"Cruel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you cruel, wicked boy!" Then she seized the strap and he soon had an opportunity to known how ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... or Overseers of the Poor of the Town of Boston, has been by them communicated to a Committee of this Town appointed to receive the donation made for the employment or relief of such inhabitants as are or may be more immediate sufferers by the cruel Act of Parliament for shutting up our harbor. This, at the desire and in the name of this Committee, I am very gratefully to acknowledge the generosity of the Town of Wethersfield, in the donation made by them, for the purpose above mentioned, consisting of 343/4 bushels of wheat, ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... "That would be cruel. Think of the dance you led me this morning. More. Think of the dances you're going to give me on ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... wife that he had not asked me before; but she was unreasonable, and he had to do it himself. She did not see why she and Martha could not manage the baby; she was sure Peggy was no such marvel; that there was no difficulty in feeding the child; that it was cruel to put a strange woman over to give her orders, for Peggy was far too independent for her place; and then Emily would love her nurse better than her own mother. I know that was the way she went on to Mr. Phillips, but on this point he was unmovable. When he asked me as a great ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... while the relation of the sexes was looked on in a wrong light, all other social relations were necessarily also misconceived. "The very ideas of family and national life," as it has been said, "those two divine roots of the Church, severed from which she is certain to wither away into that most cruel and most godless of spectres, a religious world, had perished in the East, from the evil influence of the universal practice of slave- holding, as well as from the degradation of that Jewish nation which had been for ages the ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... with tears, it was hard to find a way in which he could earn a living and provide for his family except by pressing in before some weaker rival and taking the food from his mouth. Even the ministers of religion were not exempt from this cruel necessity. While they warned their flocks against the love of money, regard for their families compelled them to keep an outlook for the pecuniary prizes of their calling. Poor fellows, theirs was indeed a trying business, preaching to men a generosity and unselfishness which they and everybody ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... the hands of their cruel foes for some time after the beheading of their royal parents. The girl was finally restored to her mother's relatives, the royal family of Austria; but the boy, who was most inhumanly treated by his jailer, was supposed to have died in consequence of that brutal abuse, ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... explain in any other manner, she would have to write a note and steal quietly away. It wasn't a nice thing to do; yet she couldn't afford to let the difficulty of explaining the situation keep her here until Elsie Moss should have become so firmly established that it would be cruel to drag her back ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... arm about Mrs. Acton's neck and kissed her shyly. "You would never have been so cruel, and now you are going to be my friend," she said. "I don't want him to go back ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... an account of that grotto, and of the cruel experiments made on the poor dogs, to gratify the curiosity of strangers. But I understood that the vapour exhaled by this ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... embittered period of the political struggle over the question of Slavery, public opinion in the South grew narrow, intolerant, and cruel. The mass of the Southern people refused to see any thing in the anti-slavery movement except fanaticism; they classed Abolitionists with the worst of malefactors; they endeavored to shut out by ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... What a cruel, cruel question to put to her! She going so unsuspectingly with him to the very door! Philip Compton's servant, always about when he was not wanted, spying about to see whom it was that "down-stairs" was letting out, came strolling into sight. Anyhow, whether that was the reason ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... because he thought she could not help him there. Some of the children rather looked down upon him, called him "tramp" and "beggar," twitted him with having been a circus boy, and lived in a tent like a gypsy. They did not mean to be cruel, but did it for the sake of teasing, never stopping to think how much such sport can make a fellow-creature suffer. Being a plucky fellow, Ben pretended not to mind; but he did feel it keenly, because he wanted to start afresh, and be like other boys. He was not ashamed ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... his broad-sword over his head: This was always sufficient to silence complaint, and send the sufferer quietly away; after which the soldier sold what he had thus acquired for profit of sometimes more than a thousand per cent. This behaviour was so cruel to the natives, and so injurious to us, that I ventured to complain of it to the resident, and the other two gentlemen, Le Cerf and the secretary. The resident, with becoming spirit, reprimanded the soldiers; but it produced so little ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... my baby girl,—they could never have lived as I have existed. They surely must have perished; if not at once, then when the first cruel storms of hideous winter came howling down from the ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... on the Virtues or Vices of a single Person. Look into the [History [1]] I have mentioned, or into any Series of Absolute Princes, how many Tyrants must you read through, before you come to an Emperor that is supportable. But this is not all; an honest private Man often grows cruel and abandoned, when converted into an absolute Prince. Give a Man Power of doing what he pleases with Impunity, you extinguish his Fear, and consequently overturn in him one of the great Pillars of Morality. This too we find confirmed by Matter of Fact. How many hopeful Heirs ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... Birmingham, for his advocacy of the cause of the poor. Whether to the new poor-law Sir Francis Burdett objected as strongly as we have seen that Dickens did, as well as many other excellent men, who forgot the atrocities of the system it displaced in their indignation at the needless and cruel harshness with which it was worked at the outset, I have not at hand the means of knowing. But certainly this continued to be strongly the feeling of Dickens, who exulted in nothing so much as at any misadventure to the Whigs in connection with it. "How often used Black and ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... once in a blinding burst of pain he was clutching at something in his chest but knew as his life ebbed rapidly from his young body that it would not matter if he was able to pull the cruel shaft out.... ...
— A World Called Crimson • Darius John Granger
... Mexican housings. In a place so exclusively Mexican as Monterey, you saw not only Mexican saddles, but true Vaquero riding—men always at a hand gallop, up hill and down dale, and round the sharpest corners, urging their horses with cries and gesticulations and cruel rotary spurs, checking them dead, with a touch, or wheeling them right about face in a square yard. Spanish was the ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... "one deception opens the way for a whole flock," and I spoke with something of a double meaning, but she only cried out, with apparently no understanding of it, that things had come to a cruel pass, and back to the house she went; and I presently followed her to get my gun, having a mind to shoot a few wild fowl, since my pupil was at her wheel. And there the two sat, keeping up that gentle ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... at the root of nine-tenths of the opposition, by their vanity, which would prompt them to affect superiority to the prejudices of the vulgar, and by the stings of their own conscience, which was constantly upbraiding them in the most cruel manner on account of their bodies, which were generally diseased; let a person's intellect be never so sound, unless his body were in absolute health, he could form no judgment worth having on matters of this kind. The body was everything: it need not perhaps be such a strong body ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... as to put your umbrella under me, and give me a jerk. I shall fall on my hands, and I shan't be offended with you. I will submit to a tumble and a scolding—but please don't break my heart by sending me away. That beautiful woman there can be very cruel sometimes, sir, when the fit takes her. She went away when I stood in the sorest need of a little talk with her—she went away, and left me to my loneliness and my suspense. I am a poor deformed wretch, with a warm heart, and, perhaps, an insatiable curiosity as well. Insatiable curiosity ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... exponent of a great nation, of a powerful people, but because he represented an inexhaustible source of vitality in the midst of the ravages of violence and death. President Wilson's messages have done as much as famine and cruel losses in the field to break the stubborn resistance of the German people. If it was possible to obtain a just peace, why go to the bitter end when defeat was manifestly inevitable? Obstinacy is the backbone of war, and nothing undermines a nation's power of resistance so much ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... Santa Fe Trail to the east, and waving good-bye to us at the far side of the ford! How the fire of patriotism burned in our hearts, and how the sudden loss of all our strongest and best men left us helpless among secret cruel enemies! And then that spirit of manhood leaped up within us, the sudden sense of responsibility come to "all the able-bodied boys" to stand up as a wall of defence about the homes of Springvale. Too well we knew the dangers. Had we not lived on this Kansas border in all those plastic ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... on the loop it would release the sapling, and up it would bound, catching him by the leg. These snares were always set deep in the woods, and we couldn't visit them very often. Sometimes the moose would be there for days, raging and tearing around, and scratching the skin off his legs. That was cruel. I wouldn't catch a moose in that way now for ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... seemed like hours: faint sounds came up from below. She heard steps and voices, and, "Was that mamma Vi crying,—crying as if her heart would break? saying over and over again, 'My baby's dead! my baby's dead! killed by her sister, her cruel, passionate sister!' Would they come and take her (Lulu) to jail? Would they try her for murder, and hang her? Oh! then papa's heart would break, losing two of his children in such ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley
... It is a cruel error to confuse her with the sinful woman of whom Luke has just been writing. Mary had suffered from demon possession, as here stated, but there is nothing in the Gospels to indicate that she had ever been a ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... a young lady of quality, 'do you mean to cheat us out of our prerogative? will you persuade us love cannot subsist without hope, or that the lover must become fickle if the lady is cruel? O fie! I did not expect such an ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... beating fast with exultation, and not a tremor in her steady fingers, she waited motionless as a statue against the wall. She was not a girl of a cruel nature, but her husband lay behind that slim partition on her right, and unarmed, for Stephen would never carry a pistol, and she would have shot unhesitatingly each man in succession that tried to pass her to him. There seemed to be some talking outside and a trampling of feet on the broken ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... most hideous physical curse which fallen man inflicts upon himself; and for this simple reason, that it reverses the very laws of nature, and is more cruel even than pestilence. For instead of issuing in the survival of the fittest, it issues in the survival of the less fit: and therefore, if protracted, must deteriorate generations yet unborn. And yet a peace such as we now enjoy, prosperous, civilised, humane, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... However, the artillery were soon climbing a small kopje on the left, while the Rifles and Northumberland Fusiliers, in skirmishing order, mounted the hill held by the Republicans. Footsore and weary with their long midnight march, they toiled up the steeps amidst a cruel hailstorm from the enemy's fire, which came pouring at the same time from three separate quarters in flank and rear. One of the almost impregnable hill-tops was gained at the point of the bayonet, but so furious became the storm of bullets ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... ambition had not looked beyond the recovery of his father's beylick, was now established as one of the most powerful viziers under the Ottoman government. Success only stimulated his insatiable ambition. He earned the confidence of the Porte by the cruel discipline he maintained in his own sanjak, and the regular flow of tribute and bribes which he directed to Constantinople; while he bent all his energies to extending his territories at the expense of his neighbours. The methods he adopted would have done credit to Cesare Borgia; ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... me?" whispered Colin, anxiously. "Ah! Marietta, what have I done to thee, that thou art so cruel toward me?" ...
— The Broken Cup - 1891 • Johann Heinrich Daniel Zschokke
... the words, O Queen, which thou True to thy lord, hast spoken now, Better than gems and pearls of price, Yea, or the throne of Paradise. But, lady, ere I leave this place, Grant me, I pray, a single grace. Permit me, and this vengeful hand Shall slay thy guards, this Rakshas band, Whose cruel insult threat and scorn Thy gentle soul too ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... clean breast of the whole matter, but the cruel lash cut my sentence short. I had on no coat, only my waist, and I am sure a boy never received such a whipping as ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... have some time, for curiousness, my Lord Watch'd children playing at their life to be, And cruel at it, killing helpless flies; Such is our time—all times ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... exhibiting some misconception of our Federal system of administration in the Territories while they as yet are not in the exercise of the full measure of that sovereign self-government pertaining to the States of the Union, presents in truthful terms the main features of the cruel outrage there perpetrated upon inoffensive subjects of China. In the investigation of the Rock Springs outbreak and the ascertainment of the facts on which the Chinese minister's statements rest the Chinese representatives were aided by the agents of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... are brought before him, err on the side of mercy. Persian justice is short, sharp, and severe, and a man who commits a crime in the morning, may be minus his head before sunset. Although a Persian would indignantly deny it, some of their punishments are nearly as cruel as the Chinese. For instance, not so very long ago a man in Southern Persia was convicted of incest, for which crime his eyes were first torn out with pincers, and his teeth then extracted, one by one, sharpened to a point, and hammered, like nails, through the top of his skull. It should ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... flesh, butter, honey, cheese, garden herbs, and vegetables of various kinds. They were unwilling at first to slay animals, because it seemed cruel; but thinking afterwards that it was also cruel to destroy herbs which have a share of sensitive feeling, they saw that they would perish from hunger unless they did an unjustifiable action for the sake of justifiable ones, and so now they all eat meat. Nevertheless, ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... love for her was dead and gone. But it had died such a cruel and violent death that the very memory of it was full of pain and horror, and to meet her would be like meeting the specter of his murdered love. Nevertheless he must not shrink from his duty; he must ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... merely niggers, to herd in the cabins. But while they never undervalued freedom, and, personally, ardently longed for it, there were certain things which exercised influence over them of a softening kind, despite the master grievance of hard bondage and its occasional cruel hardships. For example, Booker Washington, at a very early age, undertook such service as he could perform in his master's house; and it was not only a possibility, it frequently happened, that a young servant, whether a lad or a girl, became ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... "That were cruel, mother," I answered; "we should return good for evil; and those for whom I plead have never wronged you—of that ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... back from the banks of the Rhine and have an engagement from which I cannot free myself just now, I would immediately set out for Geneva to thank your esteemed mamma and at the same time accept her kind invitation. But cruel fate—in one word, it cannot be done. Your sister was so good as to send me her composition. It gives me the greatest pleasure, and happening to improvise the veryevening of its arrival in one of our ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... know Ernest and his fine mind. Observe now, Dean, out there the parching, cruel sun, that strikes and kills. Here Ernest's magic, this silent machine that catches that sun and turns its death kiss into life. And out there, where the honey bees buzz, the magic made vital. My boy's brain did such miracles and I never knew it until now. I even forbade him the house when he insisted ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... thus nursed on the fields of France found at last scope for action in England itself. Even before the outbreak of the War of the Roses the nobles had become as lawless and dissolute at home as they were greedy and cruel abroad. But with the struggle of York and Lancaster and the paralysis of government which it brought with it, all hold over the baronage was gone; and the lawlessness and brutality of their temper showed itself without a check. The ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... Bishop their leader. His converts (about fifty) were stanch, and he has a school at which about the same number of Chinese boys are educated. These facts pleaded in his favour, and it says something for the Chinese that they were not insensible to these claims. They committed some cruel acts, but they certainly might have committed more. They respected the women except one (Mrs. C., whom they wounded severely), and they stuck by the Bishop until they found that he was trying to bring Brooke back. They then turned upon him, ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... in the bank. Your pedigree begins in a workhouse; mine can be dated from all the royal palaces of Europe. I came over with the Conqueror; I am own cousin to Charles Martel, Orlando Furioso, Philip Augustus, Peter the Cruel, and Frederick Barbarossa. I quarter the Royal Arms of Brentford in my coat. I despise you, but I want money; and I will sell you my beloved daughter, Blanche Stiffneck, for a hundred thousand pounds, to pay off my mortgages. Let your son marry her, and she shall become Lady Blanche ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... most ingenious investigation, the following results are thought to have been obtained: "Young children are less merciful than older ones. When they appear cruel and resentful, we know that they are exercising what they honestly consider the right of revenge. Boys are less merciful than girls. Young children judge of actions by their results, older ones look at the motives which prompt them. If a young child disobeys a command ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... bow in hand, and watched him, as he raised his huge bulk against the side of the rock. The long, strong, cruel-looking claws took hold of crevices and roughnesses much more powerfully than a human hand or foot could have grasped them. A grunt, a growl, a great lift, and the grisly was ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... short, small stick only, and he was "Desired to use it with clemency." However, if any boy proved "incoridgable," he could be "presented" before the elders; and perhaps he would rather have been treated as were Hartford boys by cruel Hartford church folk, who ordered that if "any boye shall be taken playing or misbehaving himself in the time of publick worship whether in the meeting-house or about the walls he shall be examined and punished at ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... Wildmere's coveted beauty might prove an ally. One so attractive would be sought, perhaps won, before Graydon returned, and absence might have taught him that his regard had been little more than admiration. Naturally Madge would not be inclined to think well of one who had brought so cruel an experience into her life; but, prejudice apart, the society girl had given evidence of a type of womanhood not very high. Even Graydon, in his allusions, had suggested a character repulsive to Madge. A woman "as hard to capture and hold as a 'Bedouin'" was not ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... unacquainted with. Should he think me an object of his royal bounty, my heart won't suffer any bounds to be set to my gratitude; and, give me leave to say, my spirit won't suffer me to be burdensome to his Majesty longer than my cruel necessity compels me. ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... plaster which I never see without a shiver and swift recollections of the scenes with which it is associated in my mind. Part of his black hair had been shorn away, and one eye was nearly closed; pain so distorted, and the cruel sabre-cut so marred that portion of his face, that, when I saw it, I felt as if a fine medal had been suddenly reversed, showing me a far more striking type of human suffering and wrong than Michel Angelo's bronze prisoner. By ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... young, two or three years old; and not one of them, except Jim, who has a bit of outside history, has ever been used in any other way. They know nothing about carriages or carts, harness or saddle; they have escaped the cruel curb-bits, the check reins and blinders of our civilization. Fortunate in that respect. And they never have had a shoe on their feet. Their feet are perfect, firm and sound, strong and healthy and elastic; natural, like those of the Indians, who run barefoot, who go over the rough places ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... and personal theories. Singing was not to him merely a means of displaying the singer's voice or person; it was a superior language, charged with the rendition, in its individual charm, of all the greatest creations of literature and poetry; all the sweet, tender, or cruel sentiments possible to humanity. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... theory that he had lost his way in the storm and fallen into the river. This suggestion as soon as it came to Mrs. Voss settled into a conviction. Her imagination brooded over the idea and brought the reality before her mind with such a cruel vividness that she almost saw the tragedy enacted, and heard again that cry of "Mother!" which had seemed to mingle with the wild shrieks of the tempest, but which came only to her ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... worst, let him go to his doom. Yet I would that he had escaped unharmed; yea, may this be so, revered goddess, daughter of Perses, may he avoid death and return home; but if it be his lot to be o'ermastered by the oxen, may he first learn this, that I at least do not rejoice in his cruel calamity." ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... gendarmes began cleaning their beards, brushing their stomachs, spreading their legs, collecting their baggage. The reddish eyes, little and cruel, woke from the trance of digestion and settled with positive ferocity on their prey. "You ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... Mr. Merrihew, but I can say that Mr. Hillard is a gentleman. I have proved that. As for being cruel, I am not; ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... lion or of a dog he bore a fantastic head with a slender curved snout, upright and square-cut ears; his cloven tail rose stiffly behind him, springing from his loins like a fork. He also assumed a human form, or retained the animal head only upon a man's shoulders. He was felt to be cruel and treacherous, always ready to shrivel up the harvest with his burning breath, and to smother Egypt beneath a shroud of shifting sand. The contrast between this evil being and the beneficent couple, Osiris and Isis, was striking. Nevertheless, the theologians ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the Colonel, had mischievously carried out the principle, by presenting a soldo to each one of the assembly having the slightest pretence to comeliness. Upon which the two Pollys, unable to tolerate such cruel discrimination, had offered prompt reparation to the feelings of the ugly ones. The consequence was, that Vittorio and Angelo passed a lively half-hour in the role of sheep-dogs, keeping the small and ravening ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... and looked at her with eyes that flamed with anger. Unfortunately Bud, like Martha, was entirely lacking in humour; otherwise his heart would have been saved many a cruel hurt. "I don't want your prayers," he said, ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... orders were to admit the count, but I suppose you may go in. If mademoiselle cannot land her lover it were cruel to deny her the ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... these two was obvious. McKee was bald, paunchy, middle-aged, his face loose from easy living. Talbott tended toward the more athletic figure. He was dark, his eyes clear and sharp, his mouth cruel. ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... her speak about having cruel treatment from her first masters; I don't know who they were. But after the Fletchers bought them, they had a good time. They come all the way out of Louisiana up here. My mother was sold from her mother and sister-sold some two or three times. She ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... year or two after the war, I engaged one of these very men—he was called Saad—as a servant, and he proved most devoted and attentive; but he had contracted the germs of pulmonary disease during that cruel winter of 1870-71, and at the end of a few months I had to take him to the Val-de-Grace military hospital in Paris, where ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... ever in peril of the spell, the enchantment, the noxious beam of the evil eye, and tales of many a "devilish cantrip sleight," as Burns happily characterized the activity of the witch and the wizard, were told in hushed voices at the Breton fireside when the winter wind blew cold from the cruel sea and the heaped faggots sent the red glow of fire-warmth athwart the thick shadows of the great farm kitchen, and old and young from grandsire to herd-boy made a great circle to hearken to the creepy tales so dear ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... which has been that many, whose expectations were excited, suffered proportionate disappointment at the outset of their career as emigrants. Convinced of the injurious tendency of such a practice, and regarding it as a culpable and cruel mockery of misfortunes, which, having been unavoidable, claim our best sympathies, I should not have said so much as I have done on this important subject, had I not felt justified in so doing. The reader may rest assured that to the sober, the honest, ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... dependence on her are numerous. Let me quote one or two: "Who is rich? He whose wife's actions are comely. Who is happy? He whose wife is modest and gentle." Again: "A man's happiness is all of his wife's creation"; and yet again: "God's presence dwells in a pure and loving home." "Be not cruel or discourteous to your wife," said a first century teacher, "if you thrust her from you with your left hand, draw her back to you with your right hand." Another says: "A man should always be careful lest he vex ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... we that we should live?" cried Hal. "The spider is less cruel; the very pig less greedy, gluttonous and foul; the tiger less tigerish; our cousin ape less monkeyish. What are we but savages, clothed and ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... might not have been effected by a movement of the whole body. The suspect stuck to his assertion, and Colloredo, in a fit of irritation, finally summoned a surgeon, who actually placed the feet of the professed paralytic in "aqua fortis," but even this rigorous method availed the cruel surgeon nothing, and he was compelled to advise dismissal from ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... the sun, he was supposed to be the author and sustainer of all life and the fountain of all pleasures. In his sterner character wherein he was known as Moloch or Molech, by the children of Israel, he was the most cruel, stern, relentless monster that the imagination of man ever depicted, and his votaries everywhere sought to conciliate him by presenting him with the most horrid scenes of human agony. Attempts were ...
— Prehistoric Structures of Central America - Who Erected Them? • Martin Ingham Townsend
... say! It's of no use your coming preaching to me, Mr. Jan. Go and try your eloquence upon others. I always have had enough to eat, and I hope I always shall. And as to my getting about, or walking, I can't. When folks come to be my size, it's cruel to ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... "The utmost that I would consent to was a two months' respite, promising to give my hand to no one in that interval. And so I was forced to refuse you, Richard. You must have seen even then that I loved you, dear, though I was so cruel when you spoke of saving me from his Grace. I could not bear to think that you knew of any stain upon our family. I think—I think I would rather have died, or have married him. That day I threw ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... try to lessen the services you have rendered us. Think of what I was but an hour since—a captive with the most horrible of all fates before me, and with the belief that my father was dying by inches in the hands of some cruel task-master, and now he is beside me and I am free. This has been done by two strangers, men of a nation which I have been taught to regard as an enemy. It seems to me that no words that I can speak could tell you even faintly what I feel, ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... The cruel deed was hardly accomplished, when it was found that the clock had stopped. The artist had destroyed his work with his own hands; his righteous determination that the chimes would never ring again, had become a melancholy truth. Up to the present no one has been able again to set ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... a melodrama of the old, old school. There was a young heroine in white, and a handsome lover in top-boots and white trousers, and a cruel uncle who wanted her property. And there was a particularly brutal villain with leery eyes, ugly mouth, with one tooth gone, and an iron jaw like a hull-dog's. He was attired in a fur cap, brown corduroy jacket, ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the picture of a shepherd, with a very kind and compassionate face, who was bearing home in his bosom a lost lamb. The lamb's fleece was torn in several places, and there were marks of blood on its back, as if it had been roughly used by some cruel beast ...
— A Peep Behind the Scenes • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... sake, don't turn everything I say to you into ridicule!" he cried. "You know I love you with all my heart and soul. Again and again I have asked you to be my wife—and you laugh at me as if it was a joke. I haven't deserved to be treated in that cruel way. It ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... complaint against whom? Against the capitalists, or against inexorable fate? Wilhelm asked himself whether the conditions of labor were attributable to men, or were not the result of cruel necessity? Could the capitalist be responsible for the accidents of machines, the dust from flour, the splitting of iron? If these workmen had not been one-eyed or consumptive could they have performed their work for the commonweal? Was it not true that ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... tree celebration was a bit disappointing to Blue Bonnet. The old ladies—and the men, who were permitted to attend also—seemed awed into silence. Perhaps the sparkling tree, bright with candles and tarlatan bags of sweets, brought memories cruel in their poignancy; and the old-fashioned songs had rather a ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... pushed open the door leading to the cellar used by Vauquelas as the repository of his riches and disappeared. Vauquelas rose from his kneeling posture, filled with consternation by what he had just heard. The extremity to which he was reduced was a cruel one; he must bribe the incorruptible Robespierre. When he made the promise to Coursegol he did not intend to fulfil it: he intended to denounce him; but the shrewdness of his partner had placed him in a most embarrassing position. He was obliged ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... a procession of broken German hopes—in the van, a destroyer of the unbeaten navy; behind, the cruel pirate craft that were to subjugate the sea. Each of the allied warships turned, and keeping a ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake
... was raised to be king; all the strong burghs stood in his hand; five-and-twenty years he was king here. He was mad, he was wild, he was cruel, he was bold; of all things he had his will, except the Peohtes were never still, but ever they advanced over the north end, and afflicted this kingdom with prodigious harm, and avenged their kin enow, whom ...
— Brut • Layamon
... friends. This rule attended to, would make a thousand people amiable, who are now the reverse; and would have made him a perfectly upright character. For could an enemy to whom he would have listened, have whispered to Sandford as he left Lord Elmwood, "Cruel, barbarous man! you go away with your heart satisfied, nay, even elated, in the prospect that Miss Milner's hopes, on which she alone exists, those hopes which keep her from the deepest affliction, and cherish her with joy and gladness, will all be disappointed. You flatter ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... On receiving this cruel reply, M. de Valorsay struck the desk such a formidable blow with his clenched fist that several bundles of papers fell to the floor. His anger was not feigned now. "What are you plotting, then?" he exclaimed; "and what ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... maid. I do not mean to spy on you, far from it; but consider, Mrs. Close, if I should be able to get at the bottom of this thing, find out the real cause of your misfortune, perhaps show that you are the victim of a cruel wrong rather than of carelessness, would you not be willing to let me go ahead? I am frank to tell you that I suspect there is more to this affair than you yourself ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... hardly spoken half a dozen words to her. He was back at the footstool of his first sovereign, he was the most devoted of engaged men; Kate was queen of the hour, Rose was nowhere. It was trying, it was cruel, it was shameful. Rose cried and scolded in the seclusion of her maiden bower, and hated Mr. Stanford, or said she did; and could have seen her beautiful elder sister in her winding-sheet with all the pleasure ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... She saw that she had dressed her idol with attributes of her own making. When had Lily ever really felt, or pitied, or understood? All she wanted was the taste of new experiences: she seemed like some cruel creature experimenting ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... I'll have to do so, though it will be difficult. You see, to give the reasons that count most would be cruel. If it's any comfort to my folks to think favorably of me, I'd rather let them. I've made a horrible mess of things, but that's no ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... not only for life, thus insuring its own perpetuation; it makes also for happiness. Arbitrary and tyrannous rules, cruel or needlessly prohibitive customs, engender restlessness, and are not stable. Such barbarous morals may long persist, propped by the power of the rulers, the superstitions of the people, and all the forces of ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... smile. "And I was coming home from a Sunday school festival in my best white muslin dress with a big pot of purple pansies in my hand," she hastened somewhat nervously to explain. "And just at the edge of the gutter there was a dreadful drunken man lying in the mud with a great crowd of cruel people teasing and tormenting him. And, because—because I couldn't think of anything else to do about it, I—I walked right up to the poor old creature,—scared as I could be—and—and I presented him ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... them for itself;—if, after all your opportunities for growth and development, you cannot yet see the truth of the great principle of individual self-government;—if you have only reached the idea of class-government, and that, too, of the most hateful and cruel form—bounded by sex—there must be some radical defect in the ethics of the party of which ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... last ended without realizing that for which it was said we were kept so long abroad after peace was signed. I had anxiously hoped I should have been directed to enforce the abandonment of their cruel system of retaining Christians who fell into their hands (in what they term war) in slavery. I hope I have made the path easy for the Government, having obtained by my own exertions the relinquishment from two States, and a ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... you thus, but the cruel foreman insists on me working off my ten days' board. Racked with pain as I am, there appears to be no alternative but flight. Accordingly I fade away once more into the unknown. Will write you general delivery, ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... to pull us all back. Mother, mother, how can you do it? How can you ask me to go agen fayther when he leaves all to me? You're acting the devil's part, mother, when you 'tice your own child to do wrong. Oh, it's cruel, it's cruel, when you know, if I were to deceive fayther it'd break his heart. But it's the drink that's been speaking. Oh, the cursed drink! that can pluck a mother's heart out of her bosom, and make her the tempter of her own child! I must leave you, mother, now. I durstn't stay. I might ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... foe—it is that the midnight and sleeping couch of our infants may not be awakened to death by the tremendous yell of an Indian warwhoop —it is that the gray hairs of our fathers may not become the bloody trophies of a cruel and insidious foe. Cruelty and a thirst for blood are the inmates of an Indian's bosom, and in the neighborhood of two contending powers they are never peaceful. If the strong hand of power does not ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... assemble, and queens of the Amazons; and after the queens have chosen, the rest cast lots for their valentines. This one month they feast, dance, and drink of their wines in abundance; and the moon being done they all depart to their own provinces. They are said to be very cruel and bloodthirsty, especially to such as offer to invade their territories. These Amazons have likewise great store of these plates of gold, which they recover by exchange chiefly for a kind of green stones, which the Spaniards call piedras hijadas, and we use ...
— The Discovery of Guiana • Sir Walter Raleigh
... cruel behaviour while commander of Paris made him not much regretted. Fouche lost in him, indeed, an able support, but none of us here ever experienced from him justice, much less protection. As with all other of our modern public ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... they tortured to death. "And that the reader may understand," says Cotton Mather, "what it is to be taken by such devils incarnate, I shall here inform him. They stripped these unhappy prisoners, and caused them to run the gauntlet, and whipped them after a cruel and bloody manner. They then threw hot ashes upon them, and, cutting off collops of their flesh, they put fire into their wounds, and so, with exquisite, leisurely, horrible torments, roasted them out ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... food. Probably I might have experienced some of the satisfaction which our savage friends did. Igubo and his sons were highly delighted at the number of animals caught, at the same time he acknowledged that the way among his own people of catching game was far less cruel. Further to the north, large nets are spread round the trunks of trees, towards which the animals are driven, much in the manner I have just described. The nets, however, only serve for smaller animals, as large ones would break through them. People are stationed ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... arguments had not the desired effect, that torments could not shake his constancy, nor even the fear of the cruel sentence he had reason to expect would be pronounced and executed on him, after severe menaces, left him. On the eighth day after being the last of their inquisition, when sentence is pronounced, they returned again, but quite altered ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... gone, good dame. But what if she Has made mistake, and thread of gold Is not enough to draw our son From out the Ogre's cruel hold? Canst think of nought, your Majesty? Of nothing else? Must we stand here And powerless lift no hand to speed The rescue of our ...
— The Rescue of the Princess Winsome - A Fairy Play for Old and Young • Annie Fellows-Johnston and Albion Fellows Bacon
... knew but that with regard to Rosie she was right—and yet wrong? Women, with their remarkable powers of divination, didn't always hit the nail directly on the head. It might be the case with Lois now. She might be right in her surmise that Rosie was in love, and mistaken in those light and cruel words: "Oh, not with you!" He didn't suppose it was with him. And ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... of mankind. Feelings of resentment began to spring up in the mind of Monkey as he saw that Sam-Chaong seemed to feel more pity for the dead demons than gratitude for the heroic efforts which had saved him from a cruel death. ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... word, no hint of mine loosen the gag?' she wished to know. 'What, you are silent still? Then, Mr. Pulvertoft, though I may seem harsh and cruel in saying it, our pleasant intercourse must end—we ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... blank wonderment and despair. Was it possible! Had she been so near her golden El Dorado only to see the shining shores receding, and the glittering harbour closed! Oh, it was cruel! Horrible! There was a convulsive catch in her throat which she managed to turn ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... merely spiritually minded. And I think it was because your own spirit was not denominational, nor fitted to any dogma of my acquaintance, that I trusted it. But really, the product is always the same. And I begin to wonder if there is not something fundamentally cruel in the law that governs soul-life. No matter what the age or the colour of the doctrine is, those most highly developed in this way generally show a conscientious selfishness that is dehumanising. They have no tender sense of touch, their relation to the world about ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... comparing seals now, and so can't you make an excuse to Angela that you want to compare the seals in the different colors, and borrow her note of invitation, and then bring it to me? If I could see that note, I might know the handwriting, and then I'd know who played this shabby, cruel trick. And I ought to know, that I mayn't suspect an ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... self-reproach. Still I found myself mocked and deluded with false hopes; yet still I renewed my quick walk, and the intensity of my watch for that radiant form that was fated never more to be seen returning from the cruel city. ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... undercurrent has belied the boast. From all ages and all lands the cry of anguish, the prayer for life unconscious of itself, has gone up to heaven. In groans and curses, in despair and cruel rage, man pours out his secret to the universe; writing it in blood, and lust, and savage wrong, upon the fair bosom of the earth; he alone not knowing what he does. If this be the life of ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... paid the greatest tribute of respect of any writer to women. While he gives us a few scolding, licentious, cruel, criminal women, like Dame Quickly, Katharina, Tamora, Gertrude and Lady Macbeth, he gives us the beautiful, faithful, loving characters of Isabella, Juliet, Desdemona, Perdita, Helena, Miranda, Imogen, ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... strongly had he urged him to the immediate slaughter of the captive. But Tisquantum was not to be lightly moved, either to good or evil. He had said that the boy should live, if he proved himself worthy to bear Indian arms, and all the cruel suggestions and arguments that Coubitant could bring forward only made him more resolved ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... Louisiana, of minor importance. They consist in the main of responses to serenades, a form of address which Lincoln cordially detested and in which as a rule he achieved only a moderate degree of success. The cares of his great office made such cruel demands upon his time and strength that he declined many requests to speak in public, and whenever he did appear he confined his remarks within the smallest possible limits. Furthermore, Lincoln was not a ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... it; but notwithstanding that, he will remember it as a trait of malice, when the whole company shall have forgotten it as a stroke of wit. Women are so far from being privileged by their sex to say unhandsome or cruel things, that it is this very circumstance which renders them more intolerable. When the arrow is lodged in the heart, it is no relief to him who is wounded to reflect, that the hand which shot it ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... savages had been for thirteen years under the instruction of a protector and others. They belonged originally to Van Diemen's Land, but migrated to a part of this colony called Portland Bay. They spoke English quite well, yet, notwithstanding all their advantages, they perpetrated this cruel and cold-blooded murder, and then cunningly hid the bodies in the ground. They were detected by the merest chance, in consequence of their having in possession of a few articles which had formerly belonged to the unhappy mariners. None of the natives is allowed to carry fire-arms, and a heavy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... humanity in fierce and noble protest against unjust laws, the tyranny of an individual or of a ruling class —oppression of any sort. As in "The Prince and the Pauper," the wandering heir to the throne is brought in contact with cruel injustice and misery, so in the "Yankee" the king himself becomes one of a band of fettered slaves, and through degradation and horror of soul acquires ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... soul he knew that his action was so base, abominable and cruel that, with that action upon his conscience, not only would he have no right to condemn others but he should not be able to look others in the face, to say nothing of considering himself the good, noble, magnanimous man he esteemed himself. And he had to esteem himself as such ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... heart to disappoint me, now that the victory is won;—now that it may be made our own by your help? And what is it that I am asking you to do? If this man were bad,—if he were such a one as your father, if he were drunken, cruel, ill-conditioned, or even heavy, foolish, or deformed; had you been told stories to set you against him, as that he had been false with other women, I could understand it. In that case we would at any rate find out the truth before we went on. But of this man we hear that he is good, and pleasant; ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... up into the skies, Thy strenuous pinions go; While shouts, and cries, and wondering eyes Still reach thee from below. But higher and higher, like a spirit of fire, Still o’er thee hangs thy foe; Thy cruel foe, still seeking With one down-plunging aim To strike thy precious life For ever from thy frame; But doomed, perhaps, as down he darts, Swift as the rustling wind, Impaled upon thy upturned beak, To leave his ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... but just let things go on! Perhaps I am asleep and dreaming, but the slumber is pleasant, so don't wake me; it's cruel kindness, dear." ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... enough—you know, a little old nasty somethin' runnin' around in the yard—after I got big enough, they took me in the house to rock the cradle, and I stayed there till I was twenty-three. I would a stayed longer but they was so cruel to me. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... only a few weeks earlier, and had pressed him to repay the former: Hans Floriszoon had paid his debts without even letting him know it. Yet he had lent many a gold piece to Tom Rookwood, while the memory of that base, cruel blow given to Hans made his cheek burn with shame. Had he not been treasuring the pebble, and flinging ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... him they took three other—Sir Hugh Le Despenser the son, and Archdeacon Baldok, and Sir Simon de Reading. The good Archdeacon, that was elect [Bishop is understood] of Norwich, was delivered over to the tender mercies (which, as saith the Psalmist, were cruel) of that priest of Baal, the Bishop of Hereford, whom indeed I cannot call a priest of God, for right sure am I that God should never have owned him. If that a man serveth be whom he worshippeth, then was Sir Adam de Orleton, Bishop of Hereford, priest of Sathanas and none other. The ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... pity for this hindrance whereto I send thee, so that stern judgment there above she breaks. She summoned Lucia in her request, and said, "Thy faithful one now hath need of thee, and unto thee I commend him." Lucia,[14] the foe of every cruel one, rose and came to the place where I was, seated with the ancient Rachael. She said:—"Beatrice, true praise of God, why dost thou not succor him who so loved thee that for thee he came forth from the vulgar throng? Dost thou not hear the pity of his plaint? Dost thou not see the death that ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... her husband as an individual, as a human entity independent of herself. To contemplate him otherwise than in the marital relation was a shock to her. She felt deserted, a potential Ariadne on Naxos. Hence jealousy, resentment, cruel hurt. ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... and its effects. The need of new stimuli is a paramount need of the human being. Solitary confinement is the worst punishment, so cruel that it is prohibited in some communities. We need the cheerful noises of the world, we need as releasers of our energies the sights, sounds, smells of the earth; we must have the voices and the presence ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... the desired object was discovered on a shelf in the shed. Its high position enhanced its value, giving it the cruel ...
— Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch • Alice Caldwell Hegan
... "The cruel monster did not answer me again, but he seized two of my companions and dashed them to the ground with such force that they died on the spot. He devoured them as a lion devours his prey. He left nothing of them, neither bones nor flesh ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... Q. Will they carry as well as draw? A. Yes, they will carry a lady or gentleman on their backs, a sack of corn, or paniers, or even little children, but they must not hit them hard, if they do, they will fall off their backs; besides, it is very cruel to beat them. Q. What is the difference between carrying and drawing? A. To carry is when they have the whole weight on their backs, but to draw is when they pull any thing along. Q. Is there any ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... other nobles insisted that you should be put to death, and that in the most cruel way: either by setting fire to your house while you slept, or by having you shot with poisoned arrows by twenty thousand men. But his Majesty could not be persuaded to do this cruelty, and decided to spare your life. Then Reldresal, who has always been your true ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... apart. They are more like children to him, even the hunters, and as children he treats them, descending perforce to their level and playing with them as a man plays with puppies. Or else he probes them with the cruel hand of a vivisectionist, groping about in their mental processes and examining their souls as though to see of ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... taken from India refused to come any further, and I was compelled to get fresh men from this place. The Shokas (the local and correct name of the inhabitants of Bhot) were not at all inclined to accompany me. They knew too well how cruel the Tibetans were. Many of them had been tortured, and men could be seen in Garbyang who had been mutilated by the Tibetans. Indeed, the Tibetans often crossed the border to come and claim dues and taxes and inflict punishment on the helpless Shokas, ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... not get a penny of the income;—not a penny. There never was anything so cruel. He has published all manner of accusations ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... you wouldn't be so cruel!" she whispered pleadingly. "You know what he would think. He—oh, Kit, let them all get settled for the night, and then come down, like a dear, and help me out. I know loads ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... had said: "You are cruel. Do you think there is any man in the world that I wouldn't hate the sight of if I knew that to see him gave you a moment's pain?" It was true—he felt it was true. But one couldn't hate a girl simply because she loved you; at least he couldn't—not ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... also, Mr. Corcoran began to build another of his beneficent gifts to the city. His beloved daughter had died, and the city and the country was filled with ladies who had been made penniless by the cruel fratricidal war. In 1871 he turned over to the trustees the Louise Home on Massachusetts Avenue, between 15th and 16th Streets, as a home for gentlewomen, the only requirements being enough money to ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... hate to leave Jack even for an hour, I have to get out each day for some fresh air. To-day it seemed to me, as I walked among the crowds, fantastic in the flickering flames of bonfires and incandescent light, that life had done its cruel worst to these people—had written her bitterest tokens of suffering and woe in the deeply furrowed faces and ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... now, repeating their own words. Our sleep at the palace at Pramanakoti, the administration of deadly poison to our food, the bites of black cobras, the setting fire to the house of lac, the robbing of our kingdom by gambling, our exile in the woods, the cruel seizure of Draupadi's beautiful tresses, the strokes of shafts and weapons in battle, our miseries at home, the other kinds of sufferings we endured at Virata's abode, all these woes borne by us through the counsels of Shakuni ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... suit the capricious young person at the piano, so Brian, who had a pleasant voice, sang the quaint old ditty of cruel Barbara Allan, who treated her dying ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... task of destruction. This not from cowardice, for Gabriel had once rightly described her when he said that if she lived with shadows she could quell them, but simply because, more intellectually unsparing than constitutionally cruel (save where the old vindictive memories thoroughly unsexed her), this was a victim whose pangs she desired not to witness, over whose fate it was no luxury to gloat and revel. She wished not to see nor to know him living, only to learn that he was no more, and that Helen alone stood between ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... despair, addressed to the perfidious Jermyn. She took the epistle of Ariadne to Theseus for her model. The beginning of this letter contained, word for word, the complaints and reproaches of that injured fair to the cruel man by whom she had been abandoned. All this was properly adapted to the present times and circumstances. It was her design to have closed this piece with a description of the toils, perils, and monsters, that awaited ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... took time to reflect; a sudden shadow fell on the fair heaven of his happy thoughts. He all at once remembered that his father, his poor mother who had so loved him, might be still suffering cruel torments in the place of expiation. And despising his own great necessities, and generously making the sacrifice of what was for him a treasure, Damian, raised above himself and his wants by the thought of his beloved parents, brought ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... cry of the black and coloured peoples of the Earth who have for long enough already said how hard and cruel the faces of the white men seemed to them, and who now think how black ...
— NEVER AGAIN • Edward Carpenter
... not cruel, Madam," replied the young squatter, "and Miss Grant may be easy on that score. There have been many instances of the gentleness of their nature, and some Europeans have lived a long time among them without having the least cause to complain of ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... his Reformation. She as nobly forgives, and prays for, and endeavours to give posthumous Comfort to, her persecuting Relations; wounding all of them deeper by the Generosity of her Forgiveness, than if they were to suffer the most cruel Deaths. ...
— Clarissa: Preface, Hints of Prefaces, and Postscript • Samuel Richardson
... both fall, stained with fraternal gore Long since I launched that curse against you twain Which here again I summon to mine aid, That ye may learn what duty children owe To a parent, nor account it a light thing That ye were cruel sons to your blind sire. These maidens did not so. Wherefore my curse Prevails against thy prayer for Thebe's throne, If ancient Zeus, the eternal lawgiver, Have primal Justice for his counsellor. Begone, renounced ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... son was born to the Eupatrid Euphorion at Eleusis; and I have no doubt there was some such stir over the event, on Olympus or on Parnassus, as happened over a birth at Stratford-on-Avon in 1564, and one in Florence in the May of 1265. In 510, Hippias, grown cruel since the assassination of his brother, was driven out from an Athens already fomenting with the yeast of new things. About that time this young Eleusinian Eupatrid was set to watch grapes ripening for the vintage, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... I'm not vindictive or cruel. But old Miller said, when I came past the lodge, dripping wet, that the boar are increasing too fast and that you ought to keep them down either by shooting or by trapping them, and sending them ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... in a house in that narrow street: she was sick unto death, and the cruel landlord came up, and tore away the thin coverlet, her only protection against the cold. 'Get up!' said he; 'your face is enough to frighten one. Get up and dress yourself, give me money, or I'll turn you out into the street! Quick—get up!' She answered, 'Alas! death is gnawing at ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... known as King Philip's War—was raging, and hundreds of the inhabitants fell victims to the ruthless rage of their savage foes. Whole villages perished, their inhabitants being slain on the spot, or carried away captive for the more cruel fate of Indian vengeance. The province was in a state of terror, for none knew at what moment the terrible war-whoop might sound, and the murderous enemy be upon ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... line between despair and black rage. I had about given up the game, but the sudden ache of my shoulders gave me purpose again. He must have seen the rage in my eyes, for his own became cruel. ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... appearance now so swiftly and silently, that it was impossible to tell where he had come from,—and he stood close to Nir-jalis, his muscular firms folded tightly across his chest, and his hideous mouth contorted into a grin of cruel amusement and expectancy. Absolute quiet reigned within the magnificent banquet hall, . . the music had ceased,—and not a sound could be heard, save the delicate murmur of the wind outside swaying the water-lilies on the moonlit lake. Every one's attention ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... you," she cried, "are you not a hundred times more cruel? Ah! fool, as you say, who would know the truth! Fool that I would be if I expected you to believe it! You would know my secret, and my secret is that I love you. Fool that I am! you will seek another. That ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... conflicting emotions as she read the letter, which showed her how truly she was loved and what care Savinien took of the honor of the woman who was to be his wife; but she had too much charity and true religion to be willing to be the cause of death or suffering to her most cruel enemy. ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... vagrancy, lasted even into the present century. In the year 1804 six women were publicly flogged at Gloucester for this offence. Under Whittington this barbarous cruelty would not have been done. There were, it is true, certain punishments which seem excessively cruel. If a man struck a sheriff or an alderman he was sentenced to have his right hand chopped off. That is, indeed, worse than hanging. But, consider, the whole strength of London lay in its power to act and its resolution always to act, ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... mind the cool fountains of Shiraz, and the luxurious waters of old Nile. Roger had unfortunately dreamt of having found a crock of gold—I dare say he will tell us his dream anon—and just as he was counting out his treasure, that blessed beautiful heap of shining money—cruel habit roused him up before the dawn, and his wealth faded from his fancy. So he awoke at ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... while oure noble king, His broad sword brandishing, Downe the French host did ding, As to o'erwhelme it. And many a deep wound lent, His armes with bloud besprent, And many a cruel dent Bruised his helmet. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various
... had deserved it, he had—she had said—"presumed strangely." Three more words only had she uttered and he had slunk out from her presence like a dog. What a Goddess! Venus Urania! So she, too, might have ravished a worshipper as he prayed, and, after, slain him for a careless word. Cruel? No, but a Goddess. Beauty had no laws; she was above them, Agnolo himself had said it, from Plato.... Holy Michael! What a blast! Black and desperate weather.... "Either the God of Nature suffers."... God shield all Christian souls on ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... his bhall-singara or castration-knife. Women are tattooed before marriage, with dots on the forehead, nose, cheeks and chin, and with figures of a date-palm on the forearm, a scorpion on the palm of the hand, and flies on the fingers. The caste do not bear a good character, and it is said of a cruel man, 'Mang-Nirdayi,' ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... carcases which the exterminating engines of war have laid prostrate for their repast, these men out of the influence of the oppressive disabilities which are overwhelming all but themselves, eagerly watch the progress of the surrounding misery, and impatiently await its completion; more cruel than vultures, since covered with the aegis that has unnerved the force and paralysed the energies of their neighbours, they introduce themselves into the midst of the havoc of their own species, and prey upon the living victims who ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... cold and hot, as the meaning of Will's words seemed to scathe and burn her brain. Then, quick as a flash of lightning, another thought came to her, and she smiled, and tore the obnoxious and cruel letter ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... cave it seemed to Neal and Teddy that Jake had really been abandoned, and, regardless of what he had done, they felt that it was cruel to hurry away ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis |
