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More "Extenuate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... never been married, never was a housekeeper, and had no house fitting for a man of his birth to reside in, as his mansion in the country had been burnt down within two years. These reasons appeared to his judges to aggravate rather than extenuate his offence; and after a long reprimand for having deserted his tenants and neighbours, they heavily fined him in one ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... heresiarch. If, then, the heresiarch causes infinitely greater evils than the murderer, why is he not as proper an object of penal legislation as the murderer? We can give a reason, a reason, short, simple, decisive, and consistent. We do not extenuate the evil which the heresiarch produces; but we say that it is not evil of that sort the sort against which it is the end of government to guard. But how Mr. Gladstone, who considers the evil which the heresiarch produces ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Macartney, "what do you make of that? That's worth coming up for. That ought to extenuate a good deal." James was quick to ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... rightly, has now nothing to do to complete the main fabric of his garden but to carry this flow of natural draperies on round the domicile's back and farther side and forward to its front again. Thus may he wonderfully extenuate, even above its reach and where it does not conceal, the house's architectural faults, thus winsomely enhance all its architectural charm; like a sweet human mistress of the place, putting into generous shadow all the ill, and into open sunshine all the best, of a husband's ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... Vernon, and which had not yet been repaid. Mr. Vernon wrote him a very gentle intimation, stating that it would be very convenient for him to receive the money. Franklin returned a contrite and magnanimous letter. He made no attempt to extenuate his fault, promised immediately to strain every nerve to meet the debt, and in a few months paid the whole, ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... Raschid (who was the friend of the great Charlemagne,) entertained Ebn Oaz at his court in the quality of jester, he desired him one day, in the presence of the Sultana and all her followers, to make an excuse worse than the crime it was intended to extenuate: the Caliph walked about, waiting for a reply. Alter a long pause, Ebn Oaz skulked behind the throne, and pinched his highness in the rear. The rage of the Caliph was unbounded. "I beg a thousand pardons of your Majesty," said Ebn Oaz, "but I thought it was her Highness the Sultana." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various
... Without attempting to extenuate the errors of Madame de Longueville, moral or political, it has been the author's endeavour to reconcile the apparent contradictions in her character, imputed in the passage above cited, by assigning the different incidents, which have doubtless ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... we should be together." The girl was so agitated, fearing that in some way her adventures might be discovered, that she had no occasion to feign alarm. Mrs. Whately sought only to soothe and quiet, also to extenuate her son's words. "I don't suppose we truly realize yet, as Madison does, ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... toward him. I vigorously opposed Mr. McCombs' suggestion, arguing that no explanation of the Joline letter could be made to Mr. Bryan that would wear the appearance of sincerity, or be convincing, and that the letter having been written there was nothing to do to extenuate it in any way and that the wise thing was to make a virtue of necessity. I suggested that on the following night, when the Governor was to deliver his address at the Jackson Day dinner, he could, in the most generous and kindly ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... savoured of contempt of court, Hinted of disrespect toward the Bench, That I should chuckle when your pitch was short Or smile to see you in the sanded trench; But Golf (so I extenuate my sin) Brings all men level, like the greens they putt on; One common bunker makes the whole world kin, And Bar may scrap with Beak, and I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various
... of the charges in which I am personally concerned. As to the other matters objected against me, which in their turn I shall mention to you, remember once more I do not mean to extenuate or excuse. Why should I, when the things charged are among those upon which I found all my reputation? What would be left to me, if I myself was the man who softened and blended and diluted and weakened all the distinguishing colors of my ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... myself; but I cannot act for him; and hence I must be, and I am, debased, contaminated by the union, both in my own eyes and in the actual truth. I am so determined to love him, so intensely anxious to excuse his errors, that I am continually dwelling upon them, and labouring to extenuate the loosest of his principles and the worst of his practices, till I am familiarised with vice, and almost a partaker in his sins. Things that formerly shocked and disgusted me, now seem only natural. I know them to ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... time of his condemnation to the day he died, he neither affected to extenuate his crime, nor reflect, as some are apt to do, on the cruelty of the prosecutors, witnesses, or the Court that condemned him. So far from it, that he always acknowledged the justice of his sentence, seemed grieved only for the greatness of ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... out of a grim humor peculiarly his own, and partly to extenuate his severity toward the youth, had sent to his niece all the city papers containing unfavorable references to Haldane, and to her mind the associations created by those disgraceful scenes were still inseparable from him. She honestly respected him for his resolute ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... where he found himself on his recovery, and make no effort to lift his wife to that he had renounced. She was a child of Nature. He would learn life anew of her; but he failed of success in all his undertakings. Shall a man attempt to extenuate his failures? It seemed new to him; he acknowledged it in open court, that from the day of his entrance into Dalton to the day he left it, he was under some enchantment there. And if an insane man is not to be held responsible ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... much nerves as lack of nerve with me; I don't know what you call it, but I confess I find the smoke-wreaths pleasant; you won't join me either, Jack? Well, let us have the story in all its native simplicity and be sure you nothing extenuate nor ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... generously refused to be prejudiced against me by busy, malignant rumour; you have resolved to judge of me for yourself. Nothing, then, shall be concealed. In such circumstances I cannot seek to extenuate any of my faults or follies. I am ready to acknowledge them all with self-humiliation more poignant than the sarcasms of my bitterest enemies. But I must pause till I have summoned courage for ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... forget that it was the Catholic Lord Baltimore and Catholic colonists of Maryland who in 1648 first proclaimed on these shores the glorious principle of universal toleration, while the Puritans were persecuting in New England and the Episcopalians in Virginia. 'Nothing extenuate nor aught set down in malice,' should be the rule of our souls. Humanity means eternal Progress, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... friend, do not think I want to extenuate sins of passion (though, in very truth, the sin of Magdalene is a light one compared to that of Judas); but observe, sins of passion, if of real passion, are often the errors and backfalls of noble souls; but prodigality is mere and pure selfishness, ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... as the writer has had an opportunity of remarking, the generality of professed Christians among the higher classes, either altogether overlook or deny, or at least greatly extenuate the corruption and weakness here in question. They acknowledge indeed that there is, and ever has been in the world, a great portion of vice and wickedness; that mankind have been ever prone to sensuality and selfishness, in disobedience ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... his degradation, for it was humiliating to the child to reveal the parent's shame. Criminal he knew him to be, with regard to my mother, but Ernest had said, when gazing on her picture, he almost forgave the crime which had so much to extenuate it. The gambler, the profligate, the lost, abandoned being, who had thrown himself so abjectly on my compassion: in these characters, the high-minded Ernest would spurn him with withering indignation. Yet as the interview ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... compose a number of dissertations, on such leading and general topics as are now called common places. Gorgias, he adds, did the same, and wrote panegyrics and invectives on every subject: for he thought it was the province of an Orator to be able either to exaggerate, or extenuate, as occasion might require. Antiphon the Rhamnusian composed several essays of the same species; and (according to Thucydides, a very respectable writer, who was present to hear him) pleaded a capital cause in his own defence, with as much eloquence as had ever yet been displayed ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the belief is that Angie was much fascinated by him, and had met him East before meeting him here. Mr. Davies, I am glad to relieve your mind of one uncomfortable theory in connection with this affair. I wish I could extenuate or explain Willett's conduct as easily, but that young man is a fool ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... believe a syllable of it,' protested Lady Kirkbank, dabbing her brow with a handkerchief steeped in eau de Cologne. 'A vile fabrication of Montesma's, who wanted to blacken poor Smithson's character in order to extenuate his own crimes.' ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Fire-slain Phaeton left, and not without cypresses airy. These in a line wide-broke set he, the Mansion surrounding, So by the soft leaves screened, the porch might flourish in verdure. Follows hard on his track with active spirit Prometheus, Bearing extenuate sign of penalties suffer'd in bygones. 295 Paid erewhiles what time fast-bound as to every member, Hung he in carkanet slung from the Scythian rock-tor. Last did the Father of Gods with his sacred spouse and his offspring, Proud from the Heavens proceed, thee leaving (Phoebus) in loneness, ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... ascendancy over Madame d'Urfe, and I often abused my power over her. Now that I am no longer the victim of those illusions which pursued me throughout my life, I blush at the remembrance of my conduct, and the penance I impose on myself is to tell the whole truth, and to extenuate ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... we may observe in general, that, as they consist in comparing the iniquitous practice of slavery with other iniquitous practices in force among other nations, they can neither raise it to the appearance of virtue, nor extenuate its guilt. The things compared are in these instances both of them evils alike. They call equally for redress[098], and are equally disgraceful to the governments which suffer them, if not encourage ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... not cast reproach upon any man without some necessary reason. In charity (that charity which "covereth all sins," which "covereth a multitude of sins") we are bound to connive at the defects, and to conceal the faults of our brethren; to extenuate and excuse them, when apparent, so far as we may in truth and equity. We must not therefore ever produce them to light, or prosecute them with severity, except very needful occasion urgeth—such as is the glory and service of God, the maintenance of truth, the vindication of ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... facts, breathlessly, and in spite of herself accusingly,—and then waited for the explanation that would extenuate the apparent ugliness of his attitude toward her, and set all the world right for her again. As she looked into his face she felt that it must come. She noted compassionately how the shadows under the dark eyes had deepened; ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... "genial" not so much profaned, were it not misused in easy good-nature, to extenuate lettered and sensual indolence, that worn old term might be applied, above all men, to "the Shirra." But perhaps we scarcely need a word (it would be seldom in use) for a character so rare, or rather ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... to prevent taking place; which, indeed, I had before said, would be most atrocious when I so often petitioned concerning it(144) and which as you yourself show, by revoking it too late, you consider to be grave, and this I could not extenuate when committed.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... hath a measure of this spirit, and is grieved at his heart, when he calls to mind his shameful denials of his Lord. If any, who think themselves his disciples are blind to their faults, or little affected with them—ready to excuse or extenuate them, especially if hidden from the world; or feel reluctant to take shame to themselves, when they have fallen, it nearly concerns them to examine the grounds of their hope toward God; there is reason to fear that they "hold a lie in their right ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... a word or two before you goe: I haue done the State some seruice, and they know't: No more of that. I pray you in your Letters, When you shall these vnluckie deeds relate, Speake of me, as I am. Nothing extenuate, Nor set downe ought in malice. Then must you speake, Of one that lou'd not wisely, but too well: Of one, not easily Iealious, but being wrought, Perplexed in the extreame: Of one, whose hand (Like the base Iudean) threw a Pearle away Richer then all his Tribe: Of one, whose subdu'd Eyes, Albeit ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... been doiwos or deiwos or dewos, had coined a new word for god from a different root, yet coming so near to dewos as thewos? These internal difficulties seem to me nearly as great as the external: at all events it would not be right to attempt to extenuate either. ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... Reginald. "If anything can extenuate killing a fellow-creature, it is that. Are you quite positive—But perhaps I have no right ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... Constable of the Castle of Southampton, to whose custody they had been committed, to have confessed the justice of the charges brought against them, and that they threw themselves on the king's mercy; but Scroop endeavoured to extenuate his conduct, by asserting that his intentions were innocent, and that he appeared only to acquiesce in their designs to be enabled to defeat them. The Earl and Lord Scroop having claimed the privilege ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... pray you, in your letters, When you shall these unlucky deeds relate, Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate, Nor set down aught in malice: then, must you speak Of one that loved, not wisely, but too well: Of one not easily jealous, but, being wrought, Perplexed in the ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... open countenance, differing so far from Philip. Philip was sullen, James jovial. Both were equally ferocious. James II. was an easy-minded tiger; like Philip II., his crimes lay light upon his conscience. He was a monster by the grace of God. Therefore he had nothing to dissimulate nor to extenuate, and his assassinations were by divine right. He, too, would not have minded leaving behind him those archives of Simancas, with all his misdeeds dated, classified, labelled, and put in order, each in its compartment, like poisons in the cabinet of a chemist. To set the sign-manual ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... It would, indeed, be difficult to deny or extenuate the appalling truth of Mr. Sinclair's indictment."— ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... breeze. What a contrast to this dingy, confined, close dungeon! And was it possible that he had ever wandered at will in that fair scene with a companion fairer? Such thoughts might well drive a man mad. With all his errors, and all his disposition at present not to extenuate them, Ferdinand Armine could not refrain from esteeming himself unlucky. Perhaps it is more distressing to believe ourselves unfortunate, than to ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... me, and your detestation of the wrong your father did me. But death brings clearer vision, my child, and I cannot wish that your father's last years,—if, indeed, he be living—should be desolated by not knowing you. I want you to know that there were many things which, while they did not extenuate your father, yet might in some measure ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... ever comfort me!" he says moodily to Miriam, when she would extenuate his crime. "I have a great weight here!" lifting her hand to his breast. Wild creatures, once his loved companions, shun him as he, in turn, shuns the face of man. He disappears from the story, hand-in-hand with Miriam, bound, it would seem, upon a penitential pilgrimage, or ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... Interspersed with Observations, Anecdotes and Remarks, tending to illustrate the moral and political characters of three nations. To which is added, a correct Engraving of Dartmoor Prison, representing the Massacre of American prisoners. Written by himself." "Nothing extenuate, or set down ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... the contest. There is no retreat, but in submission and slavery. Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable—and let it come! I repeat it, Sir, let it come!—It is vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry peace, peace—but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field. Why stand we here, idle? Is life so dear, is peace so sweet, ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... known by those who were her friends; but were these people to whom he was now going to write, friends? He knew there was a rich mother, and a handsome, elegant son; and he had also some idea of the circumstances which might a little extenuate their mode of quitting Ruth. He had wide enough sympathy to understand that it must have been a most painful position in which the mother had been placed, on finding herself under the same roof with a girl who was living with her son, ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... witness, and in the malignant glance which he had shot toward him ere he began his tale, Richard read that the charge against him was to be pushed to the bitter end. It was in this man's power, more than in any other's (save one), to extenuate or to set down in malice; and there was no doubt in his rival's mind (though his rancor took so blunt a form that it might well have been mistaken by others for outspoken candor) which of the two courses Solomon had chosen. He showed neither scruple nor hesitation; every word was distinct ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... From the same.— The lady writes upon scraps of paper, which she tears, and throws under the table. Copies of ten of these rambling papers; and of a letter to him most affectingly incoherent. He attempts farther to extenuate his villany. Tries to resume his usual levity; and forms a scheme to decoy the people at Hampstead to the infamous woman's in town. The lady seems ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... he was a proud young man. Perhaps he was, but it is not always an indication of pride when young people bestow more care upon their appearance than do their fellows; it may arise from a desire to appear respectable and be respected. No one will think I am trying to extenuate the foolish and extravagant love of dress which some people show, who adorn themselves in silks or broadcloth, for which they have to go into debt without the means of paying. Some are most unsparing in the way they lavish money on their own persons, but only ask them to bestow something ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... also communicated to me, for the satisfaction of his relations, other circumstances connected with that unfortunate disaster, which, after their deaths, may or may not be laid before the public. And although they can implicate none but himself, either living or dead, they may extenuate but will contain not a word of his in defence of the crime he committed against the laws of ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... "however;"—for it is self-evident that every universal rule must have its exceptions. But he is so exceedingly accurate, that, if he only fancies he has said a word too precipitate, or too general, or only half true, he never ceases to qualify, to modify, and extenuate, till at last he appears to have said nothing at all. Upon this occasion, Albert was deeply immersed in his subject: I ceased to listen to him, and became lost in reverie. With a sudden motion, I pointed the mouth ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... broke down, and lay there before me strangling with sobs and cries. "Should Mr. Floyd know," he murmured, "should Mr. Floyd even guess, that I am the wretched wreck of a man that I am, he would not let Helen stay with me another moment. He would extenuate, he would pity, nothing: he does not know what it is for a man like me, once proud, witty, gay, to bear seclusion and depression and decay. I long at times for some of the inspiration of my youth: it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... defending the constitution, the treacherous Frederick William not only declined to do so, but began to send his troops to occupy Polish territory. The upshot was the further dismemberment of Poland known as the Second Partition (1793). "No sophistry in the world," writes Mr. Nisbet Bain, "can extenuate the villainy of the Second Partition. The theft of territory is its least offensive feature. It is the forcible suppression of a national movement of reform, the hurling back into the abyss of anarchy and corruption of a people who, by incredible efforts and sacrifices, had struggled back ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... in which every word may be said to have been deposed upon oath; for the oaths were at least equal to all the other words spoken. In this controversy the whole company spoke together, and every man seemed wholly bent to extenuate the sum which fell to his share; so that the most probable conclusion which could be foreseen was, that a large portion of the reckoning would fall to the landlord's share to pay, or (what is much the same thing) would ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... Dick's. Bostwick had ousted him after all, before he could extenuate his madness, before he could ascertain whether Beth were angry or not—before he ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... Norton, "that I hardly ever get anything stated without some grave mistake, however true in my main discourse." But in this case a fate stronger than he had taken him unawares. The circumstances do not extenuate the error of the Professor, but they explain the difficulties under which his work was done. The cloud that rested on his own life was the result of a strange and wholly ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... three, agreeing as they do wonderfully together, were printed at Aix under the eye of her enemies, in a volume where, as I shall presently prove, an attempt was made to extenuate the guilt of Girard, and fasten the reader's gaze on every point likely to tell against Cadiere. And yet the editor could not help inserting depositions like these, which bear with crushing weight on the ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... born to it," Beppo remarked, to extenuate his outwitted cunning, when he found each door of the room ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to wind. While this minor war measure went forward the day's mail came. From a canvas sack Lew Wee spilled letters and papers on the table. Whereupon the yarn was laid by while Ma Pettengill eagerly shuffled the letters. She thought fit to extenuate this eagerness. She said if people lived forever they would still get foolishly excited over their mail; whereas everyone knew well enough that nothing important ever came in it. To prove this she sketched ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... conduct in life, so candour, and indeed common integrity, enjoin it upon us to accompany that acknowledgment with all such circumstances, and the reasonings upon them that occur to us, as may serve to extenuate the criminality of those acts, and to show that his misconduct was the natural, or rather the necessary and inevitable result of the circumstances to which he was exposed, and nothing more than the every-day issues of human infirmity. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... and had no inkling that their front trenches were down at the river. With the imperfect means at his disposal he did such scouting as he could, and if his fiery and impetuous spirit led him into a position which cost him so dearly it is certainly more easy for the critic to extenuate his fault than that subsequent one which allowed the abandoned guns to fall into the hands of the enemy. Nor is there any evidence that the loss of these guns did seriously affect the fate of the action, for at those other parts of the field where the infantry had the full and unceasing ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... tried. She trembled and shed tears during the reading of the indictment, and, in a low voice, pleaded guilty. On being asked why sentence of death should not be passed against her, she replied meekly, "I can much aggravate, but nothing extenuate my fault. I desire mercy, and that the lords will intercede for me with the king." Sentence of death was ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... they will name you with King Codrus who sacrificed his life for the freedom of Attica, for have you not sacrificed what should be dearer than life,—the fair name of your husband? But courage. Your patriotism may extenuate his crime. Only the traitor ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... with it: Dulcisonum reficit tristia corda melos, Eobanus Hessus. Many other properties [3473]Cassiodorus, epist. 4. reckons up of this our divine music, not only to expel the greatest griefs, but "it doth extenuate fears and furies, appeaseth cruelty, abateth heaviness, and to such as are watchful it causeth quiet rest; it takes away spleen and hatred," be it instrumental, vocal, with strings, wind, [3474]Quae, a spiritu, sine manuum dexteritate gubernetur, &c. it cures all irksomeness and ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... down without omissions and with nothing extenuate the data on which is based the indictment that the clergy have been, and are, anti-national, and I ask the reader to say whether the charge is unsupported or not. That overtures have again and again been made sub rosa to the clergy to wean them from the popular side is proved up to the hilt, but ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... to you, Susan, that my parentage is as obscure as it well can be; and secondly, that the early part of my life was as vicious. I may, indeed, extenuate it when I enter into an explanation, and with great justice: but I have now only stated the facts generally. If you wish me to enter into particulars, much as I shall blush at the exposure, and painful as the task assigned will be, I shall not refuse, ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... societies which admit it. This is no longer regarded as a subject of argument and investigation. The opinions referred to are assumed as settled, or the truth of them as self-evident. If any voice is raised among ourselves to extenuate or to vindicate, it is unheard. The judgment is made up. We can have no hearing before the tribunal of the civilized world. Yet, on this very account, it is more important that we, the inhabitants of the slaveholding States of America, insulated as we are, by ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... distinguished from the herd of mankind, and the fear of either infamy or oblivion, passions which cannot but have some degree of influence, and which may, at least, affect the writer's choice of facts, though they may not prevail upon him to advance known falsehoods. He may aggravate or extenuate particular circumstances, though he preserves the general transaction; as the general likeness may be preserved in painting, though a blemish is hid or a ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... the truthful historian to narrate facts, not to palliate or extenuate the conduct of the various actors. Whether Ernest did right or wrong, at least he did it; he wrote a playful social for Monday's 'Morning Intelligence,' and carried it into the office on Sunday afternoon himself, beause there was no postal ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... Borgia family; P. Villari's Machiavelli (English translation, new ed., 1892) deals with the subject at some length. Of the Catholic writers L. Pastor, Geschichte der Papste (Freiburg i. B, 1886) should be consulted, for although the author tries to extenuate the pope to some extent, on the whole he is fair. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... it is in the crossness and indisposition of the mind of man to think of any such thing, to will or to resolve it. And therefore Titus Livius in his declamatory digression wherein he doth depress and extenuate the honour of Alexander's conquests saith, NIHIL ALIUD QUAM BENE AUSUS VANA CONTEMNERE: in which sort of things it is the manner of men first to wonder that any such thing should be possible, and after it is found out to wonder ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... the arrest of Garibaldi could not be kept secret, the general thought it most prudent to be himself the herald of its occurrence, which he announced to the troops in a manner as little discouraging as he could devise. It was difficult to extenuate the consequences of so great a blow, but they were assured that it was not a catastrophe, and would not in the slightest degree affect the execution of the plans previously resolved on. Two or three days later some increase of confidence was occasioned by the authentic intelligence that ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... will infuse true motion in a stone, Put glowing fire in an icy soul, Stuff peasants' bosoms with proud Caesar's spleen, Pour rich device into an empty brain: Bring youth to folly's gate: there train him in, And after all, extenuate his sin. Well, I will not go, I am resolved for that. Go, carry it again: yet stay: yet do too, I will defer it ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... by speaking against Edmund, to whom she was under great obligations? He made but little reply; but the impression sunk deep into his rancorous heart; every word in Edmund's behalf was like a poisoned arrow that rankled in the wound, and grew every day more inflamed. Sometimes he would pretend to extenuate Edmund's supposed faults, in order to load him with the sin of ingratitude upon other occasions. Rancour works deepest in the heart that strives to conceal it; and, when covered by art, frequently puts on the appearance ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... perfect. It is a portion of the duke's life which cannot be entirely passed over in silence, since it must be conceded, that much of his unpopularity may be traced to this source. Neither the court nor the people of England are so ascetic as not to extenuate the indiscretions of royalty; but this charitable estimate of misgivings does not extend to approbation of any culpable dereliction of social and moral duties. The fact of his royal highness having a large family, by a lady now no more, is too well known to be concealed; but ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - No. 291 - Supplement to Vol 10 • Various
... sincere and apparently well-grounded belief that a felony is about to be perpetrated will extenuate a homicide committed in prevention of it, though the defendant be but a private citizen" (25 Ala., 15.) See Wharton, above quoted, who embodies the doctrine in his text (Vol. 2, ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... alleviate her regrets will be to lay aside his own. He does not attempt to conceal from her the magnitude of the misfortune, because so far from being a mere novice in sorrow, she has tasted it from her earliest years in all its varieties; and because his purpose was to conquer her grief, not to extenuate its causes. Those many miseries would indeed have been in vain, if they had not taught her how to bear wretchedness. He will prove to her therefore that she has no cause to grieve either on his account, or on her own. Not on his—because he is happy among circumstances which others ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... Mrs. Farnham really suffers in thought by the same unflinching fidelity to her creed. It makes her clear and resolute in her statement; but it often makes her as one-sided as the advocates of male supremacy whom she impugns. To be sure, her theory enables her to extenuate some points of admitted injustice to woman,—finding, for instance, in her educational and professional exclusions a crude effort, on the part of society, to treat her as a sort of bird-of-paradise, born only to fly, and therefore not needing feet. Yet this authoress is obliged to assume ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... I must do. I can scarcely think or feel yet. Only I know that I must get free. It isn't that I'm hard. It's just that I have no choice. Your case was different. You had to do it. But this—" her words sank, became scarcely audible—"Nick, could anything extenuate—this?" ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... it nowise apprehended, that any personal connection of ours with Teufelsdrockh, Heuschrecke or this Philosophy of Clothes, can pervert our judgment, or sway us to extenuate or exaggerate. Powerless, we venture to promise, are those private Compliments themselves. Grateful they may well be; as generous illusions of friendship; as fair mementos of bygone unions, of those nights and suppers of the gods, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... finger of his right hand to his lip, cast a look of inquiry at the bystanders, and then said he knew it would be no easy matter to apologize to ladies for so singular a transgression, but how his treating could extenuate an insult offered to another party, he could not exactly see. "By my word as a man of standing, I have spent much sweat and labor in getting the little Fortune has favored me with, and it seems to me that he who needs it most had better quench his thirst with ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... He knew the great aim of life; he saw things in their true light, and taught me to see them also; he called things by their proper names; and while he could make ample allowance for the faults of others, he never attempted to extenuate his own errors; nor did he mistake vice for virtue, or the semblance of virtue for the reality. From the companionship of such a person I could not fail to reap much benefit. I did not enjoy it long. ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... But Charlton sat, pale and dejected, ready enough to converse about anything else, but declining to say one word in regard to his guilt or innocence of the crime charged. It is not strange that some of his best friends accepted the charge as true, and only tried to extenuate the offense on the ground that the circumstances made the temptation a very great one, and that the motive was not mercenary. Others stood out that it would yet be discovered that Plausaby had stolen the warrant, until half-a-dozen people remembered that Plausaby himself had been in ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... confounded and overawed by these cutting reproaches, and her animated behaviour, that all his resolution forsook him, and he found himself not only incapable of obstructing her retreat, but even of uttering one syllable to deprecate her wrath, or extenuate the guilt of his own conduct. The nature of his disappointment, and the keen remorse that seized him, when he reflected upon the dishonourable footing on which his character stood with Emilia, raised such perturbation in his mind, that his silence was succeeded ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... but sanguine friend has been with me again and again. My time is expired and I find a relief beyond measure, for he has fully convinced me that no act of mine can mar the eternal counsel, or in the smallest degree alter or extenuate one event which was decreed before the foundations of the world were laid. He said he had watched over me with the greatest anxiety, but, perceiving my rooted aversion towards him, he had forborne troubling me with his presence. ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... of a Northern mythus, their duty was to punish the oppressor and redress the wronged, and they thus fixed in the wild elements of unsettled opinion a recognised standard of generosity and of justice. Their deeds became the theme of the poets, who sought to embellish their virtues and extenuate their offences. Thus, certain models, not indeed wholly pure or excellent, but bright with many of those qualities which ennoble a national character, were set before the emulation of the aspiring and the young:—and the traditional fame of a Hercules or a Theseus assisted to inspire ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the fatal curiosity of Fatima and her sister Anne. We must extenuate here, nor aught set down in malice, remembering that Wagner knew only the women of his own day, before the sex was uplifted and purified by the vote, and he naturally depicted them with the man-engendered vices that were then a part of their unhappy heritage. This "NeugierdeMotiv" (Curiosity ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... his demeanor and conduct in company of his late companions; while, with his own family, he appeared moody, irresolute, and restless, and even, at length, he began to throw out occasional hints tending to defend or extenuate the conduct of the very man whom, a few weeks before, he had so confidently denounced as a thief and a robber. Alarmed at these indications of returning weakness and fatuity in her husband, Mrs. Elwood soon put herself on inquiry, ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... retreat but in submission and slavery. Our chains are forged, their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston. The war is inevitable; and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come! It is in vain to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, 'Peace, peace,' but there is no peace. The war is actually begun. The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms. Our brethren are already in ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... for the mutiny, and I exonerate all, even my adherents, from so much as suggesting it to me; nevertheless, there are some who love me in England, to whom I would beg of you to relate the circumstances that I have told you. These may extenuate though they cannot justify the crime I have committed. I assure you, most solemnly, that almost up to the last I had no intention of doing more than making my own escape from the ship which the injustice and brutality of Bligh had made a place of torment to me. When you called me, Stewart, ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... as the Inductive Philosophy are most fairly examined; not in the spirit of the common biographer who always canonizes his subject through thick and thin, but in that of an impartial seeker for truth, resolved to naught extenuate and set down naught in malice. It is believed by many that BACON was simply so fortunate as to have his picture stand as the frontispiece of the new Philosophy, when in truth other contemporaries, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... this period will amply repay the explorer with enlarged ideas of its meaning and its issues. Of the Queen-mother "naught extenuate nor aught set down in malice." Catherine compares more than favorably with Marie de' Medici, whom history has painted in brighter hue. Bigotry has blasted the name of one who for her time was at least the equal of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... exercised on the Aborigines of America, the wrong and outrage heaped on them from the days of Montezuma and Guatimozin, to the present period, while they excite sympathy for their sufferings, should extenuate, if not justify the bloody deeds, which revenge prompted the untutored savages to commit. Driven as they were from the lands of which they were the rightful proprietors—Yielding to encroachment after encroachment 'till forced to apprehend their ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... this thought at present, no doubt the same impulse would have been experienced; but now it was my brother whom I was irresistibly persuaded to regard as the contriver of that ill of which I had been forewarned. This persuasion did not extenuate my fears or my danger. Why then did I again approach the closet and withdraw the bolt? My resolution was instantly ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... revoked. The noblest and the basest he not only seems to comprehend, but to personate and body forth in their most secret lineaments: hence actions and opinions appear to him as they are, with all the circumstances which extenuate or endear them to the hearts where they originated and are entertained. This also is the spirit of our Shakespeare, and perhaps of every great dramatic poet. Shakespeare is no sectarian; to all he deals with equity and mercy; because he knows ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... and in thinking she seized hold of the idea, at one feminine bound, that the caged bird had been brought by Henchard for her as a wedding gift and token of repentance. He had not expressed to her any regrets or excuses for what he had done in the past; but it was a part of his nature to extenuate nothing, and live on as one of his own worst accusers. She went out, looked at the cage, buried the starved little singer, and from that hour her heart ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... sorry for poor Maud, as a rule, but he felt a need to shed a little gaiety, to extenuate the accident as far as possible, to turn it into a joke, so as to prevent his girls from being panic-stricken. He talked of heads smashed to a jelly, of legs in smithereens, of a bicyclist who had had not one, but both eyes caught in the chain. ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... perverse. I was confident and unconcerned as long as our neighbourhood was free from disease, and as long as I forbore any communication with the sick; yet I should have withdrawn to Malverton, merely to gratify my friends, if Thetford had not used the most powerful arguments to detain me. He laboured to extenuate the danger. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... the cavalry, pursued the fugitives into the neighbouring fields, and made two hundred prisoners. Not a man was killed on the side of the national guard; the loss of the people is unknown. The one side diminished it, in order to extenuate the odium of an execution without resistance; the others augmented it, in order to rouse the people's resentment. At night, which was already fast approaching, the bodies were cast into the Seine. Opinions were divided as to the ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... if "he thought that all things were governed by fate or fortune,"[62] George the First remained a long time to settle his own affairs in Hanover, before coming to England. This delay was employed by the Earl of Mar, in an endeavour to extenuate the tenor of his political conduct of late years in the eyes of the Sovereign, and in placing before the King the merit of his services and his claims to favour. The letter which he addressed to George the First, when ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... dealt plainly with himself; it was only in this last matter that the power, more than the will, to understand his own heart had failed him. His intellect now reasserted itself. He did not attempt to blink facts; he did not deny the truth of the revelation or seek to extenuate its force. He did not tell himself that the matter was a trifle, or that its effect would be transient. He recognized that he had fallen from the state of a priest vowed to Heaven, to that of a man whose whole ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... and a good naturall wit; whereof no man thinks himselfe unprovided: whereas the knowledge, of Right and Wrong, which is no lesse difficult, there is no man will pretend to, without great and long study. And of those defects in Reasoning, there is none that can Excuse (though some of them may Extenuate) a Crime, in any man, that pretendeth to the administration of his own private businesse; much lesse in them that undertake a publique charge; because they pretend to the Reason, upon the want whereof they would ground ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... Paris, by exhibiting it with all its perfections and imperfections. Borrowing the language of MERCIER, I shall trace the institution through all its ramifications, and, in pointing out its effects, I shall "nothing extenuate, nor set ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... moment he induced the inconsiderate Maria to betray, we will not say the confidence of her friend, but such facts as could only have come to her knowledge by the intimacy of unaffected association. If there were any thing to extenuate this breach of decorum by Maria, it was the manner in which it was effected. Miss Osgood had just returned from one of her frequent visits to the villa of Mr. Henley, when Delafield made his customary morning call: the absence of Maria, and the object ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... other Bodies of Men invested with some temporary shadow of authority, they are charged to maintain the King's Cities and Strong Places intact, till Brunswick arrive to take delivery of them. Indeed, quick submission may extenuate many things; but to this end it must be quick. Any National Guard or other unmilitary person found resisting in arms shall be 'treated as a traitor;' that is to say, hanged with promptitude. For the rest, if Paris, before Brunswick gets thither, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... that I do not attempt to defend my faithlessness, hardly to extenuate it; and I do not at all wonder at your altered temper towards me. It was a cruel blow I gave you. But my life shall show you the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... your wishes, attribute my demerits to some infirmity of mind, rather than to a negligence of your happiness. Yet, be the cause what it will, since these faults have existed, I do not attempt to disavow or extenuate them, ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... presently, apologetic and abject, prepared at the same time to extenuate and deny. Trent ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and Curiatii, the fierce young hero, who had overcome the Curiatii one after another (instead of being congratulated by his sister for his victory, being upbraided by her for having slain her lover), in the height of his passion and resentment kills her. If anything could extenuate so brutal an action, it would be the doing of it on a sudden, before the sentiments of nature, reason, or manhood could take place in him. However, to avoid public bloodshed, as soon as his passion is wrought to its height, he follows his sister the whole length ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... proceeded to read aloud. Gardiner gave a frank, explicit account of all that had happened since he parted with his owner, concealing nothing, and not attempting even to extenuate his fault. Of the Sea Lion of Holmes' Hole he wrote at large, giving it as his opinion that Captain Daggett really possessed some clue—what he did not know—to the existence of the sealing islands, though he rather thought that he was not very ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... word had Roland sought to interrupt his son,—nay, by a feverish excitement which my heart understood in its secret sympathy, he had seemed eagerly to court every syllable that could extenuate the darkness of the offence, or even imply some less sordid motive for the baseness of the means. But as the son now closed with the words of unjust reproach and the accents of fierce despair,—closed a defence that showed, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... gazed at her sister. "And, oh, Sancie, you've had your honeymoon!" Before the deadly simplicity of that last stroke Sanchia fell, and lay quivering. She could not ask for mercy, she could explain, extenuate, nothing. Huddled she lay. At this aching moment the one thing that the world held worth her having seemed to be the approbation of this butterfly child. For Vicky's happiness was specific. Nuptial bliss lay, ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... contracted with a man I hated placed me in the most cruel embarrassment. I had exhausted every resource. A fatal idea occurred to me. Believing myself certain of impunity, I committed an infamous action. You see, my father, I conceal nothing from you. I confess the ignominy of my conduct. I seek to extenuate nothing. One of two resolutions remains for me to take, and I have now to decide which. The first is to kill myself, and to leave your name dishonored, for if I do not pay to-day even the twenty-five thousand francs, the complaint ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... of disposition, which marked him in private life, pervade his writings, except on some few occasions, when his mind is too much under the influence of party feelings. This bias inclined him, not only to treat the character of Milton with a most undue asperity, but even to extenuate the atrocities committed under the government of Mary, and somewhat to depreciate the worth of those divines, whose attachment to the reformed religion led them to suffer ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... me, as I reflected that perchance I had left those most dear to return to them no more. But I forget; a description of private feelings is, to uninterested readers, only so much twaddle, besides being more egotistical than even an account of personal adventures could extenuate; so, with the exception of a few extracts from my "log," I shall jump at once from the English Channel to the more exciting shores ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... now and then to the dry-goods store for dress goods, which Pheeny made up; and Eddie left an occasional sum at the Pantatorium for a fresh alpaca coat, or for a new pair of trousers when the seat of the old ones grew too refulgent or perilously extenuate. As Eddie stood up at his tall desk most of the time, however, it was rather his shoes than his pantaloons that felt the wear and tear ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... times before his death, that he received his wound from Savage; nor did Savage at his trial deny the fact, but endeavoured partly to extenuate it, by urging the suddenness of the whole action, and the impossibility of any ill design, or premeditated malice; and partly to justify it by the necessity of self-defence, and the hazard of his own life, if he had lost that opportunity of giving the thrust: he observed, that neither reason ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... Circumstances, does not act like an obliged Man only to him from whom he has received a Benefit, but also to all who are capable of doing him one. And whatever little Offices he can do for you, he is so far from magnifying it, that he will labour to extenuate it in all his Actions and Expressions. Moreover, the Regard to what you do to a great Man, at best is taken notice of no further than by himself or his Family; but what you do to a Man of an humble Fortune, (provided always that he is a good and a modest Man) raises the Affections ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... ought to be maintained; the internal feuds of Poland were more fatal to human happiness than the despotism of Russia; and the growth of improvement among its people was as slow as among the ryots of Hindostan." These are just remarks; but the causes of Poland's overthrow do not extenuate the guilt of the spoliators: the dismemberment of the country is a foul blot upon the historic page of Russia, Austria, and Prussia—a blot which can never be ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... but still with a stern determination, that the historian—should faithfully record these transactions. To extenuate would be base; to exaggerate impossible. It is good that the world should not forget how much wrong has been endured by a single harmless nation at the hands of despotism, and in the sacred name of God. There ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... fool, almost a madman, we must, when we look closer, find much to respect in his extraordinary devotion. How different indeed was he from those who, if their wives go mad, shut them in madhouses and give themselves up to concubinage, and nay, what is more, there are many who extenuate such conduct too. But Mr. Tebrick was of a very different temper, and though his wife was now nothing but a hunted beast, cared for no one in the ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett
... in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry peace, peace, but there is no peace. The war is actually begun. The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms. Our brethren are already in the field. Why stand we here idle? What is it ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... O troubled soul, from whom the vision of Christ is veiled. It is more than likely that some undetected or unconfessed sin is shutting out the rays of the true sun. Excuse nothing, extenuate nothing, omit nothing. Do not speak of mistakes of judgment, but of lapses of heart and will. Do not be content with a general confession; be particular and specific. Drag each evil thing forth before God's judgment bar; ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... to the judicious and curious Reader to determine. Thus much I thought necessary to say concerning former Translations, in order to justify my own Undertaking, which will not acquire an intrinsic Merit from the Censures, that I have pass'd upon others. No: The Faults of others cannot extenuate our own; and that Stamp, which every Work carries along with it, can only determine of what Kind ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally
... May 10.—To extenuate Hooker's misconduct, his supporters assert that he was struck, stunned, and his brains affected. Hooker was stunned on Friday, and his campaign was already lost on Tuesday before, when he wrote his silly proclamation, when he subsided with the army in a semi-lunar (the worst form of all) camp, ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... Farnham really suffers in thought by the same unflinching fidelity to her creed. It makes her clear and resolute in her statement; but it often makes her as one-sided as the advocates of male supremacy whom she impugns. To be sure, her theory enables her to extenuate some points of admitted injustice to woman,—finding, for instance, in her educational and professional exclusions a crude effort, on the part of society, to treat her as a sort of bird-of-paradise, born only to fly, and therefore not needing feet. Yet this authoress is obliged ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... writer has had an opportunity of remarking, the generality of professed Christians among the higher classes, either altogether overlook or deny, or at least greatly extenuate the corruption and weakness here in question. They acknowledge indeed that there is, and ever has been in the world, a great portion of vice and wickedness; that mankind have been ever prone to sensuality and selfishness, in disobedience to the ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... unmerited popularity as a preacher. As he is, perhaps, though a burning and a shining light, not "one of the fixed," we shall take this opportunity of discussing his merits, while he is at his meridian height; and in doing so, shall "nothing extenuate, nor ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, peace—but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale, that sweeps from the north, will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... of life issued from the womb of nature after so long and painful a travail? The annihilation of the unfit is the seamy side, though the most real side, of natural selection. We ignore it, or extenuate it, and turn rather to consider the advances in organisation by which the survivors were enabled to outlive ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... herself. It has been objected that her ready avowal of weakness as common to all her sex is the undramatic epigram of a satirist, awkwardly ventriloquizing through the mechanism of a tragic puppet; but it is really quite in keeping with the woman's character to enlarge and extenuate the avowal of her own infamy and infirmity into a sententious reflection on womanhood in general. A similar objection has been raised against the apparent change of character implied in the confession made by ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... this cause doth saye. He that hathe obserued the whole lawe / and dothe offend in one / is made giltye of all. Which sayinge truly is harde and sharpe / but most true / and teachith all men that they shuld not extenuate synne. But this place of Iames / is not to be vnderstonded / as thoughe that all synnes ...
— A Treatise of the Cohabitation Of the Faithful with the Unfaithful • Peter Martyr
... coming up to spend one evening,—Powell is the name they all knew him by, and the belief is that Angie was much fascinated by him, and had met him East before meeting him here. Mr. Davies, I am glad to relieve your mind of one uncomfortable theory in connection with this affair. I wish I could extenuate or explain Willett's conduct as easily, but that young man is a fool of ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... not so much profaned, were it not misused in easy good-nature, to extenuate lettered and sensual indolence, that worn old term might be applied, above all men, to "the Shirra." But perhaps we scarcely need a word (it would be seldom in use) for a character so rare, or rather ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... wasn't well when she went away," he whispered, turning his shoulder to the men and his face to Philip. He talked in a low voice, just above the rumble of the wheels, trying to extenuate Kate's fault and ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... this impeachment, it must be confessed that his majesty gave many marks of his great lenity; often urging the services you had done him, and endeavouring to extenuate your crimes. The treasurer and admiral insisted that you should be put to the most painful and ignominious death, by setting fire to your house at night, and the general was to attend with twenty thousand ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... had wished to say that he personally, so far from finding fault with Mr. Solmes for trying to shoot him, fully recognised that he drew trigger under a contract to do so, given circumstances which had actually come about. He would not endeavour to extenuate his own conduct, but submitted that he was entitled to a lenient judgment, on the ground that a hare, the pursuit of which was the indirect cause of the whole mishap, had jumped up from behind a stone.... Well—I suppose I oughtn't ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... bring all this upon myself? Whether unmasked by others, or by myself, is it not equally true that I have been playing false, and am now punished for it? What do the world care for your having returned to truth? You have offended by deceiving them, and that is an offence which your repentance will not extenuate." It was but too true, I had brought it all on myself, and this reflection increased my misery. For my dishonesty, I had been justly and severely punished: whether I was ever to be rewarded for my subsequent honesty still remained to be proved; but I knew very well that most people would have written ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... fanaticism borders upon hypocrisy. He was possessed with a "great moral idea," the idea of making Catholicism the ruler of the world, that he might be the ruler of Catholicism. Why, it may be said, shall the charge of fanaticism be allowed to absolve Isabella and extenuate the guilt of Charles, while it only strengthens the case against Philip? Because Isabella persecuted heretics in order to save their souls from a worse fate, while Philip burnt them in order to get them out of his way. ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... ear-rings at his face. She had missed her mark. But this did not extenuate the outrageous gesture. He pointed to ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... find some reason or other to give for, or excuses to palliate. Men plead want to extenuate theft, and strong provocations to excuse murders, and many a lame excuse they will bring for whoring; but this sordid habit even those that practise it will own to be a crime, and make no excuse for it; and the most ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... But nothing can extenuate the infamy that must for ever rest upon the names of certain parties to the proceedings. Not to attempt here to measure the guilt of the accusing witnesses, it may be mentioned that it was the deliberate conviction of the ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... in refusing to marry them," said Father Tom, "nothing. Uncle John, I know that you can extenuate, that you are kind, but I do not see it is possible to look at it from any ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... devotedness, could efface the remembrance of her connivance at that deep-laid plot which had imposed her upon him as a wife. Yet the lot of Leah was peculiarly a lot of reproach and trial—and as we behold her wretchedness, we are led, not to extenuate her fault, nor to palliate her sin, but to forgive ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... was under great obligations? He made but little reply; but the impression sunk deep into his rancorous heart; every word in Edmund's behalf was like a poisoned arrow that rankled in the wound, and grew every day more inflamed. Sometimes he would pretend to extenuate Edmund's supposed faults, in order to load him with the sin of ingratitude upon other occasions. Rancour works deepest in the heart that strives to conceal it; and, when covered by art, frequently puts on the appearance of candour. ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... understood the trend of her thoughts. He tried to find some excuse for his cowardly act; but with the realization of the true cowardliness and treachery of it that the girl didn't even guess he understood the futility of seeking to extenuate it. He saw that the chances were excellent that after all he would be compelled to resort to force or threats to win her hand ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Lieut. Corner, who would not have been likely to err on the side of hostility to Edwards, gives his evidence against him in this particular. But whether he is to be believed or not, the fact that four of the prisoners went down in irons is impossible to extenuate. ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... omissions and with nothing extenuate the data on which is based the indictment that the clergy have been, and are, anti-national, and I ask the reader to say whether the charge is unsupported or not. That overtures have again and again been made sub rosa to ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... the slightest idiosyncrasies of temperament and character, but also, in some sort of way, to justify what was positively bad. Thus his book contains the germs of that Byronic egotism which later became the fashion all over Europe. It is also, in parts, a morbid book. Rousseau was not content to extenuate nothing; his failings got upon his nerves; and, while he was ready to dilate upon them himself with an infinite wealth of detail, the slightest hint of a reflection on his conduct from any other person filled him with ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... general, that, as they consist in comparing the iniquitous practice of slavery with other iniquitous practices in force among other nations, they can neither raise it to the appearance of virtue, nor extenuate its guilt. The things compared are in these instances both of them evils alike. They call equally for redress[098], and are equally disgraceful to the governments which suffer them, if not encourage them, to exist. To attempt therefore to justify ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... independent in the mountains, in spite of every effort to reduce them under the Spanish dominion. The natives are strong, active, vigorous, and war-like, but are represented as cruel, vindictive, and treacherous, though perhaps the Spaniards have exaggerated their bad qualities, to extenuate their own tyranny and oppression. The Spanish garrison at this island at this time consisted of 300, relieved from time to time from Manilla, and the King of Spain is said to have allowed 30,000 dollars yearly for the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... floating it to a creditable finish. It is a precipitate of the partisan animosity that inspires both parties and holds them to their duty of self-sacrifice and devastation, and at its best it will chiefly serve as a cloak of self-righteousness to extenuate any exceptionally profligate excursions in ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... lack of nerve with me; I don't know what you call it, but I confess I find the smoke-wreaths pleasant; you won't join me either, Jack? Well, let us have the story in all its native simplicity and be sure you nothing extenuate nor set down ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... been explained by the barbarity of the civilized Europeans, and which, often conspicuous, has never been more destructively present than in their dealings with the Tasmanians. But I am convinced that this is an error. I certainly do not wish to apologize for or extenuate the crimes of the convicts and colonists, against which the most vigorous protests have been raised both in England and in the colony itself, but neither war nor social disasters have been the principal cause of the disappearance ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... have the fatal curiosity of Fatima and her sister Anne. We must extenuate here, nor aught set down in malice, remembering that Wagner knew only the women of his own day, before the sex was uplifted and purified by the vote, and he naturally depicted them with the man-engendered vices that were then a part of their unhappy heritage. This ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and decisive manner are punishments awarded for every class of crimes committed in society; and it was communicated to the English factory from the viceroy, that on no consideration was it left in the breast of the judge to extenuate or to exaggerate the sentence, whatever might be the rank, character, ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... justly called perverted ambition, and Milton stamped it with terrible condemnation when he put into the mouth of his arch fiend the sentiment—"better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." The passions of youth extenuate those errors which in ripened manhood are criminal; and it is not improbable that Mr. Cooper's own opinion at this day concurs with ours when we say that his refusal of the manager's offer seems to us to have been very injudicious. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... or dewos, had coined a new word for god from a different root, yet coming so near to dewos as thewos? These internal difficulties seem to me nearly as great as the external: at all events it would not be right to attempt to extenuate either. ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... been my aim in the course of this narrative to extenuate nothing, nor set down aught in malice. Like the gentleman who played euchre with the Heathen Chinee, I state but facts. I do not, therefore, slur over my scheme for disturbing the professor's peace of mind. I am not always good and noble. ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... this impeachment, it must be confessed that his majesty gave many marks of his great lenity, often urging the services you had done him, and endeavoring to extenuate your crimes. The treasurer and admiral insisted that you should be put to the most painful and ignominious death, by setting fire on your house at night; and the general was to attend, with twenty thousand men armed with poisoned arrows, to shoot you on the face and hands. Some of your servants ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... would be regarded, Caesar warned the Senate against another act of precipitate anger which would be unlawful in itself, unworthy of their dignity, and likely in the future to throw a doubt upon the guilt of the men upon whose fate they were deliberating. He did not extenuate, he rather emphasized, the criminality of Catiline and his confederates; but for that reason and because for the present no reasonable person felt the slightest uncertainty about it, he advised them to keep within the ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... be said very easily on this side; nevertheless, I think I shall go on with my plea for the small verse-maker who has long fallen out; and though I may be unable to make a case out, the kindly critic may find some circumstance to extenuate my folly—to say, in the end, that this appears to be one of the little ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... the World War, from whence he emerged covered with glory, followed by the plaudits of mankind, that became the inspiration of this work—his story of devotion, valor and patriotism; of unmurmuring sacrifice; worthy the pens of the mighty, but which the historian, as best he may will tell: "NOTHING extenuate, nor ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... Baltimore and Catholic colonists of Maryland who in 1648 first proclaimed on these shores the glorious principle of universal toleration, while the Puritans were persecuting in New England and the Episcopalians in Virginia. 'Nothing extenuate nor aught set down in malice,' should be the rule of our souls. Humanity means eternal Progress, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... into the disposition requisite for your purpose; though they may not have assented to, or even stated distinctly in their own minds, the proposition which it was your business to establish. Thus if a sophist has to defend one who has been guilty of some serious offense, which he wishes to extenuate, though he is unable distinctly to prove that it is not such, yet if he can succeed in making the audience laugh at some casual matter, he has gained practically the same point. So also if any one has pointed out the extenuating circumstances in some particular case of offense, so as to show ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... the business of the truthful historian to narrate facts, not to palliate or extenuate the conduct of the various actors. Whether Ernest did right or wrong, at least he did it; he wrote a playful social for Monday's 'Morning Intelligence,' and carried it into the office on Sunday afternoon himself, ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... whereof no man thinks himselfe unprovided: whereas the knowledge, of Right and Wrong, which is no lesse difficult, there is no man will pretend to, without great and long study. And of those defects in Reasoning, there is none that can Excuse (though some of them may Extenuate) a Crime, in any man, that pretendeth to the administration of his own private businesse; much lesse in them that undertake a publique charge; because they pretend to the Reason, upon the want whereof they would ground ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... came from the contrite heart of this great man, to whose labours the world is so much indebted: 'When I survey my past life, I discover nothing but a barren waste of time with some disorders of body, and disturbances of the mind, very near to madness, which I hope He that made me will suffer to extenuate many faults, and excuse many deficiencies.' But we find his devotions in this year eminently fervent; and we are comforted by observing intervals of quiet, ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... no retreat but in submission and slavery. Our chains are forged, their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston. The war is inevitable; and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come! It is in vain to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, 'Peace, peace,' but there is no peace. The war is actually begun. The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms. Our brethren ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Theft is theft, whatever the circumstances that seem to extenuate it. Nothing, no need, gives a right to take what does not belong to you. But, for all that, I am certain the poor creature has been honest hitherto, and deserves help. She is committed to prison for stealing, and I promised her I would look to her children; so I have been to see them, ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... predicted over and over again by the prophets as to happen. The natural consequence of this conviction in the minds of those nations, would be a revulsion of the feelings to the opposite extreme. They would exaggerate the merits, and extenuate the demerits of "God's servant." They would reflect with astonishment and commiseration on their past sufferings. "We considered them," they might exclaim, "as a God- abandoned race, and devoted to wretchedness by him for having crucified their king. But ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... conceded to him, that criminal individuals are not more numerous in the Society Islands, than among other people, yet it is obvious, that the discovery of the universal prevelancy of vice does not warrant any person to extenuate its malignity in any particular ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... anger in his replies, yet he was foaming. He passed an eulogy upon Basville (father of the Intendant), talked of the consideration he merited; excused Courson, and babbled thereupon as much as he could to extenuate everything, and lose sight of the principal points at issue. Seeing that he did not finish, and that he wished to tire us, and to manage the affair in his own way, I interrupted him, saying that the father and the son were two people; that the case in point respected ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... all three, agreeing as they do wonderfully together, were printed at Aix under the eye of her enemies, in a volume where, as I shall presently prove, an attempt was made to extenuate the guilt of Girard, and fasten the reader's gaze on every point likely to tell against Cadiere. And yet the editor could not help inserting depositions like these, which bear with crushing weight on the man he sought ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... had defended themselves by pointing to the crimes of Hastings, and by arguing that abuses so extraordinary justified extraordinary measures. Those who, by opposing that bill, had raised themselves to the head of affairs would naturally be inclined to extenuate the evils which had been made the plea for administering so violent a remedy; and such, in fact, was their general disposition. The Lord Chancellor Thurlow, in particular, whose great place and force of intellect gave ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... might stand clear in his eyes as to the main points, he must, and would blame her weakness in first consenting to this deception—he who was above deceit. She had not absolutely told, but she had admitted a falsehood; she had acted a falsehood. This she could not extenuate. Her motive at first, to save Lady Davenant's life, was good; but then her weakness afterwards, in being persuaded time after time by Cecilia, could not well be excused. She was conscious that she had sunk step by step, dragged down that ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... comfort me!" he says moodily to Miriam, when she would extenuate his crime. "I have a great weight here!" lifting her hand to his breast. Wild creatures, once his loved companions, shun him as he, in turn, shuns the face of man. He disappears from the story, hand-in-hand with Miriam, bound, it would seem, upon a ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... with the letter you have addressed to me, the declaration relative to the seizure which took place at the residence of your bookseller; I find it difficult to understand the use you propose to make of this document, which cannot extenuate in any manner the infraction of law committed by M. Le Normant. The Law of the 21st of October, 1814, is precise on this point. No printer can publish or offer for sale any work, in any manner whatever, before having deposited the prescribed number of copies. ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Athens. In years to come they will name you with King Codrus who sacrificed his life for the freedom of Attica, for have you not sacrificed what should be dearer than life,—the fair name of your husband? But courage. Your patriotism may extenuate his crime. Only the traitor ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... words, and there was no demand for details. Mrs. Lascelles seemed to have lost all interest in her latest lover; but when I tried to speak of my own hateful hand in that affair, to explain what I could of it, but to extenuate nothing, and to apologise from my heart for it all, then there was a change in her, then her blood mounted, then her bosom heaved, and I was silenced by a single ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... instead of the corn and cotton which gladdened the heart and filled the purse. It was this gigantic iniquity which created that arrogant class who have exhausted the catalogue of violence to obtain power and the lexicon of sophistry for arguments to extenuate the exceeding heinousness of crime. How could it be otherwise? To tell a man he is free when he has neither money nor the opportunity to make it, is simply to mock him. To tell him he has no master when he cannot live except by permission of the man who, under ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... was great," said Reginald. "If anything can extenuate killing a fellow-creature, it is that. Are you quite positive—But perhaps I have no right ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... late "eighties," I think I should say that, while I have a strong conviction as to the identity of the person himself, I shall not express it. I accept the doctrine that there are some names not to be uttered. Similarly I shall neither defend nor extenuate; if I throw it out at all it will be as a hint to the judicious, or a clew, if you like, to those who are groping a way in or out of the labyrinth of Being. To me two things are especially absurd: one is that the trousered, ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... extenuate the term, seven scenes; the utterance seven "acts" would sound horrific, full of extremities of weariness; but my meaning actually is none other than seven acts of one scene each: for the number seven, there always have been decent reasons, and ours may best appear as we proceed, less than ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... fear; but we 'whiten' a wall, not by withdrawing some other colour, but by the superinducing of white; thus 'whited sepulchres.' When we 'palliate' our own or other people's faults, we do not seek 'to cloke' them altogether, but only to extenuate the guilt of them ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... the householder, having begun so rightly, has now nothing to do to complete the main fabric of his garden but to carry this flow of natural draperies on round the domicile's back and farther side and forward to its front again. Thus may he wonderfully extenuate, even above its reach and where it does not conceal, the house's architectural faults, thus winsomely enhance all its architectural charm; like a sweet human mistress of the place, putting into generous shadow all the ill, ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... perished forever, but who are now civilized and Christianized. Satan would be glad, I think, to see American slavery come to an end. We have no right to go and steal people in order to convert them; the salvation of these slaves will not, in one iota, extenuate the guilt and punishment of those who were engaged in the slave-trade. But "the wrath of men shall praise Thee." In the writings of anti-slavery men I do not remember to have met with cordial acknowledgments of what religion has done for the ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... into Stevie's overflowing eyes and own up to the truth as well as I could, and explain it. It was the most humiliating hour that I ever spent, but I told Stevie exactly what I felt about her 'nothing extenuate, and naught set down in malice,' and what I had said about her to our mutual friend, who by the way, is not the mutual friend of either of us any longer. We were both crying by the time I had finished, but we understood each other. There were one ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... the very first order, owe immensely to the form, the art, the stereotyped metres, and stock figures they find ready to hand. The form is suggestive,—it invites and aids expression, and lends itself readily, like fashion, to conceal, or extenuate, or eke out poverty of thought and feeling in the verse. The poet can "cut and cover," as the farmer says, in a way the prose-writer never can, nor one whose form is essentially prose, ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... must be finally fatal to the societies which admit it. This is no longer regarded as a subject of argument and investigation. The opinions referred to are assumed as settled, or the truth of them as self-evident. If any voice is raised among ourselves to extenuate or to vindicate, it is unheard. The judgment is made up. We can have no hearing before the tribunal of the civilized world. Yet, on this very account, it is more important that we, the inhabitants of the slaveholding States of America, insulated as we are, by this ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... any had done you some great wrong or injury, suppose your servant, or inferior, what acknowledgment would you take from him of his wrong? If he confessed his wrong only in general ambiguous terms, if he did it either lightly, or without any sense or sorrow for it, if he did withal excuse and extenuate his fault, and never ceased, notwithstanding of all his confession, to do the like wrong when occasion offered, would you not think this a mockery, and would it not rather provoke you than pacify you? Now, when you take words in so real and deep significations in your own matters, what ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... found himself on his recovery, and make no effort to lift his wife to that he had renounced. She was a child of Nature. He would learn life anew of her; but he failed of success in all his undertakings. Shall a man attempt to extenuate his failures? It seemed new to him; he acknowledged it in open court, that from the day of his entrance into Dalton to the day he left it, he was under some enchantment there. And if an insane man is not to be held responsible in law for his offences, he had the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... who already exercised absolute political power. "The state of France," said Burke, "is perfectly simple. It consists of but two descriptions, the oppressors and the oppressed." It is in vain that the attempt has been made to extenuate the atrocious and senseless cruelties of this time by extolling the great legislative projects of the Convention, or pleading the dire necessity of a land attacked on every side by the foreigner, and rent with ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... had as little wish to speak as the Emperor could have to let me. My thoughts were busy with the memory of the woman of whose tragic death I had been the unwitting cause, and with the measures that remained to be taken to extenuate, so far as extenuation was possible, the fatal action ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... who are sinking into oblivion together. He must accept life as a Grand Piano tuned by a new sort of Tuning Master, and unless he can dance to its music he is a misfit. That is what my friend said to extenuate her. She fitted into this kind of life splendidly. He was in the other groove. She loved light, laughter, wine, song, and excitement. He, the misfit, loved his books, his work, and his home. His greatest joy would have been to go with her, hand in hand, through some wonderful cathedral, ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... Yes, I have used deceit in persuading him of my mother's death. I began now to think that that was a false step, which, if ever discovered, might recoil upon me. I remained a long while in deep thought. I tried to extenuate my conduct in this particular, but I could not; and to rid myself of melancholy feelings, which I could not overcome, I wrote a letter, requesting leave of absence for a fortnight, and took it myself to the admiral's office. This depression of spirits ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... ashamed, for she was conscious that she was offering something unreal to extenuate the fault of her brother—her ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Anecdotes and Remarks, tending to illustrate the moral and political characters of three nations. To which is added, a correct Engraving of Dartmoor Prison, representing the Massacre of American prisoners. Written by himself." "Nothing extenuate, or set down ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... action is not the most favourable to accuracy of detail:—Notwithstanding the purest intentions and the most scrupulous regard to truth, much will remain, for candour to extenuate and information to supply. Impressed with this sentiment, and feeling the importance of the subject, the Editor has waited till the season of tranquility, and now presents to the public eye, the produce of his exertions. He wished to postpone the Publication ...
— An Impartial Narrative of the Most Important Engagements Which Took Place Between His Majesty's Forces and the Rebels, During the Irish Rebellion, 1798. • John Jones
... epoch in the Irish movement. It was determined at once to meet it boldly—to extenuate nothing, to retract nothing—to take advantage of no legal subterfuge; but dare the issue promptly, openly and fully. Mr. O'Brien at first refused to be defended by counsel. He was with great difficulty prevailed upon to change his determination; and, when it was known that ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... for scattered, he says, gives the idea of an anarchy, which was not the case. It may be replied that scathed gives the idea of ruin, waste, and desolation, which was not the case. It is unworthy a lover of truth, in questions of great or little moment, to exaggerate or extenuate for mere convenience, or for vanity yet less than convenience. Scattered naturally means divided, unsettled, disunited.—Next is offered with great pomp a change of sea to seize; but in the first edition the word is fee, for hire, ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... Iustice ceizes; What knowes the Lawes That theeues do passe on theeues? 'Tis very pregnant, The Iewell that we finde, we stoope, and take't, Because we see it; but what we doe not see, We tread vpon, and neuer thinke of it. You may not so extenuate his offence, For I haue had such faults; but rather tell me When I, that censure him, do so offend, Let mine owne Iudgement patterne out my death, And nothing come in ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... have followed you here to tell you the truth face to face, as I shall tell it—bientot—to the good God. You shall bind me by any oath that you will, though it should be enough for you that I have nothing at all to gain, as you have said. I shall hide nothing from you. I shall extenuate nothing. I shall tell you only the truth, man to man, as my heart knows it. For her sake, you will ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... it savoured of contempt of court, Hinted of disrespect toward the Bench, That I should chuckle when your pitch was short Or smile to see you in the sanded trench; But Golf (so I extenuate my sin) Brings all men level, like the greens they putt on; One common bunker makes the whole world kin, And Bar may scrap with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various
... the success and prosperity of his country? Such there are, (Oh, shame to patriotism, and reproach to Great Britain!) who act as the emissaries of France, both in word and writing; who exaggerate our necessary burdens, magnify our dangers, extol the power of our enemies, deride our victories, extenuate our conquests, condemn the measures of our government, and scatter the seeds of dissatisfaction through the land. Such domestic traitors are doubly the objects of detestation;—first, in perverting truth; and, secondly, in propagating falsehood, to the prejudice of that community ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... he had never been married, never was a housekeeper, and had no house fitting for a man of his birth to reside in, as his mansion in the country had been burnt down within two years. These reasons appeared to his judges to aggravate rather than extenuate his offence; and after a long reprimand for having deserted his tenants and neighbours, they heavily fined him ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... his persons indifferently through right and wrong, and at the close dismisses them without further care, and leaves their examples to operate by chance. This fault the barbarity of his age cannot extenuate; for it is always a writer's duty to make the world better, and justice is a virtue independent on time or place." (Nichol Smith's "Eighteenth Century ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... addresses and pamphlets, the style of Our Brethren the Roman Catholics, whose interests they put on the same foot with their own: And some of Cromwell's officers took posts in the army raised against the Prince of Orange.[5] These proceedings of theirs they can only extenuate by urging the provocations they had met from the Church in King Charles's reign, which though perhaps excusable upon the score of human infirmity, are not by any means a plea of merit equal to the constancy ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... the EMPRESS of INDIA. So the SENAPATTI must be got rid of at earliest possible moment, and in most absolutely complete fashion. Arbitrary this; tyrannical perhaps; unjust possibly. None of GORST's business to defend or extenuate it. All he could say was it is not a new thing; done wherever British flag waves under foreign skies; in New Zealand with the Maori King; in South Africa with CETEWAYO; in Egypt with ARABI; in the Soudan with ZEBEHR. "In India," said GORST, leaning his elbow ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 27, 1891 • Various
... beautiful plant in a fertile soil, caressed by the sun of a cloudless sky, awoke to a sense of a new self. This crisis of her life, the subject of this Scene, would be incomprehensible without certain explanations, which may extenuate in the eyes of women the wrong-doing of this young countess, a happy wife, a happy mother, who seems, at first ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... jovial. Both were equally ferocious. James II. was an easy-minded tiger; like Philip II., his crimes lay light upon his conscience. He was a monster by the grace of God. Therefore he had nothing to dissimulate nor to extenuate, and his assassinations were by divine right. He, too, would not have minded leaving behind him those archives of Simancas, with all his misdeeds dated, classified, labelled, and put in order, each in its compartment, like poisons ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Mr O'Connell. Whatever be the result of that prosecution, whether those indicted be found guilty, or acquitted, of the misdemeanours laid to their charge; we feel assured, on the one hand, however long and grievous may have been the "provocation," that while there will be "nothing extenuate," neither will there be "set down aught in malice;" but that the measure of the retribution now demanded by the state, will be so temperately and equitably adjusted, that while the very semblance of oppression is carefully avoided, the majesty of the law, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... by the union, both in my own eyes and in the actual truth. I am so determined to love him, so intensely anxious to excuse his errors, that I am continually dwelling upon them, and labouring to extenuate the loosest of his principles and the worst of his practices, till I am familiarised with vice, and almost a partaker in his sins. Things that formerly shocked and disgusted me, now seem only natural. I know them to be wrong, because ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... the ball he would have lost the hole," I explained, anxious to extenuate Pepper's ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... which have been exercised on the Aborigines of America, the wrong and outrage heaped on them from the days of Montezuma and Guatimozin, to the present period, while they excite sympathy for their sufferings, should extenuate, if not justify the bloody deeds, which revenge prompted the untutored savages to commit. Driven as they were from the lands of which they were the rightful proprietors—Yielding to encroachment after encroachment 'till forced to apprehend their utter annihilation—Witnessing ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... words, driveth Adam to the point, either to confess or deny the truth of the case. If he confess, then he concludes himself under judgment; if he deny, then he addeth to his sin: Therefore he neither denieth nor confesseth, but so as he may lessen and extenuate ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... nothing can do that; because virtue is, and ought to be, preferable to all considerations, and to life itself. But, methinks, I love this dear lady so well for the sake of her edifying penitence, that I would fain extenuate her crime, if I could; and the rather, as in all probability, it was a first love on both sides; and so he could not appear to her as ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... wives and children had been murdered before their eyes, but to wreak vengeance on Spencer's unoffending family, who had walked into their settlement under the protection of a friendly alliance, was an unparalleled outrage which nothing can justify or extenuate. With as little delay as possible after the horrible discovery, I returned to camp, had boxes made, and next day buried the bodies of these ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... despised virtues of patience and humility have abased the spirits of men, which pagan principles exalted; but rather regulated the wildness of audacities, in the attempts, grounds, and eternal sequels of death, wherein men of the boldest spirits are often prodigiously temerarious. Nor can we extenuate the valor of ancient martyrs, who contemned death in the uncomfortable scene of their lives, and in their decrepit martyrdoms did probably lose not many months of their days, or parted with life when it was scarce worth the living; for (beside ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... from disease, and as long as I forbore any communication with the sick; yet I should have withdrawn to Malverton, merely to gratify my friends, if Thetford had not used the most powerful arguments to detain me. He laboured to extenuate the danger. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... to excuse so great a crime as I have been guilty of it, that of Rebellion. But I humbly beg leave to lay before your Excellency some particulars in the circumstance of my guilt, which, I hope, will extenuate it in some measure. It was my misfortune, at the time the Rebellion broke out, to be liable to legal diligence and caption, at the Duke of Montrose's instance, for debt alledged due to him. To avoid ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... shows himself in quite a childish light. Having in his Panegyrical Oration set himself to prove that the Athenian state has surpassed that of Sparta in her services to Hellas, he starts off at the very outset with these words: "Such is the power of language that it can extenuate what is great, and lend greatness to what is little, give freshness to what is antiquated, and describe what is recent so that it seems to be of the past."[2] Come, Isocrates (it might be asked), is it thus that you are going to tamper with the ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... found so important. He knew the great aim of life; he saw things in their true light, and taught me to see them also; he called things by their proper names; and while he could make ample allowance for the faults of others, he never attempted to extenuate his own errors; nor did he mistake vice for virtue, or the semblance of virtue for the reality. From the companionship of such a person I could not fail to reap much benefit. I did not enjoy it long. We afterwards met under very different circumstances in a far-off region, which he at that ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... leading and general topics as are now called common places. Gorgias, he adds, did the same, and wrote panegyrics and invectives on every subject: for he thought it was the province of an Orator to be able either to exaggerate, or extenuate, as occasion might require. Antiphon the Rhamnusian composed several essays of the same species; and (according to Thucydides, a very respectable writer, who was present to hear him) pleaded a capital cause in his own defence, with as much eloquence as had ever yet been displayed by any man. ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... well-grounded belief that a felony is about to be perpetrated will extenuate a homicide committed in prevention of it, though the defendant be but a private citizen" (25 Ala., 15.) See Wharton, above quoted, who embodies the doctrine in his text ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... wonderfully idyllic, with great beauty of scene and circumstance? And will you please to observe that almost all that is ugly is in the whites? I'll apologise for Papa Randal if you like; but if I told you the whole truth—for I did extenuate there!—and he seemed to me essential as a figure, and essential as a pawn in the game, Wiltshire's disgust for him being one of the small, efficient motives in the story. Now it would have taken a fairish ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... politeness cannot extenuate, though it may gloss over, my imprudence; and by delaying to unfold my little history to you, my crime may seem more black while hidden than when it ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... under complicated tenures, we become very sensitive to its violation, and acquire a proportionably intense sentiment of Justice. Again, association operates in modifying our approval and disapproval of actions according to their attendant circumstances; as when we extenuate ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... satisfaction of his relations, other circumstances connected with that unfortunate disaster, which, after their deaths, may or may not be laid before the public. And although they can implicate none but himself, either living or dead, they may extenuate but will contain not a word of his in defence of the crime he committed against the laws ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... been, and years, unretarded years, shall come. May we all have moderation; may we all show candor. Though, perhaps, nothing could ultimately have averted the strife, and though to treat of human actions is to deal wholly with second causes, nevertheless, let us not cover up or try to extenuate what, humanly speaking, is the truth—namely, that those unfraternal denunciations, continued through years, and which at last inflamed to deeds that ended in bloodshed, were reciprocal; and that, had the preponderating ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... doubtful. Such was his demeanor and conduct in company of his late companions; while, with his own family, he appeared moody, irresolute, and restless, and even, at length, he began to throw out occasional hints tending to defend or extenuate the conduct of the very man whom, a few weeks before, he had so confidently denounced as a thief and a robber. Alarmed at these indications of returning weakness and fatuity in her husband, Mrs. Elwood soon put herself on inquiry, to ascertain the ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... Dr. Breuer cannot possibly vindicate himself against this disparagement I feel obliged to extenuate Dr. Breuer in the ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... that Lord Byron never spared himself. He invented faults rather than sought to extenuate them. And so he fully merits belief, when he happens to do himself justice. Let us attend to ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... proud little creature you were, Olive," he said, trying to extenuate his shabby conduct, "and that there was no chance of your listening to me if you found out Tom was a tradesman. What does it matter about the shop? Tom is as good a chap as ever breathed, and Susan is the best-hearted woman in the world." But I ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... without feeling how intimately it was connected with the cook-shop! The victims to the intoxicating qualities of pickled salmon, oyster-sauce, and lobster salad, are innumerable; for where one gentleman or lady pleads guilty to too much wine, a thousand extenuate on the score of indigestion. We are aware that the disorganisation of the digestive powers is very prevalent—about one or two in the morning—and we have no doubt the Conservative friends of Captain Rous, who patriotically contributed five shillings ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various
... lauding the blessings of peace before he tried a struggle for the honors of war." After this preface (which should be read in connection with the Hornet's unaccepted challenge to the Bonne Citoyenne, a ship "a trifle superior in force") it can be considered certain that James will both extenuate and also set down a good deal in malice. One instance of this has already been given in speaking of the President's capture. Again, he says, "the Hornet received several round shot in her hull," ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... a burst of honest feeling, which made him very red, he at length plunged into his confession. Not a little astonished, Mrs. Clover learnt all that had passed between him and Polly Sparkes, now Polly Parish. Nothing did he extenuate, but he wronged neither Polly ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... Buff would explain and extenuate her broken promise: "The fact is, my hands are almost too full: what with the school and the committee, the organ and church, the missionary club and my district, I am a regular lay-curate. Then there is Mr. Duffer's early ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... to the king fresh complaints of Duchesneau against Frontenac, and of Frontenac against Duchesneau; and the king replied with rebukes, exhortations, and threats to both. At first he had shown a disposition to extenuate and excuse the faults of Frontenac, but every year his letters grew sharper. In 1681 he wrote: "Again I urge you to banish from your mind the difficulties which you have yourself devised against ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... have been caught in the snares of one dexterous heresiarch. If, then, the heresiarch causes infinitely greater evils than the murderer, why is he not as proper an object of penal legislation as the murderer? We can give a reason, a reason, short, simple, decisive, and consistent. We do not extenuate the evil which the heresiarch produces; but we say that it is not evil of that sort the sort against which it is the end of government to guard. But how Mr. Gladstone, who considers the evil which the heresiarch produces as evil of the sort against which it is the end of government to ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... on both precedes. He ended, and the heavenly audience loud Sung Halleluiah, as the sound of seas, Through multitude that sung: Just are thy ways, Righteous are thy decrees on all thy works; Who can extenuate thee? Next, to the Son, Destined Restorer of mankind, by whom New Heaven and Earth shall to the ages rise, Or down from Heaven descend.—Such was their song; While the Creator, calling forth by name His mighty Angels, gave them several charge, As sorted ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... which "an upstart inlander has ever preached a crusade against the Turks because they did not introduce knives and forks at their tables," &c. Even Scripture—and this, be it remembered, by the sanction of The Christian Advocate—is blasphemously quoted to extenuate the American practice of expectoration. "What, after all, is there so unbearably revolting about spitting? Our Saviour, in one of his early miracles, 'spat upon the ground and made clay of the spittle, and anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay. And he said unto him, Go wash ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... of its being a tender subject—a salutary form of self-discipline, which will make us wiser and better men for the future. If we have made obvious mistakes, we should not try, as we generally do, to gloss them over, or to find something to excuse or extenuate them; we should admit to ourselves that we have committed faults, and open our eyes wide to all their enormity, in order that we may firmly resolve to avoid them in time to come. To be sure, that means a great deal of self-inflicted pain, in the shape of discontent, ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... opposed Mr. McCombs' suggestion, arguing that no explanation of the Joline letter could be made to Mr. Bryan that would wear the appearance of sincerity, or be convincing, and that the letter having been written there was nothing to do to extenuate it in any way and that the wise thing was to make a virtue of necessity. I suggested that on the following night, when the Governor was to deliver his address at the Jackson Day dinner, he could, in the most ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... power, Chiefly when opportunity attends her: She will infuse true motion in a stone, Put glowing fire in an icy soul, Stuff peasants' bosoms with proud Caesar's spleen, Pour rich device into an empty brain: Bring youth to folly's gate: there train him in, And after all, extenuate his sin. Well, I will not go, I am resolved for that. Go, carry it again: yet stay: yet do too, I will defer it till ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... "Nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice," said Othello to Lodovico, and these Scotland Yard men, charged with so great a responsibility, never forgot the ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... down, and lay there before me strangling with sobs and cries. "Should Mr. Floyd know," he murmured, "should Mr. Floyd even guess, that I am the wretched wreck of a man that I am, he would not let Helen stay with me another moment. He would extenuate, he would pity, nothing: he does not know what it is for a man like me, once proud, witty, gay, to bear seclusion and depression and decay. I long at times for some of the inspiration of my youth: it comes with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... upon this impeachment, it must be confessed that his majesty gave many marks of his great lenity, often urging the services you had done him, and endeavoring to extenuate your crimes. The treasurer and admiral insisted that you should be put to the most painful and ignominious death, by setting fire on your house at night; and the general was to attend, with twenty ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... interrupted by a chorus or company of men of his own tribe, who condole his miseries, extenuate his fault, and conclude with a solemn vindication of divine justice. So that at the conclusion of the first act there is no design laid, no discovery made, nor any disposition formed towards ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... life, I discover nothing but a barren waste of time, with some disorders of body, and disturbances of the mind, very near to madness,[289] which I hope He that made me will suffer to extenuate many faults, and ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... ALONE. Our sins make us guilty and deserving of punishment, even though they be sins of weakness. We must not excuse or extenuate them. God never excuses any one. But if we penitently confess our sins, He will forgive us for Jesus' sake. ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump
... known that Lord Byron never spared himself. He invented faults rather than sought to extenuate them. And so he fully merits belief, when he happens to do himself justice. Let us ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... not defend his errors; I only seek to extenuate them. Pity and justice are not the same; but one may still so temper the other that Mercy, the appointed angel of this ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... thought by the same unflinching fidelity to her creed. It makes her clear and resolute in her statement; but it often makes her as one-sided as the advocates of male supremacy whom she impugns. To be sure, her theory enables her to extenuate some points of admitted injustice to woman,—finding, for instance, in her educational and professional exclusions a crude effort, on the part of society, to treat her as a sort of bird-of-paradise, born only to fly, and therefore not needing feet. Yet this authoress is obliged ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... "in this confession did not deny his own responsibility; a fact which gives his statement the character of an incriminative and not of an exonerative confession; and that though he might possibly have wished, in his statement of the facts, to modify and extenuate his own share in the crime, yet there was no reason to suspect that he wished gratuitously to aggravate the guilt of his comrade;" and that also taking into consideration the villainous character of Volpi, it cannot be doubted, that he was the principal in the crime. ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... suffered much, and that their wives and children had been murdered before their eyes, but to wreak vengeance on Spencer's unoffending family, who had walked into their settlement under the protection of a friendly alliance, was an unparalleled outrage which nothing can justify or extenuate. With as little delay as possible after the horrible discovery, I returned to camp, had boxes made, and next day buried the bodies of these hapless ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... relations, other circumstances connected with that unfortunate disaster, which, after their deaths, may or may not be laid before the public. And although they can implicate none but himself, either living or dead, they may extenuate but will contain not a word of his in defence of the crime he committed against the laws of his ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... May. I'm sure you were thinking of what would be best for both of us, but I've nothing to alter or extenuate. They must do as they think fit, these Christians, if they have the power. After all, it can make no difference to us; I can always get work enough to keep us, even if it isn't such congenial work. But ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... unpalatable in others. It was true that Ruth's condition ought to be known by those who were her friends; but were these people to whom he was now going to write, friends? He knew there was a rich mother, and a handsome, elegant son; and he had also some idea of the circumstances which might a little extenuate their mode of quitting Ruth. He had wide enough sympathy to understand that it must have been a most painful position in which the mother had been placed, on finding herself under the same roof with a girl who was living with her son, as Ruth was. And yet he did not like to apply to ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the malignant glance which he had shot toward him ere he began his tale, Richard read that the charge against him was to be pushed to the bitter end. It was in this man's power, more than in any other's (save one), to extenuate or to set down in malice; and there was no doubt in his rival's mind (though his rancor took so blunt a form that it might well have been mistaken by others for outspoken candor) which of the two courses Solomon had ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... style of Our Brethren the Roman Catholics, whose interests they put on the same foot with their own: And some of Cromwell's officers took posts in the army raised against the Prince of Orange.[5] These proceedings of theirs they can only extenuate by urging the provocations they had met from the Church in King Charles's reign, which though perhaps excusable upon the score of human infirmity, are not by any means a plea of merit equal to the constancy and ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... she wasn't well when she went away," he whispered, turning his shoulder to the men and his face to Philip. He talked in a low voice, just above the rumble of the wheels, trying to extenuate Kate's fault and to excuse ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, peace!—but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... Missouri Compromise by subtle indirection. This was the device of a shifty politician, trying to avert suspicion and public alarm by clever ambiguities. That he really believed a new principle had been substituted for an old one, in dealing with the Territories, does not extenuate the offense, for not even he had ventured to assert in 1850, that the compromises of that year had in any wise disturbed the status of the great, unorganized area to which Congress had applied the restrictive proviso of 1820. Besides, only so recently as 1849, he had said, with all the ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... contrast to this dingy, confined, close dungeon! And was it possible that he had ever wandered at will in that fair scene with a companion fairer? Such thoughts might well drive a man mad. With all his errors, and all his disposition at present not to extenuate them, Ferdinand Armine could not refrain from esteeming himself unlucky. Perhaps it is more distressing to believe ourselves unfortunate, than to recognise ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... higher types of life issued from the womb of nature after so long and painful a travail? The annihilation of the unfit is the seamy side, though the most real side, of natural selection. We ignore it, or extenuate it, and turn rather to consider the advances in organisation by which the survivors were enabled to outlive the great chill ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... it," Beppo remarked, to extenuate his outwitted cunning, when he found each door of the room fast ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... she should draw a kind veil over my faults; that such as she could not hide, she would extenuate; that she would place my better actions in an advantageous light, and shew that I had her good opinion, at least, whatever liberties the world took ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... loth to name him, because he is a most judicious writer; yet he very often falls into these errors: and I once more beg the reader's pardon for accusing him of them. Only let him consider, that I live in an age where my least faults are severely censured; and that I have no way left to extenuate my failings, but by showing as great in those whom ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... whether those indicted be found guilty, or acquitted, of the misdemeanours laid to their charge; we feel assured, on the one hand, however long and grievous may have been the "provocation," that while there will be "nothing extenuate," neither will there be "set down aught in malice;" but that the measure of the retribution now demanded by the state, will be so temperately and equitably adjusted, that while the very semblance of oppression is carefully avoided, the majesty of the law, and the powers of the executive, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... and that in a solemn way. She could therefore be doing no harm to Lilian Dale. If she entertained any inner feeling that Crosbie's fault in jilting Lilian Dale was less than it would have been had she herself not been an earl's daughter,—that her own rank did in some degree extenuate her lover's falseness,—she did not express it in ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... still, though she might stand clear in his eyes as to the main points, he must, and would blame her weakness in first consenting to this deception—he who was above deceit. She had not absolutely told, but she had admitted a falsehood; she had acted a falsehood. This she could not extenuate. Her motive at first, to save Lady Davenant's life, was good; but then her weakness afterwards, in being persuaded time after time by Cecilia, could not well be excused. She was conscious that she had ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... salutary form of self-discipline, which will make us wiser and better men for the future. If we have made obvious mistakes, we should not try, as we generally do, to gloss them over, or to find something to excuse or extenuate them; we should admit to ourselves that we have committed faults, and open our eyes wide to all their enormity, in order that we may firmly resolve to avoid them in time to come. To be sure, that means a great deal ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... overcome the Curiatii one after another (instead of being congratulated by his sister for his victory, being upbraided by her for having slain her lover), in the height of his passion and resentment kills her. If anything could extenuate so brutal an action, it would be the doing of it on a sudden, before the sentiments of nature, reason, or manhood could take place in him. However, to avoid public bloodshed, as soon as his passion is wrought to its height, he follows his sister the whole length of the stage, ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... for poor Maud, as a rule, but he felt a need to shed a little gaiety, to extenuate the accident as far as possible, to turn it into a joke, so as to prevent his girls from being panic-stricken. He talked of heads smashed to a jelly, of legs in smithereens, of a bicyclist who had had not one, ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... himself for man, and by whose atonement all mankind hope for salvation, has assured us that the greatest sinner who repents shall be forgiven, and, indeed, is more acceptable in the eyes of Heaven than him who has never erred. Far be it from me to attempt to exculpate you in your own eyes, or extenuate your former criminality. You have sinned deeply, so deeply that you may well shrink aghast from the contemplation of your past life—may well recoil in abhorrence from yourself—and may fitly devote yourself to constant ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... agreeing as they do wonderfully together, were printed at Aix under the eye of her enemies, in a volume where, as I shall presently prove, an attempt was made to extenuate the guilt of Girard, and fasten the reader's gaze on every point likely to tell against Cadiere. And yet the editor could not help inserting depositions like these, which bear with crushing weight on the man he ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... Philip. Philip was sullen, James jovial. Both were equally ferocious. James II. was an easy-minded tiger; like Philip II., his crimes lay light upon his conscience. He was a monster by the grace of God. Therefore he had nothing to dissimulate nor to extenuate, and his assassinations were by divine right. He, too, would not have minded leaving behind him those archives of Simancas, with all his misdeeds dated, classified, labelled, and put in order, each in its compartment, like poisons in the cabinet of a chemist. To set ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... tell the tale to the public, with all its aggravations. Warburton, whose heart was warm with his legacy and tender by the recent separation, thought it proper for him to interpose, and undertook, not indeed to vindicate the action, for breach of trust has always something criminal, but to extenuate it by an apology. Having advanced what cannot be denied, that moral obliquity is made more or less excusable by the motives that produce it, he inquires what evil purpose could have induced Pope to break his promise. He could not delight his ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... tool in his hands, and he then turned against Matilda. When Stephen had shaken off the chains with which he was loaded in Bristol Castle, the Bishop summoned a council at Westminster, on his legatine authority; and there "by great powers of eloquence, endeavored to extenuate the odium of his own conduct"; affirming that he had supported the Empress, "not from inclination, but necessity." He then "commanded on the part of God and of the Pope, that they should strenuously assist the King, appointed by the will of the people, and by the approbation ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... of this play is extraordinarily brilliant, does his best to extenuate the stiffness of it. But to my own ear, as I read it again after a quarter of a century, there rise the tones of the stilted, the unsmiling, the essentially provincial and boringly solemn society of Christiania as it appeared to a certain young pilgrim in the early ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... have been inadequate to your wishes, attribute my demerits to some infirmity of mind, rather than to a negligence of your happiness. Yet, be the cause what it will, since these faults have existed, I do not attempt to disavow or extenuate them, and I beg ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... Villari's Machiavelli (English translation, new ed., 1892) deals with the subject at some length. Of the Catholic writers L. Pastor, Geschichte der Papste (Freiburg i. B, 1886) should be consulted, for although the author tries to extenuate the pope to some extent, on the whole he is fair. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Selwyn, the lawyer, is coming here at one o'clock, and before he comes I wish you to read over Lady R—'s confession, if I may so call it, which will explain the motives of her conduct towards you. I am afraid that it will not extenuate her conduct, but recollect that she has now made all the reparation in her power, and that we must forgive as we hope to be forgiven. Sit down and read these papers, while I unpack one or ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... his present kindly feelings toward him. I vigorously opposed Mr. McCombs' suggestion, arguing that no explanation of the Joline letter could be made to Mr. Bryan that would wear the appearance of sincerity, or be convincing, and that the letter having been written there was nothing to do to extenuate it in any way and that the wise thing was to make a virtue of necessity. I suggested that on the following night, when the Governor was to deliver his address at the Jackson Day dinner, he could, in the most generous ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... the host was celebrated for affording his guests. The major placed the fore finger of his right hand to his lip, cast a look of inquiry at the bystanders, and then said he knew it would be no easy matter to apologize to ladies for so singular a transgression, but how his treating could extenuate an insult offered to another party, he could not exactly see. "By my word as a man of standing, I have spent much sweat and labor in getting the little Fortune has favored me with, and it seems to me that ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... universal rule must have its exceptions. But he is so exceedingly accurate, that, if he only fancies he has said a word too precipitate, or too general, or only half true, he never ceases to qualify, to modify, and extenuate, till at last he appears to have said nothing at all. Upon this occasion, Albert was deeply immersed in his subject: I ceased to listen to him, and became lost in reverie. With a sudden motion, I ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... understood as the Inductive Philosophy are most fairly examined; not in the spirit of the common biographer who always canonizes his subject through thick and thin, but in that of an impartial seeker for truth, resolved to naught extenuate and set down naught in malice. It is believed by many that BACON was simply so fortunate as to have his picture stand as the frontispiece of the new Philosophy, when in truth other contemporaries, who made great discoveries by following precisely his method, as, for instance, GALILEO, were quite ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... aim in the course of this narrative to extenuate nothing, nor set down aught in malice. Like the gentleman who played euchre with the Heathen Chinee, I state but facts. I do not, therefore, slur over my scheme for disturbing the professor's peace of mind. I am not always good and noble. I am the hero of this story, ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... it is best that we should be together." The girl was so agitated, fearing that in some way her adventures might be discovered, that she had no occasion to feign alarm. Mrs. Whately sought only to soothe and quiet, also to extenuate her son's words. "I don't suppose we truly realize yet, as Madison does, what ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... there are so many lovely traits in the nature of the people. But if he experience some of their sudden and terrific snow storms and showers, when the thunder and the lightning are such that a Northerner feels that all the storms he has ever witnessed are only infantile attempts, he is inclined to extenuate, on mere climactic principles, the outbursts of wrath, and "fire-eating" propensities of the people. He who is gendered of fire and brimstone must have some vim in his composition. We believe this study is not unworthy the Christian philosopher ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... of the idea, at one feminine bound, that the caged bird had been brought by Henchard for her as a wedding gift and token of repentance. He had not expressed to her any regrets or excuses for what he had done in the past; but it was a part of his nature to extenuate nothing, and live on as one of his own worst accusers. She went out, looked at the cage, buried the starved little singer, and from that hour her heart softened towards the ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... apparently well-grounded belief that a felony is about to be perpetrated will extenuate a homicide committed in prevention of it, though the defendant be but a private citizen" (25 Ala., 15.) See Wharton, above quoted, who embodies the doctrine in his text (Vol. ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... to Great Britain!) who act as the emissaries of France, both in word and writing; who exaggerate our necessary burdens, magnify our dangers, extol the power of our enemies, deride our victories, extenuate our conquests, condemn the measures of our government, and scatter the seeds of dissatisfaction through the land. Such domestic traitors are doubly the objects of detestation;—first, in perverting truth; and, secondly, in propagating falsehood, to ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... party, beaten on Home Rule at the Election of 1886, was now following its leader into new and strange courses. Ireland was seething with lawlessness, sedition, and outrage. The Liberals, in their new-found zeal for Home Rule, thought it necessary to condone or extenuate all Irish crime; and the Irish party in the House of Commons was trying to make ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... steel. Appearances seem against Neale. I don't seek to extenuate them. But I know men. Neale might have fallen—it seems he must have. These are terrible times. In anger or drink Neale might have struck this woman.... ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... would abide on that level where he found himself on his recovery, and make no effort to lift his wife to that he had renounced. She was a child of Nature. He would learn life anew of her; but he failed of success in all his undertakings. Shall a man attempt to extenuate his failures? It seemed new to him; he acknowledged it in open court, that from the day of his entrance into Dalton to the day he left it, he was under some enchantment there. And if an insane man is not to be held ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... perhaps; but we should fail in our duty as reviewers, if he altogether escaped it. In all charity, we are bound, for that matter, to give him the full benefit of the speed he has exhibited, in so far as it may serve to explain, if it cannot extenuate, the wretched manner in which he has performed his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... means, in the shortest possible time. He first made dauntless and unsparing war on that gigantic system of oppression, extortion, and corruption. In that war he manfully put to hazard his ease, his fame, and his splendid fortune. The same sense of justice which forbids us to conceal or extenuate the faults of his earlier days compels us to admit that those faults were nobly repaired. If the reproach of the Company and of its servants has been taken away, if in India the yoke of foreign masters, elsewhere ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... very easily on this side; nevertheless, I think I shall go on with my plea for the small verse-maker who has long fallen out; and though I may be unable to make a case out, the kindly critic may find some circumstance to extenuate my folly—to say, in the end, that this appears to be one of the little ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... Once, as he chanced to stumble, the girl thought she heard a groan from him. She began to wish that she had been able to believe him, but it was utterly impossible, although she suddenly found it in her heart to pity him, to extenuate the abomination of his conduct. Why that last sacrilegious lie he had uttered? The man was suffering; it looked as if the iron were entering his soul. Oh! the pity of it! If he had only acknowledged his offence and begged her pardon she might perhaps have forgiven. ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... unknown to the Constitution, had defended themselves by pointing to the crimes of Hastings, and by arguing that abuses so extraordinary justified extraordinary measures. Those who, by opposing that bill, had raised themselves to the head of affairs would naturally be inclined to extenuate the evils which had been made the plea for administering so violent a remedy; and such, in fact, was their general disposition. The Lord Chancellor Thurlow, in particular, whose great place and force of intellect gave him a weight in the government inferior only to that of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... any appetite, however foul and depraved, if they be once furnished with a precedent; and we foresee an inundation of blood and abomination if they be not awed or ridiculed into silence. We have quietly submitted to these inflictions from two or three distinguished writers, whose talents may extenuate, though they cannot justify, such outrages upon feeling. When regular artists and professors conduct us into their dissecting room, the skill with which they anatomise may reconcile us to the offensiveness of the operation; but if butchers and resurrection-men ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... glory, followed by the plaudits of mankind, that became the inspiration of this work—his story of devotion, valor and patriotism; of unmurmuring sacrifice; worthy the pens of the mighty, but which the historian, as best he may will tell: "NOTHING extenuate, nor set down AUGHT ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... would have been the least likely to do so, for he scorned hypocrisy as he did every species of meanness. To sum up, General Morgan, with the virtues, had some of the faults of his Southern blood and country, and he sought so little to extenuate the latter himself, that it may be presumed that he cared not the least whether or no ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... lib. 14. cap. 10.) calleth it an infinite treasure to such as are endowed with it: Dulcisonum reficit tristia corda melos, Eobanus Hessus. Many other properties [3473]Cassiodorus, epist. 4. reckons up of this our divine music, not only to expel the greatest griefs, but "it doth extenuate fears and furies, appeaseth cruelty, abateth heaviness, and to such as are watchful it causeth quiet rest; it takes away spleen and hatred," be it instrumental, vocal, with strings, wind, [3474]Quae, a ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... is it not equally true that I have been playing false, and am now punished for it? What do the world care for your having returned to truth? You have offended by deceiving them, and that is an offence which your repentance will not extenuate." It was but too true, I had brought it all on myself, and this reflection increased my misery. For my dishonesty, I had been justly and severely punished: whether I was ever to be rewarded for my subsequent honesty ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... victim be forgiven His final error, for his merits past; Could virtuous life, propitiating Heaven With former deeds, extenuate ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... great! By Allah, the Commander of the Faithful pardons me!" Quoth he, "No harm shall come to thee, O uncle." And I, "O Commander of the Faithful, my offence is too great for me to attempt to extenuate it and thy pardon is too great for me to speak a word of thanks for it." And I chanted ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... was not able to prevent taking place; which, indeed, I had before said, would be most atrocious when I so often petitioned concerning it(144) and which as you yourself show, by revoking it too late, you consider to be grave, and this I could not extenuate when ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... at first, upon which your whole depends. Let no conversation, no example, no fashion, no 'bon mot', no silly desire of seeming to be above, what most knaves, and many fools, call prejudices, ever tempt you to avow, excuse, extenuate, or laugh at the least breach of morality; but show upon all occasions, and take all occasions to show, a detestation and abhorrence of it. There, though young, you ought to be strict; and there only, while young, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... and which, often conspicuous, has never been more destructively present than in their dealings with the Tasmanians. But I am convinced that this is an error. I certainly do not wish to apologize for or extenuate the crimes of the convicts and colonists, against which the most vigorous protests have been raised both in England and in the colony itself, but neither war nor social disasters have been the principal cause of the disappearance ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... would be down in a few minutes. I entered into conversation with the old lady on the subject of her daughter's conduct; hinted my suspicions of the cause, and declared my resolution of knowing my destiny immediately. She endeavored to extenuate, and excuse her as much as possible; but frankly owned that her behavior was mysterious; that no pains had been wanting, on her part, to alter and rectify it; that she had remonstrated, expostulated, ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... the impression sunk deep into his rancorous heart; every word in Edmund's behalf was like a poisoned arrow that rankled in the wound, and grew every day more inflamed. Sometimes he would pretend to extenuate Edmund's supposed faults, in order to load him with the sin of ingratitude upon other occasions. Rancour works deepest in the heart that strives to conceal it; and, when covered by art, frequently puts on the appearance ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... of mine." Isabel cared little more for him than for the tapestry that she held in her hand; but it was true that he was an old friend and that with her husband she felt a desire not to extenuate such ties. He had a way of expressing contempt for them which fortified her loyalty to them, even when, as in the present case, they were in themselves insignificant. She sometimes felt a sort of passion of tenderness for memories which ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... Adonis is alive, 1009 Her rash suspect sile doth extenuate; And that his beauty may the better thrive, With Death she humbly doth insinuate; 1012 Tells him of trophies, statues, tombs; and stories His victories, his triumphs, and ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... great aim of life; he saw things in their true light, and taught me to see them also; he called things by their proper names; and while he could make ample allowance for the faults of others, he never attempted to extenuate his own errors; nor did he mistake vice for virtue, or the semblance of virtue for the reality. From the companionship of such a person I could not fail to reap much benefit. I did not enjoy it long. We afterwards met under very different circumstances in a far-off region, ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... what a proud little creature you were, Olive," he said, trying to extenuate his shabby conduct, "and that there was no chance of your listening to me if you found out Tom was a tradesman. What does it matter about the shop? Tom is as good a chap as ever breathed, and Susan is the best-hearted woman in the world." But I ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... come. May we all have moderation; may we all show candor. Though, perhaps, nothing could ultimately have averted the strife, and though to treat of human actions is to deal wholly with second causes, nevertheless, let us not cover up or try to extenuate what, humanly speaking, is the truth—namely, that those unfraternal denunciations, continued through years, and which at last inflamed to deeds that ended in bloodshed, were reciprocal; and that, had the preponderating strength and the prospect ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... ground. Property was thus placed at the disposal of the men who already exercised absolute political power. "The state of France," said Burke, "is perfectly simple. It consists of but two descriptions, the oppressors and the oppressed." It is in vain that the attempt has been made to extenuate the atrocious and senseless cruelties of this time by extolling the great legislative projects of the Convention, or pleading the dire necessity of a land attacked on every side by the foreigner, and rent with civil war. The more that is known ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... of the evidence given by Bielaski. I have no wish to extenuate, in the slightest degree, the few serious offences against common law included in this list, but I imagine that the unprejudiced reader will not fail to observe that Mr. Bielaski found it necessary to rake up everything ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... Christianized. Satan would be glad, I think, to see American slavery come to an end. We have no right to go and steal people in order to convert them; the salvation of these slaves will not, in one iota, extenuate the guilt and punishment of those who were engaged in the slave-trade. But "the wrath of men shall praise Thee." In the writings of anti-slavery men I do not remember to have met with cordial acknowledgments of what religion has done for the slaves at the South. They coldly ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... seen in it a violation of the demands of poetic justice: "he carries his persons indifferently through right and wrong, and at the close dismisses them without further care, and leaves their examples to operate by chance. This fault the barbarity of his age cannot extenuate; for it is always a writer's duty to make the world better, and justice is a virtue independent on time or place." (Nichol Smith's "Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare," ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... ladies would remain and listen to me a few moments, I am sure I would make you aware that there is much to extenuate the apparent offence ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton
... trying to discover what it was that had brought the Suffet just when circumstances were most unfavourable. They went on to talk over the situation, and Spendius, to extenuate his fault, or to revive his courage, asserted that some hope ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... "you wrong him. My sins and transgressions are my own. Mountain high as they are, they shall not crush another. Mine is the sorrow and guilt, and mine be the penalty. I do not extenuate my own offences, but I will not criminate others. I beseech you, sir, to recall what you have just uttered, for how can I close those doors upon a friend, which have so lately been opened ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... several times before his death, that he received his wound from Savage; nor did Savage at his trial deny the fact, but endeavoured partly to extenuate it, by urging the suddenness of the whole action, and the impossibility of any ill design, or premeditated malice; and partly to justify it by the necessity of self-defence, and the hazard of his own life, if he had lost that opportunity of giving the thrust: he observed, that neither reason ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... But he can well be spared. While he is fast sinking into premature old age, negro boys in Virginia are growing up as fast into vigorous manhood to supply the void which cruelty is making in Louisiana. God forbid that I should extenuate the horrors of the slave trade in any form! But I do think this its worst form. Bad enough is it that civilised men should sail to an uncivilised quarter of the world where slavery exists, should there buy wretched barbarians, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... trenches were down at the river. With the imperfect means at his disposal he did such scouting as he could, and if his fiery and impetuous spirit led him into a position which cost him so dearly it is certainly more easy for the critic to extenuate his fault than that subsequent one which allowed the abandoned guns to fall into the hands of the enemy. Nor is there any evidence that the loss of these guns did seriously affect the fate of the action, for at those other parts ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... so. That was merely as a relief to myself, for when or where the letter will reach him—And I have written to old Mr Hamley. The relief is the one good thing come out of it all. It is such a comfort to feel free again. It wearied me so to think of straining up to his goodness. "Extenuate my conduct!"' she concluded, quoting Mr. Gibson's words. Yet when Mr. Gibson came home, after a silent dinner, she asked to speak with him, alone, in his consulting-room; and there laid bare the exculpation of herself which she had given to Molly many weeks before. When she had ended, ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... I must be, and I am, debased, contaminated by the union, both in my own eyes and in the actual truth. I am so determined to love him, so intensely anxious to excuse his errors, that I am continually dwelling upon them, and labouring to extenuate the loosest of his principles and the worst of his practices, till I am familiarised with vice, and almost a partaker in his sins. Things that formerly shocked and disgusted me, now seem only natural. I know them to be wrong, because reason and God's word declare ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... infuse true motion in a stone, Put glowing fire in an icy soul, Stuff peasants' bosoms with proud Caesar's spleen, Pour rich device into an empty brain: Bring youth to folly's gate: there train him in, And after all, extenuate his sin. Well, I will not go, I am resolved for that. Go, carry it again: yet stay: yet do too, I will defer ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... are a worthy daughter of Athens. In years to come they will name you with King Codrus who sacrificed his life for the freedom of Attica, for have you not sacrificed what should be dearer than life,—the fair name of your husband? But courage. Your patriotism may extenuate his crime. Only the traitor ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... devoted, princely, but sanguine friend has been with me again and again. My time is expired and I find a relief beyond measure, for he has fully convinced me that no act of mine can mar the eternal counsel, or in the smallest degree alter or extenuate one event which was decreed before the foundations of the world were laid. He said he had watched over me with the greatest anxiety, but, perceiving my rooted aversion towards him, he had forborne troubling me with his presence. But now, seeing that I was certainly ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... what know the laws That theives do pass on thieves? 'Tis very pregnant, The jewel that we find, we stoop and take't, Because we see it; but what we do not see 25 We tread upon, and never think of it. You may not so extenuate his offence For I have had such faults; but rather tell me, When I, that censure him, do so offend, Let mine own judgement pattern out my death, 30 And nothing come in partial. ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... of a grim humor peculiarly his own, and partly to extenuate his severity toward the youth, had sent to his niece all the city papers containing unfavorable references to Haldane, and to her mind the associations created by those disgraceful scenes were still inseparable from him. She honestly respected him for his resolute effort to reform, ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... gentleman of Valois sticks in your stomachs; and, though I do not defend his proceedings in the States, any otherwise than by the inevitable necessity which caused them, yet acknowledging his crime does not extenuate their guilt that forced him to it. It was bad on both sides, but the revenge was not so wicked as the treason; for it was a voluntary act of theirs, and a compelled one of his. The short on't is, he took a violent course to cut up the Covenant ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... brought to the king fresh complaints of Duchesneau against Frontenac, and of Frontenac against Duchesneau; and the king replied with rebukes, exhortations, and threats to both. At first he had shown a disposition to extenuate and excuse the faults of Frontenac, but every year his letters grew sharper. In 1681 he wrote: "Again I urge you to banish from your mind the difficulties which you have yourself devised against the execution of my orders; to act with mildness and moderation towards all the colonists, and ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... clear and decisive manner are punishments awarded for every class of crimes committed in society; and it was communicated to the English factory from the viceroy, that on no consideration was it left in the breast of the judge to extenuate or to exaggerate the sentence, whatever might be the rank, character, or ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... guiltless; I am alone responsible for the mutiny, and I exonerate all, even my adherents, from so much as suggesting it to me; nevertheless, there are some who love me in England, to whom I would beg of you to relate the circumstances that I have told you. These may extenuate though they cannot justify the crime I have committed. I assure you, most solemnly, that almost up to the last I had no intention of doing more than making my own escape from the ship which the injustice and brutality of Bligh had made a place of torment ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... great," said Reginald. "If anything can extenuate killing a fellow-creature, it is that. Are you quite positive—But perhaps I have no right to ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... was his demeanor and conduct in company of his late companions; while, with his own family, he appeared moody, irresolute, and restless, and even, at length, he began to throw out occasional hints tending to defend or extenuate the conduct of the very man whom, a few weeks before, he had so confidently denounced as a thief and a robber. Alarmed at these indications of returning weakness and fatuity in her husband, Mrs. Elwood soon put herself on inquiry, to ascertain the cause; and she was not long in ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... the advent of history, and imagining that a Charles IX can extenuate a Saint Bartholomew, has published as a piece justificative, a so-called "official list of the deceased persons." In this "Alphabetical List,"[1] you will meet with such items as these: "Adde, bookseller, 17 Boulevard Poissonniere, killed in his house; Boursier, ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... stupendous autobiography, and made me forget that writing was a new art, to me, and that I was rather old to try my hand at a new art. My memory suddenly began to seem not so bad after all. For weeks I had hesitated between Othello's "Nothing extenuate, nor write down aught in malice," and Pilate's "What is truth?" as my guide and my apology. Now I saw that both were too big for my modest endeavor. I was not leaving a human document for the benefit of future psychologists and historians, but telling as much ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... evidently affected her more than She ventured to express: But She believed that to extenuate my fault would make me less anxious to repent it. Often while her lips painted the enormity of my guilt in glaring colours, her eyes betrayed, how sensible She was to my sufferings. In fact I am certain that none of my Tormentors, ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... and courageous. It would, indeed, be difficult to deny or extenuate the appalling truth of ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... now arose, in which every word may be said to have been deposed upon oath; for the oaths were at least equal to all the other words spoken. In this controversy the whole company spoke together, and every man seemed wholly bent to extenuate the sum which fell to his share; so that the most probable conclusion which could be foreseen was, that a large portion of the reckoning would fall to the landlord's share to pay, or (what is much the same ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... faction, introduced among the sectaries a spirit of discord and inconstancy, which, in the course of a few years, erected eighteen different models of religion, and avenged the violated dignity of the church. The zealous Hilary, who, from the peculiar hardships of his situation, was inclined to extenuate rather than to aggravate the errors of the Oriental clergy, declares, that in the wide extent of the ten provinces of Asia, to which he had been banished, there could be found very few prelates who had preserved the knowledge of the true ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... inconsiderate Maria to betray, we will not say the confidence of her friend, but such facts as could only have come to her knowledge by the intimacy of unaffected association. If there were any thing to extenuate this breach of decorum by Maria, it was the manner in which it was effected. Miss Osgood had just returned from one of her frequent visits to the villa of Mr. Henley, when Delafield made his customary morning call: the absence of Maria, and the object of her visit, had been well known ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... the dogmas of religion may rightfully be enforced by the sword of the civil, power, dominated the world, and in this way account for their conduct; or apologize for it by the necessities of their situation, and the peculiarities of their creed; or combine these causes, and so extenuate ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... cypresses airy. These in a line wide-broke set he, the Mansion surrounding, So by the soft leaves screened, the porch might flourish in verdure. Follows hard on his track with active spirit Prometheus, Bearing extenuate sign of penalties suffer'd in bygones. 295 Paid erewhiles what time fast-bound as to every member, Hung he in carkanet slung from the Scythian rock-tor. Last did the Father of Gods with his sacred spouse and his offspring, Proud from the Heavens proceed, ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... has eaten five or six children, a relatively insignificant number, no doubt, but remarkable enough from another point of view. It is manifest that, pricked by remorse—for my client is religious, in his way, and has a conscience, as I shall prove later—and desiring to extenuate his sin as far as possible, he has tried six times at least to substitute lay nourishment for clerical. That this was merely an experiment we can hardly doubt: for if it had been only a question of gastronomic variety, six would have been ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... came and apologised to me in a very proper manner, and entirely removed the disagreeable impression from my mind. I owe this to your kindly intervention; and I must honestly say that I thought well of Sandys. He did not attempt to excuse himself, or to extenuate his fault. He showed very good feeling, and I believe that henceforth his influence will be on the side of order. I was really ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... righteous gains, God's blessing upon labour: yet is there rightful hope to get those righteous gains. Who can condemn the poor man's care, though Faith should make his load the lighter? And who will extenuate the rich man's coveting, whose appetite grows with what it feeds on? "Having food and raiment, be therewith content;" that is the golden mean; to that is limited the philosophy of worldliness: the man must live, by labour and its earnings; but having wherewithal ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Scots as a beautiful sinner who has repented. Her sins are grievous and she does not deny or extenuate them. But they are in the distant past; so far as the present is concerned, she is in the right. She has come to England seeking an asylum, but instead of being treated as a queen she has been confined in one prison after another and finally brought to Fotheringay, where she is subjected ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... reason for not dating the publication of some of Gerson's treatises at Cologne earlier than the year 1470? and if good cause cannot be shown for withholding from them so high a rank in the scale of typographic being, must we not instantly reject every effort to extenuate Marchand's obtuseness in asserting with reference to Ulric Zell, "On ne voit des editions de ce Zell qu'en 1494?" (Hist. de l'Imp., p. 56.) {183} Schelhorn's opinion as to the birthright of these tracts is sufficient to awaken an interest concerning ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various
... madam, I shall beg your attention to a melancholy tale, and which may, in some slight degree, extenuate the offence I was guilty of in assuming, or rather in maintaining ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... Observations, Anecdotes and Remarks, tending to illustrate the moral and political characters of three nations. To which is added, a correct Engraving of Dartmoor Prison, representing the Massacre of American prisoners. Written by himself." "Nothing extenuate, or set down aught in ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... said to Macartney, "what do you make of that? That's worth coming up for. That ought to extenuate a good deal." James was quick to notice ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... more, and that is concerning provocation. We have hitherto been considering self-defense, and how far persons may go in defending themselves against aggressors, even by taking away their lives, and now proceed to consider such provocations as the law allows to mitigate or extenuate the guilt of killing, where it is not justifiable or excusable. An assault and battery committed upon a man in such a manner as not to endanger his life is such a provocation as the law allows to reduce killing down to the crime of manslaughter. Now, the law has been made ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... communicated to me, for the satisfaction of his relations, other circumstances connected with that unfortunate disaster, which, after their deaths, may or may not be laid before the public. And although they can implicate none but himself, either living or dead, they may extenuate but will contain not a word of his in defence of the crime he committed against the laws of his ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... her: She will infuse true motion in a stone, Put glowing fire in an icy soul, Stuff peasants' bosoms with proud Caesar's spleen, Pour rich device into an empty brain: Bring youth to folly's gate: there train him in, And after all, extenuate his sin. Well, I will not go, I am resolved for that. Go, carry it again: yet stay: yet do too, I will defer it till ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... whom she was under great obligations? He made but little reply; but the impression sunk deep into his rancorous heart; every word in Edmund's behalf was like a poisoned arrow that rankled in the wound, and grew every day more inflamed. Sometimes he would pretend to extenuate Edmund's supposed faults, in order to load him with the sin of ingratitude upon other occasions. Rancour works deepest in the heart that strives to conceal it; and, when covered by art, frequently puts on the appearance of candour. By these means did Wenlock and Markham impose upon the credulity ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... have been, and years, unretarded years, shall come. May we all have moderation; may we all show candor. Though, perhaps, nothing could ultimately have averted the strife, and though to treat of human actions is to deal wholly with second causes, nevertheless, let us not cover up or try to extenuate what, humanly speaking, is the truth—namely, that those unfraternal denunciations, continued through years, and which at last inflamed to deeds that ended in bloodshed, were reciprocal; and that, had the preponderating ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... my past life, I discover nothing but a barren waste of time, with some disorders of body, and disturbances of the mind, very near to madness,[289] which I hope He that made me will suffer to extenuate many faults, and excuse ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... knowledge, of Right and Wrong, which is no lesse difficult, there is no man will pretend to, without great and long study. And of those defects in Reasoning, there is none that can Excuse (though some of them may Extenuate) a Crime, in any man, that pretendeth to the administration of his own private businesse; much lesse in them that undertake a publique charge; because they pretend to the Reason, upon the want whereof they ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... remembrance of her connivance at that deep-laid plot which had imposed her upon him as a wife. Yet the lot of Leah was peculiarly a lot of reproach and trial—and as we behold her wretchedness, we are led, not to extenuate her fault, nor to palliate her sin, but to ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... housekeeper, and had no house fitting for a man of his birth to reside in, as his mansion in the country had been burnt down within two years. These reasons appeared to his judges to aggravate rather than extenuate his offence; and after a long reprimand for having deserted his tenants and neighbours, they heavily fined him in one ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... has never found any work in which "an upstart inlander has ever preached a crusade against the Turks because they did not introduce knives and forks at their tables," &c. Even Scripture—and this, be it remembered, by the sanction of The Christian Advocate—is blasphemously quoted to extenuate the American practice of expectoration. "What, after all, is there so unbearably revolting about spitting? Our Saviour, in one of his early miracles, 'spat upon the ground and made clay of the spittle, and anointed the eyes ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... to God, O troubled soul, from whom the vision of Christ is veiled. It is more than likely that some undetected or unconfessed sin is shutting out the rays of the true sun. Excuse nothing, extenuate nothing, omit nothing. Do not speak of mistakes of judgment, but of lapses of heart and will. Do not be content with a general confession; be particular and specific. Drag each evil thing forth before ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... others, or by myself, is it not equally true that I have been playing false, and am now punished for it? What do the world care for your having returned to truth? You have offended by deceiving them, and that is an offence which your repentance will not extenuate." It was but too true, I had brought it all on myself, and this reflection increased my misery. For my dishonesty, I had been justly and severely punished: whether I was ever to be rewarded for my subsequent honesty still remained to be proved; ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... often falls into these errors: and I once more beg the reader's pardon for accusing him of them. Only let him consider, that I live in an age where my least faults are severely censured; and that I have no way left to extenuate my failings, but by showing as great ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... store for dress goods, which Pheeny made up; and Eddie left an occasional sum at the Pantatorium for a fresh alpaca coat, or for a new pair of trousers when the seat of the old ones grew too refulgent or perilously extenuate. As Eddie stood up at his tall desk most of the time, however, it was rather his shoes than his pantaloons that felt the ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... justify, no pleas can extenuate it. To insult over the miseries of an unhappy creature is inhuman, not to compassionate them is unchristian. The worthy part of the sex always express themselves humanely on the failings of others, in proportion to their ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... Mary Queen of Scots as a beautiful sinner who has repented. Her sins are grievous and she does not deny or extenuate them. But they are in the distant past; so far as the present is concerned, she is in the right. She has come to England seeking an asylum, but instead of being treated as a queen she has been confined in ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... shown" that Starna "in this confession did not deny his own responsibility; a fact which gives his statement the character of an incriminative and not of an exonerative confession; and that though he might possibly have wished, in his statement of the facts, to modify and extenuate his own share in the crime, yet there was no reason to suspect that he wished gratuitously to aggravate the guilt of his comrade;" and that also taking into consideration the villainous character of Volpi, it cannot be doubted, that he was the principal in the ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... conceives it his duty to sit continually in the censor's chair, and weigh in the scales of justice all that happens in the domestic commonwealth, domestic happiness is out of the question. It is manly to extenuate and forgive, but a crabbed and ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... this passage of Gibbon on slavery, is full, not only of blamable indifference, but of an exaggeration of impartiality which resembles dishonesty. He endeavors to extenuate all that is appalling in the condition and treatment of the slaves; he would make us consider those cruelties as possibly "justified by necessity." He then describes, with minute accuracy, the slightest mitigations of their deplorable ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... fidelity to her creed. It makes her clear and resolute in her statement; but it often makes her as one-sided as the advocates of male supremacy whom she impugns. To be sure, her theory enables her to extenuate some points of admitted injustice to woman,—finding, for instance, in her educational and professional exclusions a crude effort, on the part of society, to treat her as a sort of bird-of-paradise, born only to fly, and therefore not needing feet. Yet this authoress is obliged to assume ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... Cascades had suffered much, and that their wives and children had been murdered before their eyes, but to wreak vengeance on Spencer's unoffending family, who had walked into their settlement under the protection of a friendly alliance, was an unparalleled outrage which nothing can justify or extenuate. With as little delay as possible after the horrible discovery, I returned to camp, had boxes made, and next day buried the bodies of these hapless victims of ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... was celebrated for affording his guests. The major placed the fore finger of his right hand to his lip, cast a look of inquiry at the bystanders, and then said he knew it would be no easy matter to apologize to ladies for so singular a transgression, but how his treating could extenuate an insult offered to another party, he could not exactly see. "By my word as a man of standing, I have spent much sweat and labor in getting the little Fortune has favored me with, and it seems to me that he who needs it most had better quench ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... made dauntless and unsparing war on that gigantic system of oppression, extortion, and corruption. In that war he manfully put to hazard his ease, his fame, and his splendid fortune. The same sense of justice which forbids us to conceal or extenuate the faults of his earlier days compels us to admit that those faults were nobly repaired. If the reproach of the Company and of its servants has been taken away, if in India the yoke of foreign masters, elsewhere the heaviest of all yokes, has been found lighter than that of any native dynasty, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... different, it is very easy to see that she would have been continually quarrelling with Rachel; but, happily, she was one of those women with whom it is impossible to quarrel. With her broad mantle of charity, she was always seeking to cover up and extenuate the defects of her sister-in-law, though she could not help acknowledging ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger
... sufficient to excuse so great a crime as I have been guilty of it, that of Rebellion. But I humbly beg leave to lay before your Excellency some particulars in the circumstance of my guilt, which, I hope, will extenuate it in some measure. It was my misfortune, at the time the Rebellion broke out, to be liable to legal diligence and caption, at the Duke of Montrose's instance, for debt alledged due to him. To avoid ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... for him; and hence I must be, and I am, debased, contaminated by the union, both in my own eyes and in the actual truth. I am so determined to love him, so intensely anxious to excuse his errors, that I am continually dwelling upon them, and labouring to extenuate the loosest of his principles and the worst of his practices, till I am familiarised with vice, and almost a partaker in his sins. Things that formerly shocked and disgusted me, now seem only natural. I know them to be wrong, because reason and God's word declare ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... as they do wonderfully together, were printed at Aix under the eye of her enemies, in a volume where, as I shall presently prove, an attempt was made to extenuate the guilt of Girard, and fasten the reader's gaze on every point likely to tell against Cadiere. And yet the editor could not help inserting depositions like these, which bear with crushing weight on the man ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... say to your honors is this [he spoke calmly and distinctly], and it may in a degree extenuate, though it cannot excuse, my crime. I went into that man's store an innocent boy, and if he had been an honest man I would not have stood before you to-day ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... concupiscence, but we have also said that "the fear of God and faith are wanting." This we have added with the following design: The scholastic teachers also, not sufficiently understanding the definition of original sin, which they have received from the Fathers, extenuate the sin of origin. They contend concerning the fomes [or evil inclination] that it is a quality of [blemish in the] body, and, with their usual folly, ask whether this quality be derived from the contagion of the apple or from the breath of the serpent, and whether it be increased ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... doctor says it isn't so much nerves as lack of nerve with me; I don't know what you call it, but I confess I find the smoke-wreaths pleasant; you won't join me either, Jack? Well, let us have the story in all its native simplicity and be sure you nothing extenuate nor ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... sense, he should be critic as well as lover, he could make her exceedingly uncomfortable; and she had a growing perception that he was comparing her with others, that there was a lack of warmth in his words and manner, which even the circumstances could not extenuate. She resolved, therefore, to teach him that she would tolerate nothing halfway in his conduct. She was sitting on a chair while he reclined at her feet, and she determined that he should be at her feet in a sense which had large meanings to her. So she rose and said coldly, ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... tending to illustrate the moral and political characters of three nations. To which is added, a correct Engraving of Dartmoor Prison, representing the Massacre of American prisoners. Written by himself." "Nothing extenuate, or set down ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... Cromwell began as a reformer, but ended as a usurper. Whatever name he goes by, whatever title he may have assumed, he became, by force of his victories and of his army, the absolute ruler of England,—as Caesar did of Rome, and Napoleon of Paris. We may palliate or extenuate this fact; we may even excuse it on the ground that the State had drifted into anarchy; that only he, as the stronger man, could save England; that there was no other course open to him as a patriot; and that it was a most ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... happens, it is best that we should be together." The girl was so agitated, fearing that in some way her adventures might be discovered, that she had no occasion to feign alarm. Mrs. Whately sought only to soothe and quiet, also to extenuate her son's words. "I don't suppose we truly realize yet, as Madison does, what war ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... so confounded and overawed by these cutting reproaches, and her animated behaviour, that all his resolution forsook him, and he found himself not only incapable of obstructing her retreat, but even of uttering one syllable to deprecate her wrath, or extenuate the guilt of his own conduct. The nature of his disappointment, and the keen remorse that seized him, when he reflected upon the dishonourable footing on which his character stood with Emilia, raised such perturbation in his mind, that his silence was succeeded by a violent fit ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... justice: "he carries his persons indifferently through right and wrong, and at the close dismisses them without further care, and leaves their examples to operate by chance. This fault the barbarity of his age cannot extenuate; for it is always a writer's duty to make the world better, and justice is a virtue independent on time or place." (Nichol Smith's "Eighteenth Century Essays ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... demeanor and conduct in company of his late companions; while, with his own family, he appeared moody, irresolute, and restless, and even, at length, he began to throw out occasional hints tending to defend or extenuate the conduct of the very man whom, a few weeks before, he had so confidently denounced as a thief and a robber. Alarmed at these indications of returning weakness and fatuity in her husband, Mrs. Elwood soon put herself on inquiry, to ascertain the cause; and she was not long in making discoveries ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... Uncle Elkins; he would abide on that level where he found himself on his recovery, and make no effort to lift his wife to that he had renounced. She was a child of Nature. He would learn life anew of her; but he failed of success in all his undertakings. Shall a man attempt to extenuate his failures? It seemed new to him; he acknowledged it in open court, that from the day of his entrance into Dalton to the day he left it, he was under some enchantment there. And if an insane man is not to be held responsible ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... retinue. The second has a key-syllable that means stretching: tend, tender, tendon, tendril, tendency, extend, subtend, distend, pretend, contend, attendant, tense, tension, pretence, intense, intensive, ostensible, tent, tenterhook, portent, attention, intention, tenuous, attenuate, extenuate, antenna, tone, tonic, standard. The form of the key-syllable for the first set of words is usually ten, tent, or tin; that for the second tend, tens, tent, or ten. You may therefore easily confuse the two groups ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... as I am: nothing extenuate, Nor set down aught in malice: then, must you speak Of one that loved, not wisely, but too well; Of one not easily jealous, but, being wrought, Perplexed in the extreme; of one whose hand, Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... sake. Believe me, my dear cousin, if anything could increase the infinite affection with which I love you, it would be the consciousness that at all times, whenever my image crosses your mind, it is to muse for my benefit, or to extenuate my errors. ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... has been justly called perverted ambition, and Milton stamped it with terrible condemnation when he put into the mouth of his arch fiend the sentiment—"better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." The passions of youth extenuate those errors which in ripened manhood are criminal; and it is not improbable that Mr. Cooper's own opinion at this day concurs with ours when we say that his refusal of the manager's offer seems to us to have been very injudicious. From Plautus, with whom we ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... has died during the investigation, after making a confession which removes all doubt as to the part played by Vauthier and the woman Bryond; if he attempted to extenuate that of his wife and his nephews Chaussard, his ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... declared several times before his death, that he received his wound from Savage; nor did Savage at his trial deny the fact, but endeavoured partly to extenuate it, by urging the suddenness of the whole action, and the impossibility of any ill design, or premeditated malice; and partly to justify it by the necessity of self-defence, and the hazard of his own life, if he had lost that opportunity of giving the thrust: he observed, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... action in refusing to marry them," said Father Tom, "nothing. Uncle John, I know that you can extenuate, that you are kind, but I do not see it is possible to look at ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... alone, so that Hugo pulled no longer. Once, as he chanced to stumble, the girl thought she heard a groan from him. She began to wish that she had been able to believe him, but it was utterly impossible, although she suddenly found it in her heart to pity him, to extenuate the abomination of his conduct. Why that last sacrilegious lie he had uttered? The man was suffering; it looked as if the iron were entering his soul. Oh! the pity of it! If he had only acknowledged his offence and begged her pardon she might perhaps have ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... do. I can scarcely think or feel yet. Only I know that I must get free. It isn't that I'm hard. It's just that I have no choice. Your case was different. You had to do it. But this—" her words sank, became scarcely audible—"Nick, could anything extenuate—this?" ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... the state some service, and they know it. No more of that; I pray you in your letters, When you shall these unlucky deeds relate, Speak of me as I am, nothing extenuate, Nor set down aught in malice. 96 SHAKS.: ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... in the attendant circumstances that were connected with the act of Nero in murdering his mother, which could palliate or extenuate the deed in the slightest degree. It was not an act of self-defense. Agrippina was not doing him, or intending to do him any injury. It was not an act of hasty violence, prompted by sudden passion. It was not required by any political necessity ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... had lost the ball he would have lost the hole," I explained, anxious to extenuate Pepper's offense as much ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... of his condemnation to the day he died, he neither affected to extenuate his crime, nor reflect, as some are apt to do, on the cruelty of the prosecutors, witnesses, or the Court that condemned him. So far from it, that he always acknowledged the justice of his sentence, seemed grieved only for the greatness ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... whose heart was warm with his legacy and tender by the recent separation, thought it proper for him to interpose, and undertook, not indeed to vindicate the action, for breach of trust has always something criminal, but to extenuate it by an apology. Having advanced what cannot be denied, that moral obliquity is made more or less excusable by the motives that produce it, he inquires what evil purpose could have induced Pope to break his promise. He could not delight his vanity by usurping the work, ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... hills, and had no inkling that their front trenches were down at the river. With the imperfect means at his disposal he did such scouting as he could, and if his fiery and impetuous spirit led him into a position which cost him so dearly it is certainly more easy for the critic to extenuate his fault than that subsequent one which allowed the abandoned guns to fall into the hands of the enemy. Nor is there any evidence that the loss of these guns did seriously affect the fate of the action, for at those other parts ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... me be ever deaf to 't: One of Pasquil's paper-bullets, court-calumny, A pestilent air, which princes' palaces Are seldom purg'd of. Yet, say that it were true, I pour it in your bosom, my fix'd love Would strongly excuse, extenuate, nay, deny Faults, were they apparent in you. Go, be safe In ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... wrote in despair to Professor Norton, "that I hardly ever get anything stated without some grave mistake, however true in my main discourse." But in this case a fate stronger than he had taken him unawares. The circumstances do not extenuate the error of the Professor, but they explain the difficulties under which his work was done. The cloud that rested on his own life was the result of a strange and ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... hard, hard as steel. Appearances seem against Neale. I don't seek to extenuate them. But I know men. Neale might have fallen—it seems he must have. These are terrible times. In anger or drink Neale might have struck ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... well when she went away," he whispered, turning his shoulder to the men and his face to Philip. He talked in a low voice, just above the rumble of the wheels, trying to extenuate Kate's fault and ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... would gladly have withheld from my husband the knowledge of his degradation, for it was humiliating to the child to reveal the parent's shame. Criminal he knew him to be, with regard to my mother, but Ernest had said, when gazing on her picture, he almost forgave the crime which had so much to extenuate it. The gambler, the profligate, the lost, abandoned being, who had thrown himself so abjectly on my compassion: in these characters, the high-minded Ernest would spurn him with withering indignation. Yet as the interview had been ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... holding a hank of gray wool for Ma Pettengill to wind. While this minor war measure went forward the day's mail came. From a canvas sack Lew Wee spilled letters and papers on the table. Whereupon the yarn was laid by while Ma Pettengill eagerly shuffled the letters. She thought fit to extenuate this eagerness. She said if people lived forever they would still get foolishly excited over their mail; whereas everyone knew well enough that nothing important ever came in it. To prove this she sketched a rapid and entirely unexciting summary of the six unopened ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... be the result of that prosecution, whether those indicted be found guilty, or acquitted, of the misdemeanours laid to their charge; we feel assured, on the one hand, however long and grievous may have been the "provocation," that while there will be "nothing extenuate," neither will there be "set down aught in malice;" but that the measure of the retribution now demanded by the state, will be so temperately and equitably adjusted, that while the very semblance of oppression is carefully avoided, the majesty of the law, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... duty. And wherever I have been inadequate to your wishes, attribute my demerits to some infirmity of mind, rather than to a negligence of your happiness. Yet, be the cause what it will, since these faults have existed, I do not attempt to disavow or extenuate them, and ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... It shall also greatly auayle yf he can shewe that he hathe in tyme afore ben in auctoritie and bare a rule ouer other / in the whiche he was neuer but gentyll and glad to forgyue them that had offended vn[-] derneth hym. And than let hym extenuate his owne faute / and shew that there folo- wed nat so great damage therof / and that but lytle profyte or honesty wyll folowe of his punysshment. And finally than by co- mon places to moue the iudge to mercy & pitie ...
— The Art or Crafte of Rhetoryke • Leonard Cox
... over, and now and then took him up and corrected him. He did not dare to show anger in his replies, yet he was foaming. He passed an eulogy upon Basville (father of the Intendant), talked of the consideration he merited; excused Courson, and babbled thereupon as much as he could to extenuate everything, and lose sight of the principal points at issue. Seeing that he did not finish, and that he wished to tire us, and to manage the affair in his own way, I interrupted him, saying that the father and the son were two people; that the case in point respected the ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... upon this impeachment, it must be confessed that his majesty gave many marks of his great lenity; often urging the services you had done him, and endeavouring to extenuate your crimes. The treasurer and admiral insisted that you should be put to the most painful and ignominious death, by setting fire to your house at night, and the general was to attend with twenty thousand men, armed with poisoned ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... thus placed at the disposal of the men who already exercised absolute political power. "The state of France," said Burke, "is perfectly simple. It consists of but two descriptions, the oppressors and the oppressed." It is in vain that the attempt has been made to extenuate the atrocious and senseless cruelties of this time by extolling the great legislative projects of the Convention, or pleading the dire necessity of a land attacked on every side by the foreigner, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... justifier; defendant &c. 938. justifiable charge, true bill. v. justify, warrant; be an excuse &c. n.for; lend a color, furnish a handle; vindicate; exculpate, disculpate[obs3]; acquit &c. 970; clear, set right, exonerate, whitewash; clear the skirts of. extenuate, palliate, excuse, soften, apologize, varnish, slur, gloze; put a gloss, put a good face upon; mince; gloss over, bolster up, help a lame dog over a stile. advocate, defend, plead one's cause; stand up for, stick up for, speak up for; contend for, speak for; bear out, keep in countenance, support; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... to it," Beppo remarked, to extenuate his outwitted cunning, when he found each door of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... inconstancy, which, in the course of a few years, erected eighteen different models of religion, and avenged the violated dignity of the church. The zealous Hilary, who, from the peculiar hardships of his situation, was inclined to extenuate rather than to aggravate the errors of the Oriental clergy, declares, that in the wide extent of the ten provinces of Asia, to which he had been banished, there could be found very few prelates who had preserved the knowledge of the true God. The oppression which he had felt, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... deprecate the serious and distressing consequences which followed such decision; yet we forbear to look with severity on the past, in consequence of judicial precedents, calculated in some measure to extenuate the conduct of the judges, and hope that for the future this explicit expression of ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... immensely to the form, the art, the stereotyped metres, and stock figures they find ready to hand. The form is suggestive,—it invites and aids expression, and lends itself readily, like fashion, to conceal, or extenuate, or eke out poverty of thought and feeling in the verse. The poet can "cut and cover," as the farmer says, in a way the prose-writer never can, nor one whose form is essentially ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... sweeter women who are sinking into oblivion together. He must accept life as a Grand Piano tuned by a new sort of Tuning Master, and unless he can dance to its music he is a misfit. That is what my friend said to extenuate her. She fitted into this kind of life splendidly. He was in the other groove. She loved light, laughter, wine, song, and excitement. He, the misfit, loved his books, his work, and his home. His greatest joy would have been to go with her, hand in hand, through ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... on the Borgia family; P. Villari's Machiavelli (English translation, new ed., 1892) deals with the subject at some length. Of the Catholic writers L. Pastor, Geschichte der Papste (Freiburg i. B, 1886) should be consulted, for although the author tries to extenuate the pope to some extent, on the whole he is fair. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Thrale on July 10, 1780:—'Last week I saw flesh but twice and I think fish once; the rest was pease. You are afraid, you say, lest I extenuate myself too fast, and are an enemy to violence; but did you never hear nor read, dear Madam, that every man has his genius, and that the great rule by which all excellence is attained and all success procured, is to follow genius; and have ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... every departure from straight-laced morality, he, of all men, would have been the least likely to do so, for he scorned hypocrisy as he did every species of meanness. To sum up, General Morgan, with the virtues, had some of the faults of his Southern blood and country, and he sought so little to extenuate the latter himself, that it may be presumed that he cared not the least whether ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... in common with men ought to contend for, I have not attempted to extenuate their faults; but to prove them to be the natural consequence of their education and station in society. If so, it is reasonable to suppose, that they will change their character, and correct their vices and follies, when they are allowed ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... appreciate the compliment. But, Lionel, there is no time to be lost, as Mr Selwyn, the lawyer, is coming here at one o'clock, and before he comes I wish you to read over Lady R—'s confession, if I may so call it, which will explain the motives of her conduct towards you. I am afraid that it will not extenuate her conduct, but recollect that she has now made all the reparation in her power, and that we must forgive as we hope to be forgiven. Sit down and read these papers, while I unpack one or two of my ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... found his market in it, we ought to acknowledge the superabundant and quick succession of literary novelties for the present volume. There is little of our own; because we have uniformly taken Dr. Johnson's advice in life—"to play for much, and stake little" This will extenuate our assuming that "from castle to cottage we are regularly taken in:" indeed, it would be worse than vanity to suppose that price or humble pretensions should exclude us; it would be against the very economy of life to imagine this; and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 407, December 24, 1829. • Various
... partly out of a grim humor peculiarly his own, and partly to extenuate his severity toward the youth, had sent to his niece all the city papers containing unfavorable references to Haldane, and to her mind the associations created by those disgraceful scenes were still inseparable ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
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