Literary notes about palliate (AI summary)
The term “palliate” is often employed in literature to suggest the lessening or softening of a fault, suffering, or moral transgression. Writers use it both in a literal sense—referring to alleviating physical pain or disease as seen in passages that discuss easing torments [1, 2, 3]—and in a figurative context, where it implies an attempt to excuse or mitigate the weight of an offense or defect [4, 5, 6, 7]. In many narratives, to palliate is not so much to justify as to offer a temporary reprieve or to mask the severity of an act, inviting readers to explore the tension between acknowledgment of wrongdoing and the insufficiency of mere consolation [8, 9, 10]. This dual usage underscores the complex interplay between appearance and reality in human behavior, a recurring concern in literature as authors probe the limits of forgiveness and the ethics of mitigation [11, 12, 13].
- It is found easier by the short-sighted victims of disease, to palliate their torments, by medicine, than to prevent them by regimen.
— from Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages Including a System of Vegetable Cookery by William A. (William Andrus) Alcott - It is found easier, by the short-sighted victims of disease, to palliate their torments by medicine than to prevent them by regimen.
— from The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 3 by Percy Bysshe Shelley - [Pg 258] remedies that can palliate the disease.
— from The Map of LifeConduct and Character by William Edward Hartpole Lecky - I presume, however, to palliate the offence.
— from Gallantry: Dizain des Fetes Galantes by James Branch Cabell - I, whose aim it was principally to gull the company who had their eyes fixed upon me, took it into my head only to palliate the disease.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne - “I have no notion how to cure your brother, and all that I feel myself able to do is to palliate his sufferings.
— from The House of Defence v. 2 by E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson - "No, not justify—I do not justify them even to myself—not justify, but palliate them, Alden—palliate them at least in your eyes, if in no others."
— from Victor's TriumphSequel to A Beautiful Fiend by Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth - Any attempt to palliate her offence only made matters worse.
— from The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America by Thomas Jefferson - We have no wish to palliate any act of Calvin's which is manifestly wrong.
— from Fox's Book of Martyrs by John Foxe - It is hard to say this without indulging a Pharisaic spirit, but I don't mean to palliate our national sins by exaggerating theirs.
— from Life of John Coleridge Patteson : Missionary Bishop of the Melanesian Islands by Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) Yonge - She sought not to varnish her history, or to palliate her own transgressions.
— from A Century of English EssaysAn Anthology Ranging from Caxton to R. L. Stevenson & the Writers of Our Own Time - Thyestes: I should attempt to palliate my sins, Hadst thou not shown me such fraternal love;
— from The Tragedies of SenecaTranslated into English Verse, to Which Have Been Appended Comparative Analyses of the Corresponding Greek and Roman Plays, and a Mythological Index by Lucius Annaeus Seneca - Spoken love will palliate even spoken roughness.
— from The Eustace Diamonds by Anthony Trollope
