"Palliation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... disorder and reason for unreason. In the November of 1783, Pitt addressed a challenge to the Ministry calling upon them to bring forward some measure securing and improving the advantages to be derived from England's Eastern possessions, some measure not of temporary palliation and timorous expedients, but vigorous and effectual, suited to the magnitude, the importance, and the alarming exigencies of the case. Fox answered this challenge by asking leave to bring in a bill "for vesting the affairs of the East India ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... but another slave is to be put to death by the garrote in about a fortnight, whose offense had some palliation. His master was a man of harsh temper, and treated his slaves with extreme severity; the negro watched his opportunity, and shot him ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... without avail. He sinned again. His commanding officer was in despair as to what should be done. A fellow officer said, "Suppose you try forgiveness." The guilty soldier was summoned. On being asked what he had to say in palliation of his offense, he hung his head and replied: "Nothing, except I'm very sorry." "Well," said the officer, "We have decided to forgive you." The culprit looked dazed, burst into tears, saluted, and went out to become one of the ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... lasts, while heaven lasts, while hell rocks and groans, will it be forgotten that Slavery by its minions slew him, and in slaying him made manifest its whole nature and tendency. This blow was aimed at the life of the Government. Some murders there have been that admitted shades of palliation, but not such a one as this—without provocation, without reason, without temptation—sprung from the fury of a heart cankered to all that is ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... her spirit seemed greater than she could bear. Her eyes were opened, and she looked upon herself with loathing and horror. She would admit of no hope, no consolation; she would listen to no palliation or excuse of her guilt. I could only direct her to that Source of pardon and peace to which the broken and contrite heart never appeals ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the United States and England. Most of those who had been engaged in the war, ceased hostilities. Black Hawk, however, and his band, and some of the Pottawatamies, were not inclined to bury the tomahawk. Even as late as the spring of 1816, they committed depredations. Some palliation for these outrages may be found in the fact, that the British, on the north-west frontier, long after they were officially notified of the peace, continued to excite the Indians to acts of violence against the United States; and, indeed, participated ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... the Bible, it seems to be wholly grounded on the idea that the sin of man is astonishing, inexcusable, and without palliation or cause, and the atonement is spoken of as such a wonderful and undeserved mercy that I am filled with amazement. Yet if I give up the Bible I gain nothing, for the providence of God in nature is just ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... exactly what he appeared to have calculated upon), he would have forgiven me; he might have even been grateful to me for having humiliated her, and cast her helpless at his feet. But the crime I had committed in loving her too well to forsake her, admitted of no palliation. He could extract nothing out of it but vengeance. The sleepless hostility with which the Indian follows the trail of his foe, is not more vindictive and persevering than the feelings of hatred with which he coiled himself up for the spring which he was nursing all ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... the crew who were understood to be ready for any scrape which might be suggested. Shuffles had coined the expression himself, while at the Brockway Academy, and introduced it on board the ship. Without concealment or palliation, they were bad boys. By the discipline of the ship they were kept in good order, and compelled ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... sufferings,—at least, of rendering them somewhat less unendurable—(for I will not disguise my conviction, that in this one point the tragic in this play has been urged beyond the outermost mark and ne plus ultra of the dramatic);—Shakespeare has precluded all excuse and palliation of the guilt incurred by both the parents of the base-born Edmund, by Gloster's confession that he was at the time a married man, and already blest with a lawful heir of his fortunes. The mournful alienation of brotherly love, occasioned by the law of primogeniture in noble ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... error, and he has sufficient address to conceal it, or sufficient ingenuity to palliate it, but he does neither; instead of availing himself of concealment and palliation, with the candor of a great mind, he confesses his error, and makes all the apology or atonement which the occasion requires. None has a title to true honor but he who can say with moral elevation, when truth demands the acknowledgment, I ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... and on clear evidence, it would be punished in the most exemplary way open to a limited authority; by rustication, at least—that is, banishment for a certain number of terms, and consequent loss of these terms—supposing the utmost palliation of circumstances; and, in an aggravated case, or in a second offence, most certainly by ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... avow the existence of so dangerous a motive. The only excuse that offers itself in. behalf of Captain Cook's conduct on this occasion, is stated in what he immediately mentions of the anarchy existing in this island. But even that is only a palliation in part, and does not reach to the full amount of the case. Let ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... it," said the judge, and the man in a few words told his story without any palliation. With a gleam of hope Mildred saw the expression of the judge's face change as he listened, and when at last he replied, in tones so low that none could hear them save he to whom they were addressed, ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... Oliver Desmond was dead; felt sure that nothing but death could have kept him from her at that hour! But afterwards she and all the world—their world—learnt that he had left her for another; the one palliation of the cruel wrong and insult he had inflicted on his innocent and trusting betrothed being that it was no new love, but the resurrection of an old, supposed-to-be-dead passion that had lured him from her. Then they heard now and again rumours of Oliver Desmond's career. It seemed to be a ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... trial of Caroline of Brunswick, the unhappy woman whom the Prince of Wales married to get relief from his pecuniary necessities, and whom he insulted as soon as he saw her, although she was a princess of considerable accomplishments, and as amiable as she was beneficent. The only palliation of his infamous treatment of this woman was that he never loved her, and was even disgusted with her. No sooner was the marriage solemnized, than she was treated on every occasion with studied contumely, and scarcely had she recovered from illness incident to the birth of the Princess Charlotte, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... forced to name your accomplices," cried the enraged commandant; "there is no palliation for a traitor, and if you do not name them at once, I shall subject you to ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... falsehood—was no morbid curiosity. Browning was no "painter of dirt"; no artist can portray filth for filth's sake, and remain an artist. He crowds his pages with criminals, because he sees deeper than their crimes. He describes evil without "palliation or reserve," and allows it to put forth all its might, in order that he may, in the end, show it to be subjected to God's purposes. He confronts evil in order to force it to give up the good, which is all the reality ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... reactionaries in opposition to the great revolution. On a smaller scale—perhaps because he represented a much smaller power—he is to be classed with Disraeli, Metternich, Cavour and Bismarck. In palliation of many of his doings, it should be remembered that he was not a priest; for the Cardinalate is a dignity not necessarily associated with the priesthood, and Antonelli was never ordained. He was a fighter ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... holding Fifth-Monarchy views, John Rogers prefers a lengthy indictment against lawyers, for whose delinquencies and heinous offence he admits neither apology nor palliation. In his opinion all judges deserve the death of Arnold and Hall, whose last moments were provided for by the hangman. The wearers of the long robe are perjurers, thieves, enemies of mankind; their institutions are hateful, and their ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... of conventionality constantly repeated is the sin of inversion, which is no less prevalent, throughout the poem, in the conversational than in the narrative portions. In some cases the exigencies of rhyme may be pleaded in palliation, as for "Cam's marge along" and "breezy willows cool," which occur in two consecutive lines of a speech; but there are many for which no such excuse can be urged. Does any one talk of "sloth obscure," or of "hearts afflicted?" Or what reason is there for preferring ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... Yes; from no morbid wish to dwell upon the frightful scenes which, alas! grew too common, but as some palliation of the acts of our men, against whom charges were plentiful about their ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... laughed. "Madam Vanity!" said he, "I repeat that to be descended of a line of czars or from a house of emperors is, at the worst, an empty braggartism, or, at best—upon the plea of heredity—a handy palliation for iniquity; and to be descended of sturdy and honest and clean-blooded folk is beyond doubt preferable, since upon quite similar grounds it entitles one to hope that even now, 'when their generation is gone, when their play is over, when their ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... its consequences, aggravated his crime. To risk so much upon other people, to gain so little for himself, was the more heinous sin than its converse would have been. That he might not have foreseen the evil consequences made possible, was no palliation: he ought to have examined the situation; or indeed he ought to have heeded what he must have known, that little offences may always entail dire evils. Measured by their possibility to work havoc with lives, there are no small ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... encomiastic nonsense about Germany and the Germans. Of all infatuations connected with what is foreign, the infatuation about everything that is German, to a certain extent prevalent in England, is assuredly the most ridiculous. One can find something like a palliation for people making themselves somewhat foolish about particular languages, literatures, and people. The Spanish certainly is a noble language, and there is something wild and captivating in the Spanish character, and its literature contains the grand book of the ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... that he, too, acknowledges the all-potent power of luck, and soothes his humbled pride by deeming himself the victim of ill-fortune. In short, from the most venial offense to the most flagrant, there is hardly any wrong act or neglect to which this too fatally convenient word is not applied as a palliation." ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... perhaps inevitable that Americans should frequently be irritated by the tone of the comments in English papers on the lynchings of negroes which occur in the South. Some of these incidents are barbarous and disgraceful beyond any possibility of palliation, but it is certain that if Englishmen understood the conditions in the South better they would also understand that in some cases it is extremely difficult to blame the lynchers. Many of those people who in London (or in Boston) are loudest in condemnation of outrages upon the negro would if they ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... advocates can soften the symbolic meaning of the banner and the keys; but the style of ad regnum dimisimus, or direximus, (Codex Carolin. epist. i. tom. iii. pars ii. p. 76,) seems to allow of no palliation or escape. In the Ms. of the Vienna library, they read, instead of regnum, rogum, prayer or request (see Ducange;) and the royalty of Charles Martel is subverted by this important correction, (Catalani, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... or palliation, can be offered for such movements; and their triumph will safely produce all the evils which it is possible for an enlightened people to endure. Our system of instruction is what it professes to be,—a public system. As sects or parties, we have no claim whatever ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... this time disdained palliation. He said that Jeff was the son of the landlady at Lion's Head Mountain, which he had painted so much, and he was now in his second year at Harvard, where he was going to make a lawyer of himself; and this interested the lady. She asked if he had ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... continued, after an interval of meditation, "but falling in love appears to be the one utterly inexplicable, utterly reasonless thing one ever does in one's life. You can usually think of some more or less plausible palliation for embezzlement, say, or for robbing a cathedral or even for committing suicide—but no man can ever explain how he happened to fall in love. He ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... war, in which he vilified the patriots to extenuate his own surrender and his master's cruelty. It is true that he afterwards composed an elaborate apology for his people in the form of a history in twenty volumes, which may be considered as a kind of palliation for the evil he had done them in action. It was more possible to refute the Roman prejudices based on utter ignorance of Jewish history, than the prejudices based on their narrowness of mind. But even here the writer has often to accommodate himself to a pagan standpoint, which could ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... it even were so, how strong a plea of palliation might not the poor negro bring, by adducing the neglect of her various owners to afford religious instruction or moral discipline, and the habitual influence of their evil example (to say the very least,) before her eyes? What moral good could she possibly learn—what moral ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince
... granted that if it can be shown that great numbers of lives have been and are sacrificed to ignorance or blindness on this point, no other error of which physicians or nurses may be occasionally suspected will be alleged in palliation of this; but that whenever and wherever they can be shown to carry disease and death instead of health and safety, the common instincts of humanity will silence every attempt to ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... please hear this in palliation—I would not presume to say in defense—of my conduct: I was driven to frenzy by a passion of contending love and jealousy as violent and maddening as it was unreal and transient. But that delusive passion has subsided, ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... of State at Washington made public the first of three famous notes on the Lusitania case. It solemnly informed the German government that "no warning that an unlawful and inhumane act will be committed can possibly be accepted as an excuse or palliation for that act or as an abatement of the responsibility for its commission." It called upon the German government to disavow the act, make reparation as far as possible, and take steps to prevent "the recurrence of anything so obviously subversive of the principles of warfare." The note ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... using any violence to the young lady, who had herself admitted in her evidence, that she was a willing party to Ussher's proceedings. Doubtless, there might be circumstances, which at the prisoner's trial would be properly put forward in palliation of the murder, by his counsel; but with that the jury before the Coroner could have nothing to do; and on these considerations, the jurors with very little delay had come to the conclusion which had so surprised and grieved Father John. Still, however, he looked forward with almost absolute certainty ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... expulsion from Illinois, in which so many foreign converts shared, an explanation and palliation of the emigration thence were necessary. In the United States, then and ever since, the Mormons pictured themselves as the victims of an almost unprecedented persecution. But as soon as John Taylor reached England, ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... a French gentleman, Dupont de Nemours, sought to impress upon the First Consul the unwisdom of his taking possession of Louisiana, without ceding to the United States at least New Orleans and the Floridas as a "palliation." Even so, France would become an object of suspicion, a neighbor with whom Americans were ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... to accepting a palliation of which she felt herself undeserving, now lifted up her head, and forcing herself to speak, said "No, madam, I will not deceive you, for I have never been deceived myself: I presumed not to expect ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... withdrawn, famous, to reappear now and then during her course always in similar roles. It happened that she had never heard of Eleanor Watson's stolen story until a week before the class-meeting, when some one had told her the unvarnished facts, with no palliation and no reference to Eleanor's subsequent change of heart or renunciation of one honor after another. Virtuous indignation and pained surprise struggled for expression ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... wicker-work—the "immani magnitudine simulacra" of Caesar—which were filled with human victims, and which crackled and disappeared in towering flame and columns of smoke, amid the loud chantings of the bards. The most that can be said in palliation of this custom is, that almost always such a scene presented the judicial execution of criminals, invested with the ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... ground for suspicion that some important secrets were in her possession respecting later transactions between the princess and Seymour which she had faithfully kept. It should also be observed in palliation of the liberties which she accused the admiral of allowing to himself, and the princess of enduring, that the period of Elizabeth's life to which these particulars relate was ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... creatures, is totally disregarded; all social connection and tenderness of nature being broken, desolation and bloodshed continually fomented in those unhappy people's country." It was also intended, said he, "to invalidate the false arguments which are frequently advanced for the palliation of this trade, in hopes it may be some inducement to those who are not yet defiled therewith to keep themselves clear; and to lay before such as have unwarily engaged in it, their danger of totally losing that tender sensibility to the sufferings of their fellow ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... of Darius in this—the crisis of his fate—cannot be approved; but it admits of palliation, and does not compel us to withdraw from him that respectful compassion which we commonly accord to great misfortunes. After Issus, it was his duty to make at least one more effort against the invader. To this object he addressed himself with earnestness and diligence. The number and quality ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... our disgust for the general folly that makes the Poem as miserable in point of authorship, as in point of principle. We know that among a certain class this outrage and this inanity meet with some attempt at palliation, under the idea that frenzy holds the pen. That any man who insults the common order of society, and denies the being of God, is essentially mad we never doubted. But for the madness, that retains enough of rationality to be wilfully mischievous, ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... discussion, who would have writhed far more at the spinster's palliation of his offense than at the men's disdain, lay in his tiny cabin, a prey to an attack of that nervous misery which overtakes an artist out of his element as surely and speedily ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... Cynthia, piercing her sorrow. The superb strength of the man was there in that simple confession, and it is in the nature of woman to admire strength. He had fought his fight, and gained, and paid the price without a murmur, seeking no palliation. Cynthia had not come to that trial—so bitter for her—as a judge. If the reader has seen youth and innocence sitting in the seat of justice, with age and experience at the bar, he has mistaken Cynthia. She came to Coniston inexorable, it is true, because hers was a nature impelled to do right ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... will not be constructed, until some super-human agency is employed in its production. All grammatical principles and systems which are not perfect are exceptionable."—Kirkham's Grammar, p. 66. The unplausible sophistry of these strange remarks, and the palliation they afford to the multitudinous defects of the book which contains them, may be left, without further comment, to the judgement of ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... in some plausible manner, but suspicion was a stealing monster that would play upon the deeply tinctured surface, and soar above in disgrace. That the Rovero family were among the first of the State would not be received as a palliation; they had suffered reverses of fortune, and, with the addition of Lorenzo's profligacy, which had been secretly drawing upon their resources, were themselves well nigh in discredit. And now that this sudden and unexpected reverse had ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... were very much to be pitied, seeing that they were in many cases trained to their peculiarly indelicate life by their parents, and had been taught to regard ballet-dancing as quite a proper and legitimate what's-its-name. No doubt this was only a palliation of the life they led, but she thought that if anyone was to be severely blamed in the matter it was the people who went to witness ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... wanting. It is simply the plea of "not guilty," which even the most hardened culprit may make in court. In one of the Vedic hymns to Varuna there is something which looks like confession of sin, but it really ends in palliation. "It was not our doing, O Varuna, it was necessity; an intoxicating draught, passion, dice, thoughtlessness. The old is there to mislead the young. Even sleep brings unrighteousness." And the remission sought for is not one involving a change of character but only ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... hard to find excuse or palliation. Instinct must have told us that the demands, the programme, of such diseased creatures, could only aggravate the national ills instead of healing them. Yes, it would seem so. I can only say that comparatively few among us did see it. Perhaps disease was too general among us for ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... and out the other—all except her, little Mammy. As with her lameness, it took time for her to recognize, to understand, the fact. She could study over her lameness, she could in the dull course of time think out the broomstick way of palliation. It would have been almost better, under the circumstances, for God to have kept the truth from her; only—God keeps so little of the truth from us women. It is ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... rickety tenements. The Dickens idea of betterment was the priestly plan of dole. Dickens did not know that indiscriminate almsgiving pauperizes humanity, and never did he supply the world a glimpse of a man like Robert Owen, whose charity was something more than palliation. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... Lord Cobham, and the circumstances which preceded it, require a more patient and a more impartial examination than they have often met with. But it must be borne in mind throughout that our inquiry has for its object, neither the condemnation of religious persecution, nor the palliation of the spirit of Romanism,—neither the canonization of the Protestant martyr, nor the indiscriminate inculpation of all concerned in the sad tragedy of his condemnation and death,—but the real estimate of Henry's character. The pursuit of ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... say, in palliation of this fault, that Mr. Reade's insolent tone is not peculiar to him. It characterizes almost every prominent person who has attempted to mould the opinions of the age. We find it in Macaulay, Carlyle, Ruskin, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... many of his Peruvians is quite pardonable, considering the desperate characters he had to deal with; while his offering canine battle to the banded rebels seems under the circumstances altogether just. But for this King Oberlus and what shortly follows, no shade of palliation can be given. He acted out of mere delight in tyranny and cruelty, by virtue of a quality in him inherited from Sycorax his mother. Armed now with that shocking blunderbuss, strong in the thought of being master of that horrid isle, he panted for a chance to prove his potency upon ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... to some degree allied may be regarded as legitimate, but the cumulative effect of such combinations over a large area is most unfair to the party adversely affected. No defence at all can be urged in palliation of the evils of certain other coalitions also characteristic of second ballots—the coalitions of extreme and opposed parties which temporarily combine for the purpose of wrecking a third party in the hope of snatching some advantage from the resulting political situation. Sometimes such coalitions ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... these was Miles Milton. Mindful of his recent thoughts, and re-impressed with the word Duty, which his friend had just emphasised, he sat down and wrote a distinctly self-condemnatory letter home. There was not a word of excuse, explanation, or palliation in it from beginning to end. In short, it expressed one idea throughout, and that was—Guilty! and of course this was followed by his asking forgiveness. He had forgiveness—though he knew it not—long before ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... said Richard Johnson observes, "I put down at his [the Nabob Fyzoola Khan's] particular desire, but otherwise useless; as my orders" (which orders do not appear) "were, not to receive any palliation, but a negative or affirmative": though such palliation, as it is called by the said Johnson, might be, as it was, in the strictest conformity to ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... was to pursue a policy so mild and conciliatory as to win them to the side of the government. Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri were excited by strong minorities who desired to aid the South, while no strong element in their population was ready to take decisive measures for the Union. Palliation, conciliation, concession, compromise, were the only words heard, and the almost universal opinion in the South, shared largely by the North, was that to precipitate war would be to abandon the last hope for restoration of ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... have politely excused us to him, but Colville would have no palliation of our political and moral nakedness; and he framed a continuation of the letter he began on the Ponte Vecchio to the Post-Democrat-Republican, in which he made a bitterly ironical comparison of the achievements of Italy and America in the ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... to tell thee the glosses I put upon these heavy charges, what would it be, but repeat many of the extenuating arguments I have used in my letters to thee?—Suffice it, therefore, to say, that I insisted much, by way of palliation, on the lady's extreme niceness: on her diffidence in my honour: on Miss Howe's contriving spirit; plots on their parts begetting plots on mine: on the high passions of the sex. I asserted, that my whole view, in gently restraining her, was to oblige ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... of his mind and the ardour of his temperament. On one occasion, indeed, he wrote a violent and reproachful letter to Tycho, who had given him no just ground of offence; but the state of Kepler's health at that moment, and the necessitous circumstances in which he had been placed, present some palliation of his conduct. But, independent of this apology, his subsequent conduct was so truly noble as to reconcile even Tycho to his penitent friend. Kepler quickly saw the error which he committed; he lamented it with ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... of the community; if they suffer their names to be coupled with it wherever it may gain a credulous patient; and deny all responsibility for its character, refuse all argument for its doctrines, allege no palliation for the ignorance and deception interwoven with every thread of its flimsy tissue, when they are questioned by those competent to judge and entitled to ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... haunt on the shore of the gulf. But even here, the first painful shock over, we find it is not imperative. For the love of brother for sister, viewed from a standpoint sufficiently lofty, is a crime against morality, but not against human nature; and there is at least some measure of palliation in the youth of the pair, and in the passion that blinds them. Othello, too, the semi-barbarian who does Desdemona to death, has been goaded to madness by the machinations of Iago; and even this last can plead his by no means gratuitous hatred. The disasters that weighed so heavily ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... at his wife. Something in her pose suggested to him so vividly the Fatima that, despite his self-conquest on the bridge, a flood of anger swelled within him. The masculine instinct, nourished through a thousand generations, that no palliation gives the wife a right to claim forgiveness from her husband for the shame she has put upon him by a violation of modesty, surged up within him. He drew in a deep inspiration and started forward with an inarticulate sound as if he could throw himself upon ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... identified, in the minds of the people, with the Monarchy which they feared and detested." (History of Philosophy, Chap. 59.) The moral is that when injustice and evil are rampant, let us have no palliation, no weakness disguising itself as a virtue. What we cannot at once resist, we can always repudiate. To ignore these things is the worst form of imprudence—an imprudence which we, for our part at least, take the ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... into debt; and the other is, that she has not the credit to do it if she wished! If, however, she does involve herself in this way, the law exempts her from imprisonment. This, perhaps, is offered as a sort of palliation for the disabilities which she suffers in other respects. The only object of the petition is, I believe, that the husband and wife be placed upon a legal and political equality. If the law gives woman an advantage over man, we deprecate ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... in the circumstances, but we barely noticed that, we were so shocked and grieved at the wanton murder he had committed—for murder it was, that was its true name, and it was without palliation or excuse, for the men had not wronged him in any way. It made us miserable, for we loved him, and had thought him so noble and so beautiful and gracious, and had honestly believed he was an angel; and to have him do this cruel thing—ah, it lowered him so, and we had had such pride in ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... it struck Bedient that he must leave. He was startled that he had not left. His only palliation for such a venture into two lives—was the memories her voice roused. His lips tightened with scorn of self. And yet the thought became a fury as he walked rapidly through the dark toward the river—what it would mean to have a woman want him that way!.... ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... having won her confidence, escorted her all through the Wicked Valley. By a continual palliation she yielded one point after another until her virtue was sacrificed on ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... once hear the missionary account, in palliation at least, of such clamant enormities. "They have no partitions in their houses; but it may be affirmed, they have in many instances more refined ideas of decency than ourselves; and one long a resident, scruples not to declare, that he never saw any appetite, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... ought not to forget the past altogether. The conduct of the husband is most noble in these scenes; he has forgiven her fully, never upbraiding, never even alluding to her fatal act, excepting in one passage possibly, in which there is a gentle palliation of her behavior: "Thou camest to the place, moved by some divinity who wished to give glory to the Trojans." The husband will not blame her, she acted under the stimulus of a God. The fallen woman restored is the divinest of all pictures; ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... in proportion as their allusions recall memories or merely puzzle us; we cannot all be expected to have agreeable memories stirred by insignificant Homer tags; and it is well to bear in mind by way of palliation that in Greek education Homer played as great a part as the Bible in ours. He might be taken simply or taken allegorically; but one way or the other he was the staple of education, and it might be assumed that every one would like ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... is one expression of our author too perverse, too grossly abused, to admit of any apology, of any palliation. It is not to be supposed, that he was ignorant of any word in the English language. And least of all can he be supposed ignorant of the meaning of a word, which, had it been ever so doubtful before, had a certain meaning impressed upon it ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... experience in the field of bibliography I cannot plead as palliation for any imperfections that may be discovered in this, that it is the work of a 'prentice hand. Difficult as I found my self-imposed task in the case of the Meredith and Hardy bibliographies, here my labour has ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... the second act and the finale of "Tristan und Isolde" the most powerful plea that can be made for Wagner's guilty lovers. Nowhere else is the ennobling and purifying capacity of music demonstrated as in the death song of Isolde. Without such palliation the vileness, the horror, the hideousness of a play like "Tosca" is more unpardonable in an operatic form than in the original. Its lust and cruelty are presented in their nakedness. There is little or no time to reflect upon the workings of perverted minds, to make psychological or physiological ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... of this allegation is admitted, it is answered that in many places honest local government is impossible if the mass of uneducated negroes are allowed to vote. These are grave allegations. So far as the latter is true, it is the only palliation that can be offered for opposing the freedom of the ballot. Bad local government is certainly a great evil, which ought to be prevented; but to violate the freedom and sanctities of the suffrage is more than an evil. It is a crime ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Vol. VIII.: James A. Garfield • James D. Richardson
... that an unlawful and an inhuman act will be committed can possibly be accepted as an excuse or palliation for that act, or as an abatement of the responsibility for its commission. * ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... not tenable: whatever glosses he might use for the defence or palliation of single passages, the general tenour and tendency of his plays must always be condemned. It is acknowledged, with universal conviction, that the perusal of his works will make no man better; and that their ultimate effect is to represent ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... Palliation may be found for the alleged arson mentioned in the catalogue of complaints that have excited British indignation. In the question of a site for the residence of the ambassadors, the irrepressible foreigner demanded a celebrated ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... from the Potomac to Cape Horn; who would then have remembered that England raised up this scourge to humanity not for the evil's sake, but because somebody had offered an insult to her flag? Or even if unforgotten, who would then have felt that such a grievance was a sufficient palliation of the crime? Every reader of a newspaper, to the farthest ends of the earth, would have believed and remembered one thing only—that at the critical juncture which was to decide whether slavery should blaze up afresh with increased vigor or be trodden out at the moment ...
— The Contest in America • John Stuart Mill
... no palliation for an act that was undutiful, dishonorable, and deceitful—there was nothing to plead for him, save that he was young, and had never ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... not like water spilt upon the ground, which cannot be gathered up again. Even when the story is one of shame and remorse, we find it to be mental relief, patiently and without any reservation or palliation, to expose the whole not only to our own eye but to that of our Judge. For, to this very thing have we been invited. This is precisely the "reasoning together" which God proposes to us. God has not offered clemency to a sinful world, with the expectation or desire that ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... is engaged, and of the little cashier-girl whose terror-filled face is ever with me. It has kept me, also, from dwelling too constantly on the message Lillie Pierce sent by me to the women of clean and happy worlds. For herself there was no plea for pity or for pardon, no effort at palliation or excuse. But with strength born of bitter knowledge she begged, demanded, that I do something to make good women understand that worlds like hers will never pass away if men alone are left to rid ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... I then meant to leave Naples," pursued Elgar, who had repeated this so often to himself, by way of palliation, that he had come to think it true. "It was not my fault that I couldn't when that visit was over. It happened that I saw Miss Doran alone—sat talking with her ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... to-night, Miss Langdon, and I know it," he told her rapidly. "There is no excuse for the acts I have committed; there can be no palliation for them. I would not have dared to ask for your forgiveness; I can only say that I am sorry. It was not I, but a madman, who for a moment possessed me, who conducted himself so vilely toward you. I shall go back to my ranch again. My only prayer ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... ay, true," cried the doctor, see-sawing very solemnly, "that, indeed, is some palliation for his forbearance. But I must not have you so fond of the Scotch, my little Burney; make your hero what you will but a Scotchman. Besides, you write Scotch—you say 'the one'—my dear, that's not English, Never use that ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... Dorothea's friends, to a restaurant for supper. He planned the little parties and excursions for which Dorothea's "budding" offered an excuse; and, while he recognized the subterfuge, he made his probable journey, with the long absence it would involve, serve as a palliation. Since, too, there was no danger to Diane, there could be the less reason for stinting himself in the pleasure of her presence, so long as he was prepared to pay ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... as though Barbara's change of mood had overthrown the barrier which her stern refusal had raised between them. Calm and cheerful as in former days he sat before her, listening while, in obedience to his invitation, she told him, with many a palliation and evasion, about her married life and the children. She made her story short, in order at last to hear some further particulars concerning the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... come to an end. And how can an author do better than to quote Ibn Khallikan's own concluding words, which, though written so long ago about a biographical dictionary, may be borrowed by all literary hands as palliation for whatever shortcomings their work may have?—"If any well-informed person remark, in examining this book, that it contains faults, he should not hasten to blame me, for I always aimed at being exact, as far as I could judge; and, besides, God has allowed ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... Newbery, according to agreement, whose profits on the sale of the work far exceeded the debts for which the author in his perplexities had pre-engaged it. The sum which accrued to Goldsmith from his benefit nights afforded but a slight palliation of his pecuniary difficulties. His friends, while they exulted in his success, little knew of his continually increasing embarrassments, and of the anxiety of mind which kept tasking his pen while it impaired the ease and freedom of spirit ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... the betrayed bias of almost all we spoke with, toward palliation of this dark act. "Didn't she die in a fit; or of fright; or something?" was a frequent question, even from those near the scene of this tragedy. "What did ail the old creture to go near 'em? Name of goodness! didn't they order her not?" ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... attachment suggested to Thaddeus a few unpleasant recollections respecting the fervent and unequivocal passion of Lady Sara. Though guilty, it sprung from a headlong ardor of disposition which formed at once the error and its palliation. He saw that love was not welcomed by her (at least he thought so) as a plaything, but struggled against as with a foe. He had witnessed her tortures; he pitied them, and to render her happy, would gladly have made any sacrifice ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... him without scruple as a means to an end. She had made him the instrument for escaping from a predicament which she found unbearably irksome. That she had done so in the heat of passion was small palliation. For the present, at least, she wisely resolved to make the best of things. It could not last forever. The day must come when she could free herself from the bonds that ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... hushed murmur ran through the church at sight of the silver-shining figure of the bride. How handsome, how stately, how perfectly self-possessed and calm. Truly, if beauty and high-bred repose of manner be any palliation of low birth and obscurity, this American young lady ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... revolting. She is a lady by birth and by education, and is destined for a social sphere into which you could never, and ought never, enter. You may now go, sir, but you must remember that your ignorance is the only palliation of your presumption. Laurie, show this ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... Nelly fret and moan over the invalid condition for which there was neither palliation nor remedy? Nay, a blessing upon her at last; she began to witness a good testimony to the original mettle and bravery of her nature. She accepted the tangible evil direct from God's hand, sighingly, submissively, and with a noble meekness ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... her appearance in the dining-room until she was sure that everybody was present; then she would go down, and, standing there before them all, say what she had to say, state the few bald facts of the case, without excuse or palliation, and leave them to ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris |
