"Culpability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have been a certain degree of culpability in the panel's conduct, still there is one circumstance which pleads strongly in his favor, so as to preclude all presumption of dole. This is the frequent practice, whether proper or improper, of using this amusement in the streets. It is a matter of public notoriety, that boys of all ages ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... desecrations, many parties are to blame. Such outrages have been practised by both landlord and tenant, by both State and Church; and I fear that the Presbyterian Church of Scotland is by no means free from much culpability in the matter. But let us, at the same time, rejoice that a better spirit is awakened on the whole question; and let us hope that our Scottish landlords will all speedily come to imitate, when required, the excellent example of Mr. Baillie, who, when some years ago he found that ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... satisfaction to Mackenzie that Miss Beasley shared his views as to the culpability of the delinquents and the necessity of giving them their deserts. They were summoned to the study ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... it was a characteristic of early law not to penetrate beyond the external visible fact, the damnum corpore corpori datum. It has been thought that an inquiry into the internal condition of the defendant, his culpability or innocence, implies a refinement of juridical conception equally foreign to Rome before the Lex Aquilia, and to England when trespass took its shape. I do not know any very satisfactory evidence that a man was ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... silent for the striding of half a square. The New England conscience dies hard, and while it lives it is given to drawing sharp lines on all the boundaries of culpability. Kent ended by taking the matter in debate violently out of the domain of ethics and standing it upon the ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... humility, with the feeling of culpability which Ugolini had awakened in him, suffice to explain his attitude with regard to the pope, or must we suppose that he had a vague thought of abdicating? Who knows whether conscience was not already murmuring ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... Judge, "you have committed an act of grievous impropriety. You have been guilty of one of the most reprehensible offences that any citizen of a Commonwealth founded upon order and justice could commit, an act of such flagrant culpability that the Court, in the maintenance of its dignity and in the interest of the Commonwealth found it necessary to visit upon you punishment of great severity and incarcerate you in the gaol usually reserved for the most depraved malefactors. Intemperance is one of the most debasing ...
— The Sheriffs Bluff - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... had never been able to free his mind of the disagreeable fact that he had so nearly killed Congdon; and he was beset now by the thought that sooner or later he must confess his culpability in the Bailey Harbor shooting. Congdon was accepting him at face value, and the thing wasn't square. Every time he touched the injured ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... such questions; and saw much physical cause for moral effects. He refrained, with the physician's reticence, from inquiring into the affair; but he would not have thought Bartley without excuse under the circumstances. In regard to the relative culpability in matters of the kind, his knowledge of women enabled him to take much the view of the woman's share ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... reasons, my dear," came the response. "One, because he wanted to leave me in the lurch. Another—it will be easier to keep an eye on him until Naughty is returned, or"—her voice had the vindictive ring of a Roman matron's—"this person's culpability is proven. Naughty is a valuable ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... the echo came back from the Cannes Brulees—that the very bottom culpability of this thing rested on the Grandissimes, and specifically on their fugleman Agricola, through his putting the hellish African upon him. Moreover, fever and death, to a degree unknown before, fell upon his slaves. Those to whom life was spared—but to whom strength did not ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... celebrated men of the present day, and to pronounce all who fell below that standard to have been deficient in natural talents, or in a faithful exercise of them, would be seen and acknowledged by all. At this time, errors in navigation would be unpardonable, which would have implicated a pilot in no culpability at all, who lived before the invention of the mariner's compass, and when half our globe was as yet unknown. The same observations are applicable when we would estimate the moral excellence of an ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... time in history the legal culpability of war makers is being determined. The trials now in progress in Nurnberg-and those soon to begin in Tokyo—bring before the bar of international justice those individuals who are charged with the responsibility for the sufferings of the past ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... based on the incriminating report of her own admiralty. The Austrian Government was informed that the admission that the Ancona was torpedoed after her engines had been stopped and while passengers remained on her was alone sufficient to fix the blame on the submarine commander. His culpability ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... systematically, but also too successfully, hostile to the advancement of the Ethiopians subject thereto; while the "fair field and no favour" management of the strong-minded Americans has, by its results, confirmed the culpability of the English policy in its relation to ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... was that other encounter at the chapel porch. Neither you nor I had the slightest business there. I admit my own culpability.” ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... deliberately destroyed their own property and then charged the culpability to the strikers, was common report. So conservative an authority as Carroll D. Wright, for a long time United States Commissioner of Labor, tells of the railroad agents setting a large number of old, decayed, worthless freight cars at Pittsburg on fire, ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... view, but we have also to consider and digest the fact, that the maintenance of this Church for near three centuries in Ireland has been contemporaneous with a system of partial and abusive government, varying in degree of culpability, but rarely, until of later years, when we have been forced to look at the subject and to feel it, to be exempted in common fairness from the reproach of gross inattention (to say the very least) to the interests of a noble but ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... guilty aggravates the guilt of each one, and he is most guilty who most is sensible of the guilt. Christ, the innocent, since he best knew the intensity of the guilt, was in a certain sense the most guilty. In him the culpability, together with the divinity, of humanity arrived at the consciousness of itself. Many are wont to be amused when they read how, because of the most trifling faults, faults at which a man of the world would merely smile, the greatest saints counted themselves the greatest ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... party spirit,' he went on, 'run very high against your commercial measures, I have no doubt that the venom of my religious opinions will be plentifully alleged to have infused itself into your policy even in that direction, ... and more than ever will be heard of your culpability in taking into office a person of my bigoted and extreme sentiments.' Peel replied (October 19, 1841) with kindness and good sense. He had not taken the trouble to read the paragraph; he had read the works from which a mischievous industry had tried to collect means of defaming their author; he ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... claimed damages for losses inflicted by fourteen cruisers and four tenders. The award allowed for only the Alabama with her tender, the Florida with her three tenders, and the Shenandoah during a part of her career. With regard to the Alabama the culpability of the British Government was so clearly shown that even the English arbitrator voted in favor of the American claim. The Florida was permitted to escape from Liverpool although Mr. Adams, the United States minister, repeatedly called the attention of the authorities ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... to introduce a system which would work smoothly, and in which there would be no question of suits-at-law, or investigations into anyone's culpability. The latter is quite immaterial for him who has been injured. He remains unfortunate, crippled, and unable to earn a living, if this has been his lot, or, if he has been killed, his family is left without its bread-winner, whether the accident was due to criminal neglect, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... but there are degrees in guilt, and the endorsation, or even the approval of an act after it has been committed, is a different thing from the original conception and carrying out of it. The respective weight of culpability, in the case under consideration, is a matter which the reader may very well be left to estimate according ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... he snapped, "rank, contemptible treachery. And the worst part of it all is that, even now, when I am morally certain of his culpability, I—I can't bring myself to despise the man. He's been my friend for thirty years, Dexter has, and damn it—— I beg your pardon, Sarah—but, damn it, I keep on thinking of him, in soft moments, as my ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... will remove some of your uneasiness. As to my opinions, I have no particular desire to vindicate them. They are merely speculative, and therefore cannot partake of the nature of moral culpability. They are early formed, and I am not solicitous that you should think them superior to those of most people at eighteen. I will, however, say this in their defence. Whatever the affectionate alarm of my dear ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... embraced and forming a part of Christian belief, or the deliberate questioning of a single article thereof, is a sin, a sin against God's light and God's grace. It is a deliberate turning away from God. The moral culpability of such an act is great in the extreme, while its consequences cannot be weighed or measured by any ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... shudder even at this distance of time. As Frontenac adopted the plan and sent forth the war-parties, the moral responsibility in large part rests with him. There are, however, some facts to consider before judgment is passed as to the degree of his culpability. The modern distinction between combatants and non-combatants had little meaning in the wilds of America at this period. When France and England were at open war, every settler was a soldier, and as such each man's duty was to keep on his guard. If caught napping ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... a ball she always dances with him. If you forbid her to see him, she makes a great outcry and it is not till many years afterwards [see Meditation on Las Symptoms] that you see the innocence of Monsieur A——- and the culpability ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... to the constable. When, in the evening, Mr. Robertson informed Richard what he had done, the boy flew into a terrible passion, and abused his tutor with a violence of language which shocked and astonished him, and opened his eyes to his own culpability, in allowing him to go on his way unchecked. He in vain endeavoured to silence the furious lad. He had been so long without exercising any authority, that he had now no authority to exercise, and, after an angry scene, Richard flung himself out of ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... other hand, you ought not to exact from us the literal performance of the stipulation when you know that we cannot perform it without conscious culpability. A true solution of the difficulty seems to be attainable by regarding it as a simple case where a contract, from changed circumstances, cannot be fulfilled exactly as made. A court of equity in such a case decrees execution as near as may ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... have resulted. A yet deeper reason for the secrecy enjoined upon the Twelve appears in the fact that the Jewish nation was not prepared to accept their Lord; and to ignore Him through lack of certain knowledge involved a lesser degree of culpability than would have attached to an unpalliated rejection. The particular mission of the apostles at a time then future was to proclaim to all nations Jesus, the crucified ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... collision with her countrymen. He would have again sought refuge in his passive, non-committal attitude, but he knew the impersonal character of Indian retribution and compensation—a sacrifice of equal value, without reference to the culpability of the victim—and he dreaded some spontaneous outbreak. To prevent the enforced expiation of the crime by some innocent brother packer, he was obliged to give orders for the pursuit and arrest ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... Peter was very good in being willing to take Linda at all after all that had happened, but she had begun to be aware that he himself was not able to make his own goodness apparent to Linda. She did not in her heart blame Peter for his want of eloquence, but rather imputed an increased degree of culpability to Linda, in that any eloquence was necessary for her conviction on such a matter. Eloquence in an affair of marriage, in reference to any preparation for marriage arrangements, was one of those devil's baits of which Madame Staubach was especially afraid. Ludovic Valcarm ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... police"; and he reminds them of Mr. Ruskin's saying that "a bad critic is probably the most mischievous person in the world," though a sense of their relative proportion to the whole of life would perhaps acquit the worst among them of this extreme of culpability. A bad critic is as bad a thing as can be, but, after all, his mischief does not carry very far. Otherwise it would be mainly the conventional books and not the original books which would survive; for the censor ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the genial countenance of the patriarch seemed to confirm his mild words. A smile, tender and patronizing, in which Jose read forgiveness—and yet with it a certain undefined something which augured conditions upon which alone penalty for his culpability would be remitted—lighted up the pale features of the Holy Father and warmed the frozen life-currents of the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... name, for the dubious pleasures of a life of dissipation, did not occur to him. He believed in the established moral code that excuses the offenses of the man and eternally condemns the woman. Yet, ready as he was to attribute culpability to her conduct, it was hard even for him to reconcile her smooth, artless brow, her frank, limpid eyes, her delicate, sensitive lips, with any act that ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... be because of some occult shortcoming on his part. In some way or other that man persuaded himself of his responsibility for her misbehaviour. He knew what it meant if he didn't ask the law to aid him to get rid of her; he knew perfectly well that his silence meant acknowledgment of culpability; that he couldn't remain in the service under ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... tragic) in the work, but the thought of the homelessness of the men, their terrible beds, and their long hours of toil oppressed the delicate and refined woman. She began to take on culpability. She was partly in authority now, and this system must be changed. She was deep in plans for improvement, in shanties and in sleeping-places, ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... been his attitude from the moment the detective left. My own insistence that it was our duty to track down the thief met with nothing but a shrug. Another person might have suspected that this apathy only proved his own culpability in the theft, but such a suspicion never for a moment crossed my mind. He was, as he said, sick of the very name of bonds, and with a person of his temperament that ended the matter. Though I did not comprehend his attitude, still I took him ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... ears of the judges were stopped against their appeals for justice. It was enough that they were accused. Decrees of confiscation, of the razing of their houses, of death, were promptly given before any examination was made into the truth of their culpability. On a mere rumor of a commotion in the Protestant city of Montauban, an order was issued to demolish its walls. The case was far otherwise with turbulent Roman Catholic towns. The people were encouraged ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... there was a movement in France to perpetuate De Lesseps's name by officially calling the waterway the Canal de Lesseps. But England withheld its approval, while other interests having a right to be heard believed that the stigma of culpability over the Panama swindles was fastened upon De Lesseps too positively to merit the tribute desired by his relatives and friends. As a modified measure, however, the canal administration was willing to appropriate a modest ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... capable, mon ami, of an exactitude of that undeviating character. To force further solemn promises from so forgetful, so unreflecting, yet so undesigning and well-meaning a young creature, is to plunge him and ourselves into the culpability of which we accuse him. To attempt in that manner to couper court,(308) etc., instead of frightening him into right, would harden him into desperation. His disgust to his forced study is still so vehement, that it requires all I can devise of exhortation, persuasion, menace, and ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... her icy hands; "you have saved my life, and rendered an immense service to Prosper. Don't be alarmed; everything will come out right in the end. Prosper will be accused, perhaps arrested; he expects that, and is prepared for it; he will deny his culpability; and, as there is no proof against him, he will be set ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... up, as from force of circumstances or shirking of responsibility. Desert refers to leaving or quitting in violation of obligation, duty, or oath. Forsake, which may involve no culpability, usually implies a breaking off ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... citizen to contribute and to sacrifice his all, I feel that I cannot but issue an appeal to every man in whom a Russian heart and a spark of what we understand by the word 'nobility' exist. For, after all, which of us is more guilty than his fellow? It may be to ME the greatest culpability should be assigned, in that at first I may have adopted towards you too reserved an attitude, that I may have been over-hasty in repelling those who desired but to serve me, even though of their services I did not actually stand in need. Yet, had they really loved justice and the good ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... simpler still to imagine than the culpability of Natacha. It is that Priemkof schemed to pour the poison into the flask of vodka, saying to himself that if the poison didn't succeed at least it would make the occasion for introducing his dynamite into the house in the pockets of the ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... to mankind the strict morality of Christ, charity, renunciation, peace at all price, without taking into account the necessities of social life; and he denounced, as had Jean Jacques Rousseau, the culpability of art and literature, being resigned to recognising his own works as condemnable. His was the soul of an exalted poet and a lofty poetical mind; from a poet must not be demanded practical common sense or that feeling for reality which is demanded, ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... very face of it, an accusation which is as malicious as it is groundless. To make such a self-proved and self-condemned accusation as this is, I submit, to be guilty of libel with no ordinary degree of culpability. ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... thoughts concerning women that had been gathering themselves together for years, but his absence from home had given him a holiday from the harassments of Aunt Rebecca's tongue, so that no new notions of woman's culpability had risen within him. He had dismissed the subject altogether, and had been thinking over a sermon regarding baptism, which he thought he could make convincing to certain of the younger members ...
— Amos Kilbright; His Adscititious Experiences • Frank R. Stockton
... and that the sin of sins is the rejection of Jesus Christ. Beneath the broad folds of that 'more tolerable' there lie infinite degrees of retribution. The same deed done by a group of men may be indefinitely varied in its culpability, according to the motives and the clearness of knowledge which accompany or prompt the doing of it. And so, just because the life beyond is the accurate outcome and issue of the whole character and conduct, estimated according to motive and knowledge, therefore there ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... obtained, within a few days of the events just related, certain revelations as to the culpability of the court of Navarre. At Lyon, and at Mouvans in Dauphine, a body of Reformers, under command of the most enterprising prince of the house of Bourbon had endeavored to incite the populace to rise. Such audacity, after the bloody executions ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... solid judgement, and that knowledge of human nature, for which he was upon all occasions remarkable. Taking care to keep in view then moral and religious duty, as understood in our nation, he shewed clearly from reason and good sense, the greater degree of culpability in the one sex deviating from it than the other; and, at the same time, inculcated a very useful lesson as to the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... The culpability of many parents is beyond dispute. They not only omit to set their children good examples, and give them good advice, but, on the contrary, instil into their minds the first rudiments of wickedness, and lead them into the paths of vice. Their homes present scenes which ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... one which is committed from sudden impulse, though not wholly involuntary, bears the image of the involuntary, and is therefore the more excusable of the two, and should receive a gentler punishment. The act of him who nurses his wrath is more voluntary, and therefore more culpable. The degree of culpability depends on the presence or absence of intention, to which the degree of punishment should correspond. For the first kind of murder, that which is done on a momentary impulse, let two years' exile be the penalty; for the ...
— Laws • Plato
... bear the discredit into which the seaside fell with the mothers of all the other sick children. She tried to bring Dr. Morrell once to the consideration of her culpability in the case of those who might have lived if the case of Mrs. Savor's baby had not frightened their mothers from sending them to the seaside; but he refused to grapple with the problem. She was obliged to believe him when he said he should not ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... Francesca in her sight. Vain were the remonstrances of her husband and of her father-in-law, vain their entreaties and their reproofs; unavailing also proved the interference of some mutual friends, who sought to convince her of the culpability of her conduct, and to persuade her that she was bound to show Baptista's mother at least the attentions of ordinary civility. The headstrong young woman persisted in exhibiting the utmost contempt for her. The Saint endured all her frowardness with unvarying gentleness ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... repeat that I perceive no culpability in my conduct. Had I felt it my duty, your love or indifference would not have weighed an atom in my decision to act according to my sense ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans |
