"Enormity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sufferers. The outburst of pity and of charity exceeded anything that the world had known. Differences of race and religion were swallowed up in the universal sympathy which was felt for those who had suffered so terribly from an evil that was as unexpected as it was unimaginable in its enormity. ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... total community. But had there even been a gentry in Stratford, since they would have marked the distinctions of their rank chiefly by greater reserve of manners, it is probable that, after all, Shakspeare, with his enormity of delight in exhibitions of human nature, would have mostly cultivated that class of society in which the feelings are more elementary and simple, in which the thoughts speak a plainer language, and in which the restraints ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... and sympathy in return, was everything that could be done for her. To be otherwise comforted was out of the question. The case admitted of no comfort. Lady Bertram did not think deeply, but, guided by Sir Thomas, she thought justly on all important points; and she saw, therefore, in all its enormity, what had happened, and neither endeavoured herself, nor required Fanny to advise her, to think little ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... of Major Weir in 1670, who also was executed on his own voluntary confession of witchcraft and crime. Gilles's last words, though couched in Christian phraseology, show that he had not realized the enormity of the crimes which he confessed: 'We have sinned, all three of us', he said to his two companions, 'but as soon as our souls have left our bodies we shall all see God in His glory in Paradise.' He was hanged on a gibbet above a pyre, but ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... luckless as to fall into his hands, were hastened away to their execution with but the mockery of a trial. Doubtless Berkeley felt himself justified in this severity. To him rebellion against the King was not merely a crime, it was a hideous sacrilege. Those guilty of such an enormity should receive no mercy. But this cannot explain or excuse the coarse brutality and savage joy with which he sent his victims to the scaffold. It is impossible not to feel that many of these executions were dictated, not by motives of policy or ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... not a geisha? What difference can it make to me whether they are geishas or not?" Later, no doubt, when I understand Japanese affairs better, I shall appreciate myself the enormity of my proposal: one would really suppose I had ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... the reply, "he did not think his partners, Mr. Harvey Chester and Col. Van Ellis, would go to the extremity proposed. He thought they would change their minds when the enormity of the crime was set before them. In fact, he suspected from the first that they were being urged on by others having private ends to gain by the destruction of the dam. Besides, he thought himself capable of handling the situation alone. Is that ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... "you can perhaps understand another evil of those times. It did not grow directly out of love for country, but that too much lauded sentiment prevented the people from seeing its full enormity. This was the practice of attempting by law to protect the inhabitants of one country by shutting out the goods of all others. This prohibition included both the manufactured articles and natural products, and the means adopted was the placing of a high duty on imports. If the ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... prey to the Secession faction, when not a tenth part of its people were Secessionists, should be thoroughly, emphatically rebuked, and its chief representatives severely punished, by extorting from the rebellious section a practical admission of the enormity of the crime of which it was guilty when it resisted the lawful authority of a President who was chosen in strict accordance with the requirements of the Constitution, and who entertained no more intention of interfering with the constitutional rights of the South than he thought of instituting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... government messenger seemed to strike the host with More astonishment than any other enormity that had taken place on the road; and indeed it was the first time so wanton an outrage had been committed; the robbers generally taking care not to meddle with any thing belonging ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... that was wanted. "Won't do it again?" echoed the Squire. "No, you won't do it again. I'll take good care of that." He then went on to bring home to her the enormity of her offence, which seemed to have consisted chiefly in upsetting the whole house, which he wouldn't have, and so on. But when he had repeated all he had to say twice, and most of it three or four times, he suddenly took his seat in ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... investigated the cruelties perpetrated by the English upon their defenceless prisoners, and had instructed him to prepare a school book for the use of American children, to be illustrated by thirty-five good engravings, each to picture some scene of horror, some enormity of suffering, such as should indelibly impress upon the minds of the school children a dread of British rule, and a hatred ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... now the thing was over, greatly relishing its satiric elements, must be forgiven the trick of the burial and his still greater enormity in coming to life again. And then, duke or no duke, it was understood that he willed that things should in no case be precisely as they had been. He would never again be quite so near people's lives as in the past—a fitful, intermittent ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... Patrick's night, by every Castle reporter. They made, it is to be lamented, as Irish reporters will make, sad mistakes at times. The once poor injured lady had been attired in canary-colored lute-string, and an ostrich plume remarkable for its enormity while she, the libeled one, had been becomingly arrayed in blue bombazine, and of any plumage imported from Araby the blest, was ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... to say that he DIDN'T mean to—-" began Susan hotly, stung even beyond anger by outraged pride. But, as the enormity of her question smote her suddenly, she stopped short, with a ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... who harbors them to punishment. And lest any one should be disposed to look upon evil thoughts as an offense too trivial to awaken any concern, mark the company in which this sin is found. Learn from those offenses with which it is classed something of the enormity to which it may rise. "Out of the heart proceedeth evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... confront us around the world. No man entering upon this office, regardless of his party, regardless of his previous service in Washington, could fail to be staggered upon learning—even in this brief 10 day period—the harsh enormity of the trials through which we must pass in the next four years. Each day the crises multiply. Each day their solution grows more difficult. Each day we draw nearer the hour of maximum danger, as ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John F. Kennedy • John F. Kennedy
... battle to the British. Was there a Putnam here to essay to inspire courage into these frightened negroes, who left their wives and children at the mercy of the mob, and were fleeing toward Hillton? Yes, there was one, and his name was DAN WRIGHT. Did Dan Wright fully realize the enormity of his act as he faced this mob of white men, armed to the teeth, now pressing down upon him? Did Dan Wright feel that death was to be his reward for this act of bravery? Yes, but this did not deter him or affect the steadiness of his aim. ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... and picked up his cards. He was a foul-looking Mexican and seemed capable even of the enormity he was about to commit. The scene was rehearsed to Baird's satisfaction, then shot. The weeping old lady, blinded by her tears, awkward with her mop, the ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... second time he beats me with a rod." "Does the priest ask you about anything else?" I inquired. "Yes," he rejoined; "he asks me about my father and my mother." "What does he ask you about them?" "He asks me if they do dirty actions," said the boy. Now, here the enormity and vileness of the confessional peeped out. Here one can see how the confessor can look into every hearth, and into every heart, in Rome. The priests had dragged this young boy into their den, and taught ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... all happened so suddenly that one or two minutes passed before Edward Lynde took in the full enormity of Mary's desertion. A dim smile was still hovering about his lips when the yellow speck that was Mary faded into the gray distance; then his countenance fell. There was no sign of mortal habitation visible from the hillside where he stood; the farm ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... "inhabitants." Of course it cannot be pretended that the mere fact that one or more States had established, and had power to perpetuate slavery, secured to new States the right to establish and perpetuate the same enormity, as a necessary result of State equality. That would make the right or power of one State, resulting from State equality, necessarily coextensive with tolerated evil in another. Manifestly "the fathers" had no such idea as ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... Agatha, "there was that terrible box upon my sitting-room floor, and there were those two degraded wretches. The callous beasts stood above the box apparently quite insensible to the ethical enormity of their crime. But they were keen enough to see that it might be used as a lever with which to force more money from me. For when I demanded that they take the box away with them and dispose of it, they only laughed at me. They said that they had had enough of that box. They had delivered ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... have great respect for the judges of their courts and the latter show much wisdom and discretion in their decisions, though they do not always place the white man's estimate upon the relative enormity of offenses. I was present at a session of the Cheyenne river court in 1892, when two parties accused with crime were brought before it. One was charged with stealing a picket pin of the value of thirteen cents and he got thirty days in the ...
— Sioux Indian Courts • Doane Robinson
... in that stage of anger when it is pleasant to repeat all one's hot words to a second audience and, moreover, he wanted to impress Rose with the enormity of her visit. He repeated all that he had said to Erica, interspersed with yet harder words about her perverse ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... New Orleans, returning home, as before, by steamboat. That voyage is remarkable, because it first opened young Lincoln's eyes to the enormity of African slavery. Of course, he had seen slaves before; but the sight of a slave sale in the old market place of New Orleans seems to have aroused his anger and given him an intense hatred of slave-holding. He, himself, declared, years after, ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... think you realize the seriousness (he wanted to say enormity but didn't) of your point of view. There's no standing still in this world,' he said. 'If you don't go ahead, you're going to go back. That's all very well for you personally if you choose to remain idle, but it won't do where great financial interests are involved. I want to try to make ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... "That's the enormity of the whole business," broke in Mr. Allison. "What I wish could be done with our hands would be to have them regularly enlisted for the work,—so many years unless sooner discharged,—just like the soldiers, by Jove! Then when a man quit work it would be desertion, and when ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... and finally touched the strand. Just then a breeze wafted away the clouds from before the giant's visage, and Hercules beheld it, with all its enormous features; eyes each of them as big as yonder lake, a nose a mile Long, and a mouth of the same width. It was a countenance terrible from its enormity of size, but disconsolate and weary, even as you may see the faces of many people, nowadays, who are compelled to sustain burdens above their strength. What the sky was to the giant, such are the cares of earth to those who let themselves be weighed down by them. And whenever ...
— The Three Golden Apples - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... do with our old maids?" he would ask, and then answer the question himself—"Oh, enlist them. With a little training they would make first-rate soldiers." He was also prejudiced against saints, and said of one, "I presume she was so called because of the enormity ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... was unfortunate and unhappy, all her anger straightway vanished, giving place to the most tender compassion. He was the Pen of old days, the frank and affectionate, the generous and tender-hearted. She at once took side with Helen against Dr. Portman when he cried out at the enormity of Pen's transgressions. Debts? What were his debts? They were a trifle; he had been thrown into expensive society by his uncle's order, and of course was obliged to live in the same manner as the young gentlemen whose company he frequented. Disgraced by not getting his ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... him a clear field for his operations. He felt a contempt for most of his victims, who were slow-witted Swedes, grasping neither the purport nor the magnitude of his operation, and as to those litigants who were discerning enough to see its enormity, he trusted to ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... triumph, for 2,700 Moslems were cut down in cold blood in consequence of the failure of Saladin to fulfil the terms of the capitulation; and the palliative plea that the massacre was perpetrated in the heat of the assault can scarcely be urged in extenuation of this enormity. While many historians have laid the blame on King Richard, the historian Michaud believes it rather to have been decided on in a council of the ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... took some slight refreshment at the hotel, and were charged so exorbitantly, that we forswore all visits to the house in future. To-day, the keeper stopt me in the street, and begged the favor of our patronage. On my representing the enormity of his former conduct, he declared that it was all a mistake; that he was the master of the hotel, and was unfortunately absent at the time. I was pleased with this effrontery, having paid the exorbitant ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... find Jefferson's anti-slavery letter to Dr. Price, written in 1785, urging the Doctor to work against pro-slavery ideas in the young men, and to exhort the young men of Virginia to the "redress of the enormity." Incidentally he speaks of Mr. Wythe as already doing great good in this direction among these same young men, and declares him "one of the most virtuous of characters, and whose sentiments on the subject ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... not hear of it — appealing to my own words, "Do not your padres, your very bishops, marry?" The absurdity of a bishop having a wife particularly struck them: they scarcely knew whether to be most amused or horror-struck at such an enormity. ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... to enquire to what all this enormity of wickedness is traceable, that we may come, if possible, to the remedy. That is largely to be ascribed, as all must be persuaded, to the neglect of religious instruction in early life; to the contentment of peoples and governments to afford a shallow secular education, without ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... the prince; he had not estimated till that time the enormity of the misfortunes brought on people of Egypt by those merchants. His horror was all the more vivid, since he had rented out his own subjects to Dagon, and was himself witness of the way in which the banker collected his dues ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... when the unexpected happened,—when builders began to tear down his house,—the enormity of his deed dawned upon him. After a day of moaning and staring, as he sat amidst his household goods on the bank of the creek, he became animated by a deep rage against the mill-owner. Now more than ever had he a special purpose for enriching himself ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... to expatiate on every sort of rustic enormity of which he accused Benjie. He had been suspected of snaring partridges—was detected by Joshua himself in liming singing-birds—stood fully charged with having worried several cats, by aid of a lurcher which attended him, and which was ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... unreasonable to suppose that our friends would believe them what we thought them to be ourselves. In the present instance, every monikin seemed perfectly aware of the difficulty; and, instead of waiting for his acquaintances to attribute some moral enormity as his governing reason, he prudently adopted a moderately selfish inducement for his acts, which he proclaimed with a simplicity and frankness that generally obtained credit. Indeed, the fact once conceded that the motive was not offensively disinterested ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... attack had produced, he repeats, in a hurried manner, the circumstances of his situation, and dwells on the perfidy of Hermione; but when he finds no palliation for his crime, and sees how completely he has been degraded by his unmanly weakness, the whole enormity of his guilt comes full upon his mind, and he acquires even dignity in the opinion of the beholder, from the solemn and emphatic manner in which he curses the folly and inhumanity of his conduct. But a further blow awaits him; and it is not till Pylades ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... awaiting Mr. Seward's advices) still more elaborate and masterly instructions are given out to these gentlemen. The paper to Mr. Adams will in future years be quoted and referred to as a model history of the rise and progress of the secession enormity. It may be asked, Why are such dispatches and instructions needed? Why such elaborate briefs and compendiums required for gentlemen each of whom may have said, respecting his connection with subject-matter of the Secretary (none more emphatically so than Messrs. Adams and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... personal contact with them. It had been so even in the case of her father whom she idolized, and had been one of the small items in stepmother's list against her. But she had heard so much upon the subject then, and of its enormity, that she had set herself to overcome the failing, since failing it was. And had poor Moses known it, she would almost rather have borne his pain herself than to have helped him turn upon his back as she did. To do more for him than this was impossible, and again she besought him to say ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... seemed as if the storm was his servant, and lent wings to his steed. When the talk at table or in company turned upon Bastide Grammont and his murderous crime, of which no one stood in doubt, Clarissa never occupied herself with the enormity of the deed, which must forever separate such a man from the fellowship of the good. Enveloped in a voluptuous mist, she was sensible of the influence of his compelling force, of the heroic soul that spoke in his gestures, of the reality of his existence and the possibility of a close approach ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... Fayette had purloined from the store of the workmen who were excavating for the new wing of the building. In a moment more the fuse would have burned unnoticed to its fatal end, and an awful crime, of whose enormity the dull criminal had no real comprehension, would ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... libellers, instead of being brought to the condign punishment their infamy deserved, were privately hushed into silence, out of delicacy to the Queen's feelings, by large sums of money and pensions, which encouraged numbers to commit the same enormity in the hope of obtaining the ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 5 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... of a mechanic, or hasten the hand of the public executioner, she has yet had the satisfaction of embittering all his hours, and forcing him into exigencies that hurried on his death. It is by no means necessary to aggravate the enormity of this woman's conduct by placing it in opposition to that of the Countess of Hertford. No one can fail to observe how much more amiable it is to relieve than to oppress, and to rescue innocence from destruction than to destroy ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... I see all that there is to see,' said the other. 'If the poor lady has been deceived and betrayed, no punishment can be too heavy for the man who has so injured her. But the very enormity of the iniquity makes me doubt it. As far as I can judge, Caldigate is a high-spirited, honest gentleman, to whom the perpetration of so great a ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... embarrassed. If I had flogged him, he would have got over it a good deal sooner than I should. That sort of boy does not mind castigation any more than he does tearing his trousers in the briers. If I had treated him with kindness, and conciliated him with grapes, showing him the enormity of his offense, I suppose he would have come the next night, and taken the remainder of the grapes. The truth is, that the public morality is lax on the subject of fruit. If anybody puts arsenic or gunpowder into his watermelons, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... life that does not honor Christ makes its sin the more heinous for the name it bears. Every sin the people of God commit is a provocation of Jehovah; not only in the act of disobedience itself, but also in the transgression of the second commandment. The enormity of the sin is magnified by the conditions that make it a blasphemy of God's name and an occasion of offense to others. Paul says in Romans 2, 24: "For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you." So a Christian should, in his life, by all means guard ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... in process of exterminating me. But, since I have reason to believe that no sufficient opportunity has been afforded you of realising the enormity of your conduct, I rally the profoundness of nobility which I discover within me—I calm myself. I go further, I explain. Living in retirement, you may not have learned that I am in Naples. I followed your cousin here—Madame de Vallorbes. My connection with her represents the supreme ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... conduct were plenty enough indeed; his excitement, his provocation, his freedom from malice; he marshalled them in orderly array; but, under the cold logic of events, one by one they crumbled and fell away. More and more heavily, more and more depressingly the enormity of his offense weighed upon him as he considered it, and what the outcome of it all would be he did ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... long-continued violations of law in the West, and for the horrors which resulted from his exploitation of the Indians, was Astor ever prosecuted? To repeat, no; nor was he disturbed even by such a triviality as a formal summons. Yet, to realize the full enormity of acts for which he was responsible, and the complete measure of immunity that he enjoyed, it is necessary to recall that at the time the Government had already begun to assume the role of looking upon the Indians as its wards, ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... are, that Harald has carried his demand so far that he cannot now let it drop, and I expect nothing but war in the land; and that he will be able to gather a great force, because his father was so beloved. And then it would be a great enormity if you were to kill your relation; for, as things now stand, all men would say that he was innocent. But I am far from saying, or advising, that you should make yourself a smaller king than your ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... to his share the fleecing of about fifty-nine rag-men. In all candor let me ask, was such a system for benefiting the few at the expense of the many ever before devised? And was the sacred name of Democracy ever before made to indorse such an enormity against ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... Probably she is. Why not? At any rate, whenever Marsworth and Cicely fall out, which they do every day—Cicely has the vile habit—of course you know!—of visiting Marsworth's sins upon little Daisy Stewart. I understood she was guilty of some enormity at the Red Cross sale in the village last week. Marsworth was shocked, and had it out with her. Consequently they haven't been on speaking ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... doctor laments, that "The old Virginia gentleman, All of the olden time," has passed away, the colonial house is modernized, and the ghost, the killing of whom would be "an enormity far greater than the crime of killing a live man," has been laid to rest for half a century, but the old scenes and the old-time life come back to us who once knew it, in the pages of the perennial boy who recalls the time when "me and Billy Ivins and the other fellows ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... Adam Overdo is the Justice of the Peace, who in Ben Jonson's 'Bartholomew Fair' goes disguised 'for the good of the Republic in the Fair and the weeding out of enormity.'] ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... unreasonable, extravagant, and absurd as I admitted them to be. My first impulse—and it was a very strong one—was to take Mr Austin into my confidence, to unfold to him my suspicions and the circumstances which had given rise to them, frankly admitting at the same time their apparent enormity, and then to put the question to him whether, in his opinion, there was the slightest possibility ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... innumerable acts of goodness He bestowed—His forbearance to inflict punishment, and the various methods He employed to bring us to repentance. And by the side of all this He will exhibit our conduct toward Him—our ingratitude, our disobedience, our perverseness. And with what enormity will these things then appear invested! So guilty will thy conduct then appear, O sinner, that thou wilt be constrained to exclaim: "Thou art righteous, O Lord, which art, and wast, and shall be, ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... and love of power, and knew how to honour it: they honoured something in themselves when they honoured the saint. In addition to this, the contemplation of the saint suggested to them a suspicion: such an enormity of self-negation and anti-naturalness will not have been coveted for nothing—they have said, inquiringly. There is perhaps a reason for it, some very great danger, about which the ascetic might wish to be more ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... remarkable comprehension of human language evinced by his Bull-dog terrier, called Camp. He understood so many words, that Sir Walter felt convinced an intercourse with dumb animals might be enlarged. Camp once, bit the baker, for which Sir Walter beat him, and, at the same time, explained the enormity of the offence; after which, to the last moment of his life, he never heard the least allusion to the story, in whatever voice or tone it might be mentioned, without getting up and retiring into the darkest corner of the room, with great appearance of distress. ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... have heard, Have read bold fables of enormity, Devised to make men wonder, and confirm The abhorrence of our nature; but this hardness Transcends all ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... a careful consideration of her welfare, and that nothing came by chance with her. And on her rare ebullitions of self-will, mamma, governess, nurse, nay even papa, were all in sorrowful commotion till their princess had been brought to a sense of the enormity ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cases of bands appearing in arms; there were more than 200 cases of administering unlawful oaths; and there were 1,944 cases of sending threatening letters. By the end of the year, the general crime of Ireland had doubled in amount and enormity compared with ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... America, there being but few slaves, they can easily disencumber themselves of them; and emancipation is put into such a train, that in a few years there will be no slaves northward of Maryland. In Maryland, I do not find such a disposition to begin the redress of this enormity, as in Virginia. This is the next State to which we may turn our eyes for the interesting spectacle of justice, in conflict with avarice and oppression: a conflict wherein the sacred side is gaining daily recruits, from the influx into office of young ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... totally surrounded now. I suppose, when you realize the enormity of the odds against you, you'll do the decent ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... stiff brocade, should have been made aware by some mysteriously occult means of a strange thrill at the heart, caused by the protracted gaze of a handsome fellow-worshipper, but to tell the truth her thoughts were piously intent upon the enormity of her own sins, and the necessity of reclaiming her brother from the very literal ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... allowed himself to be fitted with an ochre-coloured suit of some fleecy checked material grotesquely improper for his unassuming figure. It was the kind of cloth and cut that one sees only in the windows of Nassau Street. Happily he was unaware of the enormity of his offence against society, and rapidly transferring his belongings to the new pockets, he paid down the purchase price ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... still hard faces, intent gray eyes; they packed guns, and one of them wore a bright star on his vest. These men took Hookey away with them. And after they were gone the cowboys told Pan that Hookey was wanted for horse stealing. Young as Pan was he understood the enormity of that crime in the eyes of cowboys. He felt terribly hurt and betrayed. Long indeed was ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... lay awake, pretending to sleep, and heard Mammy and her satellite discussing our conduct in all its enormity. Considerably influenced by their unaffected horror and astonishment, the thought for the first time rushed upon my mind, that perhaps I might be much worse than other people. It troubled me considerably; I found it impossible to sleep, and following a good impulse, I ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... what may in the world to come. Nine-tenths of those who make a parade of their piety, are rotten at heart, as that Cardinal de Crema, Legate of Pope Calixtus 2nd, in the reign of Henry 1st, who declared at a London Synod, it was an intolerable enormity, that a priest should dare to consecrate, and touch the body of Christ immediately after he had risen from the side of a strumpet, (for that was the decent appellation he gave to the wives of the clergy), but it happened, that the very next night, ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... that the enormity of the whole proceeding becomes most glaring—the house owes its actual value to the profit which the owner can make out of it. Now, this profit results from the fact that his house is built in a town—that ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... making him an example but of punishing him for his enormous crimes, was dreadful. The infatuation of political rancor on one side, an infatuation which could perceive nothing but the virtue of high and resolute Protestantism in his conduct, blinded his supporters to the enormity of his conduct, and, as a matter of course, they left no stone unturned to save his life. As we said, however, they were outnumbered; but still they did not despair. Reilly's friends had been early in the legal market, and succeeded in retaining some of the ablest men at the bar, his leading counsel ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... which she acted. The few quotations given in this chapter will, however, suffice for the general reader. She concludes with a pregnant sentence: "Let our prison discipline be severe in proportion to the enormity of the crimes of those on whom it is exercised, and let its strictness be such as to deter others from a similar course of iniquity, but let us ever aim at the diminution of crime through the just and happy medium of ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... say, that I should never enter it again; and that presentiment is now fulfilled. Fate urged me on. Unnatural hate has pushed me to the ledge, and now I sink to lose myself in the abyss. Oh, foul fate! this deed foul, foul! Fair, fair Amanda, close thine eyes on this enormity; or be content to see it, yet not understand it, for knowledge here would surely drive ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... Dumps, now that the enormity of her sin was brought home to her, and the articles eaten so carefully enumerated, began to feel very much like a boa-constrictor, and the tears fell from her eyes ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... take care of women, overran and plundered the Lowlands from Tegulet to the Red Sea. The Amharas were commanded to spare nothing that drew the breath of life: to fulfil a prophecy which foretold the fall of El Islam, they perpetrated every kind of enormity. ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... on his own behalf, whilst asking questions of a witness on behalf of an otherwise undefended prisoner. How unceremoniously he takes the word out of the mouth of the, in his opinion, hardly competent junior barrister who is with him. How Demosthenic is his language when addressing the jury on the enormity of all agrarian offences; with what frightful, fearful eloquence does he depict the miseries of anarchy, which are to follow nonpayment of tithes, rents, and taxes; and with what energy does he point out to a jury that their own hearths, ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... were rolling down his cheek and staining his white coat. A momentary gleam of anger shot into his eyes and he gave a gasp, whether of surprise, pain, or annoyance, I know not. He made a gesture towards me. I half expected and fervently wished he would strike. The enormity of what I had done paralysed me. The whip fell from my fingers and I dropped on to a low lounge behind me, and placing my elbows on my knees crouchingly buried my face in my hands; my hair tumbled softly over my shoulders and reached ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... on down to Company K. All admitted that their men had taken rails and had not put them back, except Captain Richardson. Then such a lecture as those nine company commanders received was seldom heard. To have heard Colonel Nance dilate upon the enormity of the crime of "disobedience to orders," was enough to make one think he had "deserted his colors in the face of the enemy," or lost a battle through his cowardice. "Now, gentlemen, let this never ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... to other slaves, they organized yearly hunts to bag a score or two. But so great is the depravity of the human heart that these wretches, in their desperate wickedness, objected to being shot, and at times were guilty of the enormity of shooting back again. History records how, on certain occasions, they did so with such good effect that the hunted became hunters; ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... treatment that there is really nothing to eat! Green biscuits with acrid spots of alkali; sour yeast-bread; meat slowly simmered in fat till it seemed like grease itself, and slowly congealing in cold grease; and above all, that unpardonable enormity, strong butter! How one longs to show people what might have been done with the raw material out of which ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... it as a conspicuous part of the house. I think it cannot be too prominently kept before the whole establishment. I wish my people to be impressed with the enormity of the crime, the determination to punish it, and the hopelessness of escape. At the same time, officer, if you in your better knowledge of the subject see ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... this enormity. She had made a discovery which interested her infinitely more. Little Theodore, hitherto so inanimate, had sat up, listened, looked with a dawning of expression in the eyes that had hitherto been clear and meaningless as blue porcelain, ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... one would endure if one undertook to sleep for a night in a tree. Then there was a devil-dog, a little black-and-tan terrier in a blanket gorgeous and belled, whose duty it was to stand on the top of the coach and bark incessantly to keep the driver fully aroused to the enormity of his occupation. To have this cur silenced either by strangulation or ordinary clubbing, Coleman struggled with his dragoman as Jacob struggled with the angel, but in the first place, the dragoman was a Greek whose tongue could ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... the saints recorded in the scriptures. "Aaron, the saint of the Lord," and Moses, whose general character was that of "a servant, faithful in all God's house," were both seduced into sins of such enormity that they were excluded the land of promise, in common with rebellious Israel. Among New Testament saints similar lapses are observable. Even the apostles forsook the Savior, and fled when Judas led forth the hostile ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... only in degree, and not at all in kind, that he differed from the general run of successful wealth builders. The Vanderbilts committed thefts of as great an enormity as he, but they gradually managed to weave around themselves an exterior of protective respectability. All sections of the capitalist class, in so fiercely reviling Gould, reminded one of the thief, who, to divert ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... "treason" of General Reed, contemplated or effected, be spread upon his country's annals? Above all, when he and his descendants have adroitly disguised his villainy with the varnish of incorruptible patriotism, why should the hand which has the power to tear off the mask, and expose the enormity of guilt, be made to fall, self-withheld and self-paralyzed, from the effort? These are questions which admit of but one reply. I shall go on, and in continuation of my developments, I here subjoin another letter from ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... hours before, the death-warrant of sixty victims, was the very next day brought before the same tribunal, composed of his accomplices, or rather his creatures, and by them condemned to die. Thus did experience confirm the general observation, that the multiplicity and enormity of punishments announces an approaching revolution. The torrents of blood which tyrants shed, are, in the ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... criticise Coriolanus. It is a much nobler play as it stands than it would have been if Shakespeare had made the hero persist, and we had seen him amid the flaming ruins of Rome, awaking suddenly to the enormity of his deed and taking vengeance on himself; but that would surely have been an ending more strictly tragic than the close of Shakespeare's play. Whether this close was simply due to his unwillingness to contradict his historical authority ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... all agree; and weeping all but echo hard-hearted Nulli. Tears are not swords and wrongs seem almost natural as rights. For the righteous to suppress an evil, is sometimes harder than for others to uphold it. Humanity cries out against this vast enormity:— not one man knows a prudent remedy. Blame not, then, the North; and wisely judge the South. Ere, as a nation, they became responsible, this thing was planted in their midst. Such roots strike deep. Place to-day those serfs in Dominora; and with them, all Vivenza's Past;— and ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... its entire magnitude did not exist for the average civilian. He could not conceive even a battle, much less a campaign. To the suburbs the war was nothing but a suburban squabble. To the miner and navvy it was only a series of bayonet fights between German champions and English ones. The enormity of it was quite beyond most of us. Its episodes had to be reduced to the dimensions of a railway accident or a shipwreck before it could produce any effect on our minds at all. To us the ridiculous bombardments of Scarborough and Ramsgate were colossal tragedies, and the battle ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... ready wit on at least one occasion showed itself by utilising the native superstition to bring home the enormity of the offence to the possible stealer of a young pig. The fear of an 'Aitu,' or wicked woman-spirit of the woods, and the general dread of devils, has far more effect on the Samoan conscience than more civilised ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... This fellow Stanninghame was a lunatic. Mad, by Jove! Still gasping as he thought of the enormity of the situation, he left without another word, diving below to try and drown his confusion in a ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... did not appear in the least overwhelmed by the enormity of his crime or by the disgrace of being so ignominiously found out. From his precarious position across the bed St. Genis had a good view of the rascal's finely knit figure, of his earnest face, now softened by a smile full of kindly humour and ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... of worship for Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Anabaptists, and every denomination of Christianity; and the meeting-houses prepared for these sects are not, as with us, hideous buildings, contrived to inspire disgust by the enormity of their ugliness, nor are they called Salem, Ebenezer, and Sion, nor do the ministers within them look in any way like the Deputy-Shepherd. The churches belonging to those sects are often handsome. This is especially the case in New York, and ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... they were to meet the enemy, they did not know when they arrived the enormity of his crimes. That they might know how the German armies make war it has been necessary that they see towns systematically burned down, mines flooded, factories reduced to ashes, orchards devastated, cathedrals shelled and fired—all that deliberate savagery, aimed ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... The enormity of suspecting Philip Crawford was so great, to my mind, that I went at once to the district attorney's office ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... the enormity of the joke, but instantly adopted the suggestion, and in the course of a day or two, flaming posters announced the awful disaster and the sale. In preparing for this event, the clerks applied lighted paper ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... 'It's almost an aggravation of the enormity, that we shall be out to-day. Out! What have we ever ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... housewife whose cut-glass and egg-shell china are continually smashed to fragments by the hirelings whose own the fragiles are not. The china bill for one year of the woman with many servants assumes proportions so huge that she is actually afraid to let herself consider its enormity. And there are still more things broken of which she is never told until the day comes when this or that article is needed, and the answer ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... you would,' answered Susie, 'because he interests me enormously. There's no place like Paris for meeting queer folk. Sooner or later you run across persons who believe in everything. There's no form of religion, there's no eccentricity or enormity, that hasn't its votaries. Just think what a privilege it is to come upon a man in the twentieth century who ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... purpose; when the stiffened joints—the cracked hoofs—the greasy legs—and stumbling gait of the worn-out animal are all put into agonized motion by belabouring him upon the raw! The expression is Hibernian, but the brutality is our own. A few ill-gained pounds reconcile the enormity to the owner—and the cheapness and expedition of the conveyance give it public sanction: but humanity is outraged by the same: human sympathies are seared; and the noble precept, that "the merciful man is merciful to his beast," is trampled ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various
... Kennedy and others, holding commissions in the rebel service, to burn New York city. If ever a man deserved his fate, this man Kennedy certainly did, and the public, having been saved, unscathed, can never fully appreciate the enormity of his crime. One, knowing the facts of these men being in the North for this purpose, can readily appreciate the punishment awarded them; but upon reviewing all the facts in the case, will as readily say that they are now less guilty than the citizens ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... that Jeanne appeared to be much more conscious than I was of the enormity which we had committed. She looked very serious indeed, and was ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... actors in the following reign; they were never punished for the crime, probably because Henry, whose maxims of government were extremely arbitrary, desired to establish it as a principle that the commands of the reigning sovereign ought to justify every enormity in those who paid obedience to them. But there is one circumstance not so easy to be accounted for: it is pretended that Richard, displeased with the indecent manner of burying his nephews, whom he had murdered, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... of the North to find some means of bringing home to the British Ministry the enormity of the offence in American eyes and the serious danger to good relations if such offences were to be continued. An immediate downright threat of war would have been impolitic and would have stirred ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... was seeking his way. From 1636 to 1644 his genius soared on steady pinions. During the eight years that followed he triumphed, but he also faltered. Rodogune (1644), which he preferred to all his other plays, is certainly, by virtue of the enormity of the characters, the violence of the passions, the vastness of its crimes, the most romantic of his tragedies; it is constructed with the most skilful industry; from scene to scene the emotion is intensified and heightened until the great fifth act is reached; but if by incomparable audacity ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... gazed at the intruders a moment with incredulity, and then, as the enormity of the outrage dawned on him, he flushed and drew himself erect, his face ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... spite of the enormity of his pretensions, he doubtless detected that Francois had been speaking ironically. So he turned to Antoine, who had remained seated in front of a block he was engraving. It was the one which represented Lise reading in her garden, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... further, if you wish. Suppose that an artist depicts a saint and becomes enamoured of her. Thus we have complications of crime against nature and of sacrilege. An enormity!" ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... to be abandoned enough to attempt to palm upon him a coat of the very best Yorkshire, instead of the very best Wiltshire broad-cloth, (an enormity of which—horresco referens—he was once very near being the victim,) the one would be sure to lose, if discovered, the best of his customers, and the other the best of a month's sleep. If he wears a wig, his expenditure with his peruquier is never less ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various
... He realized that he was safe and only then did he appreciate the full enormity of what he ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... asked Clarissa, who was not prepared to believe, and did not believe this enormity on the part of ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... to the Child's initiation, Uncle Andy had impressed upon him with the greatest care the enormity of breaking the spell of stillness by even the slightest ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... entered his own door, and paused at the sound of Harriet's voice, that he began to realize the enormity of the tragedy that had ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... all the penetration, all the historical reading, and all the generous devotedness of heart that you can command; and (2) that in the endeavor to settle this question that you are not to make the mistake that it is external forces which are chiefly to be brought to bear upon this enormity. No race of people can be lifted up by others to grand civility. The elevation of a people, their thorough civilization, comes chiefly from internal qualities. If there is no receptive and living quality in them which can be evoked for their ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... same mercy, in proportion, that a Russian does from a Turk. Dripping wet, cold, and covered with mud, I was first shown to the boys as an aggregate of all that was bad in nature; a lecture was read to them on the enormity of my offence, and solemn denunciations of my future destiny closed the discourse. The shivering fit produced by the cold bath was relieved by as sound a flogging as could be inflicted, while two ushers held me; but no effort ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... reserved a few hours, that he might be sacrificed under circumstances of peculiar enormity. A hole being dug in the ground of a depth sufficient to enable him to stand upright, with his head only exposed, his arms were pinioned to his body, he placed in it, and the loose earth thrown in and rammed closely around ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... named Lucullus, and, passing immediately through the house, sought a hiding-place in the gardens. Here her mind began to be overwhelmed with anguish, remorse, and terror. Her sins, now that a terrible retribution for them seemed to be impending, rose before her in all their enormity, and she knew not what to do. She soon reflected that there could be no permanent safety for her where she was, for the advanced guards of Claudius, which were even then entering the city and commencing their arrests, would be sure soon to discover the place of her ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... Amidei and the Uberti, whose families were allied, were filled with rage, and having assembled with many others, connections of the parties, they concluded that the injury could not be tolerated without disgrace, and that the only vengeance proportionate to the enormity of the offence would be to put Buondelmonti to death. And although some took into consideration the evils that might ensue upon it, Mosca Lamberti said, that those who talk of many things effect nothing, using that trite and common adage, Cosa fatta capo ha. Thereupon, they ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... one another, by being mutually conscious of such an atrocity. But some thought that this report, and many others, were invented by persons who supposed that the odium against Cicero, which afterward arose, might be lessened by imputing an enormity of guilt to the conspirators who had suffered death. The evidence which I have obtained, in support of this charge, is not at all in proportion to ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... sobbing audibly. The bewildered children hearkened to the protest against cruelty with that elfin look which mischievous youth dares assume, while the culprit stood with a finger in her mouth, not quite understanding the enormity of her conduct. In a moment more they were in the school-yard, and Miss Willis was beside Jimmy's desk patting his tangled head. He wept as though his ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... seeing the thing on the stove quickly unscrewed it. The steam blew out with terrific force and filled the tent. A moment or two more and the bottle would have burst with disastrous consequences. When I told Stephenson of the enormity of his offence and that he might have been the cause of my death, and would have sent me to the grave covered with dishonour for having been killed by the bursting of a hot water-bottle—an unworthy end ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... spare him, however, as regarded Netta. He knew him to be utterly callous as to the follies and crimes of his life; he must, therefore, be made conscious of their weight, through their effects upon others; he knew that they had been the cause of Netta's death, and this would show him the enormity of sin if ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... precedent to the story of a play, however impossible it might seem to the mind of the individual. Oedipus King has been married to his mother many years before the play begins; but the Greek crowd forbore to ask why, in so long a period, the enormity had never been discovered. The central situation of She Stoops to Conquer seems impossible to the individual mind, but is eagerly accepted by the crowd. Individual critics find fault with Thomas Heywood's ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... that race, and first tasted the deceptive kind of knowledge which, promising to make man God, banishes him from the paradise of experience. His sin has been transmitted to his descendants, though hardly in its magnificent and simple enormity. "The whole is one," Xenophanes had cried, gazing into heaven; and that same sense of a permeating identity, translated into rigid and logical terms, brought his sublime disciple to the conviction that ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... morning Dr. Rowlands spoke to his boarders on the previous day's discovery, and in a few forcible vivid words set before them, the enormity of the offence. He ended by announcing that the boys who were caught would be birched,—"except the elder ones, Bull and Brigson, who will bring me one hundred lines every hour of the half-holidays till further notice. There are some," he said, "I am well aware, ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar |
