"Atrocity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a plot to humiliate us in the most abominable way. The whole family have sworn to make us blush publicly. Publicly blush! They have written to Mama to come and speak out. Now will you attend to me, Caroline? You do not credit such atrocity? I ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of this occurrence in the Press prove conclusively that the newspapers of the Witwatersrand, the atrocity-mongering tactics of which constitute a share of the organised campaign against the Republic and its Government, have been compelled to resort to mendacious criticisms on imaginary instances of maladministration, ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... wounds mortifying and the nervous exhaustion brought on by cramps and convulsions. In many cases the corpses were left to feed the kites and crows; and this added horror to the death. Moslems care little for mere hanging. Whenever a fanatical atrocity is to be punished, the malefactor should be hung in pig-skin, his body burnt and the ashes publicly thrown into a ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... parties in the murder of Dow, and arrested Branson, dragging him out of his bed at night. He had also associated with himself eleven other men. The news spread like wild-fire among the free State men. This Jones was supposed to be capable of any atrocity, however horrible, and a company of sixteen men was gathered up for the rescue of Branson. Of this company Sam Wood, of Lawrence, was the leader. They met Jones and his company at Blanton's Bridge, on the Wakarusa River, where Jones was crossing to go to Lecompte, ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... the attorney (whom we will now report in the first person), "the man who stands here charged, and, in the minds of nine out of ten of all present, I fearlessly affirm, justly charged, with a murder, to the deliberate atrocity of which scarce a parallel can be found in the world's black catalogue of crime,—this man, I say, is a ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... abominable things were done which it is unnecessary to chronicle here. The regular English troops, on the whole, behaved reasonably well, but Tarleton's native "Tories" were inflamed by a fanaticism far fiercer than theirs, while atrocity was of course normal to the warfare of the barbarous mercenaries of England, whether Indian or German. It is equally a matter of course that such excesses provoked frequent reprisals ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... Meanwhile Captain Slocum improved the occasion by giving us a short harangue, the burden of which was that we had now seen a LITTLE of what any of us might expect if we played any "dog's tricks" on him. But you can get used to anything, I suppose: so after the first shock of the atrocity was over, things went on again pretty much ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... the direction of her eyes, and saw my odious cousin, Dudley, in a flagrant pair of cross-barred peg-tops, and what Milly before her reformation used to call other 'slops' of corresponding atrocity, approaching our refined little party with great strides. I really think that Milly was very nearly ashamed of him. I certainly was. I had no apprehension, however, of the scene which ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... hardness of heart, heart of stone, obduracy; cruelty; cruelness &c adj.; brutality, savagery; ferity^, ferocity; barbarity, inhumanity, immanity^, truculence, ruffianism; evil eye, cloven foot; torture, vivisection. ill turn, bad turn; affront &c (disrespect) 929; outrage, atrocity; ill usage; intolerance, persecution; tender mercies [Iron.]; unkindest cut of all [Julius Caesar]. V. be malevolent &c adj.; bear spleen, harbor spleen, bear a grudge, harbor a grudge, bear malice; betray the cloven ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... centers of crime, we daily hear of murders; their frequency and remoteness leave us undisturbed. Our sympathies can only be deeply moved either by some scenic peculiarities investing the crime with unusual romance or unusual atrocity, or else by the more immediate appeal of direct neighborly interest. The murder which is read of in the Times as having occurred in Westminster, has seldom any special horror to the inhabitants of Islington or Oxford Street; but to the inhabitants of Westminster, and especially to the inhabitants ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... to the distracted count that a fiendish atrocity of some sort had been committed, but it was quite impossible to gather any particulars or even the most meagre hint from the poor demented girl by his side; he therefore made the best of his way back to the chateau, whence immediately ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... story of Medea almost too revolting for record even of a sorceress, a class of persons to whom both ancient and modern poets have been accustomed to attribute every degree of atrocity. In her flight from Colchis she had taken her young brother Absyrtus with her. Finding the pursuing vessels of Aeetes gaining upon the Argonauts, she caused the lad to be killed and his limbs to be strewn over the sea. Aeetes on reaching the place found these sorrowful traces ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... hideous, remain grand: their majesty, the majesty peculiar to the human conscience, clings to them in the midst of horror; they are virtues which have one vice,—error. The honest, pitiless joy of a fanatic in the full flood of his atrocity preserves a certain lugubriously venerable radiance. Without himself suspecting the fact, Javert in his formidable happiness was to be pitied, as is every ignorant man who triumphs. Nothing could be so poignant ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... wretched boy, whom have you to blame but yourself? Can you expect that the king, sainted even as he is before his death, dare pass over such an atrocity towards ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... Pepin must go with Bastien to where Dorothy was kept a prisoner and see what could be done. They also wisely decided that it was no use notifying or trying to lead the Imperial troops to the spot, for that might only force the Indians to some atrocity. ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... Ross-shire lands, so long the subject of dispute, entirely to Mackenzie; and the hard terms to which Glengarry was obliged to submit in the private quarrel seem to have formed the only punishment inflicted on this clan for the cold-blooded atrocity displayed in the memorable raid ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... usual, had been the real authors of this new atrocity, but Figgins felt convinced that the guilt lay at the door of Mole, on ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... home-manufacture, and has all the appearance of being the joint composition of a discarded valet and a bookseller's hack." The last hypothesis appears very probable. Internal evidence is greatly in its favour. Can any of your readers tell me who was "Charles Caraccioli, Gent.,"—when the atrocity which bears his name was published,—or any thing about the man or his book? Probably some notice of it may be found in the Monthly Review, the Gentleman's Magazine, or some other periodical of the last century. The writer, indeed, speaks ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.15 • Various
... the ardour of his flight had abated, that Alfred could fully realise that his unhappy brother was committed to a deed of scandalous atrocity, and the discovery was hard for him to bear. The strong impression which his dream had made upon him—an impression that he was to be the means of saving his brother from some great sin— came upon him now ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... is buried during the winter: this morning the sentinel informed us that an Indian was about to kill his wife near the fort; we went down to the house of our interpreter where we found the parties, and after forbidding any violence, inquired into the cause of his intending to commit such as atrocity. It appeared that some days ago a quarrel had taken place between him and his wife, in consequence of which she had taken refuge in the house where the two squaws of our interpreter lived: by running away she forfeited ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... state of siege and put the general and his officers who fired on the people on their trial for murder. He went further, and declared that whatever his opinion might be as to the doctrines of the Socialists, he for one should throw in his lot with the people, until the Government atoned for their atrocity by showing that they were prepared to listen to the demands of men who knew what they wanted, and whom the decrepitude of society forced into pushing their demands in ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... stood there, looking, looking. Slowly certain details cleared to his vision: the details of an unspeakable atrocity. He felt his knees grow weak, and clutched at the ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... for its own quality and the intrepidity of its author. Gladstone has characterized it as the greatest forensic effort in the English language, not excluding the masterpieces of Erskine. It is a plea for the life of a brutalized negro who butchered a whole family under circumstances of peculiar atrocity. The deed was without excuse or palliation, save in the insanity of the perpetrator, of which Seward became convinced, and volunteered as counsel amid the surprise, imprecations, and threats of the Auburn community, where the case was at issue. The moment was a supreme one for him, but he did ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... said that Henry started the African slave-trade of European nations, that must not be understood as the full-blooded atrocity of the West Indian planters, for the use he made of his prisoners was utterly different, though his action was the cause of incessant abuse of the best end by ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... understand how he could have stumbled at Maecenas's table on a dish so overdosed with garlic as that which provoked this humorous protest. From what we know of the abominations of an ordinary Roman banquet, the vegetable stew in this instance must have reached a climax of unusual atrocity. ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... Irish Protestants it may be said that, once the first violence of fanaticism had died out, there was little attempt to enforce the legal enactments in all their hideous atrocity. According to the strict letter of the law, no Roman Catholic bishop, archbishop, or other dignitary; no monk, nun, or member of any religious fraternity, could set foot in Ireland; and any one who harboured them was liable at the third offence to confiscation of all his ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... invention of other more rapid means of transit the present generation would be as little concerned at the pains of the post-horse as they are at the horrors enacted behind the closed doors of the physiological laboratories, the atrocity of the steel trap, the continual murdering by our big game hunters of all the noblest animals left on the globe, and finally the annual massacre of millions of beautiful birds in their breeding time to provide ornaments for the hats of ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... this portion of scientific history, the reader will not fail to perceive that the Church of Rome was driven into a dilemma, from which the submission and abjuration of Galileo could alone extricate it. He who confesses a crime and denounces its atrocity, not only sanctions but inflicts the punishment which is annexed to it. Had Galileo declared his innocence, and avowed his sentiments, and had he appealed to the past conduct of the Church itself, to the acknowledged opinions of its dignitaries, and even to the acts of its pontiffs, he would have ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... for past atrocities than for this atrocity should we make piety responsible. At most we may blame piety for not availing to check our natural passions, and sometimes for supplying them with hypocritical pretexts. But hypocrisy also imposes obligations, and with ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... directed by his passions and caprice, is the scourge of his people. If it is not lawful to make any attempt upon his life, it is still less so to grant him such assistance as would authorize him in the perpetual exercise of revenge, and in the indulgence of the injustice and atrocity of his disposition. It is even wise to deprive him ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... the pride of wealth. They had been educated with certain ideas about rank, which a military life had strengthened. The liberal theories which the war had engendered were not understood, and, during the French Revolution, they became associated with acts of atrocity which Mr. Jefferson himself condemned. Abler men than the Federalists failed to discriminate between the crime and the principles which the criminals professed. Students of affairs are now in a better position than Mr. Jefferson was, to ascertain the truth, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... the atrocity committed by the Grimaldi, in firing the house and leaving their enemy to perish in the ruins, the kinsmen of Orso Paolo assemble and rush to Monte d'Olmo, threatening vengeance on the perpetrators. The Grimaldi rally round Ruggero to shield him from his exasperated enemies. ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... Constitution—concerned only with fundamentals, and guarded against change in a manner suited to the preservation of fundamentals. To put into it a regulation of personal habits, to buttress such a regulation by its safeguards, is an atrocity for which no characterization can be too severe. And it is something more than an atrocity; the Eighteenth Amendment is not only a perversion but also a degradation of the Constitution. In what precedes, the emphasis has been placed on the ...
— What Prohibition Has Done to America • Fabian Franklin
... in her devotion, must have afforded many picturesque and striking scenes, though unfortunately there was no modern observer there to be interested and amused, but only Theodoric standing by, himself very hot upon the atrocity of a miscalculated Easter, and perhaps helping his royal mistress here and there with an argument. Naturally his story is especially full upon the religious side of Margaret's life—her much prayer, her humility and reverence during the services of the Church, an intent and silent listener ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... is feasible. I was sorry to find Mr. Shastriar joining this cry for the prosecution of General Dyer. If the English people will willingly do so, I would welcome such prosecution as a sign of their strong disapproval of the Jallianwalla Bagh atrocity, but I would certainly not spend a single farthing in a vain pursuit after the conviction of this man. Surely the public has received sufficient experience of the English mind. Practically the whole English Press has joined the conspiracy to screen ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... made a night attack on the new mission-house. The building is burned to the ground, and the missionaries have been massacred—with the exception of two priests, carried away captive. The names of the priests are not known. News of the atrocity has been delayed four months on its way to Europe, owing partly to the civil war in the United States, and partly to ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... was to be our future course; but even for that we did not look forward long; how could we, when every day we scarcely knew if we should see the sun go down? For Amante knew or conjectured far more than I did of the atrocity of the gang to which M. de la Tourelle belonged; and every now and then, just as we seemed to be sinking into the calm of security, we fell upon traces of a pursuit after us in all directions. Once I remember—we must have been nearly three weeks wearily walking through unfrequented ways, day ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... clearly and succinctly to unfold detail after detail of the plot for the overthrow of the king, and the means whereby it had been hoped to accomplish it, including the murder of the six chiefs who, it was believed, were powerful enough to render the scheme abortive. As the full, cold-blooded atrocity of the conspiracy became revealed, murmurs of anger and detestation, low at first, but louder as the story proceeded, began to run round the line of chiefs, while those who sat next the parties implicated edged ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... the toothpick habit! Let no one ever tell me that that atrocity is American! Here it goes with every course, and without the pretended decency of holding one's serviette before one's mouth, which, in my opinion, is a mere affectation, and ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... this day, Norman of Torn," replied De Montfort. "Verily do I believe we owe our victory to you alone; so do not mar the record of a noble deed by wanton acts of atrocity." ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... long enough without any reasonable fear of further immediate persecution from Mr. Slope, but we are all inclined to magnify the bugbears which frighten us. In her present state of dread she did not know of what atrocity he might venture to be guilty. Had anyone told her a week ago that he would have put his arm round her waist at this party of Miss Thorne's, she would have been utterly incredulous. Had she been informed that ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... within her. She could not bear it, no, she could not bear it when the boy was beaten. It made her sick. She felt that she must go out of this school, this torture-place. And she hated the schoolmaster, thoroughly and finally. The brute, had he no shame? He should never be allowed to continue the atrocity of this bullying cruelty. Then Hill came crawling back, blubbering piteously. There was something desolate about this blubbering that nearly broke her heart. For after all, if she had kept her class in proper discipline, this would ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... pity a man whom her God hates? Why should she show mercy to a kind and noble heretic whom her God will burn in eternal fire? Why should a Christian be better than his God? It is impossible for the imagination to conceive of a greater atrocity than has been perpetrated by the church. Let it be remembered that all churches have persecuted heretics to the extent of their power. Every nerve in the human body capable of pain has been sought out and touched by the church. Toleration has increased only when ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... our children are not of the HUMAN FAMILY, but were made by our creator to be an inheritance to them and theirs forever? How can the slave-holders but say that they can bribe the best coloured person in the country, to sell his brethren for a trifling sum of money, and take that atrocity to confirm them in their avaricious opinion, that we were made to be slaves to them and their children? How ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet
... committed an unpardonable atrocity. A coral fishery at Bona worked under the British flag was suddenly and treacherously destroyed by an attack of the Algerines. The fishermen engaged at their work were, without warning of any kind, almost annihilated ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... urged, be no doubt as to what was believed in Carmarthen. And why should it be believed without ground that any man had done so hideous a deed as to destroy a will? The lawyer's hair stood almost on end as he spoke of the atrocity; but yet he believed it. Would a respectable newspaper such as the Carmarthen Herald commit itself to such a course without the strongest assurance? What was it to the Carmarthen Herald? Did not the very continuance of the articles make it clear that the ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... evident relish), nothing more mysterious, or more awful, has ever been known, than the recent tragedy at Catheron Royals. In the annals of our town, of our county, of our country we may almost say, it stands unparalleled in its atrocity. A young and lovely lady, wedded little better than a year, holding the very highest position in society, in the sacred privacy of her own household, surrounded by faithful servants, is struck down by the dagger of the assassin. Her youth, her beauty, ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... to temporary madness. They were, perhaps, a little excited by the wine and spirits they had swallowed; else a casual quarrel between two young men, at tennis, could not have driven them to such extremes. But certain it is that, from one at first arising to address the party on the atrocity of the offence, both in a moral and political point of view, on a sudden there were six on their feet, at the same time, expatiating on it; and, in a very short time thereafter, everyone in the room was up talking with ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... say?—a giant!—to the loving, timid, fragile child." "In fine, a certain air of calm rectitude pervaded his person." Execrable wretch! could anything be more repulsive to true and delicate sentiment (as before, a la Francaise) "I should say his age was about forty." Our wrath at this last atrocity can hardly be controlled. It seems as if M. Feydeau, by collecting in one individual all the qualities which most excite his abhorrence and contempt, had succeeded in giving us, in Fanny's husband, a very tolerable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... martial tyranny and foreign oppression, such as we of this generation have beheld in the double conquest of Paris by insulted and outraged Christendom. But nothing of all this will be found in Thucydides—he is as cool as a cucumber upon every act of atrocity; whether it be the bloody abuse of power, or the bloody retribution from the worm that, being trampled on too long, turns at last to sting and to exterminate—all alike he enters in his daybook and his ledger, posts them up to the account of brutal ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... preserve it. Who shall assign limits to the achievements of free minds and free hands under the protection of this glorious Union? No treason to mankind since the organization of society would be equal in atrocity to that of him who would lift his hand to destroy it. He would overthrow the noblest structure of human wisdom, which protects himself and his fellow-man. He would stop the progress of free government and involve his country either in anarchy or despotism. He would extinguish the fire of liberty, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... been a feature of the Aztec worship. But about 200 years before the arrival of the Spanish invaders was the beginning of this religious atrocity, and at last no public festival was considered ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... it. We Germans had no longer any reason for war. We had what we needed. To fight for more, from a lust of conquest and for the annexation of countries which were not necessary for us, always appeared to me like an atrocity; I am tempted to say like a Bonapartistic and foreign atrocity, alien to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... accustomed to think of the betrayer of our Lord as a kind of monster, whose crime is so mysterious in its atrocity as to put him beyond the pale of human sympathy. The awful picture which the great Italian poet draws of him as alone in hell, shunned even there, as guilty beyond all others, expresses the general feeling about him. And even ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... so small and arid a desert as that over which they were said to have wandered during forty years, nor water from a single well; and that the butchery of two hundred thousand Midianites by twelve thousand Israelites, "exceeding infinitely in atrocity the tragedy at Cawnpore, had happily only been carried out on paper." There was nothing of the scoffer in him. While preserving his own independence, he had kept in touch with the most earnest thought both among European scholars and in ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... expense of the defenseless inhabitants of Africa, those inhabitants would not thereby gain; on the contrary, they would lose, for they would be handed over to the tender mercies of individual traders, operating with armies of reprobate bravos, and committing every atrocity to which the civilized barbarian is prone. The European governments cannot divest themselves of responsibility in regard to Africa. They must govern there, and the best that can be hoped is that they should govern with a minimum of cruelty and rapacity. From the point of view of preserving the peace ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... Europe." In Italy I never began to see the cruelty to animals which English tourists report, and in Spain I saw none at all. If the reader asks how with this gentleness, this civility and integrity, the Spaniards have contrived to build up their repute for cruelty, treachery, mendacity, and every atrocity; how with their love of bull-feasts and the suffering to man and brute which these involve, they should yet seem so kind to both, I answer frankly, I do not know. I do not know how the Americans are reputed good and just and law-abiding, although they often shoot one another, and ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... my right!" What atrocity has that legend sanctified! and yet with demure faces they try men for blasphemy. Give ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... imaginative writers, 'that even a moral purpose will not justify the nakedness with which Swift has sketched this horrible outline of mankind degraded to a bestial state; since a moralist ought to hold with the Romans that crimes of atrocity should be exposed when punished, but those of flagitious impurity concealed. In point of probability, too—for there are degrees of probability, proper even to the wildest fiction—the fourth part ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... three hundred people and burned about the same number of houses. Most of the houses had been looted systematically. According to the stories of those inhabitants who remain, there was a reign of terror for about a week, during which the Germans rendered themselves guilty of every sort of atrocity and barbarity. They are all most positive that there was no firing upon the German troops by the civil population. It seems to be generally believed that the massacre was due to resistance of retiring Belgian ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... by the pernicious liquid that it bursts. In either of these catastrophes all his family are sold for slaves. Some survive these diabolical expedients of injustice, but the issue is uniformly slavery. When chiefs of influence, guilty of atrocity and fraud, become objects of accusation, the ingredient is of course qualified so as to remove its fatal tendency. Hence justice seldom or ever in this country can punish powerful offenders, or shield the innocence of ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... and hideously abused, breathed their last miserably; and old men and persons labouring under illness were committed to the flames; and some infants were dashed against the rocks, and the brains of others were cooked and eaten. Atrocity horrible and before unheard of, savagery such that, good God, were all the Neros of all times and ages to come to life again, what a shame they would feel at having contrived nothing equally inhuman! Verily, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... England began her battle against it even before the beginning of the century. The work of the philanthropists, begun as far back as 1786-87, when the Quakers, under the leadership of Clarkson and Sharpe, began to cry out against the atrocity of human bondage, now reached the public authorities, and ministers found it necessary to take heed of what the people were saying and doing. Both Pitt and Fox became abolitionists before the close of the eighteenth ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... this proclamation is aimed, not at the negro or the South, but at Europe." Bell's Weekly Messenger believed that it was now "the imperative duty of England and France to do what they can in order to prevent the possible occurrence of a crime which, if carried out, would surpass in atrocity any similar horror the world has ever seen[933]." "Historicus," on the other hand, asked: "What is that solution of the negro question to which an English Government is prepared to affix the seal ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... axe had been laid to the root thereof. The later witch prosecutions were not to be compared for extent and atrocity to the mediaeval ones; and first, as it would seem, in France, and gradually in other European countries, the old contempt of women was being replaced by admiration and trust. Such examples as that of Marguerite d'Angouleme ...
— Women and Politics • Charles Kingsley
... Government had hoped that the time had passed away when the perpetration of such acts of atrocity could have been tolerated; and that the law by which they are permitted or enjoined, although it might still disgrace the Mahomedan code, had fallen so completely into disuse as to have become virtually null and ...
— Correspondence Relating to Executions in Turkey for Apostacy from Islamism • Various
... at last, having found that all their proceedings were totally ineffectual, they desire the women to surrender their house; though it is in evidence before you, that to remove a woman from her own house to another house without her consent is an outrage of the greatest atrocity, on account of which many women have not only threatened, but have actually put themselves to death. Mr. Hastings himself, in the case of Munny Begum, had considered such a proposition as the last degree of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... atrocious murder committed by two Ohio men. This turned the tables on my native state, and I was compelled to confess that bad men came from Ohio as well as from other states; but, if so, Ohio people excelled in the atrocity of their crimes as well as in the excellence of ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... been denounced with greater severity than by themselves in the two wars with Great Britain, in the last and in the present century, and in the Declaration of Independence in 1776, when an enumeration was made of the wrongs which justified the revolt from Great Britain. The climax of atrocity was deemed to be reached only when the English monarch was denounced as having 'excited ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... Mr. Barker deplored this coincidence, which put a stop to "Attila." "But have you never yourself been the victim of these odd coincidences, and, just as you had fixed upon a subject or a title, found yourself superseded—a thing next in atrocity to the ancients' stealing all one's fine thoughts. My comedy of 'Tears and Smiles' was to be called 'Name it Yourself,' when out comes a 'Name it Yourself,' in England, and out comes too a 'Smiles and Tears,' with a widow, an Irishman, and almost all my dramat. pers. ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker
... celestial radiance. But notwithstanding all her arguments and explanations there remains the fact that Liszt and thousands of others, I one of them, read Lucrezia Floriani and were not a moment in doubt that Chopin was the prototype of Prince Karol. We will not charge George Sand with the atrocity of writing the novel for the purpose of getting rid of Chopin; but we cannot absolve her from the sin of being regardless of the pain she would inflict on one who once was dear to her, and who still loved her ardently. Even Miss Thomas, [FOOTNOTE: In George Sand, a volume of ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... that a large part of the Congo atrocity was a German scheme. The head and front of the expose movement was Sir Roger Casement of London. He sought to foment a German-financed revolution in Ireland and was hanged as a traitor ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... Cawnpore, having halted for the night, he heard that the women and children at Cawnpore were still alive, and that the Nana had taken the field to oppose him. He broke camp and marched fifteen miles that night. In the meantime, the crowning atrocity was committed at Cawnpore. The defeated rebels had returned to the Nana. On receiving the tidings of their repulse, he ordered the slaughter of the 200 women and children. They were hacked to death with swords, bayonets, ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... was in a fair way to be overcome. Not that he had begun to make love to Beatrice, or committed himself by the utterance of any opinion as to the propriety of clerical marriages; but he daily became looser about his peculiar tenets, raved less immoderately than heretofore as to the atrocity of the Greshamsbury church pews, and was observed to take some opportunities of conversing alone with Beatrice. Beatrice had always denied the imputation—this had usually been made by Mary in their ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... other. They have lost all decency—all the semblance of good manners and decorum. Whatever little politeness they had put on to impose upon the outsider was gone, and there they were in all the naked atrocity of their bad natures. It is thus you see the Greeks. You have dropped in upon them unfairly; you have invaded a privacy they had hoped might be respected. Give them a nation to cheat, however; let the pigeon be introduced, and you'll not see a better bred and a more courtly people ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... this dismal story, we must remember Brown's situation was that of an avowed and determined rebel, liable as such to military execution; so that the atrocity was more that of the times than of Claverhouse. That general's gallant adherence to his master, the misguided James VII., and his glorious death on the field of victory, at Killicrankie, have tended to preserve and gild his memory. He is still remembered in the Highlands as the ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... its ultima ratio, the penalties of the law. In every grade of this descending scale are men to whom are committed all the legal powers of a husband. The vilest malefactor has some wretched woman tied to him, against whom he can commit any atrocity except killing her, and, if tolerably cautious, can do that without much danger of the legal penalty. And how many thousands are there among the lowest classes in every country, who, without being in a legal sense malefactors in any other respect, because in every other quarter their aggressions ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... fought manfully. Nevertheless, they were finally taken, and one of them slain, and the son of the queen, pierced in two places; when they were taken to the admiral's ship they showed no less ferociousness and atrocity of mien, than if they had been lions of Libya who felt themselves taken in the net. And such were they that no man could have even looked upon them without his heart trembling with horror, so greatly was their look hideous, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... are kept; and so proud were they of his deeds, that they even gave a name of honor to the bodies brought for his consumption, calling them the "Contents of the Turtle-pond." ... One man gained a great name among his people by an act of peculiar atrocity. He told his wife to build an oven, to fetch firewood for heating it, and to prepare a bamboo knife. As soon as she had concluded her labors her husband killed her, and baked her in the oven which her own hands had prepared, ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880
... speech, in each session, in which he went over the political issues of the two parties in a violent and extreme fashion. He would give us the whole history of the year and point out the imperfections and weakness and atrocity of the party in power in a most unsparing fashion. This speech he would frank home to Missouri. He seemed to think his duty as a Democratic politician was done, and he would betake himself to statesmanship the rest of the year. I think he has of late discontinued ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... range of his voluminous contributions to imaginative literature. The passages selected to this end from his famous story of Oliver Twist were those relating more particularly to the Murder of Nancy by Bill Sikes. A ghastlier atrocity than that murder could hardly be imagined. In the book itself, as will be remembered, the crime is painted as with a brush dipped in blood rather than pigment. The infamous deed is there described in language worthy of one of the greatest realists in fictitious narrative. Henri de Balzac, even ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... superintendent of the Kroonstad Native Location for an outrage upon a coloured woman. He arrested her in the location ostensibly because she could not produce her residential pass, and in the field between the location and the town through which he had to escort her to prison he perpetrated the atrocity. In sentencing him to four years' hard labour, the Chief Justice said for a similar crime upon a white woman a black man would be liable to ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... bloody scourging. Mr. DOUGLASS states that in neither of these instances was any thing done by way of legal arrest or judicial investigation. The Baltimore American, of March 17, 1845, relates a similar case of atrocity, perpetrated with similar impunity—as follows:—"Shooting a slave.—We learn, upon the authority of a letter from Charles county, Maryland, received by a gentleman of this city, that a young man, named Matthews, a nephew of General Matthews, ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... passage in a letter of Mary of Hungary,[613] there is no hint in the correspondence, either in Paris, Simancas, or Brussels, that there was a suspicion of foul play. If Charles or Francis had believed Henry really capable of so deep atrocity, no political temptation would have induced either of them to commit their cousins or nieces to the embrace of a monster, yet no sooner was Jane Seymour dead, than we shall find them competing eagerly with each other to secure ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... and though I had known nothing more of the case than the Government account of it, as contained in that paper, I would have said that it was enough to cover any Government with eternal infamy. Indeed, I don't believe that there is a Government under the sun, save the Pope's, that would have done an atrocity like it. I had some talk with our consul, Mr Freeborn, about that case too, and he assured me that, bad as these cases were, they were not worse than scores, aye, hundreds, that to his knowledge had been perpetrated in Rome, and all over the Papal States, since the ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... sententiously. "It was such a comfort to me. I'd been feeling so grumpy because my own was horrid compared to yours, but when I saw that grey flannel atrocity I felt I ought ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... imperfect. I could see that the courthouse was filled to overflowing, and this increased my feebleness. The case was one that had occasioned considerable excitement in the community, It was one of no ordinary atrocity. This was a sufficient reason why the audience should be large. There was yet another. There were two new debutants. In a community where popular eloquence is, of all others, perhaps the most desirable talent, this circumstance was well calculated to bring ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... the atrocity of fainting, but found herself thoroughly chilled and weak. Cousin Sue bustled about with brandy and blankets, and Sharley, watching her through her half-closed eyes, speculated a little. Had she anybody's wedding-cards laid up on a shelf? ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... be prevented from mixing themselves up with the troops. The Afghans occupied the cantonments as portion after portion was evacuated by our people, rending the air with their exulting cries, and committing every kind of atrocity. It was late in the afternoon before the long train of camels following the main body had cleared the cantonments; and meanwhile the rear-guard was massed outside, in the space between the rampart and the canal, among the chaos of already abandoned baggage. It was exposed ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... that this relates to the atrocity committed by the Infant Don Juan of Castille, who, while in revolt against his brother, Sancho IV., appeared before the city of Tarifa with an army, chiefly composed of Mahometans; finding the infant son of the governor, Don Alonzo Perez de Guzman, at nurse in a neighbouring ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... retires into its hole, so we would burrow deep into our pride and show neither resentment nor sense of honor. As soon as possible, word came from the White House that, as the President's speech had been written before the sinking of the Lusitania, his remarks had no bearing on that atrocity. Pride is a wonderful cloak for cowards, but it never saves them. Perhaps the most amazing piece of impudence in Germany's long list was the formal visit described by the newspapers which the German Ambassador, Bernstorff, paid ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... most extraordinary sensation to note the utterly urbane and cheerful countenance with which Mr. Vanringham disclosed the meditated atrocity. This unprincipled young man was about to run me through with no more compunction than a naturalist in the act of pinning a new beetle among his collection ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... down, And turned to rest me in the herdsmen's cots,[51] Where I was host and guest, until I gain'd The cheerful homes and social haunts of men. Already through these distant vales had spread The rumor of this last atrocity; And wheresoe'er I went, at every door, Kind words saluted me and gentle looks. I found these simple spirits all in arms Against our rulers' tyrannous encroachments. For as their Alps through each succeeding year Yield the same roots—their streams flow ever on In the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... they had not misused the women. I heard no tales of actual atrocity, though some of brutal passion. But many women shrugged their shoulders when I questioned them about this and said: "They had no need to use violence in their way of ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... ate to satiety, and quit with plenty left. From the very first they treated South Carolina as her acts of treason and atrocity deserved. Nearly every house all over the country was fed on the flames of Yankee vengeance. When their houses were burnt, the proud chivalry were obliged to seek refuge in negro shanties—an awful condescension, but scores of them have had their ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear
... of the determination of the Crown to silence the voice of the people with the weapons of Scotch mercenaries. Pamphlets, speeches, sermons, all were employed to stimulate the general agitation and to brand with atrocity the conduct of the Ministry. The tombstone erected over the murdered man Allan chronicled his inhuman murder "by Scottish detachments from the Army," and quoted from Proverbs the words, "Take away the wicked from ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... glass box must have been, for any courage that kept him above his fate. It was all very vivid, and the more incredible therefore that such a devilish thing as the death-punishment should still be, and that governments should keep on surpassing in the anguish they inflict the atrocity of the cruelest murderers. If the Salem-born Hawthorne ever visited that church in remembrance of the fact that his people came from the same parish; if he saw the mortal relic which held me in such fascination that I could scarcely leave the place even when the glass box had been locked ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... by following through the jungles, guided by the reports of the natives, who were on the lookout in all directions. The animal showed peculiar cunning, as it never remained in the same place, but travelled a considerable distance immediately after the committal of some atrocity, and concealed itself within the jungles until prompted to another raid in some new direction. I am indebted to Colonel Bloomfield for an interesting description of the manner in which, after many days of great fatigue and patience, he ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... the gifts of Heaven are inscrutable as mysterious, and education gives no clue to them. The business of the hour went on, and my attention was soon wholly taken up in the development of the gigantic guilt of the wretched culprit before me. I could not have conceived of such atrocity as I heard brought home to him, and to which, miserable man! he listened, now with a smile, now with perfect unconcern, as crime after crime was exhibited and proved. His history was a fearful one even from his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... outline the future cannot blind us to the unmistakable trend of the evolutionary forces at work. One thing that is clear is that our boasted Christian civilization is the theater in which has been staged the most un-Christian war of recorded history and in which human atrocity has reached a point that leaves us vaguely groping for a rational explanation of it. Another obvious fact is that the more than twenty nations involved have been forced into measures and methods before unknown and which wholly transform ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... whisperings of a malignant and envious minister—a snake in the grass—a fly in the ointment of Prince Ahmad's beatitude! And to think of the old witch gaining access to the fairy palace— it was nothing less than an atrocity! And the tasks which she induces the king to set Prince Ahmad to perform—but they are all accomplished for him by his fairy bride. The only thing to regret—the fatal blemish in the tale—is the slaughter ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... fairly made my blood creep; one instance in particular filled me with horror, for it was a cold-blooded murder of the deepest dye I must, however, do the narrator the justice to say that he viewed the atrocity in the same light ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... the purpose of giving the Minister an opportunity of disapproving of them: he hoped he should not hear the principle avowed. Crowned heads, he thought, were at present led by some fatal infatuation to degrade themselves and injure mankind. But some, it seems, regard any atrocity in monarchs as if it had lost its nature by not being committed by low and vulgar agents. A head with a crown, and a head with a nightcap, totally altered the moral quality of actions—robbery was no longer robbery—and death, inflicted by ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... among the volunteers in Poydras Street. His presenting himself at their rendezvous, getting enrolled in the corps, and offering as a candidate for the captaincy, were all done under instructions, and with a design which, for wickedness and cold-blooded atrocity, was worthy of Satan himself. Had he succeeded in becoming the leader of this ill-fated band, for them the upshot might have been no worse; though it would not have been better; since it was his intention to betray them to the enemy at the first opportunity that ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... and palliate his conduct toward Scotland. They have glossed over his crimes and tried to explain away the records of his deeds of savage atrocity, and to show that his claims to that kingdom, which had not a shadow of foundation save from the submission of her Anglo-Norman nobles, almost all of whom were his own vassals and owned estates in England, were just ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... weapon with which he was assailed. The impression of a bloody hand thrust under the bolster, where it was Sir Wynston's habit to place his purse and watch, when making his arrangements for the night, supplied the motive of this otherwise unaccountable atrocity. ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... O.K., bringin' most of it back on his breath and the Kid asked him to stick out his tongue so he could see was they any revenue stamps on it. In the mornin' he grabbed a container of ice water and a pen and dashed off a atrocity in five reels based on what atmosphere of Montana Joe's that was still with him. He called the thing "The End of the World!" Potts says the title alone sounded good enough to him to remove the bumpers from his bankroll without lookin' further, addin', in a loud aside, that ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... in ordinary times. Those to whom they are accredited have to pay them, under ordinary circumstances, certain sums monthly, to prevent their inventing or exaggerating cases of abuse of power or neglect of duty on their part; but, when they happen to be really guilty of great acts of atrocity, or great neglect of duty, they are required to pay extraordinary sums, not only to the news-writers, who are especially accredited to them, but to all others who happen to be in the neighbourhood at the time. There are six hundred and sixty news- writers ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... first thing I knew I was introduced. Now I was really in sympathy with the purpose of this gathering and I felt, sincerely, the atrocity of the Kishinef massacre. Consequently, I was able to speak from the heart in telling my audience how every human being, without regard to race, was touched by such an outrage. Had I been running for Congress there, I would have received every vote in the ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... own dreadful character in Klosterheim, which might have decayed a little of late, in all its original strength and freshness of novelty; or, as though he wished to send immediately before him an act of atrocity that should form an appropriate herald or harbinger of his ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... we are making ourselves out as white as angels, and yet we are, taking it all in all, capable of any kind of polite atrocity the moment glory, gold, or women are concerned—So you ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... crime is committed in some place, attracting public attention either through the atrocity of the case or the strangeness of the criminal deed—for instance, one that is not connected with bloodshed, but with intellectual fraud—there are at once two tendencies that make themselves felt in the public conscience. One of them, ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... educated a girl well,—he should have made her know too much. Lessing said, "The woman who thinks is like the man who puts on rouge, ridiculous." Voltaire said, "Ideas are like beards; women and young men have none." And witty Dr. Maginn carries to its extreme the atrocity: "We like to hear a few words of sense from a woman, as we do from a parrot, because they are so unexpected." Yet how can we wonder at these opinions, when the saints have been severer than the sages? since the pious Fenelon ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... circles of her sex. Agnes would have looked more in place behind the refreshment bar from which Morris Barnes had brought her. Her dress of cheap shiny silk was ill fitting and hopeless, her hat with its faded flowers and crushed shape an atrocity, boots and gloves, and brooch of artificial gems—all were shocking. Little was left of her pale-faced prettiness. The tragedy which had stolen into her life had changed all that. Yet she faced the Baroness without flinching. She seemed sustained ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Charles was exactly the sort of man who would like to have the profit of an evil deed without the loss of reputation arising from the commission of it, and who would consider himself best served by agents who could commit a profitable atrocity without being guilty of the annoying want of tact of waiting for his direct orders ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... mistress. What was there to prevent her from insuring her life, if she pleased, and from so disposing of the insurance as to give Van Brandt a direct interest in her death? Knowing what I knew of him—believing him, as I did, to be capable of any atrocity—I trembled at the bare idea of what might have happened if I had failed to find my way back to her until a later date. Thanks to the happy accident of my position, the one certain way of protecting her ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... than they, did not erect his own criminality into a social theory, but was tolerably soon overtaken by a remorse which drove him both to confess his misdeed, and to admit that it was inexpiable; and that the atrocity of the offence owes half the blackness with which it has always been invested by wholesome opinion, to the fact that the offender was by and by the author of the most powerful book by which parental duty has been commended in its full loveliness and nobility. And at any rate, let Rousseau be a little ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... characteristic act. He knew that an Indian rarely failed to repay a kindness or an injury, stroke for stroke, when opportunity offered. Long-Hair was a typical Indian. That is to say, a type of inhumanity raised to the last power; but under his hideous atrocity of nature lay the indestructible sense of gratitude so fixed and perfect that it did its work ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... his first and last public atrocity. He had killed men since, but always when they were alone with him. No one had seen him at his murders. He would have been destroyed when his racing days were over, but he possessed the ability to transmit a large measure of his stamina and speed ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... was obliged to accord, until they were again reconciled. [17] The mischievous right of private war was repeatedly recognized by statute. It was claimed and exercised in its full extent, and occasionally with circumstances of peculiar atrocity. An instance is recorded by Zurita of a bloody feud between two of these nobles, prosecuted with such inveteracy that the parties bound themselves by solemn oath never to desist from it during their lives, and to resist every effort, even on the part of the crown itself, to ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott |
