"Excusable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Bible and believed only the parts that didn't hurt their sensitive feelings; the young men who lived fast lives and sowed wild oats because a wicked and false public sentiment made them think it was excusable and perhaps necessary; and all other men and women who lived as they pleased, regardless of God and eternity—when all these shall appear before the judgment seat of Christ He will look upon them all alike, and with a smile of gracious pardon will reach ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... is, Ben," answered Uncle Job, with a disregard of grammar more excusable than his nephew's, for he had never had any special educational advantages,-"so there is, but you don't know anybody ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... "Oh, that's excusable. He did not know me. But you were my lover; you ought to have seen I was forced to deceive poor Raynal. How dare you believe your eyes; much more your ears, against my truth, against my honor; and then to believe such nonsense?" Then, with a grand assumption of superior knowledge, says she, "You ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... shop of the silk merchant, with whom he sat awhile till behold, the old woman passed telling her beads on a rosary she held in hand; whereupon he sprang up and laying hold of her dress began to abuse and rail at her, whilst she answered him with fair words, saying, "Indeed, my son, thou art excusable." So the people of the bazaar flocked round the two, saying, "What is the matter?" and he replied, "O folk, I bought of this merchant a veil for fifty dinars and gave it to my slave girl, who wore it awhile, then sat ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... in bold accents, that they have solved problems of which they find the solution imminent, and who, the day after its final elucidation by third parties, proclaim themselves its true discoverers. He must rise above a partiality which deems itself excusable because it proceeds from national pride; and, finally, he must seek with patience for what has gone before. While thus retreating step by step he runs the risk of losing himself ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... party there in putting the finishing touches to quite a respectable structure—half tent, half bower—for which the skipper had acted the part of architect-in-chief. This structure had cost Captain Blyth a vast amount of almost painful cogitation, and was the result of a little fit of excusable, and perhaps natural pique, which had come over him on finding how exceedingly well the two landsmen had managed without him. From the moment of their being thrust out of the ship to that other moment when he had rejoined them, they had scarcely been out of his thoughts for an hour, ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... Her sudden—perhaps excusable—jealousy of Anne Alison, her barbarous dismissal of Anthony, her quite inexcusable failure to give any reason for such treatment, her subsequent enlightenment by Anne herself—there is the skeleton whose dry bones he and she are to pick over—a gruesome business which has already been dispatched ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... to hear them. Churchmen, even, were bold enough to learn the mysteries of nature, Algebra, Judicial Astrology, and the occult powers of herbs, stones, and animals, from the Mussulman doctors of Cordova and Seville; and, like Pope Gerbert, mingle science and magic, in a fashion excusable enough in days when true ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... been caught. Mrs Devitt was sufficiently vexed at the prospect of her husband having to fork out some hundreds of pounds, without the further promise of revelations in which light-hearted, lighter living young women were concerned. Debts were forgivable, perhaps excusable, in a young gentleman of Lowther's standing, but immorality, in Mrs Devitt's eyes, was a horse of quite another colour; anything of this nature acted upon Mrs Devitt's susceptibilities much in the same way as seeing ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... one of his buckets, and speaking with excusable pride. To TWEENY). Nor mine for nearly three months. It was only last week, Tweeny, that he said to me, 'Ernest, the water cure has worked marvels in you, and I question whether I shall require to dip you any more.' (Complacently.) ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... stuff the envelope full of miscellaneous folders, booklets and other printed matter that does little more than bewilder the man who gets it. Others make the mistake of not putting anything in with the letter to help the prospect buy. Neither mistake is excusable, if the writer will only analyze his proposition and his prospect, consider what the man at the other end will want to know—then give him ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... less excusable, as it must become apparent to every one who examines a section of the skull of any ape above a Lemur, without taking the trouble to make a cast of it. For there is a very marked groove in every such skull, as in the human skull—which indicates the line of attachment of what is termed the ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... of applied chemistry, an addendum in a work of this kind is quite excusable. Even while the book is being printed some fact may be announced which the author or editor would wish to insert. In our case this has happened. Very recently there has been introduced in France ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... The mistake was an excusable one. Mrs. MacDermott looked very young and pretty in her blue tweed. She appreciated the compliment paid her all the more because ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... writing with calmness when I reflect on all the unnecessary hardships and sufferings that were caused by sheer wanton greed. On four different voyages I learnt how terrible it was to be short of provisions and water, and in three out of the four this was preventable. The first case was excusable owing to the long continuance of easterly gales in the chops of the English Channel. Some vessels managed to reach Scilly or Falmouth, but many failed to do so, and we were amongst the many. On several occasions ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... also he habitually deducts about 25 percent, from the real number of men on board the British ships; as regards Lake Erie he contradicts himself so much that he does not need to be exposed from outside sources. But the most glaring and least excusable misstatements are made as to the battle of Lake Champlain, where he gives the American as greatly exceeding the British force. He reaches this conclusion by the most marvellous series of garblings and ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... as a legitimate political vengeance. The prisoners are now in danger of the death penalty; but that is not dishonoring under some circumstances. Whereas, if they can be proved to have stolen money, which can never be made to seem excusable, you lose all benefit of whatever interest may attach to persons condemned to death for other crimes. If, at the first, you had shown the hiding-places of the treasure, the plan of the forest, the ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... white flannels with a red guide-book protruding from his pocket, was comfortably stretched in a lounging chair engaged with a cigarette and a copy of the Paris Herald. He glanced up with a yawn—excusable under the circumstances—but as his eye fell upon the letter he ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... worst part of the bad story—we, at least, here in Ravenna are perhaps excusable in thinking it the worst. The fact is, Signor Marchese, that this death took place under circumstances which seem to leave no doubt that the deed was done by the hand ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... are not treated in this world as they deserve, yet 'tis seldom, very seldom their goodness which makes them disliked, even in cases where it may seem to be so: but 'tis some behaviour or other, which however excusable, perhaps infinitely overbalanced by their virtues, yet is offensive, possibly wrong; however such, it may be, as would pass off very well in ...
— Some Remains (hitherto unpublished) of Joseph Butler, LL.D. • Joseph Butler
... to the health of the absent,' her husband replied, filling his friend's glass and his own and giving a drop to their companion; 'but we must hope he's preparing himself for a happiness much less like this of ours this evening—excusable as I grant it to be!—than like the comfort we have always (whatever has happened or has not happened) been able to trust ourselves to enjoy. The comfort,' the Master explained, leaning back in the pleasant lamplight and firelight, ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... for mental work of a high order. Thomas Jefferson's remark that no colored man could probably be found who was capable of taking in and comprehending Euclid, and that none had made any contribution to the civilization of the world through his art, would perhaps appear somewhat excusable when viewed in the light of the prevailing conditions in his day, and on which, of course, his judgment was based; but even at that time Jefferson knew something of the superior quality of Benjamin Banneker's mental equipment, for it ...
— The Colored Inventor - A Record of Fifty Years • Henry E. Baker
... the blacksmith went so far as to say that "them chaps as put that responsibility on the old man oughter be lynched." But the blacksmith was not a stockholder; and the expression was looked upon as the excusable extravagance of a large, sympathizing nature, that, when combined with a powerful frame, was unworthy of notice. At least, that was the way they put it. Yet I think there was a general feeling of regret that this misfortune would interfere with the old ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... considered the chance of his conviction by a Boer jury to be very small. The word "culpable," says Webster (English Dictionary) is "applied to acts which have not the gravity of crime." In this instance, it made Jones' action excusable on the grounds that Edgar struck him with a stick, at the moment of his entering ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... veneration for Latin and Greek as languages, we no longer deprecate an English work because it happens to be in English; nevertheless the tradition still grips us, especially if we happen to be Brahmanic. Our college professors, and many less excusable, still doubt the artistic validity of work in a form never dignified by the practice of the ancients, never hallowed, like much of English literature besides, by a long line of native productions adapting classic forms to ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... prized his "boy" accordingly. This is but a slight indication of the excess to which he carried his love for reading and scribbling. If he could not read, he must scribble; so he scribbled when out hunting! If he had been fishing with a book in his hand, that had been excusable. But we do not believe that the Romans took kindly to fishing as a sport. They bred their fish in private fish-ponds—piscinae—and they had a revolting habit of fattening their fish. Old Izaak would have abhorred the very thought of casting a line for such ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... [57] It is excusable to use two words for the single verb savoir to bring out the meaning. King Bagdemagus does not "know" as a fact that Lancelot has slain his son, though he fears it and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... net-work of circumstances the masculine incarnation of a young girl was brought about, why Felicite des Touches became a man and an author, and why, more fortunate than Madame de Stael, she kept her freedom and was thus more excusable for her celebrity, would be to satisfy many curiosities and do justice to one of those abnormal beings who rise in humanity like monuments, and whose fame is promoted by its rarity,—for in twenty centuries we can count, at most, twenty famous women. Therefore, although in these pages ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... that was very excusable, considering how strongly he was fired at the first discoveries he made in an art which he almost first found out; Descartes, I say, hoped to discover in the stars, by the assistance of telescopes, objects as small as those ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... of a people that had never, however far we probe into the past, played false. But there would have been much of that confusion and irresolution inevitable in a host suddenly threatened with disaster. There would have been vain talking, mistaken measures, excusable but irreparable vacillations; and, above all, the much-needed words, the precise and final words, would not have been spoken and the deeds, than which we can picture none more resolute, none greater, would not have been done at ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... natural than this mistake. Any one looking for the first time at the trees might fancy that they were indeed vast and titanic fans, which by their mere waving agitated the air around them for miles. Nothing, I say, could be more human and excusable than the belief that it is the trees which make the wind. Indeed, the belief is so human and excusable that it is, as a matter of fact, the belief of about ninety-nine out of a hundred of the philosophers, reformers, sociologists, and politicians of the great age in which we live. My small friend ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... had been acquired by the marine surveys. Even the wild attempts of Grey look comparatively reasonable beside this march of Eyre's, Had he had any object in view beyond the one of being the first white man to cross the desert between the two colonies, his actions might have been excusable, but as it was, his trip was bound to be ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... Peter Coleman was no longer a particularly idealized one. But she had long ago come to the conclusion that his faults were the faults of his type and his class, excusable and understandable now, and to be easily conquered when a great emotion should sweep him once and for all away from the thought of himself. As he was absorbed in the thought of his own comfort, so, she knew, he could become absorbed in the thought of what was due ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... the proprietor, he who should have been the first in the work, Palmer was drunk, and the Pilgrim's Progress was ruined, insofar as that town was concerned. Palmer had become frenzied the night previous and cried over the excusable blunders of an honest meaning man. Yet tonight he had ruined the entertainment, disgusted all who ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... dazzled by Zinzendorf's "Church within the Church" idea, compelled hundreds who longed to join their ranks as members to remain outside the Church. In Germany this policy succeeded; in England, where a State Church existed, it may have been excusable; but in America, where a State Church was unknown, it was senseless ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... criticism is, moreover, only employed by a select few. The natural tendency, even of historians who work methodically, is to read the text with the object of extracting information directly from it, without any thought of first ascertaining what exactly was in the author's mind.[131] This procedure is excusable at most in the case of nineteenth-century documents, written by men whose language and mode of thought are familiar to us, and then only when there is not more than one possible interpretation. It becomes dangerous as ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... usurpation of the crown, he must be allowed a prince of great justice, which most writers affirm to have been always unblemished, except in that single instance: for, as to his treatment of the bishops and the Earl of Chester, it seems very excusable by the necessity of the time; and it was the general opinion, if he had not used that proceeding with the latter, it would have cost him his crown. Perhaps his injustice to the Empress might likewise admit a little extenuation. Four kings successively had sat on the throne without ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... that Juliet is not dead, this scene is, perhaps, excusable. But it is a strong warning to minor dramatists not to introduce at one time many separate characters agitated by one and the same circumstance. It is difficult to understand what effect, whether that of pity or of laughter, ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... used to maintain that in this matter the English were not merely historically excusable but likewise politically judicious. He founded what may be called the culte of corporations. And it was natural, that in France, where there is scarcely any power of self-organisation in the people, where the prefet must be asked upon ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... whereof Cicero and other great wits so frequently inveigh against the people, and sometimes even Livy as at the first institution of it. To say the truth, it was a kind of anarchy, whereof the people could not be excusable, if there had not, through the courses taken by the Senate, been otherwise a necessity that they must have seen the commonwealth run ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... minor perfection. Assuredly no great artist was ever a profound scholar. The great artist has other ends to achieve. And every artist, major and minor, is aware in his conscience that art is full of artifice, and that the desire to proceed rapidly with the affair of creation, and an excusable dislike of re-creating anything twice, thrice, or ten times over—unnatural task!—are responsible for much of that artifice. We can all point in excuse to Shakspere, who was a very rough-and-ready person, and whose methods would shock Flaubert. Indeed, the amateurishness ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... regarded not only as a virtuous but as a generous deed, which is intelligible if the reason was that there would be fewer mouths to fill in the tribe." This explains the murders in question but does not show them to be excusable; it explains them as being due to the vicious selfishness and hard-heartedness of parents who would rather kill their infants than restrain their sexual appetite when they had all the children they ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... cardinal article of British political faith was that, in the interests of Great Britain, Constantinople should not be allowed to fall into Russian hands. The occupation of Egypt in 1882 without doubt introduced a new and very important element into the discussion. The most serious as also the least excusable mistake in British Near-Eastern policy of recent years has been the occupation of Cyprus, which burthened us with a perfectly useless possession, and inflicted a serious blow on our prestige. Sir Edward Grey's recent diplomatic success is in a large measure due to the fact that all the Powers concerned ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... dissertations on such details have not been given the public; the themes of felony, cruelty, and duplicity, and of this and that, have not, as is the fashion of the day, been underlined, so that the critics are excusable for not seeing them. ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... told you, pointing out that the affair had been quite harmless, though appearances were certainly against me. He left the house and returned later on. He had seen Gustave. The engagement, of course, was off. My escapade was looked upon as excusable. I was young and inexperienced in the ways of the world, and permission was graciously given me to see my late fiancee. This I did, and, I am happy to say, she not only forgave me but we ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... to the Abbe Boiviel to inhabit his chateau of Voisenon, where, in the calm and repose of a peaceful existence, and with a mind freed from the harassing cares of the world, he would have leisure to meditate and write; that this proceeding of his, though strange in appearance, was excusable, and to be judged with an indulgent eye; he, the Abbe de Voisenon, was happy, rich, powerful even. The Abbe Boiviel would be quite at home at the chateau de Voisenon; his feelings of independence would not be outraged; when he should be tired ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... tenderness, by making her abhorred by her family, by rendering her children indifferent to her, and her husband detestible (sic)? I believe that these reflections would have appeared to me in as strong a light, if my sex had not rendered them excusable in such cases; and I hope, that I should have had more sense, than to imagine vice the less vicious, because it is ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... travellers, on the subject of the changed numbers, under penalty of being dismissed, the manager composed his mind with the reflection that he had done his duty to his employers. 'Now,' he thought to himself, with an excusable sense of triumph, 'let the whole family come here if they like! The hotel is a match ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... man who makes a living by changing money and investigating its value is no more a parasite than the man who makes a living changing titles or investigating their value; the hindrance of trade and easy transfer of property is no more excusable in one case than the other; and the 90 per cent, that China might save by a better system of money transfers is paralleled by the 90 per cent, that we might save by a better ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... to him an enterprise which he might think would put heresy under his feet. And if you knew either the character of Charles II. or the principles of his government, you ought not to have supposed his union with France for the ruin of Holland an impossible or even improbable event. It is hardly excusable in a statesman to be greatly surprised that the inclinations of princes should prevail upon them to act, in many particulars, without any regard to the political maxims and ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... herself freely. He "thanks God most humbly that in all his speeches and practices he has had a desire to do nothing against the glory of God." He was so much annoyed by having been misunderstood by the two spies that he "thought it would make our actions much more excusable to tell the truth, than to stand to the torture, or trial by witnesses." As to his acquaintance with the plot, he sought to hinder it more than men can imagine, as the Pope can tell: how could he have dissuaded the conspirators if he ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... they were one of the most inconsiderable and least known of the nations,—an isolated family, in fact, inhabiting Canaan,—what becomes of the analogy? We really pause for an answer.... Such a theory might have been expected, and would have been excusable if it had proceeded from a Sunday-school-boy of fifteen,—who had read the Bible indeed, but who was unacquainted with any book besides; and so, had jumped to the conclusion that the Jews were "the World." But Dr. Temple is a Schoolmaster, and therefore must surely know better. If he ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... want to say to you, Signory Rosy-elly," continued Buck, with a burst of pride quite excusable, tipping his hat to one side and hooking his thumb into the armhole of his vest, "it wasn't my money you got, and it never will be my money you'll get. You just made the mistake of your life when you ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... through the streets. They were assassinated before the eyes of the governor of the fort. They were pierced with a thousand blows of stilettos, such as I sent you and the representatives of the French people cause it to be printed, that if they believed this fact for an instant, they were excusable. I know well there are societies where it is said, "Is this blood, then, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the poet felt quite at ease in contemplating female beauty. To see and not to be seen was what his heart enjoyed in full delight, and he fervently expressed his opinion to Tom Benyon that the only thing that made the big city endurable, and even money-hunting excusable, was the presence of all these fair women. Tom felt much gratified at this declaration, considering any praise of London as ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... wanted. His spirits rose with their usual elasticity as soon as he was out of Centre Street, and he insisted on giving Philip and his friends a royal supper at Delmonico's, an excess which was perhaps excusable in the rebound of his feelings, and which was committed with his usual reckless generosity. Harry ordered, the supper, and it is perhaps needless to say, that Philip ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... subject the knowledge of God to any such limitation is surely absurd and unphilosophical, as well as impious; and, therefore, to mix up the idea of God's foreknowledge with any quality in the nature of the things foreknown, is even less excusable than to be guilty of that confusion ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... the Persies, as they published it abroad.] These noble men, to make their conspiracie to sem excusable, besides the articles aboue mentioned, sent letters abroad, wherein was conteined, that their gathering of an armie tended to none other end, but onlie for the safegard of their owne persons, and to put some ...
— Chronicles (3 of 6): Historie of England (1 of 9) - Henrie IV • Raphael Holinshed
... her remarks with that, setting her mouth hard. It was evident that she was firm in her decision. I suggested mildly that the girl had never been taught, and had always had so much money that she was excusable for not knowing how to do all these little things which the Linnville girls had been forced ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... excusable in him to tremble," replied Aramis, "for even I feel a shudder at the recollection; hold, just above that tree is the little spot where I ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... some concealed within bundles of hoop-staves. Sometimes we found seamen, dressed as gentlemen, drinking wine and talking with the greatest familiarity with people much above them in rank, who had used these means to conceal them. Our information led us to detect these excusable impositions. ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... is being put into old bottles and the wine of life is being poured out and wasted. The old convention that irregular love is excusable in the case of the man, but always to be punished in the case of the woman will never again be accepted, at least not by women. It is not women's ideas so much that are confused as their emotions, ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... but as crumpled tarlatan to brocaded satin beside the passage on Coleridge in the English Poets, or the description of Winterslow and its neighbourhood in the "Farewell to Essay-writing," or "On a Landscape of Nicolas Poussin" in the Table-Talk. Read these pieces and nothing else, and an excusable impression might be given that the writer was nothing if not florid. But turn over a dozen pages, and the most admirable examples of the grave and simple manner occur. He is an inveterate quoter, yet few men are more original. ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... Satire without bitterness Talent without artifice The pulpit is in want of comedians; they work wonders there Then comes discouragement; after that, habit Trust not in kings What they need is abstinence, prohibitions, thwartings When one has seen him, everything is excusable Would you like to be a cardinal? I can ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Court Memoirs of France • David Widger
... rather stupidly took up the same idea from a map saying 'Zambesi' (eastern branch), believing that the map printer had some authority for his assertion. My first crossing was thus as fruitless as theirs, and I was less excusable, for I ought to have remembered that while Chambeze is the true native name of the northern river, Zambesi is not the name of the southern river at all. It is a Portugese corruption of Dombazi, which we adopted rather than introduce confusion by new names, in the same way that we ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... denouncing the Constitution, the Laws, and the Bible. It is not here that the pulpit has been desecrated by seditious exhortations, teaching that theft [a man stealing his own limbs and person from his 'lawful owner'] is meritorious, murder [in self-defence killing a man-stealer] excusable, and treason [opposition to the ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... a paroxysm of fun got the better of you. Well, it's excusable on New Year's Day. But, if the firm of Murphy & Flynn expect to succeed in business, they must not mix so much play with their work." And Mr. Prim shut ...
— The Nursery, January 1877, Volume XXI, No. 1 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... may gaze on the cross and see nothing. We too may look at it without emotion, because without faith, or any consciousness of what it may mean for us. Only they who see there the sacrifice for their sins and the world's, see what is there. Others are as blind as, and less excusable than, these soldiers who watched all day by the Cross, seeing nothing, and tramped back at night to their barrack utterly ignorant of what they had been doing. But their work was not quite done. There ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... those kneeling and those standing."[35] Yet she demurs, a little farther on in the same letter, to both these extremes. "The Unitarians seem to me to throw over what is most beautiful in the Christian Doctrine; but the Formulists, on the other side, stir up a dust, in which it appears excusable not to see." To which he replies (Aug. 17): "Dearest, I know your very meaning, in what you said of religion, and responded to it with my whole soul—what you express now is for us both, ... those are my own feelings, my convictions ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... history; he would never mix together (under his nose) two chemicals that would assuredly explode and nearly blow his head off. For he has a few brains in that head, which makes such blunders all the less excusable. But I am not sure if a good deal of his bad luck is not due to the merciless way in which he was laughed at, and called "duffer," and taught to believe that he could no more do a thing right than a bull could walk through a china-shop without making a smash. He got it into his head ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... occasionally bring you relief by agitating those humors, and so purifying or dissipating them? If it was in some nook or alley in Paris, deprived of walks, that you played awhile at chess after dinner, this might be excusable; but the same taste prevails with you in Passy, Auteuil, Montmartre, or Sanoy, places where there are the finest gardens and walks, a pure air, beautiful women, and most agreeable and instructive conversation; ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... regards manhood. Doubtless there is some courage required in learning to smoke, and so much, but it is not much, is to the smoker's credit; but for the rest, smoking and drinking are simply forms of self-indulgence, and though they are doubtless very excusable and are often practised by splendid men, they are of no virtue in themselves. Further, they are open to the fundamental objection that they lessen the measure of a man's self-mastery. Women should set a high standard in such ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... the draft[3] to Lord Bloomfield, which she could only write about in haste yesterday, as being of a nature not to be sanctioned by her. It is quite natural and excusable that our patience should at last be worn out by the miserable policy which Prussia is pursuing, but it can never be our interest openly to quarrel with her. This would be simply playing the game of Russia, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... the mate aft; and they had a long talk, which ended in the mate's returning to his duty. The captain had broken through a custom, which is a part of the common-law of a ship, and without reason; for he knew that his mate was a sailor, and needed no help from him; and the mate was excusable for being angry. Yet he was wrong, and the captain right. Whatever the captain does is right, ipso facto, and any opposition to it is wrong, on board ship; and every officer and man knows this when ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... "Know, O my lord, that I came out to avenge my mother and my father on Sabur, King of the Persians; for he would have slain them; but my mother escaped and I know not whether he killed my father or not." When Gharib heard these words, he replied, "By Allah, thou art indeed excusable! But who were thy father and mother and what are their names?" Murad Shah said, "My sire was Gharib, King of Al-Irak, and my mother Fakhr Taj, daughter of King Sabur of Persia." When Gharib heard this, he gave a great cry and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... of "plain" food. Chicken or mutton, beef or venison, finnan haddie or brook trout, eggs or oysters thus "sauced," taste all alike—sauce! To use such ready-made sauces with dishes cooked a l'anglaise is logical, excusable, almost advisable. Even the most ascetic of men cannot resist the insidiousness of spicy delights, nor can he for any length of time endure the insipidity of plain food sans sauce. Hence the popularity ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... twinge. It dawned upon him that neither his spells of illness, nor his distress over his sister Lorna, nor his obsession to see and understand what the young people were doing could hold him wholly excusable for having neglected ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... publisher, in his Key, p. 11. We only take this opportunity of mentioning the manner in which those letters got abroad, which the author was ashamed of as very trivial things, full not only of levities, but of wrong judgments of men and books, and only excusable from the youth and inexperience of ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... game, that was all. The girl's mother even excused his conduct by saying that he was ambitious to get ahead in the army. Like most of her sex in Germany she has been reared to venerate the uniform so much that anything done by the man who wears it is quite excusable. Indeed, Marie's mother still listens with respectful approval at Kaffeeklatsch to Fritz's mother when she boasts of what her son is doing as a major over ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... those who endeavour to cure them of that disease rob them of a very considerable pleasure, and in most it is incurable: give Sylvia then leave to share it with her sex, since she was so much the more excusable, by how much a greater portion of beauty she had than any other, and had sense enough to know it too; as indeed whatever other knowledge they want, they have still enough to set a price on beauty, though they do not always rate it; for had Sylvia done ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... novelist alive. A first-rate unconventional work of art is not a straw better than a conventional one, and to become slightly light-headed about either is not only permissible but seemly. Nevertheless, to go silly over a mediocre innovation is far more excusable than to be taken in by its equivalent in a familiar style. While to rave about Messrs. Wells, Moore and Galsworthy seems to me shocking. Surely there can be no difficulty about treating these writers as ordinary citizens ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... the people generally have shrewder and livelier ideas. Therefore, to prevent gentlemen from degenerating into complete dunderheads, an admixture with the people, provided always it was on the female side, was not only excusable, but expedient; and, finally, my uncle held that whereas a man is a rude, coarse, sensual animal, and requires all manner of associations to dignify and refine him, women are so naturally susceptible of everything ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... strain of candor to admit that this author speaks at random; that he is only slovenly and inaccurate, and not fallacious. In matters of account, however, this want of care is not excusable; and the difference between neutral nations entirely engrossing our navigation, and being only subsidiary to a vastly augmented trade, makes a most material difference to his argument. From that principle of fairness, though the author speaks otherwise, I am willing to suppose ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... least whenever, as in those old Persians, we see in them manliness and truthfulness, hatred of idolatries, and devotion to the God of light and life and good? And shall we not feel pity, instead of contempt, for their ruder forms of government, their ignorances, excesses, failures—so excusable in men who, with little or no previous teaching, were trying to solve for themselves for the first time the deepest social ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... I could not help saying that the remarkably good looks of the woman made my conduct the more excusable. ...
— A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell
... only revised these reports; but he became so dexterous in the execution of his task, that he required only to be told the names of the speakers, and the side of the question to be espoused, in order to frame the speeches himself; an artifice not wholly excusable, which afterwards occasioned him some self-reproach, and even at the time pleased him so little, that he did not consent to continue it. The whole extent of his assistance to Cave is not known. ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... think that his opinion of his work had been swayed by the shallow judgments of a public whose taste he despised. Was it possible that he had allowed himself to think less well of "Abundance" because it was not to the taste of the average novel-reader? Such false humility was less excusable than the crudest appetite for praise: it was ridiculous to try to do conscientious work if one's self-esteem were at the mercy of popular judgments. All this the professor's letters delicately and indirectly conveyed to Betton, with the result that the author of "Abundance" began to recognize ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... intelligence of the president's refusal to continue the suspension of hostilities reached him at Montreal on the 30th of August, a day or two before Captain Glegg, with the dispatches and trophies of the capture of Detroit. At the commencement of the war, a defensive attitude was perhaps excusable, especially as the British cabinet seems to have been anxious to accommodate the differences between the two countries; but after the American government had refused to continue the armistice, it appears to us that Sir George ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... consequences which 'might have been foreseen.'[602] Otherwise we should have to excuse a man because he had neglected to calculate, whereas to calculate is the very essence of virtue. A man who fired a gun down a crowded street would not be excusable because he had not thought of the result. He 'ought' to have thought of it. The question of moral approval of any given action turns upon these questions. Did a man foresee evil consequences and disregard them? He is then cruel. Did he neglect to consider them? He is then culpably careless, ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... Constitution, asked the Hamiltonians, could the National Government in an emergency assume such rights from the preamble and the powers expressed? Must it hesitate and temporise while the blood of its citizens was being shed? Such an assumption of power, replied the strict interpreters, might be excusable in an emergency, but could be warranted as a practice only by an amendment to the Constitution made in ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... son's career at the Grand Babylon. Now she seemed determined to rival him in showiness, to be the partner of his alleged vulgarity. That the immature Sissie should suddenly drop the ideals of the new poor for the ideals of the new rich was excusable. But Eve! But that modest embodiment of shy and quiet commonsense! She, who once had scorned the world of The Daily Picture, was more and more disclosing a desire for that world. And where now were her doubts about the righteousness of ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... disdain. Mrs. Baxter kept her house and made petticoats. Marchmont read his books, mixed with his world, and did his share in his obvious duty of governing the country. Misty dreams, great cloudy visions, vague ideals, were forsworn of both; they were all whimsy-whamsies, the hardly excusable occupation of an idle day in the country. Was such a coincidence of opinion conclusive? Perhaps. But then, as she had hinted to Morewood, what of life? Was it not conclusive as to the merits of that also? Suddenly Fred Wentworth's ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... to call at 219, Brunswick Square, as soon as he deemed it excusable to do so. Miss Gates was out, the solemn butler said, but she might be found in the square gardens. David came upon her presently with a book in her lap and herself under a shady tree. She was not reading, her eyes were far away. As she gave David a warm greeting there was a tender bloom on ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... Fenneben's black eyes held Burleigh. "There is only one thing to do. When you ranked high in grades with only the trivial matter of excusable absence against you—no broken law—you took Professor Burgess gently by the throat and told him you meant to play anyhow. You stood your ground like a man, for your own sake and for the honor of Sunrise. Stand like a man for your own sake and the honor of Sunrise, ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... at the old game from this hillock of abstinence—it is not an eminence like those occupied by the twelve and fifteen year boys—looking back at the old game from this slight elevation, it is perhaps excusable for a man who put in twenty years at the old game to set the old game off against the new game and make up a debit and credit account just for the ...
— The Old Game - A Retrospect after Three and a Half Years on the Water-wagon • Samuel G. Blythe
... is excusable anywhere, it is so in country or provincial society in Scotland. "We cannot help spoiling the men"—says a distressed party-giver in these latitudes, conscious that this state of things is not right, and ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... admirable policy to do; had she said, like the great Henry, that Scotland was well worth a mass or the sacrifice of a mass; had she turned round and persecuted the priests of her own Church as she now was about, for their safety and with a subterfuge excusable if ever subterfuge was, to pretend to do—would posterity have thought the better of her? Certainly it would not; but Knox would, and her path would have been a thousand times more clear. Only it has to be said at the end of all, that religion had little part in the woes of Mary. ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... have next to no chance of beating him, one soon gets angry with the big one for "pegging away," even though one may at first have perceived him to be in the right. Such seemed to many English observers to be the condition of the case in America. They were mistaken, but excusable; but for the error in their premise, their deduction would have been correct, or at least ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... undressing. Presumably the parlour-car companies know their own business best; but it would seem to the average "Britisher" that such a petty spirit of annoyance would be likely to do more harm than good, even in a financial way. The custom would be more excusable if it were confined to those cases in which two people shared the lower berth. The custom is so unlike the usual spirit of the United States, where the practice is to charge a liberal round sum and then relieve you of all minor annoyances and exactions, that ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... them odious and detestable to every spectator, who has the least relish left for nature and propriety. As for the fard or white, with which their necks and shoulders are plaistered, it may be in some measure excusable, as their skins are naturally brown, or sallow; but the rouge, which is daubed on their faces, from the chin up to the eyes, without the least art or dexterity, not only destroys all distinction of features, but renders the aspect really frightful, or at best conveys nothing but ideas of disgust ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett |
