"Enormity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Fayette had purloined from the store of the workmen who were excavating for the new wing of the building. In a moment more the fuse would have burned unnoticed to its fatal end, and an awful crime, of whose enormity the dull criminal had no real comprehension, ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... hands, were hastened away to their execution with but the mockery of a trial. Doubtless Berkeley felt himself justified in this severity. To him rebellion against the King was not merely a crime, it was a hideous sacrilege. Those guilty of such an enormity should receive no mercy. But this cannot explain or excuse the coarse brutality and savage joy with which he sent his victims to the scaffold. It is impossible not to feel that many of these executions ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... me three years ago by a valued servant and friend, my man Guiseppe. He bought it for my birthday; spent ten of his hard-earned dollars on it, foolish, faithful creature that he is. What could I do? It was,—the enormity you perceive. I was obliged to give it a place of honour,—fortunately, I seldom use this room when I am alone; I was forced to praise its tint, which I abominate, and its shape, which is wholly detestable. What would you? I could not wound my good Guiseppe; the vase has remained, ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... forty-eight hours had suddenly presented themselves to the girl's mind in all their enormity. It occurred to her for the first time that she had not only thrown away the chance of her life, but that she had been guilty of black ingratitude to her benefactors. And her folly in permitting the fancy to rove towards Archibald Dorrimore, for whose foppishness she had a contempt, ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... and driven out the French garrison, and I resolved to proceed there, as it was more advisable than being continually in danger of being picked up by the French stragglers, who were committing every enormity that could ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... with, every illusion of the "high origin" of man destroyed; to come into such close contact with nothing but the beast in man had been too much for him, for he had been brought up by idealists. He was staggered by the enormity of the hypocrisy displayed in the intercourse between men and women; it was a revelation to him to find that the inmost substance of that indescribable womanliness was nothing but the fear of consequences. But supposing he had married the doctor's daughter, or the gardener's little girl? Then ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... embarrassed. If I had flogged him, he would have got over it a good deal sooner than I should. That sort of boy does not mind castigation any more than he does tearing his trousers in the briers. If I had treated him with kindness, and conciliated him with grapes, showing him the enormity of his offense, I suppose he would have come the next night, and taken the remainder of the grapes. The truth is, that the public morality is lax on the subject of fruit. If anybody puts arsenic or gunpowder ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of the child's sex to Cranch, but whether the next morning or a week later he did not know. He fancied, too, that Cranch had also confessed some trifling deception to him, but what, or why, he could not remember; so much greater seemed the enormity of his own transgression. He thought Cranch had put in his hands the letter he had written to the Father Superior, saying that his secret was still safe, and that he had been spared the avowal and ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... will not be surprised to learn that after a day so filled with events and emotions, Oscar, in spite of the enormity of his offences, slept the sleep of the just. The next day he did not find the world so changed as he thought it; he was surprised to be very hungry,—he who the night before had regarded himself as unworthy ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... about anything else?" I inquired. "Yes," he rejoined; "he asks me about my father and my mother." "What does he ask you about them?" "He asks me if they do dirty actions," said the boy. Now, here the enormity and vileness of the confessional peeped out. Here one can see how the confessor can look into every hearth, and into every heart, in Rome. The priests had dragged this young boy into their den, and taught him to play the spy on his father and mother. The ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... great enough for the enormity of the crime; and if it remain unpunished, the most sacred ...
— The Miser (L'Avare) • Moliere
... that men had been taught implicitly to believe, long before they knew one word that was in it. They had been taught that to doubt the truth of this book, to examine it, even, was a crime of such enormity that it could not be forgiven, either in this world ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the more heinous for the name it bears. Every sin the people of God commit is a provocation of Jehovah; not only in the act of disobedience itself, but also in the transgression of the second commandment. The enormity of the sin is magnified by the conditions that make it a blasphemy of God's name and an occasion of offense to others. Paul says in Romans 2, 24: "For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you." ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... the severer punishment dwelt on the enormity of the offence. It was "one of the highest crimes man could commit," and "a captain of a ship engaged in this traffic was guilty of murder."[34] The law of God punished the crime with death, and any one would rather be hanged than be enslaved.[35] ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... wrath against him straightway vanished, and gave place to the most tender and unreasonable compassion. He was the Pen of old days once more restored to her, the frank and affectionate, the generous and tender-hearted. She at once took side with Helen against Doctor Portman, when he outcried at the enormity of Pen's transgressions. Debts? what were his debts? they were a trifle; he had been thrown into expensive society by his uncle's order, and of course was obliged to live in the same manner as the young gentlemen ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Swine, and sometimes the more gentle race of dogs and cats, are guilty of this horrid and preposterous murder. When I hear now and then of an abandoned mother that destroys her offspring, I am not so much amazed, since reason perverted, and the bad passions let loose, are capable of any enormity; but why the parental feelings of brutes, that usually flow in one most uniform tenor should sometimes be so extravagantly diverted, I leave to abler philosophers than myself ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... him; and she would die a maid, loveless and childless, she declared, rather than have the guilt of a deception of such magnitude on her soul. Moreover, where were the means to be procured for executing the enormity? There was nothing of the sort, she was sure, in Trader Tom Jenkins's shop at Scalawag Run. There was nothing of the sort to be had anywhere short of St. John's; and as for sanctioning a plan so bold as sending ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... cold blood in consequence of the failure of Saladin to fulfil the terms of the capitulation; and the palliative plea that the massacre was perpetrated in the heat of the assault can scarcely be urged in extenuation of this enormity. While many historians have laid the blame on King Richard, the historian Michaud believes it rather to have been decided on in a council of the ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... The enormity of the thing had struck him, almost dazzling him with its implications. Carson laughed bitterly and waved him to a chair, ...
— Daughters of Doom • Herbert B. Livingston
... friend and ally. Some writers have found a difficulty in understanding how Steele could have so blundered. One might, perhaps, whisper in confidence to the discreet, that even editors are mortal, and that Steele was conceivably capable of the enormity of reading papers carelessly. Philips was furious, and hung up a birch in Button's Coffee-house, declaring that he would apply it to his tormentor should he ever show his nose in the room. As Philips was celebrated for skill with the sword, ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... Susie, 'because he interests me enormously. There's no place like Paris for meeting queer folk. Sooner or later you run across persons who believe in everything. There's no form of religion, there's no eccentricity or enormity, that hasn't its votaries. Just think what a privilege it is to come upon a man in the twentieth century who ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... all; he and his apologists will insolently tell you, that you are the guilty ones who have tightened the bonds of the slave, increased his hardships, and blighted his prospect of freedom, by your mistaken kindness, in showing the slaveholder the enormity of his sin! Can this be so? Have we any direct influence over his human chattels? None. Then who is it that rivets the chain and increases the already heavy burden of the crushed slave, but he who has the power to do with him as he wills? He it ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... morning Dr. Rowlands spoke to his boarders on the previous day's discovery, and in a few forcible vivid words set before them, the enormity of the offence. He ended by announcing that the boys who were caught would be birched,—"except the elder ones, Bull and Brigson, who will bring me one hundred lines every hour of the half-holidays till further notice. ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... neither consoled nor convinced. Stover was too firmly persuaded of the enormity of his offense and the depth of ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... is that of a Broker, leading me often into Taverns about the Exchange, has given me occasion to observe a certain Enormity, which I shall here submit to your Animadversion. In three or four of these Taverns, I have, at different times, taken notice of a precise Set of People with grave Countenances, short Wiggs, black Cloaths, or dark Camlet trimmd with Black, and mourning Gloves and ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... been appreciated by even the most enlightened and conservative people of the North. Only those who actually suffered the baneful effects of the unrestrained working of those laws can ever realize their full enormity. The radical Congress was not content to impose upon the Southern States impartial suffrage to whites and blacks alike. They were not content even to disfranchise the leading rebels, according to the terms of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... this is, by voluntary associations in a foreign community, seeking to excite public sentiment against the perpetrators of the evil; exhibiting the enormity of the crime in full measure, without palliation, excuse or sympathy, by means of periodicals and agents circulating, not in the community committing the sin, but in that which does not ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... resolved to do penance suitable to the greatness of [his] Sins. For the People of that country have this Naturally, that as they are more prone to evil thro' Ignorance than Men of other Countries,* so are they more ready and willing to do penance, when they are made sensible of the Enormity of their Sins. When the Bishop wou'd then enjoin him such penance as he thought reasonable, the Soldier answered: "Since you say that I have offended God so grievously, I will undergo a penance more grievous than any other whatsoever. ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... of blood. The explanation we got invariably was that the Arab who owned these victims was enraged at losing his money by the slaves becoming unable to march, and vented his spleen by murdering them; but I have nothing more than common report in support of attributing this enormity ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... comforted was out of the question. The case admitted of no comfort. Lady Bertram did not think deeply, but, guided by Sir Thomas, she thought justly on all important points; and she saw, therefore, in all its enormity, what had happened, and neither endeavoured herself, nor required Fanny to advise her, to think little of ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Robberies in the streets were of daily occurrence, in consequence of the immense sums, in paper, which people carried about with them. Assassinations were also frequent. One case in particular fixed the attention of the whole of France, not only on account of the enormity of the offence, but of the rank and high connexions ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... people in the South, he says, are totally destitute of any national feeling. The same bigoted sectionalism that swayed them prior to the war is almost universal. Nor have they any feeling of the enormity of treason as a crime. To them it is not odious, as very naturally it would not be, under the policy which foregoes the punishment of traitors, and gives so many of them the chief places of power in the South. And their hatred of ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... My sense of the enormity of London increased with the twilight, and began to prevail a little against my intense personal wretchedness. I remember wastes of building enterprise, interminable vistas of wide dark streets, with passing trams, and here and there at strategic corners coruscating groups of shops. ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... from the enormity of the betrayal to that important point. The time element—that was the primary concern now that the damage was done, and ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... they should prove only a 'savor of death unto death.' She listens to my discourse, on most occasions, with a commendable patience, and seems kindly disposed toward my efforts. Still I could wish much to see in her a little more burdensome sense of sin and of the enormity of her transgressions. We hope that she may yet be brought to a realizing sense of her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... have great respect for the judges of their courts and the latter show much wisdom and discretion in their decisions, though they do not always place the white man's estimate upon the relative enormity of offenses. I was present at a session of the Cheyenne river court in 1892, when two parties accused with crime were brought before it. One was charged with stealing a picket pin of the value of thirteen cents and he got thirty days in the guard-house, ...
— Sioux Indian Courts • Doane Robinson
... drove a knife through Mr. Eden's heart. He stood among them white as a sheet. He could not speak; but his pale face was a silent protest against this enormity. His look of horror and righteous indignation chilled and made uneasy ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... asks you why you have left the Pope's niece, take care not to tell her the reason. She will be pleased with your discretion. In short, do your best to expiate the enormity of your offence." ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... enormity, struck him a blow that made him reel, for a moment, till he could grasp at his self-control. He had made no sign, and he made none now as he folded the sheet ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... brought before the same tribunal, composed of his accomplices, or rather his creatures, and by them condemned to die. Thus did experience confirm the general observation, that the multiplicity and enormity of punishments announces an approaching revolution. The torrents of blood which tyrants shed, are, in the end, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... disturbance of mind provoked by self-torturing speculations on the subject of the murder. If Mirabel was innocent, who was guilty? The false wife, without pity and without shame—or the brutal husband, who looked capable of any enormity? What was her future to be? How was it all to end? In the despair of that bitter moment—seeing her devoted old servant looking at her with kind compassionate eyes—Emily's troubled spirit sought refuge in impetuous self-betrayal; the very betrayal which ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... swallowed a poker. He is shy himself, and the cause of shyness in others. He is stiff, not because he is proud, but because he is shy; and he cannot shake it off, even if he would. Indeed, we should not be surprised to find that even the clever writer who describes the English Philistine in all his enormity of awkward manner and absence of grace, were himself as ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... too small and never a fit, was now yellow on the shoulders where the sun had faded the analine dye, and his trousers were so tight that they clung to the tops of his great boots, exposing his huge feet in all their enormity of shapeless housing. His large hands protruded from his sleeves and were made still more noticeable by his evident loss ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... no reward could induce him to be guilty of such an enormity, and followed it up by so skilful an allusion to the progressing youth of his master that the latter swore he was right, and that he could dance better than he could at thirty, and to prove it executed, with extraordinary agility for ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... pagodas, cupolas, kiosks, and turrets as grace the roofs of our office buildings! Architects evidently look upon such adornments as compensations! The more hideous the structure, the finer its dome! Having perpetrated a blot upon the city that cries to heaven in its enormity, the repentant owner adds a pagoda or two, much in the same spirit, doubtless, as prompts an Italian peasant to hang a votive heart on some friendly shrine when a crime lies ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... this mode of life, that were I to be possessed of a plantation, and my slaves treated as in general they are here, never could I rest in peace; my sleep would be perpetually disturbed by a retrospect of the frauds committed in Africa, in order to entrap them; frauds surpassing in enormity everything which a common mind can possibly conceive. I should be thinking of the barbarous treatment they meet with on ship-board; of their anguish, of the despair necessarily inspired by their situation, when torn from their friends and relations; when delivered into the hands of a people ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... exhaustion, I rose and looked about. All signs of the crime had been obliterated from the garage. "I must be crazy!" I thought, as the enormity of the thing rushed on me. "I wonder why I did it? And I wonder whether I can forget it some day—maybe after ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... sleep for a night in a tree. Then there was a devil-dog, a little black-and-tan terrier in a blanket gorgeous and belled, whose duty it was to stand on the top of the coach and bark incessantly to keep the driver fully aroused to the enormity of his occupation. To have this cur silenced either by strangulation or ordinary clubbing, Coleman struggled with his dragoman as Jacob struggled with the angel, but in the first place, the dragoman was a Greek whose tongue could go quite drunk, a Greek who ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... Tophet!" bawled Flagg, having made sure that the enormity he was viewing was not a dream. He cut his whip under the bellies of his horses, one stroke to right and the other to left, and the animals went over the cliff and down the sharp slope, skating and floundering ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... lawyer after Sterne's pattern, but a very solid, substantial notary of Paris, one of your estimable men who do a stupid thing pompously, set down a foot heavily upon your private corn, and then ask what in the world there is to cry out about? If, by accident, they come to know the full extent of the enormity, "Upon my word," cry they, "I hadn't a notion!" This was a well-intentioned ass, in short, who could see nothing in life but deeds ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... with the vilest arts of the gambler by profession, and, having become an adept in his despicable science, to practise it habitually as a means of increasing my already enormous income at the expense of the weak-minded among my fellow-collegians. Such, nevertheless, was the fact. And the very enormity of this offence against all manly and honourable sentiment proved, beyond doubt, the main if not the sole reason of the impunity with which it was committed. Who, indeed, among my most abandoned associates, would not rather ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Grimby on their hands a client who seemed so entirely alone. What, Mr. Palford asked himself, would he do in the enormity of Temple Barholm, which always struck one as being a place almost without limit. But that, after all, was neither here nor there. There he was. You cannot undertake to provide a man with relatives if he has none, or with acquaintances if people do not want to ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... mischief on the one hand and misery on the other,—gods, demons, genii, goblins, wraiths; and to flatter or propitiate these, especially to enlist their tutelary offices, they commit or connive at crimes of fantastic enormity. ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... condemned as rebels; also from free citizens, some fighting for hire (auctorati), others from a depraved ambition; at last even knights and senators were exhibited,—a disgrace of which the first tyrant was naturally the first inventor.[670] In the end, dwarfs, and even women, fought; an enormity prohibited by Severus. Of these the most to be pitied undoubtedly were the barbarian captives; and, to this species a Christian writer[671] justly applies the epithet "innocent," to distinguish them from the professional gladiators. Aurelian ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... two points I have because my time will very soon expire, but I must be allowed to say that Judge Douglas recurs again, as he did upon one of two other occasions, to the enormity of Lincoln—an insignificant individual like Lincoln—upon his ipse dixit charging a conspiracy upon a large number of members of Congress, the Supreme Court, and two Presidents, to nationalize slavery. I want to say that, in the ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... The enormity of the charge dumbfounded Calhoun. He could scarcely believe his ears. He began to protest, but was cut short by Conway, who ordered the Lieutenant to take an escort of ten men and to conduct Calhoun straightway ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... rallied together. The survivors in France began to count their numbers and marshal their forces for self-preservation. From every part of Protestant Europe a cry of horror and execration simultaneously arose in view of this crime of unparalleled enormity. In many places the Catholics themselves seemed appalled in contemplation of the deed they had perpetrated. Words of sympathy were sent to these martyrs to a pure faith from many of the Protestant kingdoms, with pledges of determined and efficient aid. The Protestants rapidly gained ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... was the state of his mind when his officers appeared with the petition from his men. In proportion as they felt the extremities into which they were driven, the offense he had committed glared with tenfold enormity in his eyes; and, in a wild despair, he told them "they might do as they would, but for his part, the moment they opened the gates to the enemy, that moment should be the last of his life. He, that was the son-in-law ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... world's most remarkable homicides? I'm sorry they never carried the thing out; for I cannot conceive of two minds more fitted to the task. They would have dressed every event in the grimmest and most subtle horror; why, the soul would have shuddered at each enormity as shaped and presented ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... full enormity of the cant about Penny Dreadfuls can best be perceived by travelling to and fro for a week between London and Paris and observing the books read by those who travel with first-class tickets. I think a fond belief in Ivanhoe-within-the-reach-of-all ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... have heard, Have read bold fables of enormity, Devised to make men wonder, and confirm The abhorrence of our nature; but this hardness Transcends all ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... expatiate on every sort of rustic enormity of which he accused Benjie. He had been suspected of snaring partridges—was detected by Joshua himself in liming singing-birds—stood fully charged with having worried several cats, by aid of a lurcher which attended him, and which was as lean, and ragged, and mischievous, as his master. Finally, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... by our fathers' holy Fear, Why must I hear Your insults, while in life on earth I stand, O ye that flow In wealth, rich burghers of my bounteous land? O fount of Dirce, and thou spacious grove, Where Thebe's chariots move! Ye are my witness, though none else be nigh, By what enormity of lawless doom, Without one friendly sigh, I go to the strong mound of yon strange tomb,— All hapless, having neither part nor room With those who live or ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... dwindles into novels. How ignoble seems the current material of London literary life, for instance, compared with the noble simplicity which, a half-century ago, made the Lake Country an enchanted land forever! Is it worth a voyage to England to sup with Thackeray in the Pot Tavern? Compare the "enormity of pleasure" which De Quincey says Wordsworth derived from the simplest natural object with the serious protest of Wilkie Collins against the affectation of caring about Nature at all. "Is it not strange", says this most unhappy man, "to see how little real hold the objects of the natural ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... him began the greatness of Prussia as a military power. So far as a life devoted to the military and political aggrandizement of a country makes a man a patriot, Frederic the Great will receive the plaudits of those men who worship success, and who forget the enormity of unscrupulous crimes in the outward glory which immediately resulted,—yea, possibly of contemplative statesmen who see in the rise of a new power an instrument of the Almighty for some inscrutable end. To me his character and deeds have no fascination, any more than the fortunate career ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... one sheet posters, which looked to the natives bigger than one hundred sheet stands would in this country. Next morning the inhabitants stood aghast at the audacity of the Americans in doing such an unheard of thing. They were summoned before the Governor and the enormity of their offense solemnly revealed to them; but owing to the plea of ignorance of the law, they were discharged, and ordered to take down the bills as quickly as possible. In obedience to the mandate of the Governor, they employed a sleepy-eyed native to do the ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... she added, suddenly conscious of the enormity John Sibley was committing by squeezing ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... bounded aloft several feet, and then lit. It was empty! When it is remembered that in the old buffalo days the daily ration per head at the Company's prairie posts was eight pounds of fresh meat, which was all eaten, its equivalent being two pounds of pemmican, the enormity of this Gargantuan feast may be imagined. But we ourselves were not bad hands at the trencher. In fact, we were always hungry. So I do not reproduce the foregoing facts as a reproach, but rather as a meagre tribute to the prowess of the great of ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... cruel, it is monstrous, it is heartrending!" gasped Tricotrin, when he grasped the enormity of his failure; "but, light of my life, why should you blame me for this villainy ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... innocence as to any particular offence of which he may be suspected.... And should the perpetrator of any mischief, in order to avoid detection, deny his guilt, then may the Society require any student to give evidence on his honor touching this foul enormity that the college may not be polluted by the presence of those that have showed themselves equally regardless of the laws of honour, the principles of morality and ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... last, his passion had begun to fold its wings, and he grew dimly aware of a beating at the door of the solitary chamber in which he sat. He knew nothing of the enormity of which he was guilty—presenting unsought the city of Antwerp with a glorious phantasia. He did not know that only upon grand, solemn, world-wide occasions, such as a king's birthday or a ball at the Hotel de Ville, was such music on the card. When he flung the door to, it had closed ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... against him, not even if he is friendless and homeless. Again, no youthful prisoner under twenty-one years of age, no matter how bad his record, is allowed the benefit of Borstal training unless he, too, be sound in mind and body. This is not only an enormity, but it is also a great absurdity; for it ultimately fills our prisons with weaklings, and assures the ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... He was seen abroad clad in a ruffled shirt, a red and blue uniform, with pantaloons and gaiters to match. He was belted with dirks and pistols, and wore a watch with enormous length of chain, and most glaring ornaments, all probably the spoils of murder. So habited, he strutted, in the enormity of his cruelty in view of the ill-fated captives of the Indians, like the peacock spreading his morning plumage. There is little doubt that his capricious acts of saving the few that were spared through his intercession, were modified results ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... not prevail upon him to return home with them. The envoys carried a letter to Alexis which his father had written with his own hand, representing to him, in strong terms, the impropriety and wickedness of his conduct, and the enormity of the crime which he had committed against his father by his open rebellion against his authority, and denouncing against him, if he persisted in his wicked course, the judgment of God, who had threatened in his Word to punish disobedient children ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... well that he was setting before her the enormity of her offence: she stood still with her lips parted. He went on rehearsing the crimes of the cardinal: how he had been educated by the King's high bounty: how the King had offered him the Archbishopric of York: how he had the rather fled to the Bishop of Rome: how he ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... remains than to clear up the darkness still spread over the Spectre's History, and inform you that when living, Beatrice bore the name of las Cisternas. She was the great Aunt of your Grandfather: In quality of your relation, her ashes demand respect from you, though the enormity of her crimes must excite your abhorrence. The nature of those crimes no one is more capable of explaining to you than myself: I was personally acquainted with the holy Man who proscribed her nocturnal riots ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... civilian. He could not conceive even a battle, much less a campaign. To the suburbs the war was nothing but a suburban squabble. To the miner and navvy it was only a series of bayonet fights between German champions and English ones. The enormity of it was quite beyond most of us. Its episodes had to be reduced to the dimensions of a railway accident or a shipwreck before it could produce any effect on our minds at all. To us the ridiculous bombardments of Scarborough and Ramsgate were colossal ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... would be useless to make Mrs. Urmy understand the enormity of her offence against good taste, and presently her ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... rhetoric were thunderstruck by the audacity of Racine, who in the 'Dream of Athalie' had spoken of dogs as dogs—molossi would have been better—and they advised young poets not to imitate this license of genius. Accordingly the first poet who wrote bell (cloche) committed an enormity; he exposed himself to the risk of being cut by his friends and ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... pearls. Mrs. Beaumont distinctly thought that this was not the sort of dress to dash into the faces of a quiet country party. It was like letting off rockets at a five o'clock tea. Only a woman could dissect the enormity of it; ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... knew the life of the workingmen better than these people, and saw more clearly than they the enormity of the task they assumed. She could look upon them with the somewhat melancholy indulgence of a grown-up person toward children who play man and wife without understanding the drama ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... were dismissed, and all the students were disposed to laugh at the mildness of the punishment, compared with the enormity of the offence. ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... would have thought of trying to abolish all religion by decree. Once only, by the arbitrary folly of the Ashikaga shogun, the imperial cult had been seriously interfered with; and the social earthquake consequent upon that division of the imperial house, apprised the usurpers of the enormity of their blunder.... Only the integrity of the imperial succession, the uninterrupted maintenance of the imperial worship, made it possible even for Iyeyasu to clamp together the indissoluble units ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... confinement might perhaps be beneficial," said Bonaparte. "It will enable you, Waldo, to reflect on the enormity of the sin you have committed against our Father in heaven. And you may also think of the submission you owe to those who are older and wiser than you are, and whose duty it is to check ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... an actor!" shouted the marquis, his anger again breaking forth. "Has he not already dragged an honored name in the dust? A stroller! A player!" The marquis fairly gasped at the enormity of the offense; for a moment he was speechless, and then asked feebly: "What caused him to take such ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... "nine days' wonder" is the excess to which gaming is carried among the higher circles of this country; but I much doubt whether the present expositions of such enormity in a neighbouring nation will work ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various
... retort to that, or begin to think of a reply, or even assimilate the full enormity of Fay's statement, he was grabbed from behind and frog-marched away from Fay and something that felt remarkably like the muzzle of a large-caliber gun was shoved in the ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... was more dissonant, his neckcloth more alarming, his jewellery more prominent, his hat closer shaved and the flower in his mouth less like a flower than ever. How came I there? Why, because I was piqued, and hurt, and reckless. I was capable of almost any enormity. John's manner to me in the train had well-nigh driven me mad. So quiet, so composed, so cold, so kind and considerate, but a kindness and consideration such as that with which one treats a child. He seemed to feel he was my superior; he seemed even to soothe and pity me. I would have ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... afterwards exclaimed at a council of five called to discuss the enormity of the doctor's conduct and his growing record of outrages upon humanity. "To extract a portion of the intestines was madness and murder, for who can exist without intestines as God made them?—and his effrontery to put the blame upon the women who in the tenderness ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... be given jurisdiction over any man who kills or attempts to kill the President or any man who by the Constitution or by law is in line of succession for the Presidency, while the punishment for an unsuccessful attempt should be proportioned to the enormity of the offense ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt
... to which we were reduced, when envoys were sent into Holland to try and bring about peace. The picture is exact, faithful, and not overcharged. It was necessary to present it as it was, in order to explain the extremity to which we were reduced, the enormity of the concessions which the King made to obtain peace, and the visible miracle of Him who sets bounds to the seas, by which France was allowed to escape from the hands of Europe, resolved ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... working of its own cure. As seamen improve, punishment will become less necessary; and as the character of officers is raised, they will be less ready to inflict it; and, still more, the infliction of it upon intelligent and respectable men, will be an enormity which will not be tolerated by public opinion, and by juries, who are the pulse of the body politic. No one can have a greater abhorrence of the infliction of such punishment than I have, and a stronger conviction that severity is bad ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... riding along the brink, and looking down at various points on the sublime expanse. Nevertheless, a descent into the Canon is essential for a proper estimate of its details, and one can never realize the enormity of certain cliffs and the extent of certain valleys, till he has crawled like a maimed insect at their base and looked thence upward to the narrowed sky. Yet such an investigation of the Canon is, after all, merely like going ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... larger and larger, even as you may see a small circle in the water widen into enormity, if you disturb the equanimity of the surface by the obtrusion of ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... The two words came slowly and distinctly from her lips, as though she were trying to make clear to him the enormity of his speech. Then she drew herself up proudly to her full height, and a wonderful smile ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... her country and her friends, adhered to me through good and evil report—and I prepared for her a cruel death! Dreadful contrast! Who shall describe the shame, the sorrow, the humiliation, of the ingrate whose crime has risen to the fearful altitude of this enormity; and who, by the tenderness and love of his devoted victim, is forced to turn his eye on the grim reward of death for love, riches, and life? Gentle, beloved, injured Espras! that emaciated form, these trembling limbs, these sunken eyes, and these weak and whispering ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... still left in the capital realize that the national life itself is at stake and accept the inevitable losses of a successful military occupation. There is a grim dignity everywhere. There are no false ideas as to the enormity of the struggle for existence. A great many Germans, in fact, realizing that it is nearly the whole world against Germany, do not believe that the Fatherland can survive. But they are determined that while there is a living German so ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... at a small eating-house; and, as nothing is more offensive to the Spaniards than drunkenness, I had much ado to apologise for this step. Yet they admit of gallantry in the utmost excess, thus only exchanging one enormity ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... less than the simple spoliation of all those who came under its provisions at the time. Matthew O'Connor has furnished some instances of its workings, which may bring into stronger light the enormity of ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... was on his feet did the Monitor of the Gold-Fish Bowl appreciate the enormity of the mission he had undertaken. The other children began to understand, and watched his struggle for words and breath with sympathy or derision, as their natures prompted. But there are no words in which one may politely mention ineffective safety-pins to one's glass of fashion. Morris's ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... and punishments unjust. The ruin of Liberty overthrows all order and all police, confounds vice and virtue, authorises every monstrous infamy, extinguishes the last spark of shame and remorse, degrades and disfigures beyond recovery the whole human race. A doctrine of such enormity as this ought not to be examined in the schools; it ought to be punished by the magistrates."[187] Of course, this was exactly what the Jesuits said about a belief in God, about revelation, and about the institutions of the church. To take away these, they said, is to ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... you! Are you not afraid I shall be angry one of these days, dear!!? The gentlemen were equally concerned in this last enormity. Poor Jemmy, or Jammy, with his devotion and tenderness that soothed, and his high spirit that supported the weaker vessel, was as funny to our male as to our female guests—so there. I saw but one that understood him, and did ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... police, indicates a morbid disposition of the mind—a desire to be familiar with crime; for it is necessary to detect it successfully, to come in contact frequently with the criminal. In consequence, by familiarity, crime loses its enormity: the police officer sees how seldom the perpetrator is detected; how often, when detected, he escapes unwhipped of justice; he connives at some petty offence, in the hope of entrapping the criminal in some more flagrant act, and tampers with crime, till the little moral sensibility ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... talk was over before any of them realized the enormity of Anne's contention, and Anne and Justin had departed. But both the old doctor and the lawyer agreed with Martin that it looked as if Anne was right, and when the family was alone again, and had had the time to digest the matter, they felt as if a thunderbolt ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... That is just where you are to come in, papa thinks so much of you—I want you to sound Paul's praises in his ear—to prepare him for what must come.' Was ever rejected lover burdened with such a task? Its enormity kept me still. 'Sydney, you have always been my friend,—my truest, dearest friend. When I was a little girl you used to come between papa and me, to shield me from his wrath. Now that I am a big girl ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... first shock of the enormity that I should be her executioner, I made my resolve: to drop shot, too, at the moment after she dropped shot, so disposing my body, that it would fall half upon her, and half by her, so that we might be close always: and that would not be so ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... Her mind seemed to dread a wicked or deceitful thing; and in all her intercourse with her parents and her young associates there was a noble frankness which opened to her the hearts of all. The earliest lessons of her childhood were calculated to impress her mind with the enormity of all falsehood and the value of truth; and as she grew up to womanhood she was distinguished for this ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... chuckled at the enormity of the joke. "First rate! We'll have incendiary meetings!" He pulled an elaborately armorial watch from his enfolding furs. "I'm so sorry, but I must say good-bye—this is my street," he explained. Millner, with ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... result, Mr. Anthony says, he saw a score or more of people killed. Women became hysterical and prayed in the streets, while men sat on the curbing, appearing to be dazed. It was twenty minutes before those in the vicinity seemed to realize the enormity of the catastrophe. The crowds became larger and in the public squares of the city and in empty lots ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... some way behind four of la Garda were trying to find him. Rodriguez' mind, which was looking at life from the point of view of a judge, changed somewhat at this thought. He reflected next that, for the prevention of crime, to make Morano see the true nature of his enormity so that he should never commit it again might after all be as good as killing him. So what we call his better nature, his calmer judgment, decided him now to talk to Morano and not to kill him: but Morano, looking back upon this merciful ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... to recover his self-possession, and to walk in the storm as other men did. But in proportion as his composure returned the enormity of his crime became more apparent to him, and the word written in red letters became so bright that he felt as if every passer-by must read it, unless he dropt his eyes to prevent their seeing through them into ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... situation. And the situation was this: Canterbury had kicked off and gained over thirty yards without losing possession of the ball! But in one way that play was ill-advised. Brimfield had stood all sorts of jokes and pranks from the enemy with fairly good grace, but this enormity was too much. Brimfield was peeved! More than that, she was really angry! And, being angry, she forgot that for twenty minutes she had been outplayed and started in then and there to administer a licking to the obstreperous ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... against any who questioned their authority. Hildebrand boasts (Ep. vii, 23) that, when William of Normandy sent envoys to ask Pope Alexander to sanction his unscrupulous invasion of England, and the Papal Court was itself too sensible of the enormity to give its sanction, he (Hildebrand) overbore the wavering Pope and forced him to bless the enterprise; and, when he had in his turn mounted the Papal throne, he vehemently claimed that his action had made ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... of exterminating me. But, since I have reason to believe that no sufficient opportunity has been afforded you of realising the enormity of your conduct, I rally the profoundness of nobility which I discover within me—I calm myself. I go further, I explain. Living in retirement, you may not have learned that I am in Naples. I followed your cousin here—Madame de Vallorbes. ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... against my own will." Halldor went home after that, and the men he had sent for came crowding up to the place. Thorstein was of the wrothest, and wanted forthwith to make an onset on Halldor. Thorkell bade him not to do so, "for that is the greatest enormity at such a season as this; but when this season wears off, I shall not stand in the way of his and ours clashing together." Halldor said he was given to think he would not fail in being ready for them. After that they rode away and talked much together of this ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... goods. The cool, open, impudent manner in which these fellows spoke of such transactions, fairly astounded me. They must have thought I was in jail for some crime similar to their own, or they would not have talked so freely before a stranger. These chaps seemed to value a man by the enormity and number of ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... reform must combine patience for the enormity of the task and vigilance for our fundamental interest and values. We will continue to urge Russia and the other states to press ahead with economic reforms, and we will seek to cooperate with Russia to solve regional problems while insisting that, if Russian troops operate ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William J. Clinton • William J. Clinton
... Dyak tribe are administered by the chief and the two principal men. They have no fixed code, nor any standard of punishment, each case of crime being judged according to its enormity. In the event of murder in their own tribe, the murderer suffers death by decapitation, provided he be in fault. Theft is punished by fine, and adultery (stated as a heinous offense) by severe beating ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... no further obligations toward her! I am free to act as I think best. Lestocq, I will be no nun, but an empress! You now have my word, and are at liberty to make all necessary arrangements. If it must be done, let it be done quickly and unhesitatingly. I have yet to-day the courage to dare any enormity, therefore ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... of this, to hope that it might not be altogether false. Could any girl loving such a man not have had some such hope? But then the stories of these revelries became worse and worse, and it was dinned into her ears that these doings had been running on in all their enormity before that day of his banishment. And so, silently and sadly, with no outspoken word either to mother or brother, she had ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... who made particular inquiries on this subject, ascertained that the total amount, including cellars and closets, capable of receiving a bed, was fifteen thousand.] chambers, were to take fire—for a considerable space of time the fire would be retarded by the mere enormity of extent which it would have to traverse. But there would come at length a critical moment, at which the maximum of the retarding effect having been attained, the bulk and volume of the flaming mass would ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... and absurd as I admitted them to be. My first impulse—and it was a very strong one—was to take Mr Austin into my confidence, to unfold to him my suspicions and the circumstances which had given rise to them, frankly admitting at the same time their apparent enormity, and then to put the question to him whether, in his opinion, there was the slightest possibility of those ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... What if it were SHE who was dead! If she were going to die—to die soon—and leave him free! The sensation of standing there, in that warm familiar room, and looking at her, and wishing her dead, was so strange, so fascinating and overmastering, that its enormity did not immediately strike him. He simply felt that chance had given him a new possibility to which his sick soul might cling. Yes, May might die—people did: young people, healthy people like herself: she might die, and set ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... is but right to enquire to what all this enormity of wickedness is traceable, that we may come, if possible, to the remedy. That is largely to be ascribed, as all must be persuaded, to the neglect of religious instruction in early life; to the contentment ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... and I told him slowly, lest he miss one grain of the enormity of Maga's crime. But instead of appearing distressed he shook his bands delightedly and rattled off a very volley of ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... lightness surrounded Amory. He realized that he was safe and only then did he appreciate the full enormity of what ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... ghoul (for he that rifles tombs is none other) who perpetrated this enormity described himself as an archaeologist. Possibly he was of gentle birth and had received a University education. If so, so much the greater his crime, for he could not plead ignorance. Surely no seriously minded person can urge that the knowledge thus ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... why not a geisha? What difference can it make to me whether they are geishas or not?" Later, no doubt, when I understand Japanese affairs better, I shall appreciate myself the enormity of my proposal: one would really suppose I had talked of ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... you'd send me on the—on the Death Trail?" he cried, aghast. The enormity of the peril swept over him in a flood, set him a-tremble. Though he questioned so wildly, he knew the truth, and the awfulness of it put his manhood in revolt, made him coward for the moment. The Death Trail! ... He had not been prepared for that. To back against the wall, and fight to the end ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... parents, of all parents. Now she saw Dwight's cruelty to her as his cruelty to Di; she saw Ina, herself a child in maternity, as ignorant of how to deal with the moment as was Dwight. She saw Di's falseness partly parented by these parents. She burned at the enormity of Dwight's appeal to her for verification. She threw up her head and no one had ever ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... not until he entered his own door, and paused at the sound of Harriet's voice, that he began to realize the enormity of the tragedy ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... table and picked up his cards. He was a foul-looking Mexican and seemed capable even of the enormity he was about to commit. The scene was rehearsed to Baird's satisfaction, then shot. The weeping old lady, blinded by her tears, awkward with her mop, the brutal Mexican, his ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... not know how wicked I am—I am so wholly forward the wonder is the devil does not take me at once. I live only in what my father calls the lust of the eye. I—I would rather look at a haw-tree in bloom than meditate on the Almighty!" He brought out this awful confession with a gasp at its enormity, but hurried on to a yet more terrible climax. "I cannot be righteous, but many times there are those who cannot—but oh, worse than that, I cannot even wish to be! I can only wish to be ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... were sweet to her; but there was a bitter in the sweet. These newly-overt acts of his, which had culminated in this plain question, coming on the very day of Mrs. Jethway's blasting reproaches, painted distinctly her fickleness as an enormity. Loving him in secret had not seemed such thorough-going inconstancy as the same love recognized and acted upon in the face of threats. Her distraction was interpreted by him at her side as the outward signs of ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... seemed to him monstrous beyond belief. Why, if this were true, what a hypocrite the girl was! As coarse and unfeeling as the rest of them. Yet she had some shame left; she had blushed to be caught in the act by him. It showed her worse than those who justified this thing, the enormity of which she had ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... and streaking lights blurred the keenness of his eyes. Reason had but little to do with his first thoughts, and feelings had nearly everything. There did not seem to be any possible atonement for him to make. Too late, as it seemed, he realized the enormity of his offence and ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... allotted seven quarts of corn per week. Many who had lived in affluence in their own country were compelled to wear osnaburgs, and go bare-foot through the year. More than nine years were those valuable settlers kept in this state of slavery, the cruelties inflicted upon them surpassing in enormity those which so stigmatised the savage Spaniards of St. Domingo. Drivers were compelled to beat and lacerate those who had not performed their tasks; many were left naked, tied all night to trees, that mosquitoes might suck ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... Marsyas, to realise that they were antiques of inestimable value, the collection of some great prince. I gathered up the gems by handfuls and stuffed them into my wallet. I was sobered by the realisation of the enormity of my crime, for I had possessed myself, vi et armis, of jewels worth a king's ransom; and I had no clue by which I ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... placed on a stool, and a citizen, who had taken a very prominent part in front of the procession, and who, I was told, was the chief cause of this outrage, stepped in front of him, and pulling out a sheet of paper, read a lecture on the enormity of his crime, which wound up with the sentence about to be enforced. When this was finished, the man who carried the tar-vessel stepped up, and began, with a scissors, to cut off the culprit's hair, which he did most effectually, ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... IN. The dreadful tragedy performed in this town last April, and the subsequent arrests, developments, confessions, trials, &c., by keeping the thoughts and conversation of the community continually directed to that enormity, have led to the general but very erroneous notion, that there must have been a great deterioration of the public morals.—If the words of the aged are to be received as true, the very reverse is the fact. The revolutionary war left the whole country ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 3: New-England Sunday - Gleanings Chiefly From Old Newspapers Of Boston And Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... romances our travelers began to find the whole scene hackneyed; and they were glad to part from him a little sooner than they had bargained to do. They strolled about the anomalous village on foot, and once more marveled at the paucity of travel and the enormity of the local preparation. Surely the hotels are nowhere else in the world so large! Could there ever have been visitors enough at Niagara to fill them? They were built so big for some good reason, no doubt; but it is no more ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... position and of army rank, who had "done something" and had gone wrong; disgraced, hiding from society, criminals escaped from justice, with a sprinkling of young adventurers and riotous Germans. No enormity they would not commit, no danger they would not court; some even seeking death; all knowing that if left wounded in the bush by retreating comrades they would be tortured horribly by the Tonquin women. They had a hospital served by Roman Catholic nurses, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... these miserable women. With what disdainful bitterness they must have watched the frivolous vanities, the petty deceptions, the paltry sins of ordinary offenders. Perhaps they took a horrible pride in the enormity of their wickedness; in this "Divinity of Hell," which made ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... had to hold carefully in his mind that this visible abyss, this enormity of purest dark, was not an opening into nothingness but was simply Earth at night as ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... it, finishing up with the two; he therefore made with his spades all—indeed, I rather think more tricks than the Colonel ought to have made in his diamonds, each of which, now losing cards, he successively banged down with increasing anger and turbulence of gesture, as the enormity of my crime was borne in upon him. It was the deciding game of a rubber; the adversaries' score had stood at one, while we were at two, and besides, we had had two by honours; as they made four by cards, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 19, 1892 • Various
... whether it be the seeming enormity of the action, or the glare of new authority. Yet the sane sense follows in the next lines, (see 1765, ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... shall be supported by permitting her to claim dominion of the ocean, and to levy tribute on every flag traversing that, as lately attempted and not yet relinquished, every nation must contest, even ad internecionem. And yet, that, retiring from this enormity, she should continue able to take a fair share in the necessary equilibrium,of power on that element, would be the desire of ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Gabriella," said he; "I give you back to her guardianship, till I have done penance for the sins of this night. The lips that have dared to speak to a mother, and such a mother, the words of bitterness and passion, are unworthy to receive the pledge of love. My eyes are opened to the enormity of my offence, and I abhor myself in dust and ashes; my spirit shall clothe itself in garments of sackcloth and mourning, and drink of the bitter cup of humiliation. Hear, then, my solemn vow;—nay, my mother, nay, Gabriella,—I must, I will ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... plundered and enslaved by another. Captain Keppel has well related more than one engagement in which he was concerned with the ferocious marauders of these eastern seas—scenes of blood and horror, justified only by the enormity of the offence, and the ultimate advantages likely to be obtained from an extirpation of the deeply-rooted evil. As we have hinted at the commencement of this article, our present object is not so much to draw attention to the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... suddenly and hotly at the thought of what she had once endured at her mother's hands for daring to pencil the shadows under her eyes. It had been no more than a girlish trick—an experiment to pass an idle moment. But it had been treated as an offence of immeasurable enormity, and she winced still at the memory of all that that moment's vanity ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... now the thing was over, greatly relishing its satiric elements, must be forgiven the trick of the burial and his still greater enormity in coming to life again. And then, duke or no duke, it was understood that he willed that things should in no case be precisely as they had been. He would never again be quite so near people's lives as in the past—a ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... control over the pardoning power, which is vested exclusively in the governor. The family and friends of that youth represented his crime, stupendous as it was, as the first he had ever committed. Its enormity was represented as a proof of temporary insanity—the great argument, now-a-days, of our lawyers—and he was set free by the governor, after remaining a few months in prison. He shows himself again among the wealthy classes, and is as kindly received by them as he would have been had he never forged ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... after all, might once have been young and in love like himself, though it was so odd to realise it. Mr Wentworth, for his part, saw no humour whatever in the scene. He thought nothing less than that some fresh complication had taken place. Jack had committed some new enormity, or there was bad news from Charley in Malta, or unpleasant letters had come from home. "Bless my soul, sir, something new has happened," said the Squire; and he was scarcely reassured, when Miss Dora stumbled up from her chair in great confusion, and wiped the tears from her eyes. He was suspicious ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... was appointed to decoy herself to some secret place, where her life also was to be sacrificed to the avarice of Montoni, who then would claim securely the contested estates in Languedoc. The consideration of the enormity of such guilt did, at length, relieve her from the belief of its probability, but not from all the doubts and fears, which a recollection of Barnardine's manner had occasioned. From these subjects, her thoughts, at length, passed to others; and, as the evening advanced, she remembered, with ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... faction, when not a tenth part of its people were Secessionists, should be thoroughly, emphatically rebuked, and its chief representatives severely punished, by extorting from the rebellious section a practical admission of the enormity of the crime of which it was guilty when it resisted the lawful authority of a President who was chosen in strict accordance with the requirements of the Constitution, and who entertained no more intention ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... Mara to listen, for her heart took his side almost passionately. Unintentionally Mrs. Hunter proved herself the young man's best ally, yet Mara outwardly was compelled to acquiesce, for she herself had proved the enormity which was to end everything. Consistency, however, was torn to tatters one day, and she said in sudden passion, "Aunty, never mention Mr. Clancy's name again. I demand this ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... confessed these faults committed as the writer of this book, it is still possible in human multifariousness to consider their enormity, not merely in this book, but in fictional reading-matter at large, as viewed by an average-novel-reader—by a representative of that potent class whose preferences dictate the nature and main trend of modern American literature. ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... is difficult to overstate the enormity of the ignorance which this popular statement implies. For the fact is, that all art, and all nature, depend on the "disposition of masses." Painting, sculpture, music, and poetry depend all equally ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... that occurred in the dawn of young Time before the earliest twilight of story—traditions that linger as shades among the nations, vague hints of former greatness and of a calamity, a crime whose enormity is guessed by the magnitude of its shadow hovering over the earth, shrouding men's cradles and darkening with a menace their tombs. Such too were the joyful surmisings of a restoration, such the ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... the crying sin of infanticide is most prevalent in those localities where the system of moral education has been longest neglected. This inhuman crime might be compared to the murder of the innocents, except that the criminals, in this case, exceed in enormity the ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... blameless, then is the Spanish Inquisition blameless also; the Auto-da-Fe being, in the last result, certainly the result of the civil power. In short, the charges and recommendations of the Jews against their persecutors are of such enormity as to make them, it is to be hoped, if they be conscious of their innocence, anxious that the whole matter should be sifted to the bottom by a process more rational than the bastinado, and before a judge less suspected of foreign influence than ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore |
