"Palliate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... injuries will ever stain the annals of Frederic the Great; even those who read this book will perhaps suppose that I, from political motives of hope or fear, have sometimes concealed truth by endeavouring to palliate his conduct. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... origin of the enmity of this particular clan towards the neighbouring tribes, I cannot so confidently speak. I will not say that their foes are the aggressors, nor will I endeavour to palliate their conduct. But surely, if our evil passions must find vent, it is far better to expend them on strangers and aliens, than in the bosom of the community in which we dwell. In many polished countries civil contentions, as well as domestic enmities, are ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... with charms. Probity in thought and deed being the distinguishing quality of this extraordinary man's mind, while he felt that a sort of disgrace ought to attach to his idleness on the occasion mentioned, the last thought that could occur would be to attempt to palliate ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... both cruel and base in his treatment of her? And yet she recoiled from the application of such hard terms by another to Philip, by a cool-judging and indifferent person, as she esteemed Jeremiah to be. From some inscrutable turn in her thoughts, she began to defend him, or at least to palliate the harsh judgment which she herself had been the first ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... thought I was free, but in fact I was bound," he acknowledged. "The words I spoke on the steps that night escaped me unaware. I was tortured by jealousy, and tempted by love. I had no right to speak them then; nothing can excuse or palliate the weakness which allowed me to. I should have waited until I could come to you untrammeled—as now. I attempt no justification of my madness, Princess. I have no excuse but my love, and can only sue for pardon. You will forgive me, sweetheart"—using ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... extravagance. You shall hear everything. And listen,—as a witness that I shall speak truth, I will say my say before the face of Hiero Glyphic yonder, and upon the steps of his altar! See, I desire neither to palliate nor ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... or palliate to me, dearest Tom," replied Mary; "my eyes have been opened, too late it is true, but they have been opened; and although it is kind of you to say so, I feel the horrid conviction of my own guilt. See what misery ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... find some reason or other to give for, or excuses to palliate. Men plead want to extenuate theft, and strong provocations to excuse murders, and many a lame excuse they will bring for whoring; but this sordid habit even those that practise it will own to be a crime, and make no excuse for it; and the most I could ever hear a man say for ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... did not;" he said, hastily; "but suppose I should now tell you that it was the miscreant, La Tour himself, would that palliate the severity of which you are ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... his sharp sword. Side by side with them he would fight and, if it must be, die. A voice within warned him against making common cause with those who had robbed the family of which he had become a member, yet he again used the remembrance of his innocent darlings to palliate his purpose. For their sakes only he desired to go to his death, sword in hand, like a valiant knight in league with those who were risking their lives in defence of the ancient privilege of their class. They must not even suspect that their father had been shut out from the tournament, but grow ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... cause to condemn sex-antagonism, and it is my hope that no page or line or word of this book can be accused of illustrating or justifying or inciting to or even attempting to palliate either form of this wholly abominable spirit of the pit. If such places there be, there assuredly is misdirection and falsity. This spirit is one of the great enemies of mankind. As aroused in women against men, ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... himself: if he neglect to use it, all the consequences ought to fall on him; and, as far as my observation has gone, in nineteen out of twenty cases of infidelity in wives, the crimes have been fairly ascribable to the husbands. Folly or misconduct in the husband, cannot, indeed, justify or even palliate infidelity in the wife, whose very nature ought to make her recoil at the thought of the offence; but it may, at the same time, deprive him of the right of inflicting punishment on her: her kindred, her children, and the world, will justly hold her in abhorrence; ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... hastily to palliate Vladimir's misdeed in their eyes, but it is doubtful whether they heard her. The Major's fury clothed and reclothed itself in words as frantically as a woman up in town for one day's shopping tries on a succession of garments. He reviled and railed at fate and the general ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... as these that afterward, when everything that might be so employed as to justify or palliate the atrocity of Coligny's assassination was eagerly laid hold of, were construed as threats of a Huguenot rising, in case Charles should refuse to engage in the Flemish war. Compare, e.g., the unsigned extract ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... cards most foolishly; you have thrown away your money—rather, I should say, my money, in a manner which nothing can excuse or palliate. You might have made the turf a source of gratifying amusement; your income was amply sufficient to enable you to do so; but you have possessed so little self-control, so little judgment, so little discrimination, that you have allowed yourself to be plundered by every blackleg, and robbed by every—everybody ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... those excesses, of which it does not fail to gather the fruit: according to its ministers, every thing is permitted to revenge the most high: thus the name of the Divinity is made use of to authorize the most baneful actions, to palliate the most injurious transgressions. The atheist, as he is called, when he commits crimes, cannot, at least, pretend that it is his gods who command them, or who clothe them with the mantle of their approval, this is the excuse the superstitious being offers for his perversity; ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... was raised for him in State Street, Boston, and twenty-five thousand dollars in Wall Street, New York. Mr. Allen trusted that the Democratic party had yet honor enough left to inquire into the matter, and that the Whigs even, would not palliate it, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... enlarge upon the enormity of the design. The most prominent impression in his mind evidently was that we were acting a base and treacherous part in deserting his party, in what he considered a very dangerous stage of the journey. To palliate the atrocity of our conduct, we ventured to suggest that we were only four in number while his party still included sixteen men; and as, moreover, we were to go forward and they were to follow, at least a full proportion of the perils he apprehended ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... lately happened upon some Papers that were entitled The FARMER's LETTERS, &c. which were imputed to me as the Author. And, after some Compliments on Spirit, and Genius, and so forth, in order to palliate, as I suppose, what you purpose to administer, you charge me, by Implication, with Crimes, whose smallest Tendency I should abhor in myself, ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... houses of people above you, that you may see their EVERY-DAY character, manners, habits, etc. One must see people undressed to judge truly of their shape; when they are dressed to go abroad, their clothes are contrived to conceal, or at least palliate the defects of it: as full-bottomed wigs were contrived for the Duke of Burgundy, to conceal his hump back. Happy those who have no faults to disguise, nor weaknesses to conceal! there are few, if any such; but unhappy those ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... with a man over his cups, or in any wise to molest him in his drink, is an offense against the proprieties that even the good-natured Epicurean can not find it in his easy heart to palliate or pardon. On this point he speaks ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... solemnity; they were charged with having tyrannized over the people and oppressed the convention. Though proofs were not wanting to support this charge, the accused defended themselves with much address. They ascribed to Robespierre the oppression of the assembly, and of themselves; they endeavoured to palliate their own conduct by citing the measures taken by the committee, and adopted by the convention, by urging the excitement of the period, and the necessity of securing the defence and safety of the republic. Their former colleagues ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... personal investigation in such a case, she blamed herself for having omitted herself to question the confidential clerk, and having left all to Lord Ormersfield, who, cool and wary as he ordinarily was, would be less likely to palliate Mr. Ponsonby's errors than those of any other person. Her heart grew sick as she counted the weeks ere she could ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pass as faultless before men and to escape public censure means to deceive God also. But they will learn how God looks upon the matter. Paul tells us (Gal 6, 7) God will not, like men, be mocked. To conceal and palliate will not avail. Nothing will answer but dying to vice and then striving after what is virtuous, divine and ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... are right," said he; "I have plenty of faults of my own: I know it, and I don't wish to palliate them, I assure you. God wot I need not be too severe about others; I have a past existence, a series of deeds, a colour of life to contemplate within my own breast, which might well call my sneers and censures from my neighbours to myself. I started, or ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... organization of industry. In the midst of this advance and uplift this slave trade and slavery spread more human misery, inculcated more disrespect for and neglect of humanity, a greater callousness to suffering, and more petty, cruel, human hatred than can well be calculated. We may excuse and palliate it, and write history so as to let men forget it; it remains the most inexcusable and despicable blot on ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... turns out the products of its internal activity, the stupid machine of war throws out, from minute to minute, bleeding men. We pick them up, and here they are, swathed in bandages. They have been crushed in the twinkling of an eye; and now we shall have to ask months and years to repair or palliate the damage. ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... chains to the court of Milan or Constantinople, to defend his life and fortune against the malicious charge of these privileged informers. The ordinary administration was conducted by those methods which extreme necessity can alone palliate; and the defects of evidence were diligently supplied ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... "that you should have taken this fresh piece of trouble about one so little worthy of it; but, to the humane, I know there is a pleasure in goodness for its own sake: if you have patience for the recital of my story, it may palliate, though it cannot excuse, my faults." Harley bowed, as a sign of assent; and ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... sharply, then leaned and took her hand and held it close. His firm clasp steadied her more than any words could have done. Without further delay or attempt to palliate its grim significance, he read ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... meet him in London some little time after his marriage, he—he was pleased with the manner in which he was behaving then, thought—thought—' And here, recollecting that she must not speak ill of old Sir Guy, nor palliate his son's conduct, poor Mrs. Edmonstone got into an inextricable confusion—all the worse because the fierce twisting of a penwiper in Guy's fingers denoted that he was suffering a great trial of patience. She avoided the difficulty thus: 'It is hard to speak of such things when there ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the barbarous excesses of the followers of Gautier and Peter the Hermit made him look upon the whole body of them with disgust, but it was the disgust of a little mind, which is glad of any excuse to palliate or justify its own ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... it justified the deed. My position as an officer of the King would palliate deserting the ship ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... pretend to justify, because I think there is much to be forgiven on either side. But if anything can palliate the act, it is that system of determined hostility which for years has been levelled against an institution which they believe to be righteous and founded upon divine precept. But I think this is not the hour for justification or for crimination. I am convinced that the integrity of the Union ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... are certain laws of optics and ingenuities of composition which may palliate this effect, but the fact remains that the floor should be covered in a way which will leave the mind tranquil and the eye satisfied, and this is hard to accomplish with what is commonly known ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... to examine it closely?" Darrow was all attention. He would be delighted to show it. Suppose they make a practical test of it by playing a game. This they did and Maitland played superbly, but he was hardly a match for the old gentleman, who sought to palliate his defeat by saying: "You play an excellent game, sir; but I am a trifle too much for you on my own ground. Now, if you can spare the time, I should like to witness a game between you and my daughter; I think you will be pretty ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... physicians maintained, that a fever produced by it was, upon the whole, good for health: so different are our reflections on the same subject, at different periods; and such the excuses with which we palliate what ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... shrunk from perpetrating the most horrid cruelty, endure more from the consciousness that no man will sympathise with their sufferings, than from apprehension of the personal agony of their impending punishment; and are known often to attempt to palliate their enormities, and sometimes altogether to deny what is established by the clearest proof, rather than to leave life under the general ban of humanity. It was no wonder that Nigel, labouring under the sense ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... all good philosophy, Mr. Ratcliffe," answered Miss Vere; "but, excuse me, it by no means emboldens me to visit, at this late hour, a person whose extravagance of imagination you yourself can only palliate." ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... cannot tell; my impression is that it would have done him no good; that he was a man who, if he had confessed himself beaten by the annoyances, would have succumbed at once, and that he was conscious of this. He did seek to palliate them by inviting visitors to his house. The result he has ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... study and collect from the newspapers. Certainly there are enough of them! A man who bets wants to make money without work, and that on the face of it is a dishonourable aspiration; if he robs some one, I do not in the faintest degree try to palliate his crime—he is a responsible being, or ought to be one, and he has no excuse for pilfering. I should never aid any man who suffered through betting, and I would not advise any one else to do so. My appeal ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... an example—it has been known to happen that nations have been told to their faces that they did not require as much freedom as many other nations do. This statement might, indeed, be dictated by forbearance and a desire to palliate, the true meaning being that they were utterly unable to endure so great freedom and that only a high degree of rigidity could prevent them from destroying one another. If, however, the words are taken as they are spoken, they ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... principles of his utterances were. He never posed as anything but an aristocrat, and while he whimsically admitted that in the present day to be one was an enormous disadvantage for a man who wished to get on, he endeavored to palliate the misfortune by lucid explanation of what the duties of such a status were, and of the logical advantages which an appreciation of the truths of cause and effect might bring to mankind. Down ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... from Northumbrian, died away beneath the common pressure of the stranger. The Conquest was hardly over when we see the rise of a new national feeling, of a new patriotism. In his quiet cell at Worcester the monk Florence strives to palliate by excuses of treason or the weakness of rulers the defeats of Englishmen by the Danes. AElfred, the great name of the English past, gathers round him a legendary worship, and the "Sayings of AElfred" embody the ideal of an English king. We see the new vigour drawn ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... of the best captains of his time. And, in truth, if a zealous patriotism, a fiery valor, and skilful leadership are worthy of honor, then is such tribute due to Dominic de Gourgues, despite the shadowing vices which even the spirit of that wild age can only palliate, the personal hate that aided the impulse of his patriotism, and the implacable cruelty ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... just before the strike,—that, for the first time in his life, he didn't know what to do, because right seemed to be hopelessly entangled with wrong, and wrong with right. When a man does evil in order that good may come, one tries to find an excuse for him, tries to palliate his offense in any reasonable way. That is human instinct. That is what accounts for the petition there, with the signatures of many of the most conscientious men in Alleghenia attached. They have managed to find ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... Chowringhee," he said, "but this is not a censorious public." Then, as if to palliate the word, he added, "They will think me no more mad to carry paper bags than to carry myself, when it is plain that I might ride—and they see me doing ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... words!" cried she indignantly. "You would palliate your unfaithfulness, represent your fickleness of mind as magnanimity! But I hear only one thing in your words—you give me up, you ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... return; whom no gentleman or lady has yet enabled to give any cause of discontent, and who have therefore no opportunity of showing how skilfully I can pacify resentment, extenuate negligence, or palliate rejection. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... his mistaken course might bring, he now began to wish that the punishment would be light. His confidence that Jim needed only to be pushed a little to confess was somewhat shaken, and the charge was really serious. He felt a desire to explain, to palliate, to minimize. ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... the least," Annabel replied, laughing. "And a charming host," she added, to palliate Sue's evident disappointment. ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... Journals were written at the close of many a laborious day, when the energies both of mind and body were almost exhausted by long-continued toil. The author trusts that this circumstance will account for, and palliate, some of the defects which may be discovered in his volumes. Conscious as he is of the deficiencies of his work, he nevertheless hopes that the reader will not pronounce it to be wholly devoid of interest. Though Australia ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... something of the same drapery over more recent foundations, in which otherwise the fortune, the genius, the talents, and military virtue of this nation never shone more conspicuously. But whatever necessity might hide or excuse or palliate, in the acquisition of power, a wise nation, when it has once made a revolution upon its own principles and for its own ends, rests there. The first step to empire is revolution, by which power is conferred; the next is ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... report of others, be sure that all is not right with you, and more especially, if you feel an inward pleasure in convicting them of wrong. A truly good mind is always grieved at improper conduct in others, and ever seeks to palliate, rather than to judge with severity. It gives but slow credence to evil reports. Truly regard the good of all around you, and there will be no need of placing a bridle on ...
— Who Are Happiest? and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... say outside that the table ain't all right or that folks go away hungry under the new management," remarked Hiram, endeavoring to palliate. ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... child had sought to escape; crept out into the backyard; tried to scale the wall; fallen back exhausted; and been found at morning on the stones in a dying state. But though there was some evidence of cruelty, there was none of murder; and the aunt and her husband had sought to palliate cruelty by alleging the exceeding stubbornness and perversity of the child, who was declared to be half-witted. Be that as it may, at the orphan's death the aunt inherited her brother's fortune. Before the first wedded year was out, the American quitted England abruptly, and never returned ...
— Haunted and the Haunters • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... as a development of this central principle, is the tendency to treat and write of "sin" so called, wrong-doing, failure of ideal, as variations of spiritual health, as diseases, the ravages of which it is possible for the skilful hand to palliate, but not to cure; to think of and treat sin as a hideous contagion, which has power for a season, perhaps inherently, to drag souls within its grasp, involve and overwhelm them; and consequently to regard the sinner with ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... be lost; and, that the gentleman on whose account she was divorced had gained her heart while thus unhappily situated. Seduced, perhaps, by the charms of the lady in question, I thus attempted to palliate what I was sensible could not be justified; for when I had finished my harangue, my venerable friend gave me a proper check: 'My dear Sir, never accustom your mind to mingle virtue and vice. The woman's a whore, and there's an ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... brethren?"—"Yea—More blessed than the womb which bare me, and the paps that I have sucked, is the humblest of my true disciples." Let no one misunderstand me: full well I know the just explanations which palliate such passages; and the love stronger than death which beat in that Filial heart. But, take the phrases as they stand; and do they not in reason constitute some warning and some prophecy that men should ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... we fear be thus irresistible, what remains but to acquiesce with silence, as in the other insurmountable distresses of humanity? It remains that we retard what we cannot repel, that we palliate what we cannot cure. Life may be lengthened by care, though death cannot be ultimately defeated: tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration; we have long preserved our constitution, let us make some struggles for ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson
... on the departure of Vidus Vidius for Italy was appointed to succeed that physician as professor of surgery to the Royal College. His character is easily estimated. With greater coarseness in his manners and language than even the rude state of society in his times can palliate, with much varied learning and considerable eloquence, he was a blind, indiscriminate and irrational admirer of Galen, and interpreted the anatomical and physiological writings of that author in preference to giving demonstrations from the subject. Without talent for original research ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... 'How shall I palliate, what I cannot defend, my behaviour while I overheard you and your aunt? In vain do I plead that I was asleep, when you came into the coach; and that I first discovered you by the sound of your voice and the turn of the conversation; that I dreaded exciting any sudden alarm in ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... can have any pretext for destroying, especially if they can invent some new means of torment to give a fresh piquancy to their pleasure. These monsters do not act from passion. Men are sometimes inclined to palliate great cruelties and crimes which are perpetrated under the influence of sudden anger, or from the terrible impulse of those impetuous and uncontrollable emotions of the human soul which, when once excited, seem to make men insane; but the crimes of a tyrant are not of this ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... steamers and railways, by the Whig alliance, by democratic sympathy, and by the transference of our political capital to Westminster. Tracts, periodicals, and the whole horde of Benthamy rushed in. Without manufactures, without trade, without comfort to palliate such degradation, we were proclaimed converts to Utilitarianism. The Irish press thought itself imperial, because it reflected that of London—Nationality was called a vulgar superstition, and a general European Trades' Union, ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... he arrives, will confront him with the story," I told her. "I don't suppose he can utterly deny, but he can palliate. There will be nothing told to Daphne which she can't forgive. The ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... me. I allege neither hiding nor spying on your part. Name of a good little gray man! The President of the Royal Academy would hide and spy for a month if he could palliate his conduct by that picture. But, given no picture, what is the answer? Reflect calmly, Mr. Trenholme, and you'll see that mine are words of wisdom. Burn that canvas, and you cut a sorry figure in the witness box. Moreover, suppose you treat the law with disdain, how do you propose ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... particularly disordered health and spirits, had been long at an end, and he had no other ailments than old age and general infirmity, which every professor of medicine was ardently zealous and generally attentive to palliate, and to contribute all in their power for the prolongation of a life so valuable. Veneration for his virtue, reverence for his talents, delight in his conversation, and habitual endurance of a yoke my husband first put upon me, ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... purpose. In Scotland, for long years after he was dead and dust, the mention of his name was like a curse; and even in England, where the debt due to his courage counted for much, no one has been found to palliate his conduct or to whitewash his infamy. As "Butcher" Cumberland he was known while he lived; as Butcher Cumberland he will be remembered so long as men remember the "Forty-five" and the horrors after Culloden fight. Some of those horrors no doubt were due to the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... dwelt resolutely upon his integrity, upon the acumen which had made him a business success; yet in her heart she could not help likening him to a garment of shoddy material aping the style of elegance. While endeavoring to palliate these small offenses Helen knew perfectly that they were due to the fact that he was innately what was known in the office vernacular as a "cheap skate," striving to give the impression of generosity at a ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... am sure no theory can be correct which a mother is not willing for her daughter to practice. Decent women should not live with licentious husbands in the relation of wife. As society is now, good, pure women, by so living, cover up and palliate immorality and help to violate the law of monogamy. Women must take the social helm into their own hands and not permit the men of their own circle, any more than the women, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... don't defend the action. I only endeavour to palliate it on the plea of necessity. And, if Adam fell in the days of innocency, what should poor Tom Collins do in the days ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... So a person may be covered with wraps, and not buried under them. Bury may be used of any object, entomb and inter only of a dead body. Figuratively, one may be said to be buried in business, in study, etc. Compare IMMERSE; PALLIATE. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... love affairs was always the man. She treated Chopin as a child, a toy, used him for literary copy- -pace Mr. Hadow!—and threw him over after she had wrung out all the emotional possibilities of the problem. She was true to herself even when she attempted to palliate her want of heart. Beware of the woman who punctuates the pages of her life with "heart" and "maternal feelings." "If I do not believe any more in tears it is because I saw thee crying!" exclaimed Chopin. Sand was the product of abnormal ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... mitigate, temper, accoy|; attemper[obs3], contemper[obs3]; mollify, lenify[obs3], dulcify[obs3], dull, take off the edge, blunt, obtund[obs3], sheathe, subdue, chasten; sober down, tone down, smooth down; weaken &c. 160; lessen &c. (decrease) 36; check palliate. tranquilize, pacify, assuage, appease, swag, lull, soothe, compose, still, calm, calm down, cool, quiet, hush, quell, sober, pacify, tame, damp, lay, allay, rebate, slacken, smooth, alleviate, rock to sleep, deaden, smooth, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... negativd both by Bernard & Hutchinson the latter, who can smile sweetly even upon the Man he hates, when he is instructed or it is his Interest so to do, fawnd & flatterd one of the HEADS OF THE FACTION, & at length approvd of him when he was elected a Councellor last May. To palliate this inconsistent Conduct it was previously given out that Mr H had deserted the faction, & became as they term each other, a Friend to Governmt. But he had Spirit enough to refuse a Seat at the Board, & continue a Member of the House, where he has in every ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... their comrades—and who generally end by being their dupes and victims. It is natural, however, that this adventurer—who has kept a gambling-hell and ruined many a man, soul and body, and who now wishes to reinstate herself in a virtuous social position—should thus strive to palliate her past proceedings. Self-justification is one of the first laws of life. Even Iago, who never deceives himself, yet announces one adequate motive for his fearful crimes. Even Bulwer's Margrave—that prodigy of evil, that cardinal type of infernal, joyous, animal ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... not because ordinary food was not plentiful in the Confederacy, but because of lack of transportation to carry the food from the interior to the front, while the Union prisoners perished from hunger in the midst of abundance. Again, even assuming the plea of scarcity to be true, that would not palliate the numerous murders of helpless prisoners by volleys fired into the stockades at the pleasure of the guards.[1] There was a vindictiveness in these crimes ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... things in a portion of the United Kingdom itself, which was a "serious disgrace to the age, and to the government, and the country in which we live," without endeavouring, by the enactment of more stringent laws, to correct it, the evasions, by means of which they now seek to palliate their neglect, and the strange want of perspicacity which they display in not being able to discover the real source of mischief, or their timidity in not daring to denounce it, must naturally excite our astonishment. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... same person, that when he found them hesitating in the presence of the enemy, he "burst into a passion," called them cowards, and dashed into the river as before narrated. If this account be true, it may somewhat palliate, but certainly ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... doubt of his fair liability to any. The intervals of rigour were meant to notify to the sceptical that the Government was at last on the track of evidence which would confirm the equity of everything from the beginning done against him. Constantly he had to stand on his defence against attempts to palliate the effrontery of the Winchester judgment by experimental accusations that he had been tampering with new conspiracies. For ten years the contest proceeded between him and the Court on that basis. He asseverated the right of an innocent ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... Bark at the End of the third Period, as we observed before; but where the Fever had been neglected till about the third or fourth Period, or badly treated in the Beginning, and the Bowels were inflamed or overcharged with corrupted Gall, he was obliged to endeavour to palliate the most pressing Complaints, and to watch Evening, Night, and Morning for a Remission, and then immediately to fly to the Bark, as the only Remedy that could avert the Danger. If the Patient was strong, he gave Half an Ounce of the Bark, ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... Tutt rose and began going through the empty formality of attempting to discuss the evidence in such a way as to excuse or palliate Angelo's crime. For Angelo's guilt of murder in the first degree was so plain that it had never for one moment been in the slightest doubt. Whatever might be said for his act from the point of view of human emotion only ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... peasant households had no longer any land of their own, and of those who still possessed land a large proportion had no longer the cattle and horses necessary to till and manure their allotments. No doubt M. Witte was beginning to perceive his mistake, and had done something to palliate the evils by improving the system of collecting the taxes and abolishing the duty on passports, but such merely palliative remedies could have little effect. While a few capitalists were amassing gigantic fortunes, the ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... apocryphal; but it is stated in the narrative of "New England's Plantation," written and circulated by Mr. Higginson soon after their arrival; and it must be remembered that the ship carried a supply of personages of the clerical profession out of proportion to the number of the rest of the passengers. But palliate the marvel how we may, we cannot help smiling at it, and at the same time regretting that the Puritans themselves probably had no realization of the miracle which was transacting under their noses. They doubtless regarded it as a matter of course, instead of a thing to occur but once ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... we would palliate Henry's vices, if such there be on record, or disguise his follies, or wish his irregularities to be forgotten in the vivid recollections of his conquests, that we would try "our immortal bard" by the test of rigid fact. We do so, because he is the ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... the damning answer. Thus, had John's single departure from the truth brought instant punishment. For no other purpose but to see Alan would he have entered a billiard-room; but he had desired to palliate the fact of his disobedience, and now it appeared that he frequented these disreputable haunts ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... book; and it seems like blasphemy to intimate that the Spirit of God could have had anything to do with its composition. It is absolutely sickening to read the commentaries, which assume that it was dictated by the Holy Ghost, and which labor to justify and palliate its frightful narrative. One learns, with a sense of relief, that the Jews themselves long disputed its admission to their canon; that the school of Schammai would not accept it, and that several of the wisest and best of the early fathers of the Christian church, Athanasius and Melito of ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... which are far less likely than degraded slaves to stir up the rage of their savage masters. It is an argument long since protested against with noble feeling, and strikingly exemplified, by the ever-illustrious Humboldt. It is often attempted to palliate slavery by comparing the state of slaves with our poorer countrymen: if the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin; but how this bears on slavery, I cannot see; as well might the use of the thumb-screw be defended ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... be convinced; until prejudice shall be overcome by the power of conviction; until men are constrained, from very shame, to withdraw from a position which no argument, no experience can justify, which no consideration of decency will palliate. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... bought as much bread, and ate it as freely, as if the government by insuring its cheapness had insured its abundance. So the city lived in high spirits and in gleeful defiance of its besiegers, until all at once provisions gave out, and the government had to step in again to palliate the distress which it had wrought. It constituted itself quartermaster-general to the community, and doled out stinted rations alike to rich and poor, with that stern democratic impartiality peculiar to times of mortal peril. But this served only, like most artificial ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... continued Captain Sedley, who, though deeply grieved at his son's apparent disobedience, was too indignant to hear an excuse; for such he supposed Frank was about to offer—one of those silly, frivolous excuses which boys sometimes seize upon to palliate their misconduct. ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... Solmes's great estate; his good management of it—'A little too NEAR indeed,' was the word!—[O how money-lovers, thought I, will palliate! Yet my mother is a princess in spirit to this Solmes!] 'What strange effects, added she, have prepossession ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... bold is the man who, tenacious of justice, shall venture to weigh circumstances, or draw lines of distinction between Cowardice and any apparently similar or neighbour quality: As well may a lady, virgin or matron, of immaculate honour, presume to pity or palliate the soft failing of some unguarded friend, and thereby confess, as it were, those sympathetic feelings which it behoves her to conceal under the most contemptuous disdain; a disdain, always proportioned, I believe, to a certain consciousness which we must not explain. I am afraid ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... paralytic masher of the present day, who is most alive at midnight, rises at noon. Then the day began earlier with a long morning, followed by a pleasant period called the forenoon. Under modern conditions we spend the morning in bed, and to palliate our sloth call the forenoon and most of the rest of the day, the morning. These young men of Clement's Inn were a lively, not to say a rowdy, set. They would do anything that led to mirth or mischief. What passed when they lay all night in the windmill in St. George's Field we do ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... or saintliness will be assigned the same positions in the rewards of the last day; and it is just as unlikely that human estimates are right when they venture to assign the degrees of final condemnation. Two things it is our duty to do in regard to Judas: first, not so to palliate his sin as to blunt the healthy, natural abhorrence of it; and, secondly, not to think of him as a sinner apart and alone, with a nature so different from our own that to us he can be no example. But for the rest, there is only one ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... till it has faded into nothingness. Instead of the life being the main thing, and being absolutely necessary to give value and emphasis to the belief, it has come to pass that it is the belief, and the acceptance of the belief, that has been held to hallow the life and excuse and palliate its errors. ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... is to propose a new, crude, difficult, and unsympathetic game. They may all of them, or most of them, hate war, but they will cling to the belief that their method of operating may now, after a new settlement, be able to prevent or palliate war. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... by the Lady Abbess; but it was not long before her Grief renewing with greater Violence, and more afflicting Circumstances, had obliged them to stay with her till it was almost dark, when they once more begged the Liberty of an Hour's Absence; and the better to palliate their Design, Henrique told her, that he would make use of her Father Don Richardo's Coach, in which they came to Don Antonio's, for so small a Time: which they did, leaving only Eleonora her Attendant with her, with out whom she had been at a Loss, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... himself to the charge of being a pig; so, it is possible that a man may frequent a low tavern, not without detriment, but, without becoming thereby worthy of being classed with the lowest of the low. Do not misunderstand us, gentle reader. We do not wish in the slightest degree to palliate the coarse language, the debasement, the harsh villainy, which shock the virtuous when visiting the haunts of poverty. Our simple desire is to assure the sceptical that goodness and truth are sometimes ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... to soften or palliate the fact, that nothing would reconcile Miss Templeton and her sister to such a marriage; that her brother's character was regarded by them with abhorrence; that their cherished brother should marry the sister of a billiard-marker—a mere adventurer and gambler—was utterly impossible; and Leah's ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the feelings that possessed this country, and which wrung, even from the Whigs, with every wish to palliate them, an acknowledgment of the heavy disasters which had befallen us. Pressed with the weight of these convictions, Mr. Macaulay, in a debate on the Income-tax, in April 1842, after cannily disclaiming any responsibility for the Affghan invasion, as having been ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... the former at night and the latter in the morning. In bad cases, they should be used once in six hours. Applications of Oil of Arnica to the affected parts at night, warming them before a fire, will serve greatly to palliate the sufferings, and frequently effect a perfect cure. The Urtica Dioica will relieve recent cases, immediately, and is one of the best remedies for the chronic affection. It should be taken at the 2d dilution, and the tincture applied to the ...
— An Epitome of Homeopathic Healing Art - Containing the New Discoveries and Improvements to the Present Time • B. L. Hill
... illustration, will see sin to be an odious and abominable thing, contrary to the holy nature of God, and awakening in that nature the most holy and awful displeasure. His knowledge upon this subject will be so identical with that of God, that he will be unable to palliate or excuse his transgressions, as he does in this world. He will see them precisely as God sees them. He must know them as God knows them, because he will "know even ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... hospitable, witty, magnificent,—a most accomplished gentleman, one of the best men of all antiquity. What if he was vain and egotistical and vacillating, and occasionally weak? Can you expect perfection in him who "is born of a woman"? We palliate the backslidings of Christians; we excuse the crimes of a Constantine, a Theodosius, a Cromwell: shall we have no toleration for the frailties of a Pagan, in one of the worst periods of history? I have no patience with those critics who would hurl him from the pedestal on which he has stood for ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... home and family, his children were an agreeable recreation, an interesting pastime; and when the children, carried away by the sparkling fire of youth, shouted or cried too loud, the father endeavored to palliate their misdemeanor, and obtain their pardon from their mother. Then Letitia's eyes were fastened with a flaming glance upon her husband, and, imperatively bidding him leave the children, she would say: ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... ordered Edward to desist from molesting Gaston during its hearing. The English king, anxious not to quarrel openly with the French court, granted a truce. The suit of Gaston long occupied the parliament of Paris, but the good-will of the French lawyers could not palliate the wanton violence of the Viscount of Bearn. The French, like the English, were sticklers for formal right, and were unwilling to push matters to extremities. Edward had the reward of his forbearance, for Philip advised Gaston to go to England and make ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... and other ballads, is impugned by Colonel the Hon. FitzWilliam Elliot. He "hopes, though he cannot expect," that I will give my reasons for not sharing his belief that Sir Walter did a certain thing which I could not easily palliate.' ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... his wishes, and now he was anxious to know whether Zych was angry with him. He was afraid that the abbot would never be reconciled with Zbyszko and him. He wanted, however, to do everything he could, to soften that anger; therefore while riding, he was thinking what he would say in Zgorzelice, to palliate the offence and preserve the old friendship with his neighbor. His thoughts, however, were not clear, therefore he was glad to find Jagienka alone; the girl received him as usual with a bow and kissed his hand,—in a word, she was ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... long to dwell particularly on the punishments inflicted by the Court of Star-chamber in this reign. Such historians as have not written in order to palliate the tyranny of Charles, and especially Rushworth, will furnish abundant details, with all those circumstances that portray the barbarous and tyrannical spirit of those who composed that tribunal. Two or three instances are so celebrated ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... boy's shoulder, "you must remember that the injustice came from you—no one would have doubted you if you had not first accused yourself! I had my doubts always, but I did not know enough to understand. You told a lie; nothing can palliate or do away with that! No motives can make a lie anything but a lie, and a lie is always a cowardly thing, whether we try to shield ourselves ...
— Brave and True - Short stories for children by G. M. Fenn and Others • George Manville Fenn
... a greater man than either Wellington or Nelson says of both. Napoleon, at St. Helena, spoke in very high terms of Lord Nelson,[9] and indeed attempted to palliate that one stigma on his memory, the execution of Carraciolli, which he attributed entirely to his having been deceived by that wicked woman Queen Caroline, through Lady Hamilton, and to the influence which the latter had over him. He says of the Duke: "Judging from ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman |
