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Perpetrate   /pˈərpətrˌeɪt/   Listen
Perpetrate

verb
(past & past part. perpetrated; pres. part. perpetrating)
1.
Perform an act, usually with a negative connotation.  Synonyms: commit, pull.  "Pull a bank robbery"






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"Perpetrate" Quotes from Famous Books



... young man who loves a young woman has paid her the highest compliment in the possession of man. Perpetrate almost any sin, inflict any other torture, but spare him the agony of disappointment. It is a crime that can never be forgiven, and a debt that never ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... Methodist Church forty years to get a membership of 138,000. Mormonism in forty-four years counted 250,000. It seems incredible, nevertheless it is a fact. In this brief space of time it has also been able to nullify our laws, oppose our institutions, openly perpetrate crimes, be represented in Congress, boast of the helplessness of the nation to prevent these things, and give the Church supremacy over the State and the people. Bills introduced in Congress adequate to their overthrow ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... the persons who are given to the making of sonnets, Norman Douglas wrote: "I have a sneaking fondness for some of the worst of these bards.... And it is by no means a despicable class of folks who perpetrate such stuff; the third rate sonneteer, a priori, is a gentleman, and this is more than can be said of some of our crude fiction writers who have never yielded themselves to the chastening discipline of verse composition, nor warmed their hearts, for a single ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor

... gentle and poor, banned him, and thence to Lundy Isle. There, amid the ruins of Morisco's Castle, he died mad on August 29, 1620. His treason has conferred on his obscure name an infamous immortality. He was equally an enemy to himself and to King James, whom his accommodating perfidy tempted to perpetrate the final injustice. But it must be remembered that but for him Ralegh would have lingered for a few years more of weary life on foreign soil, and dropped into an unhonoured grave. To him English history is indebted for a heroic scene, and Ralegh for a glorious close ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... appeared to belong to the best Empire period; the exquisite wedding-chest, of lacquer, the blues and greens of its floral decorations still daringly brilliant and vivid—they were far brighter and more perfect than any decorations which a faker of antiquities would dare to perpetrate. ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... waiter. The sharp eye of that Ganymede of the Gilt House had at once detected our Britannic origin, conspicuous in our sober garb and shaven chins; and doubtless he anticipated one of those uncouth bills of fare, infamous by their gastronomical solecisms, which Englishmen are apt to perpetrate, for he smiles with an air of agreeable disappointment as he glances at our judicious menu. No cause for wonder, most dapper of garcons! 'Tis not the first time, by many, that we have tabled our Napoleons on your damask napery. Schooled by indigestion, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various

... Munster. Here they confiscated property, plundered churches, violated females, murdered men who refused to join the gang, and, in briefs practised all the enormities which humanity alone can conceive or perpetrate. The prophet proclaimed himself King of Sion, and sent out apostles to preach his doctrines in Germany and the Netherlands. Polygamy being a leading article of the system, he exemplified the principle by marrying ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... the multitude of absurdities (which you Oxonians perpetrate)—I beg your pardon, Mr Hawthorne—but why need you have come out in a tandem at all, with a man ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... story. He points out that if a hundred years ago the whole wealth of this country had been divided equally among all, the masses would, as a whole, be poorer than they are now; and that most of the wealth which is monopolized now by the few consists not of abstractions which they perpetrate from a common stock, but of additions to it which they have made themselves by their own talents and enterprise. It is true, he proceeds, that if, having made these additions, the few gave them away instead of retaining them ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock

... from being well at the time I am charged with this fact, I never, to this day, perfectly recovered. Could a person in this condition execute violence against another?—I, feeble and valetudinary, with no inducement to engage—no ability to accomplish—no weapon wherewith to perpetrate such a fact;—without interest, without power, without motives, ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... ambition may prompt an unscrupulous man to make the most enormous sacrifices of human life, and to perpetrate the most atrocious crimes, for the advancement of his views of conquest. But that this great man—as he is usually reckoned even by adversaries—this hero according to some—this illustrious warrior, and mighty sovereign—should have stooped ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately

... read the bantling's dawning days?— Precocious shall he prove, and harass The world with inconvenient ways And lisped conundrums that embarrass? (Such as Impressionists delight To offer each aesthetic gaper, And faddists hyper-Ibsenite Rejoice to perpetrate on paper?) ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Jan. 9, 1892 • Various

... active demand; their bodies were expeditiously transferred from the gallows or scaffold to the operating table, and their dead limbs were made to struggle and plunge, their eyeballs to roll, and their features to perpetrate the most horrible contortions by connecting nerves with one pole, and muscles with the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various

... understand that a needy and ignorant soldiery may perpetrate such robberies amidst scenes of violence, and under the temptations of want; but we expect better things from the men ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen

... consequent laxity of law, there had been the freer license for rigours against the Loyalists. Few of them in that district but had undergone imprisonment, or exile, or confiscation of property; and thus they were provoked to form a savage alliance and to perpetrate a fierce revenge." (Lord Mahon's History, etc., Vol. VII., Chap. ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... mean? That Mr. Weil would actually do these dreadful things, would in his own person perpetrate the outrage of winning a pure girl to shame. It seemed childish to ask such a question, and yet such a meaning could easily be taken from what the critic had said. No, no! All he could have meant was that ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter

... son, I've murdered you." As he uttered these words he sprang to the side, and would have thrown himself overboard, had not Thole, who just then came on deck, caught him by the legs and dragged him forcibly back. The unhappy man struggled violently in his endeavour to perpetrate his intention. "Jim, Jim, my son! you gone—gone for ever; how can I go home and face your mother, my boy?" he cried, his bosom heaving with the passion raging within. Then he turned frantically to us, swearing oaths too frightful to repeat. "You've been murdering ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston

... what was the cause of the fracas.—'Oh, my good sir!' said I to him, continuing to cry like a child, 'imagine the most horrible cruelty, figure to yourself the most inhuman of atrocities—that is what G—— M—— has had the cowardly baseness to perpetrate: he has pierced my heart. Never shall I recover from this blow! I would gladly tell you the whole circumstance,' added I, sobbing with grief; 'you are kind-hearted, and cannot fail to ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost

... town is deprived of its chief, the inhabitants acknowledge no law; anarchy, troubles, and confusion immediately prevail, and until a successor is appointed, all labour is at an end. The stronger oppress the weak, and perpetrate every species of crime, without being amenable to any tribunal for their actions. Private property is no longer respected, and thus, before a person arrives to curb its licentiousness, a town is not unfrequently reduced from a flourishing ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... many years we have nothing but a weary record of intrigues, assassinations, wars and woes. Miserable Hungary was but a field of blood. There were three parties, Ferdinand, Stephen and Solyman, all alike ready to be guilty of any inhumanity or to perpetrate any perfidy in the accomplishment of their plans. Ferdinand with his armies held one portion of Hungary, Solyman another, and Stephen, with his strong partisans another. Bombardment succeeded bombardment; cities and provinces were now overrun by one set of troops and now by ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... of usurpation is the greatest and most enormous a subject can perpetrate; but what epithet can there be given to him who, to preserve an authority unlawfully acquired, asssociates in his guilt a Supreme Pontiff, whom the multitude is accustomed to reverence as the representative ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... Bertram answered, with grim sarcasm in his face, "of course! I might have guessed it. If there IS an injustice or a barbarity possible, I might have been sure the law of England would make haste to perpetrate it. But you needn't fear, Frida. Long before the law of England could be put in motion, I'll have completed my arrangements for taking you—and them too—with me. There are advantages sometimes even in the ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen

... that it is contrary to their rules to allow strangers to explore the interior of a nunnery, only adds insult to crime. Why should a Convent be exempt from search, more than any other edifice? Why should Roman Priests be at liberty to perpetrate every deed of darkness in impenetrable recesses called nunneries? Why should one body of females, shut up in a certain species of mansion, to whom only one class of men have unrestricted access, be excluded from all public and legal supervision, ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk

... an incident of the Cattle Trail, that most unique and stupendous of all modern migrations, and its founders must have been inspired with a malicious desire to perpetrate a crime against geography, or else they reveled in a perverse cussedness, for within a mile on every side lay broad prairies, and two miles to the east flowed the indolent waters of the Rio Pecos itself. The distance separating ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford

... chains on their legs, accused of striking a soldier near Khan Yunas. When identified by witnesses merely uttering two or three words, they were removed, cruelly pushed about in their chains and beaten on the head by the soldiers, who enjoyed the cowardly fun which they would not dare to perpetrate had the fine tall fellows ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn

... curved point, and not a few had guns. Toward evening I struck a bit of level going amid dense vegetation without a breath of air along the bank of a river that must be forded lower down, which fact I took advantage of to perpetrate a general laundering. This proved unwise, for the sun went down before the garments had dried and left me to lug on along the stream those the unexacting customs of the country did not require me to put on wet. Every hundred yards the trail went swiftly down into the stony bed of a tributary, ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... with augmented mildness. There was, indeed, compassion and sorrow at my heart, and these must have somewhat influenced my looks. "Be not alarmed. I came to confer a benefit, not to perpetrate an injury. I came not to censure or expostulate with you, but merely to counsel and aid a being that needs both; all I want is to see her. In this chamber I sought not you, but her. Only lead me to her, or tell me where she is. I will then ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... of horror, for until now he had hardly believed it was possible that even Nana Sahib could perpetrate so atrocious a massacre. Not another word was spoken until ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty

... such striking instances of the effects of honouring or neglecting the deity, do you perceive what an act of impiety we are about to perpetrate, scarcely emerging from the wreck of our former misconduct and calamity? We possess a city founded under auspices and auguries; not a spot is there in it that is not full of religious rites and of the gods: the days for the anniversary ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius

... man had disappeared. It also counted for something that Savareen and he had always been on the most friendly terms, and that Savareen was one of his best customers. But, even if he had been the most bloodthirsty of mankind, he had positively had no time to perpetrate a murder. The two or three minutes elapsing between Savareen's departure from the toll-gate and Lapierre's arrival there had been too brief to admit of the latter's having meanwhile killed the former and made away with his body; to say nothing of his having also made such a disposition of the ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent

... The pale was next, but proudly with a bound He leapt the fence of the forbidden ground: Yet fearing to be seen, within a bed Of coleworts he conceal'd his wily head; Then skulk'd till afternoon, and watch'd his time (As murderers use) to perpetrate his crime. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... the Regent, was now thirty-two, and had spent those years of his life in acquiring the honorary title of the 'first gentleman of Europe' by every act of folly, debauch, dissipation, and degradation which a prince can conveniently perpetrate. He was the hero of London society, which adored and backbit him alternately, and he was precisely the man whom the boy Brummell would worship. The Regent was colonel of a famous regiment of fops—the 10th ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... the country for use as cooks, porters, and combatants; some of these children are also trafficked across borders into Uganda or the Democratic Republic of the Congo; militia groups in Darfur, some of which are linked to the government, abduct women for short periods of forced labor and to perpetrate sexual violence; during the two decades-long north-south civil war, thousands of Dinka women and children were abducted and subsequently enslaved by members of the Missiriya and Rezeigat tribes; while ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... imaginary line which separates Florida from the United States, have violated our laws prohibiting the introduction of slaves, have practiced various frauds on our revenue, and committed every kind of outrage on our peaceable citizens which their proximity to us enabled them to perpetrate. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... three representations, and, after receiving a grand civic banquet, set out for the next place, his portmanteau fuller of music-paper than of other effects, and perhaps a dozen sequins in his pocket. His love of jesting during these gay Bohemian wanderings made him perpetrate innumerable practical jokes, not sparing himself when he had no more available food for mirth. On one occasion, in traveling from Ancona to Reggio, he passed himself off for a musical professor, a mortal enemy of Rossini, and sang the words of his own ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris

... always with the Austrian queen, and for five of those years their armies fought side by side. In the year 1759, Elizabeth sent an army of one hundred thousand men into Prussia. They committed every outrage which fiends could perpetrate; and though victorious over the armies of Frederic, they rendered the country so utterly desolate, that through famine they were compelled to retreat. Burning villages and mangled corpses marked ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... as yet have been able to read." Hyde, accepting this story, printed a facsimile of one of these plates on the cover of his book, and seems to rest on Wiley's statement his belief that "Smith did have plates of some kind." Stenhouse,* who believed that Smith and his witnesses did not perpetrate in the new Bible an intentional fraud, but thought they had visions and "revelations," referring to the Kinderhook plates, says that they were "actually and unquestionably discovered by one Mr. R. Wiley." Smith himself, after no one else could read the writing on them, declared that he had translated ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... could trick him into it," Steel exclaimed. "In my story a fraud is perpetrated to blind the villain and to deprive him of his weapons. It is a case of the end justifying the means. But it is one thing, my dear lady, to commit fraud actually and to perpetrate it in a novel. In the latter case you can defy the police, but unfortunately you and I are dealing with real life. If I am to help you I must be a ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White

... tax-payer, but as a gentleman among gentlemen. There are practices and there are acts which, owing to circumstances, the law cannot visit, though they may be worse than many things which are legally punishable. Honest men and gentlemen, if they don't want the company of people who perpetrate such acts, have got to defend themselves as they best can, and that is what I and the friends whom I may call my clients in this affair are determined to do. I don't say that Mr. Bulstrode has been guilty ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... to perpetrate this outrage at all," insisted Bundy, pulling in calculation at his little chin-whisker, "let us do it thoroughly. A hundred dollars can't take Potts any too far. We must see that he keeps going until he could never get back—" We all ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... advantages secured by this imperial law, the Church still suffered occasionally in particular districts. Hostile magistrates might plead that certain edicts had not been definitely repealed; and, calculating on the connivance of the higher functionaries, might perpetrate acts of cruelty and oppression. The Emperor Aurelian had even resolved to resume the barbarous policy of Decius and Valerian; and, in A.D. 275, had actually prepared a sanguinary edict; but, before it could be executed, death stepped in to arrest his violence, and to prevent the persecution. ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... desire to mutilate the human body." Sadism, as we know, played a prominent part in both the French and Russian revolutions. The most important point in all this is not that degenerates should be found to perpetrate these abominations, but what the circular describes as the "Machiavellian campaign organized for the unloading of these works. Editions de luxe ... were published and sold by the picture dealers; ...every crafty device ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... has spoken of expediency—political expediency. Sometimes political expediency can overreach itself and perpetrate the most grave injustices. Individuals at times are unnecessarily called upon to suffer in the interests of a cause. Your Excellency will remember a certain affair at Tavora some two months ago—the invasion of a convent by a British officer with rather disastrous consequences and the ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini

... the miscreant, who is watching all our movements in the dark, may not postpone his crime and may perpetrate it, not at the hour chosen by himself, but at the hour which I ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc

... a bishop or a missionary may be and often is of undoubted value in reference to his work and matters connected with his work, but when the writer gets outside this particular province and deals with subjects his knowledge of which must be at the best second-hand he is almost certain to perpetrate some flagrant mistakes, and occasionally indite the most egregious nonsense. I shall not particularly apply these remarks, but I think it necessary to utter this word of warning as the literary effusions of some very estimable men and women in regard ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery

... Head was a Reformer of wide experience, who was coming among them to introduce a new order of things. They resolved to put forth one great effort while the chance remained to them. They induced Sir John, before his departure, to perpetrate what may fitly be characterized as the most unstatesmanlike act of his life: an act which aroused a perfect transport of public indignation, and caused the name of the perpetrator to be execrated throughout the length and breadth ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... dramatic narrative, and said the miscreant must have lowered himself by a rope from the parapet, and passed the powder inside without entering. "He periled his life to perpetrate this crime; and he also risked penal servitude for ten years. That he was not deterred by the double risk, proves the influence of some powerful motive; and that motive must have been either a personal feud of a very virulent kind, or else trade fanaticism. ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... nothing but hypocrisy to him; for he avowed public prostitution, laughed at all honour, public spirit, and patriotism; and gave convincing proofs that the most phlegmatic old miser upon earth could not be sooner tempted with gold to perpetrate the most horrid ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... some for sale, some not. Among them was a glorious Humming Bird of wonderful brilliancy and plumage, a creature full of beauty and grace and charm and elegance. The man became passionately attached to it; he was ready to perpetrate any folly for the sake of obtaining possession of it, and indeed he did commit numbers of regrettable actions, and at last stole the bird from the Showman and carried it away. Then, in a foreign palace, for a short while he revelled in its beauty and the joy of owning it. The Humming ...
— The Damsel and the Sage - A Woman's Whimsies • Elinor Glyn

... by a little side-gate. The church was a grand pile of every style of architecture that had prevailed since the Cistercians had settled in Vale Leston, and of every defacement that the alternate neglect and good-will of the Underwoods could perpetrate. The grand tower at the west end was, however, past their power to spoil, and they had not done much damage to the exterior, except in a window or buttress here and there. But within! The brothers, used ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... yourself. They do not know what it is to make up a story. The Engineer's Thumb (God forgive me) was narrated as a piece of actual and factual history. Nay, and more, I who write to you have had the indiscretion to perpetrate a trifling piece of fiction entitled The Bottle Imp. Parties who come up to visit my unpretentious mansion, after having admired the ceilings by Vanderputty and the tapestry by Gobbling, manifest towards the end a certain uneasiness which proves them to be fellows of an infinite delicacy. They ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... all the while being most anxious to show forth, only wanting to be pressed, in order to enhance their own importance, and stimulate the curiosity of the company. Nor is this the worst of the case; for no sooner do they perpetrate one song, than they volunteer a dozen, interlarding the intervals between their performances with pedantic disquisitions on music, and flooring every man who ventures to hazard an opinion on the subject. These people, whether ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various

... are behind it all," affirmed El Conejo in his most serious manner, and he would be off to another place to spread the news or perpetrate another hoax. He would join ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja

... an outrage which the emperor would never dare to perpetrate, for it would arouse the bitter animosity of the whole aristocracy. Still it would be better to petition him at once, and ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... mother was concerned, and the establishment of Physcon upon the throne. But the perfidious monster, instead of keeping his faith in respect to the boy, determined to murder him; and so open and brutal were his habits of violence and cruelty, that he undertook to perpetrate the deed himself, in open day. The boy fled shrieking to the mother's arms for protection, and Physcon stabbed and killed him there, exhibiting the spectacle of a newly-married husband murdering the son of his wife in ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott

... Will. To this Bunco replied that he had not only heard their shots, but had seen them light their fire, and eat their supper, and prepare their couch, and go to sleep, all of which he enjoyed so intensely, in prospect of the joke he meant to perpetrate, that he was obliged to retire several times during the evening to a convenient distance and roar in imitation of a tiger, merely to relieve his feelings without betraying his presence. He added, that the canoe was about five minutes' ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne

... and also that children might not be able to meddle with the works or hands. He had a great many small children himself and had perhaps learned from experience the pranks little people were likely to perpetrate. Besides these several trademarks there are in addition various ingenious tricks that belonged to Willard and to nobody else. These a trained clockmaker instantly recognizes—the use of brass pins to hold the dial in place, for one thing. So, you see, when a banjo clock comes your ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett

... only, why was it not possible to enable the writer[1] to state them without the (purely gratuitous) error? The sufferance of such a strange and unnecessary mixture of error seems rather like that "putting to confusion" of the human mind, which we feel sure the Great Teacher would never willingly perpetrate. ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell

... means that I am to be held to the strict obligations of my position, but that the Grand Duke Armand can perpetrate any ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott

... to the truth. I know, too, that you were not drinking. (You can take off that virtuous expression, McTurk, or I shall begin to fear you don't understand me.) There is not a flaw in any of your characters. And that is why I am going to perpetrate a howling injustice. Your reputations have been injured, haven't they? You have been disgraced before the house, haven't you? You have a peculiarly keen regard for the honor of your house, haven't you? Well, now I am ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling

... nature of men to rise against the injustice of which they are the victims. When, therefore, plunder is organised by law, for the profit of those who perpetrate it, all the plundered classes tend, either by peaceful or revolutionary means, to enter in some way into the manufacturing of laws. These classes, according to the degree of enlightenment at which they have arrived, may propose to themselves two very different ends, when they ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat

... Josie, "I don't. The man might instigate a crime and encourage it, in a subtle and elusive way, but he's too shrewd to perpetrate a crime himself. I wouldn't be surprised if Duncan could name the man—or the band of traitors—we're looking for, if he chose to, but you may rest assured he has not involved his own personality in any scheme to balk ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)

... ill-timed measure shall be held to strict account for this suicidal act by the present generation, and probably cursed and execrated by posterity for all coming time, for the wide and desolating ruin that will inevitably follow this act you now propose to perpetrate? ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... of the human fiends that have subdued his will. To condemn crimes like these we need not talk of laws or of human rules; their foulness, their deformity does not depend on local constitutions, on human institutes, or religious creeds; they are crimes, and the persons who perpetrate them are monsters, who violate the primitive condition on which the earth was given to man; they are guilty by the general verdict of human-kind." Sheridan concluded his speech by an appeal to British justice, which, as it is preserved to us, is a mere ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... intercourse with her is to be diligently avoided; therefore do we interdict and expressly forbid that any one presume to introduce in the said college any woman whatsoever, however honorable she be. And if, this notwithstanding, any one should perpetrate such an act, he shall be ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... can be disciplined by dismissal from office, in which case the party must appeal to the country for re-election. That means time; and time allows passion to simmer down; and an entire electorate is not likely to perpetrate a policy inimical to Imperial interests. In practice, that represents the whole, sole and entire power of England's representative in Canada—a power less than the nod of a saloon keeper or ward boss in the civic politics of the United States. Officially, yes; the signature of the Governor-General ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut

... philosopher—Riccabocca had tried the experiment, and knew what it was. Why, even that plain-speaking, sensible, practical man, Metellus Numidicus, who was not even a philosopher, but only a Roman censor, thus expressed himself in an exhortation to the people to perpetrate matrimony—'If, O Quirites, we could do without wives, we should all dispense with that subject of care (ea molestia careremus); but since nature has so managed it, that we cannot live with women comfortably, nor without them at ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... so empty of all meaning! What addle-pate had conceived it? Why should he want to perpetrate ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk

... be thought of, although, in truth, I play but an indifferent game. If you will make amends by teaching me I will try to perpetrate as ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe

... it, stumbles over it at Bunker Hill. And why? Because it is not political, but moral,—because it is not local, but national,—because it is not a test of party, but of individual honesty and honor. The wrong which we allow our nation to perpetrate we cannot localize, if we would; we cannot hem it within the limits of Washington or Kansas; sooner or later, it will force itself into the conscience and sit by the ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... jointly with the greenbottles, who do not venture inside our houses and who work in the sunlight. Less timid, however, than they, should the outdoor yield be small, she will sometimes come indoors to perpetrate her villainies. When her business is done, she makes off as fast as she can, for she does not feel ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... breathing was quick and distressed, gasp tumbling over gasp, but still his eye was alert and his hand unerring. He had but a few moments' more effort left in him: it was enough if he could reach his goal and perpetrate the trick on which his mind, fertile in every base device, was set. For it was towards the mantelpiece that his retreat, seeming forced, in truth so deliberate, led him. There was the letter, there lay the revolvers. The time to think of risks was gone by; ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope

... (shortly after his arrival) a virile soldat clutching a somewhat dubious flag—I made the latter from descriptions furnished by Monsieur Auguste and The Young Pole himself—intended, I may add, to be the flag of Poland. Underneath which beautiful picture I was instructed to perpetrate ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... in comparison with the benefits conferred, are such as no self-respecting people should either perpetrate or endure. Take one example, where I could give you twenty. Two young men, both Christians, one rich, the other poor, came to the United States for education. They were detained in a prison-shed for three months, One of them, falling sick, was removed to a hospital; the other obtaining permission ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... at them, for while they are often absurd, they are rarely baseless. People do not go about inventing rumors, except for purposes of hoax; and even a practical joke is never (to parody the proverb) hoax et praeterea nihil. There is always a reason for wanting to perpetrate the hoax, or a reason for believing it ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley

... enemy, or when a sanguinary tyrant crushed it by violence and arms. Every evil, conscript fathers, which captured cities suffer, we have suffered, and do now as much as ever suffer. All the enormities which the most cruel and savage tyrants are wont to perpetrate upon their oppressed subjects, Pleminius has perpetrated upon ourselves, our children, and ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius

... Secretary Woodson became acting Governor until the arrival of Gov. Geary in September, the belligerents had matters pretty much their own way, and the ruffians improved the time, under pretense of authority from Woodson, to perpetrate with impunity the ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler

... application is obvious. We enclose or dispatch the murderer, lest some fresh grave act of violence be perpetrated. We agree that the violent and premature termination of a life is the most serious transgression of social law that a man can perpetrate. Next to it we put rape, mutilation, the destruction of a man's home or fortune; all acts, in a word, that come nearest to it in threatening or causing the greatest desolation. Yet we have suffered, age after age, that every few years all these ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe

... forgiveness—in no common phrase, or show of sorrow; but with earnestness and sincerity. In the same spirit, I acknowledge to you both that the time has been when I connived at treachery and falsehood—which if I did not perpetrate myself, I still permitted—to rend ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... job of lucre to obtain, or of vengeance to perpetrate, their way is, to select, for the execution, those very persons to whose habits, friendships, principles, and declarations, such proceedings are publicly known to be the most adverse; at once to render ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... Therefore, as every one complains, the course of the world now is such that both young and old are altogether dissolute and beyond control, have no reverence nor sense of honor, do nothing except as they are driven to it by blows, and perpetrate what wrong and detraction they can behind each other's back; therefore God also punishes them, that they sink into all kinds of filth and misery. As a rule, the parents, too, are themselves stupid and ignorant; one fool trains [teaches] another, and ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther

... this country. It has always reserved to itself an absolutely untrammelled hand in the shying of dead cats; and because a man happens to be a friend of the editor, it's no guarantee whatever that he won't have one slung at him the minute he deserves it. His only security is to perpetrate some crime so atrocious that we can't publish his name for fear of letting ourselves in for an action for libel. Your attitude to Mr. Jewdwine is naturally personal. Ours is not. I should have thought you'd have been ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... was passionate, and had been likewise prevailed on by his perfidious minister to countenance and favor idolatry. Werbode died miserably soon after, and Wulfere no sooner heard that the murder was perpetrate but, stung with grief and remorse, he entered into himself, did great penance, and entirely gave himself up to the advice of his queen and St. Chad. He destroyed all the idols, converted their temples into churches, founded the abbey of Peterborough, and the priory of Stone, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... to speak differently of his domestic virtues. Nay, it is more than probable that the king daily, in prayer, looked to God for guidance, and that he thought that he was doing that which was promotive of the interests of England. Alas for man! He can perpetrate the most atrocious crimes, honestly believing that he is doing God's will. He can burn aged women under the charge of their being witches. He can torture, in the infliction of unutterable anguish, his brother man—mothers and daughters, under the charge of heresy. ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott

... himself. Nothing, in fact, could be less probable, as Marion Fay never deserted her father. Nor did he like to give any hint to his friend that he was desirous of further immediate intimacy with Marion. There would be an absurdity in doing so which he did not dare to perpetrate. Only if he could have passed the morning in Paradise Row, and then have walked home with Roden in the dark evening, he could, he thought, have said what he ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope

... the measure of your deeds, and insult the woman whom you have robbed and made a widow. It was with a prophecy on your lips that you went forth just now to perpetrate your greatest crime; but it falls on your own head, for you laugh over our misfortune—and it cannot regard me, for my blood does not run cold; I am not overwhelmed nor hopeless, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... should desire to be in Paris. Why does she so long to place herself in the immediate reach of tyranny? You see I pronounce the decisive word! I am really unable to comprehend it. Can she not go to Rome, Berlin, Vienna, Milan, or London? Yes, London would be the right place! There she can perpetrate libels whenever she pleases. At all of these places I will leave her undisturbed with the greatest pleasure; but Paris is my residence, and there I will tolerate those only who love me! On this the world can depend. I know what would happen, if I should permit your mother to return to ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach

... you can see," she continued, shrugging. "Perhaps it was fate then, that her devoted new husband tired of her once her fortune was assured him, took a young mistress for himself, and disposed of the unfortunate wife, using her own pin to perpetrate her murder. She was excommunicated by her church, too, which must have made it most unpleasant for her, poor old dear." The slim shoulders straightened. "But let's not discuss such unpleasant things, my dear. The important ...
— Each Man Kills • Victoria Glad

... invasion of the Tories and Indians, and was looked upon as an outlaw who was compelled to live in the woods to escape the penalty of his innumerable crimes against civilization. There was no deed too dark for him to perpetrate. When the Revolution broke out he turned against the land that gave him birth, and committed atrocities that no other Tory or Indian had exceeded. It was well known that he had slain women and children in more than one instance, and when he held ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis

... humbuggery I am with you heart and soul. I will set my foot as far as who goes farthest in the exposure of frauds and fakes of every class and kind, though hedged about with the superstitions of a thousand centuries and licensed by prescriptive right to perpetrate a brutal wrong; but it does not follow because some church communicants are hypocrites that all religion is a humbug; that because the Bible winks at incest and robbery , murder and slavery, the book is but a tissue of foolish falsehoods; that because Almighty God has ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... chimney-corner companion who mingled himself so sociably with household joys and sorrows,—not a glimpse of this mighty and kindly one will greet your eyes. He is now an invisible presence. There is his iron cage. Touch it, and he scorches your fingers. He delights to singe a garment or perpetrate any other little unworthy mischief; for his temper is ruined by the ingratitude of mankind, for whom he cherished such warmth of feeling, and to whom he taught all their arts, even that of making his own prison-house. In his fits of rage he puffs volumes of smoke ...
— Fire Worship (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... fearfully near approach to a wedding has confused my brain. Sis"—turning suddenly to Abbie—"Have you prepared Ester for her fate? Does she fully understand that she and I are to officiate? that is, if we don't evaporate before the eventful day. Sis, how could you have the conscience to perpetrate a wedding in August? Whatever takes Foster abroad just now, any way?" And without waiting for answer to his ceaseless questions ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)

... advancement. Nothing is so unpopular as impartial liberty. The two great parties which absorb nearly the whole voting strength of the Republic are pledged to be deaf, dumb and blind to whatever outrages the Slave Power may attempt to perpetrate. Cotton is in their ears—blinds are over their eyes—padlocks are upon their lips. They are as clay in the hands of the potter, and already moulded into vessels of dishonour, to be used for the vilest purposes. The tremendous power of the ...
— No Compromise with Slavery - An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York • William Lloyd Garrison

... perpetrate matrimony were Ben Toner and Biddy Sullivan. Mr. Toner, to use his own expressive language, was afraid Serlizer might round on him if he delayed. Therefore, Father McNaughton was called in, and, with the aid of Rufus ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... too troublesome in this matter. When they become a little reasonable, it will be a great miracle; for, when their passions and fears are excited, there is no end to the extremes they will perpetrate." ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... abandoned purposes of the human fiends that have subdued his will!—To condemn crimes like these, we need not talk of laws or of human rules—their foulness, their deformity does not depend upon local constitutions, upon human institutes or religious creeds:—they are crimes—and the persons who perpetrate them are monsters who violate the primitive condition, upon which the earth was given to man—they are guilty by the general verdict ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... Well, he would have to be a superman to find her here with no trails to follow and no fingers to point. Pierre by now would have told his story—and Prosper knew instinctively that he would tell it straight; whatever madness the young savage might perpetrate under the influence of drink and jealousy, he would hardly, with that harrowed face, be apt at fabrications—they would be looking for Joan to come back, to go to the town, to some neighboring ranch. They would make a search, but winter would ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt

... don't know," said I. "The Rundles are pretty reliable, plain, uneducated country people. Maybe the paper manufacturers tried to perpetrate a swindle." ...
— Options • O. Henry

... no doubt as to the person of our enemy; but the motives that urged him to perpetrate these horrors, the means that he used, and his present condition, were totally unknown. It was reasonable to expect some information on this head, from my uncle. I therefore waited his coming with impatience. At length, ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown

... may be attended with Some Inconveniences" is such a frightful satire upon the abuses of Christianity by its professed followers that it is impossible for us to say whether Swift intended to point out needed reforms, or to satisfy his conscience,[190] or to perpetrate a joke on the Church, as he had done on poor Partridge. So also with his "Modest Proposal," concerning the children of Ireland, which sets up the proposition that poor Irish farmers ought to raise children as ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... Curator's keys lying on his desk and took them to open a passage to the upper floor. But for all that, I felt sure that I would never use the bow even after I had thrust it near to hand behind the tapestry masking the secret entrance to this passage. One dreams of such things but they do not perpetrate them. I might approach the deed, I might even make every preparation for its accomplishment, but that did not mean that the day would ever come when I should actually loose an arrow from this bow against a human breast. More than once I ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green

... the Devil himself would blush to perpetrate such an act of arrogance as you have done, in thus volunteering your advice to the "Bishops, Elders, and other Ministers," of the Methodist Church. An old political party hack, who is not now, and never was, a member of any Church—an intriguing old sinner, who ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow

... entirely; these were in number ten, the greatest part of them a most desperate and abandoned crew, who, to strike a notable stroke before they went off, placed half a barrel of gunpowder close to the captain's hut, laid a train to it, and were just preparing to perpetrate their wicked design of blowing up their commander, when they were with difficulty dissuaded from it by one who had some bowels and remorse of conscience left in him. These wretches, after rambling some time in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... will always remember Eugene Field as the author of Little Boy Blue, the many friends of Field, in addition to their memory of him as the charming poet of childhood, will always think of him as the irrepressible prince of merry-makers. To perpetrate a joke Field spared neither labor nor his friends. Many of his pranks were mere whimsicalities, innocent pleasantries that hurt no one. He would spend three hours in illustrating a letter to a friend, filling the letter with gossipy ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... meaning, and was no longer real to me. I was a healthy and happy man, and yet so empty did life seem to me that I was afraid of being tempted to commit suicide, even though I had not the slightest intention to perpetrate such a deed. But, fearing lest the temptation might come upon me I hid a rope away out of my sight, and ceased carrying a gun in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... would be to him he knew not. He was an outcast from civilisation, he was quickly forgetting his mother tongue; but his criminal instincts, and his desire to be a "big man" with the savages among whom he had lived for so long, led him to perpetrate this one particular crime. In the dead of night he led a party of natives on board the schooner, and massacred every one of her crew, save one Fijian, who, jumping overboard, swam to the shore, and was spared. A few months later this man escaped to a passing whaler, and the story of the massacre ...
— "Martin Of Nitendi"; and The River Of Dreams - 1901 • Louis Becke

... DURING THEIR WHOLE LIFE TO THOSE WHO CAPTURE THEM. Which can be easily justified, inasmuch as there is no shepherd who does not place barriers against the wolves, and does not endeavour to save his flock, and I have already exposed to your Majesty the damage which the Gitanos perpetrate in Spain. ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... day waned, and the road became more unknown to them, and their weariness grew upon them, they fell to indulging in those stale jokes that young ladies will perpetrate when they don't know what else to do. As they declared, with much laughter, and many smart ways of saying it, that Chautauqua was a myth of Eurie's brain, or that she had been the dupe of the fine young theological student who had chanced her way and that the search for paradise would ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy

... this time I had shown no literary tendency whatever, since the receipt of that check for two dollars and a half. Possibly the munificence of that honorarium seemed to me to satiate mortal ambition for years. It is true that, during my schooldays, I did perpetrate three full-grown novels in manuscript. My dearest particular intimate and I shared in this exploit, and read our chapters to each ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various

... criminals have much to do with not only the crimes they commit, but the manner in which they perpetrate their deeds, and in a consideration of what has been accomplished, heredity plays a strong part. Some men are born with an adeptness for crime of a certain character. Let the opportunity arise, and ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor

... kind of taxation—in the shape of a Compulsory Loan—proposed by "Ex-M.P." were enforced, how can we be sure that it would not take a large slice off capital, the next heir to which is a soldier or a sailor? Bad finance is so much easier to perpetrate than to remedy that one is almost certain to come across such objections as this to any scheme for making the war profiteers "cough up" ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers

... you, Rebecca, that I, too, was ready to perpetrate a crime for the sake of rescuing you and calling you my own again, and that I would ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... over the whole length and breadth of the city,—some of them engaged in actual work of demolition and ruin; others with clubs and weapons in their hands, prowling round apparently with no definite atrocity to perpetrate, but ready for any iniquity that might offer,—and, by way of pastime, chasing every stray police officer, or solitary soldier, or inoffensive negro, who crossed the line of their vision; these three objects—the badge of a defender of the law,—the uniform of the Union army,—the ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson

... the kings of the earth represent thee as a pious ruler. Wherefore, O prince, has thou then stopped to perpetrate a deed not sanctioned by the ordinance? I have been sore afflicted with hunger. Do thou not withhold from me that which hath been appointed by the Diety for my food,—under the impression that thereby thou servest the interests of virtue, whereas in reality, thou wilt ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

... the widow were found, warning him not to come to her apartment, and appointing to meet him in Charonne Cemetery. Gaudry made a full confession. It was his passion for the widow, and a promise on her part to marry him, which, he said, had induced him to perpetrate so abominable a crime. He was sent to the ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving

... Cameron, in a cool, even voice, "we're not quarantined, and never have been. To proceed, Babette has not the diphtheria, and never has had. In a word, and I trust I shall not be flayed alive,—this whole affair is a practical joke, which I have had the honour to perpetrate on Miss Patricia Fairfield, and for which I claim the payment of a wager made by ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells

... conceive that anything could induce you to perpetrate an act so shocking, so impossible to reconcile to nature or reason. One should have thought your own sense, your education, and even the natural softness of your sex, might have secured you from an attempt ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead

... upon her, than to abuse his guests, supposing that he himself should by this means prevent any injury to be done to those guests. When they no way abated of their earnestness for the strange woman, but insisted absolutely on their desires to have her, he entreated them not to perpetrate any such act of injustice; but they proceeded to take her away by force, and indulging still more the violence of their inclinations, they took the woman away to their house, and when they had satisfied their lust upon her the whole night, they let ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... books, they do wickedly instruct and inform people, and excite and stir them to sedition and insurrection, and make great strife and division among the people, and other enormities horrible to be heard, daily do perpetrate and commit. The diocesans cannot by their jurisdiction spiritual, without aid of the King's Majesty, sufficiently correct these said false and perverse people, nor refrain their malice, because they do go from diocese to diocese, and will not appear before the said diocesans; but the jurisdiction ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... imagination like the news of a conspiracy. Ay! ay! thought he; the Irishman is cunning enough! But we shall be too many for him: he wants to throw all the good sober folks of Hereford off their guard, by feasting, and dancing, and carousing, I take it; and so to perpetrate his evil designs when it is least suspected; but we shall be prepared for him, fools as he takes us plain Englishmen ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... for the pupils have each of them become teachers in the paternal homes of all the domestics; and by the good example of their lives they incite others to accept the true doctrine. A boy, a cantor in church, being solicited by a Spaniard to perpetrate a foul deed, answered: "Sir, I know well by what remedy you should drive away that temptation of yours. Let us recite together a rosary in honor of the blessed Virgin Mary, and instantly all these wicked thoughts ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various

... just been reading over the Letters of the President de Brosses. A hundred years ago, in Venice, the Carnival lasted six months; and at Rome for many weeks each year one was free, under cover of a mask, to perpetrate the most fantastic follies and cultivate the most remunerative vices. It's very well to read the President's notes, which have indeed a singular interest; but they make us ask ourselves why we should expect the Italians to persist in manners and practices which we ourselves, if we ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... and craft and ambition expressed in her faded but still striking features. With what utter contempt would she look upon the husband who sank into despondency because he had not the skill to devise, or the will to perpetrate, the iniquity which would insure ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous

... from the bungalow his eye fell upon the trembling lascar who had accompanied him to the edge of the verandah. He must be rid of the fellow in some way—no eye must see him perpetrate the deed he had in mind. A solution quickly ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... unable to suppress his astonishment and curiosity; and the courteous monarch condescended to explain the motives of this singular behavior. "I had reason to suspect that none, except one of my sons, could dare to perpetrate such an outrage; and I extinguished the lights, that my justice might be blind and inexorable. My prayer was a thanksgiving on the discovery of the offender; and so painful was my anxiety, that ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... hanged. Since there was no curtain, the actors could never be "discovered" on the stage and were forced to make an exit at the end of every scene. Plays were produced by daylight, under the sun of afternoon; and the stage could not be darkened, even when it was necessary for Macbeth to perpetrate a ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton



Words linked to "Perpetrate" :   perpetrator, move, recommit, commit, make, act, perpetration



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