"Palliate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... which twenty-five thousand dollars was raised for him in State Street, Boston, and twenty-five thousand dollars in Wall Street, New York. Mr. Allen trusted that the Democratic party had yet honor enough left to inquire into the matter, and that the Whigs even, would not palliate it, if satisfied of ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... Holidays commence on the 6th of August, but however, July the 1st is the proper day.—I beg that if you cannot find some means to keep her in the Country that you at least will connive at this deception which I can palliate, and then I shall be down in the country before she knows where I am. My reasons for this are, that I do not wish to be detained in Town so uncomfortably as I know I shall be if I remain with her; that I do wish to see my Sister; and in ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... a strict adherence to them, as your own experience must have established their value. Our laws and regulations you are strenuously to support; and be always ready to assist in seeing them duly executed. You are not to palliate or aggravate the offences of your brethren; but in the decision of every trespass against our rules, you are to judge with candor, admonish with friendship, and reprehend with justice. The study of the liberal ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... the gallant men who were maimed or killed on that hard fought field. Enveloped in the mists of receding years; obscured by the glamour of poetry; belied by the vivid imagination of stragglers and camp-followers who, on the first note of danger, made a frantic rush for Winchester, seeking to palliate their own misconduct by spreading exaggerated reports of disaster, the union army that confronted Early at Cedar Creek, for many years made a sorry picture, which the aureole of glory that surrounded its central figure made all ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... to take even a cursory view of his case, which he did in the course of a brief walk and conversation in Boston before Hawthorne started with Mr. Pierce; but he was unable, with that slight opportunity, to reach any definite conclusion. Dr. Holmes prescribed and had put up for him a remedy to palliate some of the poignant symptoms, and this Hawthorne carried with him; but "I feared," Dr. Holmes writes to the editor, "that there was some internal organic—perhaps malignant—disease; for he looked wasted and as if ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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
... character of Lilla than she had yet done, for she thought their long years of intimacy demanded candour on her part; and each year, while it increased the evil of Lilla's present situation heightened her earnest desire to draw the father and child more closely together. She did not palliate her faults, but she proved that they were increased by the constant contradiction and irritation which she had to encounter. She repeated all that had passed between them the preceding day, unconsciously and cautiously condemning Grahame's excessive ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... 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. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... they can have any pretext for destroying, especially if they can invent some new means of torment to give a fresh piquancy to their pleasure. These monsters do not act from passion. Men are sometimes inclined to palliate great cruelties and crimes which are perpetrated under the influence of sudden anger, or from the terrible impulse of those impetuous and uncontrollable emotions of the human soul which, when once excited, seem to make men insane; but the crimes of a tyrant are not of this kind. They are the ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... She will not live to put thee to the trial; and it will a little palliate for thy enormous usage of her, and be a mean to make mankind, who know not what I know of the matter, herd a little longer with thee, and forbear to hunt thee to thy fellow-savages in the Lybian ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... 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, its enormous hairy chest heaving ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... existence of a state of things in a portion of the United Kingdom 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. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... gentlemen of this 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 ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... hostilities. Indeed, there was scarcely a single person examined before the privy council, who did not prove that the Slave-trade was the source of the tragedies acted upon that extensive continent. Some had endeavoured to palliate this circumstance; but there was not one who did not more or less admit it to be true. By one the Slave-trade was called the concurrent cause, by the majority it was acknowledged to be the principal motive of the African wars. The same might be said with respect ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... of the evil-doers afterwards tried to palliate their misdeeds by stating that Logan's brother, when drunk, insulted a white man, and that the other Indians were at the time on the point of executing an attack upon them. The last statement is ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... 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
... Mathews, if they could come to terms; hoped his gout was better, and was his "very faithfully, AUGUSTUS SPIKEMAN." Melissa wrote a few lines to Araminta, begging her, as a favour, not to attempt to palliate her conduct, but to rail against her incessantly, as it would be the surest method of bringing affairs to ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... 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 ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... just sentence when you discover that the murderer is your own father! What a change this one circumstance will bring about in your judgment! If you are of an affectionate nature, you will do all in your power to find circumstances that may lessen or palliate his guilt; and perhaps you may even succeed in making him appear, in your eyes, wholly innocent; and thus your first judgment is entirely reversed. What is it that has thus changed your first judgment? Is it your deep sense ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... not permit this, and rode beside Mughith till he reached his own tent. Here he was separated from his followers, thrown into chains, and brought into the citadel of Cairo (a.h. 660). In order to palliate this crime, the sultan made public the correspondence of the Prince of Kerak with the Mongols, which it was thought would stamp the former as a traitor to Islam. The judges whom he brought with him, and amongst whom we find the celebrated historian Ibn Khallikan, who was then chief judge ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... his children. He may have a more extended intercourse, and consequently means of information and refinement, and may seek education for his children where it may be found. I say, what is obviously true, that he has the means of obtaining those advantages; but I say nothing to palliate or excuse the conduct of him who, having such means, neglects to avail ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... 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 ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... forward nor return in safety; and the nobles, who needed little persuasion, were able to convince the more earnest pilgrims that Philip's offer must of necessity be accepted, though Alexius III was on friendly terms with the Pope and had been expected to assist the Crusade. To palliate the flagrant treachery a promise was exacted from the pretender that, when installed as Emperor, he would help in the conquest of Egypt with men, ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... 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 ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... good philosophy, Mr. Ratcliffe," answered Miss Vere; "but, excuse me, it by no means emboldens me to visit, at this late hour, a person whose extravagance of imagination you yourself can only palliate." ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... seems like blasphemy to intimate that the Spirit of God could have had anything to do with its composition. It is absolutely sickening to read the commentaries, which assume that it was dictated by the Holy Ghost, and which labor to justify and palliate its frightful narrative. One learns, with a sense of relief, that the Jews themselves long disputed its admission to their canon; that the school of Schammai would not accept it, and that several of the wisest and best of the early fathers of the Christian church, Athanasius and Melito of Sardis ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... said the miserable woman. "I might say something to show where you misjudge me—something that might palliate; but no, let it be." Her accents were so drearily hopeless that Darrell abruptly withdrew his eyes from her face, as if fearful that the sight of her woe might weaken his resolve. She had turned mechanically back. They walked on in ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... of his victim! Not for a moment did she think of defending him. She 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 to the man who had treated her so shamefully. It ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... who tells us we should impute such venial errors to a pardonable inadvertency; and, as I recollect, Addison makes another very just remark, that the ancients, who were actuated by a spirit of candour, not of cavilling, invented a variety of figures of speech, on purpose to palliate little ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... from the wrench in getting there alone—I tried to analyse things. The nervous excitement in which she always plunges me must have come to the culminating point. The only thing I was glad about was that I had not attempted to ask forgiveness, or to palliate my conduct. If I had done so she would undoubtedly have walked straight out of the hotel—but having just had the sense to leave her ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... is necessary to turn to Zeno, for the Peripatetics and Stoics stand in parallel lines. The social conditions existing in Greece at the time of Epicurus may in some degree palliate his sentiments, but virtue and honour will make themselves felt at last. Stoicism soon appeared as the antagonist of Epicureanism, and Epicurus found in Zeno of Citium a rival. The passage from Epicurus to Zeno is the passage from sensual ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... must have entertained a high regard for him, to give him, in 1670, the very delicate commission he entrusted to him. Madame had just been so openly poisoned, the conviction was so complete and so general that it was very difficult to palliate it. Our King and the King of England, between whom she had just become a stronger bond, by the journey she had made into England, were penetrated by grief and indignation, and the English could not contain themselves. The King chose the Duc de Beauvilliers to carry his compliments of condolence ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... 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 Field we do ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... a part of the benefit to soften the inconvenience. The perfect cure is impracticable, because the disorder is dear to those from whom alone the cure can possibly be derived. The utmost to be done is to palliate, to mitigate, to respite, to put off the evil day of the Constitution to its latest possible hour, and may it be a ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... happiness; that these ought not to be lost; and, that the gentleman on whose account she was divorced had gained her heart while thus unhappily situated. Seduced, perhaps, by the charms of the lady in question, I thus attempted to palliate what I was sensible could not be justified; for when I had finished my harangue, my venerable friend gave me a proper check: 'My dear Sir, never accustom your mind to mingle virtue and vice. The woman's a whore, and ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... him; and, forgetting the difficulties of personal investigation in 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
... pretermit that long comparison betwixt the active and the solitary life; and as for the fine sayings with which ambition and avarice palliate their vices, that we are not born for ourselves but for the public,—[This is the eulogium passed by Lucan on Cato of Utica, ii. 383.]—let us boldly appeal to those who are in public affairs; let them lay their hands upon their hearts, and then say whether, on the contrary, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... policy which could result, he believed, only in the misery of the slaves of the South. The lot of the negro would be vastly improved if the unfortunate people were more widely dispersed. Taylor, of New York, called this a specious plea. "It is that humanity," said he, "which seeks to palliate disease by the application of nostrums, which scatter its seeds through the whole system." To open the West to slavery would be simply to create an additional demand for the importation of slaves. Of those Southern Representatives who took part in ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... lack of transportation to carry the food from the interior to the front, while the Union prisoners perished from hunger in the midst of abundance. Again, even assuming the plea of scarcity to be true, that would not palliate the numerous murders of helpless prisoners by volleys fired into the stockades at the pleasure of the guards.[1] There was a vindictiveness in these crimes which no plea ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... 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 ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... 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 ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... 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 of hunger. He contended ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... 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 an ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... without establishing a certain community of sentiment and action, from which the student's intellectual efforts must derive a great share of their nourishment. Yet, admitting the principle, we cannot justify or palliate the excess to which it has been carried. We insist upon the observance of certain limits, which no man, whether old or young, learned or unlearned, is at liberty to transgress. And when these limits are ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... knowing beforehand through what a course of unflinching and resolute consistency with their first principles he is to follow her early legislators, has reason to limit their aim and motive at the start, that he may not assume for them more than he can make good. Especially if he intend to palliate, and, still more, to justify, some of the severer and more oppressive elements of their policy, he will find it wise to qualify their purpose within the same limitations which they themselves set for it. Dr. Palfrey parts with an advantage of which he afterwards has ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... address you? But an attempt to palliate my conduct would be to no purpose; indeed it is impossible. You cannot conceive a viler opinion of me than I have of myself. I know that I forfeit all claim to honor, in the most delicate point of your noble and trusting heart!—that I have sacrificed your tenderness to my distracted passions; ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... that it will amount to nothing. Moreover, do not let us exaggerate either the protective instincts of the North or the free trade of the South. The new tariff just adopted at Washington (a grave error, assuredly, which I do not seek to palliate) may be amended in such a manner as to lose the character of prohibition with which certain States have sought to invest it. Let us not forget, that by the side of Pennsylvania, which urges the excessive ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... their very good health. "O dives Decretales, tant par vous est le vin bon bon trouve"—"O divine Decretals, how good you make good wine taste!" "The miracle would be greater," said Pantagruel, "if they made bad wine taste good." The most that can now be done by the devout for the Decretals is "to palliate the guilt of their forger," whose name, like that of ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... whining vocatives, have set me up. Besides, as the command to get ready to go to my uncle's is in the name of my father and uncles, it is but to shew a piece of the art they accuse me of, to resent the vile hint I have so much reason to resent in order to palliate my refusal of preparing to go to my uncle's; which refusal would otherwise be interpreted an act of rebellion by my brother and sister: for it seems plain to me, that they will work but half their ends, if ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... charmed by her beauty and intelligence, and he proposed that her parents should place her under his care, and allow him to convey her to France. The misery to which the poor people were reduced, may perhaps palliate the shame of acceding to this extraordinary proposition; but, be this as it may, they consented to surrender up their daughter for the sum of 1,500 piastres, and Sophia was that same day conducted to the ambassador's palace. She found in the Marquess de Vauban a kind and liberal benefactor. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various
... are the chief sources of a prodigious class of miseries in the domestic circles of society. It is clear that however the spirit of legislation may appear to frame institutions upon more philosophical maxims, it has hitherto, in those cases which are termed criminal, done little more than palliate the spirit, by gratifying a portion of it; and afforded a compromise between that which is bests—the inflicting of no evil upon a sensitive being, without a decisively beneficial result in which ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... lives, and to suffer no 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 ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... Arthur since that night in the Deering Woods, neither did she wish to see him. She did not love him now, she said; the shock had been so great as to destroy the root of her affections, and no excuse he could offer her would in the least palliate his sin. Edith was very harsh, very severe toward Arthur. She should never go to Grassy Spring again, she thought; never look upon his face unless he came to Collingwood, which she hoped he would not do, for an interview could only be painful to them both. She should tell him how deceived she was ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... increased by steamers and railways, by the Whig alliance, by democratic sympathy, and by the transference of our political capital to Westminster. Tracts, periodicals, and the whole horde of Benthamy rushed in. Without manufactures, without trade, without comfort to palliate such degradation, we were proclaimed converts to Utilitarianism. The Irish press thought itself imperial, because it reflected that of London—Nationality was called a vulgar superstition, and a general European Trades' ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... nothing to 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 ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... least living human flesh and blood. In later life, we are told by Hotham, who was in the habit of frequently seeing her, up to her death, in 1831, "she continually talked of him, and always attempted to palliate his conduct towards her, was warm and enthusiastic in her praises of his public achievements, and bowed down with dignified submission to the errors of ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... not, he says, to palliate or extenuate the crimes he himself has been guilty of: but laments, for Mr. Lovelace's own sake, that he gives him, with so ludicrous and unconcerned an air, such solemn and useful lessons and warnings. Nevertheless, he resolves ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... very indignant,—all except Miss Furnival, who did not say much, but endeavoured to palliate the crimes of Lady Mason in that which she did say. "I do not know that she is more to blame than any other lady who marries a gentleman thirty ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... and respectfully received by the Lady Abbess; but it was not long before her Grief renewing with greater Violence, and more afflicting Circumstances, had obliged them to stay with her till it was almost dark, when they once more begged the Liberty of an Hour's Absence; and the better to palliate their Design, Henrique told her, that he would make use of her Father Don Richardo's Coach, in which they came to Don Antonio's, for so small a Time: which they did, leaving only Eleonora her Attendant with her, with out whom she had ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... which the whole purchase money of 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 bitterness that the Queen's ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... Lord CURZON made 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... endeavor to palliate Franklin's error in failing to detect the duplicity of de Vergennes. On the contrary, it would give a less agreeable idea of him had he been ready to believe so ill of an old and tried friend. For years Franklin had been ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... with wraps, and not buried under them. Bury may be used of any object, entomb and inter only of a dead body. Figuratively, one may be said to be buried in business, in study, etc. Compare IMMERSE; PALLIATE. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... Chowringhee," he said, "but this is not a censorious public." Then, as if to palliate the word, he added, "They will think me no more mad to carry paper bags than to carry myself, when it is plain that I might ride—and they see me doing that ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... people 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, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... if striving by extraordinary courtesy to palliate the pain which he had inflicted on Arundel, he accompanied the two to the door of the apartment, ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... crime is proclaimed to be the greater than man's, even by the world. Let us be just. We do not heap the blame all on woman, even of her fall. All we say is, she bears the burden of the woe. In this fact she is warned. Society may pity her: it cannot palliate her guilt. Thus is she advised against throwing herself away, and casting off her allegiance to Christ, to herself, and to humanity. Let her fall, and almost without exception she is hopelessly ruined. Society ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... his strenuous action, of his undaunted courage, and of his well-tried loyalty, to draw the portrait of Lord Clarendon, to describe his character as we conceive it, and to vindicate his place in history. We have not sought to conceal his foibles, nor to palliate what may appear to some to be his prejudices. We are concerned mainly to claim for him, as the first of a long line of Conservative statesmen, a high ideal of statecraft, a lofty patriotism, and a clear-sighted honesty of purpose. We admit, without considering it necessary to apologize for, that ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... opens a subject much needing vindication and sound exposition, but which is beset with such difficulties for a Lecturer, that I must pass it by. Only as far as Shakspeare is concerned, I own, I can with less pain admit a fault in him than beg an excuse for it. I will not, therefore, attempt to palliate the grossness that actually exists in his plays by the customs of his age, or by the far greater coarseness of all his contemporaries, excepting Spenser, who is himself not wholly blameless, though nearly so;—for I place Shakspeare's merit on being of no age. But I would clear ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... palliate, extenuate passionate, impassioned pathos, pity patron, customer peculiar, unusual perspicuity, perspicacity permeate, pervade permit, allow perseverance, persistence pertain, appertain pictorial, picturesque pitiable, pitiful pity, sympathy pleasant, pleasing politician, statesman practicable, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... upon his grave. Thou art perpetrating gradually, by the use of ardent spirits, what he has effected suddenly by opium or a halter. Considering how many circumstances from surprise, or derangement, may palliate his guilt, or that, unlike yours, it was not preceded and accompanied by any other crime, it is probable his condemnation will be less than yours at ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... humiliating to a high-minded and somewhat proud-spirited woman. All these things I turned over in my mind, and instead of suffering myself to feel incensed against her for the unkind note she had written to me, I endeavoured to find excuses for her, and to palliate her fault all that I could. What troubled me most, was the almost insurmountable barrier that she had thrown between us. 'Do not attempt to answer this; do not attempt to see me;' were strong positions; ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur
... engineers, mock-Jominis, the sham soldiers: all these Washington engineers of that recent butchery, assert now, that, after all, the possession of Fredericksburgh was immaterial; that Lee would have then selected a better position. All this is thrown to the public to palliate the crime of the Washington military conclave, and to weaken and invalidate Hooker's evidence before the War Committee. It must be admitted that if Hooker—having fifty thousand in hand, and one hundred thousand in his ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... ground; may he be permitted to examine it closely?" 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 ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... was repeated on the Porta Pia; and the Vatican, indignant at its powerlessness to suppress these symptoms of disaffection, is anxious to stir up the crowd to some overt act of insurrection, which may justify or, at any rate, palliate the employment of violent measures. So in order to incense the crowd, the public executioner was sent out in a cart guarded by gendarmes to excite some active expression of anger on the part of the mob. It is hard ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... insincere, indeed I do not like him save with that instinctive material sympathy that is the fruit of incessant intimacy. Because he was myself I may be able to feel and write understandingly about motives that will put him out of sympathy with nearly every reader, but why should I palliate ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... were all. 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 ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... treatment 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, ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... me." His eyes seemed to swim in blood, as he looked at me, or through me, aghast at the horror of his situation, and sweat stood in blobs upon his brow. "That," he went on, "weighs me down like lead. Here about me my people know me, and may palliate the mistake of a day by the recollection of a lifetime's honour. I blame Auchinbreac; I blame the chieftains,—they said I must take to ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... calculation. In this way the time for the building of Rome was 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 and passions ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... think lightly of sin? or, by example and conduct, to palliate and overlook its enormity? Not so; sin, as sin, can never be sufficiently stamped with the brand of reprobation. But we must seek carefully to distinguish between the offence and the offender. Nothing should be done on our part, by word ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... plot of Conde, he said, to palliate still more his flight from France. Every one knew that the Princess could not fly back to Paris through the air. To take her out of a house filled with people, to pierce or scale the walls of the city, to arrange her journey by ordinary means, and to protect ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... that he might have been unfair to the culprit, who had not striven to deny or palliate his offense. He sent for Harrison and Craye, reprehending them very gently for the tone they had adopted to a repentant sinner, and when they returned to their study, they used the language of despair. They then made headlong inquisition through the house, driving the fags to ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... Walter Scott, which, on occasion of this and other ballads, is impugned by Colonel the Hon. FitzWilliam Elliot. He "hopes, though he cannot expect," that I will give my reasons for not sharing his belief that Sir Walter did a certain thing which I could not easily palliate.' ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... this rudderless age state and church are making desperate efforts to palliate the evils of nonreligion and its consequence, non-morality. In our own country we are multiplying state-provided nurseries, schools, playgrounds, gymnasiums, colleges and hundreds of other substitutes for the homes and the home training that fails under the strenuous ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... Oh! spare me! My conscience never martyrs me so horribly, as when I catch my base thoughts in search of an excuse! No, nothing can palliate my guilt; and the only just consolation left me, is, to acquit the man I wronged, and own I erred without a ...
— The Stranger - A Drama, in Five Acts • August von Kotzebue
... is only among the enlightened and benevolent that so great a sacrifice of appetite and prejudice can be expected, even though its ultimate excellence should not admit of dispute. It is found easier by the short-sighted victims of disease, to palliate their torments, by medicine, than to prevent them by regimen. The vulgar of all ranks are invariably sensual and indocile; yet I cannot but feel myself persuaded, that when the benefits of vegetable diet are mathematically proved—when it is as ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... insight and knowledge to get a glimpse into the unnecessary suffering of the world and who mentally come down with a slap-bang declaration that this must stop, are allowing themselves to be called by a name that history will execrate, and to smooth over and palliate and defend things that are bad, out of which good ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... so distinct from each other. If absolute justness for these instruments is to be acquired at the price of those inestimable qualities, it would be better a hundred times to leave it to virtuosi, thanks to their ability, to palliate the defects of their instrument, rather than sacrifice one of the most beautiful and intensely ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... palliated by the hope, which no well-informed men ought to have entertained, that Russia could be kept out and the war limited to Austria and Serbia. The second crime was the German ultimatum to Russia and to France. I have no desire whatever to explain away or palliate these clear facts. But it was not my object in writing this pamphlet to reiterate a judgment which must already be that of all my readers. What I have wanted to do is to set the tragic events of those few days of diplomacy in their proper place in the whole ...
— The European Anarchy • G. Lowes Dickinson
... or Brighton I cannot tell; my impression is that it would have done him no good; that he was a man who, if he had confessed himself beaten by the annoyances, would have succumbed at once, and that he was conscious of this. He did seek to palliate them by inviting visitors to his house. The result he ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... appears now to be happily restored to its former splendour; but possessing some knowledge of a lamentable fact, that neither Mr. Pettigrew nor Mr. Ashpitel appears to be aware of, I feel inclined to soften the asperity of the reflections quoted; and palliate, although I may not justify, the apparently reckless proceedings of the eccentric fifth Lord, as he is called. In the years 1796 and 1797, after finishing my clerkship, I had a seat in the chambers of the late Jas. Hanson, Esq., an eminent conveyancer of Lincoln's ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... intervals of rigour were meant to notify to the sceptical that the Government was at last on the track of evidence which would confirm the equity of everything from the beginning done against him. Constantly he had to stand on his defence against attempts to palliate the effrontery of the Winchester judgment by experimental accusations that he had been tampering with new conspiracies. For ten years the contest proceeded between him and the Court on that basis. He asseverated the right of an innocent man to freedom, ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... certainly not expedient, to proffer any information concerning the objects of royal indignation, except that which the newspapers afforded: nor was it perfectly safe, for a considerable time after the turbulent times in which the sufferers lived, to palliate their offences, or to express any deep concern for their fate. That there was much to be admired in those whose memories were thus, in some measure, consigned to oblivion, except in the hearts of their descendants; much which ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... understand much 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 ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... was his surprise and momentary delight when he beheld before him his only daughter, and felt her arms entwining his neck! After the first transport of greeting she became sensible that, in order to palliate his misery, she must put a strong curb upon her own, and in a short time was calm enough to enter into conversation with her father upon the subject of his present situation, and to deliver a message from the old earl, her grandfather, by which he was informed ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... 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 so perilous and ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... native land. 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 ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... relation of the great Plymdale dyeing house with Mr. Bulstrode, which on the one hand would have inclined her to desire that the mildest view of his character should be the true one, but on the other, made her the more afraid of seeming to palliate his culpability. Again, the late alliance of her family with the Tollers had brought her in connection with the best circle, which gratified her in every direction except in the inclination to those serious views which she believed to be the ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... treacherously surprised. 'Two minutes' looks, under the circumstances, very much like an idle pretence of fair dealing to cover an intentional act of cowardice which subsequent conduct could hardly palliate. The Boers say that they had not more men than were marching with the 94th on that occasion; that statement is worth very little, considering the evidence of our officers, and, above all, the harsh evidence of the facts that the 94th was from advance-guard to rear-guard practically ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... nearly expel Adam Smith for reading Hume's '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 condoled with him ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... success. Whatever time may remain to me, to-day in a sense my life is finished. I am a broken-hearted and discomfited man, with little more to fear and nothing to hope. Therefore I may be believed when I say that in these pages I set down the truth and nothing but the truth, not attempting to palliate my conduct where it has been wrong, nor to praise myself even when praise may have been due. Perhaps, then, it will not be counted conceit when I write that in my best days I was really a master of my trade. To my faculty for diagnosis I have, I think, alluded; ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... behave toward me as if with a cold design to bring me down in disgrace—as a proof of her superior powers and my own wretched weakness. Yet this very thing was I obliged regretfully to concede of her before many days. And it was behavior that I could palliate only by reminding myself constantly that she was not only a woman but the daughter of Miss Caroline, and by that token subject inevitably to certain infirmities of character. And still did she at times evince for me that shyness which ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... sharp sword. Side by side with them he would fight and, if it must be, die. A voice within warned him against making common cause with those who had robbed the family of which he had become a member, yet he again used the remembrance of his innocent darlings to palliate his purpose. For their sakes only he desired to go to his death, sword in hand, like a valiant knight in league with those who were risking their lives in defence of the ancient privilege of their class. They must not even suspect that their father had been shut out from ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... assuredly, Selma," Lyons answered. His predilection to palliate equivocal circumstances was never proof against clear, evidence of moral delinquency. When his religious scruples were finally offended, ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... history of Joseph, where Joseph makes himself known, and weeps aloud upon the neck of his dear brother Benjamin, that all the house of Pharaoh heard him, at that instant none of his brethren are introduced as uttering aught, either to express their present joy or palliate their former injuries to him. On all sides there immediately ensues a deep and solemn silence; a silence infinitely more eloquent and expressive than anything else that could have been substituted in its place. Had Thucydides, Herodotus, Livy, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... crude, difficult, and unsympathetic game. They may all of them, or most of them, hate war, but they will cling to the belief that their method of operating may now, after a new settlement, be able to prevent or palliate war. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... 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. ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... 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 ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... we would palliate Henry's vices, if such there be on record, or disguise his follies, or wish his irregularities to be forgotten in the vivid recollections of his conquests, that we would try "our immortal bard" by the test of rigid fact. We do so, because he is the ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... would doubtless have fought well under favorable circumstances. It is but fair, after casting upon the corps the aspersion of flight from before the enemy, to do it what justice is possible, and to palliate the bad conduct of the whole by bearing testimony to the good conduct of some of ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... full excuse for insult, but it will greatly palliate. If it was a full excuse, it might be well counterfeited to ...
— The Code of Honor • John Lyde Wilson
... replying to in terms which were far from being softening:—in fine, they quarrelled to a very high degree, and some company happening to come in at the same time, hindered either of them from saying any thing which might palliate the ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... 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
... the reader by bringing before him ill-assorted or compulsory marriages. Although habitual tolerance has long since relaxed our morals, an author could hardly succeed in interesting us in the misfortunes of his characters, if he did not first palliate their faults. This artifice seldom fails: the daily scenes we witness prepare us long beforehand to be indulgent. But American writers could never render these palliations probable to their readers; their customs and laws are opposed ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... and unobtrusive. She made no attempt to break down the wall thus established between us. And I was determined, on the whole, to be more than just with Rebecca. I would be kind to her in her disgrace. I would palliate her weakness as far as I could consistently with a pure and high standard of action. I even congratulated myself on the magnanimity of my intentions, except when I met the clear, sad gaze of those dispassionate eyes. Then I experienced an unaccountable sensation, as though ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... desire to win must 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 ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... irresistible certainty of organized nature, and, while it makes man free, in order that his responsibility may be unquestionable, it leaves mercy, even, for the judgment hereafter. Such a system of divine law can never palliate the African slave trade, and, in fact, it is the basis of that human legislation which converts the slaver into a pirate, and awards him a ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... remarked. Then he began to 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 would ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... was conspiring to bring her back into slavery. So long as the English Romanists refused to admit without mental reservation that, if foreign enemies invaded this country in the Pope's name, their place must be at the side of their own sovereign, "religion" might palliate the moral guilt of their treason, but it could not exempt ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... those dissensions in the Cabinet which his strange line of conduct had so palpable a tendency to provoke. At last the Chancellor committed himself openly to a hostile vote upon a vital measure, and left it no longer possible for the Minister to palliate their differences by private negotiations. The character and dignity of the Administration was at stake, and there was but one alternative left. The extremity to which matters were thus reduced is glanced at hesitatingly by Lord Grenville. The commentary which he did not ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... the public that they were not to go near or touch them, in twenty-four hours a mob would be raised to pull them down and ascertain what the planks contained." I mention this conversation, to shew in what a dexterous manner this American gentleman attempted to palliate one of the grossest outrages ever committed by ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... particularities of Jaffier's depositions, and the motive which prompted him to offer them, (the latter, as we have already shown, resting on a gross anachronism,) are, we believe pure inventions by St. Real; and Otway has used a poet's license to palliate still farther deviations from authentic history. Under his hands, Pierre,—whom all accounts conspire in representing to us as a foreign, vulgar and mercenary bravo, equally false to every party, and frightened into confession,—is transformed into a Venetian patriot, the proud champion ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 559, July 28, 1832 • Various
... had previously done or said or been could excuse or palliate his conduct. The fact that he was of a good family only rendered his alliance with "niggers" against his own race and class the more infamous. The fact that he was a man of substantial means, and ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... no 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. ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... crime of being a young man, which the honourable gentleman has with such spirit and decency charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny; but content myself with wishing that I may be one of those whose follies may cease with their youth, and not of that number who are ignorant ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... in favor of whom do all these sacrifices appear to have been made? In favor of an old prostitute, who, if shown to your Lordships here, like Helen to the counsellors of Troy, would not, I think, be admitted to have charms that could palliate this man's abominable conduct; you would ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... upon them as Armstrong had that tropic night on the Queen, he must have heard her words, must have realized that some compact or understanding existed between them, which neither Gray nor Mrs. Frank could palliate or explain. It had not needed that episode to tell her that Armstrong held her in contempt; and yet, when they chanced to meet, she could smile up into his eyes as beamingly, as guilelessly, as though no shadow of sin had ever darkened her winsome face. But not so ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... Nie fared differently. Japanese annals attempt to palliate his discomfiture by a story about the abuse of a flag of truce, but the fact seems to have been that Kawabe no Nie was an incompetent and pusillanimous captain. He and his men were all killed or taken prisoners, the only redeeming ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... bought as much bread, and ate it as freely, as if the government by insuring its cheapness had insured its abundance. So the city lived in high spirits and in gleeful defiance of its besiegers, until all at once provisions gave out, and the government had to step in again to palliate the distress which it had wrought. It constituted itself quartermaster-general to the community, and doled out stinted rations alike to rich and poor, with that stern democratic impartiality peculiar to times of mortal peril. But this served only, like most artificial palliatives, to lengthen ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... secretary of state for domestic affairs and the members of the privy council, silent in unanimous exhaustion and approbation the delegates, chafing under the length and solemnity of their vigil and hoping that the joyful occurrence would palliate a licence which the simultaneous absence of abigail and obstetrician rendered the easier, broke out at once into a strife of tongues. In vain the voice of Mr Canvasser Bloom was heard endeavouring to urge, to mollify, to refrain. The moment was too propitious for the display of that discursiveness ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... 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 Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller |
