"Enormity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with abundant tears, and then wept for joy that he again beheld me, again had me; and that after he had long doubted whither this misfortune might have led me, he saw me bear it so calmly and collectedly; for such an aspect had despair now assumed in me. My misery stood before me in its enormity and unchangeableness. I had wept my last tear; not another cry could be extorted from my heart; I presented to my fate my bare head with ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... the first place, what would be the use of it? Fancy Lady Exmoor's horror at the bare idea of her son's tutor falling in love with Lady Hilda! I assure you, Miss Oswald, she would evaporate at the very mention of such an unheard-of enormity. A man must be, if not an earl, at least a baronet with five thousand a year, before he dare face the inexpressible indignation of Lady Exmoor with an offer of marriage ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... questioned them as to the identity of the Hindus, he was again brought up against a blank wall, for they knew nothing of them. He deemed it politic to promise to forgive them and allow them to keep the money that they had received, after he had thoroughly impressed upon them the enormity of their guilt in daring to lay hands upon a white woman. He ordered them as a penance to visit all the Bhuttia villages on each side of the border and tell everyone how terrible was the punishment for such a crime. They were first to ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... was badder than all that." Badder seemed to admit more enormity than simply bad, "I—I went in the park to walk and ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... wore that aspect of woe which comes from the repentant consciousness of having been guilty of an enormity. 'But he wasn't good enough to take me, sir!' she said, almost crying; 'and he isn't absolutely my master until I have married ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... others the most irresistible, as it subsisted on the strongest principles of action, emolument and honour. Thus could the vilest of passions be gratified with impunity. People were robbed, stolen, murdered, under the pretended idea that these were reputable adventures: every enormity in short was committed, and dressed up ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... the enormity of the joke. "First rate! We'll have incendiary meetings!" He pulled an elaborately armorial watch from his enfolding furs. "I'm so sorry, but I must say good-bye—this is my street," he explained. Millner, with a faint twinge of envy, ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... as if this one suggestion, candidly considered, might be enough to open all parents' eyes to the enormity of whipping. How many a loving mother will, without any thought of cruelty, inflict half-a-dozen quick blows on the little hand of her child, when she could no more take a pin and make the same number of thrusts into the tender flesh, than she could bind the baby on a rack. Yet the pin-thrusts ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... slight laugh at the enormity of Mrs. Skidmore's presumption, and then a long pause, after which some one asked suddenly, "Does any one know whether Chawner really ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... escaped being campused for dancing her way through the main hall and shrieking in wild excess of spirits. To add to the enormity of the offense, the day on which this had occurred was the day when the ice-cream wagon came in from Flemington and disposed of its wares at the front entrance of the campus. At the time of her exhibition of high spirits, Hester had held high in her hand a paper butter-dish filled with cream, ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... strong and self-confident! There is no more reason in it than that. He shot Cynthia Ware, and what she suffered in secret Coniston never guessed. What parallels in history shall I quote to bring home the enormity of such a mesalliance? Orthodox Coniston would have gone into sackcloth and ashes,—was soon to go ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... The enormity of his crime came home to him, and Jean Valjean fell on the ground, and for the first time in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the enormity of London increased with the twilight, and began to prevail a little against my intense personal wretchedness. I remember wastes of building enterprise, interminable vistas of wide dark streets, with ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... better protected than those of a trooper who has been long on the march. He displayed no fear or enmity; on the contrary, his manner was rather friendly than otherwise, as though he failed to understand the enormity of his offense and the position in which he was placed. Shifting from one foot to another, he crossed his great, thin hands before him and patiently awaited his captor's pleasure. The latter surveyed him curiously, ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... 1644 his genius soared on steady pinions. During the eight years that followed he triumphed, but he also faltered. Rodogune (1644), which he preferred to all his other plays, is certainly, by virtue of the enormity of the characters, the violence of the passions, the vastness of its crimes, the most romantic of his tragedies; it is constructed with the most skilful industry; from scene to scene the emotion is intensified and heightened until the great fifth act is reached; but ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... 'savoir-faire! Indeed to speak of it at all is as archaic as to speak of the Ichthyosaurus. But sin is a root-fact of the life of man. It is the office of the spiritual teacher to pluck out sin; to pierce the heart with a recognition of the enormity of sin, and of its far-reaching consequences; to stir the seared conscience, rouse the apathetic life, thrill the spiritual imagination, and to quicken the heart to better love and to nobler dreams. He rebukes the private ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... hypocrite the girl was! As coarse and unfeeling as the rest of them. Yet she had some shame left; she had blushed to be caught in the act by him. It showed her worse than those who justified this thing, the enormity of which she had seemed ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... meet the enemy, they did not know when they arrived the enormity of his crimes. That they might know how the German armies make war it has been necessary that they see towns systematically burned down, mines flooded, factories reduced to ashes, orchards devastated, cathedrals shelled and ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... fighting for hire (auctorati), others from a depraved ambition; at last even knights and senators were exhibited,—a disgrace of which the first tyrant was naturally the first inventor.[670] In the end, dwarfs, and even women, fought; an enormity prohibited by Severus. Of these the most to be pitied undoubtedly were the barbarian captives; and, to this species a Christian writer[671] justly applies the epithet "innocent," to distinguish them from the professional gladiators. Aurelian and Claudius supplied great numbers of these unfortunate ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... Miller, who made particular inquiries on this subject, ascertained that the total amount, including cellars and closets, capable of receiving a bed, was fifteen thousand.] chambers, were to take fire—for a considerable space of time the fire would be retarded by the mere enormity of extent which it would have to traverse. But there would come at length a critical moment, at which the maximum of the retarding effect having been attained, the bulk and volume of the flaming mass would thenceforward assist the flames in ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... flue,*** before the officer who had commanded his arrest; nor could this gentleman's repeated assurances that no violence should be offered his person, convince him for a considerable time that his life was in safety from the vengeance of the populace: so conscious was he of the enormity of his conduct, and of the justice of an immediate ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... that picture! How, sir Upon my word, young man, you are in a bad way. The youngster who stops to make designs upon a copy of a deed in a law office, is on the high-road to the gallows. It is an enormity, sir—horrible! dreadful!" ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... was considered a crime among the civilized nations of antiquity has long been debated. Those who maintain the impunity of the practice rely for their authority upon certain passages in the classical authors, which, while bitterly lamenting the frequency of this enormity, yet never allude to any laws by which it might be suppressed. For example, in one of Plato's dialogues (Theaet.), Socrates is made to speak of artificial abortion as a practice, not only common but allowable; ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... it really the fact, Menedemus, that my father can, in so short a space {of time}, have cast off all the {natural} affection of a parent for me? For what crime? What so great enormity have I, to my misfortune, committed? {Young ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... voice was more dissonant, his neckcloth more alarming, his jewellery more prominent, his hat closer shaved and the flower in his mouth less like a flower than ever. How came I there? Why, because I was piqued, and hurt, and reckless. I was capable of almost any enormity. John's manner to me in the train had well-nigh driven me mad. So quiet, so composed, so cold, so kind and considerate, but a kindness and consideration such as that with which one treats a child. He seemed to feel he was my superior; he seemed even to soothe and pity ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... together. The survivors in France began to count their numbers and marshal their forces for self-preservation. From every part of Protestant Europe a cry of horror and execration simultaneously arose in view of this crime of unparalleled enormity. In many places the Catholics themselves seemed appalled in contemplation of the deed they had perpetrated. Words of sympathy were sent to these martyrs to a pure faith from many of the Protestant ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... the West, and for the horrors which resulted from his exploitation of the Indians, was Astor ever prosecuted? To repeat, no; nor was he disturbed even by such a triviality as a formal summons. Yet, to realize the full enormity of acts for which he was responsible, and the complete measure of immunity that he enjoyed, it is necessary to recall that at the time the Government had already begun to assume the role of looking ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... degree, and not at all in kind, that he differed from the general run of successful wealth builders. The Vanderbilts committed thefts of as great an enormity as he, but they gradually managed to weave around themselves an exterior of protective respectability. All sections of the capitalist class, in so fiercely reviling Gould, reminded one of the thief, who, to divert attention from himself, joins with the pursuing crowd in loudly ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... me her country and her friends, adhered to me through good and evil report—and I prepared for her a cruel death! Dreadful contrast! Who shall describe the shame, the sorrow, the humiliation, of the ingrate whose crime has risen to the fearful altitude of this enormity; and who, by the tenderness and love of his devoted victim, is forced to turn his eye on the grim reward of death for love, riches, and life? Gentle, beloved, injured Espras! that emaciated form, these trembling limbs, these sunken eyes, and these weak and whispering sounds of pity ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... transgression, though when I asked permission of my father to accept the offer of an ex-dancing-master for whom I had been able to do some work in the workshop, to give me preparatory lessons so that I might appear less clumsy on entering the class, I was sternly brought to a sense of the enormity of the matter by my father's replying, "William! I would rather see you in your grave than in a dancing-school." I could only understand that I had not been lifted by the divine grace from the condition of total depravity in which I had been born, and I knew that the preternatural indication of ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... was the state of his mind when his officers appeared with the petition from his men. In proportion as they felt the extremities into which they were driven, the offense he had committed glared with tenfold enormity in his eyes; and, in a wild despair, he told them "they might do as they would, but for his part, the moment they opened the gates to the enemy, that moment should be the last of his life. He, that was the son-in-law of King Edward, would never yield ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... the strength of will, in which they recognized their own strength and love of power, and knew how to honour it: they honoured something in themselves when they honoured the saint. In addition to this, the contemplation of the saint suggested to them a suspicion: such an enormity of self-negation and anti-naturalness will not have been coveted for nothing—they have said, inquiringly. There is perhaps a reason for it, some very great danger, about which the ascetic might wish to be more accurately informed through ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... through this scene, Caesar is made to speak quite out of character, and in a strain of hateful arrogance, in order, apparently, to soften the enormity of his murder, and to grind the daggers of the assassins to a sharper point. Perhaps, also, it is a part of the irony which so marks this play, to put the haughtiest words in Caesar's mouth just before ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... appealing to my own words, "Do not your padres, your very bishops, marry?" The absurdity of a bishop having a wife particularly struck them: they scarcely knew whether to be most amused or horror-struck at such an enormity. ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... the Christians were obliged to worship God in the secrecy of their chambers, or in the Roman catacombs, which are still preserved to attest the undying fortitude of the martyrs and the enormity of ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... found them in the same place and got rid of them by a large coin proportioned to the enormity of his remorse. Enchanted with this method of "doing the Jungfrau," the mountaineers pocketed their trinkgeld gravely, and took, with resigned step, the path to their native village, leaving ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... in process of exterminating me. But, since I have reason to believe that no sufficient opportunity has been afforded you of realising the enormity of your conduct, I rally the profoundness of nobility which I discover within me—I calm myself. I go further, I explain. Living in retirement, you may not have learned that I am in Naples. I followed your cousin here—Madame de Vallorbes. My connection with ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... incidental considerations touching this matter of flogging, which exaggerate the evil into a great enormity. Many illustrations might be given, but let us be content ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... was lamenting her frank delight in bull-fights and she said, "Oh, the firs' time I see horse keel,' I am ver' seek. Now they keel four, seven, eleven horse,' I like ver' moach!" When I tried to make her realize the enormity of her taste, she turned on me like a flash—"But you American girl, you go see you' brawther get keel' in ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... burned honesty and rewarded hypocrisy, and all this she did because it was commanded by a book—a book that men had been taught implicitly to believe, long before they knew one word that was in it. They had been taught that to doubt the truth of this book, to examine it, even, was a crime of such enormity that it could not be forgiven, either in this world or in ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... decrees which abolished the Christian religion and set aside the Bible, passed the French Assembly. Three years and a half later a resolution rescinding these decrees, thus granting toleration to the Scriptures, was adopted by the same body. The world stood aghast at the enormity of guilt which had resulted from a rejection of the Sacred Oracles, and men recognized the necessity of faith in God and His word as the foundation of virtue and morality. Saith the Lord, "Whom hast thou reproached and blasphemed? and against whom hast thou exalted thy voice, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... "were made prisoners in the field of battle, which was such a scene of horror and inhumanity as is rarely to be met with among civilized nations. Every circumstance concurs to heighten the enormity of the cruelties exercised on this occasion; the shortness of the action, the cheapness of the victory, and, above all, the moderation the Prince had shown during his prosperity,—the leniency, and even tenderness, with which he had always treated his ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... The explanation we got invariably was that the Arab who owned these victims was enraged at losing his money by the slaves becoming unable to march, and vented his spleen by murdering them; but I have nothing more than common report in support of attributing this enormity to the Arabs. ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... disinterred the bones and placed them in the chapel of the castle. But even then the world knew not all the enormity of the crime. It was reserved for clumsy apologists like Savary to provoke replies and further investigations. The various excuses which throw the blame on Talleyrand, and on everyone but the chief actor, are sufficiently disposed of by the ex-Emperor's will. ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... devil does not take me at once. I live only in what my father calls the lust of the eye. I—I would rather look at a haw-tree in bloom than meditate on the Almighty!" He brought out this awful confession with a gasp at its enormity, but hurried on to a yet more terrible climax. "I cannot be righteous, but many times there are those who cannot—but oh, worse than that, I cannot even wish to be! I can only ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... worship for Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Anabaptists, and every denomination of Christianity; and the meeting-houses prepared for these sects are not, as with us, hideous buildings, contrived to inspire disgust by the enormity of their ugliness, nor are they called Salem, Ebenezer, and Sion, nor do the ministers within them look in any way like the Deputy-Shepherd. The churches belonging to those sects are often handsome. This ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... sleep, and no emperor attempted to check the annoyance. Perhaps he could devise no check. Perhaps he himself, being on the Palatine, and his counsellors, being in their own comparatively secluded houses on the hills, scarcely realised the full enormity of the nocturnal roar of Rome. In any case the fact of the noise is unquestionable. It was then very much as it is now if one tries to sleep in rooms in the Corso or the Via Babuino. The saying that "God made the country and man made the town" is met with in a ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... as I make it my rule, whenever I have committed a very capital enormity, to do some good by way of atonement; and as I believe I am a pretty deal indebted on that score, I intend, before I leave these parts (successfully shall I leave them I hope, or I shall be tempted to double the mischief by way of revenge, though not to my Rose-bud any) to join an hundred ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... bulldog terrier. I taught him to understand a great many words, insomuch that I am positive that the communication betwixt the canine species and ourselves might be greatly enlarged. Camp once bit the baker, who was bringing bread to the family. I beat him, and explained the enormity of his offence; after which, to the last moment of his life, he never heard the least allusion to the story, in whatever voice or tone it was mentioned, without getting up and retiring into the darkest corner of the room, with great appearance of distress. ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... sigh of complete exhaustion, I rose and looked about. All signs of the crime had been obliterated from the garage. "I must be crazy!" I thought, as the enormity of the thing rushed on me. "I wonder why I did it? And I wonder whether I can forget it some day—maybe ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... all that was wanted. "Won't do it again?" echoed the Squire. "No, you won't do it again. I'll take good care of that." He then went on to bring home to her the enormity of her offence, which seemed to have consisted chiefly in upsetting the whole house, which he wouldn't have, and so on. But when he had repeated all he had to say twice, and most of it three or four times, he suddenly took his seat in the chair opposite to her and said in quite ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... crime was finally discovered, and poor Hetty barely escaped a whipping; and her bold young mistress had to listen to a severe lecture on the enormity of her conduct. ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... self-abhorrence, now inseparable from their existence. Their crimes themselves had become their punishment, and it was not necessary that greater should be inflicted. They haunted them like hideous spectres, and continually started up before them in all their enormity. They wished for a second death, that might separate them from these ministers of vengeance, as the first had separated their spirits from the body,—a death that might at once extinguish all consciousness and sensibility. They called upon the depths of hell ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... strove to throw the guilt of the sin she premeditated upon her victim, upon the Intendant, upon fate, and, with a last subterfuge to hide the enormity of it from her own eyes, upon La Corriveau, whom she would lead on to suggest the crime and commit it!—a course which Angelique tried to believe would be more venial than if it were suggested by herself! less heinous in her own eyes, and less wicked in the sight ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... was already waiting a powerful explosive, which Fayette had purloined from the store of the workmen who were excavating for the new wing of the building. In a moment more the fuse would have burned unnoticed to its fatal end, and an awful crime, of whose enormity the dull criminal had no real comprehension, would ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... in Berlin Society, there was more sympathy for mere respectability of wig than in Friedrich. To Friedrich respectability of wig that issues in solemnly failing to do justice, is a mere enormity, greater than the most wigless condition could be. Wigless, the thing were to be endured, a thing one is born to, more or less: but in wig,—out upon it! And the wig which screens, and would strive to disguise ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... you about anything else?" I inquired. "Yes," he rejoined; "he asks me about my father and my mother." "What does he ask you about them?" "He asks me if they do dirty actions," said the boy. Now, here the enormity and vileness of the confessional peeped out. Here one can see how the confessor can look into every hearth, and into every heart, in Rome. The priests had dragged this young boy into their den, and taught him to play the spy on his father and mother. The hand ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... will not be surprised to learn that after a day so filled with events and emotions, Oscar, in spite of the enormity of his offences, slept the sleep of the just. The next day he did not find the world so changed as he thought it; he was surprised to be very hungry,—he who the night before had regarded himself as unworthy to live. He had only suffered mentally. At his age mental impressions succeed each ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... with the Coolies, Goands, and Ramooses, are bold, daring, and predatory marauders—occasionally mercenaries, but invariably plunderers. There are, however, many shades of difference in the extent of the depredations of these several people, in which the balance of enormity is said to be considerably on the side of the Bheels. They are, nevertheless, described as faithful when employed and trusted; and the travellers who pay them their choute, or tribute, may leave ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... drove a knife through Mr. Eden's heart. He stood among them white as a sheet. He could not speak; but his pale face was a silent protest against this enormity. His look of horror and righteous indignation chilled and made uneasy the ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... one enormity they were ever innocent. Whatever degree of personal hardship and suffering their female captives were compelled to endure, their persons were never dishonoured by violence; a fact which can be predicated, we apprehend, of no other victorious ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... public conscience is not alive to the enormity of this anti-social crime? Mainly, we think, because the true principles of representation are not properly understood. It is almost universally assumed that there is no real distinction between direct and representative government. Minorities are tacitly ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... Henry Sandon!" he at length said. "I am, at least, glad that you do not affect to brazen out your crime, but that you show a proper sense of its enormity. What would your upright and painstaking father have said, had he lived to see his ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... doesn't realize the enormity of the offence. However, we'll pass that by. The sentence, Miss Baker, brings me back to the starting-point. You are directed to answer the question just propounded, the question which for some inexplicable reason you didn't hear. What do you think of it—this ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... continued the little man, "of which I now find my scoundrel of an apprentice to have been guilty, was the enormity of picking the lock of my desk, and prying into ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... Mr. Anthony says, he saw a score or more of people killed. Women became hysterical and prayed in the streets, while men sat on the curbing, appearing to be dazed. It was twenty minutes before those in the vicinity seemed to realize the enormity of the catastrophe. The crowds became larger and in the public squares of the city and in empty lots thousands of ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... to obtain hereditary privileges. The hereditary transmission of office from father to son dealt a heavy blow at the popularity of the parliamentary body, which had already deeply suffered through shameful abuses, the enormity of the fees, the ignorance of some of the members, and the dissolute habits ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... astonishment at the enormity of his son's offense was profound. He was struck dumb for some moments, but realizing, at last, that his son was, in all likelihood, involved, he besought the Father ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... head of the enormity of what he did. To put an end to his punishing of Cora, and, to render him powerless against that habitual and natural enemy, Laura had revealed a horrible incident in his career—it had become a public scandal; he was the sport of fools; and it might be months before ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... some time, awaiting the pleasure of the very leisurely guide, sweating at every pore, (or nearly every one, for there are several millions, I believe, and I so hate exaggeration,) and trying to evade the glances of the amused bystanders, did I begin to realize the enormity of the imposition that had been practised on me. Just fancy yourself, Mr PUNCHINELLO, in such a costume, taking a seemingly interminable walk in a hot sun, down ever so many steps, encased in those nasty articles of gear, in the company of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... continues in his abrupt, uncertain way), "man of iron; not only he declares that the spy must be beheaded, but also the entire family—a man of iron that, ha, ha; and then, no you cannot, it is impossible for you to understand the enormity of the calamity—a thousand years before the conquest by the Moors, a Spaniard alone could—there is no one here, ha, ha, I was forgetting—the utter extinction of a great family of the name, the oldest ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... Apollo and Marsyas, to realise that they were antiques of inestimable value, the collection of some great prince. I gathered up the gems by handfuls and stuffed them into my wallet. I was sobered by the realisation of the enormity of my crime, for I had possessed myself, vi et armis, of jewels worth a king's ransom; and I had no clue by which ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... enumerate his works, and are sorry we have not been able to recover any of his poems in order to present the reader with a specimen. Such is commonly the fate of temporary wit, levelled at some prevailing enormity, which is not of a general nature, but only subsists for a while. The curiosity of posterity is not excited, and there is little pains taken in the preservation of what could only please at the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... the authors of that volume had attracted to their work an increasing share of notice. An able article in the 'Westminster Review' first aroused public attention. A still abler in the 'Quarterly' awoke the Church to a sense of the enormity of the offence which had been committed. It was not that danger was apprehended. There could be but one opinion as to the essential impotence of the attack. But the circumstances which aroused public indignation were twofold. First,—Here ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... through which Helen must approach. Not one of all the town-folk and few of the country-folk had ever seen her face or heard her voice. To them she was a woman of mystery, and for the most part a woman of dark repute, capable of any enormity. They believed that she had been living a hermit life simply and only for the reason that she had been driven out of the East by the authorities, and most of them believed that the man she was ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... of the North to find some means of bringing home to the British Ministry the enormity of the offence in American eyes and the serious danger to good relations if such offences were to be continued. An immediate downright threat of war would have been impolitic and would have stirred British pride to the point of resentment. Yet American pride was ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... personal feeling; what cared he for that small consideration, when the bodies of men, women, and children could be sacrificed for that gold which would give him position among the men of the south. If he carried off poor whites, and sold them into slavery, he saw no enormity in the performance; the law invested him with power he made absolute. Society was chargeable with all his wrongs, with all his crimes, all his enormities. He had repeatedly told it so, pointing for proof to that literal observance ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... attempt was made to recriminate; but Washington pressed on in the path he had marked out, and had an English officer selected by lot and held in close confinement to await the action of the enemy. These sharp measures brought the British, as nothing else could have done, to some sense of the enormity of the crime that had been committed. Sir Guy Carleton wrote in remonstrance, and Washington replied: "Ever since the commencement of this unnatural war my conduct has borne invariable testimony against those ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... I hated him; but I did not murder him. I swore to take his life or lose my own; but not thus—not thus. Great God! to see him lying there, and feel it might have been my hand. Men, men! would ye quench hatred, behold its object stricken before you by a dastard blow like this, and ye will feel its enormity and horror. I did not slay him; I would give my life to the murderer's dagger to call him back, and ask his forgiveness for the thoughts of blood I entertained against him; but I touched ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... The enormity of the thing had struck him, almost dazzling him with its implications. Carson laughed bitterly and waved him to a ...
— Daughters of Doom • Herbert B. Livingston
... the Government itself to get up such expeditions than to allow them to proceed under the command of irresponsible adventurers. We could then at least exercise some control over our own agents and prevent them from burning down cities and committing other acts of enormity ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... and first tasted the deceptive kind of knowledge which, promising to make man God, banishes him from the paradise of experience. His sin has been transmitted to his descendants, though hardly in its magnificent and simple enormity. "The whole is one," Xenophanes had cried, gazing into heaven; and that same sense of a permeating identity, translated into rigid and logical terms, brought his sublime disciple to the conviction that an indistinguishable ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... power. So far as a life devoted to the military and political aggrandizement of a country makes a man a patriot, Frederic the Great will receive the plaudits of those men who worship success, and who forget the enormity of unscrupulous crimes in the outward glory which immediately resulted,—yea, possibly of contemplative statesmen who see in the rise of a new power an instrument of the Almighty for some inscrutable end. To me his character ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... without demur any condition precedent to the story of a play, however impossible it might seem to the mind of the individual. Oedipus King has been married to his mother many years before the play begins; but the Greek crowd forbore to ask why, in so long a period, the enormity had never been discovered. The central situation of She Stoops to Conquer seems impossible to the individual mind, but is eagerly accepted by the crowd. Individual critics find fault with Thomas Heywood's lovely ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... now, Teancum saw that the Lamanites were determined to maintain those cities which they had taken, and those parts of the land which they had obtained possession of; and also seeing the enormity of their number, Teancum thought it was not expedient that he should attempt to ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... The enormity of this lack made Tod stare, for travel and horses were inseparably connected in his mind. He shuddered a little at the thought of the big man stalking across the burning and interminable sands of the desert or toiling ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... top of the High Street, and to make things smart and business-like, a dozen strong chairs were bought for the use of the Committee room. There was also a rule about attendances, and any member failing to put in an appearance was fined sixpence, and if he happened to be the overseer, the enormity of his offence was marked by a fine of a shilling—"unless a note be sent to the meeting" [explaining cause of absence]. Here was a model authority, the like of which the town of Royston has never had since, considered as a working body, and ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... tale, distorted and diversified a thousand ways by the credulity and exaggeration of the tellers. At first I listened to the story with indifference or mirth. Methought it was confuted by its own extravagance. The enormity and variety of such an evil made it unworthy to be believed. I expected that every new day would detect the absurdity and fallacy of such representations. Every new day, however, added to the number of witnesses and the consistency of ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... blinked at the enormity of the prospect; but, remembering his dignity as a business man, he shook his head sadly ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... to be possessed of a plantation, and my slaves treated as in general they are here, never could I rest in peace; my sleep would be perpetually disturbed by a retrospect of the frauds committed in Africa, in order to entrap them; frauds surpassing in enormity everything which a common mind can possibly conceive. I should be thinking of the barbarous treatment they meet with on ship-board; of their anguish, of the despair necessarily inspired by their situation, when torn from their friends and relations; when delivered into the hands of a people ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... myself don't get a chance to know women like you. I wish to heaven—" He stopped, a lump in his throat, and gazed into the sentimental night. Great heavens, what a depraved character he really was! For the first time he saw himself in the enormity of his sinning. It was not only the cigarettes and the one black cigar, purloined from his father, but the orgies at penny-ante, the occasional game of craps back of Mather's barn. Then he remembered other damning episodes in his black record—the time he had ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... not a geisha? What difference can it make to me whether they are geishas or not?" Later, no doubt, when I understand Japanese affairs better, I shall appreciate myself the enormity of my proposal: one would really suppose I had talked of marrying ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... for the offense, so tremendous the sacrilege in killing a cat, that such an act was almost unknown in Egypt, and but few instances are recorded of its having taken place. As in the present case the enormity of the act would be vastly increased by the size and beauty of the cat, and the fact that it had been chosen for the temple of Bubastes seemed to put it altogether beyond the range of possibility that the creature had fallen by the hands of man. When a week passed without ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... expiated his sin upon the scaffold he felt and acknowledged its enormity. But it is by him and men like him, and not by the scourings of the galleys, that we can get to understand the spirit of the time. Two men, more eminent than Barnave, show it still more clearly. The great chemist Lavoisier wrote to Priestley that if there had been some ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... still condemned, now he understood, if not the defense of such an attitude, at least the existence of it. He might still think it a folly; it no longer appeared a figment. A sin it was, no doubt, and a degradation, but not an enormity or an absurdity; and when he tried again to fancy his life without Claudia, he struggled in vain against the growing conviction that the pictures he had condemned as caricatures of humanity had truth in them, and that it might be ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... decayed walnuts and sipping not the very best of wine, and Bertram was expatiating on Sir Robert Peel's enormity in having taken the wind out of the sails of the Whigs, and rehearsing perhaps a few paragraphs of a new pamphlet that was about to come out, when Harcourt ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... perpetrated by the English upon their defenceless prisoners, and had instructed him to prepare a school book for the use of American children, to be illustrated by thirty-five good engravings, each to picture some scene of horror, some enormity of suffering, such as should indelibly impress upon the minds of the school children a dread of British rule, and a hatred ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... he was pledged to Lucia, and it would be well if her ladyship did really relieve him by accepting somebody else. Whether she did or no, however, he felt that his conduct towards her would furnish his father with sufficient cause for a quarrel, even without the added enormity of presenting to him a penniless daughter-in-law, who had not even family influence ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... end by noon of the next day; and Mr. Carrington sent for the Terror and talked to him very seriously about this poaching. He did not profess to consider it an enormity; he dwelt at length on the extreme annoyance his mother would feel if he were caught and prosecuted. In the end he gave him the choice of giving his word to snare no more pheasants, or of having his mother informed that he was poaching. The Terror gave his word to snare no more pheasants ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... seemed as if the storm was his servant, and lent wings to his steed. When the talk at table or in company turned upon Bastide Grammont and his murderous crime, of which no one stood in doubt, Clarissa never occupied herself with the enormity of the deed, which must forever separate such a man from the fellowship of the good. Enveloped in a voluptuous mist, she was sensible of the influence of his compelling force, of the heroic soul that spoke in his ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... when one has to deal with one hundred legislators. In New York State, the legislature has no control over the pardoning power, which is vested exclusively in the governor. The family and friends of that youth represented his crime, stupendous as it was, as the first he had ever committed. Its enormity was represented as a proof of temporary insanity—the great argument, now-a-days, of our lawyers—and he was set free by the governor, after remaining a few months in prison. He shows himself again among the wealthy classes, and is as kindly ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin |
