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Aggravation   /ˌægrəvˈeɪʃən/   Listen
Aggravation

noun
1.
An exasperated feeling of annoyance.  Synonym: exasperation.
2.
Unfriendly behavior that causes anger or resentment.  Synonyms: irritation, provocation.
3.
Action that makes a problem or a disease (or its symptoms) worse.  Synonym: exacerbation.






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"Aggravation" Quotes from Famous Books



... religion of his wife. It is true that at a later day, the religion of the Queen, and the presence at Court of her Catholic attendants, enhanced the fury of an unthinking storm of anti-Catholic feeling. But it was only a small aggravation of an irrational ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik

... of 1542, a grievous aggravation of the tax upon salt, called Babel, caused a violent insurrection in the town of Rochelle, which was exempted, it was said, by its traditional privileges from that impost. Not only was payment refused, but the commissioners were maltreated ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... of woe, and lamentation, and great mourning; Rachel weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted, because they were not." The miserable uncertainty that involved the fate of the lost ones was an aggravation to the sufferings of the mourners: could they but have been certified of the manner of their deaths, they fancied they should be more contented; but, alas! this fearful ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill

... of her left for the grander, it was only on reflexion that the falseness came out; so long as he left it to the mercy of beneficent chance it offered him no face and made of him no claim that he couldn't meet without aggravation of his inward sense. This aggravation had been his original horror; yet what—in Milly's presence, each day—was horror doing with him but virtually letting him off? He shouldn't perhaps get off to the end; there was time enough ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James

... when these limits are transgressed we have a right to regard the offenders as all the more culpable because of their advantages. The circumstance that they come of a "good stock," as it is called, and are pursuing liberal studies, is only an aggravation of the offence. We expect youthful extravagances, waste of time, neglect of opportunities, exaggerated self-importance, a supercilious way of looking down upon the outside world—these are all phases of growth, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... aware of the dignity of the personage offended. The one would justly be sharply chastised; the other might as justly be condemned to death. In the present case, the offender does or may know that the Being offended against is of awful majesty, and therefore the offence is one of great aggravation, and he will justly be punished with great severity; but by his extremely contracted and feeble faculties, as the lowest in the scale of strictly rational and accountable creatures in the whole creation, he is infinitely incapable of any adequate conception of the greatness of ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe

... should have smoked his pipe in Nettie's sitting-room, when she was out of the way, was not, after all, considering Fred's character, a very wonderful circumstance, but it exasperated his brother to a greater extent than much more important matters. That aggravation entirely overpowered Edward Rider's self-control. It seemed the culmination of all the wrong and silent insolent injury inflicted upon Nettie. He saw the stain of those ashes on the little mantel-shelf, the rolling cloud of smoke in the ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... his troubles prevented Birotteau, always effusive and liking to be pitied and consoled, from enjoying the soothing pleasure of taking his friends into his confidence,—a last but cruel aggravation of his misery. The little amount of tact which he derived from his timidity made him fear to seem ridiculous in concerning himself with such pettiness. And yet those petty things made up the sum of his existence,—that cherished existence, full of busyness about nothings, ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac

... the masters did not care for their lives, and treated them with great barbarity. A great part of the land in Italy was turned into sheep-walks. The slaves were made responsible for the sheep committed to their care, and were left to supply themselves with food as they best could. It was an aggravation of their wretched lot, that almost all these slaves had once been freemen, and were not distinguished from their masters by any outward sign, like the negroes in the United States. In Sicily the free population had diminished even ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence

... hast slain thine enemy—it was a cruel deed: thou hast cut him off perchance in his sins—it is a fearful aggravation. Do yet by my counsel, and in lieu of him whom thou hast perchance consigned to the kingdom of Satan, let thine efforts wrest another subject from the reign of ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... of doing so; and that I have unjustly, though perhaps unintentionally, represented him as a trifling, light-minded sort of person. I have, therefore, felt bound to record this protest of the injured party, but having just read it to him, he pronounces it unsatisfactory, and an aggravation of ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer

... earthly motive for such a crime on the part of his client; the evidence adduced against him was so overwhelmingly complete and convincing—although the greater part of it was circumstantial—that his protestations were regarded as a positive aggravation of his offence; and the last news that reached him ere the prison gates closed upon him were that the girl who had promised to be his wife had already given herself to his rival; while his father, stricken to earth by the awful blow to his family pride, as well as to his affection, ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... aggravation to the already lacerated feelings of the injured man. He had been brought thither to be scoffed at and scorned at, that he might be a laughing-stock to his enemies, and food for mirth to the vile-minded. He swelled with noble anger till he would have burst, had it not been for the ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... ways of quarrelling, the four gates to this delightful city. For it is delightful, once your 'prentice days are past. In a way it is like a cold bath on a winter's morning, and you glow all day. In a way it is like football, as the nimble aggravation dances to and fro. In a way it is like chess. Indeed, all games of skill are watered quarrels, quarrel and soda, come to see them in a proper light. And without quarrelling you have not fully appreciated your fellow-man. For in the ultimate it is the train and complement of Love, ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... most diverting tale of frauds, murders, massacres, rapes, rapine, desolation, and destruction, that I think it possible on any other plan to invent; and he has given us motive and effect, with every possible aggravation, to improve the sport. One would think it difficult to preserve the point of ridicule, in such a case, unabated by contrary emotions; but now that the feat is performed it appears of easy imitation, and I am amazed that our race of imitators have made no efforts in this sort: It would answer ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith

... and a half before dinner; but Sophia carried off her guest to her own rooms at once, for the revision of her toilet, and detained her in those upper regions until just before the ringing of the second bell, very much to the aggravation of Mr. Granger, who paced the long drawing-room in dismal solitude, ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... transfusable into action." Belvidera was one of Mrs. Siddons's greatest characters. Campbell notes that "until the middle of the last century the ghosts of Jaffier and Pierre used to come in upon the stage, haunting Belvidera in her last agonies, which certainly require no aggravation from spectral agency." The play was much condensed for presentment on the stage; but it would not appear that Belvidera's dying speech, quoted above, was interfered with. Boaden, in his memoir of the actress, expressly ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... Durbege Sing. These clandestine complaints, these underhand means of accomplishing the ruin of a man, without the knowledge of his true and proper judges, we produce to your Lordships as a heavy aggravation of our charge, and as a proof of a wicked conspiracy to destroy the man. For if there was any danger of his falling into arrears when the heavy accumulated kists came upon him, the Council ought to have known that danger; they ought ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... companion's motive. It was like a fresh sacrifice for a larger conquest "Only see me through now, do it in the face of this and in spite of it, and I leave you a hand of which the freedom isn't to be said!" The aggravation of fear—or call it, apparently, of knowledge—had jumped straight into its place as an aggravation above all for her father; the effect of this being but to quicken to passion her reasons for making his protectedness, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... suffer under a system which had authority and right for its basis made his case no less intolerable to him; he felt like one suddenly seized and sold into slavery. That his master and tyrant was called the Law was no mitigation of his calamity; nay, it was an aggravation, since he could ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn

... some, if not principally all, of their crimes originate in agrarian or political vengeance. Indeed, I believe that, so far from this circumstance being looked upon as a defence, it ought to be considered as an aggravation of the guilt; inasmuch as it is, beyond all doubt, at least a far more manly thing to inflict an injury upon an enemy face to face, and under the influence of immediate resentment, than to crouch like a cowardly assassin behind a hedge and coolly ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... side of the black and white line for ever, and bring this war to the end. There is probably not one of these clamourers for recognition who could define the limits of the State to be recognized.... And, over and above all, recognition, unless it meant 'war,' would be an aggravation of the horrors of the contest; it would not aid the South one whit, and it would add immensely to the unity and the fury ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... to the dominion of a new master;—points, we say, of this sort are exhibited to the public attention, as so many arguments against the truth of the Christian religion;—and with success. For these topics being brought together, and set off with some aggravation of circumstances, and with a vivacity of style and description familiar enough to the writings and conversation of free-thinkers, insensibly lead the imagination into a habit of classing Christianity with the ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin

... bashful hesitation, just like spellin' punctooation—might have worked an aggravation on to Sutter's mournful mind, For the witnesses all vary ez to wot was said and nary a galoot will toot his horn except the way he ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte

... o Kawtoom—stetcher stends in Trifawlgr Square to this dy. Trined Bleck Pakeetow in smawshin hap the slive riders, e did. Promist Gawdn e wouldn't never smaggle slives nor gin, an (with suppressed aggravation) WOWN'T, gavner, not if we gows dahn on ahr bloomin bended knees to im ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw

... expression to views which strangely resembled the "damnable heresies of secession." Indeed, the neglect of the seceding States to "consult Kentucky," previously to having gone out, seemed to be, in the eyes of these gentlemen, not so much an aggravation of the crime of secession, as, in itself, a crime infinitely graver. There were many who would condemn secession, and in the same breath indicate the propriety of "co-operation." These subtle distinctions, satisfactory, ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke

... interference with firmness. Don't intermeddle, like Don Quixote, in such a manner as to make things worse. It is only in the case of continued and systematic cruelty that it is worth while to work temporary aggravation, to the end of ultimate and entire relief. And sometimes that is unavoidable. You remember how, when Moses made his application to Pharaoh for release to the Hebrews, the first result was the aggravation of their burdens. The supply of straw was cut off, and the tale of bricks ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... country; fifth, the party murdered; sixth, his wife; seventh, posterity; eighth, Carlisle, now to be executed; and lastly, ninth, my own soul, and I am now to die for my offence. But, my lords," he added, "besides my own offence, which in its nature needs no aggravation, divers scandalous reports are given out which blemish my reputation, which is more dear to me than my life: first, that I made show of reconciliation with Turner, the which, I protest, is utterly untrue, for what I have formerly said I do again assure ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... and that which you ask you never can learn!" No, for it is as strange, as full of black mystery, to Tristan as to Mark. It is the very impossible which has happened, the never to be accounted for. Tristan, the soul of honour, has betrayed his friend, and with all those circumstances of aggravation which the friend has just counted off. Nothing can explain it. It is surely like a dream, a curious dream, the worst of the Day's lies. But in a dream also, as we remarked before, there is a right thing to do, for a man of heart. Tristan is not long deciding ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... the considerations which filled the mind of Vauvenargues when, at the age of twenty-nine, he saw himself driven out of military life by the rapid aggravation of ill-health. His thoughts turned to diplomacy. He greatly admired the writings of Sir William Temple, on whom he may have partly modelled his own style as an essayist; he dreamed of becoming an ambassador of the same class, known, as Temple was, "by their writings no less ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse

... was the common lot. Each day and every day did these men and women, with a stolidity of long-continued destitution, and temporal and spiritual tribulation, gaze upon that bare, unyielding country, pregnant only with aggravation to their ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... undoubted proofs that it was totally fallacious; though it is by no means surprising that those who wish to depreciate him, should, since his death, have laid hold of this circumstance, and insisted upon it with very unfair aggravation[201]. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... N. increase, augmentation, enlargement, extension; dilatation &c. (expansion) 194; increment, accretion; accession &c. 37; development, growth; aggrandizement, aggravation; rise; ascent &c. 305; exaggeration exacerbation; spread &c. (dispersion) 73; flood tide; gain, produce, product, profit. V. increase, augment, add to, enlarge;. dilate &c. (expand) 194; grow, wax, get ahead. gain strength; advance; run ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... but never from the presence and scrutiny of this fierce and hateful bodyguard. Such detestable cruelties were in the manner of the time, which does not make us the less sicken at them with burning indignation and the rage of shame. For this aggravation of her sufferings England alone was responsible. The Burgundians at their worst had not used her so. It is true that she was to them a piece of valuable property worth so much good money; which is a powerful argument everywhere. But to the English she meant ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant

... dead, being alone.' The demon brings seven other devils worse than himself. The reason for that aggravation is plain. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... severity. The person who would indiscriminately bring the passengers of a moving train to death must invariably, if sane, be a criminal of the darkest dye. Murder of an individual, even when coming within the first degree, is not often without some particular aggravation on the part of the victim. But train-wrecking must always be the result of the purest malice,—of diabolism unalloyed. No palliating circumstance ever suggests itself. The villain attempts to kill not one who has involved ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various

... window of the cook-shop knows no more excruciating aggravation of his pangs than to look at food, and yet keeps on looking. It may have been like this with Saxham, empty of all love, and gnawed by the tooth of a sharper hunger than that which is merely physical. He started out of his lethargy when ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... had made Grisell so much worse that her mind hardly awoke again to anything but present suffering from fever, and in consequence the aggravation of the wounds on her neck and cheek. She used to moan now and then "Don't take me away!" or cower in terror, "She is coming!" being her cry, or sometimes "So foul and loathly." She hung again between life and death, and most of those around thought death ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge

... malignant nature, for which the pious, though excessive, rigor of Constantine had recently decreed the punishment of death. This deadly and incoherent mixture of treason and magic, of poison and adultery, afforded infinite gradations of guilt and innocence, of excuse and aggravation, which in these proceedings appear to have been confounded by the angry or corrupt passions of the judges. They easily discovered that the degree of their industry and discernment was estimated, by the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... his time in fiddling? Foolish Word-monger and Motive-grinder, who in thy Logic-mill hast an earthly mechanism for the Godlike itself, and wouldst fain grind me out Virtue from the husks of Pleasure,—I tell thee, Nay! To the unregenerate Prometheus Vinctus of a man, it is ever the bitterest aggravation of his wretchedness that he is conscious of Virtue, that he feels himself the victim not of suffering only, but of injustice. What then? Is the heroic inspiration we name Virtue but some Passion; some bubble of the blood, bubbling in the direction ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... been delayed in securing McCoppet's attention. The town was still excited over all that had happened; the saloons were full of men. Culver had been an important person, needful to many of the miners and promoters of mining. His loss was an aggravation, especially as ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... Murray and the other lords were banished, and the tide of Mary's fate began to rise darkly between the unhappy fool she had chosen for her husband, and all the wild conflicting elements which had been enough to tax her strength without that aggravation. Even Knox acknowledges that "the threatenings of the preachers were fearful," though he himself had been the first to warn the people of national judgments to be looked for because of the offences in costume and other matters of their Queen. We lose, however, here ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... blow out. Miss Philomela smiled at this act so as to be seen by him. But he did not appear to notice it. Then she whisked her cloth under his very nose, as if to challenge objections. After this aggravation had been repeated three or four times, Marcus felt compelled ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... lose the way without these guides, that conjunctions should be used. On the other hand, conjunctions are an annoyance when not needed. Just as guideposts along a road where there is no chance to leave the direct path are useless, and their recurrence is a cause of aggravation, so it is with unnecessary conjunctions. They attract attention to themselves, and so draw it from the thought. The first caution is, Do not use ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... winds our sentiments concerning the whole aboriginal race of America. Our journey was in vain and much worse than in vain. For myself, I was vexed and disappointed beyond measure; as I well knew that a slight aggravation of my disorder would render this false step irrevocable, and make it quite impossible to accomplish effectively the design which had led me an arduous journey of between three and four thousand miles. To fortify myself as well as I could against such a contingency, I resolved that I would not under ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... those causes which are aggravated by increase of speed; and if we suppose the amount of aggravation to augment as the speed, the danger of travelling is eighty-eight per cent. greater by a fast than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various

... be in a great rage, swore he would have revenge of his insulting neighbour, and pull him up. The exasperation of the Jew afforded much merriment to the spectators, who seemed to enjoy his aggravation: our friends, however, had arrived too late to discover the cause, and although not very particular about discovering themselves amid the mob, conceived it most prudent to move onward without inquiry; "for," ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... larger than a closet; however, as the horizontal position still continued most distressing to me, a bed of down could not have procured me repose, for I do not think I ceased coughing for three consecutive minutes the whole night. And it was no small aggravation to my misery, to know that I was the means of disturbing all my friends in the next apartment. Under these circumstances, I heard the summons for preparation, at a very early hour, with infinite satisfaction, and, ill as I was, though the morning was ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman

... Maecenas recovered from this fever, Horace made a narrow escape from being killed by the fall of a tree, and, what to him was a great aggravation of the disaster, upon his own beloved farm (Odes, II. 13). He links the two events together as a marked coincidence in the following Ode (II. 17). His friend had obviously been a prey to one of his fits of low spirits, ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin

... situation was by no means desirable, and therefore, although the wind was still at W.S.W. we weighed and made sail about eight o'clock the next day: We had likewise incessant rain, so that the people were continually wet, which was a great aggravation of their fatigue; yet they were still cheerful, and, what was yet less to be expected, still healthy. This day, to our great joy, we found the current setting to the westward, and we gained ground very fast. At six in the evening, we anchored in the bay on the east side of Cape Monday, where the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr

... the queen gave birth to a son; an event more fortunate to the nation than to his unhappy mother, whose evil destiny received aggravation from a circumstance which appeared so flattering ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... Can Persons frequent the Play-Houses, after the outragious Impieties of them, and the fatal Effects of their going to them, are in so full and advantageous a manner laid open to the World, without a greater Aggravation of their Guilt? ...
— Representation of the Impiety and Immorality of the English Stage (1704); Some Thoughts Concerning the Stage in a Letter to a Lady (1704) • Anonymous

... sign, and especially by my confusion, I had something with which I reproached myself; I relieved my mind by my free and immediate confession. I did well, for the next day Grimm came in triumph to relate to her my crime with aggravation, and since that time he has never failed maliciously to recall it to her recollection; in this he was the more culpable, since I had freely and voluntarily given him my confidence, and had a right to ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... case, at any rate, the hypothesis of personal immortality is an aggravation, not a remedy, ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson

... This was a great aggravation to the misery of their predicament. They had no resource but to fly on to Montreuil, which was still above two leagues distant from them; and should the republican troops persevere in the pursuit, their loss upon the road would be terrific. The darkness was their only friend, and on they ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... not even a plea of confession and avoidance. It is a plea of "Guilty" at the bar of the world. It has one merit, that it does not add to the crime the aggravation of hypocrisy. It virtually rests the case of Germany upon the gospel of Treitschke and Bernhardi, that each nation is justified in exerting its physical power to the utmost in defense of its selfish interests and without any regard to considerations ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... called in, but there was no perceptible change, except a slight aggravation of all the symptoms. The medicine had produced no visible salutary effect. During the second day, there was exhibited little alteration, but on the morning of the third day, symptoms of a more decided character had supervened—such as suffused and injected eyes, painful deglutition, ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur

... confined himself to pointing out his own views of the following subjects:—1. The seizing and imprisoning of the agent of a friendly power, travelling unarmed and without escort, under the formal protection of the Rajah, and with the authority of his own government. 2. The aggravation of this act of the Amlah, by our present detention under the Dewan's authority. 3. The chance of collision, and the disastrous consequences of a war, for which they had no preparation of any kind. 4. The impossibility of the supreme ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... environs. The shiver of the brushwood and the grass, a desolate melancholy, an anxiety in which a conscience seemed to lurk, appropriated with tragic force the whole landscape to that black figure suspended by the chain. The presence of a spectre in the horizon is an aggravation of solitude. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... The charge of firing on flags of truce was another instance of 'talking for Buncombe.' Carleton never fired on any white flag. But he always sent the same answer: that he could hold no communication with any rebels unless they came to implore the king's pardon. This, of course, was an aggravation of his offensive calmness in the face of so much revolutionary rage. To individual rebels of all sorts he was, if anything, over-indulgent. He would not burn the suburbs of Quebec till the enemy forced him to it, though many ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood

... Lovel, Catesby, Ratcliffe, and the real abettors or accomplices of Richard, were attainted and executed. No mention of such a murder (25)was made in the very act of parliament that attainted Richard himself, and which would have been the most heinous aggravation of his crimes. And no prosecution of the supposed assassins was even thought of till eleven years afterwards, on the appearance of Perkin Warbeck. Tirrel is not named in the act of attainder to which I have had recourse; and such omissions cannot but induce us to ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole

... out a bumper of wine, swore he would drink her health in vinegar, and at last openly profest he would commit adultery with her if he could. Proh pudor! Nay, and if such a sin might admit of any aggravation, she is it seems a lady of very high degree, et quidem, the ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... eager eyes the Master pries; Looks in and out, and through and through; Says nothing—till at last he spies A wound upon the Mastiff's head, 760 A wound, where plainly might be read What feats an Ass's hoof can do! But drop the rest:—this aggravation, This complicated provocation, A hoard of grievances unsealed; 765 All past forgiveness it repealed; And thus, and through distempered blood On both sides, Benjamin the good, The patient, and the tender-hearted, Was ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... league against which we are now contending. But, it is said, it is unreasonable to grant a boon to men because they have been many years doing wrong. The length of the time during which they have enjoyed property not rightfully their own, is an aggravation of the injury which they have committed, and is so far from being a reason for letting them enjoy that property for ever, that it is rather a reason for compelling them to make prompt restitution. With this childish sophistry the petitions on our table are filled. Is it ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... all the consolation you bring me? Ah how poor, how heartless, and how cold! If we accomplish not that flight upon which my hopes and wishes are suspended, what utility and what pleasure can we derive from this interview? It will then only be a bitter aggravation of all my trials, and all my miseries. If a prospect so unexpected and desirable terminate in no advantage, for what purpose was it opened before me? It will but render my sensations more poignant, and give a new refinement to the ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin

... like your feeling, just. I want my salts, and you tell me there's nothing like being still for a headache. Indeed? But I'm not going to be still; so don't you think it. That's just how a woman's put upon. But I know your aggravation—I know your art. You think to keep me quiet about that minx Kitty,—your favourite, sir! Upon my life, I'm not to discharge my own servant without—but she shall go. If I had to do all the work myself, she shouldn't stop under my roof. ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold

... content with her judicious nibbling. To pass the golden-brown, breaded pig's feet was torture. To look at the codfish balls was agony. And so Jennie went on, sampling, tasting, the scraps of food acting only as an aggravation. Up one aisle, and down the next she went. And then, just around the corner, she brought up before the grocery department's pride and boast, the Scotch bakery. It is the store's star vaudeville feature. All day long the gaping crowd stands before it, watching David the ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber

... interrupted Errington. "To part with Lady Alice is a great aggravation of my present troubles; but considering the kind of life to which we were both accustomed, and which she had a right to expect, I am sincerely thankful she was preserved from sharing my lot. Alone I can battle with life; distracted by knowing I had dragged her down, I should be paralyzed. ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander

... not even his mother with him," said Baptiste; the remark, as Baptiste delivered it, was impertinent, and yet so intangibly impertinent as to afford no handle for reproof. He meant that the Baron was free from an aggravation; he said that he ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope

... denied any lot in life but that of being the personal body-servant of a despot, and is dependent for everything upon the chance of finding one who may be disposed to make a favourite of her instead of merely a drudge, it is a very cruel aggravation of her fate that she should be allowed to try this chance only once. The natural sequel and corollary from this state of things would be, that since her all in life depends upon obtaining a good master, she should be allowed ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill

... out of the Bible, and conventional prayers are, it seems to me, an intolerable aggravation of suffering. And so I acted on a principle that I mentioned to your husband that 'there is no power so great as that of one human faith looking upon another human faith.' The promises of God, the love of Christ for little ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... so we have produced the phenomenon of widowhood. The greater the seniority of the husband, the more widowhood will there be in a society. Every economic tendency, every demand for a higher standard of life, every aggravation for the struggle for existence, every increment of the burden of the defective-minded, tending to increase the man's age at marriage, which, on the whole, involves also increasing his seniority—contributes to the amount of widowhood ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby

... time to him, when Catherine Bailey had declared her purpose to him of marrying the successful young lawyer. He had at once made up his mind that his doom was fixed, and had not regarded his solitude as any deep aggravation of his sorrow. But he had come by degrees to find that a man should not give up his life because of a fickle girl, and especially when he found her to be the mother of ten flaxen haired infants. He had, too, as he declared ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope

... remains is the opinion of the Cyrenaics, who think that men grieve when anything happens unexpectedly. And that is, indeed, as I said before, a great aggravation of a misfortune; and I know that it appeared so to Chrysippus, "Whatever falls out unexpected is so much the heavier." But the whole question does not turn on this; though the sudden approach of an enemy sometimes occasions more confusion than it would if you had expected him, and a sudden storm ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... or one of mawbound, or to ascertain the degree in which the latter disease exists. If the probang bring on a sudden rush of gas, the disease is wholly or chiefly hoove; and if it encounter a solid resistance, the disease mawbound, and exists in a degree of aggravation proportioned to the nearness of the point at ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... himself suddenly in a sitting posture, with the water round his waist. As the cool element embraces his loins, he "h-ah-ah!" gasps, as every bather knows how; but the shock to his system is nothing compared with the aggravation to his feelings when he hears the joyful yell of triumph that issues from the brazen ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne

... perfect sympathy with Iphigenia; the father would have been absorbed in his own grief, and his grief would have been an unsympathetic grief towards Iphigenia. It was his own case that he felt; and it does appear to us an aggravation of the suffering of Iphigenia, that, at the moment of her sacrifice, she saw indeed her father's person, but was never more—and knew she was never more—to behold his face again. This circumstance alone would justify Timanthes, but other concurrent reasons may be given. It was no want ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... a gentleman with Mr. Pickwick's sense of propriety, but it was not the whole extent of the aggravation, for a stage-coach full, inside and out, was meeting them at the moment, and the astonishment of the passengers was very palpably evinced. The congratulations of an Irish family, too, who were keeping up with the chaise, and begging ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... his life, and aggravation of distress, we are to suppose our prodigal almost driven to desperation. Now, for the first time, he feels the severe effects of pinching cold and griping hunger. At this melancholy season, reflection finds a passage ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler

... their great measures, to mangle their details as much as they can venture to do, and hold the Government in a sort of subjugation and in a state of sufferance? The Tory lords are perfectly rabid, and reckless of consequences, regardless of the embarrassment they cause the King, and of the aggravation of a state of things they already think very bad, they care for nothing but the silly vain pleasure of beating the Government, every day affording fresh materials for the assaults that are made upon them by the press, and fresh cause for general odium and ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... In the same way the various types of irritative conditions, physical and mental, may be considered as exciting moments. Individuals with a tendency to pathological lying will no doubt show aggravation of the phenomenon at periods of particular stress. We have heard it suggested in several cases by relatives that the menstrual period, for instance, brings about an access of tendency to prevarication. ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy

... sinking fund, due in terms of the treaty which placed the crown of Greece on his head. The whole burden of this payment, of course, falls on the Greek people, who, we have already shown, have suffered enough from the government of King Otho, without this aggravation of their misery. Is it, we ask, just that the Greeks should be compelled to pay sums expended on decorations to European statesmen, pensions to Bavarian ministers, staff appointments to French engineer officers, and ambassadors at foreign courts, when they ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... and the disturbances of the empire always raised its expenses much above its receipts. The rough miserliness of Vespasian and the wise economy of Antoninus Pius were far from sufficient to restore the balance; the aggravation of imposts was incessant; and the population, especially the agricultural population, dwindled away more and more, in Italy itself, the centre of the state. This evil disquieted the emperors, when they were neither idiots nor madmen; Claudius, Vespasian, Nerva, and Trajan labored ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... Bridgenorth—"aid them thou canst not—perish with them thou mayst, and even accelerate their ruin; for, in addition to the charges with which thy unhappy father is loaded, it would be no slight aggravation, that while he meditated arming and calling together the Catholics and High Churchmen of Cheshire and Derbyshire, his son should prove to be the confidential agent of the Countess of Derby, who aided her in making good her stronghold against the Protestant ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... securely in their beds. We can adequately realize what it must have been to voyagers approaching our coast from the Old World, on vessels helplessly exposed to the rage of that wild southwestern gale, and seeing in the long and anxiously expected land of their youth and their love only an aggravation of their perils, a death-blow to their hopes, an assurance of their ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... money like that is only an aggravation!" Caroline sighed, discouraged. "And I had hoped some of it would be left for Lavinia dear; she ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge

... out, dripping wet, and in anything but an angelic temper. It was bad enough, in his eyes, to have fallen into the pool; but to be rescued by a fellow he hated, as he did Frank Haywood, added to the aggravation. ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson

... been welcome there from the day of his birth within those walls. And the motive for his final flight from there had only provided an added aggravation for his grandfather. A staunch Union supporter wanted no part of a stubborn-willed and defiant grandson who rode with John Hunt Morgan. Drew clung to his somewhat black thoughts as he made his way to the pasture. The escape he had found in the army was no longer so complete when he ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton

... a duty expressly enjoined on Congress by the constitution of the United States." "The establishment of a naval school of instruction for the formation of scientific and accomplished officers; the want of which is felt with a daily and increasing aggravation." "The establishment of a national university, which had been more than once earnestly recommended to Congress by Washington, and for which he had made express provision in his will." "Connected with ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... honeymoon had become a memory, and she faced again her growing ambition, with a struggling husband who had neither name nor wealth to aid her, she had found her own modest income of ten thousand a year, which she had inherited from her mother, only an aggravation. True, in time her wandering father would pass away; and there was no doubt that his vast property would fall to his daughters, his only living kin. But at present, in view of his aggressively good health and disregard for his relatives, her only recourse was to attach ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... it," said Lavvy. "Pa would loll directly. But indeed I do not believe there ever was any human creature who could keep so bolt upright as Ma, or put such an amount of aggravation into one back! What's the matter, Ma? Ain't ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various

... deep truth uttered by lips that have no right to it." Poor Gourlay was conscious of some feeling of this sort when he heard such truths proclaimed from such lips. To his morbidly-sensitive nature, such irony seemed an aggravation of all he had endured. To think that, after such experiences as had fallen to his share, a Family Compact judge should gravely inform him that in Upper Canada the administrators of the law should be no respecters of persons! that justice is even-handed! To think ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... aggravation of his offence," her color heightening; "the very fact that he should condemn me unseen, unheard, adds to the wrong he has done me instead of taking from it." She rises abruptly and begins to pace up and down the room, ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... Roman Catholic Church has made an induction and classification of sins that has often been borrowed by our Protestant and Puritan divines. His classification is made, as will be seen, on an ascending scale of guilt and aggravation. In the world of sin, he says, there are, first, sins of ignorance; next, there are sins of infirmity; and then, at the top, there are sins of presumption. And this, it will be remembered, was the Psalmist's inventory and estimate of sins ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte

... which he had stolen a respite to write has been considered by Mr. Gardiner, in his Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage, an aggravation of his guilt. The claim it sets up of his right to sweep opposing Spaniards out of his way to the Mine, is treated as an admission that he had founded his enterprise on a lie, and that his sin had found him out. Mr. Gardiner adds he must ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... salad as an aggravation!" said he, as the dish successively persecuted them. "This dinner is hard ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... personal conference. It seems that Governor Seymour, who was a great person in his day, was very decidedly, in the common acceptance of the term, a gentleman. This has been counted unto him for righteousness. It should rather be treated as an aggravation ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... same power at work upon material even more baffling, apparently, in La Recherche de l'Absolu. The subject of that perfect tale is of course the growth of a fixed idea, and Balzac was faced with the task of showing the slow aggravation of a man's ruin through a series of outbreaks, differing in no way one from another, save in their increasing violence. Claes, the excellent and prosperous young burgher of Douai, pillar of the old civic stateliness ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock

... governed earnestly call for revision, and the want of a naval school of instruction, corresponding with the Military Academy at West Point, for the formation of scientific and accomplished officers, is felt with daily increasing aggravation. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... His lecture on the Humour of Homer made Mr. Garnett unhappy and Miss Jane Harrison cross, Mr. Jones says. I don't doubt it. It is very cheap humour indeed, and no more Homer's than mine is. It is entirely Butler's humour about Homer, a very different thing. Its impudence did not mitigate the aggravation, but made it more acute. If he had picked out a fairy-tale, rather than two glorious poems—Little Red Riding Hood, The Three Bears, Rumpelstiltskin, for example—he could have been as facetious as he pleased. But that would not suit him. There would have been no ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett

... (continued Sandford, in perfect neglect and contempt of her question,) "was an aggravation of his guilt; because it shewed a double share of ingratitude to the ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald

... disturbed him and his customers a good deal by playing on the drum and other similar religious services. But that was not all. They used to come out on the sidewalk and beat a large drum and sing and kneel in prayer just before his door, much to the disturbance of his customers and the aggravation of the young grocer. One day he purloined and hid the large drum. He was detected and indicted for larceny. The Attorney-General, for the Government, maintained that everything that went to constitute the crime of larceny existed there. ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar



Words linked to "Aggravation" :   exasperation, exacerbation, provocation, annoyance, twit, last straw, taunting, aggravate, taunt, chafe, intensification, aggression, vexation, aggro



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