"Mitigating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for the good of the departing one that he is removed from his native place. Then, too, there is correspondence, and there is, at least, the hope of reunion, because reunion is possible. But, with the slave, all these mitigating circumstances are wanting. There is no improvement in his condition probable,—no correspondence possible,—no reunion attainable. His going out into the world, is like a living man going into the tomb, who, with open eyes, sees himself buried out of ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... every man was his master. He knew that he was the object of suspicion, and therefore all his slender resources (ah! how pitifully slender they were!) were devoted to winning, not kindness and appreciation, but toleration; all his efforts were in the direction of mitigating the circumstances that tended to make his condition so much worse than that of the negroes around him—negroes who had ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... inferences 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 sea is irritating and ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... and the beautiful: loving the medieval, desiring to reproduce the age of chivalry, he was naturally aristocratic in taste, as in intellect, though democratic by the dictates of a thoroughly good heart. He liked a pleasant ending—or, at least, believed in mitigating tragedy by a checker of sunlight at the close. He had little use for the degenerate types of mankind: certainly none for degeneracy for its own sake, or because of a kind of scientific interest in its workings. Nor ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... humors in the society. These sometimes extend no farther than to the injury of the private rights of particular classes of citizens, by unjust and partial laws. Here also the firmness of the judicial magistracy is of vast importance in mitigating the severity and confining the operation of such laws. It not only serves to moderate the immediate mischiefs of those which may have been passed, but it operates as a check upon the legislative body in passing them; ...
— The Federalist Papers
... 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 sea Neptune" ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... less easy to put aside because, little by little, circumstances were breaking down her dislike for Rosedale. The dislike, indeed, still subsisted; but it was penetrated here and there by the perception of mitigating qualities in him: of a certain gross kindliness, a rather helpless fidelity of sentiment, which seemed to be struggling through the hard surface ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... 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, became ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... and the eyes of the whole court were directed towards the dock. Jones spoke in a deep, clear voice, and in a deliberate harangue pointed out some defects in the evidence, though without the slightest hope, he said, of mitigating the sentence now to be pronounced on himself and fellows. Three of the others also spoke. Whelan said, 'that he was not one of the men properly belonging to the boat's crew, but had been called upon to fill the place of another man, and had no knowledge of any intention to ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... 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 of her orthodoxy and a theological dispute she once had with the King are ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... employment? The existing laws cannot repress the cruel outrages which they commit. Can an act of Parliament humanize their minds, or impart mercy to their hearts? The law cannot fix a maximum for rent; and if it could, it would be only to increase their turbulence, without any mitigating comforts. Extend the franchise, it will only enable them to accomplish more political mischief—for they reject as nothing all measures, however beneficial, which do not tend to the dismemberment of the empire; endow their church, and they accuse you of corrupting it; truckle ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... proprietor—or, at any rate, rich enough in loam to lay out a suburban garden. With all the accessories at hand for the creation of an acrid and measureless thirst, neither the railway authorities nor private enterprise have had the wit as yet to provide travellers with the means of mitigating their sufferings. It is little short of a horror to think of that journey of over forty hours' duration, which had to be endured without the succour to be found in a refreshment-room where, for a consideration, ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... benefices in plurality found a spokesman in so respectable a prelate as Walter of Cantilupe, the son of a marcher baron, whom Otto had just enthroned in his cathedral at Worcester, and the legate, "fearing for his skin," was suspected of mitigating the severity of his principles to win over the less greedy of the friends of vested interests. His Roman followers knew and cared little about English susceptibilities, and feeling was so strong against them that any mischance might excite an explosion. Such an accident occurred on St. George's ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... Another mitigating circumstance in Schubart's lot was the character of his gaoler. This humane person had himself tasted the tender mercies of 'paternal' government; he knew the nature of a dungeon better even than his prisoner. ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... reason, powerful as it was, became the slave of feelings which it should have controlled. His indignation, virtuous in its origin, acquired too much of the character of personal aversion. He could see no mitigating circumstance, no redeeming merit. His temper, which, though generous and affectionate, had always been irritable, had now been made almost savage by bodily infirmities and mental vexations, Conscious of great powers and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... it as others would. I didn't myself. Even at present I may be said to be living on charity. But sometimes I have fancied that in Mr. Morton's case there might be peculiarly mitigating circumstances." ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... social persecution, which is now so nearly complete, that he himself was at last astonished by it. The manner of his dialectic, firm and vigorous as the dialectic was in matter, has gradually introduced mitigating elements into the atmosphere of opinion. Partly, no doubt, the singular tolerance of free discussion which now prevails in England—I do not mean that it is at all perfect—arises from the prevalent scepticism, from indifference, and from the influence of some of the more high-minded ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... of those whom the church had bound together; but which implied also by the absence from it of any intense clerical severity, that as the separated wife was allowed to live with so very respectable a lady as Mrs. Stanbury, there must probably be some mitigating circumstances attending this ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... have already seen (p. 562, col. 2) that Abelard is alleged to have taught a doctrine which resembles that of Diodorus. I think that the Stoics pledged themselves to give a wider range to possible things than to future things, for the purpose of mitigating the odious and frightful conclusions which were drawn from ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... 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 ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... Although, in the earlier contest, mutual animosities had been so keen that the prisoners on either side had been contumeliously branded [315], it was, perhaps, the festive and easy manner in which the siege was afterward carried on, that, mitigating the bitterness of prolonged hostilities, served to procure, at last, for the Samians articles of capitulation more than usually mild. They embraced the conditions of demolishing their fortifications, delivering up their ships, and paying by instalments a portion towards the ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... difficult 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 hardly dared contemplate such a devastating prospect. They ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... the good 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 ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... dissented in the direction of Rome, rather than of Geneva or Glasgow, were utterly out of question. One of the most strongly-marked features in the Churchmanship of the time, was the uncompromising hostility which everywhere displayed itself against Rome. This animosity was relieved by a mitigating influence in one direction only. Churchmen in this country could not fail to feel interest in the struggle for national independence in religious matters which was being carried on among their neighbours and ancestral enemies across the Channel. The Gallican Church was in the height of its ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... them. Judgment can be arrested only on grounds of law. On these you can be heard. But, if you have none to offer, you must be silent and submit to your sentence." He then, without a pause, proceeded to point out the heinous character of the offense, but admitted there was one mitigating circumstance; and, in conclusion, he condemned the culprit to five ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... accepted. Palmerston followed Lord John, and supported him, but did not say a great deal. His principal argument was the necessity for showing sympathy with Lancashire, and of not throwing away any chance of mitigating it [sic]. ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... retain its ascendancy by a sort of tacit 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 ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... was induced, in conjunction with others, to solicit the exercise of royal clemency in mitigating the severity of that punishment which the law denounces: and it gladdened the sympathetic feelings of his heart to know that these petitions were not unavailing; but the modesty of his character made him regret the publicity which had been ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 • Various
... "perfectly natural man," but he is a legitimate lay-figure, and we all approximate to him at times. The natural man, in his unsophisticated hours, takes the Universe at its surface value, neither rejecting the delicate compensations, nor mitigating the cruelty of the grotesque farce. The natural man accepts what is given. He swallows the chaotic surprises, the extravagant accidents, the whole fantastic "pell-mell." He accepts, too, the traditional pieties of his race, their "hope against ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... succeeded in fishing him out, and restored him safe and sound to his grateful family. As we were not generally expected to save a man's life every time we skated, my brother William and I felt that there were mitigating circumstances connected with this particular disobedience which might be taken into account in the final judgment, but this idea ...
— Random Reminiscences of Men and Events • John D. Rockefeller
... lower classes in recognizing one of their sort. "They don't know how to charge!" he said, with an irony that referred to the fourpence he had been obliged to pay for a cup of station tea; and when I tried to allege some mitigating facts in behalf of the company, he readily became autobiographical. The transition from tea to eating generally was easy, and he told me that he was a plumber, going to do a job of work at Llandudno, where ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... 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, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... frequent opportunities of mitigating the fierceness of a party; of doing justice to the character of a deserving man; of softening the envious, quieting the angry, and rectifying the prejudiced; which, are all of them employments suited to a reasonable nature, and bring ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... As these three 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 ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... money down we should rid ourselves and our neighbours of the presence and burden of the devouring soldiery, our friends, to enable us, made a gathering among them, and brought us the means, for we had not a sufficiency of our own. But this, instead of mitigating the oppression, became a reason with the officer set over us to persecute us still more; for he pretended to see in that neighbourliness the evidences of a treasonous combination; so that he not only took the money, but made a pretext of the readiness with which ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... three verses were elegantly applied by Sostrates in mitigating the intemperate language which Antigonus would fain have addressed to Ptolemy Philadelphus. See Sextus Emp. adv. Gramm. i. 13, ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... your desire, you can see it any day in summer. You will find them tenting out at the Mtropole and all the expensive hotels. I bivouacked with an invader there some weeks ago, and he was enduring the rigours of camp life with great fortitude, mitigating ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... a yoke under which, perhaps, the Spaniards bowed with patience, and 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 reign ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... however just may be those very censures; for when we look narrowly into their representations, as surely we find, perhaps without an exception, that an invective never closes without some unexpected mitigating circumstance, or qualifying abatement. At the moment of inflicting the censure, some recollection in opposition to what is asserted passes in the mind, and to approximate to Truth, they offer a discrepancy, a self-contradiction. ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... to their liberty. Any demand in reason you make 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 ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... shutting the door of access to the 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 in ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... colors and tinsel before the footlights dazzle the vision of a child; the rapid growth of the saloon, rendered well-nigh impregnable by the wealth of the liquor power; the wonderful labor-saving inventions, which in the hands of greed and avarice, instead of mitigating the burdens of the people, have greatly augmented them, by glutting the market with labor; the opportunities given by the government through grants, special privileges, and protective measures for rapid accumulation of wealth by the few; ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... frontier. A court-martial was quickly summoned, and during the trial it became apparent that the motive which alone had driven him to desertion had been the brutal maltreatment to which his master, Borgert, had subjected him. The court regarded that, however, as a mitigating circumstance of such slight value that it reduced the measure of the punishment meted out to him in only a small degree. The poor fellow was universally commiserated by high and low, and even among the officers ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... naked term 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 "the distinction ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... prove themselves patrons of art in regard to him. He boasts on the stage of being more in the enjoyment of the favour of the great ones than any of his literary contemporaries. [9] Modesty was certainly not a mitigating trait in the character of hot-tempered Jonson, ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... while confined entirely to 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 lay the crime on some luckless laic, that the ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... much excited over the murder of A.P. Crittenden by Laura D. Fair, and the entire weight of opinion was against her. Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton, always ready to defend their sex, determined to hear the story from her own lips, hoping for the sake of womanhood to learn some mitigating circumstances. The afternoon papers came out with an attack upon them for making this visit to the jail, and in the evening at Miss Anthony's first lecture there was an immense audience, including many friends of Crittenden, determined that there should be no justification ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... that slept the while. Awaking, he heard them accurately; and 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 just as much as the requests of indulgent fathers, rather increasing than mitigating his severity on ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... 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, ...
— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley
... to slumber during the lesson. At such a moment Anthony slipped out of the window and snapped the tuning-fork several times,—just enough to save his soul from death,—and then slipped in again. He was caught occasionally, but not often; and even when he was, there were mitigating circumstances, for he was generally put under the teacher's desk for punishment. It was a dark, close, sultry spot, but when he was well seated, and had grown tied of looking at the triangle of elastic in the teacher's congress boot, and tired of wishing it was his instead ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... it very difficult to stifle my longing for revenge, and after tossing half the night in anxiety, I arose at dawn and, in the hope of mitigating my mental sufferings and of forgetting my wrongs, I took a walk through all the public arcades and) entered a picture-gallery, which contained a wonderful collection of pictures in various styles. I beheld works from the hand of Zeuxis, still undimmed by the passage of the years, ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... experience, she comes to the conclusion, that with the ballot in 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 ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... 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 ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... illustrious men whom we still call Fathers and Saints? 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, recognizing ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... board with us, appears to be greatly interested in his work, though the life is rather rough. He has a good deal of riding about the country to vaccinate the natives, who seem fully to understand the value of the operation in mitigating the ravages of smallpox—a disease by which the country was at one time decimated. Our regret at not having been able to stop at Gaya was increased when we heard from Dr. Lamb that the Assistant Resident, Mr. Little, had just returned ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... and that, after all, fortune might have thrown him into much worse company. They, on their side, making like discoveries in him, he presently found himself admitted to their freemasonry, and initiated into their many secret ways of mitigating their lot, and shortening their long days. Thus, this chill, stern world of automata, which, on first sight, looked as if no human word or smile or jest could escape the detection of its iron laws, revealed, ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... words, a tale with a moral. They are not the critics predestined to bring me out, and develop my morals:—that is the secret. By and by the "North American Quarterly Humdrum" will make them ashamed of their stupidity. In the meantime, by way of staying execution—by way of mitigating the accusations against me—I offer the sad history appended,—a history about whose obvious moral there can be no question whatever, since he who runs may read it in the large capitals which form the title of the tale. I should have credit ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... 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 belonging to the poorest ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... looked into the provision box, and presently set about getting his supper, which, he insisted, he was perfectly capable of doing. Janet persevered with her story. He kept up his interest, making a mere anecdote out of her tale and mitigating the atmosphere with the ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... Bevisham had just done, and impulsively she pleaded for him, and became drowned in criminal blushes that forced her to defend herself with a determination not to believe the dreadful story, though she continued mitigating the wickedness of it; as if, by a singular inversion of the fact, her clear good sense excused, and it was her heart that condemned him. She dwelt fondly on an image of the 'gallant and handsome Colonel Richard ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... for forty 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 what you've ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... proved detrimental to their interests; while, upon the other hand, certain other classes of persons, 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 had never existed here, and had fallen into disuse in England. The earlier practice ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... yourselves to death against your prison bars, but you cannot break them. Countless thousands of bold and brave spirits have attempted this plan, with no good result, in time past. The Turks are well acquainted with and quite prepared for it. Your only chance of mitigating the woes of your condition lies ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... south-east side of the castle hill; like, however, all the other winter stations, the new quarter, with its handsome streets and villas, has far outgrown the original limits. Aplain, 2m. wide, is between the town and the sea. The beautifully-wooded Maure mountains surround it on the land side, mitigating the keenness of the north, north-east, and east winds, but affording indifferent protection from the mistral or north-west wind. The Toulon road, extending east and west, forms the principal thoroughfare. On it, and in its proximity, ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... visiting and consoling them in sorrow and sickness, and 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, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... the difference between the ardent feelings of man, and the tender and gentle sympathies of woman, that, while his sorrow is alleviated by a thousand mitigating circumstances of ardour and excitement, which relieve his attention, and soothe, though they do not annihilate his grief; she can only brood over her feelings, and suffer in silence and in sorrow. Henri marched out with his regiment in all the vigour of manhood, and with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... had 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
... of our constitution; to bring in annual or triennial Parliaments; to do little short of introducing universal suffrage; to disband the army, which now holds the Radicals in check; and, very probably, to let loose Bonaparte, under pretence of mitigating his confinement. These are some of the first fruits of what is to be expected from Lord Tavistock's motion, if, by its success, it removes the present Government; and can you look at any part of this picture, and yet suffer any personal considerations ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... innate 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 for his previous wrongs, and presents ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... understood it. He faced it and understood it as he had no other truth in all his life. No merciful, mitigating force caused his mind to totter. With fairly cosmic regularity, cosmic inevitability, comprehension struck blow ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... 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, ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... atmosphere of genuine reality totally unlike that of 1886, when Home Rule was a startling novelty to the British electorate, or of 1893, when the shadow of impending defeat clouded debate and weakened counsel. It would be pleasant to think that the time which has elapsed, besides greatly mitigating anti-Irish prejudice, had been used for scientific study and dispassionate discussion of the problem of Home Rule. Unfortunately, after eighteen years the problem remains almost exactly where it was. There are no detailed ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... (political martyrdom!) the mother that bore him—(and a good deal besides)—his helpless children! (a proper number for the occasion,)—all these fascinating themes were dwelt on, one by one, till, moved apparently at our emotion, he dropt his menacing attitude, and, mitigating his voice, assumed a resigned demeanour, of which many of his audience had long since set him the example. He began to look down mournfully, whereas he had a minute ago looked up fiercely—a smile, to the relief of the young ladies, stole over his countenance, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... all its discomforts, which she had not learned the art of mitigating or removing. Coming in, in better spirits perhaps than usual, intending to have a cheerful tea and a cozy chat after it, he would find everything in a state of disturbance, especially his young wife's temper, with plenty ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... 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 ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... gentlemen, there are mitigating circumstances attending this offence, which, in my opinion, should be duly weighed ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... this digression for the sake of mitigating the inference that is likely to be drawn from that characteristic of Dr. Cumming's works to which we have pointed. He is much in the same intellectual condition as that professor of Padua; who, in order to disprove Galileo's discovery of Jupiter's satellites, urged that as there were only seven ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... 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 ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... preamble of the bill stated that his lordship had never been brought to trial; that the act of attainder did not pass the Irish parliament till some months after his decease; and that these were sufficient reasons for mitigating the severity of a measure decreed in unhappy and unfortunate times. The attainder itself, as passed by the Irish parliament, was an instance of contemptible servility to the ruling powers by that corrupt assembly. A bill was introduced in the commons on the 11th of May, for enabling the public ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... to run when a man is dead, the neighbours did not stay away from his wake. They came, and they said many mitigating things across the body with the bandaged jaws and the sly grin, and they reminded each other of this and that queer thing which he had done, for his memory was crusted over with stories of wild, laughable things, and other things which were ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... a new and 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 ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... he 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
... Imperial authorities, little desire to assert any particular point of view. Last, but not least, was the factor of distance, interposing a veil of obscurity between the different communities in the Empire; mitigating minor causes of friction, keeping Colonial politics free from being entangled in ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... It was quite peculiar to the crowded townsmen of that time, and different altogether from the normal experience of any preceding age, that they never saw anything killed, never encountered, save through the mitigating media of book or picture, the fact of lethal violence that underlies all life. Three times in his existence, and three times only, had Bert seen a dead human being, and he had never assisted at the killing of anything bigger ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... when Mary Abingdon was but a child. She gave tips to bell-ringers and carol-singers, and entertained Sunday-school children and 'mothers' in the laundry. These anniversaries, she was wont to remark conscientiously, mitigating the enjoyment of placing handsome presents beside her guests' breakfast plates—these anniversaries were full of sadness. And having suffered fewer bereavements than commonly fall to the lot of most women of her age, she dutifully thought of her elder sister, whom she vaguely remembered as an ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... appear, as an outgrowth of the toiling class, a little emancipated from the gentleman's direct control, the craftsman, the merchant, and the trading sailor, essentially accessory classes, producers of, and dealers in, the accessories of life, and mitigating and clouding only very slightly that ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... the air 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
... confined 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 ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... together, and it is no paradox to affirm that you tend to purify men's thoughts and feelings when you purify the air they breathe.' He supported liberally the movement for establishing coffee-houses, and he looked with great hope to the co-operative movement as averting or mitigating industrial conflicts. 'The subject of co-operation,' he said, 'is in my judgment more important as regards the future of England than nine-tenths of those which are discussed in Parliament, and around which political controversies gather.' As the possessor of one ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... no means recommend, the fundholder would cease to spend his five hundred pounds a year. He would no longer give employment to industry, or put food into the mouths of labourers. This Mr. Southey thinks a fearful evil. But is there no mitigating circumstance? Each of the ten neighbours of our fundholder has fifty pounds a year more than formerly. Each of them will, as it seems to our feeble understandings, employ more industry and feed more mouths than formerly. The sum is exactly the same. It ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... With tearful eyes and a voice broken by sobs, the unhappy and most ill-starred De Wimpffen described his interview and conflict with Von Moltke and Bismarck, and its dire result—the army to surrender as prisoners of war, the officers alone to retain their arms, and by way of mitigating the rigor of these conditions, full permission to return home would be given to any officer, provided he would engage in writing and on honor not to serve again during the war. The generals, save one or two, and these finally acquiesced, felt ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... must be confessed, only provocative of very indirect and long-distance advances. Cephas Cole, to the amazement of every one but his (constitutionally) exasperated mother, was "toning down" the ell of the family mansion, mitigating the lively yellow, and putting another fresh coat of paint on it, for no conceivable reason save that of pleasing the eye of a certain capricious, ungrateful young hussy, who would probably say, when her verdict ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... expense of the State. No human being should be hung on circumstantial evidence, unsupported by positive testimony. If the judgment below is confirmed, then let the murderer be kept in close confinement in the penitentiary for one year, and, if during that time no new evidence or mitigating circumstances arise let him be hung by the neck until he ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... constructively at jobs that were neither sinecures nor routines. There was Calvin Boyd, for instance, who, though barely out of medical school, had discovered a new treatment for typhus, had shipped abroad and was mitigating some of the civilization that the Great Powers had brought to Servia; there was Eugene Bronson, whose articles in The New Democracy were stamping him as a man with ideas transcending both vulgar timeliness and popular hysteria; there was ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... 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 and prospered and was aided from time ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... thrust in from behind, on the contrary, may be furnished with a band or sheath of comparatively soft metal larger than the bore; the gas then acting on the base of the projectile, forces the band through the grooves, sealing the escape, entering the projectile, and, to a great extent, mitigating the erosion of surface. This is, of course, universally known. It is also pretty generally known among artillerists that the effect of the resistance offered by the band or sheathing on the powder is to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • 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 ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... of the enemy in enlisting the savages into a war with a nation desirous of mutual emulation in mitigating its calamities has not been confined to any one quarter. Wherever they could be turned against us no exertions to effect it have been spared. On our southwestern border the Creek tribes, who, yielding to our persevering endeavors, were gradually acquiring more civilized ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 1: James Madison • Edited by James D. Richardson
... words of Mr. 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 the estrangements ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... full of good fortunes, one of bad, it is not Zeus that presides as the dispenser of them, giving to some a gentle and even portion, and to others unmixed streams of evils, but ourselves. For the sensible make their life pleasanter and more endurable by mitigating their sorrows with the consideration of their blessings, while most people, like sieves, let the worst things stick to them while the ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... trouble; and in a case like this, where a prisoner attempted the life of a free settler, his doom was fixed before he was placed at the bar; nothing but his life could expiate for such a crime. Dick well knew this, and also that if there were any mitigating circumstances, his master would spare no trouble in securing his execution; he was not therefore at all surprised that he was sentenced to the extreme rigour of the law. However, death appeared to the miserable culprit only a release from his bodily suffering; ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... Chinese is bound to strike every Anglo-Saxon. They have none of that humanitarian impulse which leads us to devote one per cent. of our energy to mitigating the evils wrought by the other ninety-nine per cent. For instance, we have been forbidding the Austrians to join with Germany, to emigrate, or to obtain the raw materials of industry. Therefore the Viennese have starved, except those ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... progress along another line. Supertax, death duties, and taxes on unearned increment do a little to diminish the wealth of the few: old age pensions, national insurance, and workmen's compensation do something towards mitigating the ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... been the earl himself. He had tried one of his accustomed stratagems to lead the smith to speak to him. For it is well known that either for the purpose of abridging or of mitigating his period of enchantment, he seeks to lead people to accost him. But what, in the event of his succeeding, would befall the person whom he had ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... world enough, but thanks to that mitigating fate which now and again interferes to our advantage, there do come to most of us times and periods of existence which, if they do not quite fulfil all the conditions of ideal happiness, yet go near enough to that end to permit in after days ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... citizens, have a right to see fulfilled, if just and possible? Woman has played for too many centuries the part which Lady Godiva plays in the old legend. It is time that she should not be content with mitigating by her entreaties or her charities the cruelty and greed of men, but exercise her right, as a member of the State, and (as I believe) a member of Christ and a child of ...
— Women and Politics • Charles Kingsley
... earn the reproach of having destroyed a nation by hunger. As things had developed it was impossible for Great Britain to have followed any other policy—adopted, perhaps, in a moment of rashness, but the consequences had to be accepted. It only remained to do the best toward mitigating as far as possible the sufferings of the mass of humanity gathered into the Camps, and this I must maintain that the English Government did better than could have been expected by any who knew South Africa and the immense difficulties which ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... laws, but in derogation of both, and nothing is suggested to excuse or palliate the turpitude of the act. In the absence of any such excuse or palliation there is only room for one inference, and that is that the intent was unlawful and corrupt. Besides, the resolution not only contains no mitigating suggestions, but, on the contrary, it holds up the act complained of as justly obnoxious to censure and reprobation, and thus as distinctly stamps it with impurity of motive as if the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... condition of the slaves on his plantation in French Guiana, his philanthropic thoughts soon turned homeward. He saw France groaning under oppression and the people suffering from a thousand antiquated abuses. Some of these he succeeded in mitigating, in his capacity of member of the Assembly of the Notables, in 1787, but, as nothing of permanent value was accomplished by that body, he urged the convocation of the States General. In this assemblage, which met at Versailles, on May 4, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... unacquainted. His palace was a temple of charity. Hospitality stood at his gate, and invited the stranger and beggar to a plenteous repast. The day he devoted to benevolence, and the night to piety. His revenue was dedicated to the poor and needy; and, not contented with relieving the wants, and mitigating the woes of mankind, he was solicitous, by precept and example, to conduct his little flock to the kingdom of heaven. He died in the ninety-second year of his age, justly revered and lamented by the whole island; while his grave was watered ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various
... integrated 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 independently or in coordination with ...
— National Strategy for Combating Terrorism - February 2003 • United States
... of Huxley seemed to lead to absolute pessimism, but he offered some mitigating considerations. Society remains subject to the cosmic process, but the less as civilisation advances and ethical man is the more ready to combat it. The history of civilisation shows that we have some hope of this, for "when physiology, psychology, ethics, and political science, now ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... 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
... plain rustic cottage by the wayside, of the sort called double, with a signboard over the door; and, the lights within streaming forth and somewhat mitigating the darkness of the morning, I was enabled to decipher the inscription: "The Hunters' Tryst, by Alexander Hendry. Porter, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bad and dangerous type, the head of a gang known to be concerned in gold stealing and burglary as a profession. The penalty was regarded by all parties as most inadequate and the judge himself commented adversely upon the drafting of the law which tended to screen the prisoner. Not one mitigating circumstance was forthcoming! And yet, whilst ignoring a fresh outburst of protest against the detention of Messrs. Sampson and Davies, and whilst the Industrial Commission was exposing the gold thefts and denouncing the ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... experience and wide information to those of limited experience and immature thought, who are unable to give a mental margin for faith and all that it implies; though this wider understanding may lie in the mind of the lecturer mitigating his personal view point, it is ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... 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 ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... feud was still 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 blood, "when he ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... rope must have known when he did so that the result would be harmful to whoever rang the chapel bell this morning. I wish it understood that I have no intention of dealing leniently with the culprit, but, at the same time, a confession, if made now, will have the effect of mitigating his punishment." He paused. Joel turned an astonished look from him to Professor Durkee, who, meeting it, frowned and turned impatiently away. "You have nothing more ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... inclinations of Gladstone had separated the franchise question from their redistribution scheme, which ought to have been an integral part of any Reform Bill capable of meeting the needs of the country. The grievances which such a Bill would aim at mitigating, although less gigantic than those which called for removal at the time of the first Reform Bill, were still serious enough. In 1865 "there was not one elector for each four inhabited houses, and five out of every six adult males were without a vote." [61] But in addition to this ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... its style and contents. Not but that my epistles are always commonplace enough (spirits of Montague and Sevigne, forgive me!), but hitherto I have not really tried to make them so. Now, however, I intend to be stupidly prosy, with malice aforethought, and without one mitigating circumstance, except, perchance, it be the temptations of that above-mentioned ambitious little ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... a campaign of conquest extremely diverting to observe. To Lanyard it seemed that her methods were crude and obvious enough; but it did something toward mitigating the long-drawn boredom of the cruise to watch them work out, as they seemed to invariably, with entire success; and then remark the insouciance with which, another raw scalp dangling from her belt, Liane would address herself to ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... The "hansoms" have seating capacity for but two, and, though convenient and handy beyond any other wheeled thing until the coming of the automobile, the gondola of London was undeniably dangerous to the occupant, and ugly withal, two strongly mitigating features. ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... disastrous to modern society. The morality of strife outranks, in their judgment, the morality of service and sacrifice. The law of Jesus may be permitted to hold some subordinate place; it will be found useful in mitigating the savagery of strife; but as the regulative principle of the industrial order it ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... which defended helpless Christians in the East from persecution for their religion; and we earnestly hope that the humanity and enlightened spirit then so strikingly shown by His Imperial Majesty will now be manifested in checking and mitigating the severe measures directed against ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... most unworthily 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 ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... who had saved 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 measures ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... 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 to the prejudice of the other debtors. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... enthusiastic veneration felt by the Hindoos for this worship is naturally explained by their intense anxiety and desire for having children who might perform those ceremonies to their manes which they firmly and piously believe will have the effect of mitigating their punishment in the world to come. They worship the Lingham, therefore, for the sake of having progeny, and husbands, whose wives are barren, send them to adore that symbol, and, if report be true, the ladies take especial care not ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... stood cooling from her sudden resentment at seeing him there alive when her heart had told her that he must be lying dead in the dust of the river trail. She should not have been so suddenly resentful, she now believed. Perhaps there were mitigating circumstances which he would not stoop to explain unasked. Her heart bounded with the thought; warm blood ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... 'Tis a fine spectacle, apart from all its indissoluble associations of awe and beauty. The mitigating hour softens the austerity of a mountain landscape magnificent in outline, however harsh and severe in detail; and, while it retains all its sublimity, removes much of the savage sternness of the strange and unrivaled ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... the image-worship had never yet reached the wild superstition of the Oriental Christians, the fury of the Iconoclasts excited horror and consternation. The temperate and eloquent apology for sacred pictures, addressed by Gregory II. to the Emperor Leo, had the effect of mitigating the persecution in Italy, where the work of destruction could not be carried out to the same extent as in the Byzantine provinces. Hence it is in Italy only that any important remains of sacred art anterior to the Iconoclast ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... attempts to bolt the offending lozenge, and turning scarlet meanwhile with confusion and coughing, stammered huskily something to the effect that he had "bought the lozenges at a chemist's," which he seemed to consider, for some reason, a mitigating circumstance. ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... 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 ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... 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 ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... reasoned down. It seems incredible in this enlightened era, as the newspapers call it, that any woman should be at once so inhuman and so frivolous as to swear away the life of a fellow-creature upon an idle fancy; and yet, even in regard to this, there were slightly mitigating conditions. Consider only the position of that handful of Europeans in this vast wilderness, as it then was. The forests came down to the sea-shore, and brought with them all the weird fancies, terrors and awful forebodings which ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... go out of fashion in so short a time?" persisted innocent Frederic, bent upon mitigating her sorrow. "If my memory serves me aright, I have seen ladies wear the same ball-dress several times in the ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... to this, the rarity of its atmosphere would naturally be expected to decrease the effective temperature at the planet's surface, since an atmosphere acts somewhat like the glass cover of a hot-house in retaining the solar heat which has penetrated it. It has been calculated that, unless there are mitigating circumstances of which we know nothing, the average temperature at the surface of Mars must be far below the freezing-point of water. To this it is replied that the possible mitigating circumstances spoken of evidently exist in fact, because we can ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... equipped from the armories of the State, their churches and societies built and supported largely by their neighbors. What is the testimony of the courts? In penal legislation we have steadily reduced felonies to misdemeanors, and have led the world in mitigating punishment for crime, that we might save, as far as possible, this dependent race from its own weakness. In our penitentiary record sixty per cent of the prosecutors are negroes, and in every court the negro criminal strikes the colored juror, ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... whose barbarism had been for centuries the curse of the neighboring countries, and at the same time communicating to the cruel savages, who shed the blood of their enemies less in the battle than in the sacrifice, the bland and mitigating ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... so far 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. There is no allegation that the victims by any lawless or disorderly ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... complaints, as being trivial, or based upon prejudice or passion. Upon their recommendation, the courts discharged 7922 persons guilty of first offences, and who were penitent, or who had committed the offence under mitigating circumstances. They also provided 4130 discharged convicts with permanent situations, and furnished 18,307 other discharged convicts with board, money, railroad tickets, or clothing, to help them to better ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe |
