"Extenuation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... situation of some embarrassment. For, in representing, as you honor me, by giving me leave to do, my brother dramatists, I confess I am not in the position to deny that their wares frequently "sell." [Laughter.] I might, of course, artfully plead in extenuation of this condition of affairs that success in such a shape is the very last reward the dramatist toils for, or desires; that when the theatre in which his work is presented is thronged nightly no one is more surprised, more abashed than ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... some she thought were preposterous; but there were some that she found brilliantly successful, and a few that charmed her with their delicate and tender poetry. He said something about most of them, in apology or extenuation; Cornelia believed that she knew which he liked by his ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... struck de key-note of it all, I fear. I plead guilty. But I also plead, in extenuation, dat I have a vife to whom I owe a ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... and representing a small minority even of the Puritans. The king, a weak and vacillating man, made an attempt at arbitrary power, was resisted, and after years of civil war, ended his days on the scaffold; Cromwell, without any of those palliations which charity might urge in extenuation of the king, on the ground of the prejudices of his station, took advantage of the weakness of the country, after it had been torn by civil war, usurped supreme power, and became the most arbitrary monarch England had seen since William the Conqueror. No ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... Yet I find the fulness of my confidence checked by the fear of lowering myself in the estimation of the son of my dearest friend. But perhaps, if you knew all the circumstances, and had had my experience, you would find some extenuation of my fault. I was very unhappy when I first came to New Orleans. I was devotedly attached to a young lady, and I was rudely repelled by her proud and worldly family. I was seized with a vehement desire to prove ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... Malcolm ought to be a brave boy and not cry on account of a silly dream." Of course it was his mother who spoke; even from his infancy her method of education had been bracing. "Baby isn't a boy, movver," he had once said in extenuation of some childish fault; "movver must ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... it I wish I could undo, Laura; an' there's a lot more of it I couldn't help, an' maybe some I—I—wasn't——" He paused. He couldn't bring himself to say anything in extenuation of himself and his acts in the presence of this girl. It might sound as if he were playing for her sympathy, he thought ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... he, "it appears that Tom Beazeley has deserted twice; still there is much extenuation; at all events, the punishment of death is too severe, and I don't like it—I can save him, and I will. By the rule of the services, a deserter from one service can be claimed from the other, and must be tried by his officers. His sentence is, therefore, ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... would have regained more hearts in England than he would have lost in Ireland. But it was ever his fate to resist where he should have yielded, and to yield where he should have resisted. The most wicked of all laws received his sanction; and it is but a very small extenuation of his guilt that his sanction ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Battle servants had always spoken their minds to their mistresses in a manner which caused them to become hopeless failures when they hired themselves into strange families, where the devotion of their lives could not be offered in extenuation of ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... will have ceased from all wants as well as from all work. Then your charitable speeches may find vent; then you may remember and pity the toil and the struggle and the failure; then you may give due honour to the work achieved; then you may find extenuation for errors, and ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... Americans upon that question, and when examining into it, it should be borne in mind that there is much less excuse for vice in America than in the Old Countries. Poverty is but too often the mother of crime, and in America it may be said that there is no poverty to offer up in extenuation. ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... terror, and submit, my dear daughter, whenever I am called hence, in full confidence to that Power whose mercy is over all his works. I ought to add a few words about your dear father, who seemed to think my extreme regular conduct and the punishment I had inflicted on myself, such an extenuation of my weakness that he ever behaved to me with the tenderest respect, I might almost say reverence, and till his death gave me every proof of the purest and the strongest friendship. By consent we avoided each other's ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... because the journal of his residence on Tristan d'Acunha shows that, while living there, he read the whole service of the Church of England to that little community every Sunday, and his diary in many places exhibits a reverence for Divine things. It may, however, be said in extenuation of the lack of hospitality on the part of the missionaries of which he complains, that many of the early residents and European visitors to New Zealand were of an undesirable class, and that they exercised a demoralising influence upon the Maoris. It ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... (of which art music is by far the most important factor), has had ample time and opportunity for making up his mind. It is, therefore, high time to simplify and to cease from elaborating. In this book will be found, I trust, no special pleading, no defence or extenuation, no preposterous eulogy on the one hand, and on the other no vampire work, but a plain and concise attempt to depict the mighty artist as he lived and to describe his artistic achievement as it is. We have all had time ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... cuffs, and of a specific design and dimension of tie. Marked uniformity in these matters denoted their necessity; and clothes differing from the essential so vitally as did mine must have seemed immodest, little better than no clothes at all. I doubt if I could have argued in extenuation my lack of advantages for study, such an excuse being itself the damning circumstance. Of course eccentricity is permitted, but (as in the Arts) only to the established. And I recall a painful change of colour which befell the countenance of a shining ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... brought to judgment; war has been put on its trial. At the plea of the human race, civilization arraigns warfare, and draws up the great list of crimes laid at the charge of conquerors and generals. The nations are coming to understand that the magnitude of a crime cannot be its extenuation; that if killing is a crime, killing many can be no extenuating circumstance; that if robbery is disgraceful, invasion cannot be glorious. Ah! let us proclaim these absolute truths; ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... deserve the full extent of the law's punishment. I have known you from boyhood. Father, wife, God himself, have given you the best they have: an honorable name, a lifetime of devotion, the full ten talents. For these, you have returned dishonor, unchastity and self-indulgent hypocrisy. You have begged extenuation on the basis of nervous ill- health and temporary irresponsibility, both of which you have brought upon yourself by violating the laws of right-living. It is your soul that is sick. You are not fit to live free and equal with righteous men and women. You have had love and mercy-they have ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... with the importance of retaining an area of country which still furnished supplies than of annihilating the Army of the Potomac, and relying on European intervention rather than on the valour of the Southern soldier, were responsible for the occupation of the Fredericksburg position. In extenuation of their mistake it may, however, be admitted that the advantages of concentration on the North Anna were not such as would impress themselves on the civilian mind, while the surrender of territory would undoubtedly have embarrassed both the Government and ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... old man's gone." There was no one by at the moment to hear these injuries except Westover, but Whitwell called them out with a frankness which was perhaps more carefully adapted to the situation than it seemed. Westover made no attempt to parry them formally; but he offered some generalities in extenuation of the unworthiness of the Durgins, which Whitwell did not ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... off suddenly a stream of extenuation that was welling in her mind; for David did not look like a man about to be cut off in the heyday ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... the reserves and reticences of childhood, the things that offend, the things that bring agony, are forgotten by so many of those who have left childhood behind. In extenuation of this lively and kindly lady, it may be said that the manners and customs of her early youth were not those to which Larry was habituated. Yet, one might have thought that a glance at Larry's face would have sufficed to induce Rhadamanthus himself to remit the penalty. ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... revolver in my pocket, and the presence of the little weapon was curiously reassuring. I have endeavored, perhaps in extenuation of my own fears, to explain how about Dr. Fu-Manchu there rested an atmosphere of horror, peculiar, unique. He was not as other men. The dread that he inspired in all with whom he came in contact, the terrors which he controlled and hurled at whomsoever ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... already existing, and daily appearing in the world, the following Diary has been committed to the press, trusting that, as it was not written WITH INTENT to publication, the unpremeditated nature of the offence may be its extenuation, and that as a faithful picture of travel in regions where excursion trains are still unknown, and Travellers' Guides unpublished, the book may not be found altogether devoid of interest or amusement. ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... by the author in the way of excuse or extenuation for this incompatibility of Falstaff with Falstaff—for the violation of character goes far beyond mere inconsistency or the natural ebb and flow of even the brightest wits and most vigorous intellects—will ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... quenched its fire, and of that destructive bolt made a trophy of grace and a fair image of hope. She could not speak, and so she wept,—like the raw, chilling, hard atmosphere, which is relieved only by a shower of snow. How could she speak, guilty, remorseful wretch, without excuse, without extenuation? In the presence of divine virtue, at the tribunal of judgment, she could only weep, she could only love. But, blessed be Jesus, he could forgive her, he can forgive all. The woman departs in peace; Simon is satisfied; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... a question whether it be more improbable that the miracle should be true, or the testimony false: and this I think a fair account of the controversy. But herein I remark a want of argumentative justice, that, in describing the improbability of miracles, he suppresses all those circumstances of extenuation, which result from our knowledge of the existence, power, and disposition of the Deity; his concern in the creation, the end answered by the miracle, the importance of that end, and its subserviency to the plan pursued in the work of nature. As ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... In extenuation of the delay in the completion of the work, the author pleads his many employments during five years:—his book on the Elements of Drawing; his addresses at Manchester, and his examination, 'with more attention than they deserved,' of some of the theories ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... who are fleeing from the South, it is natural to look among the dominant class for the injustice which is driving them away; but it would be unfair to conclude that the blame rests entirely upon the whites, and still more so to leave the impression that there is no extenuation for the mistakes and abuses for which the whites are responsible. Much of the intimidation of the blacks has been tolerated, if not suggested, by a fear of negro uprisings. The apprehension is a legacy from the days of slavery, and is more unreasonable ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... Bertrade," he cried, "what is this thing that I have done! Forgive me, and let the greatness and the purity of my love for you plead in extenuation of my act." ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... hints that he would not find one of more royal temper. And this is the same Trope used when one speaks about himself in extenuation and gives a judgment contrary to one's own. There is another form when any one pretends to praise another and really censures him. As the verse in Homer, put in the mouth of Telemachus (O. ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... what you are doing!' Fitzjames shouted to the warders to put him back; discovered by patient hearing that the man was meaning to refer to some circumstance in extenuation, and after calling the witnesses found that the statement was confirmed. 'Now, you silly fellow,' he said, 'if you had pleaded "not guilty," as I told you, all this would have come out. It is true that I did not know what I was doing, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... able to explain matters so that they would seem no more than they really were,—a despair which not only relinquishes the hope of direct explanation, but wearily gives up all collateral chances of extenuation. ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... do not blame him for this. But can we blame those who, being resolved to defend the work of the National Assembly against the interference of strangers, were not disposed to have him at their head in the fearful struggle which was approaching? We have nothing to say in defence or extenuation of the insolence, injustice, and cruelty with which, after the victory of the republicans, he and his family were treated. But this we say, that the French had only one alternative, to deprive him of the powers of first magistrate, or to ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the Church stoutly opposed the insetting tide, but as the waves of commercial life grew strong and swept around her, the power of resistance grew more feeble from year to year, until finally some of her own people began to plead extenuation and even tolerance. The conflict was now open, and the result seemed questionable. With the conscience of the Southern portion of the Church asleep or dormant, the anti-slavery side of the issue came finally ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... provoking qualities that no amount of eloquence would ever draw a word of condemnation from him; he would praise readily enough, but censure was very rare with him, and extenuation was always his first impulse, so the more Honora railed at Mr. Sandbrook's interference with his nephew's plans, the less satisfaction she received from him. She seemed to think that in order to admire Owen as ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said Harlan, in extenuation. "Will you come in?" She was evidently a friend of Dorothy's, and, ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... shamed, sworn at and denounced, even now, as his generous nature groped for some extenuation for this traitor whose scheme he had discovered and exposed, he found it comforting to lay the whole blame and responsibility upon the ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... dark transaction gave him little comfort, nor was there any extenuation of his sin in the fact that the wife had fled to escape from her husband's brutality. He tried to console himself with the reflection that the thing had a ludicrous side. He might walk over to Mrs. Congdon and say: "Pardon me, madam, but ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... from another; and he that omits the care of domestick business, because he is engrossed by inquiries of more importance to mankind, has, at least, the merit of suffering in a good cause. But there are many who can plead no such extenuation of their folly; who shake off the burden of their situation, not that they may soar with less incumbrance to the heights of knowledge or virtue, but that they may loiter at ease and sleep in quiet; and who select for friendship and confidence not ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... believing it will be frustrated by Marcellina's appeal, he promises to honor the bride, as requested, in due season. Cherubino has begged for the Count's forgiveness, and Susanna has urged his youth in extenuation of his fault. Reminded that the lad knows of his pursuit of Susanna, the Count modifies his sentence of dismissal from his service to banishment to Seville as an officer in his regiment. Figaro playfully inducts him ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... having accepted two statues in payment for the ivory, previous to the death of Phidias. He likewise formally asked Eudora in marriage; humbly apologizing for the outrage he had committed, and urging the vehemence of his love as an extenuation ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... must sufficiently justify punishment, whether its end be to secure the innocent from wrong, or to deter guilt by example; and I believe every reader feels some indignation when he finds him spared. From what extenuation of his crime, can Isabel, who yet supposes her brother dead, form any plea in his favour. Since he was good 'till he looked on me, let him not die. I am afraid our varlet poet intended to inculcate, that women think ill of nothing that raises the ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... death. It meant the decay and min of a mind, the wreck of an immortal soul. What place could there be in heaven for the drunkard, who had dribbled away his reason, his power to discriminate between right and wrong, by perpetual doses of brandy? what could be pleaded in extenuation of ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... mob of persons. When brought into the presence of the magistrate, he learned, to his consternation, that the root upon which he had been experimentalising was worth four thousand florins; and, notwithstanding all he could urge in extenuation, he was lodged in prison until he found securities for ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... unfortunate day, and by the unexpected violence of the Indians in the canoe, as to lose somewhat of that self-possession, by which his character in general was eminently distinguished. Candour, however, requires, that I should relate what he hath offered in extenuation, not in defence, of the transaction; and this shall be done in his own words. "These people certainly did not deserve death for not choosing to confide in my promises, or not consenting to come on board my boat, even if they had apprehended no danger. But the nature of my service required me to ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... and especially for the selection of jurymen not likely to be troubled with scruples in political cases. He had been deeply concerned in those dark and atrocious parts of the Whig plot which had been carefully concealed from the most respectable Whigs. Nor is it possible to plead, in extenuation of his guilt, that he was misled by inordinate zeal for the public good. For it will be seen that after having disgraced a noble cause by his crimes, he betrayed it in order to escape from his well merited ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... [Footnote 1: In extenuation of the little that is known of the fresh-water fishes of Ceylon, it may be observed that very few of them are used at table by Europeans, and there is therefore no stimulus on the part of the natives to catch them. The burbot and grey mullet are occasionally eaten, but they taste of mud, and ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... alarming desertions after the retreat from Brooklyn Heights, he wrote, in humane extenuation of the deserters' offence: ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... escort and Herrera's squadron, no cavalry was forthcoming. Lopez remained unpardonably inactive, for want of orders, as he afterwards said; but, under the circumstances, this was hardly an extenuation. The position of the Carlists had been, in the first instance, from the nature of the ground, scarcely attackable by horse, at least with any prospect of advantage; but now the want of that arm was great and obvious. Cordova's conduct in leaving his squadrons ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... of opinion, that I am now so much a favourite, and have such a visible share in her confidence, and even in her affections, that I may do what I will, and plead for excuse violence of passion; which, they will have it, makes violence of action pardonable with their sex; as well as allowed extenuation with the unconcerned of both sexes; and they all offer their helping hands. Why not? they say: Has she not passed for my wife before them all?—And is she not in a fine way of being reconciled to her friends?—And was not the want of that reconciliation ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... will allege in extenuation the modern improvements now in progress, the Suez Canal, the railroads, the steamboats on the Nile, the bridge across the Nile at Cairo, and the sugar ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... in explanation and extenuation of Lenine's course, that the boycotting of the elections was the logical outcome of the class antagonism and separatism, and that the bourgeois leaders were just as much responsible for the separatism as the leaders ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... environment of unreality can respect himself or other people; and if it come to pass that he holds cheap views of life, and reads smart papers, and does sharp things in business, and that his talk be only a clever jingle, then a plea in extenuation will be lodged for him at the Great Assize. Small wonder that he comes to regard the world of men as an empty show and is full of cynicism, who has shifted at brief intervals from one shanty to another and never had a fit dwelling-place all his years. When a prophet ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... will dub me a fool to have married Sylvia. Well, he or she may do so. My only plea in extenuation is that I loved her dearly and devotedly. My love might have been misplaced, of course, yet I still felt that, in face of all the black circumstances, she was nevertheless true to those promises made before the altar. I ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... from his own peculiar point of view was morally justified in twice marrying, is a question of casuistry which has often haunted me. The reasons he alleged in extenuation of his conduct with regard to Harriet prove the goodness of his heart, his openness to argument, and the delicacy of his unselfishness. But they do not square with his expressed code of conduct; nor is it easy to understand how, having found ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... I thought God was an orphan," Hannah pleaded in extenuation. "But, what about God's papa?" she demanded with sudden inspiration. "You're so smarty, tell me ...
— The Little Mixer • Lillian Nicholson Shearon
... said by some, in extenuation of this wrong, that the slaves are well fed and clothed, and are kindly, even affectionately, looked after. This is true, in some cases,—with the house-servants, particularly,—but, as a general thing, their ...
— Step by Step - or, Tidy's Way to Freedom • The American Tract Society
... she had acted so rude to Bill, and sorry that he had gone. "But," she said to herself, by way of extenuation, "I didn't want to dance with anybody who asked me to because his hostess commanded him! He never even said he wanted to dance with me himself, but only that Adele said he must. But I do think he was mean to go away without saying ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... as she pleaded in extenuation that she was young and inexperienced; that her attachment had alone induced her to take the step to which she had resorted; and that she had been deprived of the counsel and guidance of her ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... these prisoners was uncertain; some mitigatory circumstances having come to light since his trial, which had been humanely represented in the proper quarter. The other two had nothing to expect from the mercy of the crown; their doom was sealed; no plea could be urged in extenuation of their crime, and they well knew that for them there was no hope in this world. 'The two short ones,' the turnkey whispered, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... thought. One instance among a thousand will suffice. Stage coaches, in the writer's county, used to be held up, single-handed, by a highwayman, known as Black Bart. All the foothill folk pleaded in extenuation of the robber that he wrote a copy of verses, embalming his adventure, which he used to pin to the nearest tree. Black Bart would have been shot on sight had he presented his doggerel to any self-respecting Western editor; nevertheless the sentiment that inspired a bandit to ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... heed of the remark, but passed on. But the child's pleading reminded him of the low, broken voice he had so lately heard, penitently and humbly urging the same extenuation ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... feeble-minded or hypnotized person, etc.). It is evident that measures of protection against such acts are urgent, and that persons abused in this way should have the right to heavy indemnities. What we require is not so much extenuation of penalty for the culprit as greater ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... forms of sin I never should have hated so intensely if I had not learned about them in the way God thinks best to teach us his abhorrence of them. I never read any book in which a sin was fully delineated that I did not feel some of the excitement of the sin—some extenuation, perhaps, some glossing over, some excuse for the sinner,—but in the record God gives I always intensely hate the sin and feel how abominable it is in his sight. The first book I ever cried over was the Bible and it was somebody's sin that brought the tears. I would like to ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... giving up his forty dollars a month was like a surgical operation. He saw that his master was incensed, and in no mood for extenuation; so he pleaded— ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... Carry's vague presentment of Mrs. Norma Hatch (whose reversion to her Christian name was explained as the result of her latest divorce), left her under the implication of coming "from the West," with the not unusual extenuation of having brought a great deal of money with her. She was, in short, rich, helpless, unplaced: the very subject for Lily's hand. Mrs. Fisher had not specified the line her friend was to take; she owned ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... morality—a state of public opinion which would make the improper use of public money a thing to be execrated. It was the lack of this which made your offense possible. Beyond that I see nothing of extenuation in your case." Judge Payderson paused for emphasis. He was coming to his finest flight, and he wanted ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... no consideration of a portion of the people sincere, inquiring, and emerging, though dimly enlightened, from the gloom of so dreary a scene, that is most apt to occur to our thoughts in extenuation of that gloom. Our unreflecting attention allows itself to be so engrossed by far different circumstances of that period of our history, that we are imposed upon by a spectacle the very opposite of mournful. ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... were despatched, and an habitual drunk, in the person of a burly dame from Tipperary, who pleaded not guilty and then urged the "poor childer" in extenuation, was sent down the harbour for three months; Uncle Cook had been put in charge of a couple of young frailties whose ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... are often exceedingly ingenious; and to be reputed rich might materially interfere with their success on such occasions. There is nothing more common than to hear a plea of poverty set up and most pertinaciously urged, in extenuation of the terms of a purchase, by persons whose outward condition, comfortable well-furnished houses, and large mercantile credits, indicate any ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... which succeeding generations have made, are making, and will make, continual additions, however, is Hume's fame as a philosopher; and, though I know that my plea will add to my offence in some quarters, I must plead, in extenuation of my audacity, that philosophy lies in the province of science, and not in ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... in the field of practical morals in his celebrated Instructions to his Son and to Posterity. The treatise makes an unpleasant impression with its hard, selfish, and somewhat sensual dogmatism. In extenuation it must be recollected that it was addressed to a hot and impetuous youth. He cultivated a taste for metaphysics. The Sceptic and A Treatise on the Soul are exemplifications of it. The former, as it stands, ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... up at school so long, Martha, dear," she answered in extenuation, "that I hate to interfere in anything she wants to do. She is very happy; let her alone. I wish, though, she would return some of the calls of these good people who have been so kind to her. Perhaps ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... child he saw how his act must appear to a mind unwarped by interest and unhardened by selfish years. Moreover, he could not bluster in the presence of death, and the thought that his greed had caused it chilled his heart with a sudden dread. He caught at the extenuation her words suggested, and said gravely, "You are right; I did not know. I would send food from my own table rather than any one should go hungry. I knew nothing about this girl, and no one has told me of her need until this moment. A man at the head of a great business cannot ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... as is their condition, the consideration that it has thus far been occasioned by their own imprudence, is apt to detract from that unbounded commiseration which it would otherwise excite: if, on the other hand, we do not reflect in extenuation of their thoughtlessness and extravagance, that their former increased means of indulgence, were the result of their industry; that this industry was in the first instance called into activity by the encouragement of the government; that it has since been paralysed by a concatenation ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... some great offence was tried before Lord Hermand (who was a great toper), and the counsel pleaded extenuation for his client in that he was drunk when he committed the offence. "Drunk!" exclaimed Lord Hermand, in great indignation; "if he could do such a thing when he was drunk, what might he not have done when he was sober?" evidently implying that the normal condition ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... and in some parts of America, perhaps, though now universally execrated by Christian people and pronounced murder by their laws. Even at that time Hamilton held it in abhorrence. In a paper drawn for publication in the event of death, he announced his intention of throwing away his fire, and in extenuation of yielding, he adds: "To those who, with me, abhorring the practice of duelling, may think that I ought on no account to have added to the number of bad examples, I answer that my relative situation, as well in public as in private, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... that night Julia watched by her mother, while Samuel Anderson sat in dejection by the bed. As for Norman, he had quickly relapsed into his old habits, and his former cronies had generously forgiven him his temporary piety, considering the peculiar circumstances of the case some extenuation. Now that there was trouble in the house he staid away, which was a good thing ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... is hot, come under the shade of this tree," and the master led the way to an umbrageous beech close by. There, still resting upon his horse, while China leaned against the enormous trunk, the story was told of the day's doings without exaggeration or extenuation. ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... meekness she could muster. She admitted that the monitress had reason for wrath, and that she had really no excuse worthy of urging in extenuation of her crime. It was hard to be debarred the use of the library for more than a fortnight, but, Helen, she knew, would enforce that discipline rigidly. The unfortunate motto-cards had come in for the bulk of the ink, ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... reaching a place than they are apt to bestow upon it when found. And, I am ashamed to say, that even Louisburgh was not an exception to this general truth; although perhaps certain reasons might be offered in extenuation for our somewhat speedy departure from the precincts of the old town. First, then, the uncertainty of a sailing vessel, for the "Balaklava" was coquettishly courting any and every wind that could carry her out ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... the party becomes the great object; and, too often, all measures are deemed right or wrong, as they tend to promote or impede it. The attainment of the end is considered as the supreme good, and the detestable doctrine is adopted that the end will justify the means. The mind, habituated to the extenuation of acts of moral turpitude, becomes gradually contaminated, and loses that delicate sensibility which instinctively inspires horror for vice, and ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... fitting occasion, as now, to have avowed it, if all this be a proof of the justice of the charge brought against me by my accuser of having "turned round upon my Mother-Church with contumely and slander," in this sense, but in no other sense, do I plead guilty to it without a word in extenuation. ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... and I laughed. I don't defend my laugh—it was in wretched taste. But I must plead in extenuation that the boy was a fool, and that I'd done my ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... twenty-one minutes after the attack. The Berlin government pleaded in extenuation of the sinking that the ship was armed, and German agents in New York procured testimony which was subsequently proven in court to have been perjured, to bolster up the falsehood. In further justification, the German government adduced the ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... been in all the history of murder and plunder. Liberty! the People! these are the sacred objects with which tyrants cloak their usurpations, and which assassins plead in extenuation of their brazen disregard of life, of virtue, of all that is dear and sacred to the race. The dagger of Brutus and the sword of Cromwell, were they not drawn in the name of Liberty—the People? The guillotine of the French ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... of better players than I am at the club," he said in extenuation. "I think I'll smoke a whiff or two here and go back. They can't hold ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... suggested. He said, "Come down to court to-morrow morning." I did so. "No. 4" was present, pale and trembling. As he stood there he made a better defence than any one else could have made for him. He admitted his guilt, and said he had nothing to say in extenuation except that it was the "old story", he "had not intended it; he deserved it all, but would like to get off that day; had a special reason for it, and would, if necessary, go back to jail that evening and stay there a year, or all ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... I took two drinks to his one—one drink with him, the other drink without him and of which he did not know. I STOLE that other drink, and, worse than that, I began the habit of drinking alone when there was a guest, a man, a comrade, with whom I could have drunk. But John Barleycorn furnished the extenuation. It was a wrong thing to trip a guest up with excess of hospitality and get him drunk. If I persuaded him, with his limited calibre, into drinking up with me, I'd surely get him drunk. What could I do but steal that every second drink, or else deny myself the kick equivalent ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... oath in extenuation of my conduct, and that I was bound to return. This was not held in law to be any excuse. I had no business to take an oath of that nature, it was asserted by the counsel for the Government. The sentence of death against me was, however, rescinded, on account of the many extenuating circumstances ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... enjoyed his freedom from domestic restraint; and he had planned a longer route, that should end in the Pyramids, when Fay was well and strong again. It would not matter then; but he was a brute, he confessed, to have left her just at that time. Then he added in self-extenuation that he ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... we know, were not of a kind to warrant this extenuation of the past. Maggie had returned without a trousseau, without a husband,—in that degraded and outcast condition to which error is well known to lead; and the world's wife, with that fine instinct which is given her for the preservation of Society, saw at once that Miss Tulliver's ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... use fer Chinks," said the mucker, as though in extenuation of his suggestion that they murder the youth. For some unaccountable reason he had felt a sudden compunction because of his thoughtless remark. What in the world was coming over him, he wondered. He'd be wearing white pants and playing lawn tennis presently ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Aunt Martha to the burglars, "I would like very much to hear what any one of you can say in extenuation of having broken into ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton
... as far as he only is concerned, be fearlessly avowed by those who loved him, in the firm conviction that, were they judged impartially, his character would stand in fairer and brighter light than that of any contemporary. Whatever faults he had ought to find extenuation among his fellows, since they prove him to be human; without them, the exalted nature of his soul would have raised him ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... cordially—and he had heard that the Rendal children had been to the party, which enraged him. You remember he accused the man of impudence in addition to the offence of drunkenness. Rendal, foolishly joking in his cups, had urged as extenuation of his own weakness the well-known fact that 'Arry Mutimer had been seen one evening unmistakably intoxicated in the street of Wanley village. Someone reported these words to Richard, and from that moment it was all over with ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... of her folly, and bitterly would the others upbraid her, telling again of the joys and wonders she had squandered. Then loudly would she bewail her weakness and plead in extenuation: "I seen the candy. Mouses from choc'late und Foxy Gran'pas from sugar—und I ain't ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... be to the overworked prads. The great fault of modern poetasters arises from their extreme love of spinning out an infinite deal of nothing. Now, as "brevity is the soul of wit," their productions can be looked upon as little else than phantasmagorial skeletons, ridiculous from their extreme extenuation, and in appearance more peculiarly empty, from the circumstance of their owing their existence to false lights. This fault does not exist with all the master spirits, and, though "many a flower is born to blush unseen," we now proceed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... adopts stealing as a means of subsistence. There should be no distinction made between the wealthy and aristocratic female thief and her less fortunate sister, for the crime is the same in both cases; the only difference being that the latter cannot claim the possession of riches in extenuation ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... with an outline of a comic grimace; and, if proved a voluptuary in torturing, he could instance half a dozen points for extenuation: her charm of person, withheld from him, and to be embraced; her innocent naughtiness; compensation coming to her in excess for a transient infliction of pain. 'Your anxiety is ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... by the other's horrified tone and hung her head miserably, only murmuring, after a pause, in damning extenuation, "He's ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... had given him small strength upon which to lean, was absent. He had gone idly and thoughtlessly before the emergency arose, and the man lying on the four-poster bed tried to argue for him, in extenuation, that he would have returned had he known the need. But in his bruised and doubting heart he knew that had it been Alexander, she would have read the warning in the first brook that she saw creeping into an augmented stream, and would have ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... been urged that the criticism I have passed on things as they are in England is too pessimistic. I must say, in extenuation, that of optimists I am the most optimistic. But I measure manhood less by political aggregations than by individuals. Society grows, while political machines rack to pieces and become "scrap." For the English, so far as manhood and womanhood and health and happiness go, I see ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... shall be 272expelled to a certainty—and, if I don't strike my own name off the books at the buttery hatch, shall be prevented making a retreat to Cam roads.—You're out of the scrape, that's clear, and that affords me some hope; for as you are fresh, your word will pass for something in extenuation, or arrest of judgment." After some little time spent in anticipating the charges likely to be brought against him, and arranging the best mode of defence, it was agreed that Echo should proceed forthwith to Golgotha, and there, with undaunted front, meet his accusers; while I was to proceed ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... but those who were culpable themselves. Unable to resist his reasoning, ministers attempted to elude it, but their arguments rather weakened than strengthened their cause. Lord North, indeed, candidly admitted that some of his plans had miscarried; arguing, in extenuation of their failure, that it was impossible to foresee every event. He concluded by saying that he was ready to resign, whenever the house should withdraw its confidence. There was no danger, however, of this extremity; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... humble pie, he should beg for mercy on his knees. She had put up with a good deal, but this last escapade was not to be overlooked. Even Martha, when she came in to lay the cloth for lunch, could think of nothing to say in extenuation of his offence. ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... of me than I will of myself. Self accusation shall flow in every line of my narrative where I think I am justly censurable. If any thing can arise from the account I am going to give you, for extenuation of my fault (for that is all a person can hope for, who cannot excuse herself) I know I may expect it from your friendship, though not from the charity of any other: since by this time I doubt not every mouth is opened against me; and all that know ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... sympathy in my trouble. When had you rejoiced at my misfortune, I could scarcely have been surprised. But I loved myself, and my own way, and you thwarted me twice; but enough of the past. I dare not contemplate it. Let me however say a few words in extenuation of my folly. You can never know what I endured that evening, to see the regard once bestowed on me, transferred to another, to see that I was nothing,—that I was entirely, unmistakeably forgotten,—perhaps detested; for you treated me with unnecessary coldness. All this so worked upon my ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... had taken milk from the same place at other times. When asked what she had to say in extenuation, she held her child up and said, "I did not take it for myself, I took it for this!" She did not call it her child. The magistrate looked, shuddered, and sentenced ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... I am going to relate I would much rather not tell about, as it concerns what I consider a very shameful episode in my life. The only thing I can urge in extenuation of my conduct is the lax manner in which my earlier life was looked after in my uncle's house, where my worse passions were allowed full play, without that judicious control which parental guidance would perhaps have exercised on my inherent disposition for giving vent to temper, with no thought ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... an underlying cause in extenuation for this temperamental shortcoming which in justice to the ostensibly weaker sex should be set forth here. Even though I am taking on the role of Devil's Advocate in the struggle to keep woman from canonizing herself by main force I want to be as fair as I can, always reserving the privilege where ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... dozen men spoke up. "The fire tuk inside, an' the court-house war haffen gone 'fore 'twar seen," said one, in sulky extenuation. ...
— 'way Down In Lonesome Cove - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... unhappy compiler tries to round up the broodings of the day and still get home in time for supper. And yet perhaps the will-to-live is in them, for are they not a naked exhibit of the antics a man will commit in order to earn a living? In extenuation it may be pleaded that none of them are so long that they may not be mitigated by ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... to enter into any further extenuation of what was thought exceptionable in this play, but that it has been said, that the managers should have prevented some of the defects before its appearance to the public—and in particular the uncommon length of the piece as represented the first night. It were an ill return for the most ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... was bound to citizen with ties that had inherited too much of the tribal sanctity to admit of any extenuation ...
— On The Structure of Greek Tribal Society: An Essay • Hugh E. Seebohm
... rickshaws, pulled by broken down men. They looked habitually underpaid, and were probably used to it, and were therefore less likely to raise objections at the end of the trip than one of the swift young runners who stood about the European hotels. Remember, in extenuation, that Rivers was living on credit at this time, on borrowed money, and he did not like to be more extravagant ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... all the Holmes stories with great attention, and had thought many times what an incompetent ass Doctor Watson was; but, now that he had started to handle his own first case, he was compelled to admit that there was a good deal to be said in extenuation of Watson's inability to unravel tangles. It certainly was uncommonly hard, he thought, as he paced the cricket field after leaving Sergeant Collard, to detect anybody, unless you knew who had really done the crime. As he brooded over the case in ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... circumstances to stand in the way of a clear-cut verdict. The fact that the man had been caught in the act of setting fire to the forests, if the Judge allowed it to appear in the record at all, would not stand with the jury as justification, or even extenuation of the deed of murder charged. The fate of the accused must hang solely on the question of fact, whether or not his hand had fired the fatal shot. No other question would ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... In extenuation of the barbarous blood-thirstiness which characterized it, it may be said that torture, cruel punishments, and fearful chastisement for slight offences, formed the general features of the criminal code of most Christian nations. They had been handed down by barbarous ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... lip with unutterable scorn and say: "This fellow was a milksop and ought to have been fed on Christian Commission and Sanitary goods, and put to sleep at night with a warm rock at his feet;"—I can only say in extenuation that the soldier whose feelings I have been trying to describe was only a boy—and, boys, you probably know how it was yourselves during the first year of your army life. But, after all, the soldier had a Christmas dinner ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... impossible for Lockhart, a political sympathiser and a personal friend, to treat him harshly in an obituary notice. There was no danger of his setting down aught in malice; but there might be thought to be a considerable danger of over-extenuation. The danger was the greater, inasmuch as Lockhart himself had certainly not escaped, and had perhaps to some extent deserved, one of Hook's reproaches. No man questioned his integrity; he was not a reckless spendthrift; he was not given ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... squadrons had by this time arrived within gunshot of each other, and Harry and Roger, eager though they were for the fight to commence, were yet conscious of a peculiar feeling something akin to fright, in extenuation of which it must be remembered that neither of the boys had ever been in ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... to the admiring comments of the new-comers. I think it should be added, in extenuation of what would otherwise seem a gross imposture, that his granddaughter was really ignorant of Crely's exact age—that he, being ever a gasconading fellow, was quite ready to personate that certain ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... principle, or God, descent and the rights of succession which had hitherto been reckoned through the mother were changed from the female to the male line, the father having in the meantime become the only recognized parent. In the Eumenides of Aeschylus, the plea of Orestes in extenuation of his crime is that he is not of kin to his mother. Euripides, also, puts into the mouth of Apollo the same physiological notion, that she who bears the child is only its nurse. The Hindoo Code of Menu, which, however, since its earliest conception, has undergone numberless mutilations ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... they cherished of the essential difference between their sort of humanity and the common article was absolute. The effect of such a delusion in moderating fellow feeling for the sufferings of the mass of men into a distant and philosophical compassion is obvious. To it I refer as the only extenuation I can offer for the indifference which, at the period I write of, marked my own attitude toward ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... he was the only one who had ever stood up and said a word of extenuation for me in the teeth of a family squall. Father did not count; my mother thought me bad from end to end; Gertie, in addition to the gifts of beauty and lovableness, possessed that of holding with the hare and running with the hound; but ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... confess that they have but one question in their minds in going anywhere, they ask for ivory and for nothing else, and each trip ends as a foray. Moeneghere's last trip ended disastrously, twenty-six of his men being cut off; in extenuation he says that it was not his war but Mokamba's: he wished to be allowed to go down through Loanda, and as the people in front of Mokamba and Usige own his supremacy, he said, "Send your force with mine and let us open the way," so they ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... ship was ultimately destined. On the other hand, the material of the ship's company is credibly stated to have been extremely inferior, a condition frequently complained of by British officers at this late period of the Napoleonic wars. It has also been said, in apparent extenuation of her defeat, that although six weeks out from England, having sailed November 12, and greater part of that time necessarily in the trade winds, with their usual good weather, the men had not been exercised in firing the guns until December 28, the day ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... is what will be very welcome," said the Captain, "for I have tasted no food since daybreak but a farl of oatcake, which I divided with my horse. So I have been fain to draw my sword-belt three bores tighter for very extenuation, lest hunger and heavy iron should make the ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... penalty of his law. What would have been thought of one of those mutinous seamen, if, when brought before the bar of his country, he had pleaded in his defence, that, after the revolt, he had been faithful to his new commander? Would any person have regarded that as an extenuation of his sin? No! He would at once have been led to the scaffold. And the voice of an indignant public would have said that he ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... or extenuation of this attitude it may be said that there is considerable danger in the adoption of either course. Vigorous repression means staking all on a single card, and if it were successful it could not do more than postpone the evil day, because ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... varied stores of good, contains nothing that can vie with Philanthropy—that soft milk of human kindness, that benign spirit of social harmony, that genuine emblem of practical Religion! seeking some extenuation from goodness even amongst the fallen, accepting some apology from temptation even amongst the sinful; lenient in its judgments, conciliating in its awards, forgiving in its wrath! and receiving in bosom-serenity all the ...
— Brief Reflections relative to the Emigrant French Clergy (1793) • Frances Burney
... training in youth would be in a certain limited sense regarded as lessening the guilt of any wrong thing done; and you may remember, accordingly, how that magnanimous monarch, Charles II., urged to the Scotch lords, in extenuation of the wrong things he had done, that his father had given him a very bad education. But though human laws and judges may vainly and clumsily endeavor to fix each wrongdoer's place in the scale of responsibility, and though they must, in a rough ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... trial for treason is the one serious blemish in his judicial record, but for all that it was not without a measure of extenuation. The President, too, had behaved deplorably and, feeling himself on the defensive, had pressed matters with most unseemly zeal, so that the charge of political persecution raised by Burr's attorneys was, to ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... the advantage. I remember, when I was once interceding with the emperor for a criminal who had wronged his master of a great sum of money, which he had received by order and ran away with; and happening to tell his majesty, by way of extenuation, that it was only a breach of trust, the emperor thought it monstrous in me to offer as a defence the greatest aggravation of the crime; and truly I had little to say in return, farther than the common answer, that different nations ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... strong statement about the ear as against the eye; but it is not like him to have let such an over-statement stand and continue in his corrected and carefully finished work. The prophet Jeremiah, I feel satisfied, would not have subscribed to what is said in the Holy War in extenuation of the eye. That heart- broken prophet does not say that it has been his ear that has made his head waters. It is his eye, he says, that has so affected his heart. The Prophet of the Captivity had all ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... committed this base action under the menace of some great danger to save the fortune, the honor, probably the life of Madame de Campvallon. This, though a poor excuse in the mother's eyes, still was an extenuation. Probably also he had in his heart, while marrying her daughter, the resolution to break off this fatal liaison, which he had again resumed against his will, as often happens. On all these painful points she dwelt after the departure of M. de Camors, as she had previous to ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... was an old grievance which seemed to Americans devoid of any justification. From the British point of view there was much to be said in extenuation of the practice. It should not be forgotten that Great Britain was locked in a life-and-death struggle with a mighty antagonist, and that she had need of every able seaman. Owing to the rigorous life on board ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... In extenuation, however, of these faults, it must be allowed that we were ourselves the exciting cause which called them into action, and without which they would be comparatively of rare occurrence among them. Like every other child ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... religious history of New England, it would be just and proper to show the agency of the Mathers, father and son, in the witchcraft delusion. It would be quite fair to plead in their behalf the common beliefs of their time. It would be an extenuation of their acts that, not many years before, the great and good magistrate, Sir Matthew Hale, had sanctioned the conviction of prisoners accused of witchcraft. To fall back on the errors of the time is very proper when we are trying our predecessors in foro conscientace: The houses ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... refutation, and while the facts upon which any deliberate opinion must have been based, had not been sufficiently tested by experience, the time has now arrived when it is no longer excusable to submit in silence to the reproaches of ignorance or malice. It is proper, however, to remark, as well in extenuation of those who have assailed our country, as in the support of the confidential denial, which I feel authorized to make to their assertions, that a vast improvement in the article of health has taken place within a few years. ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... hand, there was nothing whatever to be advanced in extenuation of her folly in thus inviting indigestion—a passion for pastry is its own punishment no less than any other infatuation to which mortal flesh is prone. Sally was morally certain she would suffer, and that severely, ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... But Mr. Adams did not mention his relations with Jones's pistol. Let it be said, in extenuation of that performance, that Mr. Adams supposed Jones was going to Tucson, where he said he was going, and where a job and a salary were awaiting him. In Tucson an unloaded pistol in the holster of so handy a man on the drop as was ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... I shall not go any further into this lamentable love affair. I submit, in extenuation, that people do not care to be regaled with the heartaches of past affairs; they are only interested in those which appear to be in the process of active development or retrogression. Suffice to say, ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... uncomfortable chair beside it, trying to fathom what the day had meant, striving to hope for the keeping of the promises that an hysterical woman had made, struggling for the strength to go on,—on with this cheery, brave little bit of humanity in the next cabin, without a word in self-extenuation, without a hint to break the lack of estimation in which she held him, without a plea in his own defense. And some way, Houston felt that such a plea now would be cheap and tawdry; they were in a world where there were bigger things than human aims and human ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... to render without extenuation the impressions received: of dignity, plenty, and peace at Malie, of bankruptcy and distraction at Mulinuu. And I wish I might here bring to an end ungrateful labours. But I am sensible that there remain two points ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Rawdon; he had retired to Europe, and was succeeded by Brigadier Gen. Stewart. Lord Rawdon had defended Camden as long as he could with vigour and ability; but lately stained his reputation by the execution of Col. Hayne. In extenuation of this act, it is said by his friends, he only obeyed the orders of his superior; but if he really disapproved that act of cruelty, he could easily have avoided taking a part in it, for as he was shortly to sail ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... self-extenuation once for all, 'Lady Fareway, I have but to say for myself that I have tried ...
— George Silverman's Explanation • Charles Dickens
... have ripened into love, and that one thus tempted should have fallen. Catharine in her memoirs does not deny her fall, though she can not refrain from allowing an occasional word to drop from her pen, evidently intended in extenuation. Much which is called virtue consists in the ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... so easily to be appeased, not even when Mademoiselle and the Vicomte joined their voices to mine in extenuation of my conduct. It was like Lavedan. For all that he was full of dread of the result and of the vengeance Saint-Eustache might wreak—boy though he was—he expressed himself freely touching the Chevalier's behaviour ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... illustrate them by the popularity and liberality of his own conduct; yet, as it may be said he was the only evidence of his own urbanity, which must have been lost to posterity had he not recorded it, he now pleaded it in extenuation of the blameable sensibility of his son, who, educated in these liberal notions, had felt so hurt by the negligence of the Earl of Derby at Preston fair, that he had been provoked by it to offer his services to Parliament, from whom he had received a commission, and was now serving ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... Chicago speech of 1858; and in the Cooper Union speech of 1860 he exhibited a familiarity with the theory and history of the Constitution which amazed the young lawyers who prepared an annotated edition of the address. "He has wit, facts, dates," said Douglas, in extenuation of his own disinclination to enter upon the famous joint debates, and, when Douglas returned to Washington after the debates were over, he confessed to the young Henry Watterson that "he is the greatest debater I have ever met, either here or anywhere else." Douglas ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... river, but of these I make small mention, for, in truth, one boasts little of one's deeds in piracy after the fact, or of inciting piracy and making accessories before the fact, the more especially if such accessories be small but bloodthirsty boys. These latter, let me plead in extenuation of my own sins, already were pirates, and set upon rapine. For my own part, seeing their resolution to take green corn and other vegetables, aye, even fowls, as part of the natural returns of their stern calling, ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... scornfully on himself. He was only a clod of grit caught in the world's great wheels. The foreign substance had wrought a discordant screech for a moment, and then was mercilessly ground into powder and thrust out of the bearings. He pondered on the first days of the Family Group, when there was extenuation; more, when there was necessity, for a king. At any rate the monarch then earned, or could earn, his pomp and state by services actually rendered. And now? The Hapsburg decided that there was not a more contemptible parasite ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... as one bad thing can be palliated by comparison with a worse, this may be said, in extenuation of these writers; that the mischief, which they can do even on the stage, is trifling compared with that stile of writing which began in the pest-house of French literature, and has of late been imported by the 'Littles' of the age, which consists in a perpetual ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... Come to Christ. I am credibly informed that "at least half a dozen" of my meek and lowly Baptist brethren are but awaiting an opportunity to assassinate me, and that if successful they will plead in extenuation that I "have slandered Southern women." I walk the streets of Waco day by day, and I walk them alone. Let these cur-ristians shoot me in the back if they dare, then plead that damning lie as excuse for ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... to judge of them so far as I can see; and if I am expected to judge of His purposes when they appear to be beneficent, I am in consistency obliged also to judge of them when they appear to be malevolent. And it can be no possible extenuation of the latter to point to the "final result" as "order and beauty," so long as the means adopted by the "Omnipotent Designer" are known to have been so [terrible]. All that we could legitimately assert ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... majority, Senator Jones of Nevada, and Representative Bland, of Missouri, were the leading members. If in defence or in extenuation of the policy of the majority it shall be said that the United States has not remonetized silver, and that, therefore, the policy of the majority has not been tested, a partial rejoinder, if not, indeed, a satisfactory reply, may be deduced from the facts that between the years 1878 ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... power in Great Britain. It is not denied that the suspension of the New York banks in 1837, which was followed in quick succession throughout the Union, was produced by an application of that power, and it is now alleged, in extenuation of the present condition of so large a portion of our banks, that their embarrassments have arisen from ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson |
