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Palliate   Listen
Palliate

verb
(past & past part. palliated; pres. part. palliating)
1.
Lessen or to try to lessen the seriousness or extent of.  Synonyms: extenuate, mitigate.
2.
Provide physical relief, as from pain.  Synonyms: alleviate, assuage, relieve.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Palliate" Quotes from Famous Books



... exclusively of starch, and poorer in nitrogen, as well as in phosphoric acid, than other cereals, it is less laxative, and is of value as a demulcent to palliate irritative diarrhoea, and to allay ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... take these remedies, Rhus and Apis, the former at night and the latter in the morning. In bad cases, they should be used once in six hours. Applications of Oil of Arnica to the affected parts at night, warming them before a fire, will serve greatly to palliate the sufferings, and frequently effect a perfect cure. The Urtica Dioica will relieve recent cases, immediately, and is one of the best remedies for the chronic affection. It should be taken at the 2d dilution, and the ...
— An Epitome of Homeopathic Healing Art - Containing the New Discoveries and Improvements to the Present Time • B. L. Hill

... they compressed in it. As the said distance of degrees given by them was not true, as would be quite apparent if they brought a good map, and one made some time before, in which their said navigation should be contained, and as they had no just excuse to palliate such contention, they said that they brought the said maps only to locate the Cabo Verde islands, which by the very same map was proved to be contrary to the truth and was not a sufficient excuse, since the said islands were not located on this map, as is evident from the judicial records. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair

... 'Essay on Human Nature;' let them be, as many allege, narrow-minded, hypocritical, and ignorant; we cannot charge them with wrong-dealing in expelling the originator of such open blasphemy, which nothing can be found to palliate, and of which its perpetrator did not appear to repent, rather complaining that the treatment of the Dons was harsh. The act of expulsion was, of course, considered in the same light by his numerous acquaintance, many of whom ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... of the land before him without any effort to palliate unpleasantness. If he chose to stalk about and look glum, she could sit still and call his attention to revolting truths which he could not deny. She could point out to him that he had no money, and that tenants would not stay in houses which were tumbling ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... of his time. And, in truth, if a zealous patriotism, a fiery valor, and skilful leadership are worthy of honor, then is such tribute due to Dominic de Gourgues, despite the shadowing vices which even the spirit of that wild age can only palliate, the personal hate that aided the impulse of his patriotism, and the implacable cruelty that sullied ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... such a case, she blamed herself for having omitted herself to question the confidential clerk, and having left all to Lord Ormersfield, who, cool and wary as he ordinarily was, would be less likely to palliate Mr. Ponsonby's errors than those of any other person. Her heart grew sick as she counted the weeks ere she could hear ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge

... be over seventy," growled Anderson, as if seeking for some excuse to palliate his restraint. "I'm mad—but it was funny." The working of his face finally set in the ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey

... social system. I am sure no theory can be correct which a mother is not willing for her daughter to practice. Decent women should not live with licentious husbands in the relation of wife. As society is now, good, pure women, by so living, cover up and palliate immorality and help to violate the law of monogamy. Women must take the social helm into their own hands and not permit the men of their own circle, any more than the ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... broad lands would be swallowed up in the costs of sale, or that a greedy tribe of expert middlemen would in days to come bleed Maori and settler alike. Yet it would have been but reasonable for the Colonial Office to exert itself to palliate the effects of the staggering blows it thus dealt the pioneer colonists of New Zealand. They were not all land-sharks; most of them were nothing of the sort. It was but natural that they felt with extreme ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... entirely excuse him for remaining in office at His Majesty's entreaty to pursue a course of colonial policy which his reason and his conscience disapproved. This was a political fault, which no circumstances can palliate. Others have done worse, no doubt, from meaner motives; but the mere desire of serving the King does not absolve the Minister from censure for having acted contrary to his own convictions on a question of such ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... But there is one misdeed, one which outweighs all others whatsoever—a crime which it is useless to palliate, let our other friend say what he pleased; and Reineke himself felt it so. It sate heavy, for him, on his soul, and alone of all the actions of his life we are certain that he wished it undone—the death and eating of that poor foolish Lampe, the hare. It was a paltry revenge in Reineke. ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... decency, charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny,'" said John savagely. "Quite so, Mrs. Goddard. I shall not attempt to palliate it, nor will I ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford

... accused him to herself vehemently of a sin over and above those sins which had filled Alice with dismay. He had demanded money from the girl whom he intended to marry! According to Kate's idea, nothing could excuse or palliate this sin. Alice had accounted it as nothing,—had expressed her opinion that the demand was reasonable;—even now, after the ill-usage to which she had been subjected, she had declared that the money should be forthcoming, and given ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... not merely to palliate as is so often done by practitioners in dealing with these distressing maladies. We do not prescribe coca mixtures, whiskey, malt extracts, so-called celery compounds or other nerve stimulants, which only spur the already weakened ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... is only intended to authorize the manner in which I have treated a life far more extraordinary than any of those he has transmitted to us. It is my part to describe a man whose inimitable character casts a veil over those faults which I shall neither palliate nor disguise; a man distinguished by a mixture of virtues and vices so closely linked together as in appearance to form a necessary dependence, glowing with the greatest beauty when united, shining with ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton

... or palliate to me, dearest Tom," replied Mary; "my eyes have been opened, too late it is true, but they have been opened; and although it is kind of you to say so, I feel the horrid conviction of my own guilt. See what misery I have brought about. There is a father who has sacrificed his youth and ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... to soften or palliate the fact, that nothing would reconcile Miss Templeton and her sister to such a marriage; that her brother's character was regarded by them with abhorrence; that their cherished brother should marry the sister of a billiard-marker—a mere adventurer and gambler—was utterly impossible; and Leah's ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... exertions would be shared by others, whether equally or unequally making them, and that the exertions of others would equally avail him, notwithstanding a deficiency in his own. Skilful arrangements might palliate this tendency, but it would be difficult to counteract ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson

... sudden access of courage, born possibly of her despair, she sought neither to attempt denial nor palliate the fact. ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green

... she indignantly. "You would palliate your unfaithfulness, represent your fickleness of mind as magnanimity! But I hear only one thing in your words—you give me up, you ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... horrid transaction, the French court endeavoured to palliate it by forms of law. They pretended to justify the massacre by a calumny, and accused the admiral of a conspiracy, which no one believed. The parliament was commanded to proceed against the memory of Coligni; and his dead body was hung in chains ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... knew it. The disease had taken on a form that usually baffles the skill of our most eminent physicians, and Dr. Hillhouse saw little chance of anything but a fatal termination. He could do nothing except to palliate as far as possible the patient's intense suffering and endeavor to check farther complications. But he ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur

... hear. Ah! I am but a poor broken man, liable, as you have seen, to fits of madness and extravagance. You shall hear everything. And listen,—as a witness that I shall speak truth, I will say my say before the face of Hiero Glyphic yonder, and upon the steps of his altar! See, I desire neither to palliate nor falsify. ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... despoiled Condition (as these Men deem it) be the immediate Work of Creation itself, or the Effect of Adam's Sin, and Abuse of his intellectual Powers. We are what we are by Necessity, strict Necessity: and though it may be called moral Necessity, in order to palliate and distinguish it from that which is natural; it operates on us, to all Intents and Purposes, equally the same; and the giving it a milder Name, looks like a sophistical Artifice. If Man's Nature be impaired by the Act of another, God, as a just and good ...
— Free and Impartial Thoughts, on the Sovereignty of God, The Doctrines of Election, Reprobation, and Original Sin: Humbly Addressed To all who Believe and Profess those DOCTRINES. • Richard Finch

... Kitchener). Now, Mr Prater was one of the most sportsmanlike of masters. If he had merely met Harrison out of bounds, and it had been possible to have overlooked him, he would have done so. But such a proceeding in the interior of a small shop was impossible. There was nothing to palliate the crime. The tobacconist also kept the wolf from the door, and lured the juvenile population of the neighbourhood to it, by selling various weird brands of sweets, but it was only too obvious that Harrison was not after these. Guilt was in his eye, and the packet of cigarettes in ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse

... birth itself was an ordeal of degrading personal compulsion, whose gratuitousness nothing in the result seemed to justify, and at best could only palliate. ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... vanities, with the little interludes of wisdom; these have been the occupations of my manhood; these will furnish forth the materials of that history which is now open to your survey. Whatever be the faults of the historian, he has no motive to palliate what he has committed nor to conceal what ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... subjects, nor strips them of their last rag and turns them out to shiver in the road. The despotism of Louis XVI. was not the despotism of Philippe le Bel, or of Nadir Shah, or of Caligula; but it was bad enough to justify the French Revolution, and to palliate even its horrors. If an appeal be made to the intense attachments which exist between wives and their husbands, exactly as much may be said of domestic slavery. It was quite an ordinary fact in Greece and Rome for slaves to submit to death by torture rather than betray their masters. In the proscriptions ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill

... Darrow was all attention. He would be delighted to show it. Suppose they make a practical test of it by playing a game. This they did and Maitland played superbly, but he was hardly a match for the old gentleman, who sought to palliate his defeat by saying: "You play an excellent game, sir; but I am a trifle too much for you on my own ground. Now, if you can spare the time, I should like to witness a game between you and my daughter; I think you will be ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy

... of the crew on deck, and he soon understood the whole matter. He was very severe upon Cleats for leaving the deck, declared that he could not be trusted, and that he should be discharged. The latter was very humble, acknowledged his error, and made no attempt to palliate it. He had always been faithful, so far as was known, and probably had never been guilty of any graver offence than that of leaving the deck for a few minutes during his watch. But he had been expressly cautioned not to do this, and had sent a hand below for his ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic

... the battle took place. He said also to the same person, that when he found them hesitating in the presence of the enemy, he "burst into a passion," called them cowards, and dashed into the river as before narrated. If this account be true, it may somewhat palliate, but certainly not justify ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley

... the relationship between these two plays there always seemed to be something which needed explanation. It was the only instance among the works of Shakspeare in which a direct copy, even to matters of detail, appeared to have been made; and, in spite of all attempts to gloss over and palliate, it was impossible to deny that an unblushing act of mere piracy seemed to have been committed, of which I never could bring myself to believe that Shakspeare had been guilty. The readiness to impute this act to him was to me but an instance of the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various

... too long to dwell particularly on the punishments inflicted by the Court of Star-chamber in this reign. Such historians as have not written in order to palliate the tyranny of Charles, and especially Rushworth, will furnish abundant details, with all those circumstances that portray the barbarous and tyrannical spirit of those who composed that tribunal. Two or three instances are so celebrated that I cannot pass them over. Leighton, a Scots divine, having ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... more, Miss Walton," said he, his face distorted by an expression of intense self-loathing. "Do not try to palliate my course. I would much rather you would call my cowardly selfishness and lack of principle by their right names. The best thing I can do for the world is to get out of it, and from present feelings, this 'good- riddance' will soon occur. Will you excuse me if I sit down?" and he sank ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... palliate not my wound; When you have argued all you can, 'tis incest. No, 'tis resolved: I charge you plead no more; I cannot live without Almeyda's sight, Nor can I see Almeyda, but I sin. Heaven has inspired me with a sacred thought, To live alone to ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... I champion a bad cause and seek to palliate what is inexcusable. As we travel about the world on our way through life we meet and pass here and there, in peace or in war, other men, fellow-travellers: and sometimes there is no more than time for a glance, eye to eye. And in that glance you see the sort of man: and chiefly there ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany

... sought to escape; crept out into the back yard; tried to scale the wall; fallen back exhausted; and been found at morning on the stones in a dying state. But though there was some evidence of cruelty, there was none of murder; and the aunt and her husband had sought to palliate cruelty by alleging the exceeding stubbornness and perversity of the child, who was declared to be half-witted. Be that as it may, at the orphan's death the aunt inherited her brother's fortune. Before the first wedded year was out, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... man and no cause to escape the undying penalty which history has the power to inflict on wrong 90. The plea in extenuation of guilt and mitigation of punishment is perpetual. At every step we are met by arguments which go to excuse, to palliate, to confound right and wrong, and reduce the just man to the level of the reprobate. The men who plot to baffle and resist us are, first of all, those who made history what it has become. They set up the principle that only a foolish Conservative judges the present time with the ideas ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... who was the host of his assailants, and with whom they were previously on the most friendly relations, it was an act of treachery, and reflects dishonor upon the fame of Cortez. At the same time, the position occupied by the Spaniards was so strange, and even desperate, as to palliate, though it cannot excuse, such a ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty

... above you, that you may see their EVERY-DAY character, manners, habits, etc. One must see people undressed to judge truly of their shape; when they are dressed to go abroad, their clothes are contrived to conceal, or at least palliate the defects of it: as full-bottomed wigs were contrived for the Duke of Burgundy, to conceal his hump back. Happy those who have no faults to disguise, nor weaknesses to conceal! there are few, if any such; ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... I palliate, what I cannot defend, my behaviour while I overheard you and your aunt? In vain do I plead that I was asleep, when you came into the coach; and that I first discovered you by the sound of your voice and the turn of the conversation; that I dreaded exciting any sudden alarm ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... vitality as they cannot be painted from the outside. He must see his creatures as well as hear them; and he must know always what they are doing and how they are looking when they are speaking. He cannot comment on them or explain them, or palliate their misdeeds. He must project them outside of himself; and he cannot be his own lecturer to point out their motives. He must get on without any attempt to point out the morality of his work, which remains implicit ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews

... be very strictly subordinated to the sense of honour and fair play. The book-making spirit has undoubtedly entered far too largely into many of the most characteristic of British sports, and I have no desire to palliate or excuse our national shortcomings in this or other respects. But the hard commercial spirit to which I have alluded seems to me to pervade American sport much more universally than it does the sport of England, and to form almost always a much ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead

... appropriateness to the old comedy, as a work of defined art, of allusions and descriptions, which morality can never justify, and, only with reference to the author himself, and only as being the effect or rather the cause of the circumstances in which he wrote, can consent even to palliate. ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge

... citizens, was in itself sufficient to ruin the prosperity of every Italian town. This law operated continually and unobservedly and resulted in placing,[25] year by year, a still larger quantity of the soil of Italy in the hands of the Roman aristocracy. In order to palliate the evils of conquest or at least to hide their conditions of servitude, the Romans had accorded to a part of the Italians the title of allies, and to others the privileges of municipia.[26] These privileges were combined in a very skillful manner in the interest of Rome, but ...
— Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic • Andrew Stephenson

... as a reminder that George Sand in her love affairs was always the man. She treated Chopin as a child, a toy, used him for literary copy- -pace Mr. Hadow!—and threw him over after she had wrung out all the emotional possibilities of the problem. She was true to herself even when she attempted to palliate her want of heart. Beware of the woman who punctuates the pages of her life with "heart" and "maternal feelings." "If I do not believe any more in tears it is because I saw thee crying!" exclaimed Chopin. Sand ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... particularly into the story of Cosmo the Third's wife, of whom I had read much in French Memoires; and into that of John Gaston, which was so fresh when I was at Florence; but as the author, in spite of the Great Duke's injunctions, has tried to palliate some of the worst imputations on Cosmo and his son Ferdinand, so he has been mighty modest about the Caprean amours of John Gaston and his eldest brother. Adieu! I have been writing a volume here myself. Pray remember to ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole

... and he went on just the same at cards. However, he never blamed his companions, or lost his temper when his plan of action was defeated. He certainly talked incessantly, but it was always to explain or to palliate some point in the game, and the eternal repetitions, delivered in the same eloquent and persuasive tone, provoked a ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds

... not deny, that after losing his senses upon the occasions, and in the manner to be afterwards stated, he may have committed improprieties which fill him with sorrow and regret: but he hopes, that in case he shall be able to show circumstances which abridge and palliate the guilt of his imprudent excess, the Venerable Court will consider these improprieties as the effects of that excess only, and not as arising from any radical vice in his temper or disposition. When a man is bereft of his judgment by the influence of ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... as if she would have done the same, but stood gazing at the young monkey before her, wondering whether he was deserving of her sympathy, or had really misbehaved himself, and was trying to palliate his conduct. ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn

... Djiaffer Pacha, had formerly shown me much kindness on my arrival at Souakim, during my first journey in Africa. I had therefore reckoned upon him as a friend; but no personal considerations could palliate the secret hatred to the ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... palliate, wrote very frankly. "Look, my Lord," he said to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, "upon the country near Boston. It is all fortification." His mathematics has been already quoted; he adds that the army had nothing for transport in an active campaign of any duration. ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French

... "Do not try to palliate your conduct, Gascoyne," said Mr Mason, earnestly. "The blackness of your sin is too great to be deepened or lightened by what men may have said of you. You are a pirate. Every pirate ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne

... own that Free Trade has been a failure. "In the House of Commons on March 12th, 1906, Mr. P. Snowden, M.P., said: 'Sixty years of Free Trade had failed to mitigate or palliate to any considerable extent the grave industrial and social evils which Free Traders and Protectionists alike were compelled to admit. Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman had admitted them when he said that 30 per cent. of our population were on the verge ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... redress by constitutional means. The long sanction they have received from the proper authorities and from the people, not less than the unexampled growth and increasing prosperity of so many millions of freemen, attest that no such oppression as would justify, or even palliate, such a resort can be justly imputed either to the present policy or past ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson

... first sputtering of its fuse, the old negress clasped him to her breast and rushed out of harm's way. It was not an exhibition of which a Fearless Firer might have been proud, nor did the screams of laughter greeting it serve to palliate his anger. But it was neither fun nor anger with Aunt Timmie. Her mind was a torment of fear lest he be maimed for life. Since early morning she had employed every art, every diplomatic ruse in which her race is ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris

... There is always something pathetic to me in the fables historians invent to excuse or palliate, or, perhaps it would be juster to say, make tolerable, the stained pages of the past. It is brought doubly nearer and distinct by this miserable war, and the strange fate that has fallen upon us—to be the guests of ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... that otherwise is inexplicable, but we may understand why so much and such resplendent poetry is lavished on incidents so bare, meagre, and commonplace, and why they present both poet and patron with frailties and faults naked and repellant; and we can the better palliate and forgive the weakness and subjection which the Sonnets indicate on the part of their author. With such a reading the Sonnets become a chronicle of the modes and feelings of their author, resembling in this respect the In Memoriam of ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson

... sovereignty, whom her Poet crowns with his choicest graces, on whom he devolves the task of prefacing this so critical, and, one might think, perhaps, perilous exhibition. But her description does not disguise the matter, or palliate its extremity. ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... been little more than the quotation of his own confession. His tremulously susceptible nature, especially assailable by the delights of sense, led him astray. There are traces in his life of occasional craft and untruthfulness which even the exigencies of exile and war do not wholly palliate. Flashes of fierce vengeance at times break from the clear sky of his generous nature. His strong affection became, in at least one case, weak and foolish fondness for ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren

... productions, and amongst the rest a Life of Napoleon, which is perhaps one of the most impartial extant, and very interesting, as containing a sort of recapitulation of facts, without any endeavour to palliate such of his actions as stern justice must condemn. M. Mignet has also chosen the path of history, and has not followed it unsuccessfully; the foundation of his present prosperity consisting entirely in his writings, ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve

... he now began to wish that the punishment would be light. His confidence that Jim needed only to be pushed a little to confess was somewhat shaken, and the charge was really serious. He felt a desire to explain, to palliate, ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson

... letter is not the manoeuvre of the needy, sharping author, fastening on those in upper life, who honour him with a little notice of him or his works. Indeed, the situation of poets is generally such, to a proverb, as may, in some measure, palliate that prostitution of heart and talents, they have at times been guilty of. I do not think prodigality is, by any means, a necessary concomitant of a poetic turn, but I believe a careless indolent attention to economy, is almost inseparable ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... Gall possessed most of the social virtues, particularly beneficence and good-nature—qualities, he observes, precious in all ranks of society, and which ought to make amends for many defects; but for Gall, they had only to palliate a certain roughness of character, which might wound the susceptibility of delicate persons, although the sick and unfortunate never had to complain; and, indeed, the doctor ought, in strict justice, to have more merit in our ideas, from never having once lost sight, in his writings, of either decency ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various

... was ever invented which stopped a case of acute articular rheumatism. It cannot be stopped by bleeding, or sweating, or purging, by niter, by tartar emetic, by guaiacum, by alkalies, by salines, by salicylic acid, or by anything else. The physician can palliate the pain and perhaps shorten the attack, can control and perhaps prevent complications and stiffness of the joints, but he cannot arrest the disease. Where rest, proper diet, and warmth are enjoined, most cases will get well just as soon without as with the use of medicinal ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various

... nineteen propositions we see very little to blame except the articles against the Catholics. These, however, were in the spirit of that age; and to some sturdy churchmen in our own, they may seem to palliate even the good which the Long Parliament effected. The regulation with respect to new creations of Peers is the only other article about which we entertain any doubt. One of the propositions is that the judges shall hold their offices during good behaviour. To ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... a long reply, the purport of which was that many of the reprisals were bogus, many were actions undertaken in self-defence, while the rest were generally due to men "seeing red" after their comrades had been brutally murdered. The Government did not palliate such cases, and had instituted inquiries and taken disciplinary action against the offenders, when known; but they were not prepared to set up a public inquiry such as Lord CREWE had demanded. It would only substitute "a competition ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various

... Norah tried hastily to palliate Vladimir's misdeed in their eyes, but it is doubtful whether they heard her. The Major's fury clothed and reclothed itself in words as frantically as a woman up in town for one day's shopping tries on a succession of garments. He reviled and railed at fate and the general scheme of things, he pitied ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)

... and base in his treatment of her? And yet she recoiled from the application of such hard terms by another to Philip, by a cool-judging and indifferent person, as she esteemed Jeremiah to be. From some inscrutable turn in her thoughts, she began to defend him, or at least to palliate the harsh judgment which she herself had ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell

... the sight of God he was a murderer made Blair collapse during the day. He was confined to his room; and it was then that he told the Fort Benton physician all that was haunting him, hour by hour. Blair did not attempt to palliate his sin, and although the doctor had known much and suspected more, he could hardly find it in his heart to forgive either Winifred's brother or the woman who had led him on. The only ray of mercy he felt was that matters were not so bad as he had feared between ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman

... determined to be about the year 754 before Christ. As to Romulus himself, the tradition is that he was but eighteen or twenty years old when he commenced the building of it. If this is true, his extreme youth goes far to palliate some of the wrongs which he perpetrated—wrongs which would have been far more inexcusable if committed with the deliberate purpose of middle life, than if prompted by the unthinking impulses ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... dread, of being dragged in chains to the court of Milan or Constantinople, to defend his life and fortune against the malicious charge of these privileged informers. The ordinary administration was conducted by those methods which extreme necessity can alone palliate; and the defects of evidence were diligently supplied by the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... antipathy of the nation is such, that their passions being once fully excited, they will proceed to such acts of reprisal and mutual violence, as will occasion clamors and altercations, which no soft words can palliate. As I pretend to know something of the counsels of both nations, I know there are strong advocates for war in both. The more reasons they have to produce in favor of their system, the sooner ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various

... deceives us a little sometimes, so that David's dictum hardly needs his apology of haste, it is a comfort to remember that many lies are not downright, but sympathetic; and an understanding of their nature, if it does not palliate them, may put us on our guard. Sympathetic we think a better name than the unfortunate title of white, which was given them by Mrs. Opie, because that designation carries a meaning of innocence, if not even of virtue; and instead of protecting our virtue, may even expose us to practise ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... their fathers were left to bleach upon the fields. And when exasperated by the brutality of their conquerors, and driven to deeds of vengence, there was very little appreciation of the motives which influenced them, and no attempt was made to palliate their cruelties. ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson

... understood the danger he was in, he immediately sent a galley with messengers to demand him of Dionysius; alleging that he stood engaged for his safety, upon the confidence of which Plato had come to Sicily. Dionysius, to palliate his secret hatred, before Plato came away, treated him with great entertainments and all seeming demonstrations of kindness, but could not forbear breaking out one day into the expression, "No doubt, Plato, when you are at home among the philosophers, your companions, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... the recognition of the fact, seeking miserably to palliate and excuse it. When she had given Garth that impetuous assurance of her confidence, she had not, in her crudest imaginings, dreamed of anything so hideous and ignoble as the actual truth had proved to be. Vaguely, she had deemed him outcast for some big, reckless sin that by the splendour ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... he laid his hand very kindly on the boy's shoulder, "you must remember that the injustice came from you—no one would have doubted you if you had not first accused yourself! I had my doubts always, but I did not know enough to understand. You told a lie; nothing can palliate or do away with that! No motives can make a lie anything but a lie, and a lie is always a cowardly thing, whether we try to shield ...
— Brave and True - Short stories for children by G. M. Fenn and Others • George Manville Fenn

... Kenilworth some hundreds of oxen, in perpetual danger of being "sniped "; and the populace argued (not unreasonably) that to force on us irrational rations was in the circumstances a callous thing. There were doubtless considerations to palliate this procedure on the part of the Protector, but we would not see them. The cattle were there in sufficient numbers to feed us until relief arrived. True, relief appeared to be remote, but our view was that (if a calamity ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... served with tickets was endured, a traveler found fault in good Saxon English as to the stupidity of such delay about trifles, and also complained of having been robbed of some small article of luggage. Another Englishman, particularly disposed to palliate matters, said there must be some mistake about it; he had been here before, and the people of Burgos were proverbially honest. By and by a great excitement was apparent on the platform, when it came to light that the apologist and indorser of the good people here was declaring that a leather ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... this by an example—it has been known to happen that nations have been told to their faces that they did not require as much freedom as many other nations do. This statement might, indeed, be dictated by forbearance and a desire to palliate, the true meaning being that they were utterly unable to endure so great freedom and that only a high degree of rigidity could prevent them from destroying one another. If, however, the words are taken as they are spoken, they are true under the presupposition that such a nation is entirely incapable ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... European colonies. Of consequence the trade itself, were it possible to suppose convicts or prisoners of war to be justly sentenced to servitude, is accountable for ninety-nine in every hundred slaves, whom it supplies. It an insult to the publick, to attempt to palliate ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson

... and voice recovered their usual briskness: he shook her heartily and gratefully by the hand, and entered on the subject in a manner to prove, that he now only wanted time and persuasion to think the engagement no very bad thing. His companions suggested only what could palliate imprudence, or smooth objections; and by the time they had talked it all over together, and he had talked it all over again with Emma, in their walk back to Hartfield, he was become perfectly reconciled, and not far ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... prominent and moving character. There can be no question but that Boito ("Tobia Gorria" is but an anagramatic nom de plume of Arrigo Boito) was highly successful in remodeling the tragedy for operatic purposes, but he did not palliate its moral grossness or succeed in inviting our compassionate feelings for anyone entitled to them. The only personages who in this opera escape disaster are a pair of lovers, whose sufferings, as depicted or inferred, cannot be said to have refined the guilt ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... enlarge upon the enormity of the design. The most prominent impression in his mind evidently was that we were acting a base and treacherous part in deserting his party, in what he considered a very dangerous stage of the journey. To palliate the atrocity of our conduct, we ventured to suggest that we were only four in number while his party still included sixteen men; and as, moreover, we were to go forward and they were to follow, at least a full proportion of the perils he apprehended ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... continued until reason shall be convinced; until prejudice shall be overcome by the power of conviction; until men are constrained, from very shame, to withdraw from a position which no argument, no experience can justify, which no consideration of decency will palliate. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... transaction took the shape of a formal permission for the King of France to exercise all the rights of sovereignty over all the places and harbors of Corsica, as security for debts owing to him by the republic. This cession, disguised under the form of a security in order to palliate the aggrandizement of France in the eyes of Austria and England, recalls the conditional and thinly veiled surrender of Cyprus to England nine years ago,—a transfer likely to be as final and far-reaching as that of ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan

... answered he, composedly. "It is, however, justifiable in its place, although to me it signifies nothing, who know too well that you did commit both crimes, in your own person, and with your own hands. Far be it from me to betray you; indeed, I would rather endeavour to palliate the offences; for, though adverse to nature, I can prove them not to be so to the cause of pure Christianity, by the mode of which we have approved of it, and which ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg

... social excess as may happen without much moral blame; and recollected that some physicians maintained, that a fever produced by it was, upon the whole, good for health: so different are our reflections on the same subject, at different periods; and such the excuses with which we palliate what we know ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask

... never dispense with the renown which the praises of the Patriarch of Incredulity gave to him. Catherine II. of Russia kept up a close correspondence with him; his expressions to her were confiding, even tender. She required that trumpet to celebrate her exploits, and palliate the crimes committed in the pursuit of her ambition. 'My Catau (his name for the Empress) loves the philosophers, her husband will suffer for it with posterity.' At the same time, she respected him more than Frederick, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various

... jury," said Dan Anderson, "I stand here before you to make no excuses for this Law, to palliate nothing in the way of its workings, to set no tentative or temporizing date for the time of the arrival at this place of the image of the Law. I say to you here to-day, at this hour, that image now sits ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough

... his lord's affairs, Will soon grow necessary to his heirs. His policy consists in setting traps, In finding ways and means, and stopping gaps; He knows a thousand tricks whene'er he please, Though not to cure, yet palliate each disease. In either case, an equal chance is run; For, keep or turn him out, my lord's undone. You want a hand to clear a filthy sink; No cleanly workman can endure the stink. A strong dilemma in a desperate ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... Khem: "A full Egyptian idea of Khem can scarcely be presented to the modern reader, on account of the grossness of the forms under which it was exhibited. Some modern Egyptologists endeavor to excuse or palliate this grossness; but it seems scarcely possible that it should not have been accompanied by indelicacy of thought or that it should have failed to exercise a corrupting influence on life and morals. Khem, no doubt, represented ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II

... more unjustly punished. My name and injuries will ever stain the annals of Frederic the Great; even those who read this book will perhaps suppose that I, from political motives of hope or fear, have sometimes concealed truth by endeavouring to palliate his conduct. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck

... with obtaining my liberty, if I could not insist upon coming off scathless also. In fact, I was not content to evacuate the fortress, if I were not to march out with all the honours of war. This feeling I neither attempt to palliate nor defend, I merely chronicle it as, are too many of these confessions, a matter of truth, yet not the less ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... many a brave and wise friend, whose lot was cast in no such western paradise, but rather in the infernos of this sinful earth, toiling even then amid the festering alleys of Bermondsey and Bethnal Green, to palliate death and misery which they had vainly laboured to prevent, watching the strides of that very cholera which they had been striving for years to ward off, now re-admitted in spite of all their warnings, by the carelessness, and laziness, and greed of sinful ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley

... the scandalous rout of Bull Run, the participants in the panic began to try to palliate the disgrace. The President, listening with revived sarcasm to ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams

... to deny or palliate this imposture, but he made a fairly adequate reply to other counts of the indictment, and promised a judicial inquiry into the casualties enumerated by Mr. BILLING. The revelation that he himself has a son in the Flying Corps was perhaps the most effective point in a speech which did not wholly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various

... them with labor, provisions, and intelligence, and concealing their designs from us." In fact, the Acadians, while calling themselves neutrals, were an enemy encamped in the heart of the province. These are the reasons which explain and palliate a measure too harsh and indiscriminate ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... itself, which was a "serious disgrace to the age, and to the government, and the country in which we live," without endeavouring, by the enactment of more stringent laws, to correct it, the evasions, by means of which they now seek to palliate their neglect, and the strange want of perspicacity which they display in not being able to discover the real source of mischief, or their timidity in not daring to denounce it, must naturally excite our astonishment. Let any man read the reported ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... protestant supporters, ought to have been aware that their undertaking was assuming the form of a conspiracy with the enemies of their queen and country against her government and personal safety; against the public peace, and the religion by law established; and nothing can excuse the blindness, or palliate the guilt, of their perseverance in a course ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... they lighten hearts, if but for a moment; they inculcate habits of order and self-restraint, which may be useful when the poor man finds himself in Canada or Australia. And it is a cruel utilitarianism to refuse to palliate the symptoms because you cannot cure the disease itself. You will give opiates to the suffering, who must die nevertheless. Let him slip into his grave at least as painlessly as you can. And so you must use these charitable societies, remembering ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... late hour in those days. The paralytic masher of the present day, who is most alive at midnight, rises at noon. Then the day began earlier with a long morning, followed by a pleasant period called the forenoon. Under modern conditions we spend the morning in bed, and to palliate our sloth call the forenoon and most of the rest of the day, the morning. These young men of Clement's Inn were a lively, not to say a rowdy, set. They would do anything that led to mirth or mischief. What passed when they lay all night in the windmill in St. George's ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell

... aright; for the confession consisteth in the general, in a man's taking to himself his transgressions, and standing in them, with the acknowledgement of them to be his, and that he cannot stir from under them, nor do any thing to make amends for them, or to palliate the rigour of justice against the soul. And this the Publican did when he cried, "God be merciful to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... the attendant circumstances that were connected with the act of Nero in murdering his mother, which could palliate or extenuate the deed in the slightest degree. It was not an act of self-defense. Agrippina was not doing him, or intending to do him any injury. It was not an act of hasty violence, prompted by sudden passion. It was not required by any political necessity as a means ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott

... he fly, and thus acknowledge his guilt? No, signor, no excuse can palliate such misdeeds. I burn with indignation at the thought that such signal favors have met with such cold and base ingratitude. The idea of your affliction restrains me from speaking of the outrage done my daughter. Fortunately, the reputation and social position of my family is such as to ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience

... have to request. Plead for me with my two best friends, Mrs. Richman and Mrs. Sumner. I ask you not to palliate my faults,—that cannot be done,—but to obtain, if possible, their forgiveness. I cannot write all my full mind suggests on this subject. You know the purport, and can better express it ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster

... that Poodles had browbeaten and threatened him; and we were disposed to palliate Pearl's offence, in consideration of his poverty and his dependent position, after he ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic

... In the Eastern Hemisphere the African had always been in a servile condition. In Hayti and Jamaica experiments had been tried of freeing them, under the auspices of France and England. Miseries had resulted and ruin overwhelmed the islands. "Fanaticism may palliate, but could not conceal the utter prostration of the race." The best specimens of the race were to be found in the Southern States, in closest contact with slavery. The North does not want the negro, does not encourage his immigration. The great fact of the inferiority of ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall

... inclination to palliate the mistakes, or omissions, or want of steadiness, or unhappy misunderstandings, among a few of those who ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... with a man over his cups, or in any wise to molest him in his drink, is an offense against the proprieties that even the good-natured Epicurean can not find it in his easy heart to palliate or pardon. On this point he speaks mildly, ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence

... British service, would flock to his standard, and form a corps at whose head he might again display his accustomed intrepidity. With this hope he published an address to the inhabitants of America, in which he laboured to palliate his own guilt, and to increase their dissatisfaction with ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall

... said the prince; and he seated himself by her side. "I will not attempt to palliate a deception which your charms could alone inspire and can alone justify. Hear me, Lady Iduna, hear me with calmness. I love you; I love you with a passion which has been as constant as it is strong. My birth, my rank, my fortunes, do not ...
— The Rise of Iskander • Benjamin Disraeli

... which cannot bear the truth of it. The violent on both sides will condemn the character of Absalom, as either too favourably or too hardly drawn. But they are not the violent whom I desire to please. The fault on the right hand is to extenuate, palliate, and indulge; and to confess freely, I have endeavoured to commit it. Besides the respect which I owe his birth, I have a greater for his heroic virtues; and David himself could not be more tender of the young man's life, than I would be of his reputation. But since the most ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... murder with a tranquil sense of enjoyment which seems almost incredible. There is no exaggeration in calling the deed a murder, for it certainly was not sanctioned by any law, divine or human, nor justified or excused by any of the circumstances which are supposed to palliate homicide. Nor, when the elaborate and superfluous luxury of arrangements made by Philip for the accomplishment of his design is considered, can it be doubted that he found a positive pleasure in his task. It would ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... my anger from the grave! She knew that I must become unhappy. Death and damnation! she knew it, and yet betrayed me! Look to it, serpent! That was thy only chance of forgiveness. This confession has condemned thee. Till now I thought to palliate thy crime with thy simplicity, and in my contempt thou hadst well nigh escaped my vengeance (seizing the glass hastily). Thou wert not thoughtless, then— thou wert not simple—thou wert nor more nor less than a devil! (He drinks.) The drink is bad, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... and killing, were defective and in need of revision, is indeed more shocking than to violate the current rules of action. For we are accustomed to actual crimes, misdemeanors, and sins, which are happening all the time, but we will not tolerate any suspected attempt to palliate them ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson

... the most distant ages. Cromwell began as a reformer, but ended as a usurper. Whatever name he goes by, whatever title he may have assumed, he became, by force of his victories and of his army, the absolute ruler of England,—as Caesar did of Rome, and Napoleon of Paris. We may palliate or extenuate this fact; we may even excuse it on the ground that the State had drifted into anarchy; that only he, as the stronger man, could save England; that there was no other course open to him as a patriot; and that it was a most fortunate thing ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord

... Niblo who had a theater (or let me give it his name, and call it—a garden) within the length of some three stone-throws from their own house. It must be granted they did not foresee that which was about to happen. But this will scarcely palliate the folly of taking the head of a rival ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... where the Fever had been neglected till about the third or fourth Period, or badly treated in the Beginning, and the Bowels were inflamed or overcharged with corrupted Gall, he was obliged to endeavour to palliate the most pressing Complaints, and to watch Evening, Night, and Morning for a Remission, and then immediately to fly to the Bark, as the only Remedy that could avert the Danger. If the Patient was strong, he gave Half an Ounce of the Bark, with ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro

... "but then of course," he added, wishing to palliate the offence, "it was a very hot day. I suppose, however, you are right. Serious things do not interest her—and that is—I ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells

... his execution Lee made a confession in which he attempted to palliate his guilt by throwing the burden of the crime on his accomplices, especially on Haight and Higbee, and to show that the massacre was committed by order of Brigham Young and the High Council, all of ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... occupy my place;—and be surrounded by the same temptations,—and then comport himself wisely—if he can! Such an one would need to be either god or hero; and I profess to be neither. But I do not wish to palliate or deny the errors of the past. The present is my concern,—the present time, and the present People. Great changes are fermenting in the world; and of these changes, especially of those directly ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... saintliness will be assigned the same positions in the rewards of the last day; and it is just as unlikely that human estimates are right when they venture to assign the degrees of final condemnation. Two things it is our duty to do in regard to Judas: first, not so to palliate his sin as to blunt the healthy, natural abhorrence of it; and, secondly, not to think of him as a sinner apart and alone, with a nature so different from our own that to us he can be no example. But for the rest, there is only one verdict which is at once righteous, dignified and safe; and ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker

... British distrust of American commercial honesty was originally created, perhaps, more than by anything else, by the scandals which were notoriously associated with the early history of railways in the United States. It is not desired here either to insist on the occurrence of those scandals or to palliate them. The point is that the conditions which made those scandals possible (of which the incapacity on the part of the North-western lines to keep faith with each other may be regarded as symptomatic) were concomitants of a particular stage only ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... corners of The Enormous Room with Gottverdummers which echoingly telescoped one another, producing a dim huge shaggy mass of vocal anger, The Young Pole began to laugh less and less; began to plead and excuse and palliate and demonstrate—and all the while the triangular tower in its naked legs and its palpitating chemise brandished its vast fists nearer and nearer, its ghastly yellow lips hurling cumulative volumes of rhythmic profanity, its blue eyes snapping like fire-crackers, ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... to a woman, pity for the unfortunate and—as they conceived—the innocent; but whether they have been right or wrong in their view of facts, the Scotch partisans of Mary have always—as far as I know—been right in their view of morals; they have never deigned to admit Mary's guilt, and then to palliate it by those sentimental, or rather sensual, theories of human nature, too common in a certain school of French literature,—too common, alas! in a certain school of modern English novels. They have not said, "She did it; ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... Johnson's malignity, is the manner in which he has treated the character and conduct of Milton. To enforce this charge has wearied sophistry, and exhausted the invention of a party. What they cannot deny, they palliate; what they cannot prove, they say is probable. But why all this rage against Dr. Johnson? Addison, before him, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... was as soft as it was inflammable. He was utterly unable to resist such tenderness as Mrs. Woodward showed to him. He had made a little resolution to be stiff and stern, to ask for no favour and to receive none, not to palliate his own conduct, or to allow Mrs. Woodward to condemn it. He had felt that as the Woodwards had given him up, they had no longer any right to criticize him. To them at least, one and all, to Mrs. Woodward and her daughters, his conduct had been sans reproche. They had no cause to upbraid ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... hedges should have grown up and helped to hide it, she felt sure that it would be a better world. In detail it was not so bad now, but the whole was a violent effect of porches, gables, chimneys, galleries, loggias, balconies, and jalousies, which nature had not yet had time to palliate. ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... those rivers which intersects and winds itself so beautifully majestic through a vast extent of territory of the United States is the present situation of your unworthy but constant and affectionate daughter. I pretend not to justify or even to palliate my clandestine elopement. In hopes of pacifying your mind, which I am sure must be afflicted beyond measure, I write you this scrawl. Conscious of not having thus abruptly absconded by reason of any fancied ill treatment from you, or disaffection toward any, the thoughts of my disobedience are ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford

... her offspring to her ferocious assailants. The third child was also sacrificed in the same way, and soon after, the wretched being reached her home in safety. Here she related what had happened, and endeavoured to palliate her own conduct, by describing the dreadful alternative to which she had been reduced. A peasant, however, who was among the bystanders, and heard the recital, took up an axe, and with one blow cleft her skull in two, saying, ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... a course for my adoption, and frankly to tell me if my evidence could be of service. He assured me it could not; there was no question of the fairness of the duel, and the sole crime was in the breach of military discipline. This crime my testimony could in no way palliate. He requested me to see M. de Berg, and to tell him that, to avoid the possibility of the cause of the duel becoming known, he should refuse to answer questions, plead guilty to the charge, and state, as sole extenuation, that the quarrel ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various

... to Mr. Puttock's previous speeches. Mr. Puttock, in his turn, fidgeted, and Coxon smiled sardonically. The Premier, encouraged by this success, pulled himself together and approached the last and most delicate part of his task, which was to defend or palliate a phrase of Norburn's that had been greeted with angry groans and protests. Mr. Norburn had in fact referred to the Capitalist class as a "parasitic growth," and Medland was left to get out of this indiscretion as best he ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope



Words linked to "Palliate" :   alleviate, apologize, law, ameliorate, meliorate, improve, soothe, ease, rationalise, justify, mitigate, rationalize, excuse, jurisprudence, extenuate, relieve, palliation, assuage, better, amend, comfort, apologise, palliative



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