse the woman who first committed it, and the man who joined in the rebellion? Would they indeed have been less criminal, if a seraph of glory had proposed to them the impious deed? Was not the faculty of reason which ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... and voice recovered their usual briskness: he shook her heartily and gratefully by the hand, and entered on the subject in a manner to prove, that he now only wanted time and persuasion to think the engagement no very bad thing. His companions suggested only what could palliate imprudence, or smooth objections; and by the time they had talked it all over together, and he had talked it all over again with Emma, in their walk back to Hartfield, he was become perfectly reconciled, and not far ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Treasury of the State? Is it strange that so monstrous a fabric, when those on whose living bodies it was built rose in revolt, should have fallen with a great ruin, and have crushed all whom it had sheltered? 'The guilt of an Order cannot palliate the massacre of its Innocents.' True; but human nature being what it is, the unreasoning burst of fury which strove to stamp out every trace of old institutions, to exterminate the race of the unconscious oppressors, was less strange than ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... For whenever the wife, or the children, or the servants, have done wrong, and deny or excuse their wrong-doing, the father of the family is the more moved to wrath; whereas, on the other hand, confession secures pardon or a lighter punishment. But it is the nature of hypocrites to excuse and palliate their sin or to deny it altogether and under the show of ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... she was quiet and unobtrusive. She made no attempt to break down the wall thus established between us. And I was determined, on the whole, to be more than just with Rebecca. I would be kind to her in her disgrace. I would palliate her weakness as far as I could consistently with a pure and high standard of action. I even congratulated myself on the magnanimity of my intentions, except when I met the clear, sad gaze of those dispassionate eyes. Then I experienced ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... accepting a man's championship, she has virtually admitted his devotion. Her own levity of character, the thoughtless indifference with which she would sport with any man's affections, so far from inducing her to palliate such caprices, made her more severe and unforgiving. 'How shall I punish him for this? How shall I make him remember whom it is he has insulted?' repeated she over and over to herself ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... what I mean—and not lose the privilege of being near you. It may be—it is conceivable, I mean; no more—that a revelation to me of myself, a light thrown on what I am, would bring me what would palliate the wrench of losing what I have of you. It may be so—it may be! All I know is—all I can say is—that I can now imagine nothing, no treasure of love of wife or daughter, that would be a make-weight for what I should lose if I had to part from you." He paused a moment, as ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... everywhere seen cause to condemn sex-antagonism, and it is my hope that no page or line or word of this book can be accused of illustrating or justifying or inciting to or even attempting to palliate either form of this wholly abominable spirit of the pit. If such places there be, there assuredly is misdirection and falsity. This spirit is one of the great enemies of mankind. As aroused in women against men, it has done and is doing no little harm; as exhibited by men against ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... signified assent. My answer was that their conduct very plainly showed their own lack both of military experience and elementary military knowledge, and that this ignorance was the only thing which could palliate their action. Whether they meant it or not, their action was mutinous. The responsibility for the movement of the army was with me, and whilst I should be inclined to confer very freely with my principal subordinates ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... eloquence, that grace of tongue, So rare, so lovely, never misapplied By her, to palliate vice, or deck a wrong: She speaks and argues but ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... have a more extended intercourse, and consequently means of information and refinement, and may seek education for his children where it may be found. I say, what is obviously true, that he has the means of obtaining those advantages; but I say nothing to palliate or excuse the conduct of him who, having such means, neglects to ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... excitement was over, too, he would begin to make excuses for the man, thinking that perhaps he was poor, and his children were suffering for bread, and it was on their account that he was tempted to steal, and this, though it would not justify, might in some degree palliate the act for which he was slain; or that he had been badly brought up, having never received any proper instruction, but had been trained and taught from his boyhood ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... 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 political ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... original reason of our connection, his particularly disordered health and spirits, had been long at an end, and he had no other ailments than old age and general infirmity, which every professor of medicine was ardently zealous and generally attentive to palliate, and to contribute all in their power for the prolongation of a life so valuable. Veneration for his virtue, reverence for his talents, delight in his conversation, and habitual endurance of a yoke my husband first put upon me, and of which he contentedly bore his share for sixteen or ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... has satisfied each of the contracting parties that the other does not labor under any grave personal defect. If it were possible to regard the passage containing this proposal as an interpolation in the original romance, it might then be regarded as an attempt to palliate Henry VIII.'s conduct ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... by an example—it has been known to happen that nations have been told to their faces that they did not require as much freedom as many other nations do. This statement might, indeed, be dictated by forbearance and a desire to palliate, the true meaning being that they were utterly unable to endure so great freedom and that only a high degree of rigidity could prevent them from destroying one another. If, however, the words are taken as they are spoken, they are true ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... comparison betwixt the active and the solitary life; and as for the fine sayings with which ambition and avarice palliate their vices, that we are not born for ourselves but for the public,—[This is the eulogium passed by Lucan on Cato of Utica, ii. 383.]—let us boldly appeal to those who are in public affairs; ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... England, moved for an enquiry into the causes and injurious consequences that might have resulted from the delay incurred in the publication of the laws of the Provincial Parliament, passed in the previous session. His assigned object in making the motion was to palliate the conduct of the Pointe Claire rioters. The motion carried and the Clerks and other officers of the Upper House were summoned to attend at the Bar of the Assembly. The Upper House, seemingly, considered that their officers had equal privileges ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... lied, deceived themselves; he could well conceive that the image of this first lover might have become idealized in her vicissitudes; that the memories of the creature-comforts, of first passion, might have enhanced as the victim sank. It was not only because she did not attempt to palliate that he believed her. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 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 ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... the succession of events to our will, but to narrate them with such poor skill as nature and a defective education concede, trusting that a homely sincerity, if it cannot wholly supply the place of art, may palliate ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... Jonathan. "In the first place, she had no knowledge of her birth; and, consequently, no false pride to get rid of. In the second, she was wretchedly poor, and assailed by temptations of which you can form no idea. Distress like hers might palliate far greater offences than she ever committed. With the same inducements we should all do the same thing. Poor girl! she was beautiful once; so beautiful as to make me, who care little for the allurements of women, fancy myself enamoured ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... that he signed such papers as the secretary of state presented to him without learning their purport and bearing. But such an excuse, even if it can be believed, seems fully as bad as the blunder which it is designed to palliate. ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... his parting from the estate, which appears now to be happily restored to its former splendour; but possessing some knowledge of a lamentable fact, that neither Mr. Pettigrew nor Mr. Ashpitel appears to be aware of, I feel inclined to soften the asperity of the reflections quoted; and palliate, although I may not justify, the apparently reckless proceedings of the eccentric fifth Lord, as he is called. In the years 1796 and 1797, after finishing my clerkship, I had a seat in the chambers of the late Jas. Hanson, Esq., an eminent conveyancer ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... is proclaimed to be the greater than man's, even by the world. Let us be just. We do not heap the blame all on woman, even of her fall. All we say is, she bears the burden of the woe. In this fact she is warned. Society may pity her: it cannot palliate her guilt. Thus is she advised against throwing herself away, and casting off her allegiance to Christ, to herself, and to humanity. Let her fall, and almost without exception she is hopelessly ruined. Society points the finger of scorn at her, and, what is worse, ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... Ancient Egypt, gives us the following description of Khem: "A full Egyptian idea of Khem can scarcely be presented to the modern reader, on account of the grossness of the forms under which it was exhibited. Some modern Egyptologists endeavor to excuse or palliate this grossness; but it seems scarcely possible that it should not have been accompanied by indelicacy of thought or that it should have failed to exercise a corrupting influence on life and morals. Khem, no doubt, ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II
... deceives us a little sometimes, so that David's dictum hardly needs his apology of haste, it is a comfort to remember that many lies are not downright, but sympathetic; and an understanding of their nature, if it does not palliate them, may put us on our guard. Sympathetic we think a better name than the unfortunate title of white, which was given them by Mrs. Opie, because that designation carries a meaning of innocence, if not even of virtue; and instead of protecting our ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... to Prout that he might have been unfair to the culprit, who had not striven to deny or palliate his offense. He sent for Harrison and Craye, reprehending them very gently for the tone they had adopted to a repentant sinner, and when they returned to their study, they used the language of despair. They then made headlong inquisition through the house, driving the ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... of Conde, he said, to palliate still more his flight from France. Every one knew that the Princess could not fly back to Paris through the air. To take her out of a house filled with people, to pierce or scale the walls of the city, to arrange her journey by ordinary means, and to protect ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... had previously done or said or been could excuse or palliate his conduct. The fact that he was of a good family only rendered his alliance with "niggers" against his own race and class the more infamous. The fact that he was a man of substantial means, and had sought no ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... from the records of his strenuous action, of his undaunted courage, and of his well-tried loyalty, to draw the portrait of Lord Clarendon, to describe his character as we conceive it, and to vindicate his place in history. We have not sought to conceal his foibles, nor to palliate what may appear to some to be his prejudices. We are concerned mainly to claim for him, as the first of a long line of Conservative statesmen, a high ideal of statecraft, a lofty patriotism, and a clear-sighted honesty of purpose. We admit, without considering it ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... may go against all facts for his fancy. He may end (like Carlyle and Freeman) by maintaining that the Norman Conquest was a Saxon Conquest. He may end in utter unreason—because he has a reason. A man who loves France for being military will palliate the army of 1870. But a man who loves France for being France will improve the army of 1870. This is exactly what the French have done, and France is a good instance of the working paradox. Nowhere else is patriotism more purely abstract ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... reminder that George Sand in her love affairs was always the man. She treated Chopin as a child, a toy, used him for literary copy- -pace Mr. Hadow!—and threw him over after she had wrung out all the emotional possibilities of the problem. She was true to herself even when she attempted to palliate her want of heart. Beware of the woman who punctuates the pages of her life with "heart" and "maternal feelings." "If I do not believe any more in tears it is because I saw thee crying!" exclaimed Chopin. Sand was the product of ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... Barante. M. Capefigue has published many historical productions, and amongst the rest a Life of Napoleon, which is perhaps one of the most impartial extant, and very interesting, as containing a sort of recapitulation of facts, without any endeavour to palliate such of his actions as stern justice must condemn. M. Mignet has also chosen the path of history, and has not followed it unsuccessfully; the foundation of his present prosperity consisting entirely ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... angrily. Oh, well, it was done and could not be undone now. It was mean, perhaps, to send him another girl's picture, but, considering that the whole world acknowledged that Mabel Moreley was far the better-looking of the two, did not this sacrifice of vanity palliate the offence? It seemed, after all, a very remote possibility that any harm could come to the other girl through this freak of hers. She could not, of course, have sent her own picture, and this was the only one in her collection that had seemed at all passable: so, eventually, the iniquity of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... the Indian's misfortunes, has, also, induced the class of writers, from whom, almost exclusively, our notions of his character are derived, to represent him in his most genial phases, and even to palliate his most ferocious acts, by reference to the injustice and oppression, of which he has been the victim. If we were to receive the authority of these writers, we should conclude that the native was not a savage, at all, until the landing of the ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... defile her beauty and corrupt her powers, and gird herself for the redemptive work assigned her, is the faith of every loyal Christian. The grievous failures of the church we cannot deny and must not palliate; it is of the utmost importance that she be brought face to face with them, and be made to see how far short she has come of her high calling. Such criticism she has received from the beginning. The seven churches of Asia were sharply called to account by the beloved ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden |
