"Excusable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... political subjects, and his indolent negligence of severe study and regularity. To imitate Dryden, it were well to study his merits, without venturing to adopt the negligences and harshness, which the hurry of his composition, and the comparative rudeness of his age, rendered in him excusable. At least, those who venture to sink as low, should be confident of the power of soaring as high; for surely it is a rash attempt to dive, unless in one conscious of ability to swim. While the beauties of Dryden may be fairly pointed out as an object of emulation, it is ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... of God, so that he directs their malice to whatever end he pleases, and uses their crimes for the execution of his judgments. The modesty of those who are alarmed at the appearance of absurdity, might perhaps be excusable, if they did not attempt to vindicate the Divine justice by a pretence utterly destitute of any foundation in truth. They consider it absurd that a man should be blinded by the will and command of God, and afterwards ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson
... personal whims and ambitions are concerned; and that he is engrossed with an inordinate desire to be in the good graces of the Brigadier-General, who is really, I believe, a very good sort. Apart from those failings, some of which are, perhaps, excusable, I think he is probably all right. You may be sure that his unpopularity will not prejudice me against him; I shall not join in the general condemnation unless and until he gives me good reason. As yet I have no such reason. ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... first made his acquaintance, had an idea of writing for the working classes; and what do you think he was going to offer them? Stories about the working classes! Nay, never hang your head for it, old boy; it was excusable in the days of your youth. Why, Mr Reardon, as no doubt you know well enough, nothing can induce working men or women to read stories that treat of their own world. They are the most consumed idealists in creation, especially the women. Again and again work-girls have said ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... Protestant government. It was in vain that, just before the cart passed from under their feet, they resolutely affirmed their innocence: for the general opinion was that a good Papist considered all lies which were serviceable to his Church as not only excusable but meritorious. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... people—who have mixed themselves up with feats of arms, or interfered with more ardour than discretion in the arena of politics; but such instances have been rare, and circumstances have generally made them in some degree excusable. The position of the Irish priest in regard to his flock is so anomalous, that some explanation of it seems necessary in order to understand the accusations made against Father Nicholas Sheehy, and the animosity with which he was hunted to death ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... combines oddly the aestheticism of a poet with the asceticism of a recluse. Not that he worships in secret, however. His passion is too genuine either to find disguise or seek display. With us, unfortunately, the love of Nature is apt to be considered a mental extravagance peculiar to poets, excusable in exact ratio to the ability to give it expression. For an ordinary mortal to feel a fondness for Mother Earth is a kind of folly, to be carefully concealed from his fellows. A sort of shamefacedness prevents him from avowing it, as a boy at boarding-school ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... bonds to appear as a witness when wanted. His spirits rose with their usual elasticity as soon as he was out of Centre Street, and he insisted on giving Philip and his friends a royal supper at Delmonico's, an excess which was perhaps excusable in the rebound of his feelings, and which was committed with his usual reckless generosity. Harry ordered, the supper, and it is perhaps needless to say, ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 6. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... attachment, by the distinguished honour of the society of their Sovereign, and, by being the partakers of his amusements, came sometimes to prefer the gratification of his personal inclinations to the support of his high character, the thing would be very natural, and it would be excusable enough. But the pleasant part of the story is, that these King's friends have no more ground for usurping such a title, than a resident freeholder in Cumberland or in Cornwall. They are only known to their Sovereign by kissing his hand, for the offices, pensions, and grants into which they have ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... struggling in the mind of the woman against her sense of duty. Note that in the story the temptation did not come to man through his appetite or his curiosity or his esthetic sense but through his wife whom God had given him. Was the man's act in any way excusable? Strong men and women often sin through the influence of those whom they love and admire. Are they thereby excused? What natural impulses impelled the woman to disobey the divine command? Were these impulses of themselves wrong? How far did her experience reflect ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... botanical researches he was a sorry sight. His clothes were torn in many places, and his face and hands badly scratched, while the red stains of the raspberries had turned his light tweeds into something resembling an impressionist sketch. It was perhaps excusable that he had altogether lost his temper. He burst out in angry abuse of the mare, the bullock, the raspberry clump, and the expedition in general—anger which the scarcely concealed grins of the stockmen only served to intensify. Norah, ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... precisely the nature of the danger in which the readers of such books place them-selves. In those books human frailty is idolized, deeds committed through it are either necessary or excusable, the hair-breadth escapes, and often the tragical conclusion of their story, will often inspire the reader with a salutary terror, it is true; but will that feeling destroy all those tender sympathizing sentiments that were felt while dreading it? Of course this fear is felt by the will, but the ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... that he began his wanderings very early; moreover, that ere, on just principles throwing off the yoke off his king, Israel, on equally excusable grounds, emancipated himself from his sire. He continued in the enjoyment of parental love till the age of eighteen, when, having formed an attachment for a neighbor's daughter—for some reason, not deemed a suitable ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... Newark. When this "sparring partner" came to face Corbett in the imitation ring he was so paralyzed with terror he could hardly move. It was just after Corbett had won one of his big battles as a prize-fighter, and the dismay of his opponent was excusable. The "boys" at the laboratory still laugh consumedly when ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... under their white shaggy brows, lighted with good nature. "You mean, young sir, that you did not think. 'Tis the privilege of youth; make the most of it. Very soon old age will rob you of your freedom, and force you to think, whether you will or no. Your greeting under the circumstance is surely excusable. It is I who should beg pardon, for I have interrupted your study, and I have no excuse; neither my youth nor my occupation will ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... to outbid one another for the very dregs of his wit. Thomas Brabine was but voicing the general opinion when, in some verses prefixed to Menaphon, he wrote, condescending to an inevitable pun, but also to a less excusable mixed metaphor: ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... must be acknowledged, it is more excusable than another, which, I fear, has sometimes had an equal influence on the mind—I mean so great a love of sway, as to induce her to give the preference to a person of weak intellectuals, in hopes of holding, uncontrolled, ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... adjust it to the rest of the poet's work, and this, it must be admitted, is a most difficult piece of business. Never was there a poem so irritating to a critic of the "pigeon-holing" variety. It simply defies him; and yet the instinct which he obeys is so excusable, because in fact so universal, that one feels guilty of something like disloyalty to the very principles of order in smiling at his disappointment. Complete and symmetrical classification is so fascinating an amusement; it would simplify so many ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... then in Princes, whose high estates do require in their countenance, speech & expense, a certaine extraordinary, and their functions enforce them sometime to exceede the limites of mediocritie not excusable in a priuat person, whose manner of life and calling hath no such exigence. Besides the good and bad of Princes is more exemplarie, and thereby of greater moment then the priuate persons. Therefore it is that the inferiour persons, with their inferiour vertues haue ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... recognized and affirmed in the case of Mastin v. Estcott (1841), a child baptized by a layman is validly baptized. It follows, that though Baptism by any other than a Bishop, Priest, or Deacon is discouraged, and is only excusable in extreme necessity, the Sacrament should not ...
— Ritual Conformity - Interpretations of the Rubrics of the Prayer-Book • Unknown
... or allows evil to exist in his soul. And therefore he who deals with the curable sort must be long-suffering and forbearing; but the incurable shall have the vials of our wrath poured out upon him. The greatest of all evils is self-love, which is thought to be natural and excusable, and is enforced as a duty, and yet is the cause of many errors. The lover is blinded about the beloved, and prefers his own interests to truth and right; but the truly great man seeks justice before all things. Self-love is the source of that ignorant conceit ...
— Laws • Plato
... spiritual princes no longer wielded the sword. The manner in which the officers of the princes took possession, the insolence with which they treated the subject people, the fraud and embezzlement that were openly practiced, are merely excusable on account of the fact that Germany was, notwithstanding the peace, still in a state of war. The decree of the imperial diet can scarcely be regarded as the ignominious close of a good old time, but rather as a ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... other at the bedside of the sailor. Towards evening, as they were entering the river which runs up to Littleport, he made decided progress under the skipper's ministrations; and the latter thrust his huge head up the hatchway and grinned in excusable triumph at the mate as he imparted the news. Then he suddenly remembered himself, and the smile faded. The light, too, faded from the ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... and applying it in the present tense, accused the Chief-Justice with saying that "a negro has no rights which a white man is bound to respect." This was certainly a distortion of his exact words and meaning; yet the exaggeration was more than half excusable, in view of the literal and unbending rigor with which he proclaimed the constitutional disability of the entire African race in the United States, and denied their birthright in the Declaration of Independence. ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... Seth again; not a brilliant nor original observation, but, under the circumstances, excusable, for the nonchalant person in the plaid suit was Emeline Bascom's brother-in-law, the genius, the "inventor," the one person whom he hated—and feared—more than anyone else in the world—Bennie ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... gone back again? and that, AFTER the angel had fled through the midst of heaven, preaching the gospel to those that dwell on the earth? (Rev 14:6-10). They that received the mark of the beast at first, before this angel came forth, are when compared with these, excusable (Rev 13:16,17): Wherefore, they are not threatened with that smoking wrath, as are these which are here ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... place, and left out the quotations; but to have done this would have been to avoid shocking people. Of course it is not always easy to be certain whether an audacity is employed with the desire to "ebouriffer le bourgeois" that may be excusable, or with the object of beating the big drum and calling attention, ignobly, to the existence of a work which, but for such means of publicity, might have remained unnoticed. In the case of Salome it is hard to guess to which ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... Fifteenth and early Sixteenth Centuries. It was a fashion eminently satisfactory, a great assistance to the observer. It helped tell the story, and, as these old pictures had always a story to tell, it was entirely excusable—at least, so it seems to one who has stood confounded before a modern painting without a catalogue or other indication as to the why ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... those whom he had called upon to speak during his consulship. Within such narrow limits are the powers of living of even the mightiest throng confined that it seems to me the royal tears are not only excusable but even praiseworthy. For the story goes that when Xerxes cast his eyes over his enormous host, he wept to think of the fate that in such brief space would lay so many thousands low. But that is all the ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... they might arise, and began to plot the means of obtaining more Pottawattamie scalps. Let not the refined reader feel disdisgust at this exhibition of the propensities of an American savage. Civilized life has had, and still has, very many customs, little less excusable than that of scalping. Without dragging into the account the thousand and one sins that disgrace and deform society, it will be sufficient to look into the single interest of civilized warfare, in order to make out ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... better know things twiced before you say 'em for every onced you say 'em before you know 'em.' Then Tapping, he says, was that to point at 'Lethear? And I says yes, though the girl was then young and so excusable. But she may learn better, I says, and made allowance though mistaken...." This is just as good a point for Mrs. Tapping to cease at as any other in the story. In reality Heaven ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... constant, changeful consideration of men and things. How many curious moral variations he had to show!—"vices that are lawful": vices in us which "help to make up the seam in our piecing, as poisons are useful for the conservation of health": "actions good and excusable that are not lawful in themselves": "the soul discharging her passions upon false objects where the true are wanting": men doing more than they propose, or they hardly know what, at immense hazard, or pushed to do well by vice itself, or working ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... decisions can not be correct. Both committees, we are bound to assume are equally honest, disinterested, and competent, because the members of both committees considered in making up a decision such discrepancy of judgment and the system which renders it possible may be almost excusable, perhaps, but in the Fat Stock Show, where we deal so fully in details and exact figures, and where we pretend to use our best efforts in every practical manner to get at and publish for the benefit ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... rate upon this present address, as if I should presume to value a return of this nature equal with your Lordship's deserts, but the design is to let you see that this habit I have got of being troublesome flows from two excusable principles, gratitude and love. These inward counsellors—I know not how discreetly—persuaded me to this attempt and intrusion upon your name, which if your Lordship will vouchsafe to own as the genius to these papers, you will perfect my hopes, and place me at my full height. This was the aim, ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... story Elijah Westlake Bemis is not shown often in a heroic light. Yet he had in his being the making of a hero, for he was brave. And heroism, after all, is only effective reliance on some virtue in a crisis, in spite of temptations to do the easy excusable thing. And when Lige Bemis sneaks through this story in unlovely guise, remember that he has a virtue that once exalted ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... celebrated with all encouragement; and if their vices be not notoriously palpable, let the eye, as it defends its organ, so conceal the object by connivance." But there are cases when even to write satirically against a clergyman may be not only excusable, but necessary:—"The man who gets into the church by the belfry or the window, ought never to be borne in the pulpit; and so the man who illustrates his own corrupt doctrines with as ill a conversation, and adorns the lasciviousness of his life with an equal ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... that was blocking progress. The man had used a simplified quantum mechanics without correction for relativistic effects. That made for neater mathematics but overlooked certain space-time aspects of the psi function. The error was excusable, for Sophoulis had not been familiar with the Belloni matrix, a mathematical tool that brought order into what was otherwise incomprehensible chaos. Belloni's work was still classified information, being too useful, in the design of new ...
— Security • Poul William Anderson
... was just on the point of getting at some idea of it to bewilder him with some new enigma. To her he seemed to be what he was not, simply a sham, a heavy piece of hypocrisy. Formalism and ostentatious piety she recognized as part of the business of a Nonconformist minister, in whom they were excusable, as his grave garb would be, but they seemed insufferably out of place when adopted by a layman and a man of the world, ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... not notice them. Women seemed to be going in and coming out of such places in draggle-tailed processions in those wicked days; but now I only once saw women drinking in a public house. It was a Saturday night, when, if ever, it may be excusable to anticipate the thirst of the morrow, for all through the Sunday idleness it cannot be slaked enough. It was a hot night, and the bar-room door stood open, and within, fronted by a crowd of their loudly talking, deeply drinking men-kind, those poor silly things stood ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... going too far to say that he was ashamed of them for Newman had never had a stomach for dirty work. He was blessed with a natural impulse to disfigure with a direct, unreasoning blow the comely visage of temptation. And certainly, in no man could a want of integrity have been less excusable. Newman knew the crooked from the straight at a glance, and the former had cost him, first and last, a great many moments of lively disgust. But none the less some of his memories seemed to wear at present ...
— The American • Henry James
... intention to take at least some ships into Carlscrona. The fleet, of transports coming from England with the Russian seamen, described in the German papers as a formidable fleet, has also created some alarm among the ill-informed. Harassed and torn as this country has been, it is perhaps excusable that the people should be fearful and nervous to excess, as to the situation of the small remaining resources ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... bold accents, that they have solved problems of which they find the solution imminent, and who, the day after its final elucidation by third parties, proclaim themselves its true discoverers. He must rise above a partiality which deems itself excusable because it proceeds from national pride; and, finally, he must seek with patience for what has gone before. While thus retreating step by step he runs the risk of losing himself in ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... I quite agree with you that it is far more excusable for a Roman to covet wealth than for a Briton; and while I blame many officials and soldiers for the harshness with which they strive to wring all their possessions from my countrymen, I deem their conduct as worthy and honourable when compared with that of Britons who sell ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... Loring felt some difficulty in pitying and forgiving, when he read these lines. "This sort of caprice might be excusable in a woman," he thought. "A man ought really to be capable of exercising some self-control. Poor Stella! And what ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... privy to, are forgotten as soon as they are removed from the senses. The artifices to which so many have recourse to conceal their declining years, are often intended more to soothe themselves, than to impose on others. This aversion to growing old is specially natural and excusable in the celibate and the childless. The borrowed curls, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... masculine incarnation of a young girl was brought about, why Felicite des Touches became a man and an author, and why, more fortunate than Madame de Stael, she kept her freedom and was thus more excusable for her celebrity, would be to satisfy many curiosities and do justice to one of those abnormal beings who rise in humanity like monuments, and whose fame is promoted by its rarity,—for in twenty centuries we can count, at most, twenty famous women. Therefore, although in these pages she stands ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... people of his household, which statement is untrue. I saw him once only give himself up to a transport of this kind; and certainly the circumstances which caused it, and the reparation which followed, ought to render it, if not excusable, at least easily understood: This is the incident, of which I was a witness, and which took place in the suburbs of Vienna, the day after the death of Marshal Lannes. The Emperor was profoundly affected, and had not spoken a word during his toilet. As soon as he was dressed he ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the meanest Part of his Audience, and perhaps too, for that Taste for low Jokes and Punns, which prevailed in his Time among the better Sort. This, I think, was more pardonable in him, when it was confined to Clowns, and such like Persons in his Plays; but is by no Means excusable in a Man, supposed to be in such a Station as Polonius is, Nay, granting that such Ministers of State were common, (which surely they are not) it would even then be a Fault in our Author to introduce ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous
... be excusable in him to tremble," replied Aramis, "for even I feel a shudder at the recollection; hold, just above that tree is the little spot where I ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... what have you saved me?" cried Agatha, as after her thankfulness for the rescued life, came another thought, personal yet excusable. "Had Emma lost the child, I should have felt like a murderess to ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... Protestants, likewise, were excusable if they too placed little confidence in the sincerity of the Roman Catholics. By the treacherous and inhuman treatment which their brethren in Spain, France, and the Netherlands, had suffered; by the disgraceful subterfuge of the ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... these become things inexpressible; and such is your goodness. I was almost sorry to find your servant here this day; because I was loath to have any witness of my not coming home last night, and indeed of my coming this morning. But my not coming was excusable, because earnest business detained me; and my coming this day is by the example of your St. Mary Magdalen, who rose early upon Sunday to seek that which she loved most; and so did I. And, from her and myself, I return such thanks ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... a rule, cause less harm and are less perverse than hundreds of other offences that Nature never dreams of punishing. And this penalty, moreover, is inflicted blindly, not the slightest heed being paid to the motives underlying the actions, motives that may have been excusable perhaps, or indifferent, ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... present century, and of the growth of those social usages which we have come almost to regard as instinctive, is very entertaining and instructive. Barring certain blemishes and a few inaccuracies, which ought to be excusable in a work of such character, Mr. McMaster's two volumes form a very valuable and welcome contribution to our national literature. It was a felicitous thought which prompted him to enter this peculiar ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... [57] It is excusable to use two words for the single verb savoir to bring out the meaning. King Bagdemagus does not "know" as a fact that Lancelot has slain his son, though he fears it and feels almost ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... the collar of his coat and the brim of his hat, almost blinded him. He made a few seconds' stand against the violence of the whirlwind, and then, instead of uttering any exclamation of impatience, which would have been more than excusable under the circumstances, he merely gave vent to a ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... the desert! Monsieur Dumas might indeed be reluctant to accept the flattering overtures of a country which is known to cherish such antipathies to his great ancestor Ham, and all that interesting family; and is quite, excusable for preferring the persecutions of French courts of justice, to the patronage which American law would more fully accord to his books than to his person; but why should not you, my dear Godfrey, become as original in your manner of life, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... true that he was not hurt; it was equally true that he knew that this stranger might have hurt him severely had he chosen to do so, and have been entirely excusable for ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... widely spread. It is not merely the artizan who spends all that he earns, but the classes above him, who cannot plead the same excuse of ignorance. Many of what are called the "upper" classes are no more excusable than the "lower." They waste their means on keeping up appearances, and in feeding folly, dissipation, ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... I am not coming back, you know—it would have been better if I had never seen this corner of the earth. I implore you not to take this as a reproach. All the fault is mine. If I look at your house—your conduct may be excusable, not mine. My fault is very grievous, but perhaps I can overcome it. The fact that we were called away from here is to me, so to speak, a sign that I may yet be restored to favor. Forget the past, ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... king, or to those of his advisers who were of the Cavalier party. The passion of revenge, though properly condemned both by philosophy and religion, yet when it is excited by injurious treatment of persons justly dear to us, is among the most excusable of human frailties; and if Charles, in his general conduct, had shown stronger feelings of gratitude for services performed to his father, his character, in the eyes of many, would be rather raised than lowered by this example of severity against the regicides. ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... read Parkman's works? He was, I think, among the very greatest of the historians, and yet one seldom hears his name. A New England man by birth, and writing principally of the early history of the American Settlements and of French Canada, it is perhaps excusable that he should have no great vogue in England, but even among Americans I have found many who have not read him. There are four of his volumes in green and gold down yonder, "The Jesuits in Canada," and "Frontenac," ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Darwin's work ran more directly counter to the prepossessions of naturalists twenty years ago than this. And such prepossessions were very excusable, for there was undoubtedly a great deal to be said, at that time, in favour of the fixity of species and of the existence of great breaks, which there was no obvious or probable means of filling up, between ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... it is essential that every naval officer to-day should be skilled to handle a ship under sail, because the habit of the sailing-ship educated, brought out, faculties and habits of the first value to the military man. Still, there is something not only excusable, but laudable, in a man magnifying his office; and it was well that my friend the professor should have a slightly exaggerated idea of the bearing of the calculus on the daily routine or occasional emergencies of a ship. What is needed is a counterpoise, ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... as he had only some scruples of conscience, and a thousand interests to sacrifice, he quitted all to follow a man, whom strong motives and resentments, which in some manner appeared excusable, had withdrawn from the paths of rectitude: he adhered to him in his first disgrace, with a constancy of which there are few examples; but he could not submit to the injuries which he afterwards received, and which such an inviolable attachment so little ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... pride, worldly-mindedness, ambition, sensuality, and disregard of God and His laws which is at this hour taught in the Public Schools. This, I am aware, is a grave charge, but it is made with all deliberation and sense of responsibility. Indeed, the ancients were in many respects more excusable than we are. They had but the Old Law, always incomplete and obscure, whilst we live under the fulfilment of the new law, with all its aids and graces. Now, if God did not spare the "Cities of the Plain," if He destroyed the ancient nations in ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... not compiled by Johnson, but by Oldys), a very small part of it relates to the person who is the subject of the book; and, in that, there is such an inaccuracy in the statement of facts, as in so solemn an authour is hardly excusable, and certainly makes his narrative very unsatisfactory. But what is still worse, there is throughout the whole of it a dark uncharitable cast, by which the most unfavourable construction is put upon almost every circumstance in the character ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... sudden strength. That the bow of human nature was by Puritanism bent immeasurably too far, that it overstrained the soul by stretching it to the height of an almost horrible idealism, makes the collapse of the Restoration infinitely more excusable, but it does not make it any the less a collapse. Nothing can efface the essential distinction that Puritanism was one of the world's great efforts after the discovery of the true order, whereas it was the essence of the Restoration that it involved no effort ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... that the infancy of Vivian Grey was distinguished by any extraordinary incident. The solicitude of the most affectionate of mothers, and the care of the most attentive of nurses, did their best to injure an excellent constitution. But Vivian was an only child, and these exertions were therefore excusable. For the first five years of his life, with his curly locks and his fancy dress, he was the pride of his own and the envy of all neighbouring establishments; but, in process of time, the spirit of boyism began to develop itself, and Vivian not only would brush his hair straight ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... celebrated black preacher, three parts drunk, extorting, as Mawworm says, a number of devotees, male and female, all very tipsy, in a most blasphemous fashion, the table being covered with rummers of punch, and fragments of pies and cold meat; but this did not render our conduct more excusable, I will acknowledge. Finally, as a trophy, Percales, who was a wickeder little chap than I took him for, with Longtram's help, unshipped the bell of the conventicle from the little belfry, and fastening it below ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... crown, he must be allowed a prince of great justice, which most writers affirm to have been always unblemished, except in that single instance: for, as to his treatment of the bishops and the Earl of Chester, it seems very excusable by the necessity of the time; and it was the general opinion, if he had not used that proceeding with the latter, it would have cost him his crown. Perhaps his injustice to the Empress might likewise admit a little extenuation. Four kings successively had sat on the throne without any ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... aggressive looking side-whiskers first caught my eye, and a moment later I had taken his hand. Belknap-Jackson at the same time took his bag, and with a trepidation so obvious that his lordship may perhaps have been excusable for a momentary misapprehension. I mean to say, he instantly and crisply directed Belknap-Jackson to go forward to the luggage van ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... righteous course for Felix, namely, to discharge the prisoner. But he yielded to the same temptation as had mastered Pilate, and shrank from provoking influential classes by doing the right thing. He was the less excusable, because his long tenure of office had taught him something, at all events, of 'the Way.' He had too many crimes to venture on raising enemies in his government; he had too much lingering sense of justice to give up an innocent man. So like all weak men in difficult ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... objects beyond those which are presented to us as phenomena, and to stray into intelligible worlds; nay, it does not even allow us to endeavour to form so much as a conception of them. The specious error which leads to this—and which is a perfectly excusable one—lies in the fact that the employment of the understanding, contrary to its proper purpose and destination, is made transcendental, and objects, that is, possible intuitions, are made to regulate themselves ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... attempt to recommend themselves to God, and regain his forfeited favour; whence is it that they are perpetually "going about to establish their own righteousness?" Why do they endeavour to persuade themselves that sin is a trifling concern, or that at least their sins are trivial and excusable? It is obvious, that they form very low and inadequate ideas of the greatness of their debt, and the utter worthlessness of their own merit—they do not realize their ruined and bankrupt condition, nor are they sufficiently persuaded that they have "nothing ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... a going to be angry," she replied a trifle crossly, as perhaps was excusable under the circumstances, carrying out the while, however, what had evidently been her original idea of giving the mite "a good shaking," and thereby causing his small person to oscillate violently to and fro as ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... Her sudden—perhaps excusable—jealousy of Anne Alison, her barbarous dismissal of Anthony, her quite inexcusable failure to give any reason for such treatment, her subsequent enlightenment by Anne herself—there is the skeleton whose dry bones he and she are to pick over—a ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... in tumultuous bands calling out for vengeance, and with loud and fierce cries demanding her instant death. The unhappy queen, surrounded by the ferocious and insolent soldiery, forgot all her former vaunts and intrepidity; her feminine terrors had perhaps been excusable if they had not rendered her base; but in her first panic she threw herself on the mercy of the emperor, accused her ministers as the cause of her determined resistance, and confessed that Longinus had written in her name that eloquent ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... seems far from extravagant to insist that the securing of adequate provision for systematic and long continued research is the most important task for our generation of biologists and the one which we shall be least excusable for neglecting. Indeed, when one stops to reflect concerning the situation, it seems almost incredible that the task ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... philosopher, who is not less masterly in the use of knowledge than unhappy in divination, that the transformation of the highest good into a physical power is merely incidental with him, and due to a want of faith (at that time excusable) in mechanism and evolution. Aristotle's deity is always a moral ideal and every detail in its definition is based on discrimination between the better and the worse. No accommodation to the ways of nature is here allowed ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... be the light," I said, "for I don't feel in the least faint." That was a fib, because when you are as miserable as I was at that minute your heart feels cold and heavy, as though it could hardly go on beating. But I felt that if ever a fib were excusable, that one was. "I'm a little tired, though," I went on. "None of us got to bed till after three last night; and this day, though very nice of course, has been rather long. I think, if you don't mind, Aunt Lil, I'll go straight to my ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... Kate. She was proud of her sister, and loved her, though there was an element of anxiety in the love. But she never thought of her many faults. She felt that they were excusable because Kate was Kate. It was as if you should find fault with a wild rose because it carried a thorn. Kate was set about with many a thorn, but amid them all she bloomed, her fragrant pink self, as apparently unconscious of the many pricks she gave, and as unconcerned, ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... for an opportunity which is almost excusable in one of the unfortunates against whom every man's hand is raised to-day, he had never parted with his thirst for revenge. The moment seemed propitious. It was within his power to lay for Anna ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... is very natural in students of philosophy such as I have described, and also, as I was just now saying, most excusable. ...
— The Republic • Plato
... I hope, appeared, to make the appearance of this little work, at least excusable; what more may be necessary to establish its claim to be read must depend on ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... "Quite excusable," said Starmidge. "I never heard of it myself until Monday. Well—this is all very queer, Mr. Simmons. What does Mr. Polke think? And what's Mr. Polke ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... speaks of Frenchmen. When he says "the average Frenchman dresses," or "thinks," or "talks" in such and such a way, he merely means that so does the normal specimen of a class including only a few hundred thousand men, and those city dwellers, dress or think or speak. The figure is excusable because (apart from the fact that an "average" of the entire population would be quite unfindable) the comparatively small class does indeed guide, rule, and, practically, think for, the whole population. So far as foreign countries ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... a speech of defence which must penetrate the hearts of the judges, a speech full of eloquent, inspiring words about that dignity of man which none should wound with impunity, and about that justifiable wrath which is not only excusable, but even praiseworthy. ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... really ended with that inning, for Scranton made five runs, having a nice little batting bee of their own for a change. In the ninth the visitors got a man on first through a juggle on the part of Hobson on second, though Julius was really excusable, for the ball came down to him with terrific speed, and though he knocked it down he could not recover in time to get it across the infield so as to cut ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... trifle high-pitched it was not out of keeping with her brilliant coloring and dashing manners. Even the thoughtless rebuke of the Gimpke girl seemed excusable from her lips, and Rosie Gimpke looked at ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... enough, but George's next freak was not so excusable. The circumstances of this affair are narrated in a letter from Captain Nicholson, his friend, to George Selwyn; and may, therefore, be relied on. It appears that being at a certain club in Oxford, at a wine party with his friends, George sent to a certain silversmith's ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... young Vine, with excusable taste, And knowing such things for her good were placed, Looked all round the garden with glances chaste For a something her faith to pin to. The fair little wisher had thoughts of her own, Nor cared for the pleasure of climbing alone; To perhaps the same feeling most ladies are prone, ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... in the practice; it is a species of war which we wage with brute animals for their spoils; but if ever it can be considered as excusable, it is in these savage nations, who have recourse to it for their subsistence. They are active, bold, and dexterous in all these exercises, to such a degree, that none of the wild animals they attack ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... professional brother. The most that can be done is to call gentlemen to say what they would have considered reasonable for such services, had they been performed by themselves. Some may testify up to a very high point, from an excusable, though foolish vanity; others to a very low one, from the despicable, desire of attracting custom to a cheap shop.[45] No one can ever have seen such a cause tried without feeling, that the Bar had received by it an ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... they might, in New England, go to Bryant, to Emerson, to Hawthorne; and it is more than excusable that those who were endeavouring to refine the very crude community in the midst of which they were anxiously holding up the agate lamp of Psyche, should see nothing to applaud in the vague and shadowy rhapsodies then being issued by a dissipated ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... means peculiar to China. The Chinese (they say) make physical monsters. We revile them for it and proceed to make moral monsters of our own children. The most excusable parents are those who try to correct their own faults in their offspring. The parent who says to his child: "I am one of the successes of the Almighty: therefore imitate me in every particular or I will have the skin off your back" (a quite common attitude) is a much more ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... a full proof of a general dissemination of knowledge and virtue throughout the whole body of the people. And what object or consideration more pleasing than this can be presented to the human mind? If national pride is ever justifiable or excusable it is when it springs, not from power or riches, grandeur or glory, but from conviction of national ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... the impulses of their nature; when they really need a good fuck the cock-stand will be evident enough; forcing nature only tends to after enervation, and should only be resorted to on some special occasion when one really wishes to prove himself a champion in the arena of Love. Then it may be excusable. ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... observe, quite lacking in that reserve with which young ladies should always treat strange gentlemen and especially those who are not in their own social "set." Slang may be excusable in shop girls or baseball players, but never in the mouth of a young lady with any pretensions to breeding. And the use of "darned" and "dog-goned" is simply unpardonable. Notice, now, the way in which Miss Florence writes the letter after, her mama ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... prove is that the American Moravians, still dazzled by Zinzendorf's "Church within the Church" idea, compelled hundreds who longed to join their ranks as members to remain outside the Church. In Germany this policy succeeded; in England, where a State Church existed, it may have been excusable; but in America, where a State Church was unknown, it was ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... us to move to the upper geyser basin a few miles away, to which he at once assented. I throughly sympathized with his feelings in this matter, but thought that under the circumstances our action was excusable and he doubtless saw through ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... feel that a son to me is of more importance than it is to most men. A strong anxiety on the subject, is, I think, more excusable in me than it might be in another. I don't know whether I ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... only have been one of two things. Either the relative was dead, or had done something awful and disgraceful. Anyhow, the Lovely Lady was so terribly shocked by it that she dismissed her dinner party right away. I don't suppose she felt it right to do it. It was not very polite, but probably excusable under the circumstances!" ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... which has long been sacred to Freedom. There I have seen the Cause of Liberty & of Mankind warmly espousd & ably vindicated; and that, at Times when to speak with Freedom had become so dangerous, that other Citizens possessd of less Ardour, would have thought themselves excusable in not ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... up in preparation for beginning to look over the correspondence manana. It is not the custom to make appointments in Tegucigalpa. If one resident desires the presence of another at dinner, or some less excusable function, he wanders out just before the hour set until he picks up his guest somewhere. By night the town is doubly dead. The shops put up their wooden shutters at dusk, the more energetic inhabitants wander a while about ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... section of it, has conspired to set Mr. Crockett upon an eminence so removed from his fitness for it that he is made ridiculous by the mere fact of being perched there. When Robert Louis Stevenson suffered from the hysteria of praise, the natural feeling was to save an exquisite artist from the excusable exaltations of enthusiasm. When the genuine art and real fun and touching pathos of Mr. J. M. Barrie hurried his admirers into uncritical ecstasy, one's only fear was lest the popular taste should ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... that there was virtue in whiskey; that it was invigorating to a tired man, and he was tempted, under these extremely trying circumstances, to experiment upon the beverage. He would certainly have been excusable if he had done so; but our hero had a kind of horror of the article, which would not let him even taste it. He was afraid that he should acquire a habit which would go with him through life, and make him what Hapgood and others whom he knew were—a torment to themselves, and a nuisance ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... should be doubly careful to take at least a little on your plate and make a pretence of eating some of it, since to refuse course after course can not fail to distress your hostess. If you are "on a diet" and accepted the invitation with that stipulation, your not eating is excusable; but even then to sit with an empty plate in front of you throughout a meal makes you a seemingly reproachful table companion for those of good ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... an academick the greatest part of his life, yet he contracted no sourness of temper, no spice of pedantry, no itch of disputation, or obstinate contention for the old or new philosophy, no assuming way of dictating to others, which are faults (though excusable) which some are insensibly led into, who are constrained to dwell long within the walls of a private college. His conversation was pleasant and instructive, and what Horace said of Plotius, Varius, and Virgil, might justly ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... eagerly by the editor, who was bitterly hostile to the Church—caused a stir in ecclesiastical circles and plunged the unwise lad into a sea of trouble. The essay in general might have been excusable on its distinct merits and the really profound scholarship exhibited in its composition. But when the boy, a candidate for holy orders, and almost on the eve of his ordination, seized upon the famous statement of ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... To-day we have lost our veneration for Latin and Greek as languages, we no longer deprecate an English work because it happens to be in English; nevertheless the tradition still grips us, especially if we happen to be Brahmanic. Our college professors, and many less excusable, still doubt the artistic validity of work in a form never dignified by the practice of the ancients, never hallowed, like much of English literature besides, by a long line of native productions adapting classic forms to new ages ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... consciousness at death no more than the old garment he throws aside at night, intending to put on a new and a better in the morning. To desire to keep the old body seems to me to argue a degree of sensual materialism excusable only in those pagans who in their Elysian fields could hope to possess only such a thin, fleeting, dreamy, and altogether funebrial existence, that they might well long for the thicker, more tangible bodily being in which they had experienced the pleasures of a tumultuous life on the upper world. ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... Jonah. "That excusable mistake was made this morning. My car was stolen and sought for. Your car was found. If you will accompany me to the stables, I shall be happy to restore ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... perfection. Assuredly no great artist was ever a profound scholar. The great artist has other ends to achieve. And every artist, major and minor, is aware in his conscience that art is full of artifice, and that the desire to proceed rapidly with the affair of creation, and an excusable dislike of re-creating anything twice, thrice, or ten times over—unnatural task!—are responsible for much of that artifice. We can all point in excuse to Shakspere, who was a very rough-and-ready person, and whose methods would shock Flaubert. Indeed, the amateurishness ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... Jupille, what are you thinking of? And I a professor, too! Thirty years ago it would have been excusable, but to-day! Besides, Sidonie ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... faultless. It was perfect in its design, but, somehow, many people failed to take note of the fact. It is so with the "many," one finds. The human world is so blind that at times it would be almost excusable to harbour the suspicion that animals see more. There may be something in that instinct by which dogs, horses, and cats distinguish between friends and foes, detect sympathy, discover antipathy. It is possible that they see things in the human face to which our eyes are blinded—intentionally ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... of that purse. In the former sense, the 25,000 folles would be equal to 150,000 L.; in the latter, to five or six ponuds sterling The one appears extravagant, the other is ridiculous. There must have existed some third and middle value, which is here understood; but ambiguity is an excusable fault in the language ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... she grieved at his going away to sea, and much did he blame himself for having often appeared ungrateful for her love and affection. Often in a night-watch did my thoughts recur to Julia Sumner. It was a midshipman's fancy, and perhaps a folly, but it was very excusable, I cannot help thinking even at ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... title of the 'Ecolatre.' There really seems to be as little foundation in fact for the common notion that there was no provision made for the education of the people in France before 1789, as for the notion, not less common, that there were no peasant proprietors in France before 1789. It is hardly excusable even that Mr. Carlyle, rhapsodising more than fifty years ago about the 'dumb despairing millions,' should have fallen into this error. For though De Tocqueville and Taine had not then exploded it in detail, Necker, in whose career Carlyle took ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... nation which stands for dishonesty of another sort (and much more excusable) is Gascon. The Gascons are the natives of Gascony, a province in the south of France. It is proverbial among other Frenchmen that the Gascons are always boasting, and even in English we sometimes use the word Gascon to describe a great boaster, while gasconade is now ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... tender, and loving, and forgiving. He does not punish us because we are ungrateful, and forget Him; but, though what is done in ignorance is excusable, when we know and yet forget Him we are committing ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... yet hurried. She made her smile explain to whoever was looking on that a person was excusable for making this sort of mistake, that it hurt nobody, that one need not and did not care; that she was sure they did not like her any less for it; they would not if they knew how void of offense toward them all was her heart; that having exposed herself to being looked at, she hoped ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... reference to the troubles which his servants gave him, many of which, no doubt, were due to faults of his own, excusable in a man ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... game from this hillock of abstinence—it is not an eminence like those occupied by the twelve and fifteen year boys—looking back at the old game from this slight elevation, it is perhaps excusable for a man who put in twenty years at the old game to set the old game off against the new game and make up a debit and credit account just for the ...
— The Old Game - A Retrospect after Three and a Half Years on the Water-wagon • Samuel G. Blythe
... nay Octauia, not onely that, That were excusable, that and thousands more Of semblable import, but he hath wag'd New Warres 'gainst Pompey. Made his will, and read it, To publicke eare, spoke scantly of me, When perforce he could not But pay me tearmes of Honour: cold and sickly He vented then most narrow measure: ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... tried another prevarication—with better results this time. "You will be the first person she writes to, of course." As that excusable lie passed his lips, his float began to tremble. Here was a chance of changing the subject—"I've got a ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... a good education, shall have made you blush more than once in secret, then your sensibility, through the combats by which you will attempt to vanquish it, will diminish your severity toward others, and their faults will appear more excusable. ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... nicknamed the "Charlie over the water" Scotchmen. It was a sentiment almost entirely literary and picturesque in its origin, built on ballads and the adventures of the Young Chevalier; and in Burns it is the more excusable, because he lay out of the way of active politics in his youth. With the great French Revolution, something living, practical, and feasible appeared to him for the first time in this realm of human action. The young ploughman who had desired so earnestly to rise, now reached out his sympathies ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... going out to dine. Not that Mr. Mahaffy's book can be said to be, in any sense of the word, popular. In discussing this important subject of conversation, he has not merely followed the scientific method of Aristotle which is, perhaps, excusable, but he has adopted the literary style of Aristotle for which no excuse is possible. There is, also, hardly a single anecdote, hardly a single illustration, and the reader is left to put the Professor's abstract rules into practice, without ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... domain of scientific inquiry," it dare not recognize. Nature has taught it this lesson, and Nature is right. It is the province of Science to vindicate Nature here at any hazard. But in blaming Theology for its intolerance, it has been betrayed into an intolerance less excusable. It has pronounced upon it too soon. What if Religion be yet brought within the sphere of Law? Law is the revelation of time. One by one slowly through the centuries the Sciences have crystallized into ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... her the whole story. When I had finished Hephzy nodded understandingly. She did not say "I told you so," but if she had it would have been quite excusable. ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... information concerning the Far East, when so erudite a scholar as Dr. George Miller did not hesitate to affirm that chivalry, or any other similar institution, has never existed either among the nations of antiquity or among the modern Orientals.[2] Such ignorance, however, is amply excusable, as the third edition of the good Doctor's work appeared the same year that Commodore Perry was knocking at the portals of our exclusivism. More than a decade later, about the time that our feudalism ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... I can only say that in style, color and ornament it became her perfectly, and set off the beauties of a face which I had never before thought was more than pleasing and intelligent. Perhaps the anger which was excusable after Toddie's graceless caper had something to do with putting unusual color into her cheeks, and a brighter sparkle than usual in her eyes. Whatever was the cause, she looked queenly, and I half imagined that I detected in her ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... ill-judged theories might be crushed for the evening by the polite sentence, Very likely. At the Cambridge meetings, the trial to the nerves, as Mr. Watson thinks, was even more severe. There was not the spell of common reverence for a great man, in whose presence a modest reticence was excusable. You were expected to speak out, and failure was the more appalling. The contests between Stephen and Harcourt were especially famous. Though, says Mr. Watson, your brother was 'not a match in adroitness and chaff' for his great 'rival,' he showed himself at his best in these struggles. 'The ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... Grey look comparatively reasonable beside this march of Eyre's, Had he had any object in view beyond the one of being the first white man to cross the desert between the two colonies, his actions might have been excusable, but as it was, his trip was bound to be profitless ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... reflect on all the unnecessary hardships and sufferings that were caused by sheer wanton greed. On four different voyages I learnt how terrible it was to be short of provisions and water, and in three out of the four this was preventable. The first case was excusable owing to the long continuance of easterly gales in the chops of the English Channel. Some vessels managed to reach Scilly or Falmouth, but many failed to do so, and we were amongst the many. On several occasions we were nearly able to fetch into ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... but it doesn't make burglary any more excusable. Don't you really think Tim Bolton has got ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
... She tells me that this morning's unpleasantness resulted from a misunderstanding. She says she has deceived you, and she hopes that you will forgive her. I suppose from what she has said that your hasty action was excusable, as you thought her other than she is, and I think that you may now regret it and agree with me that this ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... which is equally fatal to its objects, though they fall with a multitude. Besides, they ought to consider a remark, somewhere made by Cyprian,[36] that persons who sin through ignorance, though they cannot be wholly exculpated, may yet be considered in some degree excusable; but those who obstinately reject the truth offered by the Divine goodness, are without ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... attend the changes of posture during the service. Not unfrequently several canes and as many hymn-books clatter to the floor with each rise of the congregation, because of somebody's nervous haste. Children are often responsible for these little accidents, and of course are excusable, but they should be early taught to observe caution in ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... a system seems perfectly natural to the learned mythologist, and that granting the ancients so much is a very great concession toward this CHILDISH KNOWLEDGE is, of course, quite excusable when we are constantly told, or reminded, that actual science—that is to say, "EXACT SCIENCE," does not date backward more than a couple of centuries ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... occasion, which prompted him to avail himself of the accidental means which were at that instant afforded him of accepting and converting it to the use of the Company."[23] By this account, he considers the act as excusable only by the particular occasion, by the temptation of accidental means, and by the suggestion of the instant. How far this is the case appears by the very next paragraph of this letter in which the account is given and in which the apology is made. If these ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Atterbury, who had encouraged his first efforts; Pulteney, Chesterfield, Argyll, Wyndham, Cobham, Bathurst, Peterborough, Queensberry, who had become friends in later years, receive the delicate compliments which imply his excusable pride in their alliance. Pope, therefore, may be considered from one point of view as the authorised interpreter of the upper circle, which then took itself to embody the highest cultivation of the nation. We may appreciate Pope's poetry by comparing it ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... Daisy always had her fresh egg, which she shared with the Pink, for the Pink had been brought up daintily, and appreciated the tops of fresh eggs. On this occasion Mrs. Dove herself brought up Primrose's letter. Letters came so seldom to the girls that Mrs. Dove felt it quite excusable to gaze very hard at the inscription, to study the name of the post town which had left its mark on the envelope, and lingering a little in the room, under cover of talking to Jasmine, to watch Primrose's face ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... not know it, we ought not to be too severe upon him, when we shall see afterwards that he was a Florentine of the fifteenth century: then on account of his having lived so many centuries after the events of which he writes, it is quite excusable that he should fall into a state of confusion with respect to this rather out of the way matter, though into such a state of confusion no Roman could have fallen on account of his intimate acquaintance with the outlines of his constitution, the customs ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... to protect, and of the Americans, with whom they professed to be friendly, forms one of the darkest pages in the annals of the British in America. Yet they have been much less severely blamed for their behaviour in this matter, than for far more excusable offences. American historians, for example, usually condemn them without stint because in 1814 the army of Ross and Cockburn burned and looted the public buildings of Washington; but by rights they should keep all their condemnation ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... in the English Poets, or the description of Winterslow and its neighbourhood in the "Farewell to Essay-writing," or "On a Landscape of Nicolas Poussin" in the Table-Talk. Read these pieces and nothing else, and an excusable impression might be given that the writer was nothing if not florid. But turn over a dozen pages, and the most admirable examples of the grave and simple manner occur. He is an inveterate quoter, yet few men are more original. No man is his superior in lively, gossiping ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... beautiful young lady, governess to the General's children, having to all appearances fallen desperately in love with the poet at first sight. The only unromantic incident of the day was the customary dinner at the servants' table. Clare's biographer, with excusable warmth, says that his local patrons, however much they might differ on other subjects, held that the true place of a poet was among footmen and kitchen maids. But it should not be forgotten that the noblemen ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... they did still shoot forth again? If a man should dig a pit by the way-side, for some commodity of his own, and thou admonish the travellers to take heed to themselves, if they go that way in the darkness of the night, who would hold him excusable? How then shall they be excused who dig a most dangerous pit, which is like to ruin many souls, and yet will have us to think that they are blameless, for that they warn men to beware ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... man. "Why should Geronimo think himself less exposed to danger than others? That Geronimo should be rash is excusable; but, Mary, you deserve a severe reprimand for encouraging your ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... different countries of the earth I have quitted? If I have not known thy peculiar existence, it is because I have not known either what thou couldst be, where thou couldst be placed, or the qualities which could be assigned thee. My ignorance is excusable, because it was invincible: my mind could not bend itself under the authority of men, who acknowledged they were as little enlightened upon thine essence as myself; who were for ever disputing among themselves; ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... mistaken for her lover. We never came across a brother and sister in real life who ever gave the most suspicious person any grounds for mistaking them for lovers; but the stage brother and sister are so affectionate that the error is excusable. ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... turns out upon experiment to have next to no chance of beating him, one soon gets angry with the big one for "pegging away," even though one may at first have perceived him to be in the right. Such seemed to many English observers to be the condition of the case in America. They were mistaken, but excusable; but for the error in their premise, their deduction would have been correct, or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... think by all I can see there is money to be made here. Heaven knows my heart was never much set on gain, but it is now because it is the road to you. Please tell Will Carlo has been a great comfort to me and is a general favorite. He pointed a rat on board ship—but it was excusable, and him cooped up so long and had almost forgotten the smell of a bird, I daresay; and if anybody comes to make believe to threaten me he is ready to pull them down in a minute. So tell Will this, and that I do think his master is as much ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... excusable. It may be harmless, even beneficial; but it is charming only to the unwise. To affect a spurious ignorance ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... Colson had known. But as her father, although loving her with the mixture of pride and fondness, which her remarkable beauty, her delightful gaiety, and the accident of her being by many years the youngest of his children, rendered natural, if not excusable, had yet been the only one about her, who had discernment to perceive, and authority to check her little ebullitions of vanity and self-will; she felt, as soon as the first natural tears were wiped away, that a restraint had been removed, and, scarcely knowing why, was too soon consoled ...
— The Beauty Of The Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... of applied chemistry, an addendum in a work of this kind is quite excusable. Even while the book is being printed some fact may be announced which the author or editor would wish to insert. In our case this has happened. Very recently there has been introduced in France as ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... assertions which the particular form of writing and publication rendered possible in this case, and for the sake also of the more lively exhibition of the art itself which accompanies and illustrates these assertions in this instance, it appears on the whole excusable to commence our study of the special Art for the delivery and tradition of knowledge in those departments which science was then forbidden on pain of death to enter, with that exhibition of it which is contained in this particular work, trusting to the progress of the extracts themselves to ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... direct to the place appointed to it in Bradshaw, until they have been verbally assured upon the point by two guards, six porters, and a newspaper boy. Nevertheless, Elisabeth's ignorance—though perhaps excusable, considering her sex—was anything but bliss to poor Christopher, and her good-natured carelessness hurt him none the less for her not knowing that ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... at a distance, certainly. The worst of it was that the plaster cracked and peeled off in flakes, and that the four whitewashed legs left visible traces upon everything else they touched. Still, we do not go courting every day, you know, and some little variation from conventional routine is excusable when we do. ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... all my life long been prejudiced against that form of underhand violence which I have heard old men contend came into fashion in our country in modern times, and which certainly seems to be alien from the French character. Without judging others too harshly, or saying that the poniard is never excusable—for then might some wrongs done to women and the helpless go without remedy—I have set my face against its use as unworthy of a soldier. At the time, moreover, of which I am now writing the extent to which ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... to more than one person. It is here, and in parts of the prose, that the reader who has not a very great love for Elizabethan literature and some experience of it, can be recommended to seek confirmation of the estimate in which Greville was held by Charles Lamb, and of the very excusable and pious, though perhaps excessive, admiration of his editor Dr. Grosart. Even Coelica is very unlikely to find readers as a whole, owing to the strangely repellent character of Brooke's thought, which is intricate and ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... his utterances in courtly or diplomatic phrases, they would pass unchallenged, instead of being cited to ridicule him. His mistakes have largely resulted from his impulsive nature coupled with chauvinism, which is, perhaps, justifiable, or, at least, excusable, in a ruler. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... and desperate adventure," said the doctor sternly, "and only excusable on the ground that we have wasted years upon this plantation and are now in a ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... in the bright moonlight, came beneath the trees." This is evidently contrary to Chinese ideas of propriety, for the Classic for girls tells us that a maiden should not go out at night except in company with a servant bearing a lantern. As it was bright moonlight, however, let us hope she was excusable. ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... ye justice, my friends, you are all good company this morning. Mr. Vincent is excusable, because he is in love; and Belinda is excusable, because—because—Mr. Hervey, pray help me to an excuse for Miss Portman's stupidity, for I am dreadfully afraid of blundering out the truth. But why do I ask you to help me? In ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... which the late Rev. Dr. Peabody, as well as myself, is held up to ridicule, for having called Cotton Mather, "Dr." when referring to any thing previous to his having received his Doctorate. Perhaps we were excusable. By usage, such honorary titles, and indeed all titles, are applied retrospectively, running back over the life, indefinitely. The Encyclopaedia Americana, Eliot's Biographical Dictionary, and one of the last ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham |
