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Enormity   Listen
noun
Enormity  n.  (pl. enormities)  
1.
The state or quality of exceeding a measure or rule, or of being immoderate, monstrous, or outrageous. "The enormity of his learned acquisitions."
2.
That which is enormous; especially, an exceeding offense against order, right, or decency; an atrocious crime; flagitious villainy; an atrocity. "These clamorous enormities which are grown too big and strong for law or shame."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Enormity" Quotes from Famous Books



... 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 ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane

... that her pension was to be stopped unless the debt was paid. When she read the letter Dr. Meryon feared an outburst of fury, but Lady Hester, who, for once, was beyond violence, began calmly to discuss the enormity of the conduct ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... their mountain air, entitle them to admiration and esteem; but an undue appreciation of these should not be allowed to warp the judgement or prejudice the mind. Some there are who invest them with almost supernaturally noble qualities, while they attribute every conceivable enormity to their enemies the Turks. Each of these views is incorrect. The Osmanlis, whether it be from a consciousness of their own decrepitude, or some other cause, appear to have lost the spirit of cruelty which characterised their more successful days; and it is a ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot

... salt on the tail of a possible or a conceivable enemy. The enemy—the tail—the salt—these were all in nubibus; the only thing certain was the leap, and the thousand miles. And then, having achieved this first stage on the road, why not go on to St Petersburg, and take the Czar by the beard? The enormity of this extravagance showed from what mint it came. Ever since we have harboured the Czar's rebels in England, there has been a craze possessing our newspaper press, that Russia was, or might be, brewing evil against India. We can all see the absurdity of such reveries when ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... misread the lot! One man, to thrust, Even though in his soul the lamp was kindled At God's own hands, one man's lit soul to thrust The immense Indian darkness out of the world! For human flesh there breeds as furiously As the green things and the cattle; and it is all, All this enormity of measureless folk, Penn'd in a land so close to the devil's reign The very apes have faith in him.—No, no; Impetuous brains mistake the signs of God Too easily. God would not have me waste My zeal for Him ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various

... the 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

... the enormity of such an offense in a court the etiquette of which is so exacting that none of her own subjects ever dared appear in her presence until they had been properly instructed in court etiquette in the 'Board of Rites,' a course of instruction which may extend over a period of from a week to ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland

... 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 ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... some monstrous crime,—as murder,—and doing this without the sense of guilt, but with a peaceful conscience,—habit, probably, reconciling him to it; but something (for instance, discovery) occurs to make him sensible of his enormity. ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... by such a subjugation; the strength of will, in which they recognized their own strength and love of power, and knew how to honour it: they honoured something in themselves when they honoured the saint. In addition to this, the contemplation of the saint suggested to them a suspicion: such an enormity of self-negation and anti-naturalness will not have been coveted for nothing—they have said, inquiringly. There is perhaps a reason for it, some very great danger, about which the ascetic might wish to be more accurately informed through his secret interlocutors and visitors? In a word, the mighty ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

... awful enormity of the thought. Abravanel rose from behind his desk with an effort, and shambled over to lay a thin and feather-light arm on the younger man's shoulders. "Those are the facts of life my boy. And since we cannot escape them, we must live with ...
— The K-Factor • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)

... to be utterly callous as to the follies and crimes of his life; he must, therefore, be made conscious of their weight, through their effects upon others; he knew that they had been the cause of Netta's death, and this would show him the enormity of sin if nothing ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale

... came a crash, and all was still. Next morning, at the hour for chapel, no bell was rung; it was found that the column had been cut down and the bell carried off. A president of less shrewdness would have declaimed to the students on the enormity of such a procedure, and have accentuated his eloquence with threats. Not so Dr. Tappan. At the close of the morning prayers he addressed the students humorously. There was a great attendance, for all wished to know how he would deal with the affair. Nothing could be better than his matter ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... through the night. Then he dragged the guard into the prison, relocked the door, left the key in the lock, and returned to Hodges' office to replace the old clothes for his uniform. Not until he stood looking down upon the dead body again did the enormity of his own offense begin to crowd upon him. But he was not frightened nor did he regret what he had done. He turned out the light, sat down, coolly filled his pipe, and began turning the affair over, detail by detail, in his mind. He had, at least, followed Inspector MacGregor's ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood

... few hours, that he might be sacrificed under circumstances of peculiar enormity. A hole being dug in the ground of a depth sufficient to enable him to stand upright, with his head only exposed, his arms were pinioned to his body, he placed in it, and the loose earth thrown in ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... one—and he felt indisposed to let his prey escape. His insistence matured into insolence as Mortimer spoke somewhat sharply to him. Ignorant of racing as the latter was, he was hardly a man to take liberties with once he recognized the infringement. The enormity of his mission and the possibility that it might be frustrated by his undesirable tormentor, made him savage. Raised to quick fury by a vicious remark of the tout who held him in leash, he suddenly stretched out a strong hand, and, seizing his insulter by the collar, ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... may be doubted, indeed, whether Shakespeare had bile and nightmare enough in him to have thought of such detestable horrors as those of the interchanging adversaries (now serpent, now man), or even of the huge, half-blockish enormity of Nimrod,—in Scripture, the 'mighty hunter' and builder of the tower of Babel,—in Dante, a tower of a man in his own person, standing with some of his brother giants up to the middle in a pit in hell, blowing a horn to which a thunderclap is a whisper, and hallooing ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... he had not estimated till that time the enormity of the misfortunes brought on people of Egypt by those merchants. His horror was all the more vivid, since he had rented out his own subjects to Dagon, and was himself witness of the way in which the banker collected his dues ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... paper went to my heart. I could hardly prevent myself from there and then kneeling down at his feet and telling him what I had done. But that again would mean a confession of the past. I came to you that morning in order to understand the full enormity of my offence. From the instant that I grasped it my whole mind was turned to the one thought of getting back my husband's paper. It must still be where Lucas had placed it, for it was concealed before this dreadful woman entered the room. If it had not been for her coming, ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle

... 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 ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... gangs additions were every day making; scarcely a day or a night passed but some enormity was committed or attempted either on the property or persons of individuals. Two notorious characters, Luke Normington and Richard Elliott, were detected on the night of the 13th in a very suspicious situation in the commissary's ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... with her own handkerchief, wiped away from the lovely lip the seccotine which had attached the masculine appendage to the Queen of Beauty. She rolled up the hats in the towel which had served as turban, set her pupils to work at their copies, then marched sternly downstairs to lay the full enormity of the case before the justly-shocked ears of Miss Todd. Nobody ever heard exactly what happened in the interview; no coaxing or persuasion would induce Diana to disclose details even to Wendy or Loveday, but it was generally understood in ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... would never have desired such severity; but he might have told Captain Tugwell, with whom he had a talk almost every time they met, that his eldest son wanted a little discipline; and the Club might have served as a pretext for this, when the true crime must not be declared, by reason of its enormity. Dan closed his teeth, and English air grew bitter in his mouth, as ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... worse than the old.' The people are generally alive to public affairs—look into the votes and speeches of members, give their opinions—but are universally corrupt. They have a sour feeling against what are nicknamed abuses, rail against sinnicures, as they call them, and descant upon the enormity of such things while they are forced to work all day long and their families have not enough to eat. But the one prevailing object among the whole community is to make money of their votes, and though he says there are some ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... movements are born not in the whirlwinds, the earthquakes, and the pomps of human splendor and power, but in the agonies and enthusiasms of grand, heroic spirits. Up to this time Garrison had had, as the religious revivalist would say, no "realizing sense" of the enormity of slave-holding. Occasionally an utterance had dropped from his pen which indicated that his heart was right on the subject, but which evinced no more than the ordinary opposition to its existence, nor any profound convictions ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... stone bearing a marvellous Apollo and 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 could safely ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney

... not look at him. The enormity of the thing she was about to do appalled her. Yet there was Richard, her husband; Richard, whom she loved with all her soul, in the room below, facing madness, death. The love she felt for him overmastered ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks

... practised, and he added that if the decrees benefited France, the United States would submit not only with patience but with pleasure. What wonder that Washington, in reading this letter and taking in the full enormity of Monroe's words, should have allowed himself the exclamation, "Extraordinary!" What wonder that in due course of time he recalled Monroe from Paris and replaced him with a man whom ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer

... this abuse to the public every vain swearer is responsible; and he would do well to consider that he will never be able to make reparation for them. And the public is much concerned that this enormity be retrenched. ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow

... permitted no excuses. If a thing looked wrong, then wrong it must be, and it was of no use to talk to him about it. That he should have found Elizabeth, who had been ordered to come home at eight o'clock, running in the opposite direction at half-past eight, was in his eyes an enormity which admitted of no explanations. That she either had been in mischief, or was then on her way to it, were the only two alternatives possible to the mind ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt

... Christian life that does not honor Christ makes its sin 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

... They had still hard faces, intent gray eyes; they packed guns, and one of them wore a bright star on his vest. These men took Hookey away with them. And after they were gone the cowboys told Pan that Hookey was wanted for horse stealing. Young as Pan was he understood the enormity of that crime in the eyes of cowboys. He felt terribly hurt and betrayed. Long indeed was ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey

... advice to heart, my jewel, kicked over my pan of fat and jumped into the fire. Which, being put into straight English, I swiped a horse and rode off with the rest of the boys on the tail of the serpent." Weldon gasped, as he realized the enormity of the crime. Then he laughed. In his haste to gain possession of a mount, Paddy had taken no thought for his armament. His sole weapon was the huge iron spoon, still ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller

... stupor which such an unexpected attack had produced, he repeats, in a hurried manner, the circumstances of his situation, and dwells on the perfidy of Hermione; but when he finds no palliation for his crime, and sees how completely he has been degraded by his unmanly weakness, the whole enormity of his guilt comes full upon his mind, and he acquires even dignity in the opinion of the beholder, from the solemn and emphatic manner in which he curses the folly and inhumanity of his conduct. But a further blow awaits him; and it is not till Pylades informs him of the death of Hermione, ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... after all, everyone is a foreigner somewhere and ignorant about something—once committed the enormity of asking his host, just back from cub-hunting, whether the hedgerows, when he went out of a morning, were not quite lovely with those dewy cobwebs which the French call Veils of the Virgin. It had to be explained that such a sight was the most ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee

... that the gombeen man actually puts on cent. per cent. for this failure of redemption; but, on my principle of believing only a percentage of all I hear, and of taking a liberal discount off all I see, I doubt this enormity. Concerning the shilling interest per week on a pound there is, however, unhappily no room for doubt, and for small unsecured loans 260 per cent. per annum ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker

... for help brought Scraggs around to a fuller realization of the enormity of the disaster which had overtaken him. In his agony, he forgot to curse his navigating officer for the latter's stubbornness in refusing to turn back when the fog threatened. He clutched Mr. Gibney by the right arm, thereby interrupting for an instant ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... good many rovers and sojourners among strange men and strange moralities, failed to perceive the enormity of Henchard's crime, notwithstanding that he himself had been the chief sufferer therefrom. Indeed, the attack upon the absent culprit waxing serious, he began to take ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... a crime of the blackest dye, not to be justified by the practices of war, and unknown to this day amongst civilized nations. I flatter myself, however, that our enemies have been brought to see this transaction in its true light, and that we shall not experience a repetition of the like enormity. ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various

... attendance upon M. Alphonse, and never complained while the dinners lasted, but it was whispered that she had fits in the upper part of the house. No sooner did my father hear the rumour than he accused her to her face of this enormity, telling her that he was determined to effect a permanent cure, even though she should drive him to unlimited expense. We had a Ball party and an Aladdin supper, and for a fortnight my father hired postillions; we flashed through London. My father backed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... brought him to the tree where he had hidden, and proceeded to sit in judgment on him, Sir Henry explaining to him in the very best French the unheard-of cowardice and enormity of his conduct, more especially in letting the oiled rag out of his mouth, whereby he nearly aroused the Masai camp with teeth-chattering and brought about the failure of our plans: ending up with a ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard

... seemed to him worthy of his greatness by its mere enormity. It must be carried out. Ever since he had first donned the purple he had made it his aim to be feared. If this tremendous deed were done, he need never frown again at those whom ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Australia, an unhappy omen of the future. According to the instructions issued to Tasman, on his second voyage, he was directed to "enquire at the continent thereabout" (i.e., the neighbourhood of the Abrolhos) "after two Dutchmen, who, having by the enormity of their crimes forfeited their lives, were put on shore by the Commodore Francisco Pelsart, if still alive. In such case, you may make inquiries of them about the situation of those countries, and if they entreat you to that purpose, give them passage ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... his own way of thinking, "struck him all of a heap." He realized in a flash where his blundering had led him. He had run past himself in his enthusiasm, and given Ma's little scheme away, and, for the moment, the enormity of his offence robbed him of the power of speech. However, he pulled ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum

... descanted at length upon the enormity of young Billings's early liaisons; and then he told his own, in the year four, with a burgomaster's daughter at Ratisbon, when he was in the Elector of Bavaria's service—then, after Blenheim, when he had come over to the Duke ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray

... daughter, Argive Helen, ne'er had given Free entertainment to a stranger's love, Had she foreknown that the heroic sons 260 Of Greece would bring her to her home again. But heav'n incited her to that offence, Who never, else, had even in her thought Harbour'd the foul enormity, from which Originated even our distress. But now, since evident thou hast described Our bed, which never mortal yet beheld, Ourselves except and Actoris my own Attendant, giv'n me when I left my home By good Icarius, and who kept the door, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... 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 in neighboring ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William J. Clinton • William J. Clinton

... country. Ten more men went along with him into the prison, with their swords drawn, and so they cut the throats of those that were in custody there. The grand lying pretence these men made for so flagrant an enormity was this, that these men had had conferences with the Romans for a surrender of Jerusalem to them; and so they said they had slain only such as were traitors to their common liberty. Upon the whole, they grew the more insolent upon this bold prank of theirs, as though they had ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... except a small portion which was granted to his wife, who was well known to be strongly opposed to the course he had pursued, and who had lost considerable property which she held in her own right. I say that the fact of Nelson's case being always brought up as the great enormity carried more conviction to my mind of the utter weakness of the opponents' cause than anything else; and it also proved to me how ignorant many of them were of the truth, for several of them who vilified the Bill, the Government, and the Governor-General, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... Berwick Castle was his resolution. Such 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 of King Edward, would ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... immediately through the house, sought a hiding-place in the gardens. Here her mind began to be overwhelmed with anguish, remorse, and terror. Her sins, now that a terrible retribution for them seemed to be impending, rose before her in all their enormity, and she knew not what to do. She soon reflected that there could be no permanent safety for her where she was, for the advanced guards of Claudius, which were even then entering the city and commencing their arrests, would be sure soon to discover ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott

... The divine law, as well as most of the State laws, says, in substance: "He that sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." A highwayman commits murder, and when the officers of the law undertake to arrest, try, and punish him commensurate with the enormity of his crime, he straightens himself up to his full height and defiantly says to them: "Let me alone; I will not be arrested, I will not be tried, I'll have none of the execution of your laws, and in the event you attempt to execute your laws upon me, ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... himself had infused into a sufficiently lurid situation, but quite terribly alive to the act of treachery and violence which had brought that situation about. And I must say that Levy looked no less alive to his own enormity; he quailed in his bonds with a guilty fearfulness strange to witness in so truculent a brute; and it was with something near a quaver ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung

... that sort of game was played all over England, connived at, or at least winked at, by those who had political influence to sell or obtain, until the Reform Bill opened up the election system in all its rottenness and enormity. ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... blood of his prey, threw the offal carcass to the jackal in waiting. Having tasted once the food of confiscation, the favorites became fierce and ravenous. This worthy favorite's first grant was from the lay nobility. The second, infinitely improving on the enormity of the first, was from the plunder of the Church. In truth, his Grace is somewhat excusable for his dislike to a grant like mine, not only in its quantity, but in its kind, so ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... of Supererogation.—Among the pernicious fallacies promulgated as authorized dogmas by the apostate church during the long period of spiritual darkness following the close of the apostolic ministry, was the awful enormity known as the doctrine of supererogation. As stated by Mosheim (Eccl. Hist. Cent. xii, part ii, ch. 3:4) the dreadful doctrine was formulated in the thirteenth century as follows: "That there actually existed an ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... women and the few men 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 long will ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... would shake the whole commercial structure. A person who committed barratry would commit anything. In this manner he went on and on, reviewing the evidence of the case, destroying the whole fabric of the defense, dwelling at length on the enormity of the entire transaction. The James H. Peabody had been deliberately seized. The prisoner had lawlessly converted her, the property of another, to his own base uses. He had broken into the cargo and shamelessly sold it as his own. He could plead neither ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... had carried her thus far; now it deserted her as abruptly as it had come. Her cheeks became scarlet; her funny little false curls trembled with her agitation. What she had done seemed to her indecorous beyond expression. It was an enormity. Fancy, she had gone into his room, INTO HIS ROOM—Mister Grannis's room. She had done this—she who could not pass him on the stairs without a qualm. What to do she did not know. She stood, a fixture, on the threshold of his room, ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... war against all sins, yet has never made war upon this giant sin, but has fondled and caressed it so kindly that the pious and conscientious, believing it no sin or crime, have lost all conception of its enormity, and may never realize it until an enlightened people shall pour their hot indignation upon the crime and ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various

... not ungrateful. I'm not, dear," he caressingly asseverated, and closing her two hands between his treasured them against his cheek. "I want you to be altogether sure of it. If I did not recognize the enormity of my debt to you, Aurora, what a clod I must be! Not, mind you, because, it is just possible to think, I owe you my life. Not that, but because you were so kind. Because you were so kind, so kind—" he reiterated feelingly, "and I a troublesome, cantankerous, distinctly unappetizing ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall

... down was his own father, did not count; every fibre of his being was absorbed, to the exclusion of everything else, in the desire for his own safety. So gigantic was his selfishness, that the working of his mind was not disturbed by the enormity of the crime he had committed; he saw now that, as events had turned out, he had acted unwisely in taking the jewels from their box; and, alertly and with something like calmness, he unlocked the safe, replaced ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice

... to owe," which must be bound on the present generation in India, and entailed on their mortgaged posterity forever? A debt of millions, in favor of a set of men whose names, with few exceptions, are either buried in the obscurity of their origin and talents or dragged into light by the enormity ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... purpose, he made it an excuse for further abuse and ill-treatment. Not a day passed but one or other of us got a kick or a blow from him or the captain. They made one young lad very nearly leap overboard, where he would have been drowned. I hauled him back, and calming him down, showed him the enormity of the sin he was going to commit, and urged him to bear his trials, as ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston

... others, bravely and honestly, and stated them clearly and positively, when he felt it his duty to speak, although evasion or silence would have been the more comfortable alternative. "I doubt," says Mr. Chadwick,[129] "if Garrison or Parker had a keener sense than his of the enormity of human slavery. Before the first Abolitionist Society had been organized, he was one of the organizers of a committee for the discussion and advancement of emancipation. I have read all of his principal writings upon slavery, and ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey

... of honor had fallen upon him with the disclosure of a man's desires. His boyhood seemed suddenly to have gone from him like the light of a lamp blown out by a puff of wind. He felt old, and responsible to answer now for himself, since the enormity of his offense was plain ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... fated to happiness, have made her memory a triumph for her sex, embittered by falsehood, wrong, and treachery, involved her in errors over which both charity and propriety oblige us to draw a veil; and if all Europe rang with the enormity of her excesses, much of their origin may safely be traced to those who, after wringing her heart, trampled it in the ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott

... astounded Baudichon, whose brain was slow to take in new facts, had grasped the full enormity of the insult flung at him, the Syndic was a dozen paces distant. He had eased his mind, and that for the moment was much; though he still ground his teeth, and, had Baudichon followed him, would have struck the Councillor without thought ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman

... brocade, should have been made aware by some mysteriously occult means of a strange thrill at the heart, caused by the protracted gaze of a handsome fellow-worshipper, but to tell the truth her thoughts were piously intent upon the enormity of her own sins, and the necessity of reclaiming her brother from the very ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam

... 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 ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... any part of the world, is every where felt. There are wrongs and sufferings every where; but those to which we are accustomed, we look upon with most indifference, because being accustomed to them, we do not feel their enormity. You feel the enormity of slavery more than we do, because you are not immediately interested, and regard it at a distance. We regard some of the wrongs that exist in the old world with more sensibility than you ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... are indicative of the public mind tending to treat kidnaping as a crime against society, calling for active suppression. On the same occasion, in sentencing a woman who had severely beaten an adopted child, Sir John Smale said, 'In finally disposing of these three cases, with all their enormity, sources of satisfaction present themselves in the fact that, in each of these cases, it has been owing to the spontaneous indignation of Chinese men and women that these crimes have been brought to the knowledge of the police.' The Governor closes his letter ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell

... never was teacher more unfortunate in his pupil. For five years Nero ruled with moderation and equity. He then broke away from the guidance of his tutor Seneca, and entered upon a career filled with crimes of almost incredible enormity. The dagger and poison—the latter a means of murder the use of which at Rome had become a "fine art," and was in the hands of those who made it a regular profession—were employed almost unceasingly, to remove persons that had incurred his hatred, or who possessed ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... is ever before them. From one victim to another their keepers pass unquestioned, and plunder, debauch, ruin and murder with an impunity frightful to contemplate. As was said by a distinguished author, speaking of a kindred social enormity, "There is not a country throughout the earth on which a state of things like this would not bring a curse. There is no religion upon earth that it would not deny; there is no people on earth that it ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur

... every Castle reporter. They made, it is to be lamented, as Irish reporters will make, sad mistakes at times. The once poor injured lady had been attired in canary-colored lute-string, and an ostrich plume remarkable for its enormity while she, the libeled one, had been becomingly arrayed in blue bombazine, and of any plumage imported from Araby ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various

... slaves, they can easily disencumber themselves of them; and emancipation is put into such a train, that in a few years there will be no slaves northward of Maryland. In Maryland, I do not find such a disposition to begin the redress of this enormity, as in Virginia. This is the next State to which we may turn our eyes for the interesting spectacle of justice, in conflict with avarice and oppression: a conflict wherein the sacred side is gaining daily recruits, from the influx into office of young men grown and growing ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... he turned, frowning at the interruption, and then sprang up with a troubled eye. It was his father certainly; but what a remarkable change since he had seen him last! For the first time Andrew realized the full enormity of his conduct in growing younger. His very appearance ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston

... "he did not think his partners, Mr. Harvey Chester and Col. Van Ellis, would go to the extremity proposed. He thought they would change their minds when the enormity of the crime was set before them. In fact, he suspected from the first that they were being urged on by others having private ends to gain by the destruction of the dam. Besides, he thought himself capable of handling the situation alone. Is ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson

... 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 cruelty ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... her own sins, she took upon herself, at the instigation of the priest, to confess her husband's also. What the priest said to her it is not necessary to repeat. She had had the same sort of things said before, and had not been shocked. He now, however, before he allowed her to depart, brought the enormity of her conduct fully before her, and told her that he could not afford her absolution, because she was married to one who held heretical notions, unless she could manage to get him duly punished. She had made her confession; but, after all, she had to go home without receiving absolution. ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston

... "The enormity of my offence weighed heavily upon my spirit and my conscience. I conceived a horror for the Cardinal and withdrew to this convent. For many years I have undergone the most grievous penances, but I shall never make thorough expiation for my sins, and I hold myself to be as great a criminal ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... voluntarily surrendered myself to my enemies, from whom I received the same mercy, in proportion, that a Russian does from a Turk. Dripping wet, cold, and covered with mud, I was first shown to the boys as an aggregate of all that was bad in nature; a lecture was read to them on the enormity of my offence, and solemn denunciations of my future destiny closed the discourse. The shivering fit produced by the cold bath was relieved by as sound a flogging as could be inflicted, while two ushers held me; but no effort ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... 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 ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... question himself—"Oh, enlist them. With a little training they would make first-rate soldiers." He was also prejudiced against saints, and said of one, "I presume she was so called because of the enormity ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... 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 desired effect ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various

... Big Bob was making a mountain out of molehills, but he could readily understand how that came. The big fellow was extremely sensitive, and the possible enormity of his offense kept standing out before him all the time ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton

... the soft sound of her voice, that he was pardoned the enormity of his love. He lay down upon the table again, and remembered how certain lords had ridden to court in an old stirrup —a thought which perfectly reconciled ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... mistaken stand, and especially after carrying their conviction to the cannon's mouth, to acknowledge their error before the world. Hence, while he has endeavored truly to depict—or to let those who made history at the time help him to depict—the enormity of the offence of the armed Rebellion and of the heresies and plottings of certain Southern leaders precipitating it, yet not one word will be found, herein, condemnatory of those who, with manly candor, soldierly courage, and true patriotism, acknowledged ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... were dim, but such as they were he walked according to them, and hence they burnt ever more and more clearly, till in later life they served to show him what is vouchsafed to such men and to such only—the enormity of his own mistakes. Better that a man should feel the divergence between Christian theory and Christian practice, that he should be shocked at it—even to the breaking away utterly from the theory until he has arrived at a wider comprehension of its scope—than that he should be indifferent to ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler

... regular customer—and after inquiring 'What's in the best cut?' and 'What was up last?' he orders a small plate of roast beef, with greens, and half-a-pint of porter. He has a small plate to-day, because greens are a penny more than potatoes, and he had 'two breads' yesterday, with the additional enormity of 'a cheese' the day before. This important point settled, he hangs up his hat—he took it off the moment he sat down—and bespeaks the paper after the next gentleman. If he can get it while he is at dinner, he eats with much greater zest; balancing ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... down. He felt that he must sit down, though Lala Roy was looking at him with eyes full of doubt and suspicion. The whole enormity of his own guilt, though he had not stolen anything, fell upon him. He had got the key; he had given it to Mr. Joseph; and he had received it back again. In fact, at that very moment, it was lying in his pocket. The worst that he had feared ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant

... exactly forbidden," said Ulyth, with a twinkle in her eye, after she had stated the extent of her enormity to Miss Teddington. ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil

... which 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

... making God our accomplice, that so we may legalize our own iniquities. Every successful massacre is consecrated by a Te Deum, and the clergy have never been wanting in benedictions for any victorious enormity. So that what, in the beginning, was the relation of man to the animal becomes that of people to ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... to Brussels, and were made welcome by the Belgian banker, whose counters he had deserted so much to his own benefit, and from thence to Paris, and, having been there long enough to buy a French bonnet and wonder at the enormity of French prices, they returned to a small but comfortable house they had prepared for themselves in the neighbourhood ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... impressment of American seamen by British ships of war was being vigorously prosecuted. This is one of those outrages so long ago laid away among the mouldering tombs in the historical graveyard that few persons now appreciate its enormity, or the extent to which it was carried. Those who will be at the pains to ascertain the truth in the matter will feel that the bloodiest, most costly, and most disastrous war would have been better than tame endurance of treatment ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse

... the usher to bring in the accused, who had been summoned to appear by a mandat d'amener. He was a stout, dark, convivial-looking soul, with a merry eye, not altogether convinced of the enormity of his delict, and inclined at first to deprecate these proceedings. But the dialectical skill of the magistrate soon tied him into knots, and reduced him to ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan

... behalf of Great Britain had been foully planned—the Prince of Wales even being an abettor of the attempted coup d'etat purely to gratify the lust of greed for the gold and diamonds of the poor innocent Boers. No terms were too vituperative to denounce the enormity. Millions of honest persons all over the world were deluded—there was a bitter cry of almost universal indignation. The Boer Government posed as innocent; the designs of the Afrikaner Bond were not even suspected—its ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas

... with which we are charged? It is endeavoring, in our faltering human speech, to declare the enormity of the sin of making merchandize of men,—of separating husband and wife,—taking the infant from its mother and selling the daughter to prostitution,—of a professedly Christian nation denying, by statute, the Bible to every sixth ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... acknowledged humanity of the French nation. It appeared from undoubted evidence, that the attempt on the king's life was the result of insanity, and a disturbed imagination. Several instances of a disordered mind had before been observed in his conduct, and the detestation justly due to the enormity of his crime ought now to have been absorbed in the consideration of his misfortune, the greatest that can befal ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... 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

... 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 seemed to ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke

... see, christian parents, how your responsibility is measured, by the magnitude of those interests committed to your care, by the kind of influence you exert over them, and by the enormity of that guilt and wo which are consequent upon your unfaithfulness. Let this be an incentive to parental integrity. The day is rapidly approaching when you must give an account of your stewardship. ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... instead of blowing it up with a match and train, is rarely successful; and after three or four other and much guiltier victims than Lenny had been incarcerated in the stocks, the parish of Hazeldean was ripe for any enormity. Pestilent Jacobinical tracts, conceived and composed in the sinks of manufacturing towns, found their way into the popular beer-house,—Heaven knows how, though the tinker was suspected of being the disseminator by all but Stirn, who still, in a whisper, accused the Papishers. And, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... own the enormity of its consequences, and the danger of its example. Nor have I the confidence to petition for impunity; but humbly hope, that publick security may be established, without the spectacle of a clergyman dragged through the streets, to a death of ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... presentiment which seemed to say, that I should never enter it again; and that presentiment is now fulfilled. Fate urged me on. Unnatural hate has pushed me to the ledge, and now I sink to lose myself in the abyss. Oh, foul fate! this deed foul, foul! Fair, fair Amanda, close thine eyes on this enormity; or be content to see it, yet not understand it, for knowledge here ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege

... to heare [of] the enormity of outcryes of those different nations. The Iroquoits sung like devils, & often made salleys to make us decline. They gott nothing by that but some arrows that did incommodat them to some purpose. We foresee that such a batail could not hold out long for want ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson

... he understood it less clearly. He was quite conscious of the enormity of his misdeed in telling a lady, and a great lady, according to his view, that he loved her, and in daring to touch the sleeves of her dress with his rough hands. He could not find it in him to regret what he had done, but ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford

... that was wanted. "Won't do it again?" echoed the Squire. "No, you won't do it again. I'll take good care of that." He then went on to bring home to her the enormity of her offence, which seemed to have consisted chiefly in upsetting the whole house, which he wouldn't have, and so on. But when he had repeated all he had to say twice, and most of it three or four ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall

... come," began Plank, growing redder and redder as he began to realise the enormity of familiarity committed only on the warrant of ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... continued the little man, "of which I now find my scoundrel of an apprentice to have been guilty, was the enormity of picking the lock of my desk, and ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins

... are in process 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. My connection with her represents the supreme passion of ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... with which he endeavoured to suppress, and if possible to extirpate, that detestable sin of swearing and cursing which is every where so common, and especially among our military men. He often declared, at the head of his regiment, his sentiments with respect to this enormity, and urged his captains and their subalterns to take the greatest care that they did not give the sanction of their example to that which by their office they were obliged to punish in others. Indeed his zeal on these occasions wrought in a very ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge

... the occupation of Algiers, or that of Tahiti, or the attack on Canton, together with the long train of Indian events which have dyed the peninsulas of the East in the blood of their people, sees an alarming enormity in the knocking down of the walls of Vera Cruz, though the breach opened a direct road into San Juan de Ulloa. In the eyes of the same profound moralists, the garitas of Mexico ought to have been respected, as so many doors opening into the boudoirs of the beautiful dames of that fine capital; it ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... 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 ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... with horror at his stupidity. To let fall the slightest hint of his feeling was, he felt, the last disloyalty to Rickman. He had a vague idea that he ought instantly to go. But instead of going he sat there, silent, fixing on his own enormity a mental stare so concentrated that it would have drawn Flossie's attention to it, if she had not ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... 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

... to his standard, for the world always follows fortune. His armies flourished while all the states through which they passed withered. What cared he for the detestation of the people, and the complaints of princes? His army adored him, and the very enormity of his guilt enabled him to bid ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.

... the place began to bring before Flora the full enormity and impertinence of her errand, but though her heart beat on her side as loud as the brass knocker upon the door, she had no mind for ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain

... also an enormity, which, though agreeable to law, can never be justified by the rules of equity—That a man should spend the principal part of his life in a parish, add wealth to it by his labour, form connexions in it, bring up a family ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... strove to throw the guilt of the sin she premeditated upon her victim, upon the Intendant, upon fate, and, with a last subterfuge to hide the enormity of it from her own eyes, upon La Corriveau, whom she would lead on to suggest the crime and commit it!—a course which Angelique tried to believe would be more venial than if it were suggested by herself! less heinous in ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... from the legitimate uses of the family—all the debauchees who rolled drunk through our streets, and all the offences directly originating in this degrading vice. Now, what conceivable order of mind could prompt a man to engage in such a laborious research? Who either doubts the enormity of drunkenness or its frequency? It is a theme that we hear of incessantly. The pulpit rings with it, the press proclaims it, the judges declare it in all their charges, and a special class of lecturers have converted it into a profession. ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever

... that head of the enormity of what he did. To put an end to his punishing of Cora, and, to render him powerless against that habitual and natural enemy, Laura had revealed a horrible incident in his career—it had become a public scandal; he was the sport of fools; and it might be months before the thing ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington

... hat," he said, "has not been received; a most distressing circumstance, as from the enormity of my head I find the utmost difficulty in getting ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey

... Roman people should quit this city; that they should set it on fire; that they should have no magistrates, no senate, no laws; that they should, in future, be ruled by kings: the gods forbid, you say. But, the enormity of the articles lessens not the obligation of a compact. If there is any thing in which the people can be bound, it can in all. Nor is there any importance in another circumstance, which weighs, perhaps, with some: whether a consul, a dictator, or a praetor, be the ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius

... his old 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 ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen

... the judgment. The faculty, or passion, which misleads one becomes a part of his judging faculty, and cannot condemn itself. The miser cannot realize the baseness of his avarice, nor the mercenary soldier the enormity of war. Nor can a defective faculty assist in realizing the defect. The color-blind cannot appreciate painting, the thief cannot appreciate integrity, the brutal wife-beater cannot appreciate love, and a Napoleon ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various

... nations, this premeditated assassination of three men invested with a sacred character, excited general horror. The legislative body declared war, and declared it with indignation against the governments on whom the guilt of this enormity fell. ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet

... had been guilty of the enormity of suggesting a course of reading, Fay had made many sarcastic comments ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley

... 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. I will go into St. Patrick's Purgatory". The Bishop, to ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... a twofold enormity. It is a base consent to the promptings of our corrupt nature to the lower instincts, to that which is gross and beast-like; and it is also a turning away from the counsel of our higher nature, from all that ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce

... of 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 heavy on ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory

... hated. Her passionate nature had drawn her whither its stormy waves listed. And now that the tempest was passed, and the driving forces had ceased to urge, leaving her in a rock-bound pool of reflection, she saw the enormity of the step she had taken, she realized the strength of Nature's tendrils which still bound her no ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... with abundant tears, and then wept for joy that he again beheld me, again had me; and that after he had long doubted whither this misfortune might have led me, he saw me bear it so calmly and collectedly; for such an aspect had despair now assumed in me. My misery stood before me in its enormity and unchangeableness. I had wept my last tear; not another cry could be extorted from my heart; I presented to my fate my bare head with ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... Gracefulness is the idea which I specially connect with him. He was graceful in shape, gesture, and carriage; graceful in manners and ways, graceful in scholarship, graceful in writing, pre-eminently graceful in speech. It was his custom from time to time, if any peculiar enormity displayed itself in the school, to call us all together in the Speech-Room, and give us what we called a "Pi-jaw." One of these discourses I remember as well as if I had heard it yesterday. It was directed against Lying, as not only un-Christian but ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... dare say, very whimsical about it, probably very absurd, judged at least by the canons of fashion, and old Cousin Monica Knollys, in whose eye the London fashions were always fresh, was palpably struck by it as if it had been some enormity against anatomy, for she certainly laughed very heartily; indeed, there were tears on her cheeks when she had done, and I am sure my aspect of wonder and dignity, as her hilarity proceeded, helped to revive her merriment again and again as ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... the whole law, for man cannot break any one law unless he breaks first this fundamental Law of all Laws. This implies that the demoralizing effect of sinning or law-breaking, on any one of the planes of being, does not depend so much upon the enormity of the deed as upon the loss of self-control. Continued weakening of self-control in trivial things may therefore, in the end, prove more destructive than a murder committed in the heat of passion. If ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... had finished the 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 ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... a long time yet, and Malgat would not have thought of interrupting her. The fearful truth broke all of a sudden upon him; and he felt as if the whole world were going to pieces. He understood the enormity of the crime; he discerned the fatal consequences, and knew he was ruined. A thousand voices arose from his conscience, telling him, 'You are a thief! You are ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau

... informed her friend; and they were hardly undressed before the alguazil, the attorney, two bailiffs, and myself entered the room. The amorous pair were sorely disconcerted, and the alguazil, inveighing against the enormity of their conduct, ordered them to dress with all speed, and go with him to prison. The Breton was dismayed, the attorney interceded from motives of compassion, and prevailed on the alguazil to commute the penalty for only a hundred reals. The Breton ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... and spoil him; more than once, indeed, a delicate head just grazed each of his square shoulders; but candor compels me to own that their fatigue and the yawing of the carriage at the time were more to blame than the tired girls; for at the enormity there was a prompt retirement to a distance. Miss Maitland had been a long time in the land of Nod; and Vizard, from the first, had preferred ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... her voice loud, yet not disagreeable." Elliot's briefer mention of her appearance is at once confirmatory and complementary of that of Mrs. St. George: "Her person is nothing short of monstrous for its enormity, and is growing every day. Her ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... it was all empty talk; and the years and months passed by, until the scapegrace reached his twenty-sixth year, having heaped wickedness upon wickedness; and who can tell how much trouble he brought upon his family, who were always afraid of hearing of some new enormity? At last they held a family council, and told the parents that matters had come to such a pass that if they did not disown their son the rest of the family must needs break off all communication with them: if he were allowed ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... I was badder than all that." Badder seemed to admit more enormity than simply bad, "I—I went in the park to walk and I ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas

... may be for the first time, in his unreflecting and heedless life,—he is oftentimes terribly excited. He is now brought suddenly into the midst of the most solemn things. That sin of his, the enormity of which he had never seen before, now reveals itself in a most frightful form, and he feels as the murderer does who wakes in the morning and begins to realize that he has killed a man. That holy Being, of whose holiness he had no proper conception, now rises dim and awful before ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... beside the body. His hand, holding the short club above the Earl's throat, trembled uncontrollably. He wanted to act—had to act now—but his fear made him nauseated and weak. For a moment, his head seemed to expand and to lighten as he realized the enormity of his intent. This was one of the great nobles of the land, ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole

... been better called Crosstown. There are several shops, and it is not a very small place; but I could not meet with a silver thimble, and bought a halfpenny brass one. Slept at the Graham's Arms, a large inn. Here, as everywhere else, the people seemed utterly insensible of the enormity of Hatfield's offences; the ostler told William that he was quite a gentleman, paid every one genteelly, etc. etc. He and 'Mary' had walked together to Gretna Green; a heavy rain came on when they were there; a returned chaise happened to pass, and ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth

... people generally 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

... moments before Halleck went on; "You would say, wouldn't you, that my first duty was to my own undertakings, and to those who had a right to expect their fulfilment from me? You would say that it was an enormity to tear myself away from the affection that clings to me in that home of mine, yonder, and that nothing but some supreme motive, could justify me? And yet you pretend to be satisfied with the reasons I've given you. You're not ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells

... who would renounce their allegiance to the United States and repair to Detroit, by the relenting of one individual, was prevented being carried into effect; and many were consequently saved from horrors, equalling, if not transcending in enormity, the outrages of the savages themselves. Scenes of licentiousness and fury, followed upon the discovery of the plot.—Exasperated at its heinousness, and under the influence of resentful feelings, the whigs retaliated upon ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... been destined for the Church. He had taken no vows, certainly; but for years he had been trained with that object, and at one time his vocation had seemed remarkably clear and strong—his marriage, at all, therefore, seemed to add enormity to his other guilt. ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill

... eagerly for some indication, however slight, of returning life or reason. The hours of horror and self-reproach had entirely changed his feelings and ideas; for it was only at the instant when he saw his father raise the poisoned wine to his lips that he saw his crime in all its hideous enormity. His soul rose up in rebellion against his crime, and the words, "Parricide! murderer!" seemed to ring in his ears like a trumpet call. When his father fell to the ground, his instinct made him shout for aid; but an instant afterwards terror took possession of him, and, rushing from the house, ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau



Words linked to "Enormity" :   inhumanity, enormous, sizeableness, atrocity, immensity, enormousness, nefariousness, outrageousness, vileness, colloquialism, indecency



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