"Venial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... chapel. A sense of unworthiness came over him. As the short, sharp stroke of the bell smote upon his ear, he fell upon his knees, and rested his forehead against the wall. Old words of prayer rose familiarly to his lips. He remembered his sins of omission and commission—venial faults they would seem, to many of us, but black and heinous in pure-hearted Dino's eyes—and pleaded passionately for their forgiveness. And then the words turned into a prayer for the welfare of his friend Brian and the woman that Brian loved. Dino was one ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... assertion of Malone), that Sir Thomas Lucy had deer, which Shakespeare might have been concerned in stealing. I also, in the same place (vol. i. p. xcv.), showed, from several authorities, how common and how venial offence it was considered in the middle of the reign of Elizabeth. Looking over some MSS. of that time, a few weeks since, I met with a very singular and confirmatory piece of evidence, establishing that in the year 1585, ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various
... came to see me. He was remorseful and miserable enough, and I think his perplexity was quite sincere. If there had been an intrigue with a woman of her own class, an infatuation, an affair, he said, he could understand. But anything so venial and accidental—He shook his head slowly back and forth. He assured me that he was not at all himself on that fateful evening, and that when he recovered himself he would have sent Ruzenka away, making proper provision for her, of course. It was ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... forgot her past dislike; she thought only of this, the simple good man, contrasted with the showy and fickle-hearted—true metal against glittering tinsel. His very weaknesses seemed homely and venial. He was of her own world, akin to the things which deep down in her soul she knew she must love to the last. It is to the credit of the man's insight that he saw the mood and took pains ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... constituted of the righteous and the great sinners, would be consigned immediately after the first judgment, the one to the Elysium, and the other to the Phlegethon, where they were to remain until the second or general judgment; while the souls of less venial sinners, constituting the greater mass of mankind, before being permitted to enter the Elysium would be compelled to suffer the expiatory punishments of the Metempsychosis, or in the upper region, or "smoky row" of ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... extricate him; and the accumulating pile of debts of honour and of trade, which would have bent to earth any other, was supported by him with a light spirit and tameless hilarity; while his company was so necessary at the tables and assemblies of the rich, that his derelictions were considered venial, and he himself received ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... a mantle of gloom, Deep sorrow sits brooding all round our sweet home; The soft venial zephyrs come sighing along, The streamlets are murm'ring a sad, ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower
... to save money enough to make a purchase. He never stole himself, though his association with street boys, whose principles are not always very strict on this point, had accustomed him to regard theft as a venial fault, provided it was not found out. For his own part, however, he did not care to run the risk of detection. Though he had cut himself off from his old home, he still felt that he should not like to have the report reach home that he had been ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... befriended by him, as to have his presence in the tiring-house, to prompt us aloud, stamp at the book-holder, swear for our properties, curse the poor tireman, rail the music out of tune, and sweat for every venial trespass we commit, as some author would, if he had such fine enghles as we. Well, ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... played her great scene, she had made her point, and now she had her eye at the hole in the curtain and she was watching the house! But she blushed as she perceived his smile, and her blush, which was beautiful, made her fault venial. ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... yesterday, a vague, unutterable dread of having offended you pours grief on the life of feeling which you had made so sweet and so rich. The lightest veil that comes between two souls sometimes grows to be a brazen wall. There are no venial crimes in love! If you have the very spirit of that noble sentiment, you must feel all its pangs, and we must be unceasingly careful not to fret each other by ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... mental horizon, and in its possible bearing on the destinies of a race is far more dangerous than even total blindness to the course of human history and endeavour; and yet it is difficult to question the popular verdict that to know nothing of gravitation though ridiculous is venial, while to know nothing of Ananias is an offence which can never ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... up money were accounted lawful, how indirect soever, and extortion was publicly protest. Murder was reckoned but a venial trespass, and was boasted ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... life on the Piazza di San Marco, when Alfieri was crossing the sierras on his Andalusian horse, and devouring a frugal meal of rice in solitude. Goldoni glided through life an easy man, with genial, venial thoughts; with a clear, gay, gentle temper; a true sense of what is good and just; and a heart that loved diffusively, if not too warmly. Many were the checks and obstacles thrown on his path; but round them or above them he passed nimbly, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... the least deviation from precise correctness, the most venial trippings, the smallest inattention paid to doubtful rules and equivocal positions of criticism, inflames their anger, and calls forth their invectives. Regardless of the sage maxims of Cicero, Quintilian, and Horace, they not only disdain the sober rules which their ancient brethren have ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... getting into favor, to go and spoil it all in that unhappy way. Now that I had become acquainted with their style of singing, the supposed fib, about which there had been such a pother, seemed a very venial offense compared with my attempt to lead the singing. Nevertheless, when the concert was over, not a word was said on the subject by any one, though I had quite expected to be taken at once to the magisterial chamber to hear some dreadful ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... and I and the sisters should be thankful that during our brief stay on earth this sanctuary has fallen to our lot, and this possibility of a holy life. We must take every advantage of it, thanking Heaven if our stay be long enough for us to repent of our sins and obtain indulgence for our venial shortcomings. It is wicked to desire to shorten our lives. It is wicked to desire anything which is not the will of God. We are here to live, to watch and to pray—not to complain and ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... Except by a special privilege of divine grace, man, even though he be in the state of sanctifying grace, is unable to avoid venial sin ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... to adopt a policy of far greater secrecy and silence. If, however, we remember that Campion intended his paper to be published under quite different circumstances, we can see that he at least hardly deserves the reproach of being contentious, or if he does, his failing was venial when we consider the tastes of the age. The immediate result of the publication was without question ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... venial sins to expiate, what hope was there left for men of ordinary earthly passions ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... moral courage, to tell Lewis that cowardice and weakness lay in that very yielding, in the fear which led him into new sin sooner than to face the consequences of former misdeeds,—misdeeds more venial than that now proposed. It was not the doctor of whom Percy stood in such awe half so much as his parents, especially his mother. It is more than possible that he would have gone to the former and made confession of past offences rather than continue in such bondage ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... prove the opposite, that Poe was not expelled in disgrace from the University of Virginia, but bore himself well there as a student and a man; that he deliberately went to work and procured his being dropped from the rolls of West Point by building up with venial faults the requisite sum of "demerits," after having repeatedly and in vain sought permission to withdraw from the control of a system of discipline so unsuited to his temperament; that, so far from being intemperate, a single glass ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... point of morality and decorum as was his course of life while under the roof of Madame ——, it was (with pain I am forced to confess) venial in comparison with the strange, headlong career of licence to which, when weaned from that connection, he so unrestrainedly, and, it may be added, defyingly abandoned himself. Of the state of his mind on leaving England, I have already endeavoured to convey some idea; and among the feelings that ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... shade was denied them as long as they refrained from taking the prescribed ritual bath in the spring that flowed out from its roots, the waters of which rose at once for those whose uncleanness was of a venial character and could be removed forthwith, while others had to wait seven days for the water to come up. Accordingly, Abraham bade the three men lean against the trunk of the tree. Thus he would soon learn ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... to creep inwards from the court of the Gentiles to holier places. The parasite grows very quickly, and Christ had to deal with it more than once to keep down its growth. The sellers of doves and changers of money into the sacred shekel were venial offenders compared with many in the Church, and the race is not extinct. If Christ were to come to His house to-day, in bodily form, who doubts that He would begin, as He did before, by driving the traders out of His temple? How many 'most respectable' usages and people ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... and gratitude, not his ill- humour and caprice. Careless fellow as I am, I am not so indifferent, Mrs. Bounderby, as to be regardless of this vice in your brother, or inclined to consider it a venial offence.' ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... enough remained to satisfy him that an attempt to arrest Holden had been made. For the cause, he was at first at a loss; for, though he had heard of the disturbance at the conference, he hardly supposed that an offence which he regarded as so venial, would have drawn along such serious consequences. But when he heard that generally assigned as the reason, having no words of his own to express his astonishment, he was obliged to resort ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... indeed was not strictly true, as it had been arranged that the cost should be paid per gun; but there was a vacancy still, and Ralph the heir, being quite willing to pay for his cousin, thought no harm to cover his generosity under a venial falsehood. The disinherited one, however, declined the offer, with many thanks. "There is nothing, old fellow, I wouldn't do for you, if I knew how," said the happy heir. Whereupon the Norfolk Ralph unconsciously resolved that he would accept nothing,—or ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... desired to repeat the experiment till he succeeds. General Macaulay's fastidious nature led him to take my father's line regarding your uncle, and my youthful soul was often vexed by the constant reprimands for venial transgressions. But the great sin was the idle reading, which was a thorn in my father's side that never was extracted. In truth, he really acknowledged to the full your uncle's abilities, and felt that if he could only add his own morale, his unwearied industry, his ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... reality you could not receive much prejudice: it was an innocent device, though I confess it had a face of guiltiness—it was at most an artifice which love contrived- -and errors which love produces have ever been accounted venial. At least think it is punishment enough that I have lost what in my heart I hold most dear, that to your cruel indignation I have offered up this beauty, and with her my peace and quiet; nay, all my ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... you; it is not that I still love you, for I cannot love the woman I no longer respect. I do not hate you; but I do sincerely pity you, and humbly, and fervently do I pray that you may, ere too late, see the errors of your conduct. You, by your own confession, deem coquetry a venial error; can that be such, from which come such cruel and mischievous results. But no more. I forgive you most freely, and shall ever fervently pray that you may see and feel how inimical to peace here, as well as hereafter, is such conduct ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... they are told so by every magistrate who cares about the peace of his district. The people, seeing how much we expect from the Thanadar, and how little we give him, submit to his demands for contribution without a murmur, and consider almost any demand venial from a man so employed and paid. They are confounded at our inconsistency, and say, where they dare to speak their minds, 'We see you giving high salaries and high prospects of advancement to men who have nothing on earth to do but to collect your revenues ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... must not talk in this Manner, yet I believe it may be one of those Sins which the Church of Rome holds to be venial, or ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding
... when he spoke to them. Weakness of the flesh and fornication appeared to him the most monstrous of sins, and he would be very angry if I dared to assert that, in my estimation, they were the most venial of faults. His sermons were crammed with passages from the Greek authors, which he translated into Latin. One day I ventured to remark that those passages ought to be translated into Italian because women did not understand Latin any more than Greek, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... remarking, if only by way of contrast between these two opposite houses, that while Madame Bernstein and her guests—bishop, dignitaries, noblemen, and what not—were gambling or talking scandal, or devouring champagne and chickens (which I hold to be venial sin), or doing honour to her ladyship the king's favourite, the Countess of Yarmouth-Walmoden, our country friends in their lodgings knelt round their table, whither Mr. Brian the coachman came as silently as his creaking shoes would let him, whilst Mr. Lambert, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... been intended for the popular personification of evil. Implacable hate, patient cunning, and a sleepless refinement of device to inflict the extremest anguish on an enemy, these things are evil; and, although venial in a slave are not to be forgiven in a tyrant; although redeemed by much that ennobles his defeat in one subdued, are marked by all that dishonours his conquest in the victor. Milton's Devil as a moral being is as far superior to his God, as one who perseveres in some purpose which he has conceived ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... And the queen of rivers beholding them in the predicament, asked them, 'Why look ye so dejected? Ye dwellers in heaven, is everything right with you?' Those celestials, the Vasus, answered her, saying, 'O queen of rivers, we have been cursed, for a venial fault, by the illustrious Vasishtha in anger. The foremost of excellent Rishis, Vasishtha, had been engaged in his twilight adorations and seated as he was, he could not be seen by us. We crossed him in ignorance. Therefore, in wrath he hath cursed us, saying, Be ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... she was so young, so innocent, so unaware of the complications of existence. How could she understand the temptations that assail a young man in the heyday of life, to whom many indulgences appear permissible or venial, which to her limited and innocent soul would seem unpardonable sins? To live even for a few years with a stainless nature like that of Lucy, in whom there was not even so much knowledge as would make the approaches of vice comprehensible, is a new kind of education ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... first on her husband's monument, while she has nobly abstained from telling those things that other persons should have supplied to the narrative. I have heard her accused of an over-anxiety to be admired; and something of the sort was discernible in society: it was a weakness as venial as it was purely superficial. Away from society, she was as truthful and simple a woman as I have ever met,—was as faithful a friend as the world has produced,—using that unreserved directness towards those whom she regarded with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... contended for have nothing whatever in common with the undertaking of Grotius. All that philosophy of right and wrong which has become famous, or infamous, under the name of Casuistry, had its origin in the distinction between Mortal and Venial Sin. A natural anxiety to escape the awful consequences of determining a particular act to be mortally sinful, and a desire, equally intelligible, to assist the Roman Catholic Church in its conflict with Protestantism ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... Abbot of Sheering had been struck by his literal way of accepting all beliefs, in the manner of a past time when the world had trembled at the near certainty of the Last Judgment, expiating its misdeeds by barefooted pilgrimages to Jerusalem, and its venial faults by cruel macerations of ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... Sidwell cast frequent glances at her brother, in whom a shrewder eye could have divined conflict of feelings—disgust at the glorification of Chilvers and involuntary pleasure in the successive defeats of his own conqueror in Philosophy. Buckland's was by no means an ignoble face; venial malice did not ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... agreement on this point. Clement of Alexandria said that when the seed had been sown the field must be left till harvest. But it may be concluded that, as a rule, the Church was inclined to regard intercourse during pregnancy as at most a venial sin, provided there was no danger of abortion. Augustine, Gregory the Great, Aquinas, Dens, for instance, seem to be of this mind; for a few, indeed, it is no sin at all.[11] Among animals the rule is simple and uniform; as soon as the female is impregnated at the period of oestrus she absolutely ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... cubits of brick walls; and, humiliating as this may appear, it sits lightly on the majority, since, even the brawlers for liberty, forgetting "the air they breathe," are often to be found within its pale; but in this case they also forget, that being in legal debt is less venial than many other sins, since it cannot be cleared by any appeals to argument, or settled by shades of opinion. Subterfuge, lying, and loss of liberty, are not all the miseries of a conscious debtor: in the world he resembles a prisoner at large; he walks many ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 277, October 13, 1827 • Various
... and to support them in venial errors Possible to do, only because we see that it has been done Repose in the other world, "Repos ailleurs" Soldiers enough to animate the good and terrify the bad To work, ever to work, was the primary law of his nature When persons of ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... the female slave under similar circumstances. She is not a less useful member of society than before. If shame be attached to her conduct, it is such shame as would be elsewhere felt for a venial impropriety. She has not impaired her means of support, nor materially impaired her character, or lowered her station in society; she has done no great injury to herself, or any other human being. Her offspring is not a ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... consequences—in fact, invite them. But Breckon forbore for two reasons: one, that he had already appeared before the judge with the confession of having possibly made an unclerical joke to his younger daughter; the other, that the judge might not consider levity towards the elder so venial; and though Breckon wished to be both punished and pardoned, in the final analysis, perhaps, he most wished to be pardoned. Without pardon he could see no way to repair the wrong he had done. Perhaps he wished even to retrieve himself in the girl's eyes, or ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and then tell you—nothing! God bless them, innocent souls! No need for these elaborate preparations. Yet what contrition, what sorrow, what love they pour forth over some simple imperfections, where even a Jansenist cannot detect the shadow of a venial sin! No wonder that my curate declares that we have material in Ireland to make it again a wonder to the world,—an Island of Saints once more! But something is wanting. He does not know what, nor ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... and he quotes Horace, who tells us we should impute such venial errors to a pardonable inadvertency; and, as I recollect, Addison makes another very just remark, that the ancients, who were actuated by a spirit of candour, not of cavilling, invented a variety of figures of speech, on purpose to palliate little errors ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... signifies by derivation, "the sharpener of the young" (narthex, nearous thegein), but the best authorities were against it. Seneca is indignant with the savage who will "butcher" a young learner because he hesitates at a word—a venial fault indeed, one would think, when we remember what must have been the aspect of a Roman book, written as it was in capitals, almost without stops, and with little or no distinction between the words. And Quintilian ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... she had repulsed him; but that, he felt, was what he deserved for entering into an alliance against her with her venial father. He was glad now that he had acquiesced in her dismissal of him, since to have stood firm and broken her to his will would have brought disaster upon both of them. He felt that she had not wholly escaped him, after ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... t. 2, p. 147, and Bollandus ad 21 Jan. pp. 563 & 564. Nicholas a Lyra and Ribera cannot be persuaded that St. Timothy ever deserved such a censure, unless we understand it only of his flock. The others say, he might have fallen into some venial remissness in not reprehending the vices of others with sufficient vigor; which fault he repaired, upon this admonition, with such earnestness, as to have given occasion to his martyrdom, in 97. He was succeeded in the see of Ephesus ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... blinded by the gross illusion of the flesh and the darkness of human understanding, they are unable to comprehend the hideous malice of mortal sin. They reason thus because they are unable to comprehend that even venial sin is of such a foul and hideous nature that even if the omnipotent Creator could end all the evil and misery in the world, the wars, the diseases, the robberies, the crimes, the deaths, the murders, on condition that he allowed a single venial sin to pass ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... making due allowance for venial faults, I may safely claim that I have been modest, and in this respect, at all events, I have not come short of the St. Sulpice standard. I am not afflicted with literary vanity. I do not fall into the error which distinguishes the literary views of our day. I am ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... should not be forgotten, and that their commemoration in the office should remind priests and the faithful of those servants of God, whom the Church wishes ever to honour. I have said the order given for commemoration in the Ordo should be followed; but not to follow this order does not exceed a venial sin. Even the deliberate omission of a commemoration in Lauds or Vespers is not a violation of ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... to you. I believe I drank too much wine last night at Hurstbourne; I know not how else to account for the shaking of my hand to-day. You will kindly make allowance therefore for any indistinctness of writing, by attributing it to this venial error. ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... that "the man with the dogs" had some years before given her, once for all, a lesson in fidelity, and that for a mere trifle, and that for a venial sin! He had surprised her for allowing herself to be kissed by some gallant; that was all! He had not taken any notice, but when the man was gone he brought two of his hounds ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... "Justitia et Misericordia!" Then followed the culprits, to the number of three hundred, each with his godfather by his side, and his large wax candle lighted in his hand. Those whose offences have been most venial walk first; all are bareheaded, and barefooted. After this portion, who wore only the dress of black and white serge, came those who carried the Sanbenitos; then those who wore the Samarias, with the flames reversed. Here there was a ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... peace," which were commonly regarded as sufficient to procure the immediate readmission of the offender (e), a practice which led to great abuse. One of the effects of the development of the penitential discipline was the establishment of a distinction between mortal and venial sins (f), the former of which were, in general, acts involving unchastity, shedding of blood, and apostasy, according to the current interpretation ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... as by force of instinct drawn, Or by necessity constrained, they live Dependent upon man, those in his fields, These at his crib, and some beneath his roof; They prove too often at how dear a rate He sells protection. Witness, at his foot The spaniel dying for some venial fault, Under dissection of the knotted scourge; Witness the patient ox, with stripes and yells Driven to the slaughter, goaded as he runs To madness, while the savage at his heels Laughs at the frantic sufferer's fury ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... said I am not here to excuse myself or inculpate others. I ask you but to extend to one, whose fault was committed under strong temptation, that mercy, which even you yourself, Lord King, must one day supplicate at a higher tribunal, and for faults, perhaps, less venial." ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... the difference in our respective stations aboard the Julia; or else the planters must have considered him some illustrious individual, for certain inscrutable reasons, going incog. With this idea of him, his undisguised disinclination for work became venial; and entertaining such views of extending their business, they counted more upon his ultimate value to them as a man of science than as a ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... church, with the rites of which the brethren willingly complied, nor yet to the state; and it may be doubted whether they were in any respect incompatible with private morals; but no innovations in religion were regarded as tolerable or venial under the rigid administration of Elizabeth; and the leaders of the new heresy were taken into custody, and compelled to recant. Some anabaptists were apprehended about the same time, who acknowledged their error at Paul's Cross, bearing faggots,—the tremendous ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... of the Deity after six days' labor, to the rib of Adam, the garden of Eden, the trees of life and of knowledge, the speaking serpent, the forbidden fruit, and the condemnation pronounced against human kind for the venial offence of their first progenitors. [28] The God of Israel was impiously represented by the Gnostics as a being liable to passion and to error, capricious in his favor, implacable in his resentment, meanly jealous of his superstitious worship, and confining ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... saints; any known sin given way to, and entertained without controlment, without wrestling against it, hindereth the acceptation of your solemn approaches. If your heart regard iniquity, shall God hear? Psal. lxvi. 18. No, believe it, the least sin that you may judge at first venial, and then give it toleration and indulgence, shall separate between God's face and you. Your prayers are abomination, because of such an idol perked up in the heart beside God, that getteth the honour and worship due to him, and God must answer you according ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... he could altogether account for that Captain Filbert should not desert her post. The idea had an element of imitation oddly personal; he could not bear to reflect upon it. It may be wondered whether in any flight of venial imagination Arnold saw himself in a parallel situation with a lady. I am sure he did not. It may be considered, however, that among mirages there are unaccountable resemblances—resemblances without shape or form. He might fix his gaze, at all events, upon ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... with which I dictate these Things to you; whom after those Endearments which have passed between us, I must in some Respects estimate as my Wife: For tho' the Omission of the Service was a Sin; yet, as I have told you, it was a venial One, of which I have truly repented, as I hope you have; and also that you have continued the wholsome Office of reading good Books, and are improved in your Psalmody, of which I shall have a speedy Trial: For I purpose to give you a Sermon ...
— An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews • Conny Keyber
... such things. Let us rather discuss this omelette, a dish worthy of the gods, and the bacon in it, the savour of which might imperil a saint. Sister Gabrielle, you tempt us this evening to commit the sin of gluttony, which is the most venial of all sins. And I will bear the burden ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... not the Impressionists, with their power of creating works of art that stand on their own feet, bear in their arms a new age? For if the venial sin of Impressionism is a grotesque theory and its justification a glorious practice, its historical importance consists in its having taught people to seek the significance of art in the work itself, instead of hunting for it in the emotions ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... of fact his triumph took place in 44. Caratacus was brought to Rome in 51. Perhaps Tacitus regards this in itself as a 'triumph', or else he makes a venial mistake. ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... with which the question was enforced deprived her of the last vestige of dignity and self-assertion. She relapsed into the mental condition of a juvenile culprit undergoing correction. Now that she was caught, she no longer thought of her offense as venial. The grasp of her captor seemed to put an end to all possible hairsplitting on that point, and prove that it was nothing more nor less than stealing, and a sense of guilt left her without any moral support against her fright. She ...
— Hooking Watermelons - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... it were better for sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fall, and for all the many millions who are upon it to die of starvation in extremist agony, so far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one willful untruth, though it harmed no one, or steal one poor farthing without excuse." (Anglican Difficulties, p. 190.)] The valuation that ignores all natural goods but one is ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... finger and thumb, shows the epicure, not excited by the voracity of hunger, but evidently aiming to protract his enjoyment. The exclamation which follows savours of vanity; but when his youth is recollected, this will be deemed a venial error, and it must also be considered that his few faults were probably compensated by a constellation of excellencies. This poem has been imitated, (I will not say successfully, for its beautiful simplicity is in fact inimitable,) by one of the greatest statesmen and classical scholars of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various
... the first origin of such instinct were the fear of consequences or the love of approbation; it is quite another—the inward condemnation of something which "the deceitfulness of sin" is able to excuse, and which the world at large would regard as permissible or at least venial. Even if inherited use has its full play, there is still a something wanted before the one can be got into (or out of) the other. Why, again, are savages prone to imagine natural phenomena to be caused or actuated by "spirits"? Surely it is because there is consciously ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... first form it appeared, together with some minor poems and translations, in a volume of "Miscellanies" published by Tonson's rival, Lintot. Its motif was the theft by a certain Lord Petre of one of the tresses of Miss Arabella or "Belle" Fermor, and this venial larceny having somewhat strained the relations of the two families concerned, Pope was invited to compose matters by invocation of the Muse. The poem in its first "Miscellany" form consisted of no more than ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... one's income. Hence the temptation to lessen the burden of the tax bill by making false statements is considerable, and doubtless a good deal of deception is practised. There are many people who are too honest to cheat individuals, but still consider it a venial sin ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... means) "Shining." That Shakespeare knew everything is much more certain than that miracles do not happen; and he certainly knew Mr Arnold's case if not Mr Arnold, when he introduced a certain main episode in A Midsummer Night's Dream. To frown on Oberon and caress Bottom is venial compared with the dismissal of the Bible as popular legend, and the implicit belief in ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... a point up to which a concession made to friendship is venial. But we are not bound to be careless of our own reputation, nor ought we to regard the esteem of our fellow-citizens as an instrument of such affairs as devolve upon us,—an esteem which it is base to conciliate [footnote: Latin, colligere, ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... given of the absolute community of interests which she recognized as existing between them. She was greatly comforted when Ida, instead of appearing shocked, declared that she sympathized with the culprit more than she blamed her, and that her misconduct was venial. ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... Testament entirely; another contending for the obligation of its law, in all its parts, throughout its whole extent, and over every one who sought acceptance with God. Upon the two latter subjects, a natural, perhaps, and venial, but a fruitless, eager, and impatient curiosity, prompted by the philosophy and by the scholastic habits of the age, which carried men much into bold hypotheses and conjectural solutions, raised, ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... sheep in regard to the other sin is venial blackness. Whether the teller of such a tale as this should say so outright, may be matter of dispute; but, unless he say so, the teller of this tale does not know how to tell his tale truly. Blackness such as that will be all condoned, and the sheep received into almost any flock, ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... folly as this matrimonial leap in the dark, but, once taken, there was satisfaction in the thought that the bride was an earl's daughter. Moreover, she had read of such queer goings on among the British Aristocracy that a wedding at sight was a comparatively venial offense. ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... others of her age, permitted no familiarity with any living being, no sympathies with any other heart, commanded but never indulged, rebuked but never applauded, she must have sunk beneath the severities imposed on her by her father, but for the venial disobedience committed in the pursuit of the solitary pleasure procured for her by her lute. Vainly, in her hours of study, did she read the fierce anathemas against love, liberty, and pleasure, poetry, painting, and music, gold, silver, and precious stones, which ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... virtues, such as forgiveness, liberal construction, gentleness and mercy to the faults of others, and the remembrance of our own imperfections and advantages, he bade us not inquire too closely into the venial errors of the poor, but finding that they WERE poor, first to relieve and then endeavour - at an ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... which were all the time carried on with impunity, he told himself that interest could be used to make his punishment light. In these hopeful moods it was a necessity of his drama that his transgression of the law should seem venial to him. It was only when he feared the worst that he felt ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... after their deadly sins have been remitted as to the stain and guilt, and as to the everlasting pain that was due to them; but who have on account of those sins still some debt of temporal punishment to pay; as also those souls which leave this world guilty only of venial sins."—"Catholic Belief," page 196 (ed. 1884; imprimateur ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... Induction to "Cynthia's Revels," "as to have his presence in the tiring-house, to prompt us aloud, stamp at the bookholder [or prompter], swear at our properties, curse the poor tireman, rail the musick out of tune, and sweat for every venial trespass we commit as some author would." While, in the Induction to his "Staple of News," Jonson has clearly portrayed himself. "Yonder he is," says Mirth, in reply to some remark touching the poet of the performance, "within—I ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... what has been actually done may have taken his bias from the weight of these considerations, as well as from considerations of a sinister nature. The predetermined adversary, on the other hand, can have been governed by no venial motive whatever. The intentions of the first may be upright, as they may on the contrary be culpable. The views of the last cannot be upright, and must be culpable. But the truth is, that these papers are not addressed to persons falling under either of these characters. They solicit the attention ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... little moment. She had experienced the emotion of it, and just the same would it have been a matter of indifference to her had the dagger pierced Natalie's breast—she was sufficiently a child of the South to consider a murder as only a venial sin, for which ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... difference has been as to the extent or enormity of the sin! By some it has been reckoned as a "deadly sin," punishable by eternal hell fire, if not duly absolved before death; by others it has been held to be only a "venial sin," one that must always be confessed to the priest when coitus is engaged in, and which can be pardoned by the practice of due penance. But, always, it was ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long
... the goodly matter which my readers have just perused, I might be said to go through a course of breaking-in to stand criticism, like a shooting-pony to stand fire. By some of those venial breaches of confidence, which always take place on the like occasions, my private flirtations with the Muse of Fiction became a matter whispered in Miss Fairscribe's circle, some ornaments of which were, I suppose, highly interested in the progress ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... of marriage and its accompanying errors. Women, for no other crime than having followed the dictates of a natural appetite, are driven with fury from the comforts and sympathies of society. It is less venial than murder; and the punishment which is inflicted on her who destroys her child to escape reproach is lighter than the life of agony and disease to which the prostitute is irrecoverably doomed. Has a woman ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Two Grand Festivals," all these being appended to the Introduction and the first chapter, are mere hors d'oeuvres: such "copy" should have been reserved for another edition of "The Modern Egyptians." The substitution of chapters for Nights was perverse and ill-judged as it could be, but it appears venial compared with condensing the tales in a commentary, thus converting the Arabian Nights into Arabian Notes. However, "Arabian Society in the Middle Ages," a legacy left by the "Uncle and Master", and like the tame and inadequate ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... all judged according to their deeds, and those who are incurable are thrust into Tartarus, from which they never come out. Those who have only committed venial sins are first purified of them, and then rewarded for the good which they have done. Those who have committed crimes, great indeed, but not unpardonable, are thrust into Tartarus, but are cast forth at the end of a year by way of ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... experiment upon another society; and found them equally ready to consider it as a venial fault, always incident to a man of quickness and gaiety; till by degrees he began to think himself at liberty to follow the last invitation, and was no longer shocked at the turpitude of falsehood. He made no difficulty to promise his presence at distant places, and if listlessness ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... greatness? Where the change of noble attendance and hospitality into four wheels and some few butterflies? Where the art of dishonesty in practical Machiavelism, in false equivocations? Where the slight account of that filthiness which is but condemned as venial, and tolerated as not unnecessary? Where the skill of civil and honourable hypocrisy in those formal compliments which do neither expect belief from others nor carry any from ourselves? Where' (and here Bishop Hall begins to speak concerning things ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... would drive up in their carriages to take her away. Meanwhile, he added, she was treated with great respect by her fellow-paupers. I could not help thinking, from a few criticisable peculiarities in her talk and manner, that there might have been a mistake on the governor's part, and perhaps a venial exaggeration on the old lady's, concerning her former position in society; but what struck me was the forcible instance of that most prevalent of English vanities, the pretension to aristocratic connection, on one side, and the ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... criticism, not the subtlest misinterpretation, can give us anything like the sensation or the stimulus that results from direct contact with the work itself. As well enjoy the "Moonlight Sonata" through a technical analysis of its form. But this is a venial vice compared with taking your Sonata through the medium of ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... unless, indeed, we may regard them as particularly indifferent to the injuries they inflict on their fellow-men—but, what did we say? their fellow-men?—a railway is not a fellow-man. Surely Jim's sin in robbing a railway must be regarded as a venial one. Honest men do that every day and appear to think nothing of it! Nobody appears to think anything of it. A railway would seem to be the one great unpardonable outlaw of the land, which does good to nobody, and is deemed fair game by everybody who can catch it—napping. But it is not easily ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... smuggling and its decline. A Mr St Aubyn, of Clowance, lamented this decline as symptomatic—'the national fibre's deteriorating, mark my words.' A Mr Trelawny was disposed to agree with him. 'And, after all,' he said, 'the game was a venial one; a kind of sport. Hang it, a Briton must be allowed his sporting instincts!' 'By the same argument, no doubt, you would justify poaching?' put in Sir John, with a twinkle. Mr Trelawny would by no means allow this. 'It would interest me, sir, to hear you define the ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... upon fate, and, with a last subterfuge to hide the enormity of it from her own eyes, upon La Corriveau, whom she would lead on to suggest the crime and commit it!—a course which Angelique tried to believe would be more venial than if it were suggested by herself! less heinous in her own eyes, and less wicked in the sight ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... addressed these harsh and exceedingly bitter words unto his eldest brother and thereby committed a venial sin, the intelligent Savyasaci of calm wisdom, who is ever actuated by the fear of defection from virtue, became very cheerless. The son of the chief of the celestials became filled with remorse and breathing heavily, drew his sword. Seeing this, Krishna asked him, "What ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... where God or Angel Guest With Man, as with his Friend, familiar us'd To sit indulgent, and with him partake Rural repast, permitting him the while Venial discourse unblam'd: I now must change Those Notes to Tragic; foul distrust, and breach Disloyal on the part of Man, revolt And disobedience: On the part of Heav'n Now alienated, distance and distaste, Anger and just rebuke, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... penitent confusion Upon interior peace amidst anxieties Upon discouragement Upon rising after a fall Upon kindliness towards ourselves Upon imperfections The just man falls seven times in the day Upon the purgative way Upon venial sin Upon complicity in the sins of another Upon equivocating Upon solitude Upon vanity Upon the knowledge which puffs up Upon scruples Upon temptations Upon the same subject Thoughts on the Incarnation Upon Confession ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... display of his humour was the subject of prevarication. He seemed never to tire of ringing the changes upon the theme of the lie, its utility, its convenience, and its consequences. Doubtless he chose to dabble in falsehood because it is generally winked at as the most venial of all moral obliquities—a fault which is the most thoroughly universal of all that flesh is heir to. The incident of George Washington and the cherry tree furnished the basis for countless of his anecdotes; he wrung from it ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... Frederick, had ever reached his ears: plenty of it touching John. In fact, Mr. Verner was rather glad to help in shipping John off to some faraway place, for he considered him no credit to Verner's Pride, or benefit to the neighbourhood. Venial sins sat lightly on the conscience of ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Brissotins, with their newly-acquired authority, have vanity, interest, and revenge, to satiate; and there is no reason to suppose that a crime, which should favour these views, would, in their estimation, be considered otherwise than venial. To these are added Sieyes, Louvet, &c. men not only eager to retain their power, but known to have been of the Orleans faction, and who, if they are royalists, are not loyalists, and the last persons ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... such occasions it frequently happened that they imbibed, enough, not only to make them a little exuberant but also quite intoxicated, she thought she must not expect her husband to be different from other men in this respect, as it was at most only a venial offence. But now when his troubles thickened, and his friends one after another left him, and he began to drink more deeply to drown his cares and to stimulate him to meet his difficulties, her partial anxiety deepened ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... him most bitterly, and utterly abominated his deceitful deed, I could not but admit in my heart that the result was put of all proportion to the intent: he had never dreamt of doing me this injury, or indeed any injury at all. Intrinsically the deceit had been quite venial, the reason for it obviously the reason that Raffles had given me. It was quite true that he had spoken of this Lochmaben peerage as a new creation, and of the heir to it in a fashion only applicable to Alick Carruthers. He had given me hints, which I had been too dense to ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... stigma is incurred, however, if a girl should remain unmarried till she arrives at adolescence, but, on the contrary, a higher price is then obtained for her. Sexual licence either before or after marriage is considered a venial offence, but a woman detected in a liaison with a man of one of the lowest castes is turned out of caste. Widow marriage and ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... think of the feelings of the beetles it is our painful duty to crush into nothingness? Not at all. If we have any compunctions, they are quickly absorbed in the pride of our capture. And more often still, as in the present case, we set our foot upon the poor victim by pure accident or venial carelessness. ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... crime can go unpunished.— When now Luzio brings her tidings of her own brother's fate, her disgust at her brother's misconduct is turned at once to scorn for the villainy of the hypocritical Regent, who presumes so cruelly to punish the comparatively venial offence of her brother, which, at least, was not stained by treachery. Her violent outburst imprudently reveals her to Luzio in a seductive aspect; smitten with sudden love, he urges her to quit the convent for ever ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... on the other hand,—the occasional omission of words, whether few or many,—especially that passing from one line to the corresponding place in a subsequent line, which generally results from the proximity of a similar ending,—is a purely venial offence. It is an evidence of carelessness, ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... notorious modesty of the senior service. So shy indeed is our Fleet of praise that I feel my apologies are due to their Chaplain for my perfectly honest commendation of his book. But he seems human enough to pardon the more venial sins. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 28, 1917 • Various
... she felt inclined to admit just then for the sins both of commission and omission—sins that, at another time, when her faculties were fresh and her judgment unbiassed, she might have looked upon as any thing but venial. Ah! Mr. Fullarton, the seed you have scattered so profusely to-night is beginning to bear fruit already you never dreamed of. Beet-root and turnips will not succeed on every soil. It must be long before a remunerative ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... not repress a smile at Belle's association of herself with him in the guilt of the affair. In fact, he rather liked the idea, for it made his own part seem quite venial after all—an error of ignorance like that of the child's—so he said kindly, "Indeed, we did not, and now we'll make amends. You go and see what is needed and let me know, and to-morrow, if you wish, you can take your own place and not any one's ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... of sufficiently ancient lineage, grows venial with the years and, if carried out with adequate ruthlessness or at least success, may quickly find itself invested with grandeur. No one boasts of his own illegitimacy, but most men like it to be known that an ancestress, whose memory is kept green, once enjoyed royal favour. No ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... of crime, And full of felons for all coming time, Your blood's too precious to be lightly spilt In testimony to a venial guilt. Live to get whelpage and preserve a name No praise can sweeten and no lie unshame. Live to fulfill the vision that I see Down the dim vistas of the time to be: A dream of clattering beaks ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... fits of depression, caused or accompanied by compunction for venial or fancied sins, by the fear of death or madness—(the only things he did fear), and by ingrained ineradicable disease. When Boswell speaks of his "striving against evil," "Ay," she writes in the margin, "and against the ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... the abbess, turning casuist in the distress they were under, are held by the confessor of our convent to be either mortal or venial: there is no further division. Now a venial sin being the slightest and least of all sins—being halved—by taking either only the half of it, and leaving the rest—or, by taking it all, and amicably halving it betwixt yourself and another person—in course becomes diluted ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... him. Oh! who could blame her if in so doing she departed from the strict and literal meaning of that vow which had bound her to consider her relations as dead to her? But the fault—if fault it were—was so venial, that to justify it is to invest it with an importance which it would not have possessed save for the frightful results to which it led. You have already heard how foully he was waylaid, how ruthlessly he was murdered! Holy Virgin! ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... imbecile crowd that pronounces judgment on us, that disposes of our honour, that lifts us to the clouds or trails us through the mud. Opinion passed through every phase about Desroches. The shifting event is ever their one measure of praise and blame. A fault which nobody thought more than venial became gradually aggravated in their eyes by a succession of incidents which it was impossible for Desroches either to foresee or to prevent. At first opinion was on his side, and his wife was thought to have carried ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... his difficulty, and that when the note was traced, and the matter became public, he had in a base and cowardly manner allowed Frank to bear the blame. This would have been bad enough in all conscience, although comparatively venial to his deliberate attempt to ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... there is ofttimes a sin even in their histories. We desire no records of such enormities; sins should be accounted new, that so they may be esteemed monstrous. They amit of monstrosity as they fall from their rarity; for men count it venial to err with their forefathers, and foolishly conceive they divide a sin in its society. The pens of men may sufficiently expatiate without these singularities of villainy; for as they increase the hatred of vice in some, so do they enlarge the theory of wickedness in all. And this ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... papers which were specially devoted to graver musings that they served the cause of religion and morality. They were true sons of the Church; and if they did not go far below the surface, nor profess to do more as a rule than satirise follies and censure venial forms of vice, their tone was ever that of Christian moralists. They did no scanty service as mediators, so to say, between religion and the world. This phase of literature lived on later into the century, but it became duller ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... for a venial offence, you forget it is to a man guilty of the same error. I knew your person, from having seen you on the Continent; and finding you disposed to go by the homely name of Sharp, in a moment of thoughtlessness, I took its counterpart, Blunt. A travelling ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... flesh, which is at once his burden and his temptation. He drags it with him and yields to it. He must watch it, check it, repress it, and obey it only at the last extremity. There may be some fault even in this obedience; but the fault thus committed is venial; it is a fall, but a fall on the knees ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... at any rate, such connexions are so common, I might almost say universal, in our slave colonies, that except by the missionaries and a few serious persons, they are considered, if faults at all, so very venial as scarcely to deserve the name of immorality. Mr. Wood knows this colonial estimate of such connexions as well as I do; and, however false such an estimate must be allowed to be, especially When applied to their own conduct by persons of education, pretending to adhere ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince
... who, bettering not with time, Corrupts the strength of heaven-descended Will, And ever weaker grows thro' acted crime, Or seeming-genial venial fault, Recurring and suggesting still! He seems as one whose footsteps halt, Toiling in immeasurable sand, And o'er a weary sultry land, Far beneath a blazing vault, Sown in a wrinkle of the monstrous hill The city sparkles like ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... and walked away to a window, to conceal the paleness of her cheeks. Admiral Bluewater, though perfectly abstemious himself, regarded license with the bottle after dinner, like most men of that age, as a very venial weakness, and he quietly took a seat by the side of Mildred, and ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Glasgow—when it is known that holy men and women were burned alive there for adhering to the principles of the Reformation—when it is known that men and women were imprisoned and whipped every day during the kirk-session's pleasure, for offences now considered venial—when it is known that, for a breach of the seventh commandment, some were carted through the streets, whipped, and thereafter banished from the town; that others, for a violation of the said commandment, were fined and ordained to stand ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... should be set free, that every crystal vase in the house of Vedius should be broken in his presence and that the fish pond should be filled up. Even women inflicted upon their female slaves punishments of the most cruel atrocity for faults of the most venial character. A brooch wrongly placed, a tress of hair ill-arranged, and the enraged matron orders her slave to be lashed and crucified. If her milder husband interferes, she not only justifies the cruelty, but asks in amazement: "What! is a slave so much ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... Jews, he furnished the model for all poems of the kind that followed; their first genuine humorist, he flashes forth his wit like a stream of light suddenly turned on in the dark. That he measured the worth of his productions by the generous meed of praise given by his contemporaries is a venial offense in the time of the troubadours and minnesingers. Charisi was particularly happy in his use of the "mosaic" style, and his short poems and epigrams are most charming. Deep melancholy is a foil to his humor, but as often his writings are disfigured by levity. The following may serve as samples ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... have died like a brute, without confession. I admit that we have advanced by some years the maturity of celestial justice; we have hastened a little for him an eternity of torture which sooner or later must inevitably have been his lot. But be indulgent, Gentlemen, towards so venial an offence, and reserve your severity for those who attempt the life and salvation ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... of talk where God or Angel guest With Man, as with his friend, familiar us'd, To sit indulgent, and with him partake Rural repast; permitting him the while Venial discourse unblam'd. I now must change Those notes to tragick; foul distrust, and breach Disloyal on the part of Man, revolt, And disobedience: on the part of Heaven Now alienated, distance and distaste, Anger and just rebuke, and judgement given, That brought into this world ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... preconceived notions, and that, without for a moment intending to be unfair, he responded to this challenge by giving the school a strongly adverse report. Immorality and irreligiousness as such are comparatively venial offences in the eyes of religious orthodoxy. What it cannot tolerate is that men should be moral and religious in any ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... sentenced men, Foreboding wrath to come. Sad Fancy heard The flames up-rushing o'er their convent home, The ruin of their church late-built, the wreck It might be of their Order. Fierce they knew That Mercian royal House! Against their King They hurled no ban: venial they deemed his crime: 'He moves within the limits of his right, Though wrongly measuring right. He sees but this, His subjects break his laws. Some sin of youth It may be hides from him a right more high:'— Thus ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... parties and persons. Wary and circumspect, always a traitor, but always in conspiracy with Fortune, Talleyrand treats his enemies as if they were one day to become his friends, and his friends as if they were to become his enemies. He is a man of unquestionable talent, but venial in every thing. Nothing could be done with him but by means of bribery."[20] This is not complimentary; and it would be curious to compare such a sentence of condemnation with the judgment of Talleyrand on Napoleon which is contained in his memoirs, for that ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... government of the towns over which they presided. It declared that "even where they existed in their least imperfect form, and were most rightfully administered, they were inadequate to the wants of the present state of society." But they charged them also with positive offences of no venial kind. "They had perverted their powers to political ends, sacrificing local interests to party purposes. They had diverted from their legitimate use revenues which ought to have been applied for the public ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... conduct, but to inculcate ceremonial rules. Of the more importance, therefore, is the occasional pause which is made to insist, beyond peradventure, on the superiority of moral rules. A very good instance of this is found in Gautama. He has a list of venial sins. Since lying is one of the most heinous offences to a Hindu lawgiver, and the penances are severe, all the treatises state formally that an untruth uttered in fun, or when one is in danger, or an oath of the sort implied by Plato: [Greek: aphrodision orkon ou phasin ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... had become dryads for her sake; ever and anon the sinister Hunding was heard muttering in the ear of Chillingworth, and Hester wore the badge of her shame on the robes of Elsa, washed in innocency. But such things are venial in a first work. In frankly confessing his model (for it cannot be thought for a moment that Mr. Damrosch expected his imitations to be overlooked) he illustrated a rule which applies to all composers at the outset of their careers. The fact must be noted, ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... subjects she handles, by the manner in which she has described the Jews—the great unknown of humanity. She has penetrated into their history and literature affectionately and thoroughly; and her knowledge in a field where ignorance is still venial if not expressly authorized, has astonished even experts. In her selection of almost always unfamiliar quotations, she shows a taste and a facility of reference really amazing. When shall we see a German writer exhibiting the courteous kindliness ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... accomplished his purpose with diabolical deliberation. He must have been well aware that, had he acted on the natural impulse of the moment and revenged himself then and there on Aubert, he would have committed what is regarded by a French jury as the most venial of crimes, and would have escaped with little or no punishment. He preferred, for reasons of his own, to set about the commission of a deliberate and cold-blooded murder that bears the stamp of a more sinister motive than the vengeance of a ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... of Washington has not lost in brilliancy since he passed from the world in which he acted such a providential part. Like the Phidian Zeus his proportions are all the more majestic for the distance which rounds over any venial defect. His example is as valuable to the American Republic of the present as his life-work was to the America of a century ago. As water never rises above its source, so a great nation should have a great founder, and the figure of Washington is sublime enough to be the oriflamme of ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... surprised, then, that the history of most young men is, that they yield to temptation in a greater or less degree and in different ways. With many, no doubt, the indulgence is transient, accidental, and does not become habitual. It does not get to be regarded as venial. It is never yielded to without remorse. The wish and the purpose are to resist; but the animal nature bears down the moral. Still, transgression is always ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... priest (whose name pronounce as you would the English word wrong, supposing that it had for a second syllable the final a of 'sopha,' i.e., Wronguh), has been found a wrong-headed man by all parties, and in a venial degree is, perhaps, a stupid man; but he moves about with more eclat by far than the ablest man in Germany. And, in days of old, the man that burned down a miracle of beauty, viz., the temple of Ephesus, protesting, with tears in his eyes, that he had no other way of getting himself ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... as to the justice of bestowing such appalling, heart-withering denunciations of the popular obloquy upon the venial mistake of a poor author who thought to please us in the act of filling his pockets,—for the sum of his demerits amounts to no more than that,—it does, I own, seem to me a species of retributive justice far too severe for the offence. A culprit in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... of antiquity, we need not attempt to deny; the new spring of life in her is too genuine and great to keep her entirely free from this evident danger. But it is strange that any one who loves Italy, and sincerely rejoices in her amazing resurrection, should fail to recognise how venial ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... was a matter of comparatively slight importance. An excess of condescension is at the worst a venial and an amiable error; but even at the early period plots were being contrived against the young princess, which, if successful, would have been wholly destructive of her happiness, and which, though she was fully aware of them, she had not means by herself to disconcert or ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... cherished an implacable grudge against Franklin for his weakness, as she called it, in not following the dictates of his heart. Being sly as well as passionate, she hid her feelings from every one but a venial, though apparently devoted confidante, a ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... but the effect will be that the sins which thou hast committed up to the very hour of the penance will all be purged away and thereby remitted to thee, and the sins which thou shalt commit thereafter will not be written against thee to thy damnation, but will be quit by holy water, like venial sins. First of all then the penitent must with great exactitude confess his sins when he comes to begin the penance. Then follows a period of fasting and very strict abstinence which must last for forty days, during which time he is to touch no woman whomsoever, not even his wife. Moreover, ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... in public life; the Whips have to put a query to his name, and he cannot be trusted to confine his revolts to such occasions as those on which Mr. Foster of Henstead thought an exhibition of independence a venial sin, or in certain ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... you, you will, you must fall. Oh, 'let God be true and every man a liar.' He says you cannot serve Him and Mammon. He says that strait is the gate that leads to eternal life. Many there are who seek to widen it; they will tell you that such and such self-indulgences are but venial offences—that this and that worldly compliance is excusable and even necessary. The thing cannot be; for in a hundred and a hundred places He tells you so—look to your Bibles and seek there whether such counsel is true—and ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... make out your hiding-place till to-day. Now I'm not going to ask you to tell me how you have gone on in my absence. God and you alone know, and while He will tell me nothing, you would only tell me fibs, and I want to save you from that venial sin at least. But here I am, in as good spirits as ever, more in love than ever, and quite ready ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... (Just as you wish away, yet scarcely blame, A mole or two upon a comely frame), If no man may arraign me of the vice Of lewdness, meanness, nor of avarice; If pure and innocent I live, and dear To those I love (self-praise is venial here), All this I owe my father, who, though poor, Lord of some few lean acres, and no more, Was loath to send me to the village school, Whereto the sons of men of mark and rule,— Centurions, and the like,—were ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... latter not in the least a prude, nor given to giving herself "airs"—are constantly obliged to pull him up for his want of delicatesse. He is evidently a coxcomb, still more evidently a prig; selfish beyond even that selfishness which is venial in a lover; not in the least, though he can exceed in wine, a "good fellow," and in many ways thoroughly unmanly. A good English school and college might have made him tolerable: but it is rather to be doubted, and it is certain that his way as a transgressor would have been hard at both. As it ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... means very powerful or universal. Few laws enforce it. No very severe reprobation follows untruthfulness. In all ages and countries, falsehood has been thought allowable in love, and laudable in war; while, at the present day, it is held to be venial by the majority of mankind, in trade, commerce, and speculation. A certain amount of untruthfulness is a necessary part of politeness in the east and west alike, while even severe moralists have held a lie justifiable, to ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace |
