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Mitigation   Listen
noun
Mitigation  n.  The act of mitigating, or the state of being mitigated; abatement or diminution of anything painful, harsh, severe, afflictive, or calamitous; as, the mitigation of pain, grief, rigor, severity, punishment, or penalty.
Synonyms: Alleviation; abatement; relief.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Mitigation" Quotes from Famous Books



... alone. Doria had taken a faint turn for the better that morning and Barbara had run down to Northlands for the day. It was just as well she had gone, I thought. I should have a few hours to compose some story in mitigation of the tragedy. ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke

... his own quarters and reside awhile in the studio of the outgoing Tischbein. That slippery man does, it is true, seem to have given out that he would not be away very long; and the prospect of his return may well have been reckoned in mitigation of his going. Goethe had leave from the Duke of Weimar to prolong his Italian holiday till the spring of next year. It is possible that Tischbein really did mean to come back and finish the picture. Goethe had, at any rate, ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... upon persons who may be convicted of offences contrary to the rules of civilized warfare committed during the recent hostilities will be duly carried out, and no alteration or mitigation of such sentences will be made or allowed by the Government of the Transvaal State without Her Majesty's consent conveyed through the British Resident. In case there shall be any prisoners in any of the gaols of the Transvaal State whose respective sentences of imprisonment have been ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... life, are important and probably new ethical conceptions. Nor has Plato forgotten his old paradox (Gorgias) that to be punished is better than to be unpunished, when he says, that to the bad man death is the only mitigation of his evil. He is not less ideal in many passages of the Laws than in the Gorgias or Republic. But his wings are heavy, and he is unequal ...
— Laws • Plato

... the influence of the noble prisoner, felt himself too weak to cope openly with the first Prince of the Blood; and, consequently, the only benefit which Conde derived from the death of the Marechal d'Ancre was a mitigation of the extreme vigilance with which he had hitherto been guarded. The conduct of the Princess his wife was at this juncture above all praise. She had, from the first period of his imprisonment, been persevering in her efforts to accomplish his liberation; ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... even the chaplains, appealed for a mitigation of the extreme penalty. "While he was in command at Winchester, in December 1861, a soldier who was charged with striking his captain was tried by court-martial and sentenced to be shot. Knowing that the breach of discipline ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... his former knowledge of young Babington as a rash and weak-headed youth, easily played upon by designing persons, but likely to take to heart such a lesson as this, and become a true and loyal subject. If he could obtain any sort of mitigation for the poor youth, it would ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... or less servile reproductions of Byzantine types. Still the typical form is found under varying phases; the general tendency in these replicas of anterior originals would appear to be towards the mitigation of the asperities in the confirmed Byzantine formulas. Thus the more recent heads of the Saviour in the churches of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Troitza and Kief, assume a certain modern manner, and occasionally wear a smooth, pretty and ornamental aspect. In these variations on the ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... John Winthrop, but filled his heart, his mind, and his spirit. If, by its influence over any one human being, regarded as an unqualified, unmodified style of piety, demanding entire allegiance, and not yielding to any mitigation through the tempering qualities of an individual,—if, of itself and by itself, Puritanism could be made lovely to us, John Winthrop might well be charged with that exacting representative office. We repeat, that we have no abatement to make of our exalted regard for him through force ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... more faulty is that language as a scientific and convenient vehicle of speech. This will be illustrated in due course: the actual condition of English with respect to homophones must be understood and appreciated before the nature of their growth and the possible means of their mitigation ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges

... interest in the prosaic affairs of everyday life, and became less addicted to looking forward to a solitary, joyless old age. So that, all things considered, this second bereavement was not to be regarded in the light of an affliction absolutely without mitigation. ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent

... cast him out. He would appear as a vulgar murderer who, having failed by falsehood to fasten the guilt upon an innocent man, sought now by falsehood still more damnable, at the cost of his wife's honour, to offer some mitigation ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini

... emblems of a particular mode of life, knowledge alone becomes the cause of one's Emancipation from sorrow, it would appear that the adoption of mere emblems is perfectly useless. Or, if, beholding the mitigation of sorrow in it, thou hast betaken thyself to these emblems of Sannyasi, why then should not the mitigation of sorrow be beheld in the umbrella and the sceptre to which I have betaken myself? Emancipation does ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... suffered a punishment more terrible than any that the relentless conqueror had as yet inflicted on his captured enemies. Others had been mutilated, or beheaded; Saul-Mugina was burnt. The tie of blood, which was held to have aggravated the guilt of his rebellion, was not allowed to be pleaded in mitigation of his sentence. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson

... of nations can meet and decide on the mitigation of the horrors of war, it is certainly conceivable that a tribunal of nations can prevent war. Such a tribunal would in no respect differ from the Supreme Court of the United States in its fundamental ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association

... according to the old proverb, "the spoiled child of fortune:" Mr. Wordsworth might plead, in mitigation of some peculiarities, that he is "the spoiled child of disappointment." We are convinced, if he had been early a popular poet, he would have borne his honours meekly, and would have been a person of ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... Peter had gathered at first that Lady Agnes wouldn't trust herself to speak directly of her trouble, and he had obeyed what he supposed the best discretion in making no allusion to it. But a few minutes before they rose from table she broke out, and when he attempted to utter a word of mitigation there was something that went to his heart in the way she returned: "Oh you don't know—you don't know!" He felt Grace's eyes fixed on him at this instant in a mystery of supplication, and was uncertain as to what she wanted—that he should say something more to console her mother or should hurry ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... to meet it!" answered the friar, savagely. "Be assured that there will be no mitigation of your sentence unless you recant; and then, in her loving mercy and kindness, if you are reconciled and confess, you will enjoy the privilege of being strangled before ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston

... indicated by the records of the Earth's past. That it has had much to do with those larger changes of climate of which we have evidence, seems unlikely, since there is reason to think that these have been far slower and more lasting; but that it must have entailed a rhythmical exaggeration and mitigation of the climates otherwise produced, seems beyond question. And it seems also beyond question that there must have been a consequent rhythmical change in the distribution of organisms—a rhythmical change to which we here wish to draw ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... think themselves excused by the fact that many do worse things with impunity. Any circumstance, the lack or insufficiency of evidence against them or the fact that they are accused of an offence different from the one they have really committed, is seized upon as a mitigation of their guilt, and they always manifest much resentment against those who administer the law. "London thieves," observes Mayhew, "realise that they do wrong, but think that they are ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero

... naturally rough: and a man of a rigorous temper, with that vigilance of minute attention which his works discover, must have been a master that few could bear. That he was disposed to do his servants good, on important occasions, is no great mitigation; benefaction can be but rare, and tyrannic peevishness is perpetual. He did not spare the servants of others. Once, when he dined alone with the Earl of Orrery, he said of one that waited in the room, "That man has, since we sat to the table, committed fifteen faults." What ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson

... took out a bottle and a glass. On the label of the bottle was a kilted Highlander playing on the pipes. A siphon of soda was also in the cabinet, but he left it there. What he had to do would be done more quickly without its mitigation. ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King

... is difficult to conceive of such irreverence in a priest, himself a member of that great order in the Catholic Church; and it is this, if anything, which would show a weakness of the mind. But even here, let us say, not as excuse, but in mitigation of his offense, that only from inadvertence did the Father speak to, or of, his cats by these names in any one's hearing; and there were only two or three people at the mission who knew after what august personages they were called. ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter

... twin-friends, on whom one has to tie five hundred different colored bows (I assure you, Monsieur, the ribbon-florists have this season produced five hundred colors) in order to distinguish one from another! Heaven would not do this cruel wrong without offering some apology—some mitigation. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... principle and object of the bills; but he pointed out certain inconsistencies and anomalies of detail, which were subsequently rectified. The measures were likewise warmly advocated by Lord Brougham, who looked with confidence towards a general and effectual mitigation of the criminal code. Among the amendments which were made by the lords was one changing the term of imprisonment from five to three years, limiting the term of solitary confinement to a month at one time, and to not more than three months in a year, and the taking away the capital ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... on Exmoor. The uphill and downhill of Devonshire scorns compromise or mitigation by detour and zigzag. But here geography is on a scale so far more vast, and the roadway is so far worse metalled than with us in England—knotty masses of talc and nodes of sandstone cropping up ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... belongs, and to the consideration that is due, to members of parliament. With his majesty is the gift of all the rewards, the honours, distinctions, favour, and graces of the state; with his majesty is the mitigation of all the rigours of the law: and we rejoice to see the crown possessed of trusts calculated to obtain goodwill, and charged with duties which are popular and pleasing. Our trusts are of a different kind. Our duties are harsh and invidious in their nature; and justice and safety is all we can ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... colder currents of water always flow to lower latitudes, while warmer ones are running towards polar regions, that some such compensation should take place, and that an increase of cold in one region must to a certain extent be balanced by a mitigation of temperature elsewhere. ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell

... to him? Thus he wandered on, through the whole long morning. Twice he returned to the house, and creeping in through the back door, got himself a glass of spirits, which he swallowed, and again sallied forth, to find if movement would give him comfort, or his thoughts suggest anything to him in mitigation of his sorrows. ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope

... inhabitants some were favourable, many indifferent, and the rest overawed. So nothing memorable occurred in the course of the evening, except that Waverley's rest was sorely interrupted by the revellers hallooing forth their Jacobite songs, without remorse or mitigation of voice. ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... anything more to do with him," said Sir Harry. That was all very well, but as Emily's wants in this respect were at variance with her father's, there was a difficulty. Lady Elizabeth pleaded that some kind of civility, at least some mitigation of opposition, should be shown, for Emily's sake. At last she was commissioned to go to Cousin George, to send him away from the house, and, if necessary, to make an appointment between him and Sir Harry at the Crown, at Penrith, ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope

... really injured Titmouse most seriously, (if not indeed irreparably,) and so provoked the drubbing which had just been administered to him—had quite the contrary effect. Paradoxical as it may seem, matter of clear mitigation was at once converted into matter of aggravation. Were the feelings which Huckaback then experienced, akin to that which often produces hatred of a person whom one has injured? May it be thus accounted for? That there is a secret satisfaction in the mere consciousness of ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... those tears flow: whether from a just sense of your crimes, or only from the apprehensions of your punishment? Why should you delay to humble that haughty spirit, to acknowledge your error, and beg for a mitigation of your punishments? I will myself then plead for you. But remember, if you continue obstinate till the court is broken up, your repentance ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas

... duty to subject you to torture. Reflect that what is done to your body is for the good of your soul and in doing this we are the servants of God. Have you anything to confess in mitigation ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... of Western Europe the introduction of personal military service for the Jews was either accompanied or preceded by their emancipation. At all events, it was followed by some mitigation of their disabilities, serving, so to speak, as an earnest of the grant of equal rights. Even in clerical Austria, the imposition of military duty upon the Jews was preceded by the Toleranz Patent, this would-be Act of ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... said Gwin, in some astonishment, "you two Forbes girls can have nothing to say against Kitty. It cannot injure you in any way that we should plead for the mitigation of ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade

... trials and struggles, but sympathizing spectators, in relation to the stimulation by which it quickens wisdom that watches over the causes of this evil, or by which it vivifies the spirit of love that labors for its mitigation. War stands, or seems to stand, upon the same double basis of necessity; a primary necessity that belongs to our human degradations, a secondary one that towers by means of its moral relations into the region ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... constantly reproached with having become a mere mystic or a hopeless enthusiast. No doubt, he borrowed from his favourite authors some of their faults as well as many of their virtues. Jacob Behmen's most glaring faults in style and phraseology are sometimes transferred with little mitigation to his pages. A person who gathered his ideas of William Law from Wesley's critique would probably turn with impatience, and something like aversion, from one who could use upon the gravest subjects what ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... sisterhood of Valkyries, and Valhalla is to know her no more. Thrown into a deep sleep, she shall lie upon the mountain-top, to be the bride of the first man who finds and wakens her. Bruennhilde pleads passionately for a mitigation of the cruel sentence, or at least that a circle of fire shall be drawn around her resting-place, so that none but a hero of valour and determination can hope to win her. Moved by her entreaties, Wotan consents. He kisses ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... your confession of faith, which I have right here at my hand. The only mitigation of it that I have ever heard of on the part of consistent believers is the saying of Michael Wigglesworth, a famous alleged poet of the Puritan time in New England, when he states explicitly that none of these non-elect children can ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage

... his death, finally, illustrated the genuine humanity of his nature. In September, 1826, although an invalid at the time, he made a journey to Mannheim for the sake of procuring a mitigation of the sentence of a condemned poacher, whose case appealed strongly to his sympathy. His exertions on behalf of the poor man so aggravated his disease that he was soon beyond medical aid. Only his corpse, crowned with laurel, returned to Carlsruhe. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... balance to be struck between the utility and disutility of this patriotic spirit and of its service in the hands of the constituted authorities, it will have to be cancelled out as being at the best a mitigation of some of the disorders brought on by the presence of national governments resting on ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... some of the objects that could have been reached by constitutional means, left its red stream across that early page of our history. But in the midst of all our statements let it be remembered, in mitigation of the attitude of the Canadian authorities, that communication between Ottawa and the West at that period was very difficult. There were no railways nor telegraphs and the mails were few and far apart. Though, on the other hand, that condition ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... policy. He simplified the transit of salt, that essential article of life, to provinces where its production was scanty, and when dearth fell on the land he devoted all the resources of his treasury to its mitigation. His thoughtfulness for his soldiers was shown by sending fur coats to all the soldiers in garrison at Ninghia where the winter was exceptionally severe. A final instance of his justice and consideration may be cited in his ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... length, to a stake, around which the fagots were lighted. Here he was kept in slow torture for a long time, insulted by the gibes of the laughing Spaniards who surrounded him—until the executioner and his assistants, more humane than their superior, despatched the victim with their spears—a mitigation of punishment which was ill received by Alva. The Governor had, however, no reason to remain longer in Amsterdam. Harlem had fallen; Alkmaar was relieved; and Leyden—destined in its second siege to furnish so signal a chapter to the history ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... 13th of November, in the presence of their former comrades, the culprits were sent, in accordance with the terms of their sentence, to render their account to the Almighty. It was the saddest spectacle I ever witnessed, but there could be no evasion, no mitigation of the full letter of the law; its timely enforcement was but justice to the brave spirits who had yet to fight ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan

... totally inexperienced in martial affairs; that he entered upon the undertaking without any previous concert with its chief promoters,—without any preparation of men, horses, and arms, or other warlike accoutrements," was at once an instance of his imprudence and a mitigation of his error.[194] There was, indeed, no doubt but that Lord Derwentwater might have brought many hundreds of his followers to the field, even from one portion of his estate only; for he possessed the extensive lead ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson

... terrors of death, but dreading disgrace, Andre was deeply affected by the mode of execution which the laws of war decree to persons in his situation. He wished to die like a soldier not as a criminal. To obtain a mitigation of his sentence in this respect he addressed a letter to Washington, replete with the feelings of a man of sentiment and honor. But the occasion required that the example should make its full impression, and ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... useless. Why, even you can advance nothing in my defence, and I have myself nothing to allege in mitigation of ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... This would be when I was about ten years old. At a much earlier period, say six or seven, I remember praying earnestly, but it was for no higher object than to be spared from the loss of a tooth. Here, however, it may be mentioned in mitigation that the local dentist of those days, in our case a certain Dr. P. of —— Street, Liverpool, was a kind of savage at his work (possibly a very good-natured man too), with no ideas except to smash and crash. My religious recollections, then, are a sad blank. Neither was I ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... feel of gravel underfoot ought to guide her down the drive to the great gateway; and once outside the park, clear of its overshadowing trees, one would surely find mitigation of darkness sufficient to show ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance

... centres in the Punjab, the United Provinces, and in Bombay. I do not think that anybody who has been concerned in India—I do not care to what school of Indian thought he belongs—can deny that measures for the extermination and mitigation of this disease have occupied the most serious, constant, unflagging, zealous, and energetic attention of the Indian Government. But the difficulties we encounter are manifold, as many Members of the House are well aware. It is possible that hon. Members may rise and ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)

... they make light of the wrath of God as when they are overcome by doubt and cast down by anxious sorrow, and these transgressions aggravate the punishment. The godly, on the other hand, who by faith and devotion keep their hearts erect and near to God, enjoy the beginning of eternal life and obtain mitigation of the general distress. ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various

... interview which he obtained with the king show that he had begun to see more clearly the nature and extent of the offences with which he was charged, that he now felt it impossible altogether to exculpate himself, and that his hopes were directed towards obtaining some mitigation of his sentence. The long roll of charges made upon the 19th of April finally decided him; he gave up all idea of defence, and wrote to the king begging him to show him favour in this emergency.[34] The next day he sent in a general confession to the Lords,[35] ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... behalf of the prisoner, craved to address a few words to the Court in mitigation of sentence. He thanked Mr. Stephens for the considerate and eminently dispassionate manner in which he had outlined the main facts of the case. He had no desire to minimize the prisoner's guilt. But, on prisoner's behalf, ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher

... opinion was found among the people; many wished to decide the question by arms at once, for they were assured it would have to be done some time, and that it would be better to do so then than delay till the enemy had acquired greater strength; and that if they thought a mitigation of the laws would satisfy them, that then they would be glad to comply, but that the pride of the nobility was so great they would not submit unless they were compelled. To many others, who were more peaceable and better disposed, it appeared a less evil to ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli

... manifest that the means to this end is the absolute suppression of the desires. To expand the circle of wants is necessarily to multiply temptations and therefore to increase the number of sins.' No material and intellectual advantages, no increase of human happiness, no mitigation of the suffering or dreariness of human life can, according to this theory, be other than an evil if it adds even in the smallest degree or in the most incidental manner to the sins that are committed. 'A sovereign, when calculating the consequences of a war, should reflect ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... which should never be forgotten—the tale is carried through logically and expresses, with neither paltering nor evasion, George Eliot's sense of life's tragedy. In the other book, on the contrary, a touch of the fictitious was introduced by Lewes; Dinah and Adam were united to make at the end a mitigation of the painfulness of Hetty's downfall. Lewes may have been right in looking to the contemporary audience, but never again did Eliot yield to that form of the literary lie, the pleasant ending. She certainly did not in "The Mill on the Floss": an element of its strength is ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... accident in Sidoarjo, East Java that created a "mud volcano," a tsunami in South Java, and major flooding in Jakarta, all of which caused additional damages in the billions of dollars. Donors are assisting Indonesia with its disaster mitigation and early ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... indeed it be The Irrepressible Conflict! Let it come; There will be mitigation of the doom, If, battling to the last, our sires shall see Their sons contending for the homes made free In ancient conflict with the foreign foe! If those who call us brethren strike the blow, No common conflict shall the invader know! War to the knife, and to the last, ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... extraordinary that the circumstance just mentioned, which was notorious, was not brought forward in mitigation of the damages for the loss of conjugal joys; and which a jury of citizens, with a tender feeling for their own honour, valued at ten thousand pounds. My lord G—— B—— pocketed the injury and the ten thousand,; ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... "the Domestic Institution" is the basis of democratic virtue, the cornerstone of the Republican edifice. Cant, indeed, in one form or other, is the innate vice of the "earnest" Anglo-Saxon mind, on both sides of the Atlantic, and ridicule is the weapon which the gods have appointed for its mitigation. You must lay on the rod with a will, and throw "moral suasion" to the dogs. Above all, your demagogue dreads satire as vermin the avenging thumb—'Any thing but that,' squeaks he, 'an you love me. Liken me to Lucifer, or Caius Gracchus; charge me with ambition, and glorious vices; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... character. For, according as his temper is, harsh or mild, pleasant or grave, severe or easy, the cause should be made to incline toward the side which corresponds with his disposition, or to admit some mitigation or softening where ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser

... revelation, to guide them; and though reason be always one, we cannot wonder that different prejudices and different tempers of imagination warped it in them on such subjects as these, and produced all the extravagances of their theology. The latter had not the excuse of human frailty to make in mitigation of their presumption. On the contrary, the consideration of this frailty, inseparable from their nature, aggravated their presumption. They had a much surer criterion than human reason; they had divine reason and the ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke

... and with sunset came coolness; this was some slight mitigation to their sufferings; sleep too, promised to bring oblivion; and hope, which a merciful Providence has ordained to cast its halo over the darkest hours, told its flattering tale of possible relief on ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... concerning Maslova. I looked carefully through the case, and see that shocking injustice has been done her. It could be remedied only by the Committee of Petitions before which you laid it. I managed to assist at the examination of the case, and I enclose herewith the copy of the mitigation of the sentence. Your aunt, the Countess Katerina Ivanovna, gave me the address which I am sending this to. The original document has been sent to the place where she was imprisoned before her trial, and will from there he probably ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... appears to me a very prudent one; with some mitigation it might be of service, even in our countries. I should very much approve, that all citizens invested with honourable functions, either at court, in the army, in the church, or in the magistracy, should ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... "the President alone."[109] Also, the President's power to dismiss an officer from the service, once unlimited, is today confined by statute in time of peace to dismissal "in pursuance of the sentence of a general court-martial or in mitigation thereof."[110] But the provision is not regarded by the Court as preventing the President from displacing an officer of the Army or Navy by appointing with the advice and consent of the Senate another person in his place.[111] The President's power of dismissal in time of ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... of salt meats, was wont pleasantly to reply, that in the extremity of his fits he must needs have something to quarrel with, and that railing at and cursing, one while the Bologna sausages, and another the dried tongues and the hams, was some mitigation to his pain. But, in good earnest, as the arm when it is advanced to strike, if it miss the blow, and goes by the wind, it pains us; and as also, that, to make a pleasant prospect, the sight should not be lost and dilated in vague air, but have some bound and object ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... Unfortunately this mitigation of family sentimentality is much more characteristic of large families than small ones. It used to be said that members of large families get on in the world; and it is certainly true that for purposes of social ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw

... articles for parlour amusement, such as a solitaire-tray, two packs of "Patience" cards, a race-game, and the like. But the defendant did not allege that these had been sent or accepted as whole or partial quittance of his contract to marry, and I can only suppose that he pleaded them in mitigation of damages. Miss Cox asked for ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... he should not have hesitated about profiting, in his public character, by any information incidentally obtained. He had subjected himself to the severest penalties of military law by yielding to his passion for Ghita; and he could not discover a single available excuse to plead in mitigation. ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... made herself more agreeable to me than most of those about me. For some days my companion-shadow had been less obtrusive than usual; and such was the reaction of spirits occasioned by the simple mitigation of torment, that, although I had cause enough besides to be gloomy, I felt light and comparatively happy. My impression is, that she was quite aware of the law of appearances that existed between the people of the place and myself, and had resolved to amuse herself ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald

... some tannin, and a special bitter principle; whilst, in common with most of the Cruciferous plants, it is endowed with a pungent volatile oil, and some sulphur. The bruised plant has been applied externally for healing ulcers, burns, whitlows, and for the mitigation of swollen piles. ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... "the Major will have promised all the consulates in the service; the Senators will all come to me and refuse to believe me dis-consulate; I shall see all my treaties slaughtered, one by one, by the thirty-four per cent of kickers and strikers; the only mitigation I can foresee is being sick a good part of the time; I am nearing my grand climacteric, and the ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... glance at the board, but indeed there was not a word to be said in its mitigation. It was the crude advertisement of a crude pretentious thing crudely sold. "My dear lady!" he said in his largest style, "I am desolated! But I have said it! ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... it all quite clearly," continued Marjorie. "The General will resent the wrong; Peggy will nurture a fierce indignation. Whatever thoughts of revenge will come to his mind she will ably promote. Have a care to her; her wrath will know no mitigation." ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett

... direct control, yet that it was his intention to lay our Memorial before Congress; and that, in the mean time, we might be assured that no exertions on his part should be spared which could tend to a mitigation ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge

... only mitigation of the sentence was the eternal enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the Serpent, in which the final victory should be given to the former. The rite of sacrifice was introduced as a type of the satisfaction for sin ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... for centuries, and latterly with the French, no public contest has arisen, or does now exist, without fighting its way through every stage of advance by appeals to public opinion. If, for instance, an improved tone of public feeling calls for a gradual mitigation of army punishments, the quarrel becomes instantly an intellectual one: and much information is brought forward, which throws light upon human nature generally. But in Rome, such a discussion would have been stopped summarily, as interfering with the discretional ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... strong and firm grip. From one mouth alone, however, proceeded, amidst a succession of hiccups, the word "transportation," which, when Lord Deilmacare heard, he changed his principle, and joined the old squire in the same mitigation of feeling. ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... disrespect to a superior officer, at which Lord Hood sat as president. The determination of the court was fatal to the prisoner, and he was condemned to death. Deeply affected as the whole body of the midshipmen were at the dreadful sentence, they knew not how to obtain a mitigation of it, since Mr. Lee was ordered for execution; while they had not time to make their appeal to the Admiralty, and despaired of success in a petition to Admiral Rowley. However, His Royal Highness generously stepped forth, drew up a petition, to which he was the first to set his name, and solicited ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - No. 291 - Supplement to Vol 10 • Various

... even seen an annuity distributed to aggravate the muddle with their suggestions would be most presumptuous. It is as little as we can do to abstain. We may venture here only to say a word in mitigation of the deep stain left upon the fair fame of the United States by its management of Indian affairs. The contrast so frequently drawn with the course of things in Canada is not wholly just. It was the French who saved the Canadian Indians from the mere ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... science knows of. (I am talking now of the most modern and heaviest of battles, and of the thick and centre of it; for no men have ever been through a heavier fight than Pozieres.) We can force some mitigation of all this by one means and one alone—if we can give the Germans worse. The chief anxiety in the mind of the soldier is—have we got the guns and the shells—can we keep ahead of them with guns and our ammunition? That means everything. These ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean

... office facilitated reforms, some of which were as yet little anticipated even by the new Secretary himself. The earliest of them, and one not the least important in its bearing on the well-doing of society, the mitigation of the severity of our Criminal Code, was, indeed, but the following up of a series of measures in the same direction which had been commenced in the time of the Duke of Portland's second administration, ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... passed since this had been written, and whilst the evils of private property, so vividly depicted by Mill, showed no signs of mitigation, the remedies he anticipated had made no substantial progress. The co-operation of the Rochdale Pioneers had proved a magnificent success, but its sphere of operations was now clearly seen to be confined within narrow ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease

... as they supposed, to relieve their consciences in any way from the burdens of guilt which oppressed them. The queen herself did not participate in these fears. She ridiculed the absurd confessions, and rebuked the senseless panic to which the terrified penitents were yielding; and whenever any mitigation of the violence of the gale made it possible to do any thing to divert the minds of her company, she tried to make amusement out of the odd and strange dilemmas in which they were continually placed, and the ludicrous disasters and accidents which were always befalling her servants ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott

... if in hope of discovering some mitigation of her sentence, she re-read the short letter, lingering on the last paragraph, which alone contained some ray of comfort, some assurance of the strong love that was at once the cause and the anodyne of their ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... to the slow hand of time to subdue in some measure the grief that swelled her heart. Had she given way to selfishness, she would have sought the free indulgence of her sorrow as the only mitigation of it; but she felt also for her uncle. He was depressed at parting with his wife and child, and he was taking a long and dreary journey entirely upon her account. Could she therefore be so selfish as to add to his uneasiness by a display of her sufferings? No—she would ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... waters, only adds, in the end, to the violence of the torrent: the current must have and will have its course, be the consequences what they may. In cases not quite so decided, absence, the sight of new faces, the sound of new voices, generally serve, if not as a radical cure, as a mitigation, at least, of the disease. But, the worst of it is, that, on this point, we have the girls (and women too) against us! For they look upon it as right that every lover should be a little maddish; and, every attempt ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett

... such a system. I can remember, and others present will remember it too, two or three years of bad fishing, followed by a year of blight, when the man who wrought most anxiously and was honest-hearted could not meet the demands upon him. At such times, if there was no qualification or mitigation of the ready-money system, perhaps the ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... rulers in particular that has now brought all monarchy to the question. The implicit theory that supported the intermarrying German royal families in Europe was that their inter-relationship and their aloofness from their subjects was a mitigation of national and racial animosities. In the days when Queen Victoria was the grandmother of Europe this was a plausible argument. King, Czar and Emperor, or Emperor and Emperor would meet, and it was understood that these meetings were the lubrication of European affairs. The ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells

... the tempus and the locus, Nae pleas in mitigation (a kittle job are they), Nae bonny rapes and reivings, Nae forgeries and thievings,— The days o' my Circuits are a' ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton

... wish us to have corn, although you do wish to live on our corn." In some parts of Germany at harvest the men and women, who have reaped the corn, roll together on the field. This again is probably a mitigation of an older and ruder custom designed to impart fertility to the fields by methods like those resorted to by the Pipiles of Central America long ago and by the cultivators of rice in ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... said, sir, in this House, as I have heard, about an application for a mitigation of my sentence, in a certain quarter, where, it is observed, that mercy never failed to flow; but I can assure the House that an application for pardon, extorted from me, is one of the things which even a partial ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald

... popular tribunal for the capital offence of having deceived the people. His guilt was undeniable, and the Athenians passed their verdict accordingly. But the recollections of Lemnos and Marathon, and the sight of the fallen general, who lay stretched on a couch before them, pleaded successfully in mitigation of punishment, and the sentence was commuted from death to a fine of fifty talents. This was paid by his son, the afterward illustrious Cimon, Miltiades dying, soon after the trial, of the injury which he had ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... dishonour, than the article in the 'Quarterly Review' for July, 1860. (I was not aware when I wrote these passages that the authorship of the article had been publicly acknowledged. Confession unaccompanied by penitence, however, affords no ground for mitigation of judgment; and the kindliness with which Mr. Darwin speaks of his assailant, Bishop Wilberforce (vol. ii.), is so striking an exemplification of his singular gentleness and modesty, that it rather increases one's indignation against the presumption of his ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley

... nature. But the authors of it were not fully aware of its import. They did not understand the dreadful significance of the crucifixion of the Son of God, as we now understand it, in the light of eighteen centuries. Our Lord alludes to this, as a species of mitigation; while yet He teaches, by the very prayer which He puts up for them, that this ignorance did not excuse His murderers. He asks that they may be forgiven. But where there is absolutely no sin there is no need of forgiveness. It is ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... apportionment made. Still there is great room to suppose that the rule agreed upon would, upon experiment, be found to bear harder upon some States than upon others. Those which were sufferers by it would naturally seek for a mitigation of the burden. The others would as naturally be disinclined to a revision, which was likely to end in an increase of their own incumbrances. Their refusal would be too plausible a pretext to the complaining States to withhold their contributions, not ...
— The Federalist Papers

... appeared to do no good; whilst in the larger proportion of 206 out of 234, its use was followed by marked and unequivocal improvement—this improvement varying in degree in different cases, from a temporary retardation of the progress of the disease, and a mitigation of distressing symptoms, up to a more or less complete restoration to apparent health. The most numerous examples of decided and lasting improvement, amounting to nearly 100, have occurred in patients in the second stage of the disease, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various

... judgment. The covering is then withdrawn, and the decision is announced. On one occasion they decreed that a certain man whom they considered in fault was to pay a fine. The unwary litigant, thinking that his case had not been properly heard, began to try to address the judges in mitigation of the sentence. ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street

... Luis; and, of course, I did not lack kindly visits in the stronghold to which I was reconducted. It was found to be entirely useless to attack the sympathy of the tribunal, either to procure a rehearing of the cause or mitigation of the judgment. Presently, a generous friend introduced a saw suitable to discuss the toughness of iron bars, and hinted that on the night when my window gratings were severed, a boat might be found waiting to transport me to the opposite shore of the ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... expectation; we set forward with spirit and hope, with gayety and with diligence, and travel on awhile in the straight road of piety toward the mansions of rest. In a short time we remit our fervor, and endeavor to find some mitigation of our duty, and some more easy means ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... ground of his having inherited a brain of vitiated quality; but, surely, it would not be repugnant to the testimony of science, or the dictates of common sense and common justice, if he allowed this fact to operate in mitigation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... lays. Bright authors of my sadly-pleasing state, That you alone conceive me well I know, When to your fierce beams I become as snow! Your elegant disdain Haply then kindles at my worthless strain. Did not this dread create Some mitigation of my bosom's heat, Death would be bliss: for greater joy 'twould give With them to suffer death, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... moment when Master Florian Barbedienne was reading the sentence in his turn, before signing it, the clerk felt himself moved with pity for the poor wretch of a prisoner, and, in the hope of obtaining some mitigation of the penalty, he approached as near the auditor's ear as possible, and said, pointing to ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... as Clarkson and Wilberforce were philanthropists. His sympathy was too strongly under the control of true political reason. In 1780, for instance, the slave-trade had attracted his attention, and he had even proceeded to sketch out a code of regulations which provided for its immediate mitigation and ultimate suppression. After mature consideration he abandoned the attempt, from the conviction that the strength of the West India interest would defeat the utmost efforts of his party. And he was ...
— Burke • John Morley



Words linked to "Mitigation" :   self-justification, extenuation, alibi, abatement, excuse, moderation, decrease, reduction, palliation, diminution



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