"Palliate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Perkin as an impostor.—Answer. When Sir Thomas More wrote, Henry the Seventh was still alive: that argument therefore falls entirely to the ground: but there was great necessity, I will not say to defend, but even to palliate the titles of both Henry the Seventh and Eighth. The former, all the world agrees now, had no title(49) the latter had none from his father, and a very defective one from his mother, If she had any right, it could only be after her brothers; and it is not to be supposed that so jealous a tyrant ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... He said also to the same person, that when he found them hesitating in the presence of the enemy, he "burst into a passion," called them cowards, and dashed into the river as before narrated. If this account be true, it may somewhat palliate, but ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... the Whig alliance, by democratic sympathy, and by the transference of our political capital to Westminster. Tracts, periodicals, and the whole horde of Benthamy rushed in. Without manufactures, without trade, without comfort to palliate such degradation, we were proclaimed converts to Utilitarianism. The Irish press thought itself imperial, because it reflected that of London—Nationality was called a vulgar superstition, and a general European Trades' Union, to be followed ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... and of the utmost suffering on the other, were constantly exhibiting. A few instances of this suffering and of that barbarity, may not be improperly adduced here. They will serve to illustrate the condition of those who were within reach of the savage enemy; and perhaps, to palliate the enormities practiced ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... happiness; that these ought not to be lost; and, that the gentleman on whose account she was divorced had gained her heart while thus unhappily situated. Seduced, perhaps, by the charms of the lady in question, I thus attempted to palliate what I was sensible could not be justified; for when I had finished my harangue, my venerable friend gave me a proper check: 'My dear Sir, never accustom your mind to mingle virtue and vice. The woman's a whore, and there's ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... been no rupture, he would be as blithe as a lark at this moment, and might outlive you and M. le President and me. ... The ways of Providence are mysterious, let us not seek to fathom them," he added to palliate to some extent the hideous idea. "It cannot be helped. We men of business look at the practical aspects of things. Now you see clearly, madame, that M. de Marville in his public position would do nothing, and could do nothing, as things are. He has broken off all relations with ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... king of the Veientians, and to the Veientians. To the revolt a more heinous crime was added. By order of Tolumnius they put to death Caius Fulcinius, Claelius Tullus, Spurius Antius, Lucius Roscius, Roman ambassadors, who came to inquire into the reason of this new line of conduct. Some palliate the guilt of the king; that an ambiguous expression of his, during a lucky throw of dice, having been mistaken by the Fidenatians, as if it seemed to be an order for their execution, had been the cause of the ambassadors' death. ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... Seb. O, palliate not my wound; When you have argued all you can, 'tis incest. No, 'tis resolved: I charge you plead no more; I cannot live without Almeyda's sight, Nor can I see Almeyda, but I sin. Heaven has inspired me with a sacred thought, To live alone to ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... time before his execution Lee made a confession in which he attempted to palliate his guilt by throwing the burden of the crime on his accomplices, especially on Haight and Higbee, and to show that the massacre was committed by order of Brigham Young and the High Council, all of which was ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... had made. Nevertheless, she, by degrees, became so negligent and cold in her expression, and so slack in her correspondence, that he could not help observing and upbraiding her with such indifference; and her endeavours to palliate it were supported by pretexts so frivolous, as to be easily seen through by a lover of very ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... were made by the pure royalists to palliate the treachery of the government. They tried to persuade the people that the tranquillity and welfare of the nation depended but on the re-establishment of an absolute monarch, of a feudal aristocracy, and of all ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... nothing to palliate, wrote very frankly. "Look, my Lord," he said to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, "upon the country near Boston. It is all fortification." His mathematics has been already quoted; he adds that the army had nothing for transport in an active campaign of any duration. Proceeding, he ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... Justus Hoxon far on the road to the mountains. In the many miles, as he fared along, his thoughts could hardly have been pleasant company. As he sought to discover fault or flaw in himself, search as he might, he could find naught that might palliate the flippant faithlessness of his beloved, or the treachery of his brother. His ambition might have been too worldly a thing, but not a pulse of that most vital emotion beat for himself. He realized it now—he realized his life in looking back upon this completed ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... he strive to console himself and endeavour to palliate the wrong he had done with the consideration that he was the man Cynthia loved, and not his son; that his son was nothing to her, and that she would never have accompanied him had she dreamt that ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... portion of the United Kingdom itself, which was a "serious disgrace to the age, and to the government, and the country in which we live," without endeavouring, by the enactment of more stringent laws, to correct it, the evasions, by means of which they now seek to palliate their neglect, and the strange want of perspicacity which they display in not being able to discover the real source of mischief, or their timidity in not daring to denounce it, must naturally excite our astonishment. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... earnestly will the agitation be continued until reason shall be convinced; until prejudice shall be overcome by the power of conviction; until men are constrained, from very shame, to withdraw from a position which no argument, no experience can justify, which no consideration of decency will palliate. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... smile sweetly even upon the Man he hates, when he is instructed or it is his Interest so to do, fawnd & flatterd one of the HEADS OF THE FACTION, & at length approvd of him when he was elected a Councellor last May. To palliate this inconsistent Conduct it was previously given out that Mr H had deserted the faction, & became as they term each other, a Friend to Governmt. But he had Spirit enough to refuse a Seat at the Board, & continue a Member of the House, where he has in every ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... long reply, the purport of which was that many of the reprisals were bogus, many were actions undertaken in self-defence, while the rest were generally due to men "seeing red" after their comrades had been brutally murdered. The Government did not palliate such cases, and had instituted inquiries and taken disciplinary action against the offenders, when known; but they were not prepared to set up a public inquiry such as Lord CREWE had demanded. It would only substitute "a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... extended intercourse, and consequently means of information and refinement, and may seek education for his children where it may be found. I say, what is obviously true, that he has the means of obtaining those advantages; but I say nothing to palliate or excuse the conduct of him who, having such means, neglects to avail ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... appropriateness to the old comedy, as a work of defined art, of allusions and descriptions, which morality can never justify, and, only with reference to the author himself, and only as being the effect or rather the cause of the circumstances in which he wrote, can consent even to palliate. ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... and he has sufficient address to conceal it, or sufficient ingenuity to palliate it, but he does neither; instead of availing himself of concealment and palliation, with the candor of a great mind, he confesses his error, and makes all the apology or atonement which the occasion requires. None has a title ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... touch them, in twenty-four hours a mob would be raised to pull them down and ascertain what the planks contained." I mention this conversation, to shew in what a dexterous manner this American gentleman attempted to palliate one of the grossest outrages ever committed by ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... municipalising or State-supporting public utilities, it can never adequately counter-balance the excessive burden and wasteful expenditure of force placed on a family by undue child-production. It can only palliate them. ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... would palliate Henry's vices, if such there be on record, or disguise his follies, or wish his irregularities to be forgotten in the vivid recollections of his conquests, that we would try "our immortal bard" by the test of rigid fact. We do ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... something of the same drapery over more recent foundations, in which otherwise the fortune, the genius, the talents, and military virtue of this nation never shone more conspicuously. But whatever necessity might hide or excuse or palliate, in the acquisition of power, a wise nation, when it has once made a revolution upon its own principles and for its own ends, rests there. The first step to empire is revolution, by which power is conferred; the next is good laws, good order, good institutions, to give that power stability. ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... herself vehemently of a sin over and above those sins which had filled Alice with dismay. He had demanded money from the girl whom he intended to marry! According to Kate's idea, nothing could excuse or palliate this sin. Alice had accounted it as nothing,—had expressed her opinion that the demand was reasonable;—even now, after the ill-usage to which she had been subjected, she had declared that the money ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... them go into the disgusting and improbable details named in the "Brief Declaration." Campbell also reports the stories, but adds, in regard to the wife murderer, "upon his trial it appeared that cannibalism was feigned to palliate the murder," p. 93. Neill quotes from the Records of the Virginia Company, "The Tragical Relation of Virginia Assembly," which was transmitted to England about 1621; this was intended as a reply to a petition of Alderman Johnson and others, who had represented ...
— Colonial Records of Virginia • Various
... view to palliate the effect of their own mistake, or rather of the defeat their hopes, which the deeper sagacity of the king had contrived, they began to fill the emperor's ears, which were at all times most ready to receive all kinds of reports with ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... the old game, this is to propose a new, crude, difficult, and unsympathetic game. They may all of them, or most of them, hate war, but they will cling to the belief that their method of operating may now, after a new settlement, be able to prevent or palliate war. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... that in the sight of God he was a murderer made Blair collapse during the day. He was confined to his room; and it was then that he told the Fort Benton physician all that was haunting him, hour by hour. Blair did not attempt to palliate his sin, and although the doctor had known much and suspected more, he could hardly find it in his heart to forgive either Winifred's brother or the woman who had led him on. The only ray of mercy he felt was that matters were not so bad as he had feared between these old friends of his; but in ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... she was quiet and unobtrusive. She made no attempt to break down the wall thus established between us. And I was determined, on the whole, to be more than just with Rebecca. I would be kind to her in her disgrace. I would palliate her weakness as far as I could consistently with a pure and high standard of action. I even congratulated myself on the magnanimity of my intentions, except when I met the clear, sad gaze of those dispassionate eyes. Then I experienced an ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... it accustomed the people to set no bounds to the authority of those who bestowed it on the king. The omnipotence of parliament appeared no longer a mere hyperbole. Let it not be supposed, that to mention the good thus finally educed from such evils, is intended or calculated to palliate crimes, or to lessen our just abhorrence of criminals. Nothing, on the contrary, seems more to exalt the majesty of virtue than to point out the tendency of the moral government of the world, which, as in this instance, turns the worst enemies ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... Hemisphere the African had always been in a servile condition. In Hayti and Jamaica experiments had been tried of freeing them, under the auspices of France and England. Miseries had resulted and ruin overwhelmed the islands. "Fanaticism may palliate, but could not conceal the utter prostration of the race." The best specimens of the race were to be found in the Southern States, in closest contact with slavery. The North does not want the negro, does not encourage his immigration. The great fact of the inferiority of ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... to accept of more moderate terms of peace; and it is probable that, in order to palliate this change of resolution, he ascribed it to a vow made during a dreadful tempest, which attacked his army on their march, and which ancient historians represent as the cause of this sudden accommodation.[*] The conferences between ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... mistake us. We are not defending the crime of robbery, neither would we rashly palliate it, although there are instances of it which deserve not only palliation, but pardon. We are only describing the principles upon which this man acted, and, considering his motives, we question whether this peculiar act, originating as it did in the noblest virtues and ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... most savage manner,"—"South Carolina Loyalist."] Col. Cleavland himself being one of the offenders. [Footnote: Allaire's diary, entry of Nov. 1st.] Those of their friends and relatives who had fallen into the hands of the tories, or of Cornwallis' regulars, had fared even worse; yet this cannot palliate their conduct. Campbell himself, when in a fit of gusty anger, often did things he must have regretted afterwards; but he was essentially manly, and his soul revolted at the continued persecution of helpless enemies. He issued a sharp manifesto in reference to the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... excuse their wrong-doing, the father of the family is the more moved to wrath; whereas, on the other hand, confession secures pardon or a lighter punishment. But it is the nature of hypocrites to excuse and palliate their sin or to deny it altogether and under the show of ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... letters, calculated to your meridian! Generous spirits hate compulsion!—He is certainly a deeper creature by much than once we thought him. He knows, as you intimate, that his own wild pranks cannot be concealed: and so owns just enough to palliate (because it teaches you not to be surprised at) any new one, that may come to your ears; and then, truly, he is, however faulty, a mighty ingenuous man; and by no means an hypocrite: a character the most odious of all others, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... at his feet, confessed that she was guilty, and remorsefully admitted that fear of his resentment, which seemed to her more terrible than death, had induced her to deny what she had done. She could hate herself for it. Nothing could palliate the departure from the path of truth, but her disobedience might perhaps appear to him in a milder light if he learned what had induced ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... succession, pursuing the same studies under the guidance of the same teachers, without establishing a certain community of sentiment and action, from which the student's intellectual efforts must derive a great share of their nourishment. Yet, admitting the principle, we cannot justify or palliate the excess to which it has been carried. We insist upon the observance of certain limits, which no man, whether old or young, learned or unlearned, is at liberty to transgress. And when these limits are transgressed we have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... economize. Every one bought as much bread, and ate it as freely, as if the government by insuring its cheapness had insured its abundance. So the city lived in high spirits and in gleeful defiance of its besiegers, until all at once provisions gave out, and the government had to step in again to palliate the distress which it had wrought. It constituted itself quartermaster-general to the community, and doled out stinted rations alike to rich and poor, with that stern democratic impartiality peculiar to times of mortal peril. But this served only, like most artificial palliatives, to lengthen out ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... person may be covered with wraps, and not buried under them. Bury may be used of any object, entomb and inter only of a dead body. Figuratively, one may be said to be buried in business, in study, etc. Compare IMMERSE; PALLIATE. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... The disease had taken on a form that usually baffles the skill of our most eminent physicians, and Dr. Hillhouse saw little chance of anything but a fatal termination. He could do nothing except to palliate as far as possible the patient's intense suffering and endeavor to check farther complications. But he ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... be something which needed explanation. It was the only instance among the works of Shakspeare in which a direct copy, even to matters of detail, appeared to have been made; and, in spite of all attempts to gloss over and palliate, it was impossible to deny that an unblushing act of mere piracy seemed to have been committed, of which I never could bring myself to believe that Shakspeare had been guilty. The readiness to impute this act to him was to me ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various
... not plentiful in the Confederacy, but because of lack of transportation to carry the food from the interior to the front, while the Union prisoners perished from hunger in the midst of abundance. Again, even assuming the plea of scarcity to be true, that would not palliate the numerous murders of helpless prisoners by volleys fired into the stockades at the pleasure of the guards.[1] There was a vindictiveness in these crimes which no plea ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... torturing to death any wretched victim whom they can have any pretext for destroying, especially if they can invent some new means of torment to give a fresh piquancy to their pleasure. These monsters do not act from passion. Men are sometimes inclined to palliate great cruelties and crimes which are perpetrated under the influence of sudden anger, or from the terrible impulse of those impetuous and uncontrollable emotions of the human soul which, when once excited, seem to make men insane; but the crimes of a tyrant are not of ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... enormity of the design. The most prominent impression in his mind evidently was that we were acting a base and treacherous part in deserting his party, in what he considered a very dangerous stage of the journey. To palliate the atrocity of our conduct, we ventured to suggest that we were only four in number while his party still included sixteen men; and as, moreover, we were to go forward and they were to follow, ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... ground; may he be permitted to examine it closely?" Darrow was all attention. He would be delighted to show it. Suppose they make a practical test of it by playing a game. This they did and Maitland played superbly, but he was hardly a match for the old gentleman, who sought to palliate his defeat by saying: "You play an excellent game, sir; but I am a trifle too much for you on my own ground. Now, if you can spare the time, I should like to witness a game between you and my daughter; I think you will be ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... robb'd the father, rob the son. A knave, who deep embroils his lord's affairs, Will soon grow necessary to his heirs. His policy consists in setting traps, In finding ways and means, and stopping gaps; He knows a thousand tricks whene'er he please, Though not to cure, yet palliate each disease. In either case, an equal chance is run; For, keep or turn him out, my lord's undone. You want a hand to clear a filthy sink; No cleanly workman can endure the stink. A strong dilemma in a desperate case! ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... its cause should be of interest to those who represent the State. I am not seeking to minimize or palliate or excuse whatever crime may have been committed in this case, but that society which is seeking its own safety and perpetuity cannot too strongly be urged to beware of the universal menace to its existence, as well as to guard against those individuals ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... She will not live to put thee to the trial; and it will a little palliate for thy enormous usage of her, and be a mean to make mankind, who know not what I know of the matter, herd a little longer with thee, and forbear to hunt thee to thy fellow-savages in the Lybian ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... previously done or said or been could excuse or palliate his conduct. The fact that he was of a good family only rendered his alliance with "niggers" against his own race and class the more infamous. The fact that he was a man of substantial means, and had sought no office or aggrandizement by the votes of colored men, ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... permission for the King of France to exercise all the rights of sovereignty over all the places and harbors of Corsica, as security for debts owing to him by the republic. This cession, disguised under the form of a security in order to palliate the aggrandizement of France in the eyes of Austria and England, recalls the conditional and thinly veiled surrender of Cyprus to England nine years ago,—a transfer likely to be as final and far-reaching as that of Corsica. England then remonstrated and ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... begged him to prescribe a course for my adoption, and frankly to tell me if my evidence could be of service. He assured me it could not; there was no question of the fairness of the duel, and the sole crime was in the breach of military discipline. This crime my testimony could in no way palliate. He requested me to see M. de Berg, and to tell him that, to avoid the possibility of the cause of the duel becoming known, he should refuse to answer questions, plead guilty to the charge, and state, as sole extenuation, that the quarrel occurred off duty, and ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... into the others, particularly into the story of Cosmo the Third's wife, of whom I had read much in French Memoires; and into that of John Gaston, which was so fresh when I was at Florence; but as the author, in spite of the Great Duke's injunctions, has tried to palliate some of the worst imputations on Cosmo and his son Ferdinand, so he has been mighty modest about the Caprean amours of John Gaston and his eldest brother. Adieu! I have been writing a volume here myself. Pray remember to answer me about ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... otherwise is inexplicable, but we may understand why so much and such resplendent poetry is lavished on incidents so bare, meagre, and commonplace, and why they present both poet and patron with frailties and faults naked and repellant; and we can the better palliate and forgive the weakness and subjection which the Sonnets indicate on the part of their author. With such a reading the Sonnets become a chronicle of the modes and feelings of their author, resembling in ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... respectfully received by the Lady Abbess; but it was not long before her Grief renewing with greater Violence, and more afflicting Circumstances, had obliged them to stay with her till it was almost dark, when they once more begged the Liberty of an Hour's Absence; and the better to palliate their Design, Henrique told her, that he would make use of her Father Don Richardo's Coach, in which they came to Don Antonio's, for so small a Time: which they did, leaving only Eleonora her Attendant with her, with out whom she had been at a Loss, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... worldly minded people talk. That is how they palliate these sins against good taste and propriety. I like these girls; they are genuine, somehow; but I suppose our bringing up has made us old-fashioned, for I seemed to shrink inwardly every time they opened their lips. Surely it must be ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... of the crew on deck, and he soon understood the whole matter. He was very severe upon Cleats for leaving the deck, declared that he could not be trusted, and that he should be discharged. The latter was very humble, acknowledged his error, and made no attempt to palliate it. He had always been faithful, so far as was known, and probably had never been guilty of any graver offence than that of leaving the deck for a few minutes during his watch. But he had been expressly cautioned not to do this, and had sent a hand below for his ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... had been both cruel and base in his treatment of her? And yet she recoiled from the application of such hard terms by another to Philip, by a cool-judging and indifferent person, as she esteemed Jeremiah to be. From some inscrutable turn in her thoughts, she began to defend him, or at least to palliate the harsh judgment which she herself had been ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... hastily to palliate Vladimir's misdeed in their eyes, but it is doubtful whether they heard her. The Major's fury clothed and reclothed itself in words as frantically as a woman up in town for one day's shopping tries ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... the wall; fallen back exhausted; and been found at morning on the stones in a dying state. But though there was some evidence of cruelty, there was none of murder; and the aunt and her husband had sought to palliate cruelty by alleging the exceeding stubbornness and perversity of the child, who was declared to be half-witted. Be that as it may, at the orphan's death the aunt inherited her brother's fortune. Before the first wedded year was out, the American quitted ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... this horrid transaction, the French court endeavoured to palliate it by forms of law. They pretended to justify the massacre by a calumny, and accused the admiral of a conspiracy, which no one believed. The parliament was commanded to proceed against the memory of Coligni; and his dead body was hung in chains on Montfaucon gallows. The king himself went to view ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... answer to my question," cried the wretched father, tightening his grasp upon the old man's arm. "I do not ask you to palliate his guilt. It admits of no excuse. Did you see him do it? Tell me that—tell me quickly. I am in no ...
— George Leatrim • Susanna Moodie
... slaves belonging to the camp. Their departure had been so recent that they were still fresh and inclined to jest, and whoever caught sight of the convicts, flung them, in the Egyptian fashion, a caustic quip which many sought to palliate by the gift of alms. Others, who said nothing, also sent by the ass-drivers fruit and trifling gifts; for those who were free to-day might share the fate of these hapless men to-morrow. The captain permitted it, and when a passing slave, whom Joshua had sold for thieving, shouted the name ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Enveloped in the mists of receding years; obscured by the glamour of poetry; belied by the vivid imagination of stragglers and camp-followers who, on the first note of danger, made a frantic rush for Winchester, seeking to palliate their own misconduct by spreading exaggerated reports of disaster, the union army that confronted Early at Cedar Creek, for many years made a sorry picture, which the aureole of glory that surrounded its central figure made all ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... miseries in the domestic circles of society. It is clear that however the spirit of legislation may appear to frame institutions upon more philosophical maxims, it has hitherto, in those cases which are termed criminal, done little more than palliate the spirit, by gratifying a portion of it; and afforded a compromise between that which is bests—the inflicting of no evil upon a sensitive being, without a decisively beneficial result in which he should at least participates—and that ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... more strained, more restless, more intently listening, more easily starting at the lightest sound; until, at last, when the late day touched the rooms with fiery sunset colors, her friend, watchful of her changing mood, ready at every point to palliate circumstance, drew her out ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... countenance there that speaks a joy Half so refined or so sincere as ours. Cards were superfluous here, with all the tricks That idleness has ever yet contrived To fill the void of an unfurnished brain, To palliate dulness and give time a shove. Time, as he passes us, has a dove's wing, Unsoiled and swift and of a silken sound. But the world's time is time in masquerade. Theirs, should I paint him, has his pinions fledged With motley plumes, and, where the peacock shows His azure eyes, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... to give up a part of the benefit to soften the inconvenience. The perfect cure is impracticable, because the disorder is dear to those from whom alone the cure can possibly be derived. The utmost to be done is to palliate, to mitigate, to respite, to put off the evil day of the Constitution to its latest possible hour, and may it be a very ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... the bareness of the land before him without any effort to palliate unpleasantness. If he chose to stalk about and look glum, she could sit still and call his attention to revolting truths which he could not deny. She could point out to him that he had no money, and that tenants would not stay in houses which were tumbling to pieces, and ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Lords. He had done his work in 'another place,' but he was destined to become once more First Minister of the Crown, and, as Mr. Froude put it, to carry his reputation at length off the scene unspotted by a single act which his biographers are called upon to palliate. ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... Northumbrian, died away beneath the common pressure of the stranger. The Conquest was hardly over when we see the rise of a new national feeling, of a new patriotism. In his quiet cell at Worcester the monk Florence strives to palliate by excuses of treason or the weakness of rulers the defeats of Englishmen by the Danes. AElfred, the great name of the English past, gathers round him a legendary worship, and the "Sayings of AElfred" embody the ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... To palliate this record (which grows worse as the Afro-American becomes intelligent) and excuse some of the most heinous crimes that ever stained the history of a country, the South is shielding itself behind the plausible screen of defending the honor of its women. This, too, ...
— Southern Horrors - Lynch Law in All Its Phases • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... all. But there is one misdeed, one which outweighs all others whatsoever—a crime which it is useless to palliate, let our other friend say what he pleased; and Reineke himself felt it so. It sate heavy, for him, on his soul, and alone of all the actions of his life we are certain that he wished it undone—the death and eating of that poor foolish Lampe, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... were very indignant,—all except Miss Furnival, who did not say much, but endeavoured to palliate the crimes of Lady Mason in that which she did say. "I do not know that she is more to blame than any other lady who marries a gentleman thirty years ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... liability to any. The intervals of rigour were meant to notify to the sceptical that the Government was at last on the track of evidence which would confirm the equity of everything from the beginning done against him. Constantly he had to stand on his defence against attempts to palliate the effrontery of the Winchester judgment by experimental accusations that he had been tampering with new conspiracies. For ten years the contest proceeded between him and the Court on that basis. He asseverated ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... can and will purge herself from the things that defile her beauty and corrupt her powers, and gird herself for the redemptive work assigned her, is the faith of every loyal Christian. The grievous failures of the church we cannot deny and must not palliate; it is of the utmost importance that she be brought face to face with them, and be made to see how far short she has come of her high calling. Such criticism she has received from the beginning. The seven churches of Asia were sharply called to account by the beloved disciple; their faithlessness ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... the strike,—that, for the first time in his life, he didn't know what to do, because right seemed to be hopelessly entangled with wrong, and wrong with right. When a man does evil in order that good may come, one tries to find an excuse for him, tries to palliate his offense in any reasonable way. That is human instinct. That is what accounts for the petition there, with the signatures of many of the most conscientious men in Alleghenia attached. They have managed to find the excuse, or they think they have, which, so far ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... Liverpool to that of Bristol. The natural antipathy of the nation is such, that their passions being once fully excited, they will proceed to such acts of reprisal and mutual violence, as will occasion clamors and altercations, which no soft words can palliate. As I pretend to know something of the counsels of both nations, I know there are strong advocates for war in both. The more reasons they have to produce in favor of their system, the sooner it ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... prince; and he seated himself by her side. "I will not attempt to palliate a deception which your charms could alone inspire and can alone justify. Hear me, Lady Iduna, hear me with calmness. I love you; I love you with a passion which has been as constant as it is strong. My birth, my rank, my fortunes, do not disqualify me for an union with the daughter of the great ...
— The Rise of Iskander • Benjamin Disraeli
... stood single and alone, be a matter of trifling moment. And in favor of whom do all these sacrifices appear to have been made? In favor of an old prostitute, who, if shown to your Lordships here, like Helen to the counsellors of Troy, would not, I think, be admitted to have charms that could palliate this man's abominable conduct; you would ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... are generally overdrawn is perfectly manifest. Every fair-minded student of history frankly admits this. It was necessary for Cortez and his followers to paint the character of the Aztecs in darkest hues to palliate and excuse, in a measure, their own wholesale rapine and murder. It was the elder Dumas who said, "Truth is liable to be left-handed in history." As Cortez was a champion of the Roman Catholic Church, that institution did not hesitate to represent his achievements ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... species of calculation. In this way the time for the building of Rome was determined to be about the year 754 before Christ. As to Romulus himself, the tradition is that he was but eighteen or twenty years old when he commenced the building of it. If this is true, his extreme youth goes far to palliate some of the wrongs which he perpetrated—wrongs which would have been far more inexcusable if committed with the deliberate purpose of middle life, than if prompted by the unthinking impulses and passions ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... spare me! My conscience never martyrs me so horribly, as when I catch my base thoughts in search of an excuse! No, nothing can palliate my guilt; and the only just consolation left me, is, to acquit the man I wronged, and own I erred without a cause ...
— The Stranger - A Drama, in Five Acts • August von Kotzebue
... Bacon addressed to the Peers a letter, which the Prince of Wales condescended to deliver. In this artful and pathetic composition, the Chancellor acknowledged his guilt in guarded and general terms, and, while acknowledging, endeavoured to palliate it. This, however, was not thought sufficient by his judges. They required a more particular confession, and sent him a copy of the charges. On the thirtieth, he delivered a paper in which he admitted, with few and unimportant reservations, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to palliate matters or to refute anything he had said. In his present frame of mind it would have been useless pointing out to him that she had treated him no differently from other men. He was a Pole, and he had caught fire where others ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... fierce in his denunciation of convention as ever Gilbert Farlow had been, but nevertheless he clung to conventional things with something like desperation. It was characteristic of him that he should palliate his submission to the conventional thing by inventing a sensible excuse for it. He would say that such things were too trivial to be worth the trouble of a fight or a revolt, and declare that one should save one's energies for bigger battles; but the truth was that he had not the moral courage ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... we see very little to blame except the articles against the Catholics. These, however, were in the spirit of that age; and to some sturdy churchmen in our own, they may seem to palliate even the good which the Long Parliament effected. The regulation with respect to new creations of Peers is the only other article about which we entertain any doubt. One of the propositions is that the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... mine. I do not excuse or palliate them. The daring youngster who conceived this paid the penalty with his life. It's all that any of us can give for his country. There's something that interests me now far more than this sensation—far more ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... reverent worship of station? Is it not fitting that wealth should tender this homage to culture? Is it not touching to witness these efforts, if little availing, Painfully made, to perform the old ritual service of manners? Shall not devotion atone for the absence of knowledge? and fervor Palliate, cover, the fault of a superstitious observance? Dear, dear, what have I said? but, alas, just now, like Iago, I can be nothing at all, if it is not critical wholly; So in fantastic height, in coxcomb exaltation, Here in the Garden I walk, can freely concede to the Maker ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... they lighten hearts, if but for a moment; they inculcate habits of order and self-restraint, which may be useful when the poor man finds himself in Canada or Australia. And it is a cruel utilitarianism to refuse to palliate the symptoms because you cannot cure the disease itself. You will give opiates to the suffering, who must die nevertheless. Let him slip into his grave at least as painlessly as you can. And so you ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... have grown up and helped to hide it, she felt sure that it would be a better world. In detail it was not so bad now, but the whole was a violent effect of porches, gables, chimneys, galleries, loggias, balconies, and jalousies, which nature had not yet had time to palliate. ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... in perpetual danger of being "sniped "; and the populace argued (not unreasonably) that to force on us irrational rations was in the circumstances a callous thing. There were doubtless considerations to palliate this procedure on the part of the Protector, but we would not see them. The cattle were there in sufficient numbers to feed us until relief arrived. True, relief appeared to be remote, but our view was that (if ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... otherwise untitled mass of Fellows, the principle of social rank. To this in itself, as the distinction of "Gent" after a man's name has become derogatory, there cannot be the least objection; for antiquarianism does not palliate rudeness ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 27. Saturday, May 4, 1850 • Various
... and benevolent that so great a sacrifice of appetite and prejudice can be expected, even though its ultimate excellence should not admit of dispute. It is found easier, by the short-sighted victims of disease, to palliate their torments by medicine than to prevent them by regimen. The vulgar of all ranks are invariably sensual and indocile; yet I cannot but feel myself persuaded that when the benefits of vegetable diet are mathematically ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... departure of Vidus Vidius for Italy was appointed to succeed that physician as professor of surgery to the Royal College. His character is easily estimated. With greater coarseness in his manners and language than even the rude state of society in his times can palliate, with much varied learning and considerable eloquence, he was a blind, indiscriminate and irrational admirer of Galen, and interpreted the anatomical and physiological writings of that author in preference to giving ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... varied brilliancy and in his fatal debauchery, his character stands forth as the completest type of the period of the Regency. Many memoirs have been written, among which those of his friend Moore, and his granddaughter the Hon. Mrs. Norton, although they unduly palliate his ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... British distrust of American commercial honesty was originally created, perhaps, more than by anything else, by the scandals which were notoriously associated with the early history of railways in the United States. It is not desired here either to insist on the occurrence of those scandals or to palliate them. The point is that the conditions which made those scandals possible (of which the incapacity on the part of the North-western lines to keep faith with each other may be regarded as symptomatic) were concomitants of a particular ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... the table ain't all right or that folks go away hungry under the new management," remarked Hiram, endeavoring to palliate. ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... As the said distance of degrees given by them was not true, as would be quite apparent if they brought a good map, and one made some time before, in which their said navigation should be contained, and as they had no just excuse to palliate such contention, they said that they brought the said maps only to locate the Cabo Verde islands, which by the very same map was proved to be contrary to the truth and was not a sufficient excuse, since the said islands ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... saintliness will be assigned the same positions in the rewards of the last day; and it is just as unlikely that human estimates are right when they venture to assign the degrees of final condemnation. Two things it is our duty to do in regard to Judas: first, not so to palliate his sin as to blunt the healthy, natural abhorrence of it; and, secondly, not to think of him as a sinner apart and alone, with a nature so different from our own that to us he can be no example. But for ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... purgatory of being served with tickets was endured, a traveler found fault in good Saxon English as to the stupidity of such delay about trifles, and also complained of having been robbed of some small article of luggage. Another Englishman, particularly disposed to palliate matters, said there must be some mistake about it; he had been here before, and the people of Burgos were proverbially honest. By and by a great excitement was apparent on the platform, when it came to light that the apologist and indorser of the good people here was declaring that a leather ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... Gillian, carry back the remnant of the unhappy 'Waif,' and 'have it out' with Constance, who would, she feared, never otherwise understand the measure of her own delinquency, and from whom, perhaps, evidence might be extracted which would palliate the poor child's offence in the eyes of Colonel Mohun. Both the Hacket sisters looked terribly frightened when she appeared, and the elder one made an excuse for getting her outside the door to beseech ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and the Scotch Covenanters; and the king expressly declared, in "a large declaration, concerning the late tumults in Scotland," that "religion is only pretended, and used by them as a cloak to palliate their intended rebellion," which he demonstrated by the facts he alleged. There was a revolutionary party in France, which, taking the name of Frondeurs, shook that kingdom under the administration of Cardinal ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... an example—it has been known to happen that nations have been told to their faces that they did not require as much freedom as many other nations do. This statement might, indeed, be dictated by forbearance and a desire to palliate, the true meaning being that they were utterly unable to endure so great freedom and that only a high degree of rigidity could prevent them from destroying one another. If, however, the words are taken as they are spoken, they are true under the presupposition ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... said Morton, "that your enemies impute to you, and which palliate, if they do not vindicate, the cruel measures which the council have directed against you. They affirm, that you pretend to derive your rule of action from what you call an inward light, rejecting the restraints of legal magistracy, of national law, and even of common humanity, when in opposition ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... mitigate, temper, accoy^; attemper^, contemper^; mollify, lenify^, dulcify^, dull, take off the edge, blunt, obtund^, sheathe, subdue, chasten; sober down, tone down, smooth down; weaken &c 160; lessen &c (decrease) 36; check palliate. tranquilize, pacify, assuage, appease, swag, lull, soothe, compose, still, calm, calm down, cool, quiet, hush, quell, sober, pacify, tame, damp, lay, allay, rebate, slacken, smooth, alleviate, rock to sleep, deaden, smooth, throw cold ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... novelist turns against life itself. "Birth," he says, speaking of Tess, "seemed to her an ordeal of degrading personal compulsion whose gratuitousness nothing in the result seemed to justify and at best could only palliate." It is strange to find pessimism in a romantic setting; strange, too, to find a paganism which is so little capable of ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... them so. Now, however, I intend to be stupidly prosy, with malice aforethought, and without one mitigating circumstance, except, perchance, it be the temptations of that above-mentioned ambitious little devil to palliate ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... in practical effect whenever he ran counter to the predilections and passions of his countrymen. Gladstone succeeded when he attacked the Irish Church, and denounced the abominations of Turkish misrule: he failed when he tried to palliate his blunders in Egypt, and to force Home Rule down the throat of the "Predominant Partner." Bright succeeded when he pleaded for the Repeal of the Corn Laws and the extension of the Suffrage: he failed when he opposed the Crimean War, and lost his seat when he protested ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... that perhaps the one sin might palliate the other. You know, aunt, no young lady, let her be ever so ill-disposed, can marry two objectionable young men,—at the ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... made; and he went on just the same at cards. However, he never blamed his companions, or lost his temper when his plan of action was defeated. He certainly talked incessantly, but it was always to explain or to palliate some point in the game, and the eternal repetitions, delivered in the same eloquent and persuasive tone, provoked a smile from ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... high-minded and somewhat proud-spirited woman. All these things I turned over in my mind, and instead of suffering myself to feel incensed against her for the unkind note she had written to me, I endeavoured to find excuses for her, and to palliate her fault all that I could. What troubled me most, was the almost insurmountable barrier that she had thrown between us. 'Do not attempt to answer this; do not attempt to see me;' were strong positions; and my pride rose up, and forbade ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur
... peasant households had no longer any land of their own, and of those who still possessed land a large proportion had no longer the cattle and horses necessary to till and manure their allotments. No doubt M. Witte was beginning to perceive his mistake, and had done something to palliate the evils by improving the system of collecting the taxes and abolishing the duty on passports, but such merely palliative remedies could have little effect. While a few capitalists were amassing gigantic ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... of being a young man, which the honorable gentleman has, with such spirit and decency charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny; but content myself with wishing,—that I may be one of those whose follies cease with their youth; and not of that number who are ignorant ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... the truthful historian to narrate facts, not to palliate or extenuate the conduct of the various actors. Whether Ernest did right or wrong, at least he did it; he wrote a playful social for Monday's 'Morning Intelligence,' and carried it into the office on Sunday afternoon himself, ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... tortured subjects, nor strips them of their last rag and turns them out to shiver in the road. The despotism of Louis XVI. was not the despotism of Philippe le Bel, or of Nadir Shah, or of Caligula; but it was bad enough to justify the French Revolution, and to palliate even its horrors. If an appeal be made to the intense attachments which exist between wives and their husbands, exactly as much may be said of domestic slavery. It was quite an ordinary fact in Greece and Rome for slaves to submit to death ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... Eugene's wife, she could freely plunge into gayeties which were sparingly allowed her at home. I know she does not love Eugene; she never did; and, assuredly, his future is dark enough. I believe, if she could reform him she would not; his excesses sanction, or at least in some degree palliate, hers. Oh, Beulah, I see no ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... Toryism was Whiggish. And the Whig as a wit never expressed his political point more clearly than in Pope's line which ran: "The right divine of kings to govern wrong." It will be apparent, when I deal with that period, that I do not palliate the real unreason in divine right as Filmer and some of the pedantic cavaliers construed it. They professed the impossible ideal of "non-resistance" to any national and legitimate power; though I cannot see that even that was so servile ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... In answer.— He endeavours to palliate his purposes by familiar instances of cruelty to birds, &c.—Farther characteristic reasonings in support of his wicked designs. The passive condition to which he wants to ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... thought I was free, but in fact I was bound," he acknowledged. "The words I spoke on the steps that night escaped me unaware. I was tortured by jealousy, and tempted by love. I had no right to speak them then; nothing can excuse or palliate the weakness which allowed me to. I should have waited until I could come to you untrammeled—as now. I attempt no justification of my madness, Princess. I have no excuse but my love, and can only sue for pardon. You will forgive me, sweetheart"—using the old word tenderly—"for the sake ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... before a vision like this. All the journals approve, palliate, or keep silent; nobody dares offer resistance.[31130] Property as well as lives belong to whoever wants to take them. At the barriers, at the markets, on the boulevard of the Temple, thieves, decked with the tricolor ribbon, stop people as they pass along, seize ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... and could not be undone now. It was mean, perhaps, to send him another girl's picture, but, considering that the whole world acknowledged that Mabel Moreley was far the better-looking of the two, did not this sacrifice of vanity palliate the offence? It seemed, after all, a very remote possibility that any harm could come to the other girl through this freak of hers. She could not, of course, have sent her own picture, and this was the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... neither go forward nor return in safety; and the nobles, who needed little persuasion, were able to convince the more earnest pilgrims that Philip's offer must of necessity be accepted, though Alexius III was on friendly terms with the Pope and had been expected to assist the Crusade. To palliate the flagrant treachery a promise was exacted from the pretender that, when installed as Emperor, he would help in the conquest of Egypt ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... principles of his utterances were. He never posed as anything but an aristocrat, and while he whimsically admitted that in the present day to be one was an enormous disadvantage for a man who wished to get on, he endeavored to palliate the misfortune by lucid explanation of what the duties of such a status were, and of the logical advantages which an appreciation of the truths of cause and effect might bring to mankind. Down in his own country he was considered the coming man. He thundered at the people and had ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... are not born but damned into the world. Criminals, in consequence, have come not to be so much condemned as pitied, their perversion of character is regarded not so much in terms of iniquity as of disease, and as we thus condone transgression in others, so in ourselves we palliate our wrong. We regard it as the unfortunate but hardly blamable consequence of temperament or training. Our fathers, who thought that the trouble was the devil in them, used to deal sternly with themselves. Like Chinese Gordon, fighting a besetting sin in private prayer, they used ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... than the dread of having it; and the world seems agreed patiently to submit to this tyrant, lest a worse should come in its room." It is not difficult to account for such absurdity, though it be quite impracticable to palliate it; and what is worse, from its being founded on something more congenial to human nature than even prejudice, it is almost impossible to remove it. A single quotation more from the same author, so much in repute among his ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... under Kawabe no Nie fared differently. Japanese annals attempt to palliate his discomfiture by a story about the abuse of a flag of truce, but the fact seems to have been that Kawabe no Nie was an incompetent and pusillanimous captain. He and his men were all killed or taken prisoners, the only redeeming feature being the intrepidity of a Japanese officer, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... who can forget it?) how sheep, more destructive than the Dragon of Wantley in those days, began to devour men and fields and houses. The same process is at this day going on in the Highlands, though under different circumstances; some which palliate the evil, and some which aggravate ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... country, as mine has, and when your skin is mottled with the scars of a score of well-fought fields, you will find your soft theories corrected by hard experience, and you will know that in the case of a sentinel steeping upon, his post there can be no mitigating circumstances; that nothing can palliate such flagrant and dangerous neglect, involving the safety of the whole army; a crime that martial law and custom have very necessarily made punishable by death," said the ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... theology and metaphysics are concerned, these defences are plausible. The Sakti is identified with Prakriti or with the Maya of the Advaita philosophy and defined as the energy, coexistent with Brahman, which creates the world. But attempts to palliate the ceremonial, such as the argument that it is a consecration and limitation of the appetites because they may be gratified only in the service of the goddess, are not convincing. Nor do the Saktas, when able to profess ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... try to palliate your conduct, Gascoyne," said Mr Mason, earnestly. "The blackness of your sin is too great to be deepened or lightened by what men may have said of you. You are a pirate. ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... in mind. If you are more ready to believe an evil than a good report of others, be sure that all is not right with you, and more especially, if you feel an inward pleasure in convicting them of wrong. A truly good mind is always grieved at improper conduct in others, and ever seeks to palliate, rather than to judge with severity. It gives but slow credence to evil reports. Truly regard the good of all around you, and there will be no need of placing a bridle ...
— Who Are Happiest? and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... sudden access of courage, born possibly of her despair, she sought neither to attempt denial nor palliate the fact. ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... these to be seized by the secret police, and it is only since his death that one or two copies have again made their appearance at Moscow (where the original is kept) and St. Petersburg. From one of these M. Herzen made his transcript. They fail to palliate any of Catharine's crimes, or in the least to brighten her reputation, and add nothing to our knowledge of her sagacity and her administrative talents; but they are yet not without very considerable personal interest and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... laws of optics and ingenuities of composition which may palliate this effect, but the fact remains that the floor should be covered in a way which will leave the mind tranquil and the eye satisfied, and this is hard to accomplish with what is commonly known as a ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... a defence of his relation, sir Richard Greenville, whom lord Clarendon has shown in a form very unamiable. So much is urged in this apology to justify many actions that have been represented as culpable, and to palliate the rest, that the reader is reconciled for the greater part; and it is made very probable that Clarendon was by personal enmity disposed to think the worst of Greenville, as Greenville was also very willing to think the worst of Clarendon. These pieces were published ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... are too good,—too kind. Do not help me to excuse myself,—do not teach me to palliate my pitiable weakness. It is a grievous, a shameful, a disgraceful thing, for a woman to allow herself to love any man who gives her no evidence of affection, and shows her beyond all doubt that he is utterly ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... their EVERY-DAY character, manners, habits, etc. One must see people undressed to judge truly of their shape; when they are dressed to go abroad, their clothes are contrived to conceal, or at least palliate the defects of it: as full-bottomed wigs were contrived for the Duke of Burgundy, to conceal his hump back. Happy those who have no faults to disguise, nor weaknesses to conceal! there are few, if any such; but unhappy those who know little ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... of later and more degenerated ages. What is more revolting—what proves a deeper degeneracy of human nature, than horrid crimes conceived in the bosom of cowardly effeminacy? If such crimes are to be portrayed by the poet, he must neither seek to palliate them, nor to mitigate our horror and aversion of them. Moreover, by bringing the sacrifice of Iphigenia thus immediately before us, the poet has succeeded in lessening the indignation which otherwise the foul and painful ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... radiant with charms. Probity in thought and deed being the distinguishing quality of this extraordinary man's mind, while he felt that a sort of disgrace ought to attach to his idleness on the occasion mentioned, the last thought that could occur would be to attempt to palliate ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... necessary to endeavor to palliate Franklin's error in failing to detect the duplicity of de Vergennes. On the contrary, it would give a less agreeable idea of him had he been ready to believe so ill of an old and tried friend. For years Franklin had been the ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... to Prout that he might have been unfair to the culprit, who had not striven to deny or palliate his offense. He sent for Harrison and Craye, reprehending them very gently for the tone they had adopted to a repentant sinner, and when they returned to their study, they used the language of despair. They then made headlong inquisition through the house, driving the fags to ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... great poets shall be kept out of such editions as are meant for general reading, and that the pedant-pride which now perpetuates it as an essential part of those poets shall no longer have its way. At the end of the ends such things do defile, they do corrupt. We may palliate them or excuse them for this reason or that, but that is the truth, and I do not see why they should not be dropped from literature, as they were long ago dropped from the talk of decent people. The literary histories might keep ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the art of government discovered by the wonderful sagacity of modern statesmen; who have found out, that it is easier to palliate than to cure; and that the people maybe quieted by political soporificks, while diseases are preying upon them, while their strength decays, and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... of their accusers, and to charge nothing upon their adversaries but what they were sure to make good. This example has been ill followed of later times; the Papists since the Reformation using all arts to palliate the absurdities of their tenets, and loading the Reformers with a thousand calumnies; the consequence of which has been only a more various, wide, and inveterate separation. It is the same thing in civil schisms: a Whig ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift |
