"Mitigating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Lamar so touched the hearts of the people of the North that they may fairly be said to have been of themselves an important influence in mitigating ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... and scarcely a day, passes, but contributions are solicited from the poorer traders of the Jews, to which the most indigent add their pence, with the true feelings of Jewish benevolence, in the hope of mitigating the poignant sufferings of the applicants. "The charity which plenty gives to poverty is human and earthly, but it becomes divine and heavenly when poverty gives ...
— Suggestions to the Jews - for improvement in reference to their charities, education, - and general government • Unknown
... suppose that a course of suffering from terrors the most awful, under whatever influence supported, whether under the naked force of compulsion, or of that connected with bribes, could have any final effect in mitigating the passion of awe, connected, by our very dreams, with the shadowy and the invisible, or in tranquillizing ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... to the region east of the Mississippi, might eventually make possible a servile insurrection, particularly if foreign war should break out. All of these difficulties would be met, in the opinion of the south, by scattering the existing slaves and thus mitigating the evil without increasing the number of those ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... grand-daughter and the populace, for a knowledge of it would have served to increase her alarm. She was surrounded by the usual circle of habitues who endeavoured in vain to calm her fears, but my presence re-assured her a little, and Count Valeski, who came in soon after, succeeded in mitigating her terror. Having witnessed the horrors of the former revolution, it is no wonder she should tremble at the thoughts of another, and she looks on my calmness and courage ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... her own hand, with the power to coin her will into law, a woman might do a far more effective work in preventing human misery and crime, than she ever can accomplish by indirect influence, in merely mitigating the evils man perpetuates ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... particularly those engaged in dangerous or unhealthful employments, have been found to be in need of additional protection. Even before the adoption of the constitution, much had been done toward mitigating the severity of the common law, particularly in the administration of its criminal branch. The number of capital crimes, in this country at least, had been largely decreased. Trial by ordeal and by battle ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the community, European revolutionists were to be scourged with the Syllabus, whose every word agonized the souls of unworthy advocates of liberty. That Pontifical document has created a literature of its own in comment and explanation, some tying more knots in every lash and others mitigating its severity or palliating the errors it smote with such pitiless rigor. But the best interpretation of the Syllabus is the Paulist community. It is a body of free men whose origin was the joint ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... back in the carriage at her side, bathed in the wavering green and gold light of the chestnut-trees among which the road wended, a recent description of him, which she had said over to herself, to qualify it by mitigating adjectives, seemed to her to have become altogether unfair. Gerald's face, beneath the brim of his pliable white straw, bent down over the eyes and turned up at the back, Italian style, did not look sickly. On the contrary, it looked better and stronger since his illness; he even had a little ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... for John to explain his defection to Mr. Clotworthy and to Tarleton. The only mitigating feature of the business was that the matter to be reported was only a concert. Both Mr. Clotworthy and Tarleton trembled when they thought of the calamity that would have befallen the paper if the forgotten report had been of a murder! They ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... be no justification of Lord Cornwallis's policy; but there were some mitigating circumstances that palliate the severities which he inflicted. Among those who had been taken prisoners at the capture of Charleston, and professed loyalty, was, as Lord Mahon says, "One Lisle, who had not only taken the oath of allegiance, but accepted military rank as a King's officer; ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... Under the vague category of offences against order men might include any accusations they pleased, and by the higher grades in the scale of fines they might accomplish whatever they desired. The dangerous character of such arbitrary procedure was brought to light rather than obviated by the mitigating proviso, that these property-fines, where they were not fixed by law at a definite sum, should not amount to half the estate belonging to the person fined. To this class belonged the police-laws, which from the earliest times were especially ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Boston hotel, and saying that there was to be a consultation that day, and as soon as it had taken place she would write. Such consolation as I could gather from it was derived from four words at the end,—she missed me dreadfully. Some tremor of pity for her entered into my consciousness, without mitigating greatly the wildness of my resentment, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of me I shall make an effort to perform—but my duty to my employers I regard as paramount. I have accumulated a little money, and with it I propose to engage the best counsel in your defence, which is certainly marked by mitigating circumstances. If, on the other hand, you ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... therefore to the question, can we not seize this opportunity, in the common interests of both beggars and be-begged, for dealing vigorously with the difficulty, and for mitigating it, if we cannot at one stroke entirely ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... asked, a bit sharply, looking from one physician to the other "Is this all you came to tell—that Mr. Carwell was a suicide? Isn't there any mitigating circumstance?" ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... I should say they were extraordinarily delicate conductors of sensation. And his eye—his eye too. He hasn't used it to dominate people: he didn't care to. He simply looks through 'em all like windows. Makes me feel like the fellows who think they're made of glass. The mitigating circumstance is that he seems to see such a glorious landscape through me." Wade grinned at the thought of serving ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... enmity of an antagonistic nature—the deadly, sickening, physical loathing that in rare instances affects certain human beings toward others of their species, and toward certain animals—then there are no calculable bounds to the ferocity of such a blind instinct, no possibility of mitigating, by considerations of reflection or feeling, an inherent, integral element of a morbid organization. And Shakespeare, in giving this aspect to the last exhibition of Shylock's vindictiveness, cancels the original appeal to possible sympathy ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... Spring to have a little more rest," thought Stephen, thus mitigating his own longing to escape from the monks and friars, of whom ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... incident management capability. In the end, prevention of catastrophic terrorism is dependent upon interdiction of people and materials. However, solid plans, preparations, and immediate response remain key to mitigating acts of terrorism. Unity of effort requires coordination not only at the apex of the federal government, but also at the operational/tactical level, where response and intervention actions may be taken by diverse authorities, acting ...
— National Strategy for Combating Terrorism - February 2003 • United States
... was,' she returned. 'She has been dying for your sake several weeks, and raving about you this morning, and pouring forth a deluge of abuse, because I represented your failings in a plain light, for the purpose of mitigating her adoration. But don't notice it further: I wished to punish her sauciness, that's all. I like her too well, my dear Heathcliff, to let you absolutely seize and devour ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... prison-pen at the Waterfall, some ten or twelve miles up the Pietersburg line. They numbered in all about three thousand eight hundred, and for a while fared badly at their captors' hands. But ultimately a small committee was formed in Pretoria and L5000 subscribed, to be spent in mitigating their lot and ministering in many ways to their comfort. In these ministrations of mercy the Wesleyan minister, whose grateful guest I for a while became, as afterwards of the genial host and hostess at the Silverton Mission ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... not do. One of the ways in which religious animosity is being kept alive (and I regret to say is being steadily increased) is by the teaching in the Roman Catholic schools of exaggerated accounts of the penal laws without referring to any of the mitigating circumstances. Even in the present year—1913—the Lenten pastoral of one of the bishops goes back to the same old subject. If other countries acted in a similar manner, how could the grievances of bygone centuries ever be forgotten? ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... professions are bound to deal with these issues of human life, it seemed to me that they must be the most powerful civilizing agencies of our time. They alone afford to a man of wealth the opportunity of mitigating the fate of the poor, with whom they daily bring ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... trouble as to time,—as to ten years, three years, or even one year; trouble in inducing her to promise that she would become his wife in opposition to her mother; but he had felt sure that she never would be the wife of any one else. How he had at last succeeded in mitigating the opposition of her mother, so as to make the three years, or even the one year, appear to himself an altogether impossible delay, the reader knows. How he at last contrived to have his own way altogether, so that, as Florence told him, she was merely a ball in his hand, the reader ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... lasting, were seriously curtailed by sectarian jealousy. Most of the protestant clergy frowned upon the national schools, as the Roman catholic priesthood had frowned upon the schools of the Kildare Place Society, and a noble opportunity of mitigating religious strife in Ireland was to a great extent wasted. Thus ended the ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... was the appalling unnatural darkness, through which the ship was rushing at a speed which I am certain she had never before attained. The only mitigating circumstance was that the wind-lashed sea emitted a certain ghostly radiance that, despite the deluge of spindrift and scud- water with which the air was saturated, enabled one dimly to discern objects as far forward as the foremast. ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... condescending in more than one instance to assume the office of executrix on their decease. [64] Her heart, indeed, was filled with benevolence to all mankind. In the most fiery heat of war, she was engaged in devising means for mitigating its horrors. She is said to have been the first to introduce the benevolent institution of camp hospitals; and we have seen, more than once, her lively solicitude to spare the effusion of blood even of her enemies. But it is needless to multiply examples of this beautiful, but familiar trait ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... coercive conduct of other individuals no less than by the arbitrary action of public officials, the Court in effect transformed the due process clause into a source of encouragement to State legislatures to intervene affirmatively by way of mitigating the effects of such coercion. By such modification of its views, liberty, in the constitutional sense of freedom resulting from restraint upon government, was replaced by the civil liberty which an individual enjoys by virtue of the restraints ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... being all of hard, black slate. I had never seen houses of such a colour, it was stronger, more glaring and aggressive than the reddest brick, and there was not a green thing to partially screen or soften it, nor did the darkness of the wet weather have any mitigating effect on it. The town was built on high ground, with an open grassy space before it sloping down to the cliff in which steps had been cut to give access to the beach, and beyond the cliff we caught sight of the grey, desolate, wind-vexed sea. But the rain was coming down more and more ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... let slip an opportunity of mitigating the rigour of Fouche's orders, which, indeed, were sometimes so absurd that I did not attempt to execute them. Of this an instance occurs to my recollection. A printer at Hamburg had been arrested on the charge of having printed a libel in the German language. The man was detained in ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... anxious to see Socialism come into its own.... Though I deny the right to compensation, I do not deny its probable advisability. So far as the question of method goes it is quite conceivable that we may partially compensate the property owners and make all sorts of mitigating arrangements to avoid cruelty to them in our attempt to end the wider cruelties ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... as physicians show the desperate ill, To endear their art, by mitigating pains They cannot wholly cure: When you despair Of all you wish, some part of it, because Unhoped for, may be grateful; ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... of a card-player who trumps his opponent's ace, he placed on the pouch a pipe. And, to make the matter, if possible, worse, the pipe was not a new pipe. It was caked within and coloured without, a pipe that had seen long service. The only mitigating circumstance that could possibly have been urged in favour of the accused, namely that of 'first offence', ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... to the leader-writer, and the leader-writer, presuming that he is not a fool or a headstrong egoist or a man determined to flout his Editor's wishes, obeys them. That is the theory. But there are several mitigating circumstances. In the first place, it is often difficult for an Editor to make his policy quite clear to his staff. Next, the leader-writer, no matter how strong his intention to obey his instructions and to enter into the spirit of his chief, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... the suffering was intense, the heat of the season and dusty roads adding much to the discomfort. Each day we halted many times to dress the wounds of the injured and to refresh them as much as possible, but our means for mitigating their distress were limited. The fortitude and cheerfulness of the poor fellows under such conditions were remarkable, for no word of complaint was heard. The Confederate prisoners and colored people being on foot, our marches were necessarily made short, ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... enough. But, you see, Doctor, that woman was so unconsciously dishonest that she talked to her husband about the fancy she had taken to me. That's what makes it dangerous, this very unconsciousness of their instinctive dishonesty. That is a mitigating circumstance, I admit, but it cannot ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg
... acknowledgment by others of its value. As a soldier he disliked disorder and believed in discipline. As a commander in the war he had not spared the rod, and had even complained of Congress for mitigating the severity of military punishments. It may be that the "Whiskey Insurrection," which he suppressed with prompt and drastic energy, led him for the first time to lean a little to the Hamiltonian side. At any rate he was induced, though reluctantly and only under strong ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... his life from assassins in the attack on the palace. Kiaking died on September 2, 1820, in the sixty-first year of his age, leaving to his successor a diminished authority, an enfeebled power, and a discontented people. Some mitigating circumstance may generally be pleaded against the adverse verdict of history in its estimation of a public character. The difficulties with which the individual had to contend may have been exceptional and unexpected, the ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... of "taxation" is, however, so odious to the people, that it may be curious to observe the arts practised by governments, and even by the people themselves, to veil it under some mitigating term. In the first breaking out of the American troubles, they probably would have yielded to the mother-country the right of taxation, modified by the term regulation (of their trade); this I infer from a letter of Dr. Robertson, who observes, that ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... sanctioned by the mores, cities of refuge and sanctuaries were established to which one who had incurred a blood feud might flee until his case could be investigated. If it then appeared that the wrong committed had been unintentional or if there were other mitigating circumstances, he might find in the sanctuary protection. Otherwise, if a crime had been committed in cold blood, "lying in wait," or "in enmity," as the ancient Jewish law books called it, he might be put to death by the avenger of ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... not justified in making the attack upon a superior officer, notwithstanding the alleged cause for provocation, and that he was imprudent in his action, yet because of his good character, as testified to by his superior officers, because of the mitigating circumstances which had been brought to light by the testimony of the witnesses during the course of the trial and because the act had been committed without malice or criminal intent, he was found not guilty of any violation of the Articles of War, but imprudent in ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... the other, "but are there any mitigating circumstances in the case, so that you could throw yourself on the mercy o' the ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... sorrows to which her tender bosom would be exposed during my absence, without being pierced with the deepest affliction! As my imagination was daily and nightly upon the rack to invent some method of mitigating this cruel stroke, or at least of acquitting my love and honour in the opinion of this gentle creature, I at length stumbled upon an expedient, with which the reader will be made acquainted in due time; and, in consequence of my determination, ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... difficult. At the same time that he had felt no necessity to apologize for his marriage he had known that Taou Yuen must surprise, yes—shock, his family. She was Chinese, to them a heathen: they would be unable to comprehend any mitigating dignity of rank. Where they'd actually suffer, he realized, would be in the attitude of Salem, the stupid gabble, the censure and cold pity caused ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the whole system of Slavery into odium, the leaders of the Abolition party were themselves changing their ground. They had begun with the hope of mitigating the hardships of the slave's lot,—to place him upon the line of progression, and so ultimately to fit him for freedom. But they had found themselves occupying a false position. Slowly they came to the conclusion that for the slave little could be accomplished ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... years, Stuyvesant. I knew your parents; I exonerate them absolutely. Sheer laziness and wilful depravity is what has brought you here to me on this errand. You deliberately acquired a taste for intoxicants; you haven't one excuse, one mitigating plea to offer for ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... Presbyterian ministry to all candidates, how great soever their other qualifications, who lacked a classical education. Separating on this issue, they took the opportunity to amend the generally accepted doctrinal statements of the Presbyterian churches by mitigating those utterances which seemed to them, as they have seemed to many others, to err ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... architect's fee had been saved but when, a little later, the owner wanted to sell, it took several years to find a buyer and then only at a price of half the money invested. The new owner consulted an architect with a gift for rearranging and so succeeded in mitigating the worst features and in taking advantage of the cheerful aspects inherent with the site. Like a good doctor or lawyer, an able architect can usually get you out of trouble; but the ancient slogan, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... have no worse conclusion; and as for Molly, being recovered from her confusion, she began at first to upbraid Square with having been the occasion of her loss of Jones; but that gentleman soon found the means of mitigating her anger, partly by caresses, and partly by a small nostrum from his purse, of wonderful and approved efficacy in purging off the ill humours of the mind, and in restoring it ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... be true it is evident that those who offered hecatombs with the idea that they were thereby mitigating anger, or securing special dispensation, were playing the fool. They were appealing to a fictitious motivity, one not grounded in "the nature of things." To one for whom the walls of the world had parted asunder, such a procedure was no longer possible; though he might choose to "call the ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... resources and the answer of a good conscience towards God; and to think I ought to sacrifice my pride, and renew my efforts once again to make his home agreeable and lead him back to the path of virtue; not by false professions of love, and not by pretended remorse, but by mitigating my habitual coldness of manner, and commuting my frigid civility into kindness wherever an opportunity occurred; and not only was I beginning to think so, but I had already begun to act upon the thought—and what was the result? No answering spark ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... land question, as Unionists believe, will further strike at the true root of Irish discontent, and in removing the true grievance of the Irish tenants will diminish the strength of the party which depends for its power on the revolutionary elements in Irish society. But all chance of mitigating the inconvenience inflicted upon England by the presence of the Irish members vanishes for ever when they are changed into an Irish delegation, and are compelled by their position to be the mere mouthpiece of ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... war. That being so, we elected to dab and peck at and half-strangle the enemy, to let him go and choke him again. It is no lie that we continue on our inexplicable path animated, we will try to believe till other proof is given, by a cloudy idea of alleviating or mitigating something for somebody—not ourselves. [Here, of course, is where our racial snobbery comes in, which makes the German gibber. I cannot understand why he has not accused us to our Allies of having secret commercial understandings with him.] For that reason, we shall finish the German eagle ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... and nervously, and drank claret cup. He said they were getting on famously, his uncle's chief strength being expended in drawing out the voice of the buccaneer captain, and mitigating the boatswain. Where were the little boys? Happily disposed of. Little Felix had gone through his part, and then Fergus had carried him and Adrian off together to Clipstone to see his animals, antediluvian ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... We know that down to the very recent date of the introduction of anesthetics the idea prevailed that travail pains are the result of, and punishment for, the transgression of Mother Eve. It was claimed that it was wrong to attempt to remove "the curse" from woman, by mitigating her suffering in that hour ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... Indian, with his spare diet, would be incapable of going through the labor which he now performs. The coca plant must be considered as a great blessing to Peru. It is an essential means of preserving the nationality of the Indians, and in some measure mitigating the melancholy fate of that once great race which disease and excessive labor now threaten ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... by him to the gallows, said, "There goes myself, but for the grace of God." Of course, it is needful that human laws should hold all men as equally responsible. The punishment of such an offence is such an infliction, no matter who committed the offence. At least the mitigating circumstances which human laws can take into account must be all of a very plain and intelligible character. It would not do to recognize anything like a graduated scale of responsibility. A very bad training in youth would be in a certain limited sense regarded as lessening the guilt of any ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... was of long root. From an early age he had been afflicted with sisters; one older and one younger, and he could find no mitigating circumstances between the sister who could hit you and could not be hit back, who never romped without pretending to howl, and the sister who put you at your ease when you had tripped over the parlor rug, by ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... accused of mitigating the persecution of the Covenanters, will appear from the following simple, but very affecting narrative, extracted from one of the little publications which appeared soon after the Revolution, while the facts were fresh in the memory of the sufferers. The imitation ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... their own sex, they would take pleasure in a visit from one of the other, however slovenly and unpolished. In the world at large, should the crimes of the women be detected, the priests have no interest in mitigating their punishment; but here the whole community of them are interested in the secret of every intrigue, and should Lucinda unluckily proclaim it, she can seldom do it without the walls of the convent, and if she does, the priests ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... that she would speak and bring some mitigating shadow across his own cruel speech, which seemed to stand staring at them both in mockery of any attempt at revived fellowship. But she said nothing, and at last with a desperate effort over himself, he asked, "Shall I come in and see Lydgate ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... character was beyond reproach, and she exercised a wholesome influence on Henry during his closing years. Her task can have been no light one, but her tact overcame all difficulties. She nursed the King with great devotion, and succeeded to some extent in mitigating the violence of his (p. 411) temper. She intervened to save victims from the penalties of the Act of Six Articles; reconciled Elizabeth with her father; and was regarded with affection by both Henry's daughters. Suspicions ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... whom Fuller approvingly records: "Atropos might be persuaded to pity as soon as he to pardon where he found just fault. The prayers of cockering mothers prevailed with him as much as the requests of indulgent fathers, rather increasing than mitigating his severity on their offending children." Milton's father, though by no means "cockering," would not have tolerated such discipline, and the passionate ardour with which Milton threw himself into the studious life of the school ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... Squire's project for mitigating public discontent; and, indeed, he had once attempted to put his doctrine in practice, and a few years before had kept open house during the holidays in the old style. The country people, however, did not understand how to play their parts in the ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... storm of rain and lightning rendered their situation almost as bad as that from which they had escaped, and threatened them with death in another shape. They passed a dreadful night without finding a tree or the hollow of a rock to shelter them, and had no expedient for mitigating their exposure to the storm but to turn their horses' ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... proposed, but we do not expect that the principle can be corrected. It has been introduced, no doubt, with a laudable desire to obviate the uncertainty at present attending irregular marriages. But in mitigating that evil, it appears to us to involve others of a much more serious and sweeping kind, which it must be the duty of all religious and reflecting men who see the danger to use every exertion ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... that, on the contrary, it should be scientifically approached in the taking of outworks; and nevertheless here also is the fact to be reckoned with that children did learn by the old system, and that they learned with what looks in these days like marvellous celerity is a mitigating circumstance which has even yet a certain charm for some minds. There was a precision, too, about acquirements under the ancient method which is not always found under the new. At present the very mother of a child of eight years may not be quite clear as to her daughter's attainments; she can ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... watching the boat with pertinacious curiosity. In this strait he tried the plan of dipping his shirt into the sea, and putting it on again dripping wet; and, to his great delight, he found that this proceeding had a very sensible effect in mitigating thirst. Upon this, Tom tried the same plan, with equally beneficial results, and then they well soused poor Walford with sea-water, hoping that it would, to some extent, ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... Bickerstaff's old field, in Rutherford county, where the principal officers held a court-martial over the "most audacious and murderous Tories." Thirty-two were condemned to be hung; after nine were thus disposed of, three at a time, the remainder, through mitigating circumstances and the entreaties of their Whig acquaintances, were respited. Several of the Tories, thus leniently dealt with, afterward joined the Whig ranks, and made good soldiers to ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... of aesthetic congruity is not primarily of an economic character, but it has a considerable indirect effect in shaping the habit of mind of the individual for economic purposes in the later stages of industrial development; its most perceptible effect in this regard goes in the direction of mitigating the somewhat pronounced self-regarding bias that has been transmitted by tradition from the earlier, more competent phases of the regime of status. The economic bearing of this impulse is therefore seen to transverse that of the devout attitude; the former goes to qualify, if not eliminate, ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... Hankin combined the graces of a singularly kind and tender heart. He held, of course, that there was nothing like leather, especially for mitigating the distress of the orphan and causing the widow's heart to sing for joy. Every year he received confidentially from the school-mistress a list of the worst-shod children in the school, from whom he selected a dozen ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... fraudulent bankruptcy, by offences of a deeper dye—the concealment of property, the falsifying of books, the manufacture of fictitious debts and the giving of illegal preferences. Both kinds of bankruptcy are punishable, fraudulent bankruptcy by penal servitude, or in case of mitigating circumstances, by imprisonment for not less than three months. Accessories in fraudulent bankruptcies are liable to penal servitude—for instance, a creditor who conspires with the debtor to secure an advantage ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... respectful, but not servile, from Odenathus, one of the noblest and most opulent senators of Palmyra. "Who is this Odenathus," (said the haughty victor, and he commanded that the present should be cast into the Euphrates,) "that he thus insolently presumes to write to his lord? If he entertains a hope of mitigating his punishment, let him fall prostrate before the foot of our throne, with his hands bound behind his back. Should he hesitate, swift destruction shall be poured on his head, on his whole race, and on his country." [146] The desperate extremity to which the Palmyrenian was reduced, called into ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... The American, Abe Slaney, was condemned to death at the winter assizes at Norwich; but his penalty was changed to penal servitude in consideration of mitigating circumstances, and the certainty that Hilton Cubitt had fired the first shot. Of Mrs. Hilton Cubitt I only know that I have heard she recovered entirely, and that she still remains a widow, devoting her ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the first to call attention to Alter, and through him to Hervas, and in all probability the orientalists at the London Congress had seen the Doctrina cited by one of these or Adelung. But he rejects that evidence in no uncertain terms. Mitigating somewhat his assurance, he speaks following the above-quoted passage of printing in China, and differentiates between xylographic and typographic printing, and since he was obviously thinking in terms of printing on a press with movable type his ...
— Doctrina Christiana • Anonymous
... Even Gibbon praises his exalted character. What would the Church of the Middle Ages have been without such aims and aspirations? Oh, what a benevolent mission the Papacy performed in its best ages, mitigating the sorrows of the poor, raising the humble from degradation, opposing slavery and war, educating the ignorant, scattering the Word of God, heading off the dreadful tyranny of feudalism, elevating the learned to offices of trust, shielding the pious from the rapacity of barons, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... worked for God in China when fighting to quell a civil war; he served the same Master at Gravesend when he visited the sick and the dying, and rescued little street arabs from lives of sin; and the same motives prompted him when, later on, he devoted all his energies to mitigating and attempting to abolish the horrors of the slave-trade. He is dead, but his noble ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... brought to the Northern policy. This had been supplemented, to some extent, by the colonization society for colonizing negroes on the west coast of Africa; which had two aspects: at the South it was the means of ridding the country of the free negro population; at the North it was a means of mitigating, perhaps of gradually abolishing, slavery. Garrison, through his newspaper, the Liberator, called for "immediate abolition" of slavery, for the conversion of anti-slavery sentiment into anti-slavery purpose. This was followed by the organization of his adherents ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... Gregory IX were not long in perceiving certain defects in the system of the Inquisition. They tried their best to remedy them, although their efforts were not always directed with the view of mitigating its rigor. We will indicate briefly their various decrees pertaining to the tribunals, the penalties and the procedure ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... mechanical arrangement was made, by which the cathodes were kept in motion. The addition of a little borax to the bath is a great advantage in mitigating the appearance of gas. Its behavior is electrical rather than chemical. If the anode surface is too great, a few plates should be transferred ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... Home Secretaries upon this matter till I am tired; succeeding Home Secretaries have sent memorandums and recommendations to courts of summary jurisdiction till, I expect, they are tired, for generally they have had no effect in mitigating the evil. ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... interest seemed that of amusement only. Mary's eyes were wide-fixed on the face of Charley, evidently tortured to find that to the other enormities of his unbelief was to be added the justification of suicide. His habit of arguing was doubtless well enough known to her to leave room for the mitigating possibility that he might be arguing only for argument's sake, but what he said could not but be shocking to her upon ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... of these School Societies was "The Manumission Society," organized in New York, in 1785, for the purpose of "mitigating the evils of slavery, to defend the rights of the blacks, and especially to give them the elements of an education." Alexander Hamilton and John Jay were among its organizers. A free school for colored pupils was opened, in 1787. This grew ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... had lain on the couch, which was drawn as close to the window as it could be placed. Uncle Timothy had remained at hand with fans and iced lemonade and every other expedient he could think of for mitigating the perfervid temperature of the flat. Just now, at five o'clock in the afternoon, with no breeze whatever entering at the window, the small living-room ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... for Coningsby, the mitigating hour that softens the heart made his spirit brave. Amid the ennobling sympathies of nature, the pursuits and purposes of worldly prudence and conventional advantage subsided into their essential nothingness. He willed to blend his life and fate with a being beautiful as that nature that subdued him, ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... reckless or bold in his bearing now; but, looking away, she did not see. Was he tempted, if only in an infinitesimal degree, to suggest a plea of mitigating circumstances—not for his own sake but for hers; that she might feel less keenly that sense of hurt, of outraged pride, for having smiled on him, admitted him to a certain frank, free intimacy? Before the words fell from his lips, however, she turned; her gaze arrested his purpose, made him ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... courses that I can see," answered Bob, after reflection, "outside the one you're following now. You can give yourself up to the authorities and plead guilty. There's a chance that mitigating circumstances will influence the judge to give you a light sentence; and there's always a possibility of a pardon. When all the details are made known there ought to be a good ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... lugged, or lashed, unmercifully and unsuccessfully; the former, with that fine tact which helps them to lead nobler animals than pigs, would soothe, sympathize, coax, and gently beguile the poor beasts, or devise ways of mitigating their bewilderment and woe, which did honor to the sex, and triumphantly illustrated the power of ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... aiding slaves to escape, or rejoicing when we hear of runaways, I say we should feel grateful, on our own account, and for the slaves, that the South is willing to harbor them, and we ought to consider that the very best thing to be done for them is to encourage the South in treating them well, mitigating their trials and sorrows, and, in short, complying with the Apostle's doctrine and exhortations as to ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... force, after having first obtained from it the work required. From the day when these two instruments were contrived is to be dated the era of true progress. They have put into the hands of man a power that is almost infinite. As for their applications, they are numberless. Mitigating the rigors of winter, by giving back to the atmosphere the surplus heat stored up during the summer, they have revolutionized agriculture. By supplying motive power for aerial navigation, they have given to commerce a mighty ...
— In the Year 2889 • Jules Verne and Michel Verne
... added Mrs. Fabian. "I do not see a trick in giving a person exactly what they ask for a thing—whether they realize the true value of it, or not. That is their affair. In Law, the Judge says there is no excuse or cause, for mitigating a sentence because the prisoner claims he was ignorant of consequences of a deed. So it is in other lines: Ignorance can never claim excuse from consequences—whether it be a sale of a candle-stick or a piece of old land that turns out to ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... memory. He addressed himself to Jean, having that simple-minded young man as his neighbor. "Yes, sir, the Emperor has deceived me, and I don't hesitate to say so. His henchmen may put in the plea of mitigating circumstances, but it won't go down, sir; he is evidently the first, the only ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... in the discharge of every duty, and, like the young man referred to in Scripture, could have said, with reference to the moral law as far as outward observances are concerned, "All these have I kept from my youth up." But now, mitigating, soothing, extracting from grief, however mighty, some portion of its bitterness, where was the resignation of the Christian? Not, certainly, in that heart so full of bitterness, that was ready to contend with heaven for having reclaimed its own; its power, its ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... more true to say that such WAS the practice among the Indians, than to say, at the present time, that such IS; for it is certain that civilization in its approaches, while it has in many particulars even degraded the red man, has had a silent effect in changing and mitigating many of his fiercer customs—this, perhaps, among the rest. It is probable that the more distant tribes still resort to all these ancient usages; but it is both hoped and believed that those nearer ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... the points at which Sir Charles came into touch with the development of Mr. Errington's 'Mission' to the Vatican. On December 1st, 1880, Mr. Errington wrote—in pursuance of a conversation of the previous day—to solicit Sir Charles's offices with the French Government towards mitigating the severity with which expropriation of the unauthorized congregations might be carried out under M. Ferry's Article 7. The letter dealt also with the matter on which his 'Mission' was ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... are not controverted or affected by any exculpatory or mitigating testimony, show the murder of a number of Chinese subjects in September last at Rock Springs, the wounding of many others, and the spoliation of the property of all when the unhappy survivors had been driven from their habitations. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... that the conditions would meet with your acceptance, Rajah; and I may say that your kindly treatment of myself and my escort has gone some way in mitigating the terms that would otherwise have been demanded. But the general said that you must understand that he can make no further diminution of his demands; and that tomorrow he expects ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... of most importance to be drawn from this narrative, are, first, the extraordinary benefit derived from gestation in a carriage, and still more the mixture of gestation and exercise on horseback, in arresting or mitigating the hectic paroxysm; and secondly, that in the florid consumption, as Dr. Beddoes terms it, an elevated and inland air is in certain circumstances peculiarly salutary; while an atmosphere loaded with the spray of the ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... needed no prescience, no remarkable statesmanship or gift of forecasting the future, to see that, when such mighty forces were unloosed, and when it had been shown that all treaties and other methods hitherto relied upon for national protection and for mitigating the horror and circumscribing the area of war were literally 'scraps of paper,' it had become a vital necessity that we should instantly and on a great and adequate scale prepare for our own defense. Our men, women, and children—not in isolated cases, but ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... I again brought this painful subject at great length before the Provincial Government, and stated that, having failed to receive relief, I could only see one way left of mitigating the evil, and that is by an appeal to my people on the present critical situation of the Church, and in behalf of my destitute clergymen. It is indeed a step which I take with extreme reluctance, and which, were it possible, I would most ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... rather than submit to it would they undergo any extremity if it was sought to force such a yoke upon them. This remonstrance was supported by some of the king's counsellors, who strongly urged the policy of mitigating the rigor of religious edicts. But Philip remained inexorable. Better not reign at all, was his answer, than ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... consuming it. Many such modes offered themselves, differing according to the nature of the several kinds of exploiting society. If the constitution of the commonwealth was a patriarchal one, the labour which had become more productive would be utilised in improving the condition of the serfs, in mitigating the severity of their labour. In a commonwealth of a more military character the increasing productiveness of labour would serve to enlarge the non-labouring, weapon-bearing class. If—as was always the case when civilisation advanced—the bond between lord and serf became laxer, the lord merely ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... bodies. The normal, healthy child thinks very little of himself apart from the other boys and girls, the games, the studies, the animals, the nature wonders, the hardships that come to him from the outside. So true is this that one of the best means of mitigating or curing many ailments is to divert the child's attention from himself to things outside of himself that he can look at, hear, enjoy. The power to concentrate attention upon oneself is a sign either of a diseased body, a diseased mind, or a highly trained mind. To study others and to recognize ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... actually been engaged in stealing turkeys. He was guilty of an act of which, a few weeks before, he would have deemed himself absolutely incapable. All the mitigating circumstances of the case, which had lately stood out so clear and strong as almost to hide the offence from his moral vision, now faded, and shrunk away, and the wrong itself stood forth, ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... pleasant boat, almost 6,000 tons and fitted up with every contrivance for mitigating heat. But there are far too many persons on board: nearly 1,200: and as they simply can't breathe between decks, the decks are as crowded as a pilgrim ship's. There are over forty units represented: including drafts from about ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... suppose it wise or humane. Their first efforts merely contemplated such ameliorations of the condition of the slaves as common decency and humanity would prompt. They brought the Imperial Government to propose to the slaveholding colonies the enactment of laws abolishing the flogging of females, mitigating punishments, allowing the slaves to testify in court in cases to which whites were parties, providing for their religious instruction, appointing guardians of their scanty rights, giving them one week day for themselves, and restricting arbitrary sales of slaves. Not one of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... frequently than in China, among the women as well as the men: such acts being marked with no disgrace, are not held in any abhorrence. The government, indeed, should seem to hold out encouragement to suicide, by a very common practice of mitigating the sentence of death, in allowing the criminal to be his own executioner. The late viceroy of Canton, about two years ago, put an end to his life by swallowing his stone snuff-bottle, which stuck in the oesophagus; and ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... Jones say if he deliberately deposited a vast amount of money in a tottering institution like the Bank of Manhattan Island? It would be the maddest folly on his part if the bank went down. There could be no mitigating circumstances in the eyes of either Jones or the world, if he swamped all of ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... under water during the winter time, largely to prevent the plants from winter injury by the heaving and freezing and thawing of the bogs. Flooding is also employed at intervals for the purpose of drowning out insects, mitigating drought, and protecting against frost and fires. The ordinary practice is to choose a bog which has a creek running through it, or through which some creek or ditch may be diverted. At the lower side of ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... has been any sympathy, since he has not usually been the victim of parental despotism in the matter of selecting a spouse, or, when he has been, he has had certain privileges of excursion. The excursion is still a popular form of mitigating the severities of an unsuccessful marriage. Some commit murder, some commit suicide, some commit other things. Marriage is the one field in which instinct is least trustworthy and it is the one field in which it is accounted immoral to repent errors of ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... and 'douceur', use some expressions of diffidence of your own opinion, and deference to other people's; such as, "If I might be permitted to say—I should think—Is it not rather so? At least I have the greatest reason to be diffident of myself." Such mitigating, engaging words do by no means weaken your argument; but, on the contrary, make it more powerful by making it more pleasing. If it is a quick and hasty manner of speaking that people mistake 'pour decide et brusque', prevent their mistakes for the future ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... are mitigating circumstances attending this offence, which, in my opinion, should be duly weighed before making ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... that is antidotal to such poison. At times it has happened that pressure has been put upon the person suspected of having committed the evil to make him bring the antidote, by which it has been remedied. There are also other general antidotes, both for preservation against poison and for mitigating the effects of poison that has been administered. But the most certain and efficacious antidotes are certain small flies or insects, of a violet color, found on certain bushes in the islands of Pintados. These are shut up in a clean bamboo joint, and covered over. There ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... influence, increases the utility of his conduct, by making the world acquainted with the sanctity of his character. Witness, ye various regions of the earth! with what surprize, delight, and veneration, ye beheld an unarmed, and unassuming traveller instructing you in the sublime science of mitigating human misery, and giving you a matchless example of tenderness and magnanimity! O, England! thou generous country! ever enamoured of glory, contemplate in this, the most perfect of thy illustrious sons; contemplate those virtues, and that honour, in which thy parental spirit may most ...
— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley
... saw, with admiration, the magnitude of the scale upon which government extended relief. By an act of parliament a loan of eight millions sterling was contracted by government for the purpose of mitigating the wants of Ireland. On the first of March it was adjudicated; Messrs. Barings and Rothschilds having coalesced, they were declared the contractors. The loan was in 8 per cent. Consols; the bidding was 89 ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... king his father. Like Francis I., he was rash and reckless in his resolves and enterprises, but without having the promptness, the fertility, and the suppleness of mind which Francis I. displayed in getting out of the awkward positions in which he had placed himself, and in stalling off or mitigating the consequences of them. Henry was as cold and ungenial as Francis had been gracious and able to please: and whilst Francis I., even if he were a bad master to himself, was at any rate his own master, Henry II. submitted ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... minute for Bud's embarrassment to wear off. Then two motives impelled him to act. He didn't propose to let the North-enders see his embarrassment, and he saw that he might earn the dollar for Miss Morgan's missionary box, thus mitigating the disgrace he had brought upon her in church. This inspiration literally flashed over Bud, and before he knew it, he was standing in the ring, with his head cocked upon one side to indicate his utter indifference to everything in the world. Of course it was a stupendous ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... no proof that Dorcas was a beauty, that she looked often in the little mirror. Ugliness is quite as anxious as beauty on that point, and is even oftener found gazing with sad solicitude at itself, if haply there may be found some mollifying or mitigating circumstance, either in outline or expression. But Dorcas's face pleased herself ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... he might be embarrassed by hard frost, but had not expected it to continue. On the central tablelands of British Columbia winter is severe, but near the coast and in valleys open to the West the mitigating warmth of the Pacific is often felt. He had imagined that when his work upon the track was hindered the snow would help him to bring down lumber ready for use when a thaw set in. Now, however, wages were mounting up and little work was being done. He began ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss |
