"Pardonable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of fine quality incased his feet, in whose shapeliness he felt a pardonable pride; for a young man's excellence was often measured in the circle which he had frequented, by the possession of such a foot. A peculiar grace in the dance and a talent for bold repartee were further characteristics which had made Gregoire's departure keenly felt among certain ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... them, not so much what is there, as a reflection of what they construct from the hints that have pleased them. Some of them it takes a miserable married lifetime to undeceive; for some, not even that will serve; they continue to see, if not an angel, yet a very pardonable mortal, therefore altogether loveable man, in the husband in whom everybody else sees only a vile rascal. Whether sometimes the wife or the world be nearer the truth, will one day come out: the wife MAY be a woman of insight, and see where ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... saw myself first a mere puppy, not worth notice. The puppy grew, and I saw it as a dog; a fine, well-bred, and certainly a fortunate dog. Then as a clever, knowing, useful dog; a gentle, patient, obedient dog. Sometimes perhaps an awkward or foolish dog; but those were pardonable faults, while I was certainly a brave, honest, and faithful dog. But at last I saw myself as a jealous dog; and I paused, startled at the strange light in which my conduct appeared. How silly, unreasonable, and fractious I had been! I plainly perceived that what I had taken for injured ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland
... publish these letters partly because I think the opinion of the writers on the question is worth preserving for future reference, but chiefly, I believe, from what I hope will be deemed a pardonable vanity. Mr. Sumner, in editing the thirteen volumes of his speeches, has given in regard to all of them, letters from friends and correspondents, expressing his approval. I do not suppose it would ever have occurred to Daniel Webster to publish similar ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... could account, as there was neither wind nor tide, he said loftily: "The sea beholds its conqueror and trembles before him!" It sounds bombastic, but in the mouth of one who had first guided a civilized keel over its surface, such arrogance is at least pardonable. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... reflect no credit on the most curious hamlet in tide-water Virginia. To your amazement, you learn that all these houses, thousands in number, are boarding-houses. Of course, where everybody is a stranger, nobody keeps house. It would be pardonable to suppose, that, out of so many boarding-houses, some would be in reality what they are in name. Nothing can be farther from the fact. These houses contain apartments more or less cheerless and badly furnished, according to the price (always exorbitant, however small it may be) demanded for ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... Miss Taber; you can see that Cynthia is properly looked after, and you can give Miss Walden the joy of her life in thinking that she is able to help you. It is a pardonable bit of deceit, but will you ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... say more for postscripts than that they are often pardonable; they are often actually useful. They can be bent to the service of the writer; and over and over again, I dare say, have been appended with careful deliberation. They are invaluable as modes of emphasizing matter contained within the limits of the letter proper. They form 'last words' ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... write Pastorals, which many seem not sufficiently to understand: For since its matter is low, and humble, it seems to have nothing that is troublesome, and difficult. But this is a great mistake, for, as Horace says of Comedy, "It is by so much the more difficult, by how much the less pardonable are the mistakes committed in its composure": and the same is to be thought of every thing, whose end is to please, and delight. For whatsoever is contriv'd for pleasure, and not necessarily requir'd, unless it be ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... pardonable mistake for the old-time "freshman" to think the Pitt Press in Trumpington Street was a church, but no one does this now, because the gate tower, built about 1832, when the Gothic revival was sweeping the country, is now ...
— Beautiful Britain—Cambridge • Gordon Home
... is just a little higher and her backbone just a little stiffer than that of the average colored person because of pride—family pride—in her people—her white people. And as one can readily see from her testimony, her chief cause for her pardonable snobbery seems to be that her Massa was the last man to surrender ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... time that Alma affected to be absorbed in music when not consciously hearing it at all. Today the circumstances made such distraction pardonable; but often enough she had sat thus, with countenance composed or ecstatic, only seeming to listen, even when a master played. For Alma had no profound love of the art. Nothing more natural than her laying it completely ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... any choice; for it was clear that, since she had seen the convent side of the question, it would be very interesting to see the other. But, having been told so much about sinners, she was on the look-out for them, and looked forward to making the acquaintance of one of them with a pardonable excitement. Doubtless she would hate a sinner if she saw one, as the nuns had taught her, although the sinner of her imagination was not a very repulsive personage. Flavia probably knew a great many, and Flavia ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... to be beyond the control of the individual. They are only more lenient towards the diseases of the young—such as measles, which they think to be like sowing one's wild oats—and look over them as pardonable indiscretions if they have not been too serious, and if they are atoned for by ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... before refused to believe in the simple announcement of the Prophet, his sin was more pardonable; for, inasmuch as Isaiah had not proved himself outwardly as a divine ambassador, Ahaz sinned to a certain degree against man only, against the Prophet only, by unjustly suspecting him of a deceitful pretension to a divine revelation. Hence, Isaiah continues mild and gentle. But when Ahaz declined ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... to wire Torrence as she promised or he had neglected to warn me of her coming; either way it was a pretty kettle of fish, and I shuddered at the thought of facing her wholly pardonable indignation. ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... Philip, and it is not surprising that Sainte Aldegonde's growing unpopularity should, from that hour, have rapidly increased. To abandon the whole object of the siege, when resistance seemed hopeless, was perhaps pardonable, but to offer such lip-homage to the conqueror was surely transgressing the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... was borne faintly in upon them. In a few minutes the housekeeper ushered Green and Malley into the room. The chief inspector returned Foyle's greetings and flung his heavy overcoat on to a chair. His eyes wandered over the prisoner with a little pardonable curiosity. Grell bore the inspection ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... authoress's net. Sailor shanties and landsmen's nautical effusions were jumbled together higgledy-piggledy, along with 'Full Fathom Five' and the 'Eton Boating Song.' But this lack of discrimination, pardonable in those days, was not so serious as the inability to write the tunes down correctly. So long as they were copied from other song-books they were not so bad, but when it came to taking them down from the seamen's singing the results were deplorable. Had the ...
— The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties • Richard Runciman Terry
... much more wisely and with more love of virtue I should choose (let rude ears be absent) the object of not unlike praises. For albeit these thoughts to some will seem virtuous and commendable, to others only pardonable, to a third sort perhaps idle, yet the mentioning of them ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... of the preceding century, of all forms of excellence which did not correspond to their favourite types, and of all speculation which did not lead to, or start from their characteristic doctrines. The error is fully pardonable. We must not look to men who are leading a revolt against established modes of thought for a full appreciation of the doctrines of their antagonists; and if De Quincey could recognise no merit in Voltaire or ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... remembrance of the faults, of a husband, of a father, could not be an object which they would be desirous of seeking, or meeting with; and in this point of view, the care, which they took to avoid the hospital, seems to us almost pardonable. But what is not, what cannot be excused, what we have not learned without the greatest surprise is, that Miss Schmalz, judging of us doubtless, after a manner of thinking which was not ours, and not supposing it possible that the faults of her father, and the inhuman conduct of herself and her ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... instead of the French, which had, before his time, been the only language of polite literature in England. Other instances might be given of similar oversights, which, in the situation of Dryden, are sufficiently pardonable. ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... both were ideal natures and were severely tried in the school of life, profiting by their experiences; both possessed highly sensitive natures, and suffered much; both were keenly enthusiastic and sympathetic, with pardonable weaknesses; both lived through tragic wars; both evinced a dislike for the commonplace and strove for greater freedom, but for different publics, after unhappy marriages, both rose up as accusers against the prevalent system of marrying young girls. But Mme. de Stael was a virtuoso in conversation, ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... his revolver, took a long, steady aim, and fired. The bullet whistled past across the prairie. His second shot scored a clean hit. With pardonable pride he turned to ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... Honor, we've been directed to show just cause why James Holden should not be returned to the protection of his legal guardian. Counsel has implied that James Holden desires to be placed in the legal custody of Mr. and Mrs. Fisher. This is a pardonable error whether it stands in the record or not. The fact is that James Holden does not need protection, nor does he want protection. To the contrary, James Holden petitions this Court to declare him legally competent so that he may conduct his own affairs ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... reading the papers, foreign as well as French; he had really mastered a good deal of the political religion of a French publicist. It is curious to read, sixty years after date, his grave assertion that "La France a la conquete de Madagascar a faire," and with certain very pardonable defects (such as his Anglophobia), his politics may be pronounced not unintelligent and not ungenerous, though somewhat inconsistent and not very distinctly traceable to any coherent theory. As for ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... pardonable pride, took me over the stores in which the men's kits are prepared. There were hundreds of racks containing bundles so cunningly rolled that you could see at a glance what was in each. And beside each bundle was a valise already packed with ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... water leap down its mouth to an unseen depth with a loud rumbling noise. After a tiresome ascent of the ravine, this hitherto inaccessible island, like a standing challenge of Nature inviting the muscular and ambitious, was at last climbed to the very summit; and it may be remarked, with pardonable vanity, that the feat was never done before. The view revealed from the top of the island was a veritable apocalypse. There was something unique about the desolate grandeur of the novel surroundings that would cause a man of the Sir Charles Coldstream type to say there "is something in ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... which was the same with his, who said, "he had rather be devoured by wolves than by rats." I therefore still insist that we cannot wonder at, or find fault with the army, for concurring with a ministry who was for prolonging the war. The inclination is natural in them all, pardonable in those who have not yet made their fortunes, and as lawful in the rest, as love of power or love of money can make it. But as natural, as pardonable, and as lawful as this inclination is, when it is not under check of the civil power, or when a corrupt ministry joins in giving it too great a ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... we are friends again. And now I do think I am entitled to a picture,—at least, I think it will be pardonable if I yield to the very strong temptation I am under at this moment to buy one. Let me see: what have you in the slave-market, as ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... climate and manners or to the purpose of the building, the zealots of this new taste, passing a sweeping sentence of condemnation on the Gothic, reprobated it as tasteless, gloomy, and barbarous. This was in some degree pardonable in the Italians, among whom a love for ancient architecture, cherished by hereditary remains of classical edifices, and the similarity of their climate to that of the Greeks and Romans, might, in some sort, be said ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... which reached Sir Hercules Robinson, it is not to be wondered at that he considered Dr. Jameson's life to be in peril, and that he regarded, as he distinctly said he did, disarmament by Johannesburg as the only means of saving him; but what is less pardonable is, that he did not pin President Kruger to this, and demand an explanation when it became known that Jameson and his men were secured by the conditions of the surrender. The truth is that the wily old Boer President, by a species of ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... do not say, Phdrus, that in any case it can be meritorious to be obscure; but I say that in many cases it is very natural to be so, and pardonable in profound thinkers, and in some cases inevitable. For the other kind of obscurity which I was going to notice is that which I would denominate elliptical obscurity; arising, I mean, out of the frequent ellipsis or suppression of some of the links in a long chain of thought; ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... than that you, after having received the truth, should have abandoned it for idolatry, because you then found the advancement of your fortune and worldly honours. * * * Read again the passages of Scripture you quote, before you explain them so unhappily on any other occasion: it might be pardonable in me, a female, but you, a cardinal, to be so old and so ignorant! truly, my cousin, I feel shame for you. * * * If you have no better reasons for combating my undertaking, do not again urge me to follow your worldly prudence. I consider ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... talked about the brave and gentle Grace Darling; and how that handsome, grey-headed old man, her father, showed them the presents that had been sent to his daughter by Queen, and Lords, and Commons, in token of her deed of daring; and how he was garrulous about them and her, with the pardonable pride of a ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... sum of superficial information. We wonder how it is that any one can take an interest in a creature of this sort, just as we wonder how any one can take an interest in the Court Circular. And yet there are few sentiments more pardonable, as there are none more national, than our interest in ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... never a girl. He kept the girls in as their punishment, with a brother to take them home, and both had tea in Domsie's house, with a bit of his best honey, departing much torn between an honest wish to please Domsie and a pardonable longing for ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... that induced you to act as you did. This declaration may seem strange to you. From what you knew of me, you acted rightly; but there may be a time, sir, when you will know me better: when the deeds which you abhor may seem not only pardonable, but justifiable. Enough of this at present. The object of my being now at your bedside is to request that what you do know of me be ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... possibly sometimes tempted to do so; but then he did not do good, at all events, to the extent which might have been expected from him. He was, however, by no means of a mean or selfish nature; but in his excessive, and to a certain extent pardonable, eagerness to make what he deemed a suitable provision for himself and his family, gave himself the appearance of being comparatively indifferent to the interests or welfare of others. It is, however, only fair to his memory to acknowledge, that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... coin? I rail not at these scholarly grave-diggers because I can not interest myself in their work; that were unwise and unfair. But truly, I abominate this business of 'cashing,' as it were, the ruins and remains, the ashes and dust, of our ancestors. Archaeology for archaeology's sake is pardonable; archaeology for the sake of writing a book is intolerable; and archaeology for lucre ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... disappointed the first summer I was here, because nothing happened. It seemed such a chance. But somehow things don't happen very often. Do you think they do? And now I'm a good deal older and more experienced, and I don't expect adventures. I'm almost twenty-five," she declared, with the pardonable ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... went on easily. "The possession of State secrets has given me an interest in Austrian affairs which has created a pardonable curiosity. Fortune has favored my investigations and I have learned much here in Vienna. I have learned more in ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... from surprising the virtuous people of New Haven, were accepted by them, it appears, as facts, and published with general approval. From what we know of President Dwight, we may conclude that he would regard his brother's oration as a pardonable flight of hyperbole, based on truth. He was a Federalist of ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... is, that it is exceedingly hazardous to resist Divine influences. "Quench not the Spirit" is one of the most imperative of the Apostolic injunctions. Our Lord, after saying that a word spoken against Himself is pardonable, adds that he that blasphemes against the Holy Ghost shall never be forgiven, neither in this world nor in the world to come. The New Testament surrounds the subject of Divine influences with very great solemnity. It represents ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... which the bridge had been built, and the difficulties which had attended its erection. He conducted the Royal party to near the margin of the sea, and, after describing to them the incident of the fall of the tube, and the reason of its preservation, he pointed with pardonable pride to a pile of stones which the workmen had there raised to commemorate the event. While nearly all the other marks of the work during its progress had been obliterated, that cairn had been left standing in commemoration ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... Herr Teufelsdrockh has one scarcely pardonable fault, doubtless his worst: an almost total want of arrangement. In this remarkable Volume, it is true, his adherence to the mere course of Time produces, through the Narrative portions, a certain show of outward method; but of true logical method and sequence there is too little. ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... Indians in the heart of the strange country to which he had penetrated, Raleigh became in many ways the victim of his ignorance and his pardonable credulity. Not only was he gulled with diamonds and sapphires that were really rock-crystals, but he was made to believe that there existed west of the Orinoco a tribe of Indians whose eyes were in their shoulders, and their mouths in the middle of their breasts. He does not pretend ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... spend-thrifts, and other fools of that kidney, pretend forsooth to crack their jokes on prudence; but 'tis a squalid vagabond glorying in his rags. Still, imprudence respecting money matters is much more pardonable than imprudence respecting character. I have no objection to prefer prodigality to avarice, in some few instances; but I appeal to your observation, if you have not met, and often met, with the same disingenuousness, the same hollow-hearted insincerity, and disintegritive ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... end? Mark Beechinor, under the old will, inherited the seven hundred pounds and the house. Miss Mellor of Hanbridge is still Miss Mellor, her hand not having been formally sought. But Mark, secretary of the Labour Church, is married. Miss Mellor, with a quite pardonable air of tolerant superiority, refers to his wife as 'a strange, timid little creature—she couldn't say ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... gentlemen: It was with surprise not unmixed with pardonable pride that I heard you calling my name upon this momentous occasion. But never has Marshall Adams failed to listen to the call of his country in dishtresh!" he cried, making a determined effort to control his inebriated aitches and waving his sword ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... little closely, I soon perceived that the two middle strokes had a slight curvature, a tendency to approach the shape of an S, which distinguished them from the two exterior lines. The date was, in fact, 1551; yet so small was the difference of the figures, that the mistake was really a pardonable one. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various
... with a whine of delight; he knew what that taking up of the hat again meant. And then there was a silent stealing downstairs, and a slight, pardonable bark of joy in the hall, and a wild dash into the freedom of the narrow street when the door was opened. Then Oscar moderated his transports, and kept pretty close to his master as together they began to wander through the ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... appointed day outwardly calmer than she had ever seen him before. And this very calmness, that scrupulous attitude which he felt bound in honour to assume then and for ever, unless she would condescend to make a sign at some future time, added to the heaviness of her heart innocent of the most pardonable guile. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... writing, then the only apology for this outrage upon the charities, not to say decencies, of home is that which is suggested by the passage referred to. Then the pamphlet, however imprudent, becomes pardonable. It is a passionate cry from the depths of a great despair; another evidence of the noble purity of a nature which refused to console itself as other men would have consoled themselves; a nature which, instead of an egotistical whine for its own deliverance, sets itself ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... eighty years it is almost pardonable to remind the reader that in the earlier days of the Waverley Novels their author was much talked of by the above title. The variety of Hood's reading, and his resource in simile, are very noticeable in this Ode. The likening of Dominie Sampson to Lamb's ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... he painted, you know," Mrs. Gisburn said with pardonable pride. "The last but one," she corrected herself—"but the other doesn't count, ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... lists, than expose his enemy; however, it appeared he knew how to make use of a victory, and with a gentle trot he marched up to a gallery where their mistress sat (for they were rivals) and let him down with laudable courtesy and pardonable insolence[67]. I don't know but it might be exactly where the ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... following pieces in FOUR volumes to be the most excusable of all that I have written; and I wish LESS APOLOGY was less needful for these. As there is no recalling what is got abroad, the pieces here republished I have revised and corrected, and rendered them as PARDONABLE as it was in my ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... chivalry, history, and fable—Spain, Greece, Asia Minor, and Italy; and what Athens and Constantinople were to us a few years ago, Venice and Rome have been more recently. The poem also, or the pilgrim, or both, have accompanied me from first to last; and perhaps it may be a pardonable vanity which induces me to reflect with complacency on a composition which in some degree connects me with the spot where it was produced, and the objects it would fain describe; and however unworthy it may ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... enemy, more subtle and more powerful. It is the growing consciousness of an intolerable inconsistency between religious theory and practice. The war thus becomes a stumbling-block to faithfulness to conventional Christianity, and the glee of the rationalist is pardonable. I ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... could name. He delineates himself so perfectly in his various writings that the careful reader sees his nature just as it was in all its essentials, and has little more to learn than those human accidents which individualize him in space and time. About all these accidents we have a natural and pardonable curiosity. We wish to know of what race he came, what were the conditions into which he was born, what educational and social influences helped to mould his character, and what new elements Nature added to ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... CHOR. It is pardonable, when any one suffers greater misfortunes than he can bear, for him to be desirous ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... he called, to the best of my recollection, "A Continuation of the Deserted Village." He always brought a copy with him of an evening, and was fond of referring to it, and passing it round for the company to look at—a weakness pardonable in a garrulous old man. On revisiting the house, for old acquaintance sake, after an absence of some years from London, I missed him from his accustomed place, which I observed to be occupied by a stranger. On inquiry, I found that he was departed to where human vanity ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 392, Saturday, October 3, 1829. • Various
... its effect upon a mind set in ultimate order, so I fancied, for the few years more—nor apprehend in the least that the new element would harm what was already organized without its help. Nor have I, either, been guilty of the more pardonable folly, of treating the new feeling after the pedantic fashions and instances of the world. I have not spoken when it did not speak, because 'one' might speak, or has spoken, or should speak, and 'plead' and all that miserable work which, after all, I ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... affection at once. Modeste, on the other hand, half-frightened at being thus pushed beyond her intentions by the d'Herouvilles, walked rather markedly apart with Melchior, when the company adjourned to the park after dinner. With the pardonable curiosity of a young girl, she let him suspect the calumnies which Helene had poured into her ears; but on Canalis's exclamation of anger, she begged him to keep silence about them, ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... he came nearest to success in a plain narrative, the three stories, as stories, have less than the almost perfect art of the best of Mary Lamb's: of Father's Wedding-Day, which Landor, with wholly pardonable exaggeration, called 'with the sole exception of the Bride of Lammermoor, the most beautiful tale in prose composition in any language, ancient or modern.' There is something of an incomparable kind of story-telling in most of the best essays of Elia, but it is a kind which ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... had been very much taken up with the difficult and arduous work of paying off the amounts due to the clamorous creditors. During this process he had been forced to live very quietly, and had incidentally sifted out his real friends from among his relations and acquaintances. Thus, it is with pardonable pride that he says: 'Having mastered my debts, I did not only appear at all public meetings in a very gentlemanly equipage, but lived in as handsome and plentiful fashion at home as any gentleman in all the country, of my rank. I had between thirty ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... With pardonable affectation of vanity it has finally fitted itself for appearance in public by the assumption of three or four buff and brown decorations upon its milk-white shell, which quickly blend into a pattern varying in individuals, of blotches and clouds in brown, yellow, and white. In maturity ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... that he has been undeceived about the other women, by comparing them with her he was leaving. Honest people permit themselves only a certain number of caprices, and the Marquis has had those which his age and position in society seemed to justify. He yielded to them at a time when they were pardonable. He paid tribute to the fashion by tasting of all the ridiculous things going. Henceforth, he can be reasonable with impunity. A man can not be expected to be amorous of his wife, but should he be, it will be pardoned him as soon as people see you. ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... established next door to Mr. Jay, and I am delighted to say that I have two holes in the partition instead of one. My natural sense of humour has led me into the pardonable extravagance of giving them both appropriate names. One I call my peep-hole, and the other my pipe-hole. The name of the first explains itself; the name of the second refers to a small tin pipe or tube inserted in the hole, and twisted so that ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... work of a drunken savage." That foreigners, and, in particular, Frenchmen, who ordinarily speak the most strange language of antiquity and the middle ages, as if cannibalism had been terminated in Europe only by Louis XIV., should entertain this opinion of Shakespeare, might be pardonable; but that Englishmen should join in calumniating that glorious epoch of their history,[16] which laid the foundation of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... discrimination on the part of the physician as the disease itself. Those who know best how to flatter such caprices, are frequently the best paid for their trouble. Nervous diseases are always in season, and it is here that some professional dexterity is pardonable. Nature, when uninterrupted, will often do more than art; but our inability upon all occasions to appreciate the efforts of nature in the cure of diseases, must always render our notion, with respect to the powers faith, liable to numerous errors and deceptions. There is, in fact, ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... blasted was one which, bearing no fruit, yet made a false show of health: the Pharisees He denounced were men who covered rottenness with a pretence of religion; the sinners He consorted with had a saving knowledge of their vileness. Sin He knew to be human and bound up in our nature: all was pardonable save the refusal to acknowledge it and repent, which is the sin against the Holy Ghost testifying within us. If we confess our sins not only is He faithful and just to forgive them, but He promises more joy in Heaven over our repentance than ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... bitter even in her thoughts. She believed in this man, and in his promises; moreover, she began to focus the one thing about him in which she disbelieved. It was his feeling towards her—nothing more and nothing else. There he was insincere; but it was a pardonable insincerity, after all. ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... intention. The man was questioned as to his mode of passing the stockade, when he confessed he had fairly clambered over it, an exploit of no great difficulty from the inside. As the captain had known Joel too long to be ignorant of his love of money, and the offence was very pardonable in itself, he readily forgave the breach of orders. This was the only man in the valley who did not trust his little hoard in the iron chest at the Hut; even the miller reposing that much confidence in the proprietor of the estate; ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... on this occasion, no less than on that of his other publications, Hume exhibits no small share of the craving after mere notoriety and vulgar success, as distinct from the pardonable, if not honourable, ambition for solid and enduring fame, which would have harmonised better with his philosophy. Indeed, it appears to be by no means improbable that this peculiarity of Hume's moral constitution was the cause of ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... must have an end to this nonsense. Nothing ails the baby; he is only a trifle feverish with a new tooth. It really is very unpleasant to me that you make such a fuss over him. If you had married a greengrocer it might have been pardonable. Pray remember that you have married a physician who understands his business, and do leave me to manage it. Take the child out of the nursery. Carry him downstairs as usual for a few minutes. He will sleep better. There! I'm eight ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... from Jethro, is it?" exclaimed Sam Price, overcome by a pardonable curiosity. For it was well known that one of Jethro's fixed principles in life was embodied in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... your intention, but it was, in a measure, your fault,' answered Trombin, allowing his expression to relax, 'though it may have been only a fault of omission, and therefore venial, which is to say, pardonable, Master Landlord, in proportion to the gravity of the consequences that may attend it. And now we will make ourselves ready for the succulent dinner which, I have no doubt, your wise care is about to set before us, for your house has an excellent name, but ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... question—What does this man intend to be? A discoverer and colonist; a vindicator of some part at least of America from Spanish claims? Perhaps not altogether: else he would have gone himself to Virginia, at least the second voyage, instead of sending others. But here, it seems, is the fatal, and yet pardonable mistake, which haunts the man throughout. He tries to be too many men at once. Fatal: because, though he leaves his trace on more things than one man is wont to do, he, strictly speaking, conquers nothing, brings nothing to a consummation. ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... my failure the more, as I am not quite sure that he would be pleased with my success, since the Italians, with a pardonable nationality, are particularly jealous of all that is left them as a nation—their literature; and in the present bitterness of the classic and romantic war, are but ill disposed to permit a foreigner even to approve or imitate them, without finding some ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... Hilda, with a slight feeling of that pardonable self-importance which is natural to those who instruct others older than themselves, "that is ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the skin, and had flushed her anaemic complexion with a roseate hue. Her eyes were bright, her nerves steady, her step brisk; and she began to take some interest in life, and in those around her. Lucy presented her mother to the bishop with an unconcealed pride, which was surely pardonable. 'There, papa,' she said proudly, while the bishop was lost in wonder at this marvellous transformation. 'What do you ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... society, French, Norse, Celtic, and Achaean. "We never hear anything bad" of Diomede, Odysseus, or Aias, and the evil in Achilles's resentment up to a certain point is legal, and not beyond what the poet thinks natural and pardonable in ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... at first. It's easy to scare the likes of him. He was as white as his collar before I was done with him. He knows who I am, all right he's heard of me in Hampton," Mr. Tiernan added, with a pardonable touch ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... relations between capital and labor on the basis of collective bargaining are much further advanced in Great Britain than in the United States? It is perhaps not strange that the conservative British press has told us with pardonable irony that much of our New Deal program is only an attempt to catch up with English reforms that go back ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... step on Kentucky soil with a little bit of pardonable ostentation. Every one looked upon it as the real beginning of its military career. When the transport was securely tied up at the wharf, the Colonel mounted his horse, drew his sword, placed himself at the head of the regiment, ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... adjusted needle to point to the letters of the alphabet. While this was in use in England for a number of years, it was gradually superseded by the Morse telegraph which proved its decided superiority. It is also worthy of note that in this letter, and in all future letters and articles, he, with pardonable pride, uses a capital T ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... our great writers (and there are numbers of them amongst us), he could not resist praise, and began to be limp at once, in spite of his penetrating wit. But I consider this is pardonable. They say that one of our Shakespeares positively blurted out in private conversation that "we great men can't do otherwise," and so on, and, what's more, ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... sympathise more with a Brahmin he had never seen than with a Jesuit with whom he was engaged in a violent controversy; and should similarly feel more dislike of a Catholic who was his enemy than of a Moslem who was the enemy of his enemy. In this atmosphere of natural and even pardonable prejudice arose the habit of contrasting the intolerance of the Crusaders with the toleration shown by the Moslems. Now as there are two sides to everything, it would undoubtedly be quite possible to tell the tale of the Crusades, correctly enough in detail, and in such a way ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... of the country. Some one has said of him, that if we should suddenly lose all the maps of the United States, we need not wait for fresh surveys to make new ones, because General Sherman could reproduce a perfect map in twenty-four hours. That this is a pardonable exaggeration would be admitted by any one who had conversed with General Sherman in regard to the topography and resources of the country from Maine ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... Whigs to repeal the timber duties is quite pardonable, for, with their wooden heads, they doubtlessly look upon it in the light of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... de la douceur, de la douceur"! Even in the least pardonable of light loves he demands this tenderness—demands it from some poor "fille de joie" with the same sort of tearful craving with which he demands it from the Mother ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... seashore, repeating to myself the lines of Mr. Watson's poem, and breathing the fresh air, which an official of the bath-house told me was made in Germany (meaning thereby that the wind was blowing from the east), the thought struck me that it would be a pardonable pastime to employ the spare time I had before the boat started for Lerwick, in writing a Sonnet to Mr. William Watson. In such exercitations it is necessary to employ ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... cigar in his mouth, by the side of the wife of the British Minister, and it lowered them both in my opinion, though I don't suppose either of them would take it much to heart if they knew it. If you are walking in the woods or fields, it may be pardonable; but in the public streets no private compact can be of any avail. It is a public mark of disrespect. If you don't regard us enough to throw away or keep away your cigar when you join us, just don't ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... condemning his act, others, who were inclined to a peaceful conclusion, unfavorable to neither. A third party, while much disliking his proceedings, yet could not look upon Marcius as a treacherous person, but thought it pardonable in him to be thus shaken and driven to surrender at last, under such compulsion. None, however, opposed his commands; they all obediently followed him, though rather from admiration of his virtue, than any regard they now had ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... imply, however, that we should abandon the old sages' desire for "agreement"; and even though we may not be entitled to expect such perfect "agreement" as they derived from their pardonable egoism, we may still look for agreement of a provisional, conditional kind. And although such "agreement" be not the last word of morality, it is none the less indispensable that we should begin by being as just as we possibly can within ourselves and to those ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... discourse, will present themselves spontaneously. Your periods, perhaps, will be less harmonious, your transitions less ingenious, an ill placed word will sometimes escape you; but all this is pardonable. The animation of your delivery will compensate for these blemishes, and you will be master of your own feelings, and those of your hearers. There will, perhaps, be apparent throughout a certain disorder, but it will not prevent your pleasing and affecting me; your action as well as your ...
— Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching • Henry Ware
... evidence of that initiative which was such a conspicuous trait in the young man. He had come back to see the performances of his company, and had watched them with swelling pride. Several times he said, and with pardonable importance: ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... dishonesty on his part. On the contrary, he manifested a zeal for Mr. Langton's interest, and a respect for his person, that proved his strong sense of the benefits he had received. But he unfortunately fell into certain youthful indiscretions, which, if not entirely pardonable, might have been palliated by many considerations that would have occurred to a merciful man. Mr. Langton's justice, however, was seldom tempered by mercy; and, on this occasion, he shut the door of repentance ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... where his natural instincts assert themselves most strongly, to make a complete surrender of mind and body. If he has been in the habit of weighing the justice or the wisdom of orders before obeying them, if he has been taught that disobedience may be a pardonable crime, he will probably question the justice of the order that apparently sends him to certain death; if he once begins to think; if he once contemplates the possibility of disobedience; if he permits a single idea to enter his head beyond the necessity of instant compliance, it is unlikely ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... was free to Tom, who, however, had not so far troubled it much with his presence; but now he pushed open the door with pardonable curiosity, and beheld at once the singer ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Burnet i. 393. Dartmouth says that it was from Fagel that the Lords extracted the hint. This was a slip of the pen very pardonable in a hasty marginal note; but Dalrymple and others ought not to have copied so palpable a blunder. Fagel died in Holland, on the 5th of December 1688, when William was at Salisbury and James at Whitehall. The real ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... recovered her self-confidence that she was able to look at her divinity when she met him; and soon after this, she made the intoxicating discovery that not only did he return her look, but that he also took notice of her, and deliberately singled her out with his gaze. And the belief was pardonable on Ephie's part, for Schilsky made it a point of honour to stare any pretty girl into confusion; besides which, he had a habit of falling into sheep-like reveries, in which he saw no more of what or whom he looked at, than do the glassy eyes of the blind. ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... vote for this bill as it now stood. . . . It was a vote of unlimited confidence in an administration in which, he was sorry to say, there was very little confidence to be placed." Mr. John Quincy Adams differed from Mr. Winthrop, and could not refrain from a pardonable thrust at that gentleman for his previous vote that "war existed by act of Mexico." He differed from his colleague, Mr. Adams demurely affirmed, with a regret equal to that with which he had differed from him on the bill by which war was declared. He should not ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... hundred dollars in money was found upon his person, besides an excellent and valuable gold watch. Without waiting for any further results, Manning rushed to the telegraph office, in order to apprise me of his success. He could not repress a pardonable feeling of pride in the victory he had accomplished. His search was ended, his man was a prisoner, and shortly afterward there came clicking over the wires to Chicago, the ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... flew through the parish. Other ladies felt it their duty to show to Mrs. Pennycoop that she was not the only Christian in Wychwood-on-the-Heath. Mrs. Pennycoop, it was feared, might be getting a swelled head over this matter. The Rev. Augustus, with pardonable pride, repeated some of the things that Mrs. Pennycoop had said to him. Mrs. Pennycoop was not to imagine herself the only person in Wychwood-on-the-Heath capable of generosity that cost nothing. Other ladies could say graceful nothings—could say them even ...
— The Cost of Kindness - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... herself, "he is not really very cross; perhaps he is only tired—or in trouble. Otherwise his voice and manners are scarcely pardonable—even by me." ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... for Mr. Arthur. Frank, unselfish, truthful, and original, she had been as a child, with perhaps a little too much pride in her hair, which she hid once cut off to see how it would seem, and she was original, and truthful, and unselfish now, with a pardonable pride in her luxuriant tresses, which lay in waves upon her finely-shaped head and glistened in the sunlight like satin of a golden hue. But nothing could spoil Jerrie, not even the adulation of her friends or the looking-glass ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... dropping in at two or three favorite resorts of men who talked horse, war and politics, on his way to the house of his cousin,—bore himself bravely under his weight of uniform, and more than once threw in a pardonable boast over the services he was rendering the country, the sacrifices he was making, and the rapid growth and efficiency of the ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... first time, but it was such a necktwisting performance I felt I'd rather risk a ducking. With practice we were able to judge to a fraction just how near the edge we could risk going, and the men on the hospital ships would hold their breath at the (I hope pardonable) swank of some of the more daring spirits who went just as near as they could and then looked up and laughed as they drove down the quay. After I was in hospital in England, I heard that a new hand lost her head completely, and in Eva's newly painted 'bus executed a spinning nose-dive ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... name, Simpson, with some reluctance, as in my true patronym, Froissart, I felt a very pardonable pride—believing that I could trace a descent from the immortal author of the "Chronicles." While on the subject of names, by the bye, I may mention a singular coincidence of sound attending the names of some of my immediate ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... inspiration, therefore, English capital seeks investment everywhere, and with cheap capital, cheap labor, and cheap raw materials, she finds herself able to compete successfully with the world. It is possibly pardonable then that the British manufacturer and politician should seek earnestly the fourth requisite, viz., a large market abroad. Hence the necessity of ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... and human sympathy, the thoughts of men who lived without blame in a darkness they could not dispel; and to remember that, whatever charge of folly may justly attach to the saying, "There is no God," the folly is prouder, deeper, and less pardonable, in saying, "There is no ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... came out a little uncertainly, but as he strode through the kitchen garden and around to the front door, followed closely by Miss Copley, he decided with pardonable pride that he had extricated himself from an embarrassing position with his accustomed masterful dexterity. The thought comforted him, for he vaguely realized that he had come close to experiencing a nervous panic during ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... pain made her start and hesitate, and she stood still. The degree of her acquaintance with the members of the family was just such that she would not quite dare to intrude upon them if they had given way to an expression of pardonable weakness under their final misfortune, whereas if they were bearing it with reasonable fortitude she could allow herself to offer her sympathy and ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... once," I said with pardonable pride. "How's this?—'General (genuine), stand any test trd. L70 possess. s. hands ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... prolonged pause, and it slowly dawned upon the audience that by a pardonable trick of memory Sir Felix was for the moment unable to recall the words he had repeated thrice a day for ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... to think I have, in treating of this subject, made some suppositions that will look strange to some readers, and possibly they are so in themselves. But yet, I think they are such as are pardonable, in this ignorance we are in of the nature of that thinking thing that is in us, and which we look on as OURSELVES. Did we know what it was; or how it was tied to a certain system of fleeting animal spirits; or whether it could or could not ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... was a rough life and he was not naturally amenable to discipline, but probably his superiors made a favourite of the dashing handsome lad. The habit, which helps to redeem Frank Mildmay and even graces Peter Simple, of saving others from drowning, was always his own. His daughter records, with pardonable pride, that he was presented while in the navy with twenty-seven certificates, recommendations, and votes of thanks for having saved the lives of others at the risk of his own, besides receiving a gold medal ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... denounced by our stern moralist in the middle of the nineteenth century, have had a place in Pope's works for a hundred years, and it is too late now to seek to delete them. They were written by Pope in his fourteenth or fifteenth year, and gross as they are, are pardonable in a boy of precocious genius, giving way for a laughing hour to his sense of the grotesque. Joe Warton (not Tom) pompously calls them "a gross and dull caricature of the Father of English Poetry." And Mr Bowles says, "he might have added, it is disgusting as it is dull, and no more like Chaucer ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... transgressions, as that it would break the back of all the angels of heaven should the great God impute it to them. And he that sees this is far enough off from thinking of doing to mitigate or assuage the rigour of the law, or to make pardonable his own transgressions thereby. But he that sees not this, cannot confess his transgressions aright; for true confession consisteth in the general, in a man's taking to himself his transgressions, with the acknowledgment of them to be his, and that he cannot stir from ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... first of an elevated kind. After the grinding wrath had abated, self-pity came largely to the surface—not by any means a grand emotion, though very dear to boys and girls in their first consciousness of self, and in them pardonable enough. On the same ground it must be pardoned in a man who, with all his experience of the world, was more ignorant of the region of emotion, and more undeveloped morally, than multitudes of children: in him it was an indication that the shell was beginning ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... be the most deplorable fate that can overtake the English, and they hurry us into the great kitchen to a round table, loaded with cake and bread-and-butter and enormous bowls of tea. The angelic beings in white veils wait on us. We are hungry and we think (a pardonable error) that this meal is hospital supper; after which some work will surely be ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... travelling clothes, paused on the threshold of his own dining-room and surveyed the scene with pardonable satisfaction. ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... perhaps at twenty, a girl can toss a jaunty little felt hat upon her head, pin it in a twinkling above her wayward hair, tie on a bit of blue or red somewhere about her blouse, tuck in her handkerchief in a pardonable way, brush her short walking-skirt into becoming folds, tie up her tennis shoes, and there she is in five minutes, prettier, fresher, more becomingly dressed than all the older women of the household, who have been standing before ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... you to go to bed? Now, I will have no irregularity in the family; you must go when the rest go, and without my having to tell you." Then, as an afterthought, as if judging that his words and tone of voice were too severe for so pardonable an offense as reading a religious book he unwarily added: "If you will read, get up in the morning and read. You may get up in the morning as early ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... youth we must again take her own account on trust, since she never consented to sit for her portrait, and in old age her recollection of her vanished charms may have been coloured by some pardonable exaggeration. 'At twenty,' she told a chronicler, 'my complexion was like alabaster, and at five paces distant the sharpest eyes could not discover my pearl necklace from my skin. My lips were of such a beautiful carnation ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... that Frederic had not—as I was foolish enough to suppose for a while—told him the story that had blighted his life. Not that I could have blamed him had he done this. He had endured so much obloquy, suffered so keenly and so long, that almost any retaliatory measure would have been pardonable." ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... the subject at all,' said Lord Ormersfield, beginning to write a letter; and poor Louis, in his praiseworthy effort not to be reserved with him, found he had been confessing that he had not only been again making a fool of himself, but, what was less frequent and less pardonable, of his father likewise. He limped out at the window, and was presently found by his great-aunt, reading what he called a raving novel, to see how he ought to have done it. She shook her head at him, and told him that he was not ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a fairly accurate account of the affair. He could hardly exaggerate the peril he had incurred, and the touch of exultance with which he described his defeat of the murderer was quite pardonable in ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... Harley was necessarily a stranger. The "King," with his wide sense of Western hospitality, would not have done this at another time, but in view of the close relationship between himself and Sylvia he regarded it as pardonable. ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... of the legislature might be counted a low price to pay for protecting the mass of the population from the rule or the vengeance of a faction, they committed a grave moral error. But their mistake was more pardonable than it seems to modern critics, and the lesson which it teaches—that you cannot base a just policy upon a foundation of iniquity—is one which the modern censors of Pitt may well lay to heart. However this may ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... scorn. He saw Felicity and Mrs. Parr putting their heads together in whispered comment. The bishop stirred uneasily and glanced with irritation at the speaker's back, as if he would fain have bid him make an end. In a moment of pardonable weakness the mayor's lips parted in the briefest of smiles. Then he took out his handkerchief to conceal his emotion, and having propped his chin upon the palm of his hand, he gazed abstractedly at ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... and that neither in his letters nor elsewhere is there evidence that in his conscience he was "ill at ease" or "his mind not at peace". Here as elsewhere, Mr. Lodge's biography, written over forty years ago, reproduces anti-slavery bitterness and ignorance of facts (pardonable in 1850) and seriously misrepresents Webster's character and the situation in that ...
— Webster's Seventh of March Speech, and the Secession Movement • Herbert Darling Foster
... was very much astonished at the young man's relation; but this just prince, finding he was to be pitied rather than condemned, began to speak in his favour. This young man's crime, said he, is pardonable before God, and excusable with men. The wicked slave is the sole cause of this murder; it is he alone that must be punished. Wherefore, said he, looking upon the grand vizier, I give you three days time to find him out; if you do not bring him within that space, you shall die in his stead. The ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... extremity, he looked up and declared that he saw the heavens open, and Christ standing on the right hand of God. This was too much: they threw him out of the city and stoned him to death. It was a severe way of suppressing a tactless and conceited bore; but it was pardonable and human in comparison to the slaughter ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... With an innocence perhaps pardonable in one who was too intent on the evolution of the world drama to follow the daily development of war-time prohibitions, I next essayed to present to the public through the medium of a book the truth which had been banned from the columns of a magazine. The ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... did not trouble me much. I felt that the worst harm I had done was to hurt the pride of my would-be benefactors. This might be pardonable, but, as regarded my fiancee, what should I do? There seemed to me only one way to act that was honourable. I would ask that I might be given the privilege of seeing her for the last time and ask her forgiveness. If this was refused, then I would ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... mentioned there is, on the contrary, much to record, and we would desire to give full credit to his admirable courage and perseverance. It was with a certain national and pardonable pride that the young Italian planned his bold exploit, feeling with a sense of self-satisfaction, which he is at no pains to hide, that he aimed at winning honour for his country as well as for himself. In a letter which he wrote to his guardian, ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... fairly be regarded as astounding, Philip was unmoved. The German captain had given him a cigar, and he was examining it with a suspicion that was pardonable after the first ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... half an hour ago," said Mrs. Liddell, with pardonable inaccuracy, feeling her spirits rise in the delightful atmosphere, flower-scented, and stirred by the laughter and joyous chatter of ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... A certain sadness is pardonable to one who watches the destruction of a grand natural phenomenon, even though its destruction bring blessings to the human race. Reason and conscience tell us, that it is right and good that the Great Fen should have become, instead of a waste and howling ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... admit without bitterness, that the individual has his distinct interests, and can, without forfeiture, stipulate for his interest, and defend it; the present has its pardonable dose of egotism; momentary life has its rights, and is not bound to sacrifice itself constantly to the future. The generation which is passing in its turn over the earth, is not forced to abridge it for the sake of the generations, its equal, after all, who will have their turn ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Hook's Farm was one of those brisk little things that did so much to build up my early reputation. I did remarkably well, though perhaps it is not my function to say so. The enemy was slightly stronger, both in cavalry and infantry, than myself [Footnote: A slight but pardonable error on the part of the gallant gentleman. The forces were exactly equal.]; he had the choice of position, and opened the ball. Nevertheless I routed him. I had with me a compact little force of 3 guns, 48 infantry, and 25 horse. ...
— Little Wars; a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books • H. G. Wells
... views seem sound; but the world wearily objects to be called by epithets what society always admits in practice; for no one likes to be told that he is a bore, or ignorant, or even ugly; and having nothing to say in its defence, it rejoins that, whatever license is pardonable in youth, the man of sixty who wishes consideration had better hold his tongue. This truth also has the defect of being too true. The rule holds equally for men of half that age Only the very young have the right to betray their ignorance or ill-breeding. Elderly people commonly ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... that I desired to inform the one person in the world who had a right to know it, that such was my extreme privilege? Of this I am content, reader, to be judged by thee. If my enthusiasm was extravagant, surely it was pardonable. Judge me then as thou wilt, and as thou canst, for the end of this chapter ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... that, in their peculiar fondness for a religious nomenclature, the early French settlers of Quebec must have exhausted the saintly calendar in adapting names to their public highways, places and institutions. To this pardonable trait in their character, we must unquestionably ascribe the names given to two of the three original gates in their primitive lines of defence—St. Louis and St. John's gates—names which they were allowed to retain ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... the writer appears favourable to myself, and be judged apocryphal, it may, however, weigh in the opposite scale to some things less obligingly said of me; false praise being as pardonable as false reproach."[48] ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... in for a large share of Maggini's patronage, as also a vast number of early German makers, who adopted similar devices; to the real connoisseur, however, there is no difficulty in distinguishing the work. A more pardonable error is the confusion of Gasparo da Salo and Maggini, which is of frequent occurrence. The Double Basses of these two makers have much in common to the eye of the not deeply versed examiner. Maggini, however, was not so successful as his compeer in the selection of the ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... to him, I guess I have had a finger in the pie," said Quin with pardonable pride. "He hasn't slipped the trolley for two months; and if he can stay on the track now, it will be a cinch for him after the first of July. All he needed was a real interest in life, and a chance to work things out ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... responsibility, and our personal relations were undisturbed. If, at times, the great anti-slavery leader failed to do justice to the motives of those who, while in hearty sympathy with his hatred of slavery, did not agree with some of his opinions and methods, it was but the pardonable and not unnatural result of his intensity of purpose, and his self-identification with the cause he advocated; and, while compelled to dissent, in some particulars, from his judgment of men and measures, the great mass of the antislavcry ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... desperate attempt to transform this dirty, pale, thin woman into a Delilah. But the past is powerfully in her favor, and my Samson has a heart full of melting pity and sensibility; moreover all previous efforts have failed, and it is pardonable to seek for extraordinary means in our despair. So ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... perhaps, you do not know—attains his normal condition only through the inspiration of one great idea. As a friend of Mr. Hollingsworth, and, at the same time, a calm observer, I must tell you that he seems to me such a man. But you are very pardonable for fancying him ridiculous. Doubtless, he is so—to you! There can be no truer test of the noble and heroic, in any individual, than the degree in which he possesses the faculty of distinguishing heroism ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne |
