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Culpable   /kˈəlpəbəl/   Listen
Culpable

adjective
1.
Deserving blame or censure as being wrong or evil or injurious.  Synonyms: blamable, blameable, blameful, blameworthy, censurable.  "Censurable misconduct" , "Culpable negligence"



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"Culpable" Quotes from Famous Books



... it will be demanded, how a soul, before it was a month old, could receive sin to the making of itself unclean? I answer, There are two ways of receiving, one active, the other passive; this last is the way by which the soul at first receiveth sin, and by so receiving, becometh culpable, because polluted and defiled by it. And this passive way of receiving is often mentioned in Scripture. Thus the pans received the ashes, (Exo 27:3); thus the molten sea received three thousand baths, (2 Chron 4:5); thus the ground receiveth ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... robberies, there must bee payed vnto one Iohn Gruk of Dantzik eight hundred nobles of English money, vpon the feast of Easter next following in the Citie of London by them of Scardeburgh being guilty and culpable in this behalfe; who are by definitiue sentence condemned vnto the said Iohn in the summe of 800. nobles by reason of the iniuries and robberies aforesaid, except the lawfull expenses in this behalfe layed out: ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt

... and a sack posset [A drink composed of milk, wine, and spices.] in bed, and flinging the stocking. My Lady Castlemaine looked on the while, evincing neither anger nor jealousy, but entering into the diversion with great spirit." Nor was this the only indiscretion of which she was culpable, for, in the full confidence of her charms, she frequently kept Miss Stuart to stay with her. "The king," says Hamilton, "who seldom neglected to visit the countess before she rose, seldom failed likewise to find Miss Stuart ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... found till the world expire at the general conflagration. My imposing, therefore, on the publick in general, instead of a few obstinate persons, for whose sake alone the stratagem was designed, is the only thing culpable in my conduct, for which again I most humbly ask pardon: and that this, and this only, was, as no other could be, my design, no one, I think, can doubt, from the account I have just now given; and whether that was so criminal, as it has been represented, I shall leave ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... encouraged by Otoo. However, he was discovered before he had gotten clear of the ship, and a boat being presently hoisted out, he was taken up, and brought back to the vessel. When our commander reflected on this man's situation, he did not think him very culpable, or his desire of staying in the island so extraordinary, as might at first view be imagined. He was a native of Ireland, and had sailed in the Dutch service. Captain Cook, on his return from his former voyage, had picked ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis

... of this sex question which is too big for my comedy, and too momentous to be passed over without culpable frivolity. It is impossible to demonstrate that the initiative in sex transactions remains with Woman, and has been confirmed to her, so far, more and more by the suppression of rapine and discouragement of ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... mother, as he would have loved his own child. At least for three years I was a witness to all their most private actions, and I declare I never saw any thing that could furnish the least ground for suspicion, nor the slightest trace of a culpable intimacy. This calumny must be classed among those which malice delights to take in the character of men who become celebrated, calumnies which are adopted lightly and without reflection. Napoleon is no more. Let his memory be accompanied ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott

... him to desert. The sultan now arrived, and excused his long absence, saying that he had lost the time in fruitless endeavours to induce Sumunter to come with him. He said he had been remonstrating with Sumunter, and thought him very culpable in not obeying me. Hoping the sultan was in earnest in what he said, I now told him of all I had seen and heard about Sumunter, and begged he would assist me in sending him back to Aden, for no reliance ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke

... with the Queen of Heaven more potent than Saint Bernard. You can still read Bernard's hymns to the Virgin, and even his sermons, if you like. To him she was the great mediator. In the eyes of a culpable humanity, Christ was too sublime, too terrible, too just, but not even the weakest human frailty could fear to approach his Mother. Her attribute was humility; her love and pity were infinite. "Let him deny your mercy who can say that he has ever ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... be more unexpected than this severe disaster. The public had confidently anticipated a successful campaign, and could not believe, that the general who had been unfortunate, had not been culpable. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall

... reckless mercy thus the Sage declared: More culpable the sparer than the spared; For he that breaks one law, breaks one alone: But who thwarts Justice ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... in this connection. Thrice-sacred charity is one story; the encouragement of the unlimited borrower, the fostering of so colossal a selfishness quite another. A point had been reached where to accede to Smyth's demands was culpable, a consenting, indeed, to wrongdoing. Here then was occasion for careful consideration. Iglesias gravely laid the offensive missive aside, and proceeded to eat his breakfast before opening the rest of his letters. In the intervals of the meal he glanced ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... I rode through many Outwayes and desart places, and as culpable of the death of Socrates, I forsooke my countrey, my wife, and my children, and came to Etolia where ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius

... large number are growing up in ignorance, for want of schools within convenient distances. Of those at school, many derive little or no instruction, owing to the incapacity of the teachers, as well as to their culpable negligence and inattention. Thus the number likely to remain uneducated, and to grow up without just perceptions of their duties, religious, social, and political, is really of appalling magnitude, and such as to appeal with affecting earnestness ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... THE CULPABLE.—Live with the culpable, and you will be very likely to die with the criminal. Bad company is like a nail driven into a post, which after the first or second blow, may be drawn out with little difficulty; but being once driven in up to the head, the pinchers cannot ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... charge of culpable negligence for having permitted these vessels in the first place to leave Jamaica. All the leaders in the expedition were notorious privateers, men who had repeatedly been concerned in piratical outrages against the Dutch and Spaniards. Coxon and Harris had both come ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring

... success attended his efforts beyond all expectation, he most wilfully endangered the safety not only of himself, but of his gallant army, when he determined to march with reduced forces through the enemy's country from Harfleur to Calais. It was a rashness nothing less than culpable, but in his own interests rashness was good policy. Unless he could succeed in desperate enterprises against tremendous odds and so make himself a military hero and a favorite of the multitude, his throne was insecure. He succeeded; but it was only by staking everything ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... is real; it is a sad and great reality; I am forward to acknowledge it. Any system which would prove that evil does not exist, or, which comes to the same thing, that evil is necessary, that good and evil in short are of the same nature, is an impossible, I had almost said a culpable, system. The strongest minds have worn themselves out in such attempts with no result whatever. The great Leibnitz attempted an enterprise of this nature. His system consisted in extenuating evil as ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... produce results through the cultivation of a slave's mind, such may prove fatal to his immediate interests. And to maintain a system which is based on force, the southern minister of the gospel is doubly culpable in the sight of heaven; for while he stimulates ignorance by degrading the man, he mystifies the Word of God, that he may remain for ever and ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... grave imprudence of mine, which I discovered on leaving the room to seek more wine. On the flame of my candle blowing aside, I perceived that I had left my door unfastened, so that it now stood ajar. And, truly, this was as culpable a piece of oversight as I could well have committed; for here, had an enemy, or even an idle busybody, been passing, he might very well have entered the little passage and overheard that which had been our ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett

... "He was not wholly culpable and so I forgave his insulting remarks against us, but I forgot myself entirely when General Washington's name ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett

... friend to take the long accustomed seat in his royal coach, that seat which Prince George himself had never been permitted to invade; and the invitation was over and over declined in a way which would have been thought uncivil even between equals. A sovereign could not, without a culpable sacrifice of his personal dignity, persist longer in such a contest. Portland was permitted to withdraw from the palace. To Heinsius, as to a common friend, William announced this separation in a letter ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... ran his eye over the papers before him. "I remember. It was a fatal sleep. You see, my child, it was a time of special danger. Thousands of lives might have been lost by his culpable negligence." ...
— Twilight Stories • Various

... of my office. On account of this I thought it necessary to write to the monarch personally, in order to explain to him that my action was to be regarded more in the light of a thoughtless indiscretion than as a culpable offence. I sent this letter to Herr von Luttichau, begging him to deliver it to the King, and to arrange at the same time a short leave for me, so that the provoking disturbance should have a chance of dying down during my absence from Dresden. The striking kindness ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... nor are you a blase, nor a disciple of Voltaire; you are a marmot,[A] and a culpable marmot; a marmot with a conscience, not a naive marmot. Naive marmots lie on the stove[B] and do nothing, because they can do nothing. They do not even think anything. But you are a thinking man, and yet you lie idly there. You could do something, and you do nothing. ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... speakers, and not seldom even by sacred writers) do lie very near upon the confines of jocularity, and are not easily differenced from those sallies of wit wherein the lepid way doth consist: so that were this wholly culpable, it would be matter of scruple whether one hath committed a fault or no when he meant only to play the orator or the poet; and hard surely it would be to find a judge who could precisely set out the difference between a ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow

... could be given to science, if religion asserted more clearly its right to the spiritual world. Science has paved the way for the reception of one of the most revolutionary doctrines of Christianity; and if Christianity refuses to take advantage of the opening it will manifest a culpable want of confidence in itself. There never was a time when its fundamental doctrines could more boldly be proclaimed, or when they could better secure the respect and ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... purpose is illegal or iniquitous. An agreement entered into by students to resist or disobey the Faculty of the College, or to do any unlawful act, is a combination. When the number concerned is so great as to render it inexpedient to punish all, those most culpable are usually selected, or as many as are deemed necessary to satisfy the demands of justice.—Laws Yale Coll., 1837, p. 27. Laws Univ. ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... suggestion of a promise, of any kind. Be that as it may, Jones proceeded, though declining to mention any other name than his own. He declared positively that the idea of hazing the freshman had not originated with him, but that he had taken a culpable part in it, for which he was heartily sorry. Asked whether he considered himself or his colleague principally responsible for the injury to the freshman's health, he said that he preferred not to answer. To West this seemed a damaging admission, though perhaps not ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... woodcutter, turned on his deliverer and stung him? No wonder the good fellow knocked him on the head! I knew another sneak once who seemed to make a regular profession of this amiable propensity. He seemed to consider his path in life was to detect and inform on whatever, to his small mind, seemed a culpable offence. In the middle of school, all of a sudden his raspy voice would lift itself up in ejaculations like these, ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... may escape the justice of men, my son, but they never escape the justice of God. I do not know, however, if this woman is as culpable as they say, but still I say, do not speak of her, my son, I implore you," said Father Griffen, whom this interview ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue

... and that their plans were conceived in ignorance and executed in imbecility. At the same time he inveighed against the disgraceful servility of parliament, and concluded by remarking that none would object to inquiry but those who were culpable themselves. Unable to resist his reasoning, ministers attempted to elude it, but their arguments rather weakened than strengthened their cause. Lord North, indeed, candidly admitted that some of his plans had miscarried; arguing, in extenuation of their failure, that it was impossible to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... loyalty to the party demands our support there and there. We must give it, whatever the consequences. The thing is not easy to understand; but it was so, and the strongest and best men of the day were culpable in this. ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... sixty of the other rebels were captured and taken to Capetown. Of these, thirty-nine of the most culpable were tried on the charge of high treason. Six were condemned to death; the others, after being compelled to witness the execution of their leaders, were to undergo various degrees of punishment, according to their proved guilt. One of the six had the capital ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne

... agree with me that the "injured husband" was equally culpable on account of his intrigue with the young and handsome widow, Mrs. Raymond.—How prone are many people to lose sight of their own imperfections while they censure and severely punish the failings of those who are not a whit more guilty than themselves! The swinish ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson

... compared the public crimes of this minister—startling crimes, European crimes, if so we may say—with the private and unknown crimes with which Milady had charged him, Felton found that the more culpable of the two men which formed the character of Buckingham was the one of whom the public knew not the life. This was because his love, so strange, so new, and so ardent, made him view the infamous and imaginary accusations of Milady de Winter as, through a magnifying glass, ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... their own countries amongst other nations, | better again and more worthy must that | aspiring be which seeketh the | amplification of the power and kingdom of | mankind over the world; the rather because | the other two prosecutions are ever | culpable of much perturbation and | injustice; but this is a work, truly | divine which cometh IN AURA LENI {51} | 51. 1 Kings 19,12 (Vulgata) without noise or observation{52}. | 52. St Luke 17,20: | Authorized Version: And ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon

... with the culpable, and you will be very likely to die with the criminal. Bad company is like a nail driven into a post, which after the first or second blow, may be drawn out with little difficulty; but being once driven in up to the head, the pinchers cannot take hold to draw it out, which can only be done by the ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... House. If he accepted a pitiful drink in return for his official influence, he was guilty of a gross offense in cheapening the price of patronage. A cadetship was worth $500 if it was worth a cent. If, on the other hand, he gave his cadetship away, his conduct was even more culpable; for other congressmen might be weak enough to follow his baleful example, and the market would be broken down. He advocated the formation of a Congressional Labor Union to determine the value of these appointments, and to expel all members who took less than the standard rate. This was what ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 1, Saturday, April 2, 1870 • Various

... not many days ago," I replied, "since I heard you lament the awful and culpable defects in our popular Catholic literature. Hadn't you to fall back upon that barbarous book to enlighten Ormsby on the existence of ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan

... of your harness, as that is the statute as well as the common law. By the statute law you would be liable to pay a fine of fifty dollars for each offence. And by the statute and common law, in case of a collision with another team, you would probably be held guilty of culpable negligence and made to pay heavy damages. Of course you would be allowed to show that the absence of bells on your team did not cause the accident or justify the negligence of the driver of the other team, but it would be a circumstance ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter

... learned nothing; he never will learn anything," was his verdict regarding Beethoven. This was surely small encouragement. Beethoven's original and independent way of treating musical forms brought on this censure. As he advanced in musical knowledge he took the liberty to think for himself; a very culpable proceeding with teachers of the stamp of Albrechtsberger. The young man's intuitive faculties, the surest source of all knowledge according to Schopenhauer, were developed to an abnormal degree. By the aid of this inner light he was able to see truer and farther ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer

... also. In fine, he owned that the judgment of God was exceeding just for the many offences he committed, but that the sentence of the Law was too severe, because, as he understood it, he had done nothing culpable within the intent of the Statute on which he died. After this, he inveighed for some time against bailiffs, and then crying with vehemency to God to receive his spirit, he gave up the ghost on the ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward

... when he thought he could do without her, Wilmot sank deeper and deeper into methods of self-advancement which, if not actually base and culpable, at least smirched the finer qualities of his ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris

... fitful sympathy with Jefferson was another honored son of Virginia, the Orator of Liberty, Patrick Henry, who, while confessing that he was a master of slaves, said: "I will not, I cannot justify it. However culpable my conduct, I will so far pay my devoir to virtue as to own the excellence and rectitude of her precepts, and lament my want of conformity to them." At this very period, in the Legislature of Maryland, on a bill ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... those whom it was his duty to serve: that I had not been used to a conduct so faulty, as to lay myself at the mercy of servants: and was sorry he had measures to pursue, that made steps necessary in his own opinion, which, in mine, were very culpable, and which no end could justify: that things drawing towards a crisis between my friends and me, an interview could avail nothing; especially as the method by which this correspondence was carried on was ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... themselves were. I gave one or two instances of the manner in which they treated mother and each other, and asked how they could expect the servants to behave in any other way when they had such examples continually before them, and queried in which such conduct was most culpable. Eliza always admits what I say to be true, but, as I tell her, never profits by it.... Sister Mary is somewhat different; she will not condemn herself.... She will acknowledge the sad state of the family, but seems to think mother is altogether to blame. And dear mother ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney

... he blushes not to have made them. If any lady should be offended with the lecturer's daring to take such liberties with her sex, by {57}way of atonement for that part of my behaviour which may appear culpable, I humbly beg leave to offer a nostrum, or recipe, to preserve the ladies' faces in perpetual bloom, and defend beauty from all assaults of time; and I dare venture to affirm, not all the paints, pomatums, or washes, can be of so much service to ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens

... more such words, they bewilder me; I have been culpable in trying to serve you, without calculating the extent of what I was doing. I love you in reality, as a tender friend; and as a friend, I am grateful for your delicate attentions—but, alas!—alas! you will never find a ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... rush that bore down all barriers before it. Her mind went over to Dr. Beswick's side of the question, and she saw her success in some cases as the mere effect on the nervous system. In the bitterness of something like despair she thought herself a deluded and culpable enthusiast, worthy of ridicule, of contempt, of condemnation. There were no longer any oscillations of her mind toward the old belief; the foundations of sand had been swept away, and there was no space to make a reconstruction. ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... Villefort, "if you have been culpable it was imprudence. Give up this letter you have brought from Elba, and go and rejoin ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... felt no suspicion of the apparent contradiction which my outward life exhibited to such a mood. Like my school-fellows, I lived without control; as far as I saw or felt, I was untrammelled; and yet I do not call to mind that any of us ever committed a seriously culpable action. ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel

... positively destroy the immortal soul. It was therefore the duty of all good and logical citizens to warn the police against the enemies of the established order of things and those who failed to do so were as culpable as a modern man who does not telephone to the nearest doctor when he discovers that his fellow-tenants are ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... so large a portion of those who hold much capital, instead of using their various advantages for the greatest good of those around them, employ them for mere selfish indulgences; thus inflicting as much mischief on themselves as results to others from their culpable neglect. A great portion of the rich seem to be acting on the principle that the more God bestows on them the less are they under obligation to practice any self-denial in fulfilling his benevolent plan of raising our race to ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... this atmosphere of prodigal expenditure and culpable waste that I was to practise thrift: a fundamental in life! And it is into this atmosphere that the foreign-born comes now, with every inducement to spend and no encouragement to save. For as it was in the days of my boyhood, so it is to-day—only ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok

... has entirely forgot him, during his long absence; and when he heard his father's resolution, in consequence of the dispute he had with you, he did not think proper to make himself known. It was this which made him think me so culpable, that you hear he talks of marrying him to ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low

... of the court has of pronouncing his words; for our pleadings were formerly in French, and when the pleadings were begun, he said to the defendant "qu'il parait"—culprit; and as he was generally culpable, the "qu'il parait" ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 • Various

... prejudice, appears an irrational being—a dangerous citizen; his sentence is pronounced with a voice almost unanimous; the public indignation, roused by fanaticism, stirred up by imposture, renders it impossible for him to be heard in his defence; every one believes himself culpable, if he does not exhibit his fury against him; if he does not display his zeal in hunting him down; it is by such means man seeks to gain the favor of the angry gods, whose wrath is supposed to be provoked. Thus the individual who consults his reason, the disciple of ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... constitutes one of the serious problems of family life. There are gradations in the practice of desertion, and it is not confined to men. The social butterfly who neglects her children to flutter here and there is a temporary deserter, little less culpable than the lazy husband who has an attack of wanderlust before the birth of each child, and who returns to enjoy the comforts of home as soon as his wife is again able to assume the function of bread-winner for the growing family. ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... his faults and his numerous and culpable errors, Louis XIV. had lived and died like a king. The slow and grievous agony of olden France was about ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... was unqualified in his condemnation of the sentiment which erected sacrificial altars in the family circle. He spoke scornfully of the doctrine of renunciation, so applied, and held the victims who brought their gifts of power and liberty more culpable than those who demanded them, since the duty of resistance to recognised wrong was obvious, while great enlightenment was needed to teach one to forego an unfair privilege or power that all the world concurred in ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... may be asked, why are they most culpable? I will tell you, my friends. It is because sin is imputed to us just in proportion to the spiritual light we receive. Thus the prophet Amos says, in the name of Jehovah, "You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities." ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke

... abbot was paternal but absolute, limited, however, by the canons of the church, and, until the general establishment of exemptions, by episcopal control. As a rule, however, implicit obedience was enforced; to act without his orders was culpable; while it was a sacred duty to execute his orders, however unreasonable, until they were withdrawn. Examples among the Egyptian monks of this blind submission to the commands of the superiors, exalted ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... unexpected than this severe disaster. The public had confidently anticipated a successful campaign and could not believe that the general who had been unfortunate had not been culpable. ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... inheritance, division of families, or other civil businesses, seeing they well know these things to be heterogeneous to their office; but as they ought not to entangle themselves with the judging of civil causes, so if they should be negligent and slothful in their own office, they shall in that be no less culpable. ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... account of some seminal corruption, although this corruption is not leprosy or gout. Now since the body is proportionate to the soul, and since the soul's defects redound into the body, and vice versa, in like manner, say they, a culpable defect of the soul is passed on to the child, through the transmission of the semen, albeit the semen itself is not ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... I confess I'm culpable, And were it not a sin equal to that, To doubt you could forgive me, I durst not hope your mercy ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn

... children weep sometimes when they have not slept. She knew, also, that her lie, as a rule, was doing a serious injury to the man to whom she was telling it, and that she might find herself at his mercy if she told it badly. Therefore she felt at once humble and culpable in his presence. And when she had to tell an insignificant, social lie its hazardous associations, and the memories which it recalled, would leave her weak with a sense of exhaustion and penitent ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... lessons you receive here must be futile indeed if they do not teach you the duty of reverence to God, and courtesy to man. It gives me special pain, Williams, to have observed that you, too, a boy high in your remove, were guilty of this most culpable levity. You will all come to me at twelve o'clock in ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar

... "I call such lenity culpable. The law ordains punishment for those who disturb the people. We know what befell those who rebelled against Moses. Josephus has the valor and the wisdom of King David; but it were well if he had, like our great king, ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty

... theatrical folk would only take the trouble to acquaint themselves with the real characteristics of the sailor, and caricature him accurately, they would find, even in these days, precious material to make play from. Even Jack's culpable vagaries, if reproduced in anything like original form, might be utilised to entertaining effect; but the professional person insists upon making him appear with a quid rolling about in his mouth and his stomach brimful of slang, which he empties ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman

... in spite of ourselves, we must, in these subjects, become our own instructors. If, in a few years after we have left the school, we possess not a respectable knowledge of such common, and easily acquired subjects, as arithmetic, history, and geography, we alone are culpable; and the more the world makes us sensible of our deficiency, the more we deserve it, and the sooner we shall set about to apply the remedy. Teach us, then, in boyhood, that which we will not, or in this case, perhaps, cannot teach ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.

... cut, made by the original owners of the Montague property, and by which the veins have been in some degree exposed, absurd and culpable as it is as a mode of mining, has yet served a good purpose in showing in a very distinct manner the structure of these veins,—a structure which is found to be on the whole very general in the Province. The quartz is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various

... can serve a woman like a sensible husband! Besides, I thought all perished at Paris. Listen, Isaac Gardon: I tell you plainly that scandal is afloat. You are blamed for culpable indifference to alleged levities—I say not that it is true—but I see this, that unless you can bestow your daughter-in-law on a good, honest man, able to silence the whispers of malice, there will be measures taken that will do shame both to your own gray hairs ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... constitution of the world. And this is a merit and a beauty in thee, and yet it is altogether wrong. For Babhru suffered as a consequence of acts committed in a former birth, the circumstances of which thou dost not know. And moreover, even so, he was culpable and presumptuous, in taking on himself a vengeance to which even Aranyani did not urge him, not knowing that punishment far more terrible than his was waiting for those criminals, without his interference. ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown

... the rector had finished, "that is my observation. Most of them are driven to the life, and held in it, of course, by a remorseless civilization. Individuals may be culpable, Mr. Hodder—are culpable. But we cannot put ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... such headlong action. She had told Mrs. Jarvis the whole truth, offending her bitterly thereby, and had escaped without even a word of farewell to Mr. Huntley. But now, in the telling of it all, she seemed to see herself each moment growing more culpable and ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... business of life, we find the memory of one like that of another, and honestly impute omissions not to involuntary forgetfulness, but culpable inattention; but in literary inquiries, failure is imputed rather to want of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... no means a subtle one, was yet too subtle for Mr Clare the elder, and he went on with the story he had been about to relate; which was that after the death of the senior so-called d'Urberville, the young man developed the most culpable passions, though he had a blind mother, whose condition should have made him know better. A knowledge of his career having come to the ears of Mr Clare, when he was in that part of the country preaching missionary sermons, he boldly took occasion to speak to the delinquent ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... after a silence of reflection, "if the innocent Virgin has given us an example, by what right do we who are culpable ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... and let us break them down, so as to be able to embrace one another altogether. These hedges are doctrinal divisions about which either we or you are in error. If you are in the wrong, we do not hold you morally culpable; for your education, surroundings, knowledge, and training made the adherence to these doctrines excusable and even right. Let us examine, compare, and investigate the matter together, and we shall discover the precious pearl of peace and unity; and then let us join hands ...
— Five Sermons • H.B. Whipple

... the coming storm, and one regiment of native infantry had been disbanded; but no one, not even those in high authority, had the faintest suspicion that our rule in India was imperilled. So strong, indeed, was the sense of security from present danger that the Government, with almost culpable neglect, still confided to the care of the native army the large arsenals of Delhi, Ferozepore, and Phillour, in all of which immense quantities of ammunition and munitions of war ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths

... which strangely blended ferocity and lust. The sealer, or stockman, who periled his life to accomplish the abduction of a native female, thought that danger but fairly avenged by the destruction of her relatives! Thus far the government was remiss and culpable. The crimes of individuals, without diminishing their guilt, must be traced to those general causes, which are subject to the disposal ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... have for the quack that patters in the presence of trained skill; but from what I have seen and known of mission life, both in myself and others, since coming to North China, I think it is a little less than culpable homicide to deny a little hospital training to men who may have to pass weeks and months of their lives in places where they themselves, or those about them, may sicken and die from curable diseases before the doctor could be summoned, ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour

... consideration and respect. The natural bent of his mind and disposition, and his lifelong devotion to letters, to say nothing of his opium eating, rendered him, it must be allowed, regardless of ordinary obligations in life—domestic and pecuniary—to a degree that would have been culpable in any less singularly constituted mind. It was impossible to deal with or judge De Quincey by ordinary standards—not even his publishers did so. Much no doubt was forgiven him, but all that needed forgiveness is covered by the kindly veil of time, while his merits as a master in English ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... Wolfe, "it shames me to lend aid to an art frivolous in itself, and almost culpable in times when Freedom wants the head to design, and perhaps the hand to execute, far other and nobler works than the blazoning of her past deeds ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... quite obvious then that there is such a thing as the mind of London: and it is all the more culpable in me to have neglected it in as much as my editorial friend in New York had expressly mentioned it to me before I sailed. "What," said he, leaning far over his desk after his massive fashion and reaching out into the air, "what is in the minds of these people? Are they," ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock

... girl, that Nelauk. Only child of Pluly's old age, and he dotes on her. Anyway, he's been on the verge of being black-listed by Grand Commerce off and on through the past three decades. But nobody's ever been able to pin anything more culpable on him than that he keeps skimming extremely close to the limits of a ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz

... conscious of how she had for many days been moving with her mother in darkness, deeply stricken by Nick's culpable—oh he was culpable!—loss of his prize, but feeling an obscure element in the matter they didn't grasp, an undiscovered explanation that would perhaps make it still worse, though it might make them, poor things, a little better. He had explained nothing, he had simply said, "Dear ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... I have never yet refused to follow your advice, but where my own peace of mind was so nearly concerned, as to have made me culpable, had ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald

... it is, gents both. There is at this present moment in this very place, a perfect constellation of talent and genius, who is involved, through what I cannot but designate as the culpable negligence of my friend Pecksniff, in a situation as tremendous, perhaps, as the social intercourse of the nineteenth century will readily admit of. There is actually at this instant, at the Blue Dragon in this village—an ale-house, observe; a ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... I'm awfully sorry, dear." There was genuine regret for such culpable carelessness in his voice. "How ever did I forget it?" He drew her closer in his embrace for a brief caress. Then, after a little, his natural buoyancy reasserted itself, and he spoke with a mischievousness that would, he hoped, serve to stimulate the neglected bride toward cheerfulness. ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan

... children. But he had urgently invited Edwin to accompany them. At first Edwin had instinctively replied that it was impossible. He could not leave home. He had never been to London; a journey to London presented itself to him as an immense enterprise, almost as a piece of culpable self-indulgence. And then, under the stimulus of Osmond's energetic and adventurous temperament, he had said to himself, "Why not? Why ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... fair-haired boy of most striking beauty and interesting disposition, at the age of seventeen, and by the worst of all possible fates; he lived (as we did at that time) in a large commercial city overflowing with profligacy, and with temptations of every order; he had been led astray; culpable he had been, but by very much the least culpable of the set into which accident had thrown him, as regarded acts and probable intentions; and as regarded palliations from childish years, from total inexperience, or any other alleviating circumstances that could be urged, having everything to plead—and ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... nothing which was not probably known to my predecessors, or which could call anew for inquiries, which they had not thought necessary to institute, when the facts were recent and could be better proved. They probably believed it best to let pass into oblivion transactions which, however culpable, had commenced before this Government existed, and had been finally extinguished ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson

... regiment was accused in the papers of drunkenness, and under the sting of that accusation Washington declared war on the publicans. He whipped his men when they became drunk, kept them away from the ordinaries, and even closed by force one tavern which was especially culpable. "Were it not too tedious," he wrote the governor, "I cou'd give your Honor such instances of the villainous Behavior of those Tippling House-keepers, as wou'd astonish ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford

... [a rebellion], though a man may be innocent of the great breach which is made upon government, he is highly culpable, if he does not use all the means that are suitable to his station for reducing the community into its former state of peace and good order.—Swift. He speaks at his ease, but those who are ill used will be apt to apply what the boy said to his mother, who told ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... catalogue of our beloved Alma Mater. Whether this is to be attributed to the difficulty of Latinizing any of those honorary adjuncts (with a complete list of which I took care to furnish the proper persons nearly a year beforehand), or whether it had its origin in any more culpable motives, I forbear to consider in this place, the matter being in course of painful investigation. But, however this may be, I felt the omission the more keenly, as I had, in expectation of the new catalogue, enriched the library of the Jaalam ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... I was most culpable, sir," he said. "But when I looked in my desk for a blank, I found that I had none. Every day I intended going to the Prefecture to get a new supply, but every day something occurred to prevent me. And then came the day ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... not suppose that either you or the Choiseuls can give me any cause of fear." M. de Sartines was thunderstruck; my boldness astonished him. At length he said, "Madame, you are angry with me causelessly; I am more negligent than culpable. It is useless to say this to the king." "I will not conceal from you, sir, that he knows it all, and is greatly discontented with you. " "I am lost then," said M. de Sartines. "Lost! not precisely," replied comte Jean; "but you must decide at once and for ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon

... Malcolm a letter with some enclosures about suttees. He has reluctantly and fearfully abolished suttee, making it culpable homicide to assist, and murder to force the victim. He has done it, I think, wisely by a repeal of a clause in one regulation and an amendment. Thus not putting it vainly forward as Lord William did in ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)

... Pardon me! but you speak of it as though you believed in his guilt,—as though you thought him culpable. If I were a lady of the —th, I should glory in the name he had made for it, and be defending, not abusing him." And, with the mien of a queen of tragedy, she swished out of the room to cool her fevered cheeks ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... spoliation. All the museums of the south of France possess tombs stolen from the Alyscamp. As to the monolithic tombs, they were abandoned to any one who cared to have them, and for many centuries have been regarded as stones quarried ready for use. The city of Arles has on several occasions had the culpable condescension of giving up the tombs of its ancestors to the princes and great men of the world. Charles IX. laded several ships with them, which sank in the Rhone at Pont S. Esprit. The Duke of Savoy, the ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... outlined a course of policy by which the buoyant Secretary intended to make good his prophecy of domestic peace within ninety days. Besides calmly patronizing Lincoln, assuring him that his lack of "a policy either domestic or foreign" was "not culpable and... even unavoidable," the paper warned him that "policies...both domestic and foreign" must immediately be adopted, and it proceeded to point out what they ought to be. Briefly stated, the one true policy which he advocated at ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... near the house, and the body beginning to putrefy, such an odour was caused as became almost insupportable. At length, the merchant, overpowered by the bad smell, and alarmed by the measures the mandarin was preparing to prove him culpable, was happy to compromise the affair, and have the dead body removed, on paying the sum of four thousand five ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... we saw that the duke had not a maravedi about him, we left him where he was. As I was the least culpable of all the gang, I was charged to take him home; in adjusting his pockets, which had been turned inside out, I found the letter which he had written to you, and, learning your position at ...
— The Resources of Quinola • Honore de Balzac

... I, "is my title to this money? By retaining it, shall I not be as culpable as Welbeck? It came into his possession, as it came into mine, without a crime; but my knowledge of the true proprietor is equally certain, and the claims of the unfortunate stranger are as valid as ever. Indeed, ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... tried. On the 11th of November he wrote: "The King, in his clemency, has ordered me taken to America;" he declared himself "keenly affected by the King's generosity," adding: "Certainly, we were all culpable towards the government in taking up arms against it, but the greatest culprit was myself;" and he concluded thus: "I was guilty towards the government, and the government has been generous to me."[1] He returned ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo

... considerations which weighs with me are such as the following:—1. I am far more certain (according to the Fathers) that we are in a state of culpable separation, than that developments do not exist under the Gospel, and that the Roman developments are not the true ones. 2. I am far more certain, that our (modern) doctrines are wrong, than ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... good-humour. Nothing can or will be done by Governments of any party till the nation can be roused to some expression of public opinion; and that opinion has to be formed before it can be expressed. In the reign of force which now prevails throughout Europe, carelessness as to our power of defence is culpable beyond possibility of exaggeration, for we may have to defend not only our individual interests as a nation, but all that enormous influence for the good of mankind which is at present exercised in the remotest parts of the earth ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... her temper was getting the better of her, that minute you were in the room?' said Nyttleton to Tayling, when their client had left the house. Nyttleton was a man who surveyed everybody's character in a sunless and shadowless northern light. A culpable slyness, which marked him as a boy, had been moulded by Time, the ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... account. Blake fulfilled his mission with his usual precision and success. His first call of any importance was on the Grand Duke of Tuscany, formerly so much in the good graces of the Commonwealth (Vol. IV. pp. 483-485), but whom Cromwell, after looking more into matters, had found culpable. Blake's demands were for heavy money-damages on account of English ships taken by Prince Rupert in 1650, and sold in Tuscan ports, and also on account of English ships ordered out of Leghorn harbour in March 1653, so that they fell into the hands of the Dutch. There was the utmost ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... you, Herr Eynhardt, I should have taken you for at least five years less But whether thirty or thirty-four, it would be culpable to have reached that age without having been in love. For you surely ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... him, it was brought home to him anew that he was nothing to her; and once, when he had gazed too boldly, instead of turning away his eyes, as she went close by him to Schwarz's room, and she had resented the look with cold surprise, he felt as culpable as if he had insulted her. He atoned for his behaviour, the next time they met, by assuming his very humblest air; once, too, he deliberately threw himself in her way, for the mere pleasure of standing aside with the emphatic deference of a slave. Throughout ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... from herself, be liberal in her aspersions? Where she should be unknown, whatever disgrace might be affixed to her name, she herself might escape censure; but yet she would not be less guilty of a violation of her duty to society, since she must appear very culpable to those who knew her, and contribute to the depravity of others, as far as was in her power, by an example which, her motives being unknown, would ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott

... old cambric as in the best tailor-made gown. It was on this subject that she and Geraldine differed most. No amount of spoken wisdom could make Audrey see that she was neglecting her opportunities to a culpable degree; that while other forms of eccentricity might be forgiven, the one unpardonable sin in Geraldine's code was Audrey's refusal to make the best ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... he admits its resemblance to the mermaid, but repudiates the idea of its having given rise to the fable, by being mistaken for one. This error he imagines must have arisen at a time when observations on such matters were made with culpable laxity; but now more recent and minute attention has established the ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... for Paul, while Evie would take the jewellery and lace. How easily she slipped out of life! Charles thought the habit laudable, though he did not intend to adopt it himself, whereas Margaret would have seen in it an almost culpable indifference to earthly fame. Cynicism—not the superficial cynicism that snarls and sneers, but the cynicism that can go with courtesy and tenderness—that was the note of Mrs. Wilcox's will. She ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster

... indestructible personality, God's impregnable defence reared around the citadel of her being, than to consider it the artificial rampart flung up by an insurgent egotism. In like manner, it is a misrepresentation of the facts to assert the culpable selfishness of the faith in a future life as a demanded reward for fidelity and merit here. No one demands immortality as pay for acquired desert. It is modestly looked for as a free boon from the God who freely gave the present ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... executioner of Bergen. But glowing with rage, the King commanded to seize the criminal and lead him to death, who had ventured to dance, with the queen; so disgraced the Empress, and insulted the crown. The culpable threw himself at the Emperor, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... their courts—had confessedly proved inadequate. The prelates were in great part non-residents, and could not from a distance narrowly watch the progress of the objectionable tenets in their dioceses. One or two of their number were accused of culpable sluggishness, if not of indifference or something worse. The question naturally arose, What new and more ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... association—inconvenience which could not then be imputed to the avarice of employers or the unjust privileges of the rich. In such altered circumstances opinion could not fail to reprobate, and if reprobation did not suffice, to repress by penalties of some description, this or any other culpable self-indulgence at the expense of the community. The communistic scheme, instead of being peculiarly open to the objection drawn from danger of over-population, has the recommendation of tending in an especial degree to the prevention ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff

... their van abreast the latter's centre. At the same time Harland was directed to move to his proper position in the van, which he at once did (Fig. 3, V). Palliser made no movement, and Keppel with extraordinary—if not culpable—forbearance refrained from summoning the rear ships into line by their individual pennants. This he at last did about 7 P.M., signalling specifically to each of the vessels then grouped with Palliser, (except his own flagship), to ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan

... deserved. Hurry in writing has long been exploded as an excuse for an author;—however, in the dramatic line, it may happen, that both an author and a manager may wish to fill a chasm in the entertainment of the public with a hastiness not altogether culpable. The season was advanced when I first put the play into Mr. Harris's hands: it was at that time at least double the length of any acting comedy. I profited by his judgment and experience in the curtailing of it—till, I believe, his feeling ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan

... nothing, have nothing, and come to nothing. They are scarcely in fault, but those who ought to teach them, counsel them, employ them, until they shall be qualified to employ themselves, are deplorably culpable. Here are gentlemen and ladies of education and wealth (dozens where there were formerly hundreds) who year after year and generation after generation have lived in luxury on the income wrung from these poor creatures in the shape of Rent, without ever giving ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... but the storm is very fierce, and the vessel is old and weak. We may have fine weather in a day or two, or we may not; at all events, when property of value is at stake, and that property not my own, I should feel myself very culpable, if I did not take ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat



Words linked to "Culpable" :   guilty, culpability



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