"Heinous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the board's eyes and all of the directors' eyes boring holes through the partitions to fix their accusing gaze upon him as he bent nervously over the huge ledger and tried to shrink into invisibility. He had committed a heinous, inexcusable, unpardonable offence. He would have to pay the penalty. After all these years of faithful service, he would be kicked out in disgrace; some one else would be sitting in his place after luncheon and some one else would be hanging his coat and hat in the locker ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... communities. In a few months the visitations were finished, and the reports of the visitors were presented to Cromwell. According to these reports most of the monasteries and convents were homes of sin and vice, and many of the monks and nuns were guilty of heinous crimes, but, though in particular instances there may have been some grounds for these charges, there is good reason for not accepting as trustworthy this account of monastic discipline. In the first place the royal visitors traversed the country with ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... servants, who were constant attendants upon Dr. Leatrim's ministry, had given liberally; that the box must have been robbed, and that to a considerable amount. My uncle returned home a miserable man. A great and heinous sin had been committed. To suspect any of the members of his household was a sin almost as great. What was ...
— George Leatrim • Susanna Moodie
... inheritance; and so have most of us, and in countries that fondly believe themselves much more civilised than Italy. That was extremely wicked, but the attempt had failed, and it sank into insignificance in comparison with the heinous crime of trying to separate two lovers by treachery. That was what Regina would ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... to Doctor Dobbs, who was in the habit of taking a pipe and a tankard at the "Bugle," and it had been roundly reprobated by the worthy divine; who told Mrs. Score, that the crime of Catherine was only the more heinous, if it had been committed from interested motives; and protested that, were she a princess, he would never speak to her again. Mrs. Score thought and pronounced the Doctor's opinion to be very bigoted; indeed, she was one of those persons ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... holy malcontents, Sweet seers, and stellar visionaries, all That brood about the skies of poesy, Full bright ye shine, insuperable stars; Yet, if a man look hard upon you, none With total luster blazeth, no, not one But hath some heinous freckle of the flesh Upon his shining cheek, not one but winks His ray, opaqued with intermittent mist Of defect; yea, you masters all must ask Some sweet forgiveness, which we leap to give, We lovers of you, heavenly-glad to ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... helmet almost touching the keystone of the arch under which he sat, his accoutrements shining like jewels, and he looking every inch a British cavalryman. I walked past on the opposite side of Whitehall, meeting, without being recognized, all my aiders and abettors in this most heinous attack on Her Majesty's Guards. I then crossed the street and took a good look at my man. He and his companion-sentry under the other arch were aware of officers in "mufti" on the opposite sidewalk, and kept their eyes immovably to the front. Evidently nothing much short of an earthquake could ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... dissection," continued the operator. "It is seldom that law loses sight of eventual utility in a malefactor. Bigamy, in a man, is a heinous offense!" ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... "past life," a much more tangible objection, but Dermot was ready there, declaring that whatever Harold had done, considering his surroundings, was much less heinous than his own transgressions, after such a bringing up as his, and would his mother say that nobody ought to marry him? Besides, to whom had she given Di? They were not arguments that Lady Diana accepted, but she weakened ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to the most sacred obligations of human and divine law. But he would not permit himself to become a silent copartner in what, to his strict notion of the inviolability of the marriage contract, was one of the most heinous crimes against society and morals. He, therefore, took every means in his power to bring obloquy and punishment upon the guilty parties. He instituted various proceedings at law to test the validity of the marriage ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... impossible to overvalue the moral teaching of History.—FITCH, Lectures on Teaching, 432. Judging from the past history of our race, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, war is a folly and a crime.—Where it is so, it is the saddest and the wildest of all follies, and the most heinous of all crimes.—GREG, Essays on Political and Social Science, 1853, i. 562. La volonte de tout un peuple ne peut rendre juste ce qui est injuste: les representants d'une nation n'ont pas le droit de faire ce que la nation n'a pas le droit de faire elle-meme.—B. ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton
... of the nations, which most of these scenes showed me, I must say, fell heavily upon my spirit; and I could not help thinking of the old cities of the plain, over the house- tops of which, for their heinous sins and iniquitous abominations, the wrath of the Almighty showered down fire and brimstone from heaven, till the very earth melted and swallowed them up for ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... the danger wherein they are that steal their neighbor's goods from them, but I hear nothing yet of restitution. Sirs, I tell you, except restitution is made, look for no salvation. And it is a miserable and heinous thing to consider that we are so blinded with this world that, rather than we would make restitution, we will sell unto the devil our souls which are bought with the blood of our Savior Christ. What can be done more to the dishonoring of Christ than to cast our souls away to ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... here. And they worked to such good purpose that the legal officers of the Administration admonished the American people that the English, in holding up merchant vessels laden with cargoes for Germany, committed breaches against international law which were quite as heinous as the sinking by German submarines of ships laden with American non-combatants. They magnified the loss of a cargo of perishable food and set it against the ferocious destruction of neutral human beings. Senator Lodge, however, expressed the clear thought and right feeling of Americans ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... conduct has not been by any means irreproachable. Miss Griggs reported that she took advantage of my absence to saturate herself with scent, one of the most heinous crimes in our domestic calendar. Mulier bene olet dum nihil olet is the maxim written above this article of our code. Once when she disobeyed my orders and came into the drawing-room reeking of ylang-ylang, I sent her upstairs ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... justice driven out where heavenly men should dwell? I see it. I mark it. The leaven of pride is kneaded in the brotherhood. Intriguing hypocrites usurp the House of God. What! brother John, the fat, the corpulent, the lazy! of whom I know ten thousand heinous sins; the least sufficient to condemn a soul. An Abbot, chosen by the holy, is the elect of God. But he—no, no, no. It shall not be. God will forbid it. They put the crosier in his hand. For shame! for shame! Let not ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 544, April 28, 1832 • Various
... affirmative, neither can I hesitate for a single moment to say that it has been decided justly. You are a bad and dangerous person, and stand branded in the eyes of your fellow-countrymen with one of the most heinous ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... rather an exception," Pamela reminded him. "The one thing I cannot understand, however, is that she should have allowed herself to be seen dining with Mr. Oscar Fischer at the Ritz-Carlton. I should have thought that would have been almost as heinous to her as my own ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... who came in hotly to remonstrate, to threaten, to abuse. Dr. Fenton had charged in upon him with a whole battery of reproaches. In stentorian tones he rehearsed the judge's kindness in befriending him, he pointed out his generosity, and laid stress on Sandy's heinous ingratitude. Mr. Moseley had arrived with arguments and reasons and platitudes, all expressed in a polysyllabic monotone. Mr. Meech had come many times with prayers and ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... in the world were each to give me a box on the ear, it would not be a sufficient atonement. Your majesty will judge of this yourself, when, in telling my story, in obedience to your commands I shall inform you what that heinous ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... ate in silence, watching the sparkling throng and listening to such scraps of conversation as floated to him from merry tables. Down in Union Street it had been the fashion to decry idleness and the crimes of the rich—the orators having it that leisure was criminal and ease a heinous sin. Alban had never believed in any such fallacy. "We are all born lazy," he had said, "and few of us would work unless we had to. Vanity is at the bottom of all that we do. If no one were vain, the world would stand still." In the Savoy, ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... entering Parliament, he would have had a taste of jail, the hulks, or the pillory. So alert had the Government agents been for sedition that to stick one's tongue in his cheek at a member of the Cabinet was considered fully as bad as poaching, both being heinous offenses before God and man. Persecution was in the air and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... Great Britain herself had frequently taken foreign battalions into her pay, but these were to fight a foreign enemy. It would be a thing new in her history to engage them to suppress fellow-Englishmen. But the king regarded war as war, and rebellion a heinous offence; and the character of the troops serving for him in this case became a secondary matter. A more serious question was where to get them. No assistance could be expected from France. Holland declined to lend troops to conquer men who were standing out for their rights on their own soil. ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... she thought. There must be a lost or broken wheel in the clock-work of time; there was some disease among men; some poison, some evil, some heinous oversight. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... among other heresies which he taught, one was that God had a beginning, [a doctrine] which only very learned men understood. Another was a prebend whom his illustrious Lordship held as a recluse in our college, for heinous and atrocious crimes, whose final end was a sentence of degradation, and delivery to the secular arm; the dean settled this case, without examining the documents in the case (which they did not find), by condemning him to six months of banishment to a country house of recreation." ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... Delamere, "furnishes a sufficient penalty for any crime, however heinous, and our code is by no means lenient. To my old-fashioned notions, death would seem an adequate punishment for any crime, and torture has been abolished in civilized countries for a hundred years. It would be better to let a crime go entirely unpunished, than to ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... stealing it. He had approached without exciting alarm, and while the Sauteur was engaged in taking the trap from the water, he stood maturely surveying him with a loaded rifle in his hands. As the two nations were at war, and the offence was in itself one of the most heinous nature, he would have been justified in killing him on the spot, and the thief looked for nothing else, on finding himself detected. But the Sioux chief walking up to him discovered a nobleness of disposition which would have done honor to the most enlightened of ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... brother did, indeed, conquer the land; and for this the emperor was pleased to raise both him and you from the dust. He lived and died a true and loyal subject; and it only makes your ingratitude to your sovereign the more heinous." Then, seeing his prisoner about to reply, the president cut short the conference, ordering him into close confinement. He was committed to the charge of Centeno, who had sought the office, not from any unworthy desire to gratify ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... that's the way you pass your time! Indeed your charming, frank confession Betrays no sort of heinous crime, But marks a wonderful digression From puritanic views, less bold, That we were early taught ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... quite clear to this day as to why we were there—whether we were sent for a treat, or for a punishment, or whether I was sent to take care of Jack, or Jack was sent to take care of me. I can't remember that we had committed any unusually heinous offence at home. Indeed, since our attempt a week or two previously to emulate history by smothering the twins, after the manner of the princes in the Tower, we had been particularly quiet, not to say dull, at home. ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... deceitful creature!" said the one. "January and May," muttered the other; "the man's sixty!" It was noticeable that the party against Lucy was chiefly composed of ladies, that against Mauleverer of men; that conduct must indeed be heinous which draws down the ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... say that suicide is a crime, is speaking somewhat unphilosophically. No doubt suicide, under many circumstances, is a crime, a very heinous one. When the father of a family, for example, to escape from certain difficulties, commits suicide, he commits a crime; there are those around him who look to him for support, by the law of nature, and he has no right to withdraw himself from those who have a claim upon his exertions; he is ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... is often defeated, from pecuniary considerations in the Slave States of America, where, if a slave commits even the heinous crime of murder, the ordinary course of the law is interfered with to save the owner from loss. This of itself is sufficient to stamp for ever as infamous the social cancer of slavery, and brands as ridiculous, the boasted regard ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... found guilty of the charge of which you are accused. In that verdict I cordially concur. The offense was a very serious one; but the endeavor which you have made to screen yourself, at the expense of that beautiful and innocent young girl, is, in my opinion, still more heinous and contemptible than the crime itself. Having made yourself master of her affections, you used your power to the utmost to effect her moral and social hurt. You would have had her perjure herself, and proclaim herself guilty of a crime she did not commit, ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... she went on to ask me what it was my intention to do next, for the moment I could do nothing more than inquire what her opinion was. And she told me that she must have a good night's rest before advising any thing. For the thought of having such a heinous character in her own delivery district was enough to unhinge her from her postal duties, some of which might ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... any capital or heinous offence that shall be committed in your ship by the land or sea men, the land and sea commanders shall join together to take a due examination thereof in writing, and shall acquaint me therewith, to the end that I may proceed in judgment according to ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... so called are not responsible for their acts. Their apparent moral obliquity is, in reality, a mental deficiency, for which they are not any more to blame than you or I. I have seen men who had been guilty—yes, even convicted of most heinous crimes, who from the very conformation of their heads revealed certain things that, to say the least, should have been considered in ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... see no sech heinous difference between searchin' a gent for his roll with steers at forty dollars—the same standin' you in four—an' layin for him by raisin' the ante for the limit before the draw. Mighty likely thar's a reason why one's moral an' ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... 'wanted anything for himself;' adding, 'that if the said Michael Bumple did want anything for himself, he, the said Thomas Sludberry, was the man to give it him;' at the same time making use of other heinous and sinful expressions, all of which, Bumple submitted, came within the intent and meaning of the Act; and therefore he, for the soul's health and chastening of Sludberry, prayed for sentence ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... to the extremity of the dungeon, Frank sat down upon the stone steps, his mind a prey to feelings of keenest horror and despair. His soul recoiled from the idea of suicide, as a heinous crime in the sight of Heaven, or he would have dashed his brains out against the walls of his prison, and thus put an end to his misery. Vainly he tried to forget his sorrows in sleep; no sooner would he ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... seeing your good works may glorify your Father Who is in heaven." And S. Gregory says: "Neither is it greatly praiseworthy to be good with the good, but to be good with the evil; for even as it is of more heinous guilt not to be good among the good, so is it of unwearied honour to have stood for the good among ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... those days, the shortcomings of the McClintocks did not appear particularly heinous. All our neighbors were living in log houses and frame shanties built beside the brooks, or set close against the hillsides, and William's small unpainted dwelling seemed a natural feature of the ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... have been expected under the circumstances of the younger having the monopoly of all the intellectual ability that existed between the two, and in 1723, being then only seventeen, he broke his indentures, a heinous offense in those times, and ran away, first to New York and then to Philadelphia, where he found employment as a journeyman printer. He had attained a skill in the business ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... shall then take coach, and bring your pretty criminal to mine; and when we have them together, they shall humble themselves before us, and you can absolve or punish them, as you shall see proper. For I cannot bear to have my worthy friend insulted in so heinous a manner, by a couple of saucy girls, who, if not taken down in time, may proceed from fault to fault, till there will ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... venturesome spirit of thine own, fair sir! Still, we must honor courage, even though it border on rashness, and I rejoice to see that the wrathful mob of Al-Kyris hath yet left thee man enough to deserve my welcome! Nevertheless thou were guilty of most heinous presumption!" Here she extended her jewelled hand. "Art thou repentant? and ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... many were proud to belong, was to secure to all the utmost amount of innocent enjoyment, and the most entire peace of mind; that no pressure was put upon any one who decided to stay there, and to observe the quiet customs of the place; but that it was always considered a heinous and ill-disposed thing to attempt to unsettle any one's convictions, or to attempt, by using undue influence, to bring about the migration of any citizen to conditions of which little was known, but which there was reason to ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... you, we shall consider thus: Every tribulation that we fall in, either cometh by our own known deserving deed bringing us to it, as the sickness that followeth our intemperate surfeit or the imprisonment or other punishment put upon a man for his heinous crime; or else it is sent us by God without any certain deserving cause open and known to ourselves, either for punishment of some sins past (we know not certainly which) or for preserving us from sin in which we would otherwise be like to fall; or finally it is not due to the man's ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... Contagious Diseases Act, a fanatic for temperance, a protectionist who believes that free trade is the ruin of the country, an anti-vivisectionist who holds that any painful experiment on live animals is the most heinous of sins; let any man who has come to believe that his own credit, no less than the salvation of the country, depends on the success of a particular party, know that the triumph of his cause depends upon his voting that a particular measure operates beyond Great Britain, ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... proceeded to Venice, presented himself at court, and declared himself ready to prove his identity. The Spanish minister, acting upon his instructions, denounced him as an impostor, and as a criminal who had been guilty of heinous offences, and demanded his arrest. He was thrown into prison; but when the charges of the Spanish minister were investigated, they failed signally, and no crime could be proven against him. At the solicitation of Philip, however, he was kept under arrest, and was frequently submitted to examination ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... this defiance that a profound stillness made itself felt in the crowded hall. Judges and jurors conferred together in wrathful whispers. In a few moments, Coursegol was condemned to suffer death upon the guillotine for having been guilty of the heinous crime of insulting the court in the exercise of its functions, and of uttering seditious words in its presence. Then he approached Dolores. She was sobbing violently, entirely overcome by this scene which had moved her much more deeply than ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... capable of proof; and, secondly, all crimes under it can easily be reached by some other law. The last objection does not, however, seem to be a very serious one. If, as Feuerbach says, the crime against the soul is more heinous than that against the body, it certainly deserves the first attention, even if the one is not merged in the other. The crime being greater, the punishment would be greater; and the demands of justice ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... lands without the knowledge of, or in opposition to the wish and interest of the community was a heinous sin, and the guilty party was always disburgessed, which ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1875 • Various
... about marriage, using spiritual speech with representatives, which fully expresses all that is meant and many things in a moment. He said that in the life of the body he had regarded adulteries as of no account. But I was permitted to tell him that adulteries are heinous, although to those like himself they do not appear to be such, and even appear permissible, on account of their seductive and enticing delights. That they are heinous he might know from the fact that marriages are the seminaries of the human race, and thus also the seminaries of the heavenly ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... without exception! Is it not a great thing that these good men submit themselves to the Church, and so defer to her as to ask her permission and blessing? God grant that they may do nothing worse than eat eggs, cheese, or beef; if they were guilty of nothing more heinous than that, there would not be so many complaints ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... school of Critics who considered themselves competent to improve the style of the Holy Ghost throughout. [And before the members of the Church had gained a familiar acquaintance with the words of the New Testament, blunders continually crept into the text of more or less heinous importance.] All this, which was chiefly done during the second and third centuries, introduces an element of difficulty in the handling of ancient evidence which can never be safely neglected: and will make a thoughtful ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... marriage is a civil contract, and that matrimonial suits should therefore be removed from clerical cognisance.[755] As early as 1529 he ordered Wolsey to release the Prior of Reading, who had been imprisoned for Lutheranism, "unless the matter is very heinous".[756] In 1530 he was praising Latimer's sermons;[757] and in the same year the Bishop of Norwich complained of a general report in his diocese that Henry favoured heretical books.[758] "They say that, wherever they go, they hear that the King's pleasure ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... law we observe a scrupulous regard to justice and humanity, and have an unquestionable proof of the great advancement made by the Egyptians in the most essential points of civilization. Indeed, the Egyptians considered it so heinous a crime to deprive a man of life, that to be the accidental witness of an attempt to murder, without endeavoring to prevent it, was a capital offense, which could only be palliated by bringing proofs of ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... in this matter," answered Pedro. "I myself am an outlaw; I can never return as a free man to Spain. I have been guilty of a crime so heinous in the eyes of the law, that should the officers of my own ship discover it, they would be compelled to carry me there in chains. My dread, therefore, is lest we should fall in with any Spanish ship, from which they may learn what has occurred." ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... to whirl, then the story of the trader came back to him, and he remembered who and what the bearer of these later tidings was. He raised a pair of eyes that had become furious and bloodshot, and suddenly realized that the man before him, who persisted in saddling upon Gale this heinous crime, was the slayer of Necia's mother; for he did not doubt Gale's story for an instant. He found his fingers writhing to feel the ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... had a fair trial, and ye have been convicted of three heinous sins. First, ye miscalled a good man—for that three strokes with the cane; next, ye ill-used the quietest laddie in the whole school—for that three strokes; and, lastly, being moved of the devil, ye went home and ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... overt accusation had been made against his wife. Every allusion to her was full of love. But yet how heavy a charge was really made! That such a secret should be kept from him, the father, was acknowledged to be a heinous fault;—but the wife had known the secret and had kept it from him, the father! And then how wretched a thing it was for him that any one should dare to write to him about the wife that had been taken away from him! In ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... find the defendant not guilty." The distinguished lawyer, in the presence of the crowd and jury, and justice of the peace, straightened back in his chair. "My dear Miss Smith, you are again a free woman. No longer the imputation of this heinous crime rests upon you. You may go from this court-room as free as the bird that pinions its wings and flies toward the heavens, to kiss the first ray of the morning sunshine. You may go as free as that ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... with much earnestness, "I know that as well as you. But, in the first place, you were guilty of so heinous a crime that I determined to punish you, and at the same time to do it in a way that would impress it forcibly on your memory; and in the second place, I would not have done it at all had I not known that your nerves are as strong as those of a dray-horse. You ought to be taking shame to yourself ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... accomplished so easily as you imagine; and after all I must say, that although I promise to do every thing that lies in my power to serve the unfortunate prisoner, you must allow that his crime is a most heinous one. I cannot give you any great encouragement to hope that I shall succeed with Sir George Paull and the other Magistrates." This chap was a thorough Dr. Colston in his heart, and I left him with a determination not to trust my case in his hands. I next ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... turning to his son, grovelling at his feet. "Behold, thy brother's blood," he cried with bitterness, "asks vengeance of God and of me, thy miserable father; and now I shall deal with thee alone. Certainly it is a heinous crime for a father to kill his son, but it would be a still more grievous sin to spare the life of a parricide, lest he went on to exterminate his family, and lay their name in the dirt, to be execrated of all men. I have now resolved what to do, for I would far rather live in history as ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... my master and my friend. Yes! I confess it from my heart, and declare with horror that I disgracefully quailed when, through a dread of death, I condemned their doctrines. I therefore supplicate ... Almighty God to deign to pardon me my sins, and this one in particular, the most heinous of all." Pointing to his judges, he said firmly: "You condemned Wycliffe and John Huss, not for having shaken the doctrine of the church, but simply because they branded with reprobation the scandals ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... harass the judges, but they force the accused into their presence: a deputation from the Commune and the Federates summons the Assembly "to transfer the criminals at Orleans to Paris to undergo the penalty of their heinous crimes". "Otherwise," says the speaker, "we will not answer for the vengeance of the people."[3112] And in a still ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... offence, as a thing by itself, in an island of her life,—of which no one should ever think again. Was she to lose her lover for ever because she did not forgive him! If they could only come to some agreement that the offence should be acknowledged to be heinous, unpardonable, but committed in temporary madness, and that henceforward it should be buried in oblivion! Such agreement, however, was impossible. There could be no speech about the matter. Was she or was she not to lose her lover for ever because he had done this wicked thing? During ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... it appears that during the year 1817, out of the ninety-two persons who were tried for various offences, which it will be seen were for the most part of a heinous nature, no fewer than seventy-three were convicted, fifteen capitally, four of whom were executed, the remaining eleven had their sentences commuted into transportation to the Coal River for life; that there were six others originally sentenced to the same punishment; that there were five transported ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... to lie for the public good. But nobody else should meddle with anything of the kind; and although the rulers have this privilege, for a private man to lie to them in return is to be deemed a more heinous fault than for the patient or the pupil of a gymnasium not to speak the truth about his own bodily illnesses to the physician or to the trainer, or for a sailor not to tell the captain what is happening about the ship ...
— The Republic • Plato
... little narrow, but very indulgent to the follies of others. He had committed no sin himself—for many years: a suspicion of personal vanity is in itself proof of a pure and gentle mind; and as for the sins of others—they were probably not heinous, and at all events would gain forgiveness. The important thing, surely, was to be sound in dogma. The day wore on and the sun now shone only in a narrow space; and this the canon perambulated, smoking the end of a cigarette, the delectable frivolity of which ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... literalists and distinctly morbid and pseudophobiac, regarding every deviation from scrupulously literal truth as alike heinous; and many systematized palliatives and casuistic word-splittings, methods of whispering or silently interpolating the words "not," "perhaps," or "I think," sometimes said over hundreds of times to neutralize the guilt of intended or unintended falsehoods, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... heaved a deep sigh and said, 'Father mine, since you promise me to pray God for me, I will e'en tell it you. Know, then, that, when I was little, I once cursed my mother.' So saying, he fell again to weeping sore. 'O my son,' quoth the friar, 'seemeth this to thee so heinous a sin? Why, men blaspheme God all day long and He freely pardoneth whoso repenteth him of having blasphemed Him; and deemest thou not He will pardon thee this? Weep not, but comfort thyself; for, certes, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... Indra himself. The preceptor was venerable in years and always devoted to our welfare. Yet unrighteous that we are, and stained with a levity of behaviour, we scrupled not to injure him. Alas, exceedingly cruel and very heinous has been the sin that we have committed, for, moved by the desire of enjoying the pleasures of sovereignty, we have slain that Drona. My preceptor had all along been under the impression that in consequence of my love for him, I could, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... his eyes from McTaggart as he smoked. He watched the man when the latter stretched himself out on the bare ground and went to sleep. He listened, still later, to the man-monster's heinous snoring. Again and again during the long night he struggled to free himself. He would never forget that night. It was terrible. In the thick, hot folds of the blanket his limbs and body were suffocated until the blood ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... men. I do not even enjoy the rights of a citizen. I am not even allowed to perform my duty as a representative of the people.... To the enemies of my country, to whom my existence seems an obstacle to their heinous plots, I am ready to sacrifice it, if their odious empire is to endure..... Let their road to the scaffold be the pathway of crime, ours shall be that of virtue; let the hemlock be got ready for me, I await it on ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... general court conceiving themselves bound by the first opportunity to bear witness against the heinous, and crying sin of man-stealing, as also to prescribe such timely redress for what is past, and such a law for the future, as may sufficiently deter all others belonging to us to have to do in such vile and odious courses, justly abhorred of all good and just men, do order that ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... pen in the putrescence of falsehood and incendiarism. The author of this blasphemous and pernicious Pamphlet, therefore, in trying to father his infidelity, his sedition, and his lies, on Carlyle, is doubly guilty of a most heinous crime. And we suspect, we know, and for the welfare of the community we hope to be able soon to point out openly, who and where this vile one is. Yes, only an atheist and anarchist is capable of such villainous mendacity, such unutterable wickedness ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... legislating, as we are about to do, for all the details of crime in a state which, as we say, is to be well regulated and will be perfectly adapted to the practice of virtue. To assume that in such a state there will arise some one who will be guilty of crimes as heinous as any which are ever perpetrated in other states, and that we must legislate for him by anticipation, and threaten and make laws against him if he should arise, in order to deter him, and punish his acts, under ...
— Laws • Plato
... friendship when no friendship existed between us. I came to make friends with the queen, not to trade or take things from her—and so forth. The blackguard Maula, laughing, said, "Bana does not know what he is doing; it is a heinous offence in Uganda sending presents back; nobody for their lives dare do so to the queen; her wrath would know no bounds. She will say, 'I took a few trifles from Bana as specimens of his country, but they shall all go back, and the things the king has received ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... force had been used and an assault committed. This would "let me out," since a dispatch-bearer cannot be expected successfully to defend himself against the whole Germany army. Incidentally I might add that interference in any way with the dispatch-bearer of a neutral country is a very heinous international and diplomatic sin. I therefore jerked my envelope of papers rudely out of the detective's hand and gave him a vigorous shove, resisting an almost overwhelming temptation to hit him with all my might on his fat, unprotected jaw. I had half risen to my feet, meanwhile keeping a grip ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... of a future life; but I prefer ignorance to a belief that the most heinous baby that ever died in sin is to languish in a state of damnation—even 'in a wide sense' as ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... his townsmen. To have the town owe money made individual debtors feel that owing money was not a particularly heinous offence. To have the town free of debt might start too enterprising ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... the name of Buffum, Hatter. Wishing to ascertain whether it was an English name or not, I went in, and entered into conversation with Mr Buffum, who was dressed as what is termed a wet Quaker. He told me that his was an English name, and that his ancestor had been banished from Salem for a heinous crime—which was, as the sentence worded it, for being a damned Quaker. The reason why Quakers were banished by the Puritans, was because they would not; go out to ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Tertullus against St. Paul at Caesarea. A Roman citizen—that is, a person possessed of full Roman rights—if he either denied the jurisdiction or was in danger of being condemned to capital punishment, might, unless he had been caught red-handed in certain heinous crimes, appeal to Caesar and claim to be sent to Rome. Unless the governor had been expressly entrusted with exceptional powers, or unless the case was so self-evident that he had nothing to fear from refusing, he had no alternative but to send the appellant on to the metropolis. ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... is always an air of self-consciousness in confessions; in such revelations there is always a danger of unctuousness or of vulgarity for the best of men. St. Augus-tine is not always clear of offence, and John Bunyan himself exaggerates venial peccadilloes into heinous sins. But Marcus Aurelius is neither vulgar nor unctuous; he extenuates nothing, but nothing sets down in malice. He never poses before an audience; he may not be profound, he is always sincere. And it is a lofty and serene soul which is here disclosed before us. Vulgar vices ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... to win from them considerable sums of money; till, elated with my success, I began playing for higher stakes, and when I lost them, I grew desperate, and it was then that I began adding the sin of theft to the no less heinous one of gambling. But it is no use now to talk of the past; my character is blasted, and all I wish is to die and hide my guild in the grave, and yet I am ill-prepared to die." He became so much excited, that we endeavored ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... principles, however weak it may be, in perverted natures. In cases where judgment can discern, where there is power to choose between good and evil, the guilty person has only himself to blame, and the most heinous crime is only the action of its perpetrator. It is a human action, the result of passions which might have been controlled, and one's mind is not uncertain, nor one's conscience doubtful, as to the guilt. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... matter the best way, I am told, is to begin by settling what both parties are agreed in, and so to narrow the matter. To use that method, then, I do heartily agree with the learned counsel that murder is a heinous crime, and that, black as it is at the best, yet it is still more detestable when 'tis a wife that murders her husband, and robs her child of a parent who can ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... reigned by extortion. He poisoned his own cardinals, and bestowed on his son Caesar Borgia—an incarnated demon—the highest dignities and rewards. It was common for the popes to sell the highest offices in the church for money, to place boys on episcopal thrones, to absolve the most heinous and scandalous crimes for gold, to encourage the massacre of heretics, and to disgrace themselves by infamous vices. And a general laxity of morals existed among all orders of the clergy. They were ignorant, debauched, and ambitious. ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... you count nature as nothing?—a secret sentiment told her he was not her brother." "And use, and education, and an open sentiment, and all the world told her he was. Such a woman was guilty of a revolting indelicacy and a heinous crime, and no exaggerated representation of love, a passion of great purity in itself, can ever do away with the shocking realities of such ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... constantly kept in check; and at this time of his life his imagination was sufficiently alert to inflict upon him the sharpest anguish. His reverence for women was so deep and tender that he thought an injury to one of them was a sin too heinous to be expiated. No Hamlet, dreaming amid the turrets of Elsinore, no Sidney creating a chivalrous Arcadia, was fuller of mystic and shadowy fancies of the worth and dignity of woman than this backwoods politician. Few men ever lived more ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... Symmes, that you have committed a most heinous crime. You have killed two people in a passion that, while it used to be forgiven by the circumstances, is no longer tolerated by this government. ...
— Life Sentence • James McConnell
... are not aware, Philonous, that in making God the immediate Author of all the motions in nature, you make Him the Author of murder, sacrilege, adultery, and the like heinous sins. ...
— Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists • George Berkeley
... sentiment of moderation. Their speeches had reminded him of a passage in MIDDLETON'S Life of Cicero. The translation of it was defective, though it would equally suit his purpose. He says, "To enter into a man's house, and kill him, his wife, and family, in the night, is certainly a most heinous crime, and deserving of death; but to break open his house, to murder him, his wife, and all his children in the night, may be still very right, provided it be done with moderation." Now, was there anything more absurd in this passage, than to say, that the Slave Trade might be carried on with ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... questioned, it appears by the evidence that the European form of human sacrifice has little in common with the savage form except in the nature of the victim. It occurred, as Grimm states, when some great disaster, some heinous crime, had to be retrieved or purged, a kind of sacrifice, says Mr. Lang, not necessarily savage except in its cruelty; and the victims were not tribesmen, but captive enemies, purchased slaves, or ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... it would be a heinous Offence, if in the mean Time any Body should say, Take away this Dish, there's no Body eats. You must sit your Time appointed, which I think they measure by the Hour-Glass. At length, out comes that bearded Fellow, or the Landlord himself, in a Habit but little differing from his ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... ancestors. The vanity of Norfolk, artfully worked upon by the bishop of Ross, Mary's prime agent, caused him to listen with complacency to this rash proposal; and having once consented to entertain it, he naturally became earnest to prevent Murray from preferring that heinous accusation which he had at length apprized the English commissioners that he was provided with ample means of substantiating. After some deliberation on the means of effecting this object, he accordingly resolved upon the step of discovering his views to the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... as it occupied him the more. He might obtain the command of the right wing of the American army, and at one stroke accomplish what George Monk had achieved for Charles the Second. It was not so heinous a crime to change sides in a civil war, and history has been known to reward the memory of those who performed such daring and desperate exploits. His country will have benefited by his signal effort, ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... sinners, and did what might be done to win them to heaven by helping them to have a good time here. The church embraced and included the world. It no longer frowned even upon social dancing,—a transgression once so heinous in its eyes; it opened its doors to popular lectures, and encouraged secular music in its basements, where, during the winter, oyster suppers were given in aid of good objects. The Sunday school was made particularly attractive, both to the children and the young men and girls who taught ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells |
