"Cruelty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to say, gentlemen, is this: I'm not only magistrate, I'm an officer in an organization that you country fellers likely don't know of, an organization known as the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. As such an officer it's my duty to report an' bring to trial any man who treats a dumb brute in a cruel an' inhuman way. Mr Thornycroft, judgin' by the looks of that houn', you ain't give him ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... heavy rage came over her like a cloud. She stood shaken as a house in a storm, and utterly overcome. Her heart was arrested with fury at the mindlessness and the bestial stupidity of this struggle, her wrists were badly scored by the claws of the beast, a heavy cruelty welled up ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... base Money The great Act of Attainder James prorogues his Parliament; Persecution of the Protestants in Ireland Effect produced in England by the News from Ireland Actions of the Enniskilleners Distress of Londonderry Expedition under Kirke arrives in Loch Foyle Cruelty of Rosen The Famine in Londonderry extreme Attack on the Boom The Siege of Londonderry raised Operations against the Enniskilleners Battle of Newton ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Complete Contents of the Five Volumes • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... really the same class: namely, the children whose parents are excessively addicted to the sensual luxury of petting children, and the children whose parents are excessively addicted to the sensual luxury of physically torturing them. There is a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children which has effectually made an end of our belief that mothers are any more to be trusted than stepmothers, or fathers than slave-drivers. And there is a growing body of law designed to prevent parents from using their children ruthlessly to make ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... I yielded to folly nor because I had suffered anything unpleasant at my master's hands that I turned my thoughts towards rebellion, but seeing the extreme cruelty of the man both toward his kinsmen and toward his subjects, I could not, willingly at least, be reputed to have a share in his inhumanity. For it is better to serve a just king than a tyrant whose commands are unlawful. But do thou join with me to assist in this my effort and ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius
... book is yet a considerably livelier one than Mr. Bates's, and imposes no such burden of hopeless misery on the reader. A startling and mysterious crime is dear to the human imagination, and here we are confronted with one hideous in its cruelty and inexplicable in its circumstances. The story is told by the passionate lover of the murdered Veronika, and there is much youthful eloquence and pathos in the description of his meeting with the lovely young Jewess, their sympathy ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... and the medical student answered them. He asked whether Vassilyev's father had suffered from certain special diseases, whether he drank to excess, whether he were remarkable for cruelty or any peculiarities. He made similar inquiries about his grandfather, mother, sisters, and brothers. On learning that his mother had a beautiful voice and sometimes acted on the stage, he grew more animated ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... bound; Ramona had not been mistaken, then. A bitter shame seized him at his mother's cruelty. But her tears made him tender; and it was in a gentle, even pleading voice that he replied: "I do not see, mother, why you call Ramona shameless. There is nothing wrong in her ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... truth. As our minds become more deeply aware of their own subjectivism, we find a zest in objective method that is not otherwise there. We see vividly, as normally we should not, the enormous mischief and casual cruelty of our prejudices. And the destruction of a prejudice, though painful at first, because of its connection with our self-respect, gives an immense relief and a fine pride when it is successfully done. There is a radical enlargement of the range of attention. As the current ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... Senate Is wise, and therein just, for this Gonzalo, Upon a Massacre performed at Sea By the Admiral of Venice, on a Merchant Of Candy, when the cause was to be heard Before the Senate there, in open Court Professed, that the cruelty the Admiral Had shewed, deserved not only fine, but death; 238] For Candy then, and Venice were at peace: Since when upon a motion in the Senate, For Conquest of our Land, 'tis known for certain, That only this Gonzalo dar'd to oppose it, His reason was, because it too ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... countenance, though mild and beautiful, was by the keenest pain and sorrow distorted and disfigured: her voice soft and gentle, accompanied with heart rending gestures, appealed to the slave buyer in tones so very mournful, that I thought it might have even melted cruelty itself to some pity—coming as it did from a woman:—Oh! master, master! buy me and my children with my husband—do, pray; and this was the only crime the poor woman committed for which she suffered death on the spot. Her master stepped up from behind her, and with the butt end ...
— Narrative of the Life of J.D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky • Jacob D. Green
... his thoughts worked swiftly. There would be a certain cruelty, to his mind, in forcing Arlt to appear again before the audience which had just cut him so mercilessly. On the other hand, it would be the part of childish pique for him to refuse to show himself. Nevertheless, he needed Arlt's support. He disliked to play his own ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... was written upon the thin face of the young General. Cruelty was abhorrent to him whatever form it took; but he could be stern and rigorous in the prosecution of any plan which had been adopted after careful consideration. He knew that the greatest blessing to the Canadians ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... designs. To a gracefulness which prejudiced mankind in his favour as soon as seen, he joined an affability which gained their love. Constant in his friendships, and just to his word, by nature tender, and an utter enemy to severity and cruelty, active and vigorous in his constitution, he excelled in the manly exercises of the field. He was personally brave. He loved the pomp and the very dangers of war. But with these splendid qualities, he was vain to a degree ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... President of the American Humane Education Society The Massachusetts Society for the Prevention Of Cruelty to Animals, and the Parent American Band of Mercy 19 Milk St., Boston. This Book Is Respectfully ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... that cruelty With, beauty should have part? Or else that such great tyranny Should ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... mediums afford to gratify them vicariously. They are the Pishachas, the Incubi and Succubae of mediaeval times; the demons of thirst, gluttony, lust, and avarice—Elementaries of intensified craft, wickedness, and cruelty; provoking their victims to horrid crimes, and revelling in their commission! They not only ruin their victims, but these psychic vampires, borne along by the torrent of their hellish impulses, at last—at the fixed close of their natural period of life—they ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... every glance, and watching, with anxious uncertainty, the caprices of a pedagogue. If he survive, the liberty of manhood is dearly bought by so many heart aches. And if he die, happy to escape your cruelty, the only advantage he derives from the sufferings you have inflicted, is that of not regretting a life, of which he ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... American father and mother would act. Their sons belonged to them and they would resent any outside interference that smacked of cruelty. In Germany, the boys, as already observed, belonged essentially to the Government. The vicious treatment of German children in the home, at school, in the army, accounts for the unique Teuton institution of child-suicide. The ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... clustering of rows of bees, and the joyous gaiety of sunbeams, and the weeping of clouds, and the fickleness of the winds, and the timidity of the hare, and the vanity of the peacock, and the softness of the parrot's bosom, and the hardness of adamant, and the sweetness of honey, and the cruelty of the tiger, and the warm glow of fire, and the coldness of snow, and the chattering of jays, and the cooing of the kokila, and the hypocrisy of the crane, and the fidelity of the chakrawaka, and compounding all these together, he made woman and gave her to man. But after one week, man ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... some beautiful turnips. The rest of us got away, but my brother being lame, was not quick enough. The fox caught him, and I heard her sharp white teeth crunch into his bones. The sound made me quite sick, and my mother was very sad afterwards. She complained to my father of the cruelty of foxes, but he, who, as I have said, was a philosopher, answered her ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... should fall upon such an one, was indeed a treat! And Daireh too was particularly disliked. Then the currish way in which he took his licking added to the sport. The little civilisation they had was very superficial, and did not go nearly deep enough to repress the instinct of cruelty. ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... permitted, even with foreigners, they forbade, by the most abominable and inhuman edict, that any marriages should take place between the nobles and the commons—an order which was afterward abrogated by the decree of Canuleius. Besides, they introduced into all their political measures corruption, cruelty, and avarice. And indeed the story is well known, and celebrated in many literary compositions, that a certain Decimus Virginius was obliged, on account of the libidinous violence of one of these decemvirs, to stab his virgin daughter in the midst of the forum. Then, when he in his ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... poetry, that attempts the heart, so languor of the visual faculty can work disaster even in the calm periods of philosophic expatiation. "It cannot be doubted," says one whose daily meditations enrich The People's Post-Bag, "that Fear is, to a great extent, the mother of Cruelty." Alas, by the introduction of that brief proviso, conceived in a spirit of admirably cautious self-defence, the writer has unwittingly given himself to the horns of a dilemma whose ferocity nothing can mitigate. These tempered ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... Peel ordered his fag, Lord Gort, to make him some toast for tea. The little fag did not do it well, and as a punishment had a red-hot iron applied to the palm of his hand. The child cried, and the masters requested that he should name the author of such cruelty. He did not, however, as the expulsion of Peel might have ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... my ill luck still followed me, for my father once more caused me to go about with him as his famulus, and would never allow me on any pretext to escape this task. I should hesitate to say that he did this through cruelty; for, taking into consideration what ensued, you may perchance be brought to see that this action of his came to pass rather through the will of Heaven than through any failing of his own. I must add too that my mother and my aunt were fully in agreement ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... me—strong enough, only rejoicing in my strength to defend him against the barbarism of authorized treatment. My only comfort was that in his time of supreme need I could give him supreme kindness, and if death must come there would not be the additional laceration of avoidable cruelty inflicted; and Nature, with every possible aid that could add comfort to the suffering body, ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... resuscitated by the present Naya. We have witnessed with our own eyes expressions of pleasure cross her countenance as each batch of her subjects cast themselves into those yawning jaws. Such a monarch, capable of any cruelty, must necessarily rule unjustly, and ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... head reposing on something hard,—there is nothing soft about a yacht,—we should make a move in the direction of home? It seems pretty clear that you will have no serious talk with him to-night. Alas! my Phyllis, our dream of happiness is over. We are to be separated by the cruelty of man, as usual. Good-night, my dear! Good-night, Mr. Ayrton! Pray forgive us for keeping you out of bed so long; and receive my thanks for restoring my long-lost husband to my arms. Didn't you say that ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... other travellers speak in warm terms of this unfortunate tribe, who have suffered scarcely less from Europeans than from Arabs. They live under conditions the most unfavourable to their development; on every side they are hemmed in by foes. Constantly falling victims to the cruelty of the slave-hunters, it is no wonder that they regard with suspicion, and too often treat with ferocity, the strangers who traverse their land; not unnaturally they implicate them in the traffic which crushes them to ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... vices, the domestic crimes of cruelty, adultery, and bloodshed, the political scheming and the subtle arts of vengeance, the ecclesiastical tyranny and craft, the cynical scepticism and lustre of luxurious godlessness, which made Italy in the midst of her refinement blaze ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... Dindonette, 'never should I have the cruelty to leave one of you to decay, while the other enjoys the glory of youth. And as I cannot restore you both at once to what you were, one half of each of your bodies shall become young again, while the other half goes on its way to decay. I will ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... of bullying is so great, perhaps especially with British and Germans, that this tyranny is not wonderful; were there not an efficient police the Mohawks would soon revive; the infamous cruelty of some brutes is only known to a few doctors. Envy, malice, hatred, and all uncharitableness are shown in these attacks upon people, whose lives were useful and whose characters were high. Possibly the ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris
... Emancipation and of political Reform, so in later years we find them advocating the Repeal of the Corn Laws, taking part in the Anti-Slavery agitation, working for improvement in the laws that affected women and children, and supporting the Bill for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. A more debatable subject—that of spiritualism—was investigated by them in a friendly but impartial spirit. 'In the spring of 1856, 'writes Mrs. Howitt, 'we had become acquainted with several most ardent and honest ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... trepidat[Latin]; horresco referens[Latin], one's heart failing one, obstupui steteruntque comae et vox faucibus haesit [Lat][Vergil]. "a dagger of the mind " [Macbeth]; expertus metuit [Lat][Horace]; " fain would I climb but that I fear to fall" [Raleigh]; " fear is the parent of cruelty " [Froude]; " Gorgons and hydras and chimeras dire " [Paradise Lost]; omnia tuta timens [Latin][Vergil]; " our fears do make ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... going to the office to see Rushton; if Hunter comes here, you say I told you to tell him that if I find the boy in that shop again without a fire, I'll report it to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. And as for you, if the boy comes out here to get more wood, don't you attempt ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... traveling was fairly good the poor starved dogs crawled along so slowly that with a jog trot we easily kept in advance of them, and not even the extreme cruelty of the heathen drivers, who beat them sometimes unmercifully, could induce them to do better. I remonstrated with the human brutes on several occasions, but they pretended not to understand me, smiling blandly in return, and ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... grandfather with his pockets stuffed out with Bank notes, would come to atone for his past cruelty, by heaping his neglected grandchild with unexpected wealth," vol. 2., p. 87. We heap up wealth, but not persons with it, for that would hardly be kind. To load one with wealth is a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 285, December 1, 1827 • Various
... through his fear of a fate to which, after all, he probably would not have been condemned, sneaked back to his old haunts in Guilford, where he perished miserably by the hand of one whom former wrongs, committed in acts of official cruelty and extortion, had made desperate. And the other, and last of the infamous trio, now stands before us, to make atonement for his crimes by an ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... dear. I hate its cruelty and its wrongs. I'll do my best in these early days to make it impossible. But if it comes, I'll play the game with my life in my hands, and if I had a hundred lives I'd give them all to my country—my only regret is ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... authority, that emanation of the divine Power, has been preserved in my hands pure and immaculate.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} I now offer my tribute of gratitude to the Eternal Being, who has not suffered me to perish by the cruelty of a tyrant, by the secret dagger of conspiracy, or by the slow tortures of lingering disease. He has given me, in the midst of an honourable career, a splendid and glorious departure from this world, and I hold it equally absurd, equally base, to solicit, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... indulge his appetite by doing so;—and the conscience of the zealous Musselman, which would smite him for indulging in a sip of wine, would commend and reward him by its approval, for indulging in cruelty and injustice to the unbeliever in his faith. The executive functions of conscience then act independently of the legislative, and frequently in opposition to them. There must be a feeling of wrong, before the executive powers will reprove; and there must be a sense of merit, before they will commend;—but ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... The cruelty in his face eclipsed any lines of beauty which might have been there. The girl's heart froze within her as she looked once more into those eyes, which had always ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... The latter the witness has heard from people who were captives there, and who saw him commit these and many other abominations. He has also heard it said that when any noble or chief dies, the king orders some women to be burnt alive, with terrible cruelty, with the body of the deceased; for, according to their religion, the dead are burnt. Lastly it was about a year ago, when Gregorio de Vargas and his companion Blas Ruiz escaped from Chanpan to Canboja; they said that their ship had been stolen from them in Chanpan, with all their property ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... Her eyes were blazing, and her cheeks showed two bright red spots against the white. The melancholy appearance of some of her guests seemed to add to her sarcastic humour, and perhaps the very cynicism and cruelty of the game proposed by Ferdishenko pleased her. At all events she was attracted by the idea, and gradually her guests came round to her side; the thing was original, at least, and might turn out to be amusing. "And supposing it's something that one—one can't ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... to the revolutions of 1896 and 1898 the people charged to the friars; and the autocratic power which each friar exercised over the civil officials of his parish gave them a most plausible ground for belief that nothing of injustice, of cruelty, of oppression, of narrowing liberty was imposed on them for which the friar was not entirely responsible. The revolutions against Spain began as movements against the friars." [footnote: Abridged from Report ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... blood. He has done more than conquer others—he has conquered himself: and in the midst of the blaze and flush of victory, surrounded by the homage of nations, he has not been betrayed into the commission of any act of cruelty or wanton offence. He was as cool and self-possessed under the blaze and dazzle of fame as a common man would be under the shade of his garden-tree, or by the hearth of his home. But the tyrant who kept Europe in awe is now a pitiable object for scorn to point the finger of ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... rooting them out of the country is spoken of with the utmost abhorrence and detestation by even the Spaniards themselves at this time, and by all other Christian nations of Europe, as a mere butchery, a bloody and unnatural piece of cruelty, unjustifiable either to God or man; and for which the very name of a Spaniard is reckoned to be frightful and terrible, to all people of humanity or of Christian compassion; as if the kingdom of Spain were particularly eminent for the ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... young man of twenty-four or twenty-five,[69] very common in appearance. Before the death of Aliverdi Khan the character of Siraj-ud-daula was reported to be one of the worst ever known. In fact, he had distinguished himself not only by all sorts of debauchery, but by a revolting cruelty. The Hindu women are accustomed to bathe on the banks of the Ganges. Siraj-ud-daula, who was informed by his spies which of them were beautiful, sent his satellites in disguise in little boats to carry them off. He was often seen, in the season when ...
— Three Frenchmen in Bengal - The Commercial Ruin of the French Settlements in 1757 • S.C. Hill
... bitter root, and put on new mocassins; these unavoidable evils they had borne: but, after all these trials, how cruel it was, they said, to see those promising youths reared with so much care, and so tenderly beloved, fall victims to the insatiable rage of war, and a prey to the relentless cruelty of their enemies. "See them slaughtered," cried they, with tears and groans, "on the field of battle. See them put to death as prisoners by a protracted torture, and in the midst of lingering torments. Hark, the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... doctrine which made the eating of animal food little better than cannibalism or parricide. But, even if any of his followers rejected this view, Sotion would still maintain that the eating of animals, if not an impiety, was at least a cruelty and a waste. "What hardship does my advice inflict on you?" he used to ask. "I do but deprive you of the food of vultures and lions." The ardent boy—for at this time he could not have been more than seventeen years old—was so convinced ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... acquainted with my purpose of self-destruction, and to have written that letter on purpose to secure and hasten the execution of it. My mind, probably, at this time began to be disordered; however it was, I was certainly given to a strong delusion. I said within myself, 'Your cruelty shall be gratified; you shall have your revenge,' and flinging down the paper in a fit of strong passion, I rushed hastily out of the room; directing my way towards the fields, where I intended to find some house to die in; or, if not, determined to poison myself in a ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... eyes fixed upon her features, and his face wearing an odd expression—was it interest, or tenderness, or only scrutiny; to her there seemed a light of insincerity and cruelty in its pallor. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... meanest trull has rights to plead, Which wrong'd by cruelty or pride, Draw vengeance on thy guilty head, ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... establishment of this "government of the people, by the people and for the people" than was ever known. Look over the ocean and see Turkey's massacre of the Armenians, Russia with her Siberian horrors, Spain with her cruelty to the Moors and Jews; or look closer home over the Mexican border and see the government torn to tatters and public men shot down like dogs. Then turn and note our country's magnanimous dealings with Cuba; ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... wickedness. Talk as you will about principle, impulse is more attractive, even when it goes too far. The passions of youth, like unhooded hawks, fly high, with musical bells upon their jesses; and we forget the cruelty of the sport in the dauntless ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... made no reply. He had actually at that moment not the slightest sympathy with his wife. All his other outlets of affection were choked by his concern for his lost child; and as for pity, he kept reflecting, with a cold cruelty, that it served her right—it served both her and her sister right. Had not they driven the child ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the crown to the toe, top-full Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood, Stop up the access and the passage of remorse! . . . . Come to my woman's breasts, And take my milk ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... the "Mysore and Coorg Gazetteer." The history of the country, however, which has been gathered up by various European writers, is by no means of an alluring character, and indeed, after the beginning of this century, a more disgusting record of cruelty and oppression it would be difficult to find in the annals of any country. But three things at least the record most distinctly proves. The first is (though this hardly requires any additional proof) that man, though capable of being the best, ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... encased in long cavalry boots, crossed on the table, and he was pulling furiously at a pipe, the stem gripped firmly between his teeth. Who the bearded man might be I had no means of knowing, but this beauty was without doubt Fagin. I stared at him, fascinated, recalling the stories of his fiendish cruelty, my heart thumping violently, while my fingers gripped the butt of my pistol. Then, without warning, a man stepped out of the darkened parlor, passed within three feet of my hiding place, and stood within the dining-room ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... gallant leaders of the "old Seventh," as they led their handful of men, spared from numerous murderous battles, in the face of certain death up the hill at Ringgold. Grief for the loss was mingled with indignation at the stupidity or wanton cruelty that had sent brave men to such ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... change upon the purchase of any article, nor any such thing as paper money produced in such transactions. The exhausted state and the degree of distress which I could discover in this country, I must confess, fell short of the expectation which the various species of plunder, exaction, and cruelty, which it has for several years submitted to, had ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... Sultan of Arabia thought that all women were of not much use, so every day he married a new wife, and before twenty-four hours were over he ordered that she have her head cut off. One brave woman thought of a clever plan by which she could end this cruelty. She went to the palace and offered to marry the Sultan, and that night she began to tell him such fascinating stories that when morning came he still wished to hear more. He commanded that she should not be beheaded until all her stories were told. Then for a thousand and one nights, ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... spirit: for it is a lesson which the world will not fail to make them frequently practise, when they come abroad into it, and they will not practise it the worse for having learnt it the sooner. These early restraints, in the limitation here meant, are so far from being an effect of cruelty, that they are the most indubitable marks of affection, and are the more meritorious, as they are severe trials of tenderness. But all the beneficial effects, which a mother can expect from this watchfulness, ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... a touch as the springing to flight of a mountain bird. The Milo avalanche—it was made up of countless small tyrannies and scarcely noticeable acts of selfishness adroitly disguised. But touched into motion by Mrs. Milo's frank cruelty, it had swept upon the two women, destroying all the falsities that had hitherto made any thought of separation impossible. As Sue fingered the check, she realized that her life and her mother's had been changed. It was likely ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... varieties of humor, I have watched you steadily fall. Fifteen years ago you would have started at a theft. Three years back you would have blenched at the name of murder. Is there any crime, is there any cruelty or meanness, from which you still recoil?—five years from now I shall detect you in the fact! Downward, downward lies your way; nor can anything but death avail to ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... kindred in Australia. That could hardly be. The savor of that life would remain for ever in his nostrils, no matter how ordered and humanized his days at Nuthill; just as consciousness of human cruelty and the torture of imprisonment had been burned into his memory and nature, indelibly as though branded there by the hot irons of the circus folk in New South Wales. Finn adapted himself perfectly to the life of the household ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... There lay the man she loved pining for her; cursing her for her cruelty, and alternately praying Heaven to forgive him and to bless her: sighing, at intervals, all the day long, so loud, so deep, so piteously, as if his heart broke with each sigh; and sometimes, for he little knew, poor soul, that ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... taking altogether a wrong view of this. Now this case you were pointing out to me in your own book [pointing to proofs]—Number forty-nine, Mrs. Copway. Remarkably handsome woman too!—[reading] "The injustice and cruelty of condemning this poor lady must be apparent to all." My dear Professor, before publishing this book you'll have to modify ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones
... their marriage came, if it must come, it should come without any customary sign of smartness, without any outward mark of exaltation. It would have been very good in him to have remained away from her for weeks and months; but to come upon her thus, on the first morning of her return, was a cruelty not to be forgiven. These were the feelings with which Alice regarded her betrothed when he came ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... I've found it so, anyway. Only we're caught in this whirl that crushes us all, the poor in body and the rich in soul. But till it goes, if it ever goes, I'll not be guilty of bringing a child into such a hell as this is now. That to me would be a cruelty that no weakness of mine, no human longing, could excuse ever. For no fault of her own Mary's life was a curse to her in the end. And so it may be with any of us. I'll not have the sin of giving life ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... blamed the old Mayor of Paris; but who is there that does not know how much arbitrariness and cruelty these individuals, whom I have mentioned above, showed during our misfortunes? Their declarations, therefore, must be received with ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... fact that Lienhard, though he never failed to notice her, would not understand, and always maintained the same pleasant, aristocratic reserve of manner, she sometimes attributed to fear, sometimes to cruelty, sometimes to arrogance; she would not believe that he saw in her only a person otherwise indifferent to him, whom he wished to accustom to the mode of life which he and his friends believed to be the right path, pleasing in the sight ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... understood. Be sure to be discreet.' 'People are intent on changing your condition' was another phrase which Jeanne applied to herself. She conceived the probable hypothesis that her victims, the Queen and the Cardinal de Rohan, had repented of their cruelty, had discovered her to be innocent and were plotting for her escape. Of course, nothing could be more remote from the interests of the Queen. Presently the soldier brought another note. Jeanne must procure a model of the key that locked her cell and ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... my part only too well; it is to worship you madly, hopelessly. Your very cruelty only serves to heighten my ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... while three persons were in the room. But his saying nothing when special opportunity for speaking had been given to him would be of moment to her. Her destiny was in his hands to such a degree that she felt his power over her to amount almost to a cruelty. She longed to ask him what her fate was to be, but it was a question that she could not put to him. She knew that he would not tell her now; and she knew also that the very fact of his not telling her would inflict upon her a new misery, and deprive her of the comfort which she was beginning ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... Extensive reading of history is a sure remedy for pessimism, prejudice, and fanaticism. In so far as history is an accurate account of the past, it is a true prophecy of the future for the nation and for the individual. Who reads history knows that men always have displayed folly, Weakness, and cruelty, and that they always will, even to their own obvious ruin. Also he knows that every time and place have had their few good men and women who have honored God, and whom God has honored. Nothing so teaches a person his own insignificance ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... agreement. But let me be plain with you. If you are deceiving me or trying to deceive me, or if you should practise fraud on me, or attempt to do so, you will surely regret it. And if that child be really in life, and you have been guilty of any cruelty toward him, of any kind whatever, you will look upon the world through prison bars, I promise you, in spite of the money you may obtain from me. Now you understand; go ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... brother and sister, and it was natural that her adventure in chief should come that way. She could play with flowers for long periods at a time; she knew their names and habits; she picked them gently, without cruelty, and never merely for the "fun" of picking them; while the way she arranged them about the house proved that she understood their silent, inner natures, their likes and dislikes—in a word, their souls. For Judy connected ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... said. "I often wonder beyond words why I am given such a very naughty child—a child who understands me so very little, who cannot sympathize with my sorrows and cannot understand my griefs, and who contrives to make others miserable. It is your cruelty ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... the French from Akka, Djezzar Pasha resolved on causing all the Christians in his Pashalik to be massacred, and had already sent orders to that effect to Jerusalem and Nazareth; but Sir Sidney Smith being apprized of his intentions reproached him for his cruelty in the severest terms, and threatened that if a single Christian head should fall, he would bombard Akka and set it on fire. Djezzar was thus obliged to send counter orders, but Sir Sidney's interference is still remembered with heartfelt gratitude by all the Christians, ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... born and educated in an elevated rank in society, she would have been softened by the polish and luxury of life into perfect beauty: she was, however, utterly without education. As Anne experienced from her father no unnatural cruelty, no harshness, nor even indifference, she consequently loved him in return; for she knew that tenderness from such a man was a proof of parental love rarely to be found in life. Perhaps she loved not her father the less on perceiving ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... without much ceremony demanded the keys, insinuating that I had obtained them from John by imposition, and for the basest purposes. This aroused me to indignation, and I answered by informing her that whatever purposes the persecution and cruelty of my family had compelled me to adopt, my conscience, under present circumstances approved them, and I refused to give her the keys. She then ordered me to prepare to leave the mansion, and accompany her to her residence at the house ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... cooled, and that the greater part of the persons concerned are dead, it is the general opinion that Hindye's only crime was her ambition to pass for a saint. The abominable acts of debauchery and cruelty of which she was accused, are probably imaginary: but it is certain that she rigorously punished the nuns of her convent who hesitated to believe in her sanctity, or who doubted the visits of Jesus Christ, of which she boasted. ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... the Sultan of Maciu demanding, rigidly, an explanation regarding the recent attacks upon the Americans, as well as the immediate surrender of the murderers in their tribes who were guilty of committing various acts of injustice and cruelty since the ...
— The Battle of Bayan and Other Battles • James Edgar Allen
... shows us these men in their frantic cruelty, butchering the inhabitants of conquered Jerusalem, men, women, and children without distinction, delighting in their torment, and then, smeared with their blood, moving in procession to the holy places, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... him. With the unerring instinct of his race, he knew that this was not play-acting, that there was something behind it—something real. The sense of romance, of great things all about them transcending the ordinary things of life—this in the Jews has survived centuries of torment, shame, cruelty, and oppression. This inherited sense of romance in the pawnbroker now leaped to answer Dickie's appeal. (And I do hope I am not confusing you; stick to it; read it again if you don't understand. What I mean is that ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... do not go," said Sir Charles, hastily, in English, as he moved across to where she stood and gave her his hand. "This is sheer cruelty, sir, ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths
... in Cuba, cruelty to American citizens detected in no act of hostility to the Spanish Government, the murdering of prisoners taken with arms in their hands, and, finally, the capture upon the high seas of a vessel sailing under the United States flag and bearing a United States registry have culminated ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... necessarily have for its "object" something living and sentient. A spiritual feeling, a work of art, an idea, a principle, a landscape, a theory, an inanimate group of things, could not be contemplated with an emotion of cruelty, though it could certainly be contemplated with ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... moral support colored the whole English literary revolt. And the accident of going to Paris colored vividly the superficial layers of George Moore's soul. This book partly represents a flaunting of such borrowed colors. It was the fashion of the Parisian diabolists to gloat over cruelty, by way of showing their superiority to Christian morality. The enjoyment of others' suffering was a splendid pagan virtue. So George Moore kept a pet python, and cultivated paganness by watching it devour ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... scrupulously delicate and considerate. But to my mind it entirely failed to disguise the fanatical cruelty of the man's resolution, addressed to his wife. In substance, it came ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... imagination works indescribable horrors in my mind, to stand even upon a moderate elevation, or to see a little child take the first steps at the head of a staircase; and I think it would be the height of cruelty for you to go and stand where it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... dragon which it was believed was about to swallow up the Lord of Day. This eclipse seems to have been only partial; nevertheless a great turmoil ensued, and the two astronomers were put to death, no doubt with the usual celestial cruelty. ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... admit that she had done her duty toward the girl with a strenuous sincerity that often amounted to cruelty, but in the main she had done her best ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... marriage, and at length deserted by her seducer. She seeks her betrayer in London, (where the many-headed monster, vice, may best conceal herself,) is repulsed, and after enduring all the bitterness of cruelty, hunger, and remorse, she returns to her father's house; but nothing of him and his remains but his memory and his tomb. She is then driven to dishonesty to supply the cravings of her child—is tried and acquitted. During her imprisonment, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various
... coffin lid, his heart ached to see the lovely fragrant blossoms crushed under the heavy scattered mould, for it seemed to his foreboding mind that they were like the delicate thoughts and fancies of the girl he loved being covered by the soiling mud of the world's cruelty and slander, and killed in the cold and darkness ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... he said simply. "I felt as though I were offering stones for bread. The stones were better, perhaps, but the cruelty was the same." ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... against the Rougons, experienced the keenest pleasure on drawing tears of anguish from the young man's eyes. He detested him, perhaps, more than he did the others, and this because he was an excellent workman and never drank. He brought all his instincts of refined cruelty into play, in order to invent atrocious falsehoods which should sting the poor lad to the heart; then he revelled in his pallor, his trembling hands and his heart-rending looks, with the delight of some evil spirit who measures his stabs and finds that he has struck his victim ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... exaggerate most of the abuses they denounce; but we say deliberately, that no denunciation of the civil service of the United States which has ever appeared in print has come up as a picture, of selfishness, greed, fraud, corruption, falsehood, and cruelty, to the accounts which are given privately by those who have seen the ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith
... flag, bearing upon it a white skeleton, holding in one hand a dart striking a bleeding heart, and in the other an hourglass. Sailing to the West Indies, Spriggs took several prizes, treating the crews with abominable cruelty. On one occasion the pirates chased what they believed to be a Spanish ship, and after a long while they came alongside and fired a broadside into her. The ship immediately surrendered, and turned out to be a vessel the pirate had plundered ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... into which Indian tribes are so prone to be betrayed, and to which they are frequently incited by merciless chiefs. He posed, indeed, during the war as the apostle of clemency, not as the upholder of the traditional cruelty of the Indian. ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... experience with the Mediterranean the great admiral realized yet more forcibly the crying shame of Great Britain's acquiescence. "My blood boils that I cannot chastise these pirates. They could not show themselves in this sea did not our country permit. Never let us talk of the cruelty of the African slave trade, while we permit such a horrid war." The United States alone, although then among the least of naval powers, had taken arms before 1805 to repress outrages that were the common reproach of all civilized nations,—a measure the success of which went far ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... age. On the morning of his death he had the satisfaction of seeing the first proof-impression of a series of large wood-engravings he had undertaken, in a superior style, for the walls of farm-houses, inns, and cottages, with a view to abate cruelty, mitigate pain, and imbue the mind and heart with tenderness and humanity; and this he called his last legacy to suffering and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... that soon, by the strong arm of the law. We need make no further remarks on the subject. To employ one of the writer's own illustrations, the history of Robespierre powerfully demonstrates that great vanity, great weakness, and great cruelty, may all find room together ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... to speak for a moment. The arrangement seemed a hideous joke: a refinement of cruelty inconceivable. It was expecting him to tell Atlas that he was old and to take the weight of the world ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... some poor servants say, That in some carnal families they have had more liberty to God's things, and more fairness of dealing, than among professors. But this stinketh. And as Jacob said concerning the cruelty of his two sons, so may I say of such masters, they make religion stink before the inhabitants ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... said,[46] were established by men of great genius who, in the early ages, strove to teach purity, to ameliorate the cruelty of the race, to refine its manners and morals, and to restrain society by stronger bonds than those which human laws impose. No mystery any longer attaches to what they taught, but only as to the particular rites, dramas, ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... behind, and set off without my knowledge of the matter. At their interview, my brother represented to the Queen my mother that he could not but be greatly dissatisfied with the King after the many mortifications he had received at Court; that the cruelty and injustice of confining me hurt him equally as if done to himself; observing, moreover, that, as if my arrest were not a sufficient mortification, poor Torigni must be made to suffer; and concluding with ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... should be left uncut and as Nature made them; but for twenty years thereafter the ears of the Bull-terrier continued to be cropped to a thin, erect point. The practice of cropping, it is true, was even then illegal and punishable by law, but, although there were occasional convictions under the Cruelty to Animals Act, the dog owners who admired the alertness and perkiness of the cut ear ignored the risk they ran, and it was not until the Kennel Club took resolute action against the practice ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... were the next to hold a council. Each one had some story to tell about the cruelty of men. Each one had lost his father or his mother, his wife or his children, his brother ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix |
