"Beheading" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to feel very uneasy: to be sure she had not as yet had any dispute with the Queen, but she knew that it might happen any minute, "and then," thought she, "what would become of me? They're dreadfully fond of beheading people here: the great wonder is that ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... operations of the English fleets and the French armies, or of the attitude of the European governments. Like most Americans, the editorial writers of the paper originally sympathized strongly with the French Revolution; but the news of the beheading of Marie Antoinette, and the recital of the atrocities committed in Paris, worked a reaction among those who loved order, and the Knoxville Gazette ranged itself with them, taking for the time being strong grounds against the French, and even incidentally ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... when the Governor General passes." He also informed us that the special occasion for this rather pompous parade was the execution of some criminals at a park or prison not far away, and that this was done by beheading them. ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... account of this cruel custom of beheading their victims that the Spaniards have given to these savages the ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... short and that he would not suffer much, and this seemed to please him. Nearly all these desperadoes seemed to dread death by hanging. The Territory of Utah allowed a felon convicted under death penalty to choose the manner of his death, whether by hanging, beheading, or shooting; but no record remains of any prisoner who did not choose death by shooting. A curiosity as to the sensation of hanging was evinced in the words of several who were ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... away heard the echo of it, and there, as in England, men took sides. The men in Virginia were ready enough to stand up to the King and speak their mind when he threatened their liberties. But when they heard that the people in England had taken the King prisoner and were talking of beheading him they were horrified. To lay bands upon his person, to lead him to the block, to take his life! That seemed to them very terrible. And when at length the news of the King's death reached Virginia the Virginians forgot their grievances, ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... should be forever shielded by some beneficent Providence. She thought of them as vaguely as she did of the remote tragedies of history. They bore no closer relation to her own life than did the French Revolution or the beheading of Charles the First. It was natural, if sad, that Miss Willy Whitlow should fade and suffer. The world, she knew, was full of old people, of weary people, of blighted people; but she cherished passionately ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... halted not far from the city of Tusculum, in consequence of an old grudge of the Tusculans they were surprised, unarmed as they were, and suffered severe punishment, a messenger being scarcely left to bring an account of their defeat. The Roman general quieted the disturbed state of affairs at Ardea, beheading the principal authors of that commotion, and confiscating their effects to the public treasury of the Ardeans; the Ardeans considered the injustice of the decision completely repaired by such kindness on the part of ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... see you I'll pull your ——— arm out of the socket," he said, with an oath, and turning on his heel he went off with his following of bucks. All of them were armed with rifles and the long beheading knives called Nifa oti (death-knife), and as we three had nothing but our fists we should have had a bad time had they attacked us, for we were in an unfrequented part of the beach and would have been half murdered before assistance ...
— The Flemmings And "Flash Harry" Of Savait - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... King decreed that his faithful servant and merry companion should be executed on Tower Hill, like the rest of the men whose bodies lie in the church of St. Peter ad Vincula within the Tower walls. The day before his beheading sir Thomas wrote with a charred stick to Margaret, leaving her the hair shirt he had always worn under his clothes, and messages and little remembrances to the rest of the old household. Oddly enough, his wife ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... hand; a beautiful idea, showing that the equality of the scales of Justice is not owing to natural laws, but to her own immediate weighing the opposed causes in her own hands. In one scale is an executioner beheading a criminal; in the other an angel crowning a man who seems (in Selvatico's plate) to have been working at a ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... it was the boast of the nation. When the Burmahs subdued the kingdom of Pegu, the old king with all his family were taken prisoners, vast treasure was also captured, but the great ruby was not to be found, notwithstanding the torture and beheading of thousands. With the usual barbarity of these countries, the old king, a miserable paralytic little man, was stripped naked and confined in an iron cage, which I saw when I was at Rangoon. In this confinement ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... "Burning or beheading, at the pleasure of the King's Grace," replied the Abbot, as unconcernedly as though the choice in question lay between ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... but soon to be rendered glorious by the Carthusians, was denied to Fisher. His sentence was commuted to that of death by beheading upon Tower Hill, where he suffered upon June 22, 1535. His head was exposed on London Bridge; his body, interred without ceremony, now lies in the Tower, where a little later that of Blessed Thomas More was laid beside it—two countrymen of St Thomas ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... at the execution of two thousand Tuaricks, who, in conjunction with the rebels at Goober, had attempted to plunder the country, but were all made prisoners. It may be added, that the capital punishments inflicted in Soudan are beheading, impaling, and crucifixion; the first being reserved for Mahometans, and the other two practised on pagans. Clapperton was told, that wretches on the cross generally linger three days before death puts ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... said hauen wherin we stayed on the South side, is as it were but a sluce of the waters that rise by the flood, and but of smal accompt: we named them S. Iohns Islets, because we found them, and entred into them the day of the beheading of that Saint. And before you come to the said hauen, there is an Island lying Eastward about 5 leagues distant from the same: betweene which and the land there is no passage sauing only for smal boats. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... they are active and lively, though of a thicker make than the French; they cut their hair close on the middle of the head, letting it grow on either side; they are good sailors, and better pirates, cunning, treacherous and thievish; above three hundred are said to be hanged annually at London; beheading with them is less infamous than hanging; they give the wall as the place of honour; hawking is the general sport of the gentry; they are more polite in eating than the French, devouring less bread, but more meat, which they roast in perfection; they put a great ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... ruthlessly busy in getting up the evidence) in the long prosecution of Laud. It was all over on the 10th of January, 1644-5. On that day Laud, aged 72, laid his head upon the block on a scaffold in Tower Hill. Hanging had been commuted, with some difficulty, to beheading. He died brave, raspy, and High-Church to the last. [Footnote: Rushworth's main account of the trial and last days of Laud is in Vol. V. pp, 763-786. The "History of the Troubles and Tryal of William Laud," edited by Wharton, in two vols. ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... acquiesced in these violent measures, but in the mass they have opposed. By law, by religious canons, by public opinion, by penalties ranging all the way from ostracism to beheading, they have sought to crush this effort. Neither threat of hell nor the infliction of physical punishment has availed. Women have deceived and dared, resisted and defied the power of church and state. Quietly, desperately, consciously, they have marched to the gates of death to gain the ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... Throughout the Bights of Benin and Biafra, where the chief stalks about with his fetishman and his executioner, there is still some manliness amongst men, some modesty amongst women. There the offending wife fears beheading and 'saucy water;' here she leaves with impunity her husband, who rarely abandons the better half. Consequently the sex has become vicious as in Egypt—worse than the men, bad as these are. Petty larceny ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... observe, prolong life to the utmost. Some, of an old-fashioned structure, with a clumsy and bungling machinery—here are some sent to me as useless—long before the truth could be extracted, or much more pain inflicted than would accompany beheading, destroyed the life of the victim. Those which I build—and I build for the State—are not to be complained of in that way. Varus is curious enough, I can assure you, in such things. All these that you see here, of whatever form or make, ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... have been omitted that previous to completely stripping the body of the leviathan, he was beheaded. Now, the beheading of the Sperm Whale is a scientific anatomical feat, upon which experienced whale surgeons very much pride themselves: ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... are the principal circumstances of this famous story, the more harsh and shocking parts of it, such as the cutting up of Horus and the beheading of Isis, being omitted. Now, if such could be supposed to be the real sentiments of the Egyptians concerning those divine Beings whose most distinguishing characteristics are happiness and immortality, or could it be imagined that they actually ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... conducted a pilgrimage to Mecca with 2,000 followers, remaining there undisturbed for three days. After this he carried on war vigorously against more potent powers, whose rulers he summoned to become converts. Some yielded, and others scorned him, one of them beheading the Prophet's messengers. This brought on battles of greater magnitude, and in ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... stirred in his long body, but the right arm, that long, bony arm in its short sleeve, which moved mechanically up and down like a sword of justice, and punctuated the end of each sentence with the cruel and inexorable gesture of beheading. And it was in truth a veritable execution at which that audience was looking on. The orator would have been glad to omit from consideration the scandalous legends, the mystery that hovered over the amassing of that colossal fortune in ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... of Pericles and Aspasia was one of ten generals executed because they failed to win a certain battle. The scheme of beheading unsuccessful soldiers was not without its advantages, and in some ways is to be commended; but the plan reveals the fact that the Greeks had so little faith in their leaders that the threat of death was deemed necessary to make them do their duty. This son of Pericles was declared ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... sanguinary rites of Belgic Druids, better the yell of slaughtered victims from the "wild wood without mercy" of the pagan forefathers of the nation, than this fantastic intermingling of divine music, glowing colors, gorgeous ceremonies, with all the burning, beheading and strangling work which had characterized the system of human ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley |
