"Merciful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I mean simply that the popularity of the man who averts this strike will be an assured fact. He would be the idol of the working people, and hardly less esteemed by the element of capital. Moreover, he would be doing a humane and merciful thing. You are the only man who is in a position to approach Rathbawne, and, if you will excuse the suggestion, I think you can hardly afford to throw away the chance. As it is, you—er—you are not what might be called popular, ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... inestimable value and glorious results of American medical education, the writer draws the logical(?) sequence that it (American medical education) is responsible for a case of most heartrending malpractice, which he relates, compared to which the Japanese hari-kari were merciful mildness, and approaching more nearly the tortures by crucifixion as administered by this same kind-hearted people. With about as much reason and justice might he conclude that the American system of Sunday-school education is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... garden with Mary. In his waking moments, his sane practical moments, he would realise that it was sheer absurdity to imagine that she ever could care for him. He did not expect her to care, but—and here he drifted across the desert of plain possibilities into the merciful mirage of things hoped for—if she would condescend to let him serve her, he might take ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... found the leak to be so large that one might put his five fingers into it; indeed, it seemed next to a miracle that she kept above water; but every day of our lives may convince us what dependent creatures we are. While God's merciful providence protects us we are safe, though in the midst of apparent danger; should he withdraw that protection but for a moment, inevitable evils surround us, even when we think ourselves ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... wicked she was. She knew, now, the wilfulness of her sins, and the merciful interposition of the river's inviolable strength. Her sight of the mission boat had awakened in her soul the knowledge that she must go out and talk to the good man on board, confess her naughtiness, and beg the Prophet for instruction. Woman-like, ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... by the keen irony in her tone. She had seemed to him, for awhile, so humble and appealing that he had begun to feel, in a sense, her protector, and he did not expect a jeer at the expense of himself and his section. He had been merciful to her, too! He had sacrificed himself and perhaps injured his cause that ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... own death warrant, but also hers. He might linger on a long while—there was no knowing, but he would never be able to do any work, that was certain (unless he went out to Egypt); the doctor had said so, and then it would be she who would have to support him. And if God were merciful enough to take him off at once he would leave her in a worse plight than he had found her in, and the boy growing up! Oh, it was terrible! He buried his face in his hands, and seemed quite overcome. Then the cough would take him, and for a few minutes he could ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... of penitence, had the same fresh youthfulness, the same proud expression, and the same lily-like grace. She had re-appeared; it was she herself who now sobbed and besought him to be tender and merciful. ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... spirit, for the kyngdom of hevenes is herne.[91] Blessid ben mylde men, for thei schulen welde[92] the erthe. Blessid ben thei that mornen, for thei schulen be coumfortid. Blessid ben thei that hungren and thristen rightwisnesse,[93] for thei schulen be fulfillid. Blessid ben merciful men, for thei schulen gete merci. Blessid ben thei that ben of clene herte, for thei schulen se God. Blessid ben pesible men, for thei schulen be clepid[94] Goddis children. Blessid ben thei that suffren ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... was on the spot and helping them. The sending of troops could not have reused their fighting spirit. They were sick of fighting. What they needed was the assurance that the world was not wholly brutal—that there was some one who was merciful, who did not condemn and who was moved by their sorrow. This assurance the prompt action of the American Red Cross gave. It restored in the affirmative with mercy, precisely the quality which Hun fury and propaganda had destroyed with lies. It restored to them their belief in the nobility of mankind, ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... "Oh, merciful God! Don't! Listen—you MUST listen. Let me stay! What difference should it make to you. You have nursed hundreds of men. You have saved many lives. Save mine—give me back my little girl! She can come to me in Quebec and then we can get away somewhere in America and be safe. I can still ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... in the situation of these two calculated to inspire mutual trust. Edith felt that, under the merciful Being who was ever watching her, there was no stronger or more faithful arm upon which she could rely than the one beside her—that there was no heart truer, and no devotion more trustworthy. Under these circumstances, her words were ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... be merciful," returned Ralph, drily. "A knowledge of the truth would do no good; it would only make your ...
— George Leatrim • Susanna Moodie
... ever over the squalid bed of the soul, she washed the sores, dressed the wounds, strengthened the fainting weakness of converts. Through all the ages She was the eternal supplicant, eternally entreated; at once merciful and thankful; merciful to the woes She alleviated, and thankful to them too. She was indeed our debtor for our sins, since, but for the wickedness of man, Jesus would never have been born under the corrupt semblance of our image, and She would not have ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... the beginning, not half-way up the line. Go down to the church door and beat your breast and say not, God reward me who have done so much for Him, but God be merciful to me who have done so little. Get off your seat amongst the Pharisees and go down on your knees and weep behind Christ's couch, if perhaps He may at last say to you, Friend, ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... there is a God," I said fiercely, "and if there is, He's not the merciful being He's always depicted, or He wouldn't be always torturing ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... officer, he takes a small piece of the dead man's skull. It has been supposed that civilized soldiers, however brave and resolute, scarcely exulted in the remembrance of the lives they had taken; and it is thought to be one of the merciful features of modern warfare, that in the vast majority of cases the slayer and the slain are unknown to each other. Colonel Gilmore has none of the false tenderness which shrinks from a knowledge of homicide. On the contrary, he is careful to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... "By a merciful provision of providence," he said whimsically, "bulls can't climb trees. The situation might be worse ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... the theme "a toi" would return like the refrain of a song to which he found himself keeping step; but the words sometimes became meaningless; for in the merciful way that nature has, the impulse of self-preservation so occupied his mind that he had scarcely leisure ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... pressed her invitation vigorously. It would be a triumph of triumphs to Meta Elliot-Smith to introduce the beautiful heiress to her own set. Maggie's refusal was not listened to. She was begged to reconsider the question; implored to be merciful, to be kind; assured of undying gratitude if she would consent to come even ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... no objection to waiting, and always wait patiently; but the point is the steamer leaves Sryetensk on the 20th and sails down the Amur: if we don't catch it we must wait for the next steamer, which does not go till the 30th. Merciful Heavens, when shall I ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... with you the satisfaction that proceeds from the consciousness of duty faithfully performed; and I earnestly pray that a merciful God will extend to you ...
— Lee's Last Campaign • John C. Gorman
... it," I said half fiercely, and I forgot my pain and our danger—forgot everything but her white face in dim outline above me, and her eyes, glowing and tender against her wish, and her hand that nestled in my hand. "Be merciful to me—I want it as I have never wanted anything in my life. Desiree, ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... their chief, Moltke, pressed on the Emperor William the need of striking promptly at France. The Republic, so they argued, could not endure the strain which it now voluntarily underwent; the outcome must be war; and war at once would be the most statesmanlike and merciful course. Whether the Emperor in any way acceded to these views is not known. He is said to have more than once expressed a keen desire to end his ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... lex talionis as a law which may be satisfied with anybody's eye; the cool assumption that because the unfortunate fifer occasionally shuts both eyes he ought in strict justice to lose both eyes, and should be duly grateful to the merciful khan for permitting him to keep one of them,—are all the fine and skilful touches of a bright wit and a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... all these angels were evil angels, although it cannot be denied that God employs sometimes the good angels also to exercise his vengeance against the wicked, as well as to chastise, correct, and punish those to whom God desires to be merciful; as he sends his Prophets to announce good and bad tidings, to threaten punishment, and excite ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... of the general course of his life. If he was sometimes a stern, he was never an implacable, enemy. Ney was sincere, honest, blunt even: so far from flattering, he often contradicted him on whose nod his fortunes depended. He was, with rare exceptions, merciful to the vanquished; and while so many of his brother marshals dishonoured themselves by the most barefaced rapine and extortion, he ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 405, December 19, 1829 • Various
... would never again sleep in the bend of Courtrey's arm as she had slept in those golden days of long ago—that she was an outcast, blackened beyond all hope by the damning and unchoice words of Wylackie Bob.... Then the world faded out for Ellen in merciful blackness. ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... knows?" said she to herself. "One can never tell in which road true happiness lies; and it is not for me, who can see only a little way, to wish for anything that God has not given her. 'A contented mind is a continual feast,' says the Book. She has that. And 'Blessed are the meek, and the merciful, and the pure in heart.' What would I have? I'll make no plans, and I'll make no wishes. It is all in good hands, and there is nothing to fear for her, I am sure of that. As for her sister—. Well, I suppose there will ay be something in the lot of those we love, to make us mindful that ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... begin. You like the smooth music of a silken court, the picturesque ceremony, the poetic tradition, the perfume, the splendor, and lo! a troop in jerkin pricking to the fray in horrible earnest, and blood, and ghastly wounds, and torture, and merciful death! Yet, so courts and ceremonies are instituted. One of the hardest battles that reform has to fight is this battle in the air—so to speak: this contest with taste and imagination that cling to the myriad-hued ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... had seen but never felt starvation. He had never sold his soul for bread. But he had witnessed such a sale, not once or twice but many times. In his carelessness he had accepted it as inevitable. But the recollection stabbed him now with sudden poignancy. Merciful God, toward what were his thoughts tending! He brushed his hand across his eyes as though to clear away some hideous vision and rose slowly to his feet. The expiring fire fell together with a little crash, flared for an instant and then died down in a smouldering red mass that grew quickly ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... ourselves increasing beyond example in numbers, in strength, in wealth, in knowledge, in everything which promotes human and social happiness, let us ever remember our dependence for all these on the protection and merciful dispensations of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Tyler • John Tyler
... you ask. Not different from many others with whom I have been brought in contact. The daughter implored me to call on her mother and beg her not to consent to her being sent to the reform school, the girl solemnly promising good behavior in the future. How she clung to me as I tried to picture the merciful, loving Savior. We knelt in prayer in her lonely, dismal cell, where she followed me in a petition for God to save her soul and show her the way. Anita appeared to be about seventeen years old; but her mother with whom a few hours later I had an interview, ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... be sufficiently discharged by a sham fight performed apparently for the satisfaction of the ghost, who was supposed to be looking on and to be gratified by the sight of his friends hurling spears at the author of his death. Merciful pretences of the same sort have been practised by other savages in order to satisfy the vengeful ghost without the effusion of blood. Examples of them will come before ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... eminent divine, nominated to his post by Hammerfeldt in reward, I believe, for some political usefulness. I do not think he saw far into a child's heart, or perhaps I was not like most children. He was always comforting me, telling me not to be afraid, that God was merciful, Christ full of love, and the saints praying for me. Now I was not in the least afraid; I was very curious about death—I had never seen it—but I was, as I have said, more curious about the world I should ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... merciful, be ye perfect even as your Father; your Father in the spirit world is merciful, ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... But the merciful Spaniards on this morning made the prisoner walk for over a half-mile across the broken surface of the fields. I expected to find the man, no matter what his strength at other times might be, stumbling and faltering on this cruel journey, but as he came nearer I saw that he ...
— Cuba in War Time • Richard Harding Davis
... down upon the beautiful Easter day, Ancona was already far behind, and Hortense knelt down at the side of Louis Napoleon to thank God tearfully for having permitted her to succeed so far in rescuing her son, and to entreat Him to be merciful in the future. But there were still many dangers to be overcome; the slightest accident might still betray them. The danger consisted not only in having to pass through all the places where the Austrian troops were stationed; ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... and said, "Ah, gentle sir, since I have crossed the sea with much danger to see you, I have never asked you one favor; now I beg as a boon to myself, for the sake of the Son of the Blessed Mary, and for your love to me, that you will be merciful to ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... she had been wonderful to look at—there could be no question of that. He had looked at her, and looked, and looked again, until his eyes had blurred with the dazzle of the vision. And having looked, there could be no possible forgetting, no merciful blotting out of the recollection of that face. He had tried to forget it, to forget the whole absorbing personality, had tried with all his strength, but the thing could not be done. It seemed to him sometimes that the very effort to efface that image only cut ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... "Merciful Heaven, what grammar!" says the other guy. "I didn't come at you, as you say in that quaint English of yours, I thought you could take a ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... the association and influence of woman; her intuitive knowledge of men's character and the effect of measures upon the household; you need her for the economical details of public work; you need her sense of justice and moral courage to execute the laws; you need her for all that is just, merciful and good in government. But above all, women themselves need the ballot for self-protection, and as we are by common right and the laws of God free human beings, we demand that you no longer hold us your ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... And fouled the grasses with carousing foot, Shall not a hermit build his chapel here And cleanse the echoes with his litanies? The sodden grasses spring again—why not The trampled soul? Is man less merciful Than nature, good more fugitive than grass?" And so—if, after all, he had not died, And suddenly that door should know his hand, And with that voice as kind as yours he said: "Come, Margaret, forth into ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... right and power, and her kindness was as imposing as her displeasure was lofty and solemn. She had very little sympathy for any weakness in others, but she was always ready to dispense the mercy of Heaven, vicariously, so to say, and with a certain royally suppressed surprise that Heaven should be merciful. On the whole, considering the circumstances, she admitted that Maria Addolorata had accepted the veil with sufficient outward grace, though without any vocation, and she took it for granted that with such opportunities the girl must slowly ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... provided for any such separation as that I have just indicated, and although it was based on what I consider pernicious principles, was undoubtedly the most effectual plan for getting rid of our criminal population, and in its operation the most merciful to the prisoner of any of our recent parliamentary enactments. Had its provisions been efficiently and judiciously administered, we might still have been sending convicts to our colonies. But the business of exporting our "dirty linen" was grossly ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... compassion upon him? Have none a plea to offer for his pardon? I solemnly declare that he shall be saved, were my very crown and life endangered, if but one act of kindness and mercy shown by him to weaker creatures, can be proved. For to the kind and merciful, mercy should ever be shown; this law stands ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... she would not now indulge feelings of her old hatred. She asked that he be dealt with as leniently as possible, "for, sir," she argued, "the wicked are wicked only because of their weakness. They are so much weaker than the good; and just as the man of physical strength is merciful with one who is physically weak, so should the rule apply to moral strength, and let him who can brave temptation deal gently with the poor, weak sinner." And then they parted to the time, Fifine having agreed to seek permission to ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... stern mood. The House of Commons impeached Lord Bacon (S393) for having taken bribes in lawsuits tried before him as judge. The House of Lords convicted him. He confessed the crime, but pleaded extenuating circumstances, adding, "I beseech your lordships to be merciful unto a broken reed"; but Bacon had been in every respect a servile tool of James, and no mercy was granted. Parliament imposed a fine of 40,000 pounds, with imprisonment. Had the sentence been fully executed, ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... poured the howling buccaneers. But still the governor fought on, with his wife and daughter clinging to his knees and beseeching him to surrender, and the blood from his wounded forehead trickling down over his white collar, until a merciful bullet put an end to ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... tools and moved toward Sam as the bay collapsed to the merciful bullet. The girl washed away as best she could the stains of blood and travel from the dead face while Sandy sounded with the pick for soil deep enough ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... are no others, Mrs. Marsh. Salvation, you know, would be such a failure if there were. No merciful, all-foreseeing God could ever have devised ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... When he took my daughter into his arms, he wrote the funeral of his race! I played with him, as a tiger plays with a miserable Hindoo! When life was sweetest to him, I struck. He came here for mercy; I laughed, and I was merciful. I stabbed him to the heart. The knife hangs side by side with the arms of the Crusaders of Cruta. You are his son! You are the next to die! You will not leave these walls alive! These monks know ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Weston pulled the foremost pack-horse up on the edge of the gully. He and Devine had each a beast in his charge, and the freighter had started with two, but one of these had been left behind with a broken leg and a merciful bullet in its brain. That country is a difficult one, even to the Cayuse horses, which are used to its ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... the ravages of a dreadful pestilence, yet the Almighty has at length deigned to stay his hand and to restore the inestimable blessing of general health to a people who have acknowledged His power, deprecated His wrath, and implored His merciful protection. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... milder climate and sunnier skies tended to promote, we fancy, a serener condition of mind than he had known for years. In leaving England, he left behind him some friends, but many enemies. In his literary career, as he himself had not been over-merciful, so he was in return not always tenderly handled. As a sample of the invective which was occasionally poured forth on him, we will quote some lines from "The Race," a dull imitation of "The Dunciad," ascribed to one Cuthbert Shaw, and published in 1766. Although reprinted in "Dilly's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... the first years of his reign. In his accession manifesto a prominent place was given to his desire that justice and mercy should reign in the courts of law. Referring to these words in a later manifesto, he explained his wishes more fully as "the desire to establish in Russia expeditious, just, merciful, impartial courts of justice for all our subjects; to raise the judicial authority; to give it the proper independence, and in general to implant in the people that respect for the law which ought to be the constant guide of all and every one from the highest to the lowest." These were ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... but in reality not hurting him at all. This being perceived by Mr. Constable H., who followed the beadle, he applied his cane, without any such management or precaution, to the shoulders of the too merciful executioner. The scene immediately became more interesting. The beadle could by no means be prevailed upon to strike hard, which provoked the constable to strike harder, and this double flogging continued, ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... a not dissimilar play, the life violently altered is kept in the strange channel by a succession of violent acts. In Hamlet, when Hamlet's merciful wisdom has decided that the life violently altered shall not be wrenched back, his destroying wisdom decides that she shall not be kept in the strange channel. The King, just in his way, seeks to find out if Hamlet be sane. If Hamlet be sane, he must die. His death ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... Phillip, with feelings of unspeakable joy and gratitude, that the crisis was passed and grandmother would live. I could now say from my heart, "God is merciful. He has spared me the anguish of feeling ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... call here Sandy! Miss Mary!—do not take your hand away! Miss Mary, speak to me! You will take my boy? Do not put your face from me. I know it ought not to look on such as me. Miss Mary!—my God, be merciful!—she is leaving me!" ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... never be. And, if sometimes the heart thus wrung cries out with a great cry for the happiness it has missed, is there disloyalty to him or her who stands where another should have stood? God only knows, and He is far more merciful and ready to forgive his erring children than are they to forgive each other. And he must have pitied the man who, with a thought of Hannah thrilling every fiber of his heart, went back to the home where Martha was waiting impatiently for him, ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... this island (and wherever this society prevails) established resources, founded on the most benevolent principles. At their meetings they are taught the few, the simple tenets of their sect; tenets as fit to render men sober, industrious, just, and merciful, as those delivered in the most magnificent churches and cathedrals: they are instructed in the most essential duties of Christianity, so as not to offend the Divinity by the commission of evil deeds; to dread his wrath and the punishments he has denounced; they are taught at the ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... suffered naturally excited in her. She said that she was come to die, as she was sentenced, by the law: she would accuse none, nor say any thing of the ground upon which she was judged. She prayed heartily for the king; called him a most merciful and gentle prince; and acknowledged that he had always been to her a good and gracious sovereign; and if any one should think proper to canvass her cause, she desired him to judge the best.[*] She was beheaded by the executioner of Calais, who was sent ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... to-morrow. But no more than I call these peaceful sights, can I apply the name of peace to the insensibility of a conscience seared by sin; to the calmness, or rather callousness of one who has allowed the devil to persuade him that God is too merciful to reckon with us for our transgressions. The peace we are to seek, and, seeking to pursue, is not that of death, but life,—not that the lake presents in winter, when no life appears on its shores, nor sound ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... restitution in every possible way, it would be time to talk of a nolle prosequi. In the meantime, by the fact of absconding he was in contempt of court. He must return and submit himself for trial, and take the chance of a merciful sentence. ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... "Jamadar," he said, "what matters to a dead man the manner of his killing? Indeed it is a merciful way. Such as Bhowanee herself decreed—in a second it is over. But with the spear, or the sword—ah! I have seen men writhe in agony and die ten times ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... morning and challenge me to fast with him all day. I had to accept the challenge. We blackened our faces with charcoal, so that every boy in the village would know that I was fasting for the day. Then the little tempters would make my life a misery until the merciful sun ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... overboard from a vessel and was only saved from drowning by the quickness and skill of Gurdon B. Smith. Among these letters are several in regard to this incident, for Mr. Corcoran, in his gratitude for this merciful deliverance, sent through an agent, $1,000 to Mr. Smith, an artisan, who was very grateful and considered he had received a fortune. But, not satisfied with that, Mr. Corcoran secured an appointment as lighthouse keeper for Mr. Smith at ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... if perchance thou dost embrace the faith of the despised Nazarene? Consider what will become of thee—what thine end. Thou must fly the Temple, leave its altars, desert thy flock, be pursued until a merciful death blots out the life of the greatest, noblest woman in all Asia! Now, having told thee of this, I am ready to obey; but it shall never enter into thy mind, whatever befall thee, that Chios, who loves thee with a love that ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... in a merciful God, can you explain to me why he has left in the nature of man, created—so you believe—in His own image—that impulse to destroy that which he loves? I loved her for exactly what she was. I loved her because she had the courage to resist me. Yet from each denial so ardently desired, so ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... resistance of the vanquished became less obstinate, and the triumph of the victor less cruel. Thus humanity was introduced into the exercise of war, with which it appears to be almost incompatible; and it is to the merciful maxims of Christianity, much more than to any other cause, that we must ascribe the little ferocity and bloodshed which ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... each week, Mr. Punch, you impress With your cool-headed wit and ability, So I wonder you've not had the gumption to guess There's method in our imbecility; Read on, and your premature chiding deplore, For our merciful mission, in brief, Is to brighten the tragical drama of war ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various
... owls like the head and brains best. I left them undisturbed and came away; for I wanted to watch the young grow—which they did marvelously, and were presently learning to hoot. But I have been less merciful to the great owls ever since, thinking of the enormous destruction of game represented in raising two or three such young savages, year after ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... constancy and heroism. 'Why,' said you, 'are those the patterns we are to follow, the models set for our imitation! Are they afraid man will not be small enough, unhappy enough, weak enough, if his weakness is not enshrined under a false show of virtue.' My young friend, henceforward you must be more merciful to the stage; you have ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... also, because God is merciful and of great pity, and governs all things in a way that He alone knows—He made our father Adam live in the western border of the garden, because on that side the ...
— First Book of Adam and Eve • Rutherford Platt
... said he, once more stroking her cheek, and soothing her with gentle, caressing hand. 'Little lassie!' he said, after a while when she was quiet from very exhaustion, 'I niver thought to be so happy again. God is very merciful.' ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... said, "I see that, and of course we cannot be expected to be merciful to them who would blow us up with gunpowder. Why, they wouldn't have cared if the ladies had been injured as well as ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... of sin, as co-Redemptress of the human race. He blesses the Eternal Father who chose you, etc. He blesses the Incarnate Word, etc. He blesses the Divine Spirit, etc. He blesses, exalts and thanks the most august Trinity, etc. O Virgin, holy and merciful.... be pleased to accept this little homage of your servant, and obtain for him also from your divine Son ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... whose care a young girl could be committed; there used to be the "dance card", or programme (still in vogue at public balls) that allotted a certain dance to a certain gentleman and lady equally. There used to be the cotillion which, while cruel, at least committed its acts of cruelty with merciful dispatch. When the cotillion began, the girl who had no partner—went home. She had to. Now, once she has acquired a companion, he is planted beside her until another takes his place. It is this fact and no other ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... cried I, in my agony of distress, is this a sample of the English humanity we have heard and read so much of from our school boy years to manhood? If they be a merciful nation, they belong to that class of nations "whose tender ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... absolution of the Pope, cannot deliver you from the curse of dying in unrepented sin."—"What sin, then, have I committed?"—"The greatest of all possible sins; you refuse answering the questions put to you at the tribunal of the most holy and merciful Inquisition;—you will not tell us what you know concerning the death of Father Olavida."—"I have told you that I believe he perished in consequence of his ignorance and presumption." "What proof can ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... of the things he would accomplish, the fame he would acquire, the return home he would finally make with laurels round his brow! Even here in the forest he would be no common freebooter. He would show himself merciful to the poor and oppressed; he would only take toll of the sleek and the fat, whose wealth was doubtless as ill-gotten as that of those whose lives he ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... most merciful ruler of Kem, I have threescore-and-ten of the great golden discs, and seven hundredweight of the coins of Kem wherewith to repay the Pharaoh for the seed which the seasons have stolen from me. But I have neither food for all the men, and mules, and cattle which are the Pharaoh's, ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... to me, young man," the stranger said, in a solemn voice; "but to him, who in his merciful providence, sent me just at the right moment to meet your last extremity. Look up to him, and, whenever tempted, let your conscious weakness repose in his strength, and no evil power can prevail ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... understand—that is to say, if he had retained it. The hypothesis of madness comforted. I would give much to feel that he had really believed in his progress with the work, that his assurance of having come to the end was genuine. If he had deceived himself, God had been merciful. But if not, if he had sat down day after day, with the appalling consciousness of his impotence, there have been few of the sons of men to whom God had meted out, in this world, greater punishment for sin. It is incredible that he should have lasted so long alive. No wonder he could not sleep. ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... that they had been disobedient to orders, in quitting their post for the sake of plunder; that the devil put it into the minds of those who turned back; their flight, however, was forgiven, because God is merciful; that their defeat was intended to try them, and to show them who were believers and who not; that the event of war is uncertain; that the enemy had suffered as well as they; that other prophets before him had been defeated ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... was shown by the marked increase of crime, especially all forms of theft and the coining of false money, for which new and severe penalties were ordained without greatly mitigating the evil. During all these troubles and trials Taoukwang endeavored to play the part of a beneficent and merciful sovereign, tempering the severity of the laws by acts of clemency, and personally superintending every department of the administration. He seems thus to have gained a reputation among his subjects which he never lost, and the blame for any unpopular measures was always assigned to his ministers. ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... if God be good, and if thy strength remain, Thou shalt demand one boon of me and bless me in thy pain. For I am merciful to all, and most of ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... large forest trees were drooping and many were dead. The emus, with outstretched necks, gasping for breath, searched the channels of the rivers for water, in vain; and the native dog, so thin that he could hardly walk, seemed to implore some merciful hand to dispatch him." ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... said Lord Dunseveric, "that I expect no thanks, nor do I claim any credit for being merciful. You owe your escape solely to the fact that I happen to be a gentleman. It did not consist with my honour to arrest a man who ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... appeal). Oh. ma'am, don't ask me. Be merciful to me, ma'am. I am not bad naturally. It was just going into domestic service that did for me; the accident of being flung among bad companions. It's touch and go how the poor turn out in this world; all depends on your taking the right or ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... That is the only thing that troubles me, and often makes me feel sad when we are away at night, and the wind blows strong and the sea runs high, and I think of the many I have known who have lost their lives in stouter boats than mine. But God is merciful; He has promised to take care of the widow and orphan, and He will keep His word. I know that, and so I again look up and try to drive all mistrustful thoughts of His goodness ...
— Michael Penguyne - Fisher Life on the Cornish Coast • William H. G. Kingston
... obstinacy might have occasioned the death of a hundred and sixty persons; I, smiling, retorted, "I have brought them all safe to port, please your Excellency; and, for my part, my fate would have been much more merciful by falling into the hands of my God than into the hands of my enemies. My danger was so great that I forgot the danger of others; besides, sir, I knew my comrades were soldiers, and feared death as little as I do." My answer pleased the fine grey-headed general, and he gave me a recommendation ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... have enlarged much in this my discourse, of my temptations and troubles for sin; as also of the merciful kindness and working of God with my soul: I could also have stepped into a style much higher than this, in which I have here discoursed, and could have adorned all things more than here I have seemed to do, but I dare not: God did not play in tempting of me; neither did I play, ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... infallibility of its judgment is evidenced by the agreement of different peoples; amid the surprising differences of manners you will everywhere find the same ideas of justice, the same notions of good and evil. Show me a land where it is a crime to keep one's word, to be merciful, benevolent, magnanimous, where the upright man is despised and the faithless honored! Conscience enjoins the limitation of our desires to the degree to which we are capable of satisfying them, but not their complete suppression—all passions are good when we control ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... piercing the lung, where it severed a large artery, and then passed through the spine from left to right, lodging finally in the muscles of the back. Although there was more than one mortal injury, the immediate and merciful cause of his speedy death was the internal bleeding from the artery. Within a few moments of his wounding some forty officers and men were cut down by the same murderous fire from the tops of the enemy. ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... fool me. I knew the ideas, and even the phrases he used to express them, were not his and I was not long finding out they were yours, that it was simply you expressing yourself through him. He is a big helpless child, Sam, and he is old. He hasn't much longer to live. Do not be hard, Sam. Be merciful." ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... the gorge through which the road leads up here," answered the Saite. "But look! only look at these heathen! The Lord be merciful to us! they are climbing up the cliffs like woodpeckers ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that. Separation is not the alternative either to Home Rule or to the status quo. If the people of Ireland are not to be trusted with real power over their own affairs, it would be a hundred times more just to England, and more merciful to Ireland, to take away from her that semblance of free government which torments and paralyzes one country, while it robs the other of national self-respect and of all the strongest motives and best opportunities of self-help. ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... in this world would be at an end. It's because men's hearts are hard that life is so full of misery. If we could only learn to be kind and gentle and forgiving—never mind anything else. We act as if we were all each other's enemies; we can't be merciful, because we expect no mercy; we struggle to get as much as we can for ourselves and care nothing for others. Think about it; never let it go out of your mind. Perhaps some day it'll help ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... construct a plausible defence of a sentiment which, however adapted to supply a theme for eloquent declamation, is not to be found in Scripture. "It must be admitted," says he, "that Mary would have been involved in the general ruin of mankind, had not the merciful Physician who heals our diseases determined to imbue her beforehand with his preventing grace. Sin, which like a torrent overflowed the world, would have polluted this holy Virgin with its poisonous waves; but Omnipotence can stop, whenever he pleases, the most impetuous force. Observe ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... burst from the heart of Lady Helen, and falling into the arms of the prior, she found refuge from woe in a merciful insensibility. The pitying exertions of the venerable father at last recalled her to recollection and to sorrow. She rose from the bench on which he had laid her, and begged permission to retire for a few minutes; tears choked her further ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... think of at all; to say nothing of the danger of swinging down into the bowels of the earth in a creel, the thing aye put me in mind of the awful place, where the wicked, after death and judgment, howl, and hiss, and gnash their teeth; and where, unless Heaven be more merciful than we are just—we may all be soon enough. So I could not think of that, till other human means failed; and I determined, in the first place, to hire Tammie Dobbie's cart, and try a smell of the ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... malignity; the perspiration is welling from every pore in man and beast, but scarcely a sign of it finds its way to the surface—it is absorbed before it gets there; there is not the faintest breath of air stirring; there is not a merciful shred of cloud in all the brilliant firmament; there is not a living creature visible in any direction whither one searches the blank level that stretches its monotonous miles on every hand; there is not a ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... both of them was merciful; to heap this crowning burden upon Chief Mern's bewilderment in regard to the actions of a trusted employee would have disqualified him mentally for other ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... be with my blood," these had been Willibald's last words to her and they rang in her ears. "O, God be merciful. Not that! ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... blown up. It had been used as a training ship for the Pasha's midshipmen, and it was supposed that two hundred persons perished. This awful occurrence greatly terrified them. They offered up additional thanks to heaven for having hitherto held them under its merciful protection. ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... Merciful Heaven, Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt Split'st the unwedgeable and gnarled ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... as he meditated upon the awful gravity, the fearful helplessness, of their situation. But it was a merciful Providence which prevented him from foreseeing the hideous reality which awaited them in the grim ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... scissors were doing their merciful though destructive work, and the little sufferer closed her eyes with ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... stuffed!" he said. "The animal came to life, as you knew it would, and began to observe Christmas, and we now have no furniture left and no servants and no visitors, no friends, no photographs, no burglars—nothing but the elephant. Be kind, be merciful, be generous; take him away and send us what is ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... received the Athenians into favor. Whether it were, like the lion, that his passion was now satisfied, or that after an example of extreme cruelty, he had a mind to appear merciful, it happened well for the Athenians. Certain it is, too, that in after-time he often repented of his severity to the Thebans, and his remorse had such influence on his temper as to make him ever after less rigorous to all others. And it was observed that whatsoever any Theban, who had the good ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... Ticonderoga, but to stay where he was and hold the French in check. All was astonishment and dismay at the sudden blow. "Oswego has changed masters, and I think we may justly fear that the whole of our country will soon follow, unless a merciful God prevent, and awake a sinful people to repentance and reformation." Thus wrote Dr. Thomas Williams to his wife from the camp at Fort Edward. "Such a shocking affair has never found a place in English annals," ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... back, and soon died; but his friends always remembered that he had ruled Athens for more than thirty years without ever punishing any one unjustly, and that he had always proved helpful and merciful to all. ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... received in due season, and the first answered by return of packet. Since the receipt of the last, I here a long passage was rendered indistinct by a kind of humming noise by the sheriff I grieve to say that hum, hum, bad enough to be sure but trusts that a merciful Providence has seen fithum, hum, hum seems to be a good, pious sort of a man, Duke; belongs to the Established Church, I dare say; hum, hum vessel sailed from Falmouth on or about the 1st September of last ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... fear, nor to lose his full and entire confidence in Thy mercy. Let not the malice of the Devil, neither the traitorousness and perfidiousness of his own evil heart, cause him to fall short of Thy heavenly calling. O Lord God most holy, O Lord God most mighty, O holy and merciful Saviour, suffer him not, in his last hour, for any pains of death, to fall ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... true children of the gutter, but Romance, with the cloudy hair and starry eyes, holds them captive for a few merciful years. Their parents loll against the walls, or squat on the kerbstone, devouring with infinite relish petty scandals about their neighbours, or shaking with laughter ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... from whom all good things do come; grant to us thy humble servants, that by thy holy inspiration, we may think those things that be good, and by thy merciful guiding may perform the same, through our Lord ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... though he were attempting a movement of protest, and then dropped it again. His eyes, I noticed, were luminous with a sort of inward-burning misery. But I had no intention of being merciful. I had no chance of being merciful. It was like an operation without ether, but it had to be gone through with. It had to be cut out, in some way, that whole cancerous ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... strong grasp—"who told you I was a fit person for such a plan? who told you to come to me for such a deed? who told you I would sell my soul for your paltry land?"—and he continued grasping Barry's throat till he was black in the face, and nearly choked. "Merciful Heaven! that I should have sat here, and listened to such a scheme! Take care of yourself," said he; and he threw him violently backwards over the chairs—"if you're to be found in Connaught to-morrow, or in Ireland the next day, ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... compared with this. Death by the flood, death by the scorching fire of God burning alive the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, death to man, woman and child, flocks and herds, remorseless, relentless and exterminating death—is the just judgment of an all-merciful God, for this offense. The seed of Adam, which is the seed of God, must be kept pure; it shall be kept pure, is the fiat of the Almighty. Man perils his existence, nations peril their existence and destruction, if they support, countenance, or permit it. Such have been God's ...
— The Negro: what is His Ethnological Status? 2nd Ed. • Buckner H. 'Ariel' Payne
... the two of you have stood before his glory, who at the sight of this shape of mine that once was mortal like yourselves, crouch choking to the earth? I tell you both that had the god arisen, as in your wickedness ye willed, there where ye knelt, there ye would have died. But he who knows all is merciful, and in his place has sent me his messenger that ye may live ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard |
