"Mitigation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Continental war came to an end with Napoleon's overthrow at Waterloo, in 1815; and England, having gained enormously in prestige abroad, now turned to the work of reform at home. The destruction of the African slave trade; the mitigation of horribly unjust laws, which included poor debtors and petty criminals in the same class; the prevention of child labor; the freedom of the press; the extension of manhood suffrage; the abolition of restrictions against Catholics ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... baked bedclothing. There was some relief from the heat, but not much. I had been roasting, and while my sensations were somewhat like those which I imagine come to a planked shad when he first finds himself spread out over the plank, there was a mitigation. My temperature fell off from 167 to about 163, which is not quite enough to make a man absolutely content. Suddenly, however, I began to shiver. There was no breeze, but I ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... had had sound feet, she ought to have journeyed to Santiago di Compostella; but, since her condition precluded this, a visit to Altotting in Bavaria would suffice. But Kuni by no means desired any mitigation of the penance. She silently resolved to undertake the pilgrimage to Compostella, at the World's End,—[Cape Finisterre]—in distant Spain, though she did not know how it would be possible to accomplish this with her ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... circumstance just mentioned, which was notorious, was not brought forward in mitigation of the damages for the loss of conjugal joys; and which a jury of citizens, with a tender feeling for their own honour, valued at ten thousand pounds. My lord G—— B—— pocketed the injury and the ten thousand,; and his noble substitute has since made the 'amende honorable' to ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... however, the edict, wrung from the unwilling hands of the cardinal and the privy council, marks an important epoch in the history of the Reformed Church in France. Barely nine months had elapsed since five members of the Parisian Parliament had been thrown into the Bastile for daring to advocate a mitigation of the penalties pronounced against the Protestants, until the assembling of the long-promised Oecumenical Council. Little more than two months had passed since one of their number, and the most virtuous judge on the bench, had been ignominiously executed. And now the King of France, with the ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... himself, from his being so miserably maimed by the tortures. So cruel was the governor, that he even ordered the vermin to be swept on him twice in every eight days. He, however obtained some little mitigation of this part of his punishment, from the humanity of a Turkish slave that attended him, who, when he could do it with safety, destroyed the vermin, and contributed every refreshment to him that laid ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... drew from it was not that it made no particular difference what any one did, but that the attitude and character of the individual were all-important. There was, indeed, no panacea, political or religious, for the ills of humanity; but there could be a mitigation in men's souls. But the new asceticism must not be negative. It must not cast away the goods of civilisation because civilisation is ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... deprecate such considerations as these and I have not retained myself for the defense. Let judgment be entered against me, but in strict justice all my ancestors for generations should be made co-defendants and I be permitted to plead in mitigation of punishment the imperious mandate of heredity. To a mesalliance of that kind every globule of my ancestral blood spoke in opposition. In brief, my tastes, habits, instinct, with whatever of reason my love had left me—all ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... requires a nicely discriminating taste; and it's no use being more violent than you can help. You and Dorothea are making a match that sets the rules of your world at defiance, but you may as well avail yourselves of any little mitigation that comes to hand. Life is going to be hard enough for you ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... was so earnestly in favor of assisting in my experiment, that she declared she would prefer death to its abandonment. Accordingly, the necessary preliminaries were arranged; and, when we parted, it was some mitigation of our grief to know that there was a time appointed for meeting again. Alicia was to lodge with a distant relative of her mother's in a suburb of London; was to concert measures with this relative on the best method of turning her jewels into money; ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... de Inghilterra haveva fatto venire in la Corte sua il majordomo de la Regina et mostrava esserse mitigato alquanto. La causa della mitigation procede del buon negotiar ha fatto et fa la Catolica Mata con lo Ambaxiatore del Re de Inghilterra con persuadirle con buoni paroli et pregeri che debbia restituir la ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... and perform their drill of prayers without embarrassment or distraction in the sight of a crowd, or the rapt 'devotion' of fakirs, are held up as a rebuke to us 'Christians' who are ashamed to be caught praying. One may observe, in mitigation, that the worship which is of the heart is naturally more sensitive to surrounding distractions than that which is a matter of posturing and repetition by rote. But there still remains substance enough in the contrast to point a sharp arrow ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... had really injured Titmouse most seriously, (if not indeed irreparably,) and so provoked the drubbing which had just been administered to him—had quite the contrary effect. Paradoxical as it may seem, matter of clear mitigation was at once converted into matter of aggravation. Were the feelings which Huckaback then experienced, akin to that which often produces hatred of a person whom one has injured? May it be thus accounted for? That there is a secret satisfaction in the mere consciousness of ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... that though he might have been committed by the magistrates, and then let out upon bail, he should not be regarded now, in these days before his trial, as a convicted thief. But to explain all this to Mrs Proudie was beyond his power. He knew well that she would not hear a word in mitigation of Mr Crawley's presumed offence. Mr Crawley belonged to the other party, and Mrs Proudie was a thorough-going partisan. I know a man,—an excellent fellow, who, being himself a strong politician, constantly expresses a belief that all politicians opposed to him are thieves, child-murderers, ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... persuasion of the advertisement, offering what we do not want. In time we imagine we do. Duplications of Cuyp's very puerile arrangement of parts, as in the "Departure for the Chase" to be found in others of his pictures, work in our minds mitigation for those faults. The belief in self has the singular magnetic potency of drawing and turning us. A stronger magnet must then be the living principle. We find it in unity. Originality ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... interests of all required that there should be reconciliation between Matthias and Rhodolph; or that, in their divided state, they would fall victims to their numerous foes. The brothers agreed to an outward reconciliation; but there was not the slightest mitigation of the rancor which filled their hearts. Matthias, however, consented to acknowledge the superiority of his brother, the emperor, to honor him as the head of the family, and to hold his possessions as fiefs of Rhodolph intrusted ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... any mitigation? I'd rather die in the gutter than live on money that was obtained by a vulgar fraud. She acted a lie—a damned despicable lie. That sort of thing is done every day, but the man usually knows what he is doing, and ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... thou shalt see' (Deut 28:65-67). Nay, thou wilt find worse things to thy woe than this scripture doth manifest. For, indeed, there is no tongue able to express the horror, terror, torment, and eternal misery that those poor souls shall undergo, without the least mitigation of ease, and a very great part of it shall come from that quick, full, and continual remembrance of their sins that they shall have. And, therefore, there is much weight in these words, 'Son, remember that thou in thy ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... surmounted, and the apportionment made. Still there is great room to suppose that the rule agreed upon would, upon experiment, be found to bear harder upon some States than upon others. Those which were sufferers by it would naturally seek for a mitigation of the burden. The others would as naturally be disinclined to a revision, which was likely to end in an increase of their own incumbrances. Their refusal would be too plausible a pretext to the complaining States to withhold their ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... would pronounce that the consenters were troublers of this Commonwealth and enemies to God and to His promise planted within the same. At those words I grant your Grace stormed and burst forth into an unreasonable weeping. What mitigation the Laird of Dun would have made I suppose your Grace has not forgot. But while that nothing was able to stay your weeping I was compelled to say, I take God to witness that I never took pleasure to see any creature ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... and as the tenor of his speech had assured his friends would be the case, Socrates was found guilty—but by a majority of only five or six in a body of over five hundred. He would make no proposition, as was his right, for a mitigation of punishment; and after sentence of death had been passed upon him he spent the remaining thirty days of his life in impressing on the minds of his friends the most sublime lessons in philosophy and virtue. Many of these lessons have been preserved to us in the works of Plato, in whose Phoe'do, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... own land. For titles do not really pass with signatures and red seals, nor with money changing from one hand to another, but for true possession one must work and serve according to the most ancient law. There is no mitigation and no haggling of price. Those who think they can win the greatest joys of country life on any easier ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... finished long in his desk? and that consequently between some scenes of Tom Jones and some scenes of Amelia it is not improbable that there was no more than a few months' interval? I do not urge these things in mitigation of any unfavourable judgment against the later novel. I only ask—How much of that unfavourable judgment ought in justice to be set down to the fallacies connected with an ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... professions generally, petitioned against alteration in the law which sent children of ten to the gallows for the theft of a pocket-handkerchief. The great Lord Ellenborough declared in the House of Lords that "the learned judges were unanimously agreed" that any mitigation in that law would imperil "the public security." "My Lords," he exclaimed, "if we suffer this Bill to pass we shall not know where we stand; we shall not know whether we are on our heads or on our feet." Mr. Perceval, when leader of ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... sorrow in the world. She was a bird, the hut was her nest and Hannah her mother, whose wings covered her. These sisters were very poor; not, however, as the phrase is understood in the large cities, where, notwithstanding the many charitable institutions for the mitigation of poverty, scores of people perish annually from cold and hunger; but as it is understood in the rich lower counties of Maryland, where forests filled with game and rivers swarming with fish afford abundance of food ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... itself be bliss. For the sense of true life, there must be actual, conscious contact with the source of the life; therefore mere life—in itself, in its very essence good—good as the life of God which is our life—must be such bliss as, I think, will need the mitigation of the loftiest joys of communion with our blessed fellows; the mitigation of art in every shape, and of all combinations of arts; the mitigation of countless services to the incomplete, and hard toil for those who do not yet know their neighbour or their Father. The bliss of pure being ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... It was not dated on the 31st of October, but on or about the seventh day of November. Even that falsehood, though at first sight trivial, is enough for suspicion. If X, a known liar, utters a lie at starting, it is not for him to plead in mitigation the apparent uselessness of the lie, it is for us to presume out of the fact a use, where the fact exists. A leader in the French Revolution protested often against bloodshed and other atrocities—not as being too bad, but, on the contrary, as being too good, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... being threatened, his best mitigation was, that perhaps it was not safe for him to deny so great a lord; yet it was safest for his lordship to be denied. ... The king heard the noise of these crashes, and was so pleased, that he thanked God, before many witnesses, ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... of some mitigation of their punishment, they did well, working away, so that long before we reached Auckland we seemed to have ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... the nation requires it as a homage rendered necessary to the violated majesty of law. Nobody wishes that, at Mr O'Connell's age, any severe punishment should be inflicted. Nobody will misunderstand, in such a case, the mitigation of the sentence. The very absence of all claim to mitigation, makes it impossible to mistake the motive to lenity in his case. But judgment must be done on Cawdor. Two aggravations, and heavy ones, of the offence have occurred ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... (M16) The only mitigation of the sentence was the eternal enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the Serpent, in which the final victory should be given to the former. The rite of sacrifice was introduced as a type of the satisfaction for sin by the death of a ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... punishment, sir,' said he, 'your own deserts have no doubt suggested the likelihood of it to your mind; but I now am with you to let you know that whatever mitigation of your sentence you may look for, must be earned by your compliance with my orders. You must frankly and fully explain the contents of the packet which you endeavoured this day to destroy; and further, you must tell all that you know of the designs ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... addressing Democrats only, I should mention the protective tariff; if Republicans, the hill-tribe clamor for free coinage of silver. I should call to mind the existence of prosperous activity of a thousand lying secret societies having for their sole object mitigation of republican simplicity by means of pageantry and costumes grotesquely resembling those of kings and courtiers, and titles of address and courtesy exalted enough to draw laughter ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... be sensible and not persist in lying as on other occasions. All this time you have denied your participation in the murder of Klyauzov, in spite of the mass of evidence against you. It is senseless. Confession is some mitigation of guilt. To-day I am talking to you for the last time. If you don't confess to-day, to-morrow it will be too late. Come, tell ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... was ever ready to undertake the defence of any person who had a title, pleaded, in mitigation of censure, that perhaps Lady St. James might not be aware that her ladyship was yet well ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... enjoyments of which I have endeavoured to give a faithful narrative are gross and have no elevating tendency. I fear the men of the spur and sabre must bow to the justice of the criticism; and I know of nothing to advance in mitigation save the old Scotch proverb: "It is ill to mak' a silk purse ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... the children crying, the neighbors collecting around and in the house, while the executioner bound Mr. Judson with the cords, and took a fiendish pleasure in making them as tight as possible. Mrs. Judson gave Moung Ing money that he might follow and procure a mitigation of this torture, instead of which, Mr. Judson was again thrown down, and the cords so tightened as almost to prevent respiration. Then he was hurried on to the court-house, thence to "the death prison," into which he was hurled, and Moung Ing saw ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... best, however rough, however wild. In ordinary circumstances Jane could not deny to herself that this course would be the right course for a daughter; that such an one would do well to succor a father's failings, to add hope to his despondency and love to the mitigation of his trials. But Mr. Keene was not despondent, nor were his trials of a sort which might not easily be tempered by something like industry on his own part. He was frankly idle. He loved better than simple work the precarious excitement of prospecting—an occupation ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... centuries, and only sold their fief to Rome in 1815. Monte Coppiolo lies behind, Pietra Rubia in front: two other eagle's-nests of the same brood. What a road it is! It beats the tracks on Exmoor. The uphill and downhill of Devonshire scorns compromise or mitigation by detour and zigzag. But here geography is on a scale so far more vast, and the roadway is so far worse metalled than with us in England—knotty masses of talc and nodes of sandstone cropping up at dangerous turnings—that only ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... slow and silent, but very substantial mitigation has taken place in the practice of war; and in proportion as that mitigated practice has received the sanction of time, it is raised from the rank of mere usage, and becomes part of the law of nations. Whoever will compare ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh
... offence and the age of the defendant, but invest the judge with the power of increasing or diminishing the penalty to the extent of one-fourth.' A copy of the sentence is laid before the master, who has of course 'the power of mitigation or pardon.' From the decision of the court there lies an appeal to the committee, which is thus not only the legislative body, but also the supreme court of judicature. Two such appeals however are all that have yet occurred: both were brought by the attorney-general—of ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... should not have hesitated about profiting, in his public character, by any information incidentally obtained. He had subjected himself to the severest penalties of military law by yielding to his passion for Ghita; and he could not discover a single available excuse to plead in mitigation. ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... deceased incomparably beyond his merits, and resisting all remonstrance to the contrary and all the forms of ordinary custom, she witnessed herself the dreary ceremony which bequeathed the human remains of William Brandon to repose and to the worm. On that same day Clifford received the mitigation of his sentence, and on that day another trial awaited Lucy. We think briefly to convey to the reader what that scene was; we need only observe that Dummie Dunnaker, decoyed by his great love for little ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Rhadamanth addressed the prisoner. "Have you anything to urge," he asked in a very stern tone, "in mitigation of whatever sentence the Court may see fit to pass ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... prevail on them to reconsider their determination. So, after telling Mr Swiveller how they had not lost sight of Kit's mother and the children; how they had never once even lost sight of Kit himself, but had been unremitting in their endeavours to procure a mitigation of his sentence; how they had been perfectly distracted between the strong proofs of his guilt, and their own fading hopes of his innocence; and how he, Richard Swiveller, might keep his mind at rest, for everything should be happily ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... Henry the restoration of many old observances; and the joyous feeling which this celebration of Christmas had diffused throughout an extensive district was a fresh argument in favour of Lord Henry's principle, that a mere mechanical mitigation of the material necessities of the humbler classes, a mitigation which must inevitably be limited, can never alone avail sufficiently to ameliorate their condition; that their condition is not merely 'a knife and fork question,' to use the coarse and shallow phrase of ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... lordship would allow me to address you in mitigation of sentence. I don't know if your lordship thinks I can add anything to what I have said to the jury on the score of the prisoner's youth, and the great stress under which ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... suffered by these people at the hands of their native rulers, they come legitimately by the attitude and language of fawning and flattery, and one must remember this in mitigation when passing judgment upon the native character. It is common in these letters to find the petitioner furtively trying to get at the white man's soft religious side; even this poor boy baits his hook with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... appealed for a mitigation of the extreme penalty. "While he was in command at Winchester, in December 1861, a soldier who was charged with striking his captain was tried by court-martial and sentenced to be shot. Knowing that ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... one of our abovementioned commands—nevertheless, we do will and ordain that such person shall be considered as relapsed, and, as such, be punished with loss of life and property, without any hope of moderation or mitigation of the above-mentioned penalties." ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... wondered if this tumultuous ugliness made more dreary to Mrs. Upton the dreary circumstances of her home-coming. There was no mitigation of dreariness to be hoped for from Imogen, who was probably absorbed in her own bitter reflections. She gazed steadily out of the window, replying only with quiet monosyllables to her mother's tentative questions; her face keeping its look of endurance. One could infer ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... furnishings of Queen Caroline Murat. Having opened it he took out a bottle and a glass. On the label of the bottle was a kilted Highlander playing on the pipes. A siphon of soda was also in the cabinet, but he left it there. What he had to do would be done more quickly without its mitigation. ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... as I have said, is in the fact that it is a mitigation of primary ferocity, a symptom of readiness to negotiate, a recognition of the fact that disputes need not be settled by immediate violence: and as such it points to a time when war may be superseded, as personal combat has ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... of spring, there was of course some mitigation of the trials of the winter. Here is an almost idyllic passage from a letter to his sister, written on the fly-leaves of 'Les Confessions de ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... glare slowly softened, and with sunset came coolness; this was some slight mitigation to their sufferings; sleep too, promised to bring oblivion; and hope, which a merciful Providence has ordained to cast its halo over the darkest hours, told its flattering tale of possible relief on ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... the shape of a change or mitigation of Paolina's resolve? No sooner did the idea cross his mind than he felt ashamed of it, and his heart smote him for having for a moment harboured a thought that involved falseness to his promise to her. Nevertheless, ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... Some mitigation of her disadvantage has been effected by her rendering herself and her home a luxury to man. She has accentuated those qualities in herself which insidiously impose their bondage over her mate, some by pandering ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... the 15th of July produced no mitigation of the disturbances. Successive deputations of poissardes came to request the King to visit Paris, where his presence alone would put an end ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... of the article would pay this last-mentioned sum every year to the producers of it, over and above the price at which they could supply themselves with the same article from other sources. There would be no mitigation of this burden, except from the prospect, whatever that might be, that iron would fall in value, by domestic competition, after the importation should be prohibited. It will be easy, I think, to show that it cannot fall; and supposing for the present that it shall not, the result will be, that ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... seated her, he revived her by a protestation, that the clause she so fearfully deprecated, had been repealed by Edward. But the good earl blushed as he spoke, for in this instance he said what was not the truth. Far different had been the issue of all his attempts at mitigation. The arrival of Athol from Scotland with advices from the Countess of Strathearn, that Lady Helen Mar had fled southward to raise an insurrection in favor of Wallace, and that Lord Bothwell had gone to France to move Philip to embrace the same cause, gave Edward so ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... Paris, were confined to a few objects; the receipt of our whale-oils, salted fish, and salted meats, on favorable terms; the admission of our rice on equal terms with that of Piedmont, Egypt, and the Levant; a mitigation of the monopolies of our tobacco by the farmers-general, and a free admission of our productions into their islands, were the principal commercial objects which required attention; and on these ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... and horrid!" laughed Hay; "the Major will have promised all the consulates in the service; the Senators will all come to me and refuse to believe me dis-consulate; I shall see all my treaties slaughtered, one by one, by the thirty-four per cent of kickers and strikers; the only mitigation I can foresee is being sick a good part of the time; I am nearing my grand climacteric, and the great culbute ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... parts of Europe. The accounts do not all make mention of the spitting of blood, the diagnostic symptom of this fatal pestilence; we are not, however, thence to conclude that there was any considerable mitigation or modification of the disease, for we must not only take into account the defectiveness of the chronicles, but that isolated testimonies are often contradicted by many others. Thus the chronicles of ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... Paul claims circumcision as an excellent thing in its way for a Jew; but if it has no efficacy towards salvation, and if salvation is the one thing needful—and Paul was committed to both propositions—his pleas in mitigation only made the Jews more ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... of Tripoli might, indeed, do something for these oppressed people, and save the Saharan commerce from impending ruin. I quiet the people by telling them, (and which is the fact,) I have repeatedly written to the English Consul of Tripoli about their affairs, and to obtain some mitigation of the ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... behold, where Madam Mitigation comes! I have purchased as many diseases under her roof as come ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... murmurs, "Little Father, you do not really wish us well, you do not wish us to have corn, although you do wish to live on our corn." In some parts of Germany at harvest the men and women, who have reaped the corn, roll together on the field. This again is probably a mitigation of an older and ruder custom designed to impart fertility to the fields by methods like those resorted to by the Pipiles of Central America long ago and by the cultivators of rice in Java ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... suitable for a trade or profession, and for the whole of life, are important and probably new ethical conceptions. Nor has Plato forgotten his old paradox (Gorgias) that to be punished is better than to be unpunished, when he says, that to the bad man death is the only mitigation of his evil. He is not less ideal in many passages of the Laws than in the Gorgias or Republic. But his wings are heavy, and he is unequal ...
— Laws • Plato
... he—hated? Thus he tried to excuse himself; but yet he knew that all the world would condemn him. Life in Exeter would be impossible, if no way to social pardon could be opened for him. He was willing to do anything within bounds in mitigation of his offence. He would give up fifty pounds a year to Camilla for his life,—or he would marry Bella. Yes; he would marry Bella at once,—if Camilla would only consent, and give up that idea of stabbing ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... Being has directed the fatal blow," said Emmanuel, "it must be that he in his great goodness has perceived nothing in the past lives of these people to merit mitigation of their ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... not, constancy is not. This perspicuous proverb from the Persian (which I made up myself for the occasion) is cited in mitigation of the Tyro's regrettable fickleness, he—to his shame be it chronicled—having practically forgotten the woe-begone damsel's very existence within eighteen short hours after his adventure in knight-errantry. Her tear-ravaged ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... declared his purpose to go straight to New York and set every influence to work that could reach the President. Honora was to live near the prison, support herself by her singing, and use her great friends to secure a mitigation of his sentence, and access to ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... nerves had come the conviction that the vision was inward, though at the moment so real that often his confidence momentarily wavered, as last night in the train. It came with no kind of regularity, no warning that might prepare him. And recurrence brought no mitigation, no familiarising that could temper the acute horror it inspired. To what pitch of actuality might it attain? To what lengths might it drive him? He dragged his thoughts up sharply. To dwell on it was fatal, that way lay insanity. He set his teeth and forced himself to think of ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... that Lady Agnes wouldn't trust herself to speak directly of her trouble, and he had obeyed what he supposed the best discretion in making no allusion to it. But a few minutes before they rose from table she broke out, and when he attempted to utter a word of mitigation there was something that went to his heart in the way she returned: "Oh you don't know—you don't know!" He felt Grace's eyes fixed on him at this instant in a mystery of supplication, and was uncertain as to what she wanted—that he should say something more to console ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... happiness, as before explained; this may suggest to us what should be our general aim respecting ourselves, in our passage through this world: namely, to endeavour chiefly to escape misery, keep free from uneasiness, pain, and sorrow, or to get relief and mitigation of them; to propose to ourselves peace and tranquillity of mind, rather than pursue after high enjoyments. This is what the constitution of nature before explained marks out as the course we should follow, and the end we should aim ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... and of the government. He was arrested as insane, but medical examination proved him sane and he was then lodged as a prisoner in Colberg, where he was harshly treated, though Gneisenau obtained some mitigation of his condition. Thence he passed into Russian hands and died in prison at Riga in 1807, probably as ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... hostility to its doctrines. But a direct sympathy with Lollardism was seen in the further proposals of the Commons. They prayed for the abolition of episcopal jurisdiction over the clergy and for a mitigation of the ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... would inevitably come out; Emily had friends in Dunfield, and if her father's guilt were once disclosed, there would be no reason for her concealment of what had happened; facts like these put forward in mitigation of punishment would supply the town with a fearful subject of comment—nay, was he safe from the clutch of the law? Of these things he had not troubled to think, so assured was he that the mere threat would suffice. From his present point of ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... because this conceit of charming hath ouer-spread it selfe in this Sunneset of the world, and challengeth a lawfull approbation from the authority and practise of ancient [z]Physitians, yea and found some [aa]Diuines to be their Patrons respectiuely, and with clauses of mitigation, I thinke it very necessarie to shew the vnlawfulness ...
— A Treatise of Witchcraft • Alexander Roberts
... meditation pleased me as much as histories and fables, I was charmed by the work of Laurentius Valla against Boethius and by that of Luther against Erasmus, although I was well aware that they had need of some mitigation. I did not omit books of controversy, and amongst other writings of this nature the records of the Montbeliard Conversation, which had revived the dispute, appeared to me instructive. Nor did I neglect ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... administration of justice to seamen, to which I wish seriously to call the attention of those interested in their behalf, and, if possible, also of some of those concerned in that administration. This is, the practice which prevails of making strong appeals to the jury in mitigation of damages, or to the judge, after a verdict has been rendered against a captain or officer, for a lenient sentence, on the grounds of their previous good character, and of their being poor, and having friends ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... educational matters may be an excellent thing when the whole energies of the central authorities happen to be exerted in mitigation of the evils of the national system. But it must be borne in mind that political parties and the heads of departments are constantly changing in this country. The reformer of to-day may to-morrow be superseded by a retrogressive-minded mediocrity; and there would ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... a languorous, luscious night, with the scent of new-mown hay mingling with that of gardens. If there was any breeze it was lightly from the east, bringing that mitigation of the heat traditional to the week following Independence Day. As there was no moon, the stars had their full midsummer intensity, the Scorpion trailing hotly on the southern horizon, with Antares throwing ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... life and a dozen of others besides, had been taken, it had not grieved the hearts of the godly so much, and that either these things behoved to be retracted, or they would oppose so long as they had breath. But, after a long process, no mitigation of the council's severity could be obtained, for Mr. Black was charged by a macer to enter his person in ward, on the north of the Tay, there to remain on his own expence during his majesty's pleasure; and, though he was, next year, restored back to his place at St. Andrews, ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... the soldiery with that of Tecumseh and his Indians. He charged the Adjutant-General Reiffenstein with gross prevarication. He sneered at the captured, few of whom had been rescued by an honorable death from the ignominy of passing under the American yoke, and whose wounds pleaded little in mitigation of the reproach. The officers in retreating from Detroit, Sandwich and Malden, seemed to have been more anxious about their baggage than they had afterwards been about their honor. The enemy had attacked and defeated ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... St. Petersburg in honor of the new regent, while they were at the same time trying the old one and condemning him to death. But Anna Leopoldowna mitigated his punishment—what a mitigation!—by changing the sentence of death into that ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... terrors of death, but dreading disgrace, Andre was deeply affected by the mode of execution which the laws of war decree to persons in his situation. He wished to die like a soldier not as a criminal. To obtain a mitigation of his sentence in this respect he addressed a letter to Washington, replete with the feelings of a man of sentiment and honor. But the occasion required that the example should make its full impression, and this request could not be granted. He encountered his fate with composure and dignity, ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... laughter. To his domestics he was naturally rough: and a man of a rigorous temper, with that vigilance of minute attention which his works discover, must have been a master that few could bear. That he was disposed to do his servants good, on important occasions, is no great mitigation; benefaction can be but rare, and tyrannic peevishness is perpetual. He did not spare the servants of others. Once, when he dined alone with the Earl of Orrery, he said of one that waited in the room, "That ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... period, give us a true picture of their former friendship. "If," replied Count Mansfeld to his friend, who in an amicable manner had reproved him for his defection to the king, "if formerly I was of opinion that the general good made the abolition of the Inquisition, the mitigation of the edicts, and the removal of the Cardinal Granvella necessary, the king has now acquiesced in this wish and removed the cause of complaint. We have already done too much against the majesty of the sovereign and the authority ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... article in the 'Quarterly Review' for July, 1860. (I was not aware when I wrote these passages that the authorship of the article had been publicly acknowledged. Confession unaccompanied by penitence, however, affords no ground for mitigation of judgment; and the kindliness with which Mr. Darwin speaks of his assailant, Bishop Wilberforce (vol.ii.), is so striking an exemplification of his singular gentleness and modesty, that it rather increases ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... their large garrison at Danzig, and the recognition of Russia's right to trade with neutrals. If these terms were accorded by France, Alexander was ready to negotiate for an indemnity for the Duke of Oldenburg and a mitigation of the Russian customs dues on French goods.[254] The reception given by Napoleon to these reasonable terms was unpromising. "You are a gentleman," he exclaimed to Prince Kurakin, "—and yet you dare to present to me such proposals?—You are acting as Prussia did before Jena." Alexander ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... down to the public library, where, by the token of Richard Caramel's card, he had drawn out half a dozen books on the Italian Renaissance. That these books were still piled on his desk in the original order of carriage, that they were daily increasing his liabilities by twelve cents, was no mitigation of their testimony. They were cloth and morocco witnesses to the fact of his defection. Anthony had had several hours of acute ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... consequence of his labors, the world has at length given us credit for this great discovery, of no less value than many others which we can claim to have originated in our country, for the prolongation of life and for the mitigation of suffering. ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... divide her irrevocably from all that on earth she loves: and if there be a sacrifice in her solemn choice, accept, O Thou, the Crucified! accept it, in part atonement of the crime of her stubborn race; and, hereafter, let the lips of a maiden of Judaea implore thee, not in vain, for some mitigation of the awful curse that hath ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book IV. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Review in which he definitely though reluctantly gave his adhesion to total abolition as the goal to be aimed at, but of course he never at any time associated himself with the condemnation of all other measures for the mitigation of the cruelties of the laboratory or of the world at large that has since been pronounced by the more extreme protagonists on the ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... can meet and decide on the mitigation of the horrors of war, it is certainly conceivable that a tribunal of nations can prevent war. Such a tribunal would in no respect differ from the Supreme Court of the United States in its fundamental foundations. As our Supreme Court is final in settling all disputes in this country, ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... them and relieve them. The Premier himself was not free from these feelings. In the memorandum which he read to the Cabinet on the 1st of November, amongst many other things, he says: "There will be no hope of contributions from England for the mitigation of this calamity. Monster meetings, the ungrateful return for past kindness, the subscriptions in Ireland to Repeal rent and O'Connell tribute, will have disinclined the charitable here to make any great exertions for Irish relief."[65] There was even, I fear, something behind all this—the ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... the influence of the great "spirit interest" had succeeded in removing all restriction from the goldfields. By this time, however, the police and other authority were better organized, so that there was a very considerable mitigation of bad effects. ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... seventeenth century we owe it that we have a House of Commons. To the Whigs of the nineteenth century we owe it that the House of Commons has been purified. The abolition of the slave trade, the abolition of colonial slavery, the extension of popular education, the mitigation of the rigour of the penal code, all, all were effected by that party; and of that party, I repeat, I am a member. I look with pride on all that the Whigs have done for the cause of human freedom and of human ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the authors of it were not fully aware of its import. They did not understand the dreadful significance of the crucifixion of the Son of God, as we now understand it, in the light of eighteen centuries. Our Lord alludes to this, as a species of mitigation; while yet He teaches, by the very prayer which He puts up for them, that this ignorance did not excuse His murderers. He asks that they may be forgiven. But where there is absolutely no sin there is no need of forgiveness. It is one of our Lord's assertions, that ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... desperation to retrieve his error, if error it were; he escaped death himself as by a miracle, and he brought off a remnant of the command which, in weaker hands, might have been utterly swallowed up. On that count he is clear. But on the others—guilty, and without mitigation." ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... even seen an annuity distributed to aggravate the muddle with their suggestions would be most presumptuous. It is as little as we can do to abstain. We may venture here only to say a word in mitigation of the deep stain left upon the fair fame of the United States by its management of Indian affairs. The contrast so frequently drawn with the course of things in Canada is not wholly just. It was the French who saved ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... promise the old man some mitigation of his sufferings, and they liked each other so well that they parted the best of friends, and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... scarlet. But this did not affect Wayne so deeply, though it showed him his mistake, as the darkening shadow of disappointment in her eyes. If she had been a flirt, she would have been prepared for rudeness. He began casting about in his mind for some apology, some mitigation of his offense; but as he was about to speak, the sudden fading of her color, leaving her pale, and the look in her proud, dark eyes ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... motes resembled minute particles of liquid which had been carried mechanically from the U-tubes into the experimental tube. Precautions were therefore taken to prevent any such transfer. They produced little or no mitigation. I did not imagine, at the time, that the dust of the external air could find such free passage through the caustic potash and sulphuric acid. This, however, was the case; the motes really came from without. They also passed with freedom through ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... and conditions signed it. Religion made no difference. Roman Catholic priests even were associates of the league. The motives were not the same with all, but the pretext was similar. The Roman Catholics desired simply the abolition of the Inquisition and a mitigation of the edicts; the Protestants aimed at unlimited ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... of sale, that on the face of it was harsh and barbarous, some slight mitigation of the cruelty of the system had come; for the practice had grown up of permitting parents to buy back their own children—nominally thereafter holding them as slaves—and so to save them at a single stroke from both death and servitude. One strong cause of the hatred of the Priest Captain ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... if indeed it be The Irrepressible Conflict! Let it come; There will be mitigation of the doom, If, battling to the last, our sires shall see Their sons contending for the homes made free In ancient conflict with the foreign foe! If those who call us brethren strike the blow, No common conflict shall the invader know! War to the knife, and to the last, until The sacred ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... he saw proper.[**] In the end, the bishops and abbots, being threatened with excommunication, which made all their revenues fall into the king's hands, were obliged to submit to the exaction; and the only mitigation which the legate allowed them was, that the tenths already granted should be accepted as a partial payment of the bills. But the money was still insufficient for the pope's purpose: the conquest of Sicily ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... the United States in 1812 made America independent on the sea, and eventually compelled England to give up her assumed right to search American vessels. The two greatest reforms of the period were the abolition of the slave trade and the mitigation of the laws against debt and crime; the chief material improvement was the extension of canals and the application of steam to manufacturing and to navigation. The "Industrial Revolution" transformed ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... of irritation to the brain removed. If it is due to stable miasma, uremic poisoning, pyemia, influenza, rheumatism, toxic agents, etc., they should receive prompt attention for their removal or mitigation. ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... can surely be no greater misstatement than to speak of her as having blighted his life. This last part of his life was indeed blighted, but by ill-health and consequent nervous irritability and suffering; but such mitigation as was possible he found for eight years in the womanly devotion and genial society of Madame Sand—real benefits to one whose strange and delicate individuality it was not easy to befriend—and which the breach that took place between them shortly ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... that language as a scientific and convenient vehicle of speech. This will be illustrated in due course: the actual condition of English with respect to homophones must be understood and appreciated before the nature of their growth and the possible means of their mitigation ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... did not think, with some late writers, that mercy consists only in punishing offenders; yet he was as far from thinking that it is proper to this excellent quality to pardon great criminals wantonly, without any reason whatever. Any doubtfulness of the fact, or any circumstance of mitigation, was never disregarded: but the petitions of an offender, or the intercessions of others, did not in the least affect him. In a word, he never pardoned because the offender himself, or his friends, were unwilling that ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... the paper now by the light of the candles which Sor Teresa set on the table. It was a curt, military document without explanation or unnecessary mitigation of the truth. For Pampeluna had seen the like before and understood this ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... respect of the King for the blood of the Valois, and in the other his passion for the Marquise, would plead more powerfully in their behalf than the most emphatic entreaties. Like that of the Comtesse d'Auvergne, her attempt, however, proved abortive, save that Henry accorded to her prayers a mitigation of the rigour with which her ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe |
