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More "Enormity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... others the most irresistible, as it subsisted on the strongest principles of action, emolument and honour. Thus could the vilest of passions be gratified with impunity. People were robbed, stolen, murdered, under the pretended idea that these were reputable adventures: every enormity in short was committed, and dressed up ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... the enormity of the joke. "First rate! We'll have incendiary meetings!" He pulled an elaborately armorial watch from his enfolding furs. "I'm so sorry, but I must say good-bye—this is my street," he explained. Millner, with a faint twinge of envy, ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... as if this one suggestion, candidly considered, might be enough to open all parents' eyes to the enormity of whipping. How many a loving mother will, without any thought of cruelty, inflict half-a-dozen quick blows on the little hand of her child, when she could no more take a pin and make the same number of thrusts into the tender flesh, than she could bind the baby on a rack. Yet the pin-thrusts ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... slight laugh at the enormity of Mrs. Skidmore's presumption, and then a long pause, after which some one asked suddenly, "Does any one know whether Chawner really ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... escaped being campused for dancing her way through the main hall and shrieking in wild excess of spirits. To add to the enormity of the offense, the day on which this had occurred was the day when the ice-cream wagon came in from Flemington and disposed of its wares at the front entrance of the campus. At the time of her exhibition of high spirits, Hester had held high in her hand a paper butter-dish filled with cream, ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... strong and self-confident! There is no more reason in it than that. He shot Cynthia Ware, and what she suffered in secret Coniston never guessed. What parallels in history shall I quote to bring home the enormity of such a mesalliance? Orthodox Coniston would have gone into sackcloth and ashes,—was soon to go ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... The enormity of his crime came home to him, and Jean Valjean fell on the ground, and for the first time in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... better protected than those of a trooper who has been long on the march. He displayed no fear or enmity; on the contrary, his manner was rather friendly than otherwise, as though he failed to understand the enormity of his offense and the position in which he was placed. Shifting from one foot to another, he crossed his great, thin hands before him and patiently awaited his captor's pleasure. The latter surveyed him curiously, ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... 1644 his genius soared on steady pinions. During the eight years that followed he triumphed, but he also faltered. Rodogune (1644), which he preferred to all his other plays, is certainly, by virtue of the enormity of the characters, the violence of the passions, the vastness of its crimes, the most romantic of his tragedies; it is constructed with the most skilful industry; from scene to scene the emotion is intensified and heightened until the great fifth act is reached; but ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... 'savoir-faire! Indeed to speak of it at all is as archaic as to speak of the Ichthyosaurus. But sin is a root-fact of the life of man. It is the office of the spiritual teacher to pluck out sin; to pierce the heart with a recognition of the enormity of sin, and of its far-reaching consequences; to stir the seared conscience, rouse the apathetic life, thrill the spiritual imagination, and to quicken the heart to better love and to nobler dreams. He rebukes the private ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... hypocrite the girl was! As coarse and unfeeling as the rest of them. Yet she had some shame left; she had blushed to be caught in the act by him. It showed her worse than those who justified this thing, the enormity of which she had seemed ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... meet the enemy, they did not know when they arrived the enormity of his crimes. That they might know how the German armies make war it has been necessary that they see towns systematically burned down, mines flooded, factories reduced to ashes, orchards devastated, cathedrals shelled and ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... fighting for hire (auctorati), others from a depraved ambition; at last even knights and senators were exhibited,—a disgrace of which the first tyrant was naturally the first inventor.[670] In the end, dwarfs, and even women, fought; an enormity prohibited by Severus. Of these the most to be pitied undoubtedly were the barbarian captives; and, to this species a Christian writer[671] justly applies the epithet "innocent," to distinguish them from the professional gladiators. Aurelian and Claudius supplied great numbers of these unfortunate ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... Miller, who made particular inquiries on this subject, ascertained that the total amount, including cellars and closets, capable of receiving a bed, was fifteen thousand.] chambers, were to take fire—for a considerable space of time the fire would be retarded by the mere enormity of extent which it would have to traverse. But there would come at length a critical moment, at which the maximum of the retarding effect having been attained, the bulk and volume of the flaming mass would thenceforward assist the flames in ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... flue,*** before the officer who had commanded his arrest; nor could this gentleman's repeated assurances that no violence should be offered his person, convince him for a considerable time that his life was in safety from the vengeance of the populace: so conscious was he of the enormity of his conduct, and of the justice of an immediate ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... that picture! How, sir Upon my word, young man, you are in a bad way. The youngster who stops to make designs upon a copy of a deed in a law office, is on the high-road to the gallows. It is an enormity, sir—horrible! dreadful!" ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... was considered a crime among the civilized nations of antiquity has long been debated. Those who maintain the impunity of the practice rely for their authority upon certain passages in the classical authors, which, while bitterly lamenting the frequency of this enormity, yet never allude to any laws by which it might be suppressed. For example, in one of Plato's dialogues (Theaet.), Socrates is made to speak of artificial abortion as a practice, not only common but allowable; ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... it really the fact, Menedemus, that my father can, in so short a space {of time}, have cast off all the {natural} affection of a parent for me? For what crime? What so great enormity have I, to my misfortune, committed? {Young ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... voice was more dissonant, his neckcloth more alarming, his jewellery more prominent, his hat closer shaved and the flower in his mouth less like a flower than ever. How came I there? Why, because I was piqued, and hurt, and reckless. I was capable of almost any enormity. John's manner to me in the train had well-nigh driven me mad. So quiet, so composed, so cold, so kind and considerate, but a kindness and consideration such as that with which one treats a child. He seemed to feel he was my superior; he seemed even to soothe and pity ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... together. The survivors in France began to count their numbers and marshal their forces for self-preservation. From every part of Protestant Europe a cry of horror and execration simultaneously arose in view of this crime of unparalleled enormity. In many places the Catholics themselves seemed appalled in contemplation of the deed they had perpetrated. Words of sympathy were sent to these martyrs to a pure faith from many of the Protestant ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... the West, and for the horrors which resulted from his exploitation of the Indians, was Astor ever prosecuted? To repeat, no; nor was he disturbed even by such a triviality as a formal summons. Yet, to realize the full enormity of acts for which he was responsible, and the complete measure of immunity that he enjoyed, it is necessary to recall that at the time the Government had already begun to assume the role of looking ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... degree, and not at all in kind, that he differed from the general run of successful wealth builders. The Vanderbilts committed thefts of as great an enormity as he, but they gradually managed to weave around themselves an exterior of protective respectability. All sections of the capitalist class, in so fiercely reviling Gould, reminded one of the thief, who, to divert attention from himself, joins with the pursuing crowd in loudly ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... me her country and her friends, adhered to me through good and evil report—and I prepared for her a cruel death! Dreadful contrast! Who shall describe the shame, the sorrow, the humiliation, of the ingrate whose crime has risen to the fearful altitude of this enormity; and who, by the tenderness and love of his devoted victim, is forced to turn his eye on the grim reward of death for love, riches, and life? Gentle, beloved, injured Espras! that emaciated form, these trembling limbs, these sunken eyes, and these weak and whispering sounds of pity ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... transgression, though when I asked permission of my father to accept the offer of an ex-dancing-master for whom I had been able to do some work in the workshop, to give me preparatory lessons so that I might appear less clumsy on entering the class, I was sternly brought to a sense of the enormity of the matter by my father's replying, "William! I would rather see you in your grave than in a dancing-school." I could only understand that I had not been lifted by the divine grace from the condition of total depravity in which I had been born, and I knew that the preternatural indication of ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... was the state of his mind when his officers appeared with the petition from his men. In proportion as they felt the extremities into which they were driven, the offense he had committed glared with tenfold enormity in his eyes; and, in a wild despair, he told them "they might do as they would, but for his part, the moment they opened the gates to the enemy, that moment should be the last of his life. He, that was the son-in-law of King Edward, would never yield ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... the strength of will, in which they recognized their own strength and love of power, and knew how to honour it: they honoured something in themselves when they honoured the saint. In addition to this, the contemplation of the saint suggested to them a suspicion: such an enormity of self-negation and anti-naturalness will not have been coveted for nothing—they have said, inquiringly. There is perhaps a reason for it, some very great danger, about which the ascetic might wish to be more accurately informed through ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... through this scene, Caesar is made to speak quite out of character, and in a strain of hateful arrogance, in order, apparently, to soften the enormity of his murder, and to grind the daggers of the assassins to a sharper point. Perhaps, also, it is a part of the irony which so marks this play, to put the haughtiest words in Caesar's mouth just before ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... appealing to my own words, "Do not your padres, your very bishops, marry?" The absurdity of a bishop having a wife particularly struck them: they scarcely knew whether to be most amused or horror-struck at such an enormity. ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... the Christians were obliged to worship God in the secrecy of their chambers, or in the Roman catacombs, which are still preserved to attest the undying fortitude of the martyrs and the enormity of ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... found them in the same place and got rid of them by a large coin proportioned to the enormity of his remorse. Enchanted with this method of "doing the Jungfrau," the mountaineers pocketed their trinkgeld gravely, and took, with resigned step, the path to their native village, leaving ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... in process of exterminating me. But, since I have reason to believe that no sufficient opportunity has been afforded you of realising the enormity of your conduct, I rally the profoundness of nobility which I discover within me—I calm myself. I go further, I explain. Living in retirement, you may not have learned that I am in Naples. I followed your cousin here—Madame de Vallorbes. My connection with ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... incidental considerations touching this matter of flogging, which exaggerate the evil into a great enormity. Many illustrations might be given, but let us be content ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... was lamenting her frank delight in bull-fights and she said, "Oh, the firs' time I see horse keel,' I am ver' seek. Now they keel four, seven, eleven horse,' I like ver' moach!" When I tried to make her realize the enormity of her taste, she turned on me like a flash—"But you American girl, you go see you' brawther get keel' in ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... burned honesty and rewarded hypocrisy, and all this she did because it was commanded by a book—a book that men had been taught implicitly to believe, long before they knew one word that was in it. They had been taught that to doubt the truth of this book, to examine it, even, was a crime of such enormity that it could not be forgiven, either in this world or in ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... decrees which abolished the Christian religion and set aside the Bible, passed the French Assembly. Three years and a half later a resolution rescinding these decrees, thus granting toleration to the Scriptures, was adopted by the same body. The world stood aghast at the enormity of guilt which had resulted from a rejection of the Sacred Oracles, and men recognized the necessity of faith in God and His word as the foundation of virtue and morality. Saith the Lord, "Whom hast thou reproached and blasphemed? and against whom hast thou exalted thy voice, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... "were made prisoners in the field of battle, which was such a scene of horror and inhumanity as is rarely to be met with among civilized nations. Every circumstance concurs to heighten the enormity of the cruelties exercised on this occasion; the shortness of the action, the cheapness of the victory, and, above all, the moderation the Prince had shown during his prosperity,—the leniency, and even tenderness, with which he had always treated his ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... The explanation we got invariably was that the Arab who owned these victims was enraged at losing his money by the slaves becoming unable to march, and vented his spleen by murdering them; but I have nothing more than common report in support of attributing this enormity to the Arabs. ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... disinterred the bones and placed them in the chapel of the castle. But even then the world knew not all the enormity of the crime. It was reserved for clumsy apologists like Savary to provoke replies and further investigations. The various excuses which throw the blame on Talleyrand, and on everyone but the chief actor, are sufficiently disposed of by the ex-Emperor's will. ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... devil does not take me at once. I live only in what my father calls the lust of the eye. I—I would rather look at a haw-tree in bloom than meditate on the Almighty!" He brought out this awful confession with a gasp at its enormity, but hurried on to a yet more terrible climax. "I cannot be righteous, but many times there are those who cannot—but oh, worse than that, I cannot even wish to be! I can only ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... worship for Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Anabaptists, and every denomination of Christianity; and the meeting-houses prepared for these sects are not, as with us, hideous buildings, contrived to inspire disgust by the enormity of their ugliness, nor are they called Salem, Ebenezer, and Sion, nor do the ministers within them look in any way like the Deputy-Shepherd. The churches belonging to those sects are often handsome. This ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... sleep, and no emperor attempted to check the annoyance. Perhaps he could devise no check. Perhaps he himself, being on the Palatine, and his counsellors, being in their own comparatively secluded houses on the hills, scarcely realised the full enormity of the nocturnal roar of Rome. In any case the fact of the noise is unquestionable. It was then very much as it is now if one tries to sleep in rooms in the Corso or the Via Babuino. The saying that "God made the country and man made the town" is met with in a ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... as I make it my rule, whenever I have committed a very capital enormity, to do some good by way of atonement; and as I believe I am a pretty deal indebted on that score, I intend, before I leave these parts (successfully shall I leave them I hope, or I shall be tempted to double the mischief by way of revenge, though not to my Rose-bud any) to join an hundred ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... bulldog terrier. I taught him to understand a great many words, insomuch that I am positive that the communication betwixt the canine species and ourselves might be greatly enlarged. Camp once bit the baker, who was bringing bread to the family. I beat him, and explained the enormity of his offence; after which, to the last moment of his life, he never heard the least allusion to the story, in whatever voice or tone it was mentioned, without getting up and retiring into the darkest corner of the room, with great appearance of distress. ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... sigh of complete exhaustion, I rose and looked about. All signs of the crime had been obliterated from the garage. "I must be crazy!" I thought, as the enormity of the thing rushed on me. "I wonder why I did it? And I wonder whether I can forget it some day—maybe ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... all that was wanted. "Won't do it again?" echoed the Squire. "No, you won't do it again. I'll take good care of that." He then went on to bring home to her the enormity of her offence, which seemed to have consisted chiefly in upsetting the whole house, which he wouldn't have, and so on. But when he had repeated all he had to say twice, and most of it three or four times, he suddenly took his seat in the chair opposite to her and said in quite ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... crime was finally discovered, and poor Hetty barely escaped a whipping; and her bold young mistress had to listen to a severe lecture on the enormity of her conduct. ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... self-abhorrence, now inseparable from their existence. Their crimes themselves had become their punishment, and it was not necessary that greater should be inflicted. They haunted them like hideous spectres, and continually started up before them in all their enormity. They wished for a second death, that might separate them from these ministers of vengeance, as the first had separated their spirits from the body,—a death that might at once extinguish all consciousness and sensibility. They called upon the depths of hell ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... strove to throw the guilt of the sin she premeditated upon her victim, upon the Intendant, 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
... was already waiting a powerful explosive, which Fayette had purloined from the store of the workmen who were excavating for the new wing of the building. In a moment more the fuse would have burned unnoticed to its fatal end, and an awful crime, of whose enormity the dull criminal had no real comprehension, would ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... in Berlin Society, there was more sympathy for mere respectability of wig than in Friedrich. To Friedrich respectability of wig that issues in solemnly failing to do justice, is a mere enormity, greater than the most wigless condition could be. Wigless, the thing were to be endured, a thing one is born to, more or less: but in wig,—out upon it! And the wig which screens, and would strive to disguise ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... you about anything else?" I inquired. "Yes," he rejoined; "he asks me about my father and my mother." "What does he ask you about them?" "He asks me if they do dirty actions," said the boy. Now, here the enormity and vileness of the confessional peeped out. Here one can see how the confessor can look into every hearth, and into every heart, in Rome. The priests had dragged this young boy into their den, and taught him to play the spy on his father and mother. The hand ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... will not be surprised to learn that after a day so filled with events and emotions, Oscar, in spite of the enormity of his offences, slept the sleep of the just. The next day he did not find the world so changed as he thought it; he was surprised to be very hungry,—he who the night before had regarded himself as unworthy to live. He had only suffered mentally. At his age mental impressions succeed each ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... with the Coolies, Goands, and Ramooses, are bold, daring, and predatory marauders—occasionally mercenaries, but invariably plunderers. There are, however, many shades of difference in the extent of the depredations of these several people, in which the balance of enormity is said to be considerably on the side of the Bheels. They are, nevertheless, described as faithful when employed and trusted; and the travellers who pay them their choute, or tribute, may leave ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... drove a knife through Mr. Eden's heart. He stood among them white as a sheet. He could not speak; but his pale face was a silent protest against this enormity. His look of horror and righteous indignation chilled and made uneasy the ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... one enormity they were ever innocent. Whatever degree of personal hardship and suffering their female captives were compelled to endure, their persons were never dishonoured by violence; a fact which can be predicated, we apprehend, of no other victorious ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... public conscience is not alive to the enormity of this anti-social crime? Mainly, we think, because the true principles of representation are not properly understood. It is almost universally assumed that there is no real distinction between direct and representative government. Minorities are tacitly ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... Henry Sandon!" he at length said. "I am, at least, glad that you do not affect to brazen out your crime, but that you show a proper sense of its enormity. What would your upright and painstaking father have said, had he lived to see his ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... doesn't realize the enormity of the offence. However, we'll pass that by. The sentence, Miss Baker, brings me back to the starting-point. You are directed to answer the question just propounded, the question which for some inexplicable reason you didn't hear. What do you think of it—this ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... continued the little man, "of which I now find my scoundrel of an apprentice to have been guilty, was the enormity of picking the lock of my desk, and prying into ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... Mr. Anthony says, he saw a score or more of people killed. Women became hysterical and prayed in the streets, while men sat on the curbing, appearing to be dazed. It was twenty minutes before those in the vicinity seemed to realize the enormity of the catastrophe. The crowds became larger and in the public squares of the city and in empty lots thousands of ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... to obtain hereditary privileges. The hereditary transmission of office from father to son dealt a heavy blow at the popularity of the parliamentary body, which had already deeply suffered through shameful abuses, the enormity of the fees, the ignorance of some of the members, and the dissolute habits ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... astonishment at the enormity of his son's offense was profound. He was struck dumb for some moments, but realizing, at last, that his son was, in all likelihood, involved, he besought the Father ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... head of the enormity of what he did. To put an end to his punishing of Cora, and, to render him powerless against that habitual and natural enemy, Laura had revealed a horrible incident in his career—it had become a public scandal; he was the sport of fools; and it might be months before ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... some time, awaiting the pleasure of the very leisurely guide, sweating at every pore, (or nearly every one, for there are several millions, I believe, and I so hate exaggeration,) and trying to evade the glances of the amused bystanders, did I begin to realize the enormity of the imposition that had been practised on me. Just fancy yourself, Mr PUNCHINELLO, in such a costume, taking a seemingly interminable walk in a hot sun, down ever so many steps, encased in those nasty articles of gear, in the company of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... continues in his abrupt, uncertain way), "man of iron; not only he declares that the spy must be beheaded, but also the entire family—a man of iron that, ha, ha; and then, no you cannot, it is impossible for you to understand the enormity of the calamity—a thousand years before the conquest by the Moors, a Spaniard alone could—there is no one here, ha, ha, I was forgetting—the utter extinction of a great family of the name, the oldest ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... Apollo and Marsyas, to realise that they were antiques of inestimable value, the collection of some great prince. I gathered up the gems by handfuls and stuffed them into my wallet. I was sobered by the realisation of the enormity of my crime, for I had possessed myself, vi et armis, of jewels worth a king's ransom; and I had no clue by which ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... enumerate his works, and are sorry we have not been able to recover any of his poems in order to present the reader with a specimen. Such is commonly the fate of temporary wit, levelled at some prevailing enormity, which is not of a general nature, but only subsists for a while. The curiosity of posterity is not excited, and there is little pains taken in the preservation of what could only please at the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... the authors of that volume had attracted to their work an increasing share of notice. An able article in the 'Westminster Review' first aroused public attention. A still abler in the 'Quarterly' awoke the Church to a sense of the enormity of the offence which had been committed. It was not that danger was apprehended. There could be but one opinion as to the essential impotence of the attack. But the circumstances which aroused public indignation were twofold. First,—Here ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... through which Helen must approach. Not one of all the town-folk and few of the country-folk had ever seen her face or heard her voice. To them she was a woman of mystery, and for the most part a woman of dark repute, capable of any enormity. They believed that she had been living a hermit life simply and only for the reason that she had been driven out of the East by the authorities, and most of them believed that the man she was ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... of the North to find some means of bringing home to the British Ministry the enormity of the offence in American eyes and the serious danger to good relations if such offences were to be continued. An immediate downright threat of war would have been impolitic and would have stirred British pride to the point of resentment. Yet American pride was ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... personal feeling; what cared he for that small consideration, when the bodies of men, women, and children could be sacrificed for that gold which would give him position among the men of the south. If he carried off poor whites, and sold them into slavery, he saw no enormity in the performance; the law invested him with power he made absolute. Society was chargeable with all his wrongs, with all his crimes, all his enormities. He had repeatedly told it so, pointing for proof to that literal observance ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... attempt was made to recriminate; but Washington pressed on in the path he had marked out, and had an English officer selected by lot and held in close confinement to await the action of the enemy. These sharp measures brought the British, as nothing else could have done, to some sense of the enormity of the crime that had been committed. Sir Guy Carleton wrote in remonstrance, and Washington replied: "Ever since the commencement of this unnatural war my conduct has borne invariable testimony against those ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... I hated him; but I did not murder him. I swore to take his life or lose my own; but not thus—not thus. Great God! to see him lying there, and feel it might have been my hand. Men, men! would ye quench hatred, behold its object stricken before you by a dastard blow like this, and ye will feel its enormity and horror. I did not slay him; I would give my life to the murderer's dagger to call him back, and ask his forgiveness for the thoughts of blood I entertained against him; but I touched ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... the Government itself to get up such expeditions than to allow them to proceed under the command of irresponsible adventurers. We could then at least exercise some control over our own agents and prevent them from burning down cities and committing other acts of enormity ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... and first tasted the deceptive kind of knowledge which, promising to make man God, banishes him from the paradise of experience. His sin has been transmitted to his descendants, though hardly in its magnificent and simple enormity. "The whole is one," Xenophanes had cried, gazing into heaven; and that same sense of a permeating identity, translated into rigid and logical terms, brought his sublime disciple to the conviction that an indistinguishable ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... power. So far as a life devoted to the military and political aggrandizement of a country makes a man a patriot, Frederic the Great will receive the plaudits of those men who worship success, and who forget the enormity of unscrupulous crimes in the outward glory which immediately resulted,—yea, possibly of contemplative statesmen who see in the rise of a new power an instrument of the Almighty for some inscrutable end. To me his character ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... without demur any condition precedent to the story of a play, however impossible it might seem to the mind of the individual. Oedipus King has been married to his mother many years before the play begins; but the Greek crowd forbore to ask why, in so long a period, the enormity had never been discovered. The central situation of She Stoops to Conquer seems impossible to the individual mind, but is eagerly accepted by the crowd. Individual critics find fault with Thomas Heywood's lovely ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... now, Teancum saw that the Lamanites were determined to maintain those cities which they had taken, and those parts of the land which they had obtained possession of; and also seeing the enormity of their number, Teancum thought it was not expedient that he should attempt to ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... top of the High Street, and to make things smart and business-like, a dozen strong chairs were bought for the use of the Committee room. There was also a rule about attendances, and any member failing to put in an appearance was fined sixpence, and if he happened to be the overseer, the enormity of his offence was marked by a fine of a shilling—"unless a note be sent to the meeting" [explaining cause of absence]. Here was a model authority, the like of which the town of Royston has never had since, considered as a working body, and ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... tale, distorted and diversified a thousand ways by the credulity and exaggeration of the tellers. At first I listened to the story with indifference or mirth. Methought it was confuted by its own extravagance. The enormity and variety of such an evil made it unworthy to be believed. I expected that every new day would detect the absurdity and fallacy of such representations. Every new day, however, added to the number of witnesses and the consistency of ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... blinked at the enormity of the prospect; but, remembering his dignity as a business man, he shook his head sadly ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... to be possessed of a plantation, and my slaves treated as in general they are here, never could I rest in peace; my sleep would be perpetually disturbed by a retrospect of the frauds committed in Africa, in order to entrap them; frauds surpassing in enormity everything which a common mind can possibly conceive. I should be thinking of the barbarous treatment they meet with on ship-board; of their anguish, of the despair necessarily inspired by their situation, when torn from their friends and relations; when delivered into the hands of a people ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... myself don't get a chance to know women like you. I wish to heaven—" He stopped, a lump in his throat, and gazed into the sentimental night. Great heavens, what a depraved character he really was! For the first time he saw himself in the enormity of his sinning. It was not only the cigarettes and the one black cigar, purloined from his father, but the orgies at penny-ante, the occasional game of craps back of Mather's barn. Then he remembered other damning episodes in his black record—the time he had ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... not a geisha? What difference can it make to me whether they are geishas or not?" Later, no doubt, when I understand Japanese affairs better, I shall appreciate myself the enormity of my proposal: one would really suppose I had talked of marrying ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... for the offense, so tremendous the sacrilege in killing a cat, that such an act was almost unknown in Egypt, and but few instances are recorded of its having taken place. As in the present case the enormity of the act would be vastly increased by the size and beauty of the cat, and the fact that it had been chosen for the temple of Bubastes seemed to put it altogether beyond the range of possibility that the creature had fallen by the hands of man. When a week passed without ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... expiated his sin upon the scaffold he felt and acknowledged its enormity. But it is by him and men like him, and not by the scourings of the galleys, that we can get to understand the spirit of the time. Two men, more eminent than Barnave, show it still more clearly. The great chemist Lavoisier wrote to Priestley that if there had been some ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... still condemned, now he understood, if not the defense of such an attitude, at least the existence of it. He might still think it a folly; it no longer appeared a figment. A sin it was, no doubt, and a degradation, but not an enormity or an absurdity; and when he tried again to fancy his life without Claudia, he struggled in vain against the growing conviction that the pictures he had condemned as caricatures of humanity had truth in them, and that it might be ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... decayed walnuts and sipping not the very best of wine, and Bertram was expatiating on Sir Robert Peel's enormity in having taken the wind out of the sails of the Whigs, and rehearsing perhaps a few paragraphs of a new pamphlet that was about to come out, when Harcourt ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... perpetrated by the English upon their defenceless prisoners, and had instructed him to prepare a school book for the use of American children, to be illustrated by thirty-five good engravings, each to picture some scene of horror, some enormity of suffering, such as should indelibly impress upon the minds of the school children a dread of British rule, and a hatred ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... he was pledged to Lucia, and it would be well if her ladyship did really relieve him by accepting somebody else. Whether she did or no, however, he felt that his conduct towards her would furnish his father with sufficient cause for a quarrel, even without the added enormity of presenting to him a penniless daughter-in-law, who had not even family influence ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... end by noon of the next day; and Mr. Carrington sent for the Terror and talked to him very seriously about this poaching. He did not profess to consider it an enormity; he dwelt at length on the extreme annoyance his mother would feel if he were caught and prosecuted. In the end he gave him the choice of giving his word to snare no more pheasants, or of having his mother informed that he was poaching. The Terror gave his word to snare no more pheasants ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... seemed as if the storm was his servant, and lent wings to his steed. When the talk at table or in company turned upon Bastide Grammont and his murderous crime, of which no one stood in doubt, Clarissa never occupied herself with the enormity of the deed, which must forever separate such a man from the fellowship of the good. Enveloped in a voluptuous mist, she was sensible of the influence of his compelling force, of the heroic soul that spoke in his ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... when one has to deal with one hundred legislators. In New York State, the legislature has no control over the pardoning power, which is vested exclusively in the governor. The family and friends of that youth represented his crime, stupendous as it was, as the first he had ever committed. Its enormity was represented as a proof of temporary insanity—the great argument, now-a-days, of our lawyers—and he was set free by the governor, after remaining a few months in prison. He shows himself again among the wealthy classes, and is as kindly ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... populace took the law into its own hands and meted out justice to the Jacobins with the true Jacobin measure; but at Paris the punishments were inflicted with order and decency, and were few when compared with the number, and lenient when compared with the enormity, of the crimes. Soon after the ninth of Thermidor, two of the vilest of mankind, Fouquier Tinville, whom Barere had placed at the Revolutionary Tribunal, and Lebon, whom Barere had defended in the Convention, were placed under arrest. A third miscreant soon shared ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... he had not estimated till that time the enormity of the misfortunes brought on people of Egypt by those merchants. His horror was all the more vivid, since he had rented out his own subjects to Dagon, and was himself witness of the way in which the banker collected his ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... at the table his first demand was for "Mastika," a peculiar Greek drink distilled from mastic gum, and his second demand invariably was "Du beurre!" with the "r's" as silent as the stars; and if it failed to come at once the waiter was made to feel the enormity of his tardiness. ...
— Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis • Various
... Halleck went on; "You would say, wouldn't you, that my first duty was to my own undertakings, and to those who had a right to expect their fulfilment from me? You would say that it was an enormity to tear myself away from the affection that clings to me in that home of mine, yonder, and that nothing but some supreme motive, could justify me? And yet you pretend to be satisfied with the reasons I've given you. You're not ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... D'Herbois in the universe? Long since this was written, a fact has been recorded of CHENIER, the French dramatic poet, which parallels the horrid tale of Collot D'Herbois, which some have been willing to doubt from its enormity. It is said, that this monster, in the revolutionary period, when he had the power to save the life of his brother Andre, while his father, prostrate before a wretched son, was imploring for the life of an innocent brother, remained silent; it ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... will be no nun, but an empress! You now have my word, and are at liberty to make all necessary arrangements. If it must be done, let it be done quickly and unhesitatingly. I have yet to-day the courage to dare any enormity, therefore ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... bounded aloft several feet, and then lit. It was empty! When it is remembered that in the old buffalo days the daily ration per head at the Company's prairie posts was eight pounds of fresh meat, which was all eaten, its equivalent being two pounds of pemmican, the enormity of this Gargantuan feast may be imagined. But we ourselves were not bad hands at the trencher. In fact, we were always hungry. So I do not reproduce the foregoing facts as a reproach, but rather as a meagre tribute to the prowess of the great of ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... had filled his wicked mind with an idea so infamous, so detestable, that even his vile nature shrank for a moment from its enormity. ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... not Cardinal Wolsey, but Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, who delivered to them a fiery oration, descanting to them on the enormity of their offences, and calling upon them to abjure their hateful heresy. His ringing voice carried all over the open space, though Anthony Dalaber could only catch an occasional phrase here and there, which perhaps was ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... three letters we have his excellent Paraenesis, or exhortation to penance. In the first part he reduces the sins subjected to courses of severe public penance by the canons to three, idolatry, murder, and impurity; and shows the enormity of each. In the second he addresses himself to those sinners, who out of shame, or for fear of the penances to be enjoined, did not confess their crimes. He calls them shamefully timorous and bashful ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... condemned, now he understood, if not the defense of such an attitude, at least the existence of it. He might still think it a folly; it no longer appeared a figment. A sin it was, no doubt, and a degradation, but not an enormity or an absurdity; and when he tried again to fancy his life without Claudia, he struggled in vain against the growing conviction that the pictures he had condemned as caricatures of humanity had truth in them, and that it might be ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... process of exterminating me. But, since I have reason to believe that no sufficient opportunity has been afforded you of realising the enormity of your conduct, I rally the profoundness of nobility which I discover within me—I calm myself. I go further, I explain. Living in retirement, you may not have learned that I am in Naples. I followed your cousin here—Madame de Vallorbes. My connection with her represents ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... hypocrisy, and all this she did because it was commanded by a book—a book that men had been taught implicitly to believe, long before they knew one word that was in it. They had been taught that to doubt the truth of this book, to examine it, even, was a crime of such enormity that it could not be forgiven, either in this ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... give him as sarcastic a glance as she could. If her present self-possession was a warrant of future performance, Matt thought he could trust her; but he was afraid Louise had not taken in the whole enormity of the fact; and he was right in this. As a crime, she did not then, or ever afterwards, fully imagine it. It may be doubted whether she conceived of it as other than a great trouble, and as something that ought always to be kept ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... have shewn in executing my commissions: the different articles arrived in the very best order, with the exception of the cocked hat, which has not been received—a most distressing circumstance, as, from the enormity of my head[26], I find the utmost difficulty in getting a substitute in ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... Finally, the enormity of bloodshed and woe involved caused a sort of concession on both sides to be agreed upon. Oppression continued will surely lead to a point where it cures itself, and the superior class in England, with a wise weather-eye, saw the reef on which they were in danger of striking. They ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... candidly confessed these faults committed as the writer of this book, it is still possible in human multifariousness to consider their enormity, not merely in this book, but in fictional reading-matter at large, as viewed by an average-novel-reader—by a representative of that potent class whose preferences dictate the nature and main trend of modern American literature. And to do this, it may be, throws no unsalutary sidelight upon the ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... none follow me, and if you all, In terror for your homesteads and your herds, Bow in submission to the tyrant's yoke, Round me I'll call the herdsmen on the hills, And there beneath heaven's free and boundless roof, Where men still feel as men, and hearts are true, Proclaim aloud this foul enormity! ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... welfare, and that nothing came by chance with her. And on her rare ebullitions of self-will, mamma, governess, nurse, nay even papa, were all in sorrowful commotion till their princess had been brought to a sense of the enormity of ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Government by one of Lady Hester's chief creditors, an order had come from Lord Palmerston that her pension was to be stopped unless the debt was paid. When she read the letter Dr. Meryon feared an outburst of fury, but Lady Hester, who, for once, was beyond violence, began calmly to discuss the enormity of the conduct both of ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... same footing with the crime of piracy. The South had openly demanded the re-establishment of a commerce which alone could furnish it at some day with the number of negroes proportioned to its vast designs. What had Mr. Buchanan done? He doubtless had not consented officially to an enormity which Congress, on its part, would not have tolerated; but repression had become so lax under his administration, that the number of slave ships fitted out in the ports of the United States had at length become very ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... hearing a gentleman at the depot remark that the very enormity of the crimes committed by the Romanists, is their best protection. "For," said he, "some of their practices are so shockingly infamous they may not even be alluded to in the presence of the refined and the ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... dust, as I know well that the tongue of malice is ever loud against the failings of the unfortunate. When, however, my character is insulted, and my poor reputation attacked, extenuate, I beseech you, the enormity of my crime, by relating the hardships of my sufferings. Tell to the giddy and affluent, that, strangers to the severity of want, they know not the pain of withstanding the almost irresistible calls of nature. The poor will, I trust, commiserate my misfortunes, and shed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 285, December 1, 1827 • Various
... flashing out suddenly like a bolt from the blue, hurl nearly the whole of Europe within a week's time from a state of profound peace into one of continental war, unannounced, unexpected, unexplained, unprecedented in suddenness and enormity, was an unimaginable possibility. And yet the ringing of the church bells was suddenly drowned by the roar of cannon, the voice of the dove of peace by the blare of the trump of war, and throughout the world ran a shudder of terror at ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... presentiment is now fulfilled. Fate urged me on. Unnatural hate has pushed me to the ledge, and now I sink to lose myself in the abyss. Oh, foul fate! this deed foul, foul! Fair, fair Amanda, close thine eyes on this enormity; or be content to see it, yet not understand it, for knowledge here would surely ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... reward could induce him to be guilty of such an enormity, and followed it up by so skilful an allusion to the progressing youth of his master that the latter swore he was right, and that he could dance better than he could at thirty, and to prove it executed, with extraordinary agility for ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... Amory. He realized that he was safe and only then did he appreciate the full enormity of what ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... affected the brain as well as the lungs. Then we realized the full enormity of the gas attack of the enemy. It was not a gas that would knock a man out that they were giving us, but a ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... dare say, very whimsical about it, probably very absurd, judged at least by the canons of fashion, and old Cousin Monica Knollys, in whose eye the London fashions were always fresh, was palpably struck by it as if it had been some enormity against anatomy, for she certainly laughed very heartily; indeed, there were tears on her cheeks when she had done, and I am sure my aspect of wonder and dignity, as her hilarity proceeded, helped to revive her merriment again and again ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... the severer punishment dwelt on the enormity of the offence. It was "one of the highest crimes man could commit," and "a captain of a ship engaged in this traffic was guilty of murder."[34] The law of God punished the crime with death, and any one would rather be hanged than be enslaved.[35] It was a peculiarly ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... that head of the enormity of what he did. To put an end to his punishing of Cora, and, to render him powerless against that habitual and natural enemy, Laura had revealed a horrible incident in his career—it had become a public scandal; he was the sport of fools; and it might be months before the thing ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... copy of a most wicked advertisement, publickly distributed in the streets of London, and dispersed in the neighbouring Towns and villages; without any notice taken of such an enormity by the Magistrates, or any measures pursued to punish the miscreants who disperse them, according to their desserts. However, the wretches who thus impose on the world, finding their account therein, as they certainly do, is a proof of multitudes being as credulous ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... Mollwitz; eve of that Siege of Brieg, which we saw performing itself with punctual regard to said Laws and rigors, and issuing in so different a manner! Nothing that my Constitutional Historian has said equals in pungent enormity the matter-of-fact Picture, left by Tobias Smollett, of the sick and wounded, in the interim which follow&d that attempt on Fort Lazar ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... immunities, inveighs against the taxes and the tax-collectors. On leaving these assemblies the villager broods over what he has just heard. He sees his grievances no longer singly as before, but in mass, and coupled with the enormity of evils under which his fellows suffer. Besides this, they begin to disentangle the causes of their misery: the King is good—why then do his collectors take so much of our money? This or that canon or nobleman is ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... I had flogged him, he would have got over it a good deal sooner than I should. That sort of boy does not mind castigation any more than he does tearing his trousers in the briers. If I had treated him with kindness, and conciliated him with grapes, showing him the enormity of his offense, I suppose he would have come the next night, and taken the remainder of the grapes. The truth is, that the public morality is lax on the subject of fruit. If anybody puts arsenic or ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... nature of these appearances soon cleared itself up thus far, that generally they were found to be starry worlds, separated from ours by inconceivable distances, and in that way concealing at first their real nature. The whitish gleam was the mask conferred by the enormity of their remotion. This being so, it might have been supposed that, as was the faintness of these cloudy spots or nebul, such was the distance. But that did not follow: for in the treasury of nature it turned out that there were other ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... laugh, that flung up the brows like a fortress lifted by gunpowder. The laugh will come again, but it will be of the order of the smile, finely tempered, showing sunlight of the mind, mental richness rather than noisy enormity. Its common aspect is one of unsolicitous observation, as if surveying a full field and having leisure to dart on its chosen morsels, without any flattering eagerness. Men's future upon earth does not attract it; their honesty and shapeliness in ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... America, there being but few slaves, they can easily disencumber themselves of them; and emancipation is put into such a train, that in a few years there will be no slaves northward of Maryland. In Maryland, I do not find such a disposition to begin the redress of this enormity, as in Virginia. This is the next State to which we may turn our eyes for the interesting spectacle of justice, in conflict with avarice and oppression: a conflict wherein the sacred side is gaining daily recruits, from the influx into office of young men grown and ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... of resisting the horrible wrong the priests have been guilty of in the last election is by publishing the facts, bringing them as they now must be brought in all their enormity before Parliament. As far as every private individual can assist in bringing these truths to light and in influencing public opinion by the eloquence of tongue or pen he does right, as a man and as a gentleman, and a good member of society, and wisely ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... had been so spoiled in the treatment that there was really nothing to eat! Green biscuit with acrid spots of alkali,—sour yeast-bread,—meat slowly simmered in fat till it seemed like grease itself, and slowly congealing in cold grease,—and above all, that unpardonable enormity, strong butter! How often I have longed to show people what might have been done with the raw material out of which all these ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... Why, if this were true, what a hypocrite the girl was! As coarse and unfeeling as the rest of them. Yet she had some shame left; she had blushed to be caught in the act by him. It showed her worse than those who justified this thing, the enormity of which she had seemed to ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... Tophet!" bawled Flagg, having made sure that the enormity he was viewing was not a dream. He cut his whip under the bellies of his horses, one stroke to right and the other to left, and the animals went over the cliff and down the sharp slope, skating and floundering through the snow. The descent at that place would have ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... beings you simply cannot conceive of in certain situations. Albert Penny and divorce are irreconcilable. Tear his heart out if you will, but hands off his respectability. It may sound absurd in the face of the enormity of what I have done to him, but it is a great solace to me to be able to sacrifice that much to him and to drag him through my life like a ball and chain. Somehow it seems that I ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... his arms involuntarily at the sheer enormity of the idea. It was one thing to let a useless race expire, quite another to think of its being forced back to— "But—can't anyone think of ...
— DP • Arthur Dekker Savage
... against all sins, yet has never made war upon this giant sin, but has fondled and caressed it so kindly that the pious and conscientious, believing it no sin or crime, have lost all conception of its enormity, and may never realize it until an enlightened people shall pour their hot indignation upon the crime and ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... verses. I tell you with some unwillingness, as knowing your distaste for such things, that I have received so many applications from readers and printers for a volume of poems that I have seriously taken in hand the collection, transcription, or scription of such a volume, and may do the enormity before New Year's day. Fear not, dear friend, you shall not have to read one line. Perhaps I shall send you an official copy, but I shall appeal to the tenderness of Jane Carlyle, and excuse your formidable self, for the benefit ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... remember their youth will not be surprised to learn that after a day so filled with events and emotions, Oscar, in spite of the enormity of his offences, slept the sleep of the just. The next day he did not find the world so changed as he thought it; he was surprised to be very hungry,—he who the night before had regarded himself as unworthy to live. He had only suffered mentally. At his age ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... and business-like, a dozen strong chairs were bought for the use of the Committee room. There was also a rule about attendances, and any member failing to put in an appearance was fined sixpence, and if he happened to be the overseer, the enormity of his offence was marked by a fine of a shilling—"unless a note be sent to the meeting" [explaining cause of absence]. Here was a model authority, the like of which the town of Royston has never had since, considered as a working body, and having a due regard to the light ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... much concerned this evening with the dead letter of edicts and of statutes as with the living thoughts of men. A century ago it was perfectly well known that whoever had one audience of a Master in Chancery was made to pay for three, but no man heeded the enormity until it suggested to a young lawyer that it might be well to question and examine with rigorous suspicion every part of a system in which such things were done. The day on which that gleam lighted up the clear hard ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... cannot break any one law unless he breaks first this fundamental Law of all Laws. This implies that the demoralizing effect of sinning or law-breaking, on any one of the planes of being, does not depend so much upon the enormity of the deed as upon the loss of self-control. Continued weakening of self-control in trivial things may therefore, in the end, prove more destructive than a murder committed in the heat of passion. If there is not self-control enough to resist a cup of coffee ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... to bring in the accused, who had been summoned to appear by a mandat d'amener. He was a stout, dark, convivial-looking soul, with a merry eye, not altogether convinced of the enormity of his delict, and inclined at first to deprecate these proceedings. But the dialectical skill of the magistrate soon tied him into knots, and reduced him to a ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... pure goodness of heart. For, that he would be embroiled, in other words, that he would have success in his mission, there was no manner of doubt in his mind—a conviction he shared with the generality of mankind: that it is only necessary for an offender's eyes to be opened to the enormity of his wrongdoing, for him to be ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... a Psalter, published in four of the ancient tongues, at Genoa, in 1516, as the first essay of a polyglot version. (Letteratura Italiana, tom. viii. p. 191.) Lampillas does not fail to add this enormity to the black catalogue which he has mustered against the librarian of Modena. (Letteratura Spagnuola, tom. ii. part. 2, p. 290.) The first three volumes of the Complutensian Bible were printed before 1516, although the whole work did not pass the press till ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... enormity," bellowed Monceux, flying out. "Already you have stolen my plate, and now would strip me utterly! 'Tis rank villainy, and I ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... alive to public affairs—look into the votes and speeches of members, give their opinions—but are universally corrupt. They have a sour feeling against what are nicknamed abuses, rail against sinnicures, as they call them, and descant upon the enormity of such things while they are forced to work all day long and their families have not enough to eat. But the one prevailing object among the whole community is to make money of their votes, and though he says there are some exceptions, they are very few indeed. Robarts ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... little foolish aunt, who, after all, might once have been young and in love like himself, though it was so odd to realise it. Mr Wentworth, for his part, saw no humour whatever in the scene. He thought nothing less than that some fresh complication had taken place. Jack had committed some new enormity, or there was bad news from Charley in Malta, or unpleasant letters had come from home. "Bless my soul, sir, something new has happened," said the Squire; and he was scarcely reassured, when Miss Dora stumbled ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... of this vagueness the little group of more or less worthy men which constituted Headquarters was beginning to realise the enormity of the thing it was ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... the iron-pronged forks which some of us remember in hall in our young days. The oldest piece of furniture in the college halls were the stocks, set up for the correction of refractory undergraduates who should have been guilty of the enormity of bathing in the Cam or ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... and foot, I was free to suck his blood till I was satiated. I did all that, and then my nightmare descended upon me again. You know how I fled with Hellbeam's hounds on my heels. I was terrified at the enormity of the thing I'd done. I could have stood my ground and beaten him—and them. But moral cowardice overwhelmed me and drove me to these outlands. God, what I suffered! And after all I haven't the certainty that ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... as a finished monster of cruelty and depravity. The reputation of the object of his choice for every possible virtue, was now turned against him by his assailants, as if the excellences of the wife were proof positive of every enormity they chose to charge upon the husband. Meanwhile, the unmoved silence of Lady Byron under the repeated demands made for a specification of her charges against him, left to malice and imagination the fullest range for their ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... homestead. They had still hard faces, intent gray eyes; they packed guns, and one of them wore a bright star on his vest. These men took Hookey away with them. And after they were gone the cowboys told Pan that Hookey was wanted for horse stealing. Young as Pan was he understood the enormity of that crime in the eyes of cowboys. He felt terribly hurt and betrayed. Long indeed was it before ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... hand on Graham's shoulder. Abruptly Graham realised the enormity of his blunder in coming to the Council House. He turned towards the curtains that separated the hall from the ante-chamber. The clutching hand of Asano intervened. In another moment ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... kindness and sympathy in return, was everything that could be done for her. To be otherwise comforted was out of the question. The case admitted of no comfort. Lady Bertram did not think deeply, but, guided by Sir Thomas, she thought justly on all important points; and she saw, therefore, in all its enormity, what had happened, and neither endeavoured herself, nor required Fanny to advise her, to think little ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... heinous for the name it bears. Every sin the people of God commit is a provocation of Jehovah; not only in the act of disobedience itself, but also in the transgression of the second commandment. The enormity of the sin is magnified by the conditions that make it a blasphemy of God's name and an occasion of offense to others. Paul says in Romans 2, 24: "For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you." So a Christian should, in his life, by all means guard the honor of God—of ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... train into the lazy spring silence of the village, her own heart spelled the thing in quick, loud, hammering beats—a thing which, now that she faced it, was so wildly impossible that her cheeks burned at the first second of actual realisation of its enormity; and her knees weakened in a deathly tremble, quite as if they might ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... entered his own door, and paused at the sound of Harriet's voice, that he began to realize the enormity of the ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... my occupation. There was something very exhilarating in the fact that I was directing the course of what to me was an immense craft; and every time I moved the wheel, and saw the bow veer in obedience to her helm, it afforded me a thrill of delight, and I wholly forgot the enormity of the enterprise in which our party were engaged. I was so pleased with my employment that I came very near devoting my life to the business ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... most commonly informed mind; but architectural defects are only recognisable by those who have studied the principles of this fine art. Poetry, I am sorry to say, is not exempt from bulls and blunders, of various kinds and degrees of enormity; many of which have been, from time to time, exposed in a very amusing manner. I shall therefore, in conclusion, crave the liberty of producing one which has lately come under my own cognizance. A modern poet, whose compositions are fraught ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various
... acts? A poor man is as likely to commit crime as a rich one; but he would do so for very different reasons. The rich man in politics, sins for his own self-gratification; the poor man, to better himself or his family, often not comprehending the enormity of his crime. ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... carried her thus far; now it deserted her as abruptly as it had come. Her cheeks became scarlet; her funny little false curls trembled with her agitation. What she had done seemed to her indecorous beyond expression. It was an enormity. Fancy, she had gone into his room, INTO HIS ROOM—Mister Grannis's room. She had done this—she who could not pass him on the stairs without a qualm. What to do she did not know. She stood, a fixture, on the threshold of his room, without even resolution enough to beat a retreat. Helplessly, ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... of woe which comes from the repentant consciousness of having been guilty of an enormity. 'But he wasn't good enough to take me, sir!' she said, almost crying; 'and he isn't absolutely my master until I have married him, ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... cock-y-leekie, boiled down in his tough antiquity to a tatter. He disappears among the progeny, and you are now tied to the steak. You find there employment sufficient to justify any silence; and hope during mastication that you have not committed any crime since Christmas, of an enormity too great to be expiated by condemnation ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 12, Issue 328, August 23, 1828 • Various
... with the same inscrutable meekness of countenance, each night he methodically danced the cake-walk at Maxim's or one of the Montemarte restaurants, to the cheers of acquaintances of many nationalities, to whom he offered libations with prodigal enormity. He carried with him, about the boulevards at night, in the highly powerful car he had hired, large parties of strange people, who would loudly sing airs from the Folie-Rouge (to my unhappy shudderings) all the way from the fatiguing Bal Bullier to the ...
— The Beautiful Lady • Booth Tarkington
... talk was over before any of them realized the enormity of Anne's contention, and Anne and Justin had departed. But both the old doctor and the lawyer agreed with Martin that it looked as if Anne was right, and when the family was alone again, and had had the time to digest the matter, they felt as if a thunderbolt ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... bookshelf by the tips of her fingers and drew herself up from the floor, slowly, as it were by some mysterious unfolding process, not ungraceful. She turned on him the wide half-mischievous, half-frightened eyes of a child caught this time in some superb enormity. ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... invasions and military expeditions against any who questioned their authority. Hildebrand boasts (Ep. vii, 23) that, when William of Normandy sent envoys to ask Pope Alexander to sanction his unscrupulous invasion of England, and the Papal Court was itself too sensible of the enormity to give its sanction, he (Hildebrand) overbore the wavering Pope and forced him to bless the enterprise; and, when he had in his turn mounted the Papal throne, he vehemently claimed that his action had made England a fief for ever of the Holy See! Gregory VII and Innocent ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... brown study at hearing his name spoken. He had a vague recollection of having heard a question asked. But his mind was still far away, so he did not realize the enormity of his offense ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock
... own the enormity of its consequences, and the danger of its example. Nor have I the confidence to petition for impunity; but humbly hope, that publick security may be established, without the spectacle of a clergyman dragged through the streets, to a death ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... was only in degree, and not at all in kind, that he differed from the general run of successful wealth builders. The Vanderbilts committed thefts of as great an enormity as he, but they gradually managed to weave around themselves an exterior of protective respectability. All sections of the capitalist class, in so fiercely reviling Gould, reminded one of the thief, who, to divert attention from himself, joins with the pursuing crowd in loudly shouting, ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... subject was not any clearer moral teaching, but rather a stronger enforcement of the condemnation long since passed upon infanticide, and an increased protection for exposed infants.... The church labored to deepen the sense of the enormity of the crime."[975] Evidently infanticide was a tradition with serious approval from one state of things to another in which it was harmful and not needed in any view. In 331 A.D. Constantine gave title to those who rescued exposed children against the parents of the ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... from free citizens, some fighting for hire (auctorati), others from a depraved ambition; at last even knights and senators were exhibited,—a disgrace of which the first tyrant was naturally the first inventor.[670] In the end, dwarfs, and even women, fought; an enormity prohibited by Severus. Of these the most to be pitied undoubtedly were the barbarian captives; and, to this species a Christian writer[671] justly applies the epithet "innocent," to distinguish them from the professional gladiators. Aurelian and Claudius supplied great numbers ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... lawful wedlock of the presiding justice, sundry herring, mackerel, and other fish—such as usually come into such nets, and are found on these Her Majesty's shores. Here the Squire interrupted by commencing an essay on the enormity of the crime; and concluded with the following pungent remark:—'Now, Hornblower, I knows, without ginning a look in the law-book, you're guilty; there's always stealin done when you're about the shore. Anyhow! what say ye for yourself? Remember, you're in a Magistrate's Court—in ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... their representations of Virtue? Have they asked themselves the question, whether the terrific prospect of acquiring that fearful chubbiness of head, unwieldiness of arm, feeble dislocation of leg, crispiness of hair, and enormity of shirt-collar, which they represent as inseparable from Goodness, may not tend to confirm sensitive waverers, in Evil? A most impressive example (if I had believed it) of what a Dustman and a Sailor may come to, when they mend their ways, was presented to ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... every means in their power they should keep the soldiers from mutinying." Where Virginius occasioned greater commotion than he had left behind him in the city. For besides that he was seen coming with a body of near four hundred men, who, fired at the heinous enormity of the occurrence, had accompanied him from the city; the unsheathed weapon and himself besmeared with blood, attracted to him the entire camp; and the gowns[151] seen in the different parts of the camp, had caused the number of people from ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... I have now offered, may be of very little weight to restrain this enormity, this aggravated iniquity; however, I still have the satisfaction of having entered my private protest against a practice, which, in my opinion, bids that God, who is the God and Father of the Gentiles, unconverted to christianity, most daring and bold defiance, ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... friend, named Lucullus, and, passing immediately through the house, sought a hiding-place in the gardens. Here her mind began to be overwhelmed with anguish, remorse, and terror. Her sins, now that a terrible retribution for them seemed to be impending, rose before her in all their enormity, and she knew not what to do. She soon reflected that there could be no permanent safety for her where she was, for the advanced guards of Claudius, which were even then entering the city and commencing their ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... sigh of relief she slipped into a vacant corner, and gave herself up to the luxury of being miserable. She longed for solitude in which to face the full enormity of her misdeed, and to plan an immediate reformation. She would throw herself bodily upon the mercy of Miss Joe Hill, she would spare herself nothing; penance of any kind would be welcome, ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... others will kill you." The emperor knew of no one else that suited him so entirely, and at the same time he was well aware that the man would be a thorough knave; yet the story obtains that he was glad to give him the empire in order that his own crimes might find concealment in the enormity of Gaius's offences and that the largest and the noblest portion of what was left of the senate might perish after him. At all events he is said to have often uttered ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... According to the instructions issued to Tasman, on his second voyage, he was directed to "enquire at the continent thereabout" (i.e., the neighbourhood of the Abrolhos) "after two Dutchmen, who, having by the enormity of their crimes forfeited their lives, were put on shore by the Commodore Francisco Pelsart, if still alive. In such case, you may make inquiries of them about the situation of those countries, and if they entreat you to that purpose, ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... don't try and worm 'em out of me. It'll only waste our valuable time. March was under arrest—that's enough. I suppose he ought to be grateful that it's been 'judged expedient'—that's the phrase—never to let the story in its full enormity leak out. Vandyke was so smart at apologies and explanations in that Mexican dash of his last night, and the part he played appealed such a lot to the chaps over there, who're nothing if they're not ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... not a means, added to the other physical causes of mental aberration to be found in loneliness, and want verging upon famine,—all these, which a biographer may suppose to have conspired to his crime, have never been used by the novelist as excuses for its enormity, nor indeed, lest they should seem as excuses, have they ever been clearly presented to the view. The moral consisted in showing more than the mere legal punishment at the close. It was to show how the consciousness of the deed was to exclude whatever humanity ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... him last; his voice was more dissonant, his neckcloth more alarming, his jewellery more prominent, his hat closer shaved and the flower in his mouth less like a flower than ever. How came I there? Why, because I was piqued, and hurt, and reckless. I was capable of almost any enormity. John's manner to me in the train had well-nigh driven me mad. So quiet, so composed, so cold, so kind and considerate, but a kindness and consideration such as that with which one treats a child. He seemed to feel ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... laugh that is characteristic of him, and continues in his abrupt, uncertain way), "man of iron; not only he declares that the spy must be beheaded, but also the entire family—a man of iron that, ha, ha; and then, no you cannot, it is impossible for you to understand the enormity of the calamity—a thousand years before the conquest by the Moors, a Spaniard alone could—there is no one here, ha, ha, I was forgetting—the utter extinction of a great family of the name, the oldest and noblest of all the families in Spain, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... easy a prey to the Secession faction, when not a tenth part of its people were Secessionists, should be thoroughly, emphatically rebuked, and its chief representatives severely punished, by extorting from the rebellious section a practical admission of the enormity of the crime of which it was guilty when it resisted the lawful authority of a President who was chosen in strict accordance with the requirements of the Constitution, and who entertained no more intention of interfering with the constitutional rights of the South than he thought of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... saw, in the struggles of the Morea, the sign of revolution. This, then, is coming to a plain, practical result. The Grecian revolution has been discouraged, discountenanced, and denounced, solely because it is a revolution. Independent of all inquiry into the reasonableness of its causes or the enormity of the oppression which produced it; regardless of the peculiar claims which Greece possesses upon the civilized world; and regardless of what has been their own conduct towards her for a century; regardless of the interest of the Christian religion,—the sovereigns at Verona seized upon the ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... biases the judgment. The faculty, or passion, which misleads one becomes a part of his judging faculty, and cannot condemn itself. The miser cannot realize the baseness of his avarice, nor the mercenary soldier the enormity of war. Nor can a defective faculty assist in realizing the defect. The color-blind cannot appreciate painting, the thief cannot appreciate integrity, the brutal wife-beater cannot appreciate love, and a Napoleon ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... sometimes the more gentle race of dogs and cats, are guilty of this horrid and preposterous murder. When I hear now and then of an abandoned mother that destroys her offspring, I am not so much amazed, since reason perverted, and the bad passions let loose, are capable of any enormity; but why the parental feelings of brutes, that usually flow in one most uniform tenor should sometimes be so extravagantly diverted, I leave to abler philosophers ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... I told him slowly, lest he miss one grain of the enormity of Maga's crime. But instead of appearing distressed he shook his bands delightedly and rattled off a very volley ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... cracking decayed walnuts and sipping not the very best of wine, and Bertram was expatiating on Sir Robert Peel's enormity in having taken the wind out of the sails of the Whigs, and rehearsing perhaps a few paragraphs of a new pamphlet that was about to come out, when Harcourt again ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... of stage-thunder sounded deafeningly over his head. The piano was swept by a storm of bass passion; and deep cries of "Treason! Treason!" echoed from every side. Poor Stevens tottered, and fell into a chair placed by the Deacon Militant. He saw the enormity of the deed of shame he had committed. He had ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... wondered if his fancy were playing him a trick; then his reason sprang to certainty with so fierce a leap that for an instant his mind recoiled. For we more often stand aghast at the strength of our own feelings than before the enormity of our ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... they were to meet the enemy, they did not know when they arrived the enormity of his crimes. That they might know how the German armies make war it has been necessary that they see towns systematically burned down, mines flooded, factories reduced to ashes, orchards devastated, cathedrals shelled and fired—all that deliberate savagery, ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... come," began Plank, growing redder and redder as he began to realise the enormity of familiarity committed only on the warrant of impulse. "You don't ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... me how much she'd gin to this object and how much ministers had gin and how they wuz all goin' to preach sermons about these poor lost wimmen and try to wake the public up to the fact of the enormity of their sins and the burnin' need ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... had a magnificent appreciation for a well executed enormity. In his story 'Markheim' he gives a skilful picture of a really deft assassination; and in the 'Suicide Club' he has created what I would class as a master criminal. The Russian writers have a power in this mood that is truly wonderful. ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... from the tertulia before a military court—martial law then prevailing in the capital—with a rapidity corresponding with the supposed enormity of her offences. It was her chief pang that she was not hurried there alone. We have not hitherto mentioned that she had a lover, one Juan de Sylva Gomero, to whom she was affianced—a worthy and noble youth, who entertained for her the most passionate attachment. It is a ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... six tricks in it, finishing up with the two; he therefore made with his spades all—indeed, I rather think more tricks than the Colonel ought to have made in his diamonds, each of which, now losing cards, he successively banged down with increasing anger and turbulence of gesture, as the enormity of my crime was borne in upon him. It was the deciding game of a rubber; the adversaries' score had stood at one, while we were at two, and besides, we had had two by honours; as they made four by ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 19, 1892 • Various
... any enormity greater than I have committed. I never knew, and never shall know, a worse ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... the first. 'It's almost an aggravation of the enormity, that we shall be out to-day. Out! What have ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... a path between mountains of an extraordinary height, at the foot of which flowed a large river, in which he beheld a multitude of the damned, who were suffering diverse torments, according to the kind and enormity of their crimes. He saw amongst them many of his acquaintance; amongst others, some prelates and priests, guilty of incontinence, who were tied with their backs to stakes, and burned by a fire lighted under them; the ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... I was for a time unable to a speak. The deep plot itself, the proposition made to me to assist her, and the cool manner of the lady herself, fairly staggered me. At length, speaking as calmly as I could, I tried to convince Mrs. Quintin of the enormity of the crime she intended to commit, telling her that, if she wished to adopt a child, she would find it quite an easy matter to do so without taking any such course as she evidently intended; and, after arguing for some time, she seemed to ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... treasury, so as to enable members to sit permanently sur les fleurs de lis, and to obtain hereditary privileges. The hereditary transmission of office from father to son dealt a heavy blow at the popularity of the parliamentary body, which had already deeply suffered through shameful abuses, the enormity of the fees, the ignorance of some of the members, and the dissolute habits of ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... merely that Othello was a Moor,—that is, black. Though I think the rivalry of Roderigo sufficient to account for his wilful confusion of Moor and Negro,—yet, even if compelled to give this up, I should think it only adapted for the acting of the day, and should complain of an enormity built on a single word, in direct contradiction to Iago's "Barbary horse." Besides, if we could in good earnest believe Shakespeare ignorant of the distinction, still why should we adopt one disagreeable possibility instead ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... profane oaths in common conversation, how remote from modern ideas is the place assigned to this vice, which perhaps affects human happiness as little as any other that can be mentioned, in the scale of criminality, and how curiously characteristic is the fact that the vice to which this supremacy of enormity is attributed continued to be prevalent during the ages when theological influences were most powerful, and has in all good society faded away in simple obedience to a turn of fashion which proscribes it as ungentlemanly! ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... exactly forbidden," said Ulyth, with a twinkle in her eye, after she had stated the extent of her enormity to ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... Concealment where I was, was impossible; there were no means of obtaining horses to proceed. My last only hope then rested in the courier; he perhaps might be bribed to assist me at this juncture. Still his impression as to the enormity of the crime imputed, might deter him; and there was no time for explanation, if even he would listen to it. I returned to the room; he had finished his meal, and was now engaged in all the preparations for encountering a wet and dreary night. I hesitated; my fears ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... works, and are sorry we have not been able to recover any of his poems in order to present the reader with a specimen. Such is commonly the fate of temporary wit, levelled at some prevailing enormity, which is not of a general nature, but only subsists for a while. The curiosity of posterity is not excited, and there is little pains taken in the preservation of what could only please at the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... confessed them. The shame which the people did not feel for them, he felt; and he painted the curse upon them in words which prove how deeply the iron had entered his own soul. He had a profound sense of the engrained quality of evil,(741) the deep saturation of sin, the enormity of the guilt of those who sinned against the light and love of God.(742) A fallacy of his day was that God could easily and would readily forgive sin, that the standard ritual might at once atone for it and comfortable preaching bring the assurance ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... Taczew testified to everything he could before the court of the castellan, that would lessen the enormity of Zbyszko's offence. But in vain did he attribute the deed to childishness and lack of experience; in vain he said that even some one older, if he had made the same vow, prayed for its fulfillment and then had suddenly ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... the first shock of the enormity that I should be her executioner, I made my resolve: to drop shot, too, at the moment after she dropped shot, so disposing my body, that it would fall half upon her, and half by her, so that we might be close always: and that would not ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... added,—"But it is not merely to the character of Marat, with whom we would now have to treat, that I object; it is not to the horror of those crimes which have stained their legislators—crimes in every stage rising above another in enormity—but I object to the consequences of that character, and to the effect of those crimes. They are such as to render a negociation useless, and must entirely deprive of stability any peace which could be concluded ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... he continued, menace in his low tone, "no punishment ever devised by man could be sufficient to pay for, to atone for, the horror, the enormity, of the destruction of such a woman as my daughter was. Mercy? I'd show him no mercy if he lived a ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... so luckless as to fall into his hands, were hastened away to their execution with but the mockery of a trial. Doubtless Berkeley felt himself justified in this severity. To him rebellion against the King was not merely a crime, it was a hideous sacrilege. Those guilty of such an enormity should receive no mercy. But this cannot explain or excuse the coarse brutality and savage joy with which he sent his victims to the scaffold. It is impossible not to feel that many of these executions were dictated, not by motives ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... came to him very slowly, and it is doubtful that he ever fully realized the enormity of his sorrow and the fearful responsibility that had devolved upon him with the care of that wee thing, his son, still a ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... me is worth summarizing. It contained a lucid, many-sided, and plausible account of the Russian situation. Among other things, it was a confession of the enormity of the crimes perpetrated, on both sides, it said, which it ascribed largely to the brutalizing effects of the World War, waged under disastrous conditions unknown in other lands. Myriads of practically unarmed men had been exposed during the campaign to wholesale slaughter, ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... then. In five brief, savage sentences he had told her of Frances and the woman in the hospital. And when he had done he read her face with its tolerant good-humour, and the full enormity of it all burst over him like a flood of crude light. He turned ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... particular moment; and that in consideration of the covenantors never having clapped eyes upon each other since the wedding-day,—even had not the precontract of marriage between the groom's father and the bride's mother rendered a consummation of the childish oath an obvious and a most heinous enormity,—why, that, in a sentence, and for all his coy verbosity, the new pontiff was ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... put a citizen of Rome in bonds; it is an atrocity to scourge him; to put him to death is well-nigh parricide; what shall I say it is to crucify him?—Language has no word by which I may designate such an enormity. Yet with all this yon man was not content. 'Let him look', said he, 'towards his country; let him die in full sight of freedom and the laws'. It was not Gavius; it was not a single victim, unknown to fame, a mere ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... total community. But had there even been a gentry in Stratford, since they would have marked the distinctions of their rank chiefly by greater reserve of manners, it is probable that, after all, Shakspeare, with his enormity of delight in exhibitions of human nature, would have mostly cultivated that class of society in which the feelings are more elementary and simple, in which the thoughts speak a plainer language, and in which the restraints of factitious ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... from which, by the powers which I legally possessed, and conceive myself legally bound to assert against any subsequent authority to the contrary derived from the same common source, he was dispossessed for crimes of the greatest enormity, and your Council shall resolve to execute the order, I will instantly give up my ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... until the scapegrace reached his twenty-sixth year, having heaped wickedness upon wickedness; and who can tell how much trouble he brought upon his family, who were always afraid of hearing of some new enormity? At last they held a family council, and told the parents that matters had come to such a pass that if they did not disown their son the rest of the family must needs break off all communication with them: ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... become an adept in his despicable science, to practise it habitually as a means of increasing my already enormous income at the expense of the weak-minded among my fellow-collegians. Such, nevertheless, was the fact. And the very enormity of this offence against all manly and honorable sentiment proved, beyond doubt, the main if not the sole reason of the impunity with which it was committed. Who, indeed, among my most abandoned associates, would not rather have disputed the clearest ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... she was in a pool of blood. The explanation we got invariably was that the Arab who owned these victims was enraged at losing his money by the slaves becoming unable to march, and vented his spleen by murdering them; but I have nothing more than common report in support of attributing this enormity to ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... good many years to see that it was an outrage to confiscate to the State one half the property of a man who died childless, leaving his widow only the other half; but a legislature of women would have annihilated that enormity by a single day's work. I have never seen reason to believe that women on general questions would act more wisely or more conscientiously, as a rule, than men: but self-preservation is a wonderful quickener of the brain; and in all questions bearing on their ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... distant manner of the guests, after the departure of Sibley, she had already noticed friendly glances and an evident disposition to make amends. It also gave her not a little satisfaction that her cousin and the artist were experiencing such sincere compunctions, and were realizing the enormity of their offence. Ida was very human, and always would be. She was also a little elated over the fact that she had been able to tell the truth the evening before. The memory, however, that nestled most warmly in her heart was the ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... then," inquired Gaddo, "may be guilty of any enormity sooner than wedlock, which money itself ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... services except the Romish, and ordered the destruction of their temples, the banishment of their ministers and schoolmasters, and the baptism and education of their children henceforth in the false creed of Rome. This was indeed the bitterest drop in their cup of overflowing grief. Staggered by the enormity of the evil, they first of all sought the ear of their own prince. Disappointed, they began to make preparations to defend themselves against the troops which were gathering on their frontiers. On the 22nd of ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... moneys diverted from the legitimate uses of the family—all the debauchees who rolled drunk through our streets, and all the offences directly originating in this degrading vice. Now, what conceivable order of mind could prompt a man to engage in such a laborious research? Who either doubts the enormity of drunkenness or its frequency? It is a theme that we hear of incessantly. The pulpit rings with it, the press proclaims it, the judges declare it in all their charges, and a special class of lecturers have converted it into a profession. None denied the existence of the disease; what ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... Mrs. Gray realized the enormity of the offence, and she could only put her arms around Emma's back and say, "There, there, I wouldn't take on so about it." As a matter of fact, she had striven to have Bill send an invitation to his brother-in-law, ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... infirmity only affords him another occasion for indulging it. It is not from any want of attachment to his father or of abhorrence of his murder that Hamlet is thus dilatory, but it is more to his taste to indulge his imagination in reflecting upon the enormity of the crime and refining on his schemes of vengeance, than to put them into immediate practice. His ruling passion is to think, not to act: and any vague pretext that flatters this propensity instantly diverts him ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... that the Rishis addressed Nahusha in that style even when they knew that he had not intentionally slain the cow and the bull. The object of the speaker is to show the enormity of the act when ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... violations of law in the West, and for the horrors which resulted from his exploitation of the Indians, was Astor ever prosecuted? To repeat, no; nor was he disturbed even by such a triviality as a formal summons. Yet, to realize the full enormity of acts for which he was responsible, and the complete measure of immunity that he enjoyed, it is necessary to recall that at the time the Government had already begun to assume the role of looking upon the Indians as its wards, and thus of theoretically ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... is now," she remarked, almost cheerfully, "except some that Margot had to keep for buying sugar and flour and things in the village—" She was so calm that he knew she was utterly unaware of the enormity of the amount. "If I am going to have thirty days more," she concluded, "I'm quite sure I can get the rest for you, I'll find the Portia Person, I know, evaire so many lawyers weren't in Temple Bar today. He might be there tomorrow, you know." She nodded confidently. ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... the tree where he had hidden, and proceeded to sit in judgment on him, Sir Henry explaining to him in the very best French the unheard-of cowardice and enormity of his conduct, more especially in letting the oiled rag out of his mouth, whereby he nearly aroused the Masai camp with teeth-chattering and brought about the failure of our plans: ending up with a request ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... have heard, Have read bold fables of enormity, Devised to make men wonder, and confirm The abhorrence of our nature; but this hardness Transcends all ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... few hours, that he might be sacrificed under circumstances of peculiar enormity. A hole being dug in the ground of a depth sufficient to enable him to stand upright, with his head only exposed, his arms were pinioned to his body, he placed in it, and the loose earth thrown in and rammed ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... which he was still dressed. Another moment, and the doctor had come in, and with him half the young officers of the garrison. Rayner was led away to his own quarters. Buxton, dazed and frightened now, ordered the guards back to their post, and stood pondering over the enormity of his blunder. No one spoke to him or paid the faintest attention other than to elbow him out of the way occasionally. The doctor never so much as noticed him. Blake had briefly recounted the catastrophe to those who ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... actor!" shouted the marquis, his anger again breaking forth. "Has he not already dragged an honored name in the dust? A stroller! A player!" The marquis fairly gasped at the enormity of the offense; for a moment he was speechless, and then asked feebly: "What caused him to take ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... parents, how your responsibility is measured, by the magnitude of those interests committed to your care, by the kind of influence you exert over them, and by the enormity of that guilt and wo which are consequent upon your unfaithfulness. Let this be an incentive to parental integrity. The day is rapidly approaching when you must give an account of your stewardship. Oh, what, if in that day you behold your children ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... bravely and honestly, and stated them clearly and positively, when he felt it his duty to speak, although evasion or silence would have been the more comfortable alternative. "I doubt," says Mr. Chadwick,[129] "if Garrison or Parker had a keener sense than his of the enormity of human slavery. Before the first Abolitionist Society had been organized, he was one of the organizers of a committee for the discussion and advancement of emancipation. I have read all of his principal writings upon slavery, and it would be hard to find ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... intolerable that an example of such terrible enormity should be allowed to go at large unpunished. Your presence in the society of respectable people would lead the less able-bodied to think more lightly of all forms of illness; neither can it be permitted that you should ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... is that of magnifying and aggravating the faults of others; raising any small miscarriage into a heinous crime, any slender defect into an odious vice, and any common infirmity into a strange enormity; turning a small "mote in the eye" of our neighbor into a huge "beam," a little dimple in his face into a monstrous wen. This is plainly slander, at least in degree, and according to the surplusage whereby the censure doth exceed the fault. As he that, upon the ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... which we are charged? It is endeavoring, in our faltering human speech, to declare the enormity of the sin of making merchandize of men,—of separating husband and wife,—taking the infant from its mother and selling the daughter to prostitution,—of a professedly Christian nation denying, by statute, the Bible to every sixth man and woman of its population, and making it illegal ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... was a long silence during which the men gazed into the fire. Each, perhaps, had some vague conception of the enormity of Rojas's love or hate—some faint and amazing glimpse of the gulf of human passion. Those were cold, hard, grim faces upon which ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... being as he is the cause of the child's existence, he is a party to the crime; his share in it, indeed, is greater than the mother's; had it not been for him, there would have been no crime. Then why should he be acquitted? Because the laws are made by men. There is the answer. The enormity of such man-made laws cries of itself to Heaven for intervention. And there can be no help for us women till we are allowed a say in the elections, and in the making of ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... 'Such an enormity never occurred to her as a remote possibility. If she had known you, dear, she would have had to write an appendix to her book to meet all the new problems which you would suggest. ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... upward in the evening air, it was observed by the druids in the king's tents and caused the greatest consternation. To kindle any fire during the solemn assembly of the chiefs, before the king had lighted the sacred flame in the palace of Tara, was a sin of the greatest enormity, and the druids did not scruple to warn the king that if the fire of the stranger was not extinguished that night, unto him, whose fire it was, would belong ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... his prospects at the outset of his career and threatened to be an irreparable blight on his entire life. She realized that she was largely to blame. She had done wrong to marry him and at times she reproached herself bitterly. There were days when their union assumed in her eyes the enormity of a crime. She should have seen what a social gulf lay between them. All these taunts and insults from his family which she now endured she had foolishly brought upon her own head. But she had not been able to resist the temptation. Howard came into her life when the outlook ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... soon as the fact became known, the Amidei and the Uberti, whose families were allied, were filled with rage, and having assembled with many others, connections of the parties, they concluded that the injury could not be tolerated without disgrace, and that the only vengeance proportionate to the enormity of the offence would be to put Buondelmonti to death. And although some took into consideration the evils that might ensue upon it, Mosca Lamberti said, that those who talk of many things effect nothing, using that trite and common adage, Cosa fatta ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... four weeks' time to prepare for death and settle up your business." It was here suggested by the Attorney-General that it was usual in such cases for the court to recapitulate the essential parts of the evidence, to set forth the nature and enormity of the crime, and solemnly to exhort the prisoner to repent and fit himself for the awful doom awaiting him. "Oh!" said the judge, "Mr. Green understands all that as well as if I had preached to him ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
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