"Brutal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... orators, for leaders, but all the more appalling for that. These rough, desperate men meant, as they said, "business." This movement <was suppressed, driven under the surface, but only to break out more appallingly than ever some ten or twelve years later, in brutal assassinations, which have curdled the blood of the world. Ah, must it always be so? Will this tiresome old Celtic Enceladus never lie quiet, and be dead, though the mountain sit upon him ever so solidly, and smoke ever so ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... can but think, even yet, I was kinder than if I had been kind; but it was brutal, and I felt myself a brute, thus to be holding her up to herself there on the open sidewalk where she dared not even weep or wring her hands or hide her face, but only make idle marks on the brick pavement with her ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... possibly in the small minority, who regard anything like fighting as brutal or ungentlemanly. In a sense—a very limited sense—they may be right, for, though our environment is such that we can never rest in perfect security, it does seem hard that we should have to be constantly on the alert to protect that which we think is ours by ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... but I am one of those who believe that the highest form of patriotism is to seek the best interest of mankind, and standing on that I tell you frankly that I cannot at this time answer your question. Just now I look no farther than the end of this brutal war. After that is accomplished it will be time enough for me to decide the ultimate disposition of my invention. Its secret is now known to no living soul but myself, and is so simple that it requires no written ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... any time. Then she lowered her eyelids again, shutting all mysteriousness out of the situation except for the sobering memory of that glance, nightlike in the sunshine, expressively still in the brutal ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... which he had caught a glimpse in Lady Langdon's salon, and for awhile he cherished this chimera; then its place was usurped by one more painful: Madeleine was perhaps travelling alone, subjected by her very beauty to the curious scrutiny, the heartless insults of brutal men; and, perchance, through her ignorance of the world, trapped into some snare from which she could never be extricated unharmed. Then his mind was filled with the horrible idea that, in her friendliness and despair, finding no place of refuge ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... inmates of the palace, in that hour of fear, among slaves and freed men, half hidden behind a curtain in an obscure corner, was a timid old man, who was dragged forth with brutal violence. He was no less a personage than Claudius, the neglected uncle of the emperor, the son of Drusus and Antonia, and nephew of Tiberius, and brother of Germanicus. Instead of slaying the old man, the soldiers, respecting ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... rescue him, more through a whim than from genuine charity. Her mother's people had been English, and somehow she had not cared to see an Englishman thrown to the dogs in this country which was not hers nor his. In days when her word was law for the infatuated and brutal man whose death anniversary it now was, this bit of human driftwood—failure, drunkard, rascal—had been found trespassing on the ranch. If Carmen had not chosen to show her power over old "Grizzly Gaylor" by protecting the poor wretch, Harp would have ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... right hand, some to the left; these wasting down their moral nature, and those feeding it for immortality? A whole generation may appear even to sleep, or may be exasperated with rage,—they that compose it, tearing each other to pieces with more than brutal fury. It is enough for complacency and hope, that scattered and solitary minds are always labouring somewhere in the service of truth and virtue; and that by the sleep of the multitude the energy of the multitude may be prepared; and that by the fury of the people the chains of the people ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... tries to show how slavery develops the worst men, of the stamp of Simon Legree, the brutal overseer. Legree pours out the vials of his wrath upon the slaves about him, debauching a young octaroon to the level of his mistress, hunting his slaves with bloodhounds, killing them without trial before a jury. Power is dangerous; ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... the features of this traveller a singular mixture of brutal ferocity and careless good-humour. A crooked nose, with thick bushy eyebrows, and black eyes that sparkled from time to time with a malicious fire, gave to his countenance a sinister aspect, and belied ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... by recalling that six months ago in that place he had explained why Russia, in face of the brutal attempt by Germany and Austria upon the independence of Serbia and Belgium, had been able to adopt no other course than to take up arms in defense of the rights of nations. Russia, standing closely united and admirably unanimous in her ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... to do with the Indian girl. It was not altogether practicable to take her with them, and it did not seem to be the humane thing to leave her behind to again fall into the hands of her brutal Indian husband. ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... saw any good in being what the French call brutal," he said, "I hate making a woman cry, or that sort of thing. But you're a woman of sense, and I'm sure you must see that a young couple like Nell and me, who have our way ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... there is no surer way to lose freedom than to lose our resolve. Today the brave people of Afghanistan are showing that resolve. The Soviet Union says it wants a peaceful settlement in Afghanistan, yet it continues a brutal war and props up a regime whose days are clearly numbered. We are ready to support a political solution that guarantees the rapid withdrawal of all Soviet troops and genuine ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan • Ronald Reagan
... even without any fixed revenue, they became the astonishment of the age in which they lived, as they will be of posterity.' In their actions is to be found a mixture of the most opposite feelings and principles. They were at once undauntedly brave, and cowardly brutal; full of justice and honor to each other, and yet a lawless banditti. As an evidence of their feelings of honor, it is related that on a certain occasion a company of their fraternity—'Brothers of the Coast,' as they styled themselves—had stipulated, for a certain sum, to escort a Spanish ship ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... temperance the Greeks estimated so highly, that the supreme difficulties of modern civilization lie. We see these difficulties again in relation to the extension of law. It is desirable and inevitable that the sphere of law should be extended, and that the disputes which are still decided by brutal and unreasoning force should be decided by humane and reasoning force, that is to say, by law. But, side by side with this extension of law, it is necessary to wage a constant war with the law-making tendency, to cherish an undying resolve ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... Ned repeated. "Mind, I say it's a brutal thing to ill treat a cat like that. If she did knock down inkstands and get fellows into rows it was not her fault. It's natural cats should run after mice, and the wainscoting of the schoolroom swarmed with ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... a man of fashion (un seigneur) who lived in the neighbourhood of Auxerre. I was much mortified to find that I had treated a nobleman so scurvily, and scolded my own people for not having more penetration than myself. I dare say he did not fail to descant upon the brutal behaviour of the Englishman; and that my mistake served with him to confirm the national reproach of bluntness, and ill breeding, under which we lie in this country. The truth is, I was that day more than usually peevish, from the bad weather, as well as from the dread of a fit of the asthma, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... men was gathered about the globe. They were armed with spears and clubs, in the main, but there were other weapons of intricate design whose uses Tommy could not even guess at. He did not try. He was watching the men as they swarmed about and over the steel sphere. Their faces were brutal and savage, and now they were distorted with an insane hate. It was the same awful, gibbering hatred he had sensed in the caperings of the four he had seen ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... which induced Augustus to place it directly under the imperial power. In A.D. 215 the emperor Caracalla visited the city; and, in order to repay some insulting satires that the inhabitants had made upon him, he commanded his troops to put to death all youths capable of bearing arms. This brutal order seems to have been carried out even beyond the letter, for a general massacre was the result. Notwithstanding this terrible disaster, Alexandria soon recovered its former splendour, and for some time longer was esteemed the first city of the world after Rome. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... his tablets. These they carried to the cabin and threw upon the heap of other valuables they had stolen. They did not notice his traveling machine, however, but seeing him now unarmed they began jeering and laughing at him, while the brutal captain relieved his anger by giving ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... one save this accursed bull. If for a minute I forgot my dignity, who would be the wiser? Every moment the thunder of the hoofs and the horrible snorts of the monster drew nearer to my heels. Horror filled me at the thought of so ignoble a death. The brutal rage of the creature sent a chill to my heart. In an instant everything was forgotten. There were in the world but two creatures, the bull and I—he trying to kill me, I striving to escape. I put down my head and I ran—I ran for ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... disappoint the search he well knew my husband would cause to be made for me, removed from the country inhabited by those Saracens, and brought us into this wood, where he has kept me some days. Deplorable as my condition is, it is still a great satisfaction to me to think that the giant, though so brutal, never used force to obtain what I always refused to his entreaties. Not but that he has a hundred times threatened that he would have recourse to the worst of extremities, in case he could not otherwise prevail upon me; and I must confess to you, that awhile ago, when I provoked his anger ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... trumped up charges. She had read accounts of investigations of the prison system of the South, showing that the various states made the earning of money by the prisoners a prime consideration, and detailing how brutal overseers were wont to maltreat convicts leased to them by the state. These things coupled with the absence of reformatories for youths were destined, Foresta felt assured, to produce a harvest of criminals. What to ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... of Animals and Plants," 1st Edit., ii. 431. "Did He cause the frame and mental qualities of the dog to vary in order that a breed might be formed of indomitable ferocity, with jaws fitted to pin down the bull for man's brutal sport?" ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... only by their own efforts,—and at the end of it a lot unknown and uncertain; while, had they remained in Asia, they would have had at any rate the rich satrapy of Pharnabazus within their reach. To perfidy of dealing was now added a brutal ejectment from Byzantium, without even the commonest manifestations of hospitality; contrasting pointedly with the treatment which the army had recently experienced at Trapezus, Sinope, and Herakleia; where they had been welcomed not only by compliments on their past achievements, ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... wail. She didn't wish to see anybody—anybody but the doctor and Mrs. Darling. It was cruel, heartless, brutal on his part to come in and taunt and torment her when she was so helpless and ill. It was wicked to cut her off from the only friends she loved or who had been kind to her. She would have died of loneliness and misery while he was gone if it hadn't been for Mrs. Darling ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... demand an account of my actions," said the girl. With an evident effort to defy Thurston, she added, after a pause, "But the explanation must have come sooner or later, and you shall have it now. I have grown—perhaps the brutal truth is best—tired of you and your folly. You would sacrifice my future to your fantastic pride—and this man would give ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... concern. Moreover, the popular conception of the Indian has for a long time been wildly inaccurate. We have known him in various capacities, as the innocent victim of corrupt agents and traders, and as the brutal robber and murderer with the vices and force of the Western frontiersman, but without any of the latter's redeeming virtues. Last and most important of all, we have known him as the rare hero and the conventional villain of romance, ranging from the admirable stories of Cooper to the ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... really appreciate and understand the reason for that undying hatred which I and millions of my fellow countrymen feel, it will cost you exactly one shilling. Go to any stationer's and buy a copy of the Treaty of Versailles. Read it word by word and line by line. It is the most brutal document that was ever printed. It will help ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... personification of his nation which the artisan of Oldham or Middlesbrough can recognise is the picture of John Bull as a fat, brutal, early nineteenth-century Midland farmer. One of our national symbols alone, the 'Union Jack,' though it is as destitute of beauty as a patchwork quilt, is fairly satisfactory. But all its associations so far ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... probably trained by some brutal man who inspired her with distrust of the human species. She never bites an animal, and seems attached to all the other horses. She loves Fleetfoot and Cleve and Pacer. Those ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... had been despised, was torn from his prison to be delivered to the Russians, whose behavior at Austerlitz he had blamed. On his route he was maliciously represented as a friend to the French and exposed to the insults of the rabble, who bespattered him with mud, and to such brutal treatment from the Cossacks that he died of his wounds at Riga. Never had a prophet a more ungrateful country. He was delivered by his fellow-citizens to an ignominious death for attempting their salvation, for pointing out the means by which alone their safety could be insured, and ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... and Larry lumbered after him, ploughing his way through the crowd and colliding with the box upon which stood the Echo Phonograph, of New York and Paris. He hurled Mariedetta out of his path with brutal disregard, but even before he could reach his point of vantage the sprinters burst into the homestretch. Larry Glass saw it all at a glance—Speed was weakening, while Skinner was running easily. Nature had done her utmost; she could not work the impossible. ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... he slash'd, and split the other's shoulder, And drove them with their brutal yells to seek If there might be chirurgeons who could solder The wounds they richly merited, and shriek Their baffled rage and pain; while waxing colder As he turn'd o'er each pale and gory cheek, Don Juan raised his ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... avarice, and even too gentle for the rage of pleasure; formed, indeed, for, and highly susceptible of enjoyment and rapture; but that enjoyment, alas! almost wholly at the mercy of the caprice, malevolence, stupidity, or wickedness of an animal at all times comparatively unfeeling, and often brutal. R.B. ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... 'superficially,' and for broad, ghastly wounds. Besides, that is only following a natural law; a weak man finesses with death, tries to make sure of it at some precise point, penetrating the heart or severing an artery; a brutal man does not care where he hits, but trusts to his own brute strength to achieve ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... a year. Well, we dined as we were, Carville insisting that as I was up from the country they should bar evening dress for one night. This was rather pretty in its way, and I found he was a curious mixture of prettiness and downright brutal ruthlessness. I found a man I knew slightly among the guests, a chap named Effon, son of the soap man, and he told me that Carville was one of the most extraordinary men he had ever met, that women would almost come to him at the crooking of his finger, and even men of mature ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... whose gaze was directed to the very spot where she was standing. And what faces they were that she saw! One, a fat face, framed in thick hair and a short, thick and ragged beard, was of a dusky brown and as coarse and brutal as the other was smooth, colorless and lean, cruel and crafty. The eyes of the first of these ruffians were prominent, weak and bloodshot, with a fixed glassy stare, while those of the other seemed always to be on the watch with a restless ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... serious uneasiness; but my alarm was caused neither by his acts nor words, but entirely by his manner, which was strange and even intimidating to excess. At the beginning of the yesterday's interview there was a sort of bullying swagger in his air, which towards the end gave place to the brutal vehemence of an undisguised ruffian—a transition which had tempted me into a belief that he might seek even forcibly to extort from me a consent to his wishes, or by means still more horrible, of which I scarcely dared to trust myself to think, ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... how I could ever had imagined that love affairs were delightful, interesting things. They are horrible. I couldn't even give poor heartbroken Fred one little kiss, because of my promise to Ken. It seemed so brutal. I had to tell Fred that of course he would have my friendship, but that I couldn't kiss him because I had promised ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... monarchs. Thus it was that he finally dismissed Stambuloff from office on May 31, 1894, an act which he found all the easier because Stambuloff had made many enemies among his own people by his brusque, almost brutal, ways. But in spite of the wave of unpopularity that happened to be sweeping over him at the time, there could be no doubt that a man of Stambuloff's abilities would again rise to power. Only one thing could prevent ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... here? What had she done? She heard him asking gently, "Aren't you coming?" and she remembered. She had promised to marry George because Miriam had been lying on the floor, because, years ago, the woman lying alone in Pinderwell House had brought the Canipers to the moor where George lived and was brutal and was going to marry her. But it could not be true, for, in some golden past, before this ugliness fell between her and beauty, she had promised to marry Zebedee. She held her head to think. No, of course she had given ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... became mere robbers and outlaws. The history of the successes of L'Ollonois, Morgan, Davis, and the rest, is an exciting though painful one, inasmuch as all sense of right and mercy seems to have been crushed in the breasts of these men by their brutal business. For a handful of dollars they were ready to wreck a city, reduce even its ruins to ashes, slaughter women and babes, and cut the throats of the aged. They were as harsh and treacherous toward one another as they were toward peaceable men, and for acts of rebellion against a leader they ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... bough-house by daylight. A wicked advantage was taken by soaking the grain in anise-seed cordial, which made the birds noisy and active, thus attracting other pigeons to the stand. The device of taking pigeons in a net and wringing their necks is a brutal business, as ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... civilization, in which gorgeous palaces and artistic temples may be built, and perhaps even literature and scholarship rewarded, with money wrung from millions of toiling wretches. There is that sort of brutal strength in it, that it may endure for many long ages, until it comes into collision with some higher civilization. Then it is likely to end in sudden collapse, because the fighting quality of the people has been destroyed. ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... will admit to the fact that it could possibly change for the better. But actually there is nothing less stable. Socio-economic systems are almost always in a condition of flux. Planets such as Amazonia might for a time seem so brutal in their methods as to exclude their right to civilized intercourse with the rest. However, one of these days there'll be a change—or one of these centuries. They all change, sooner or later." She added softly, ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... the bacchanalian riot in the great hall to the solemn pathos and woe of the secret chamber sobered him rapidly. Even his obduracy gave way at last. "Caroline," said he, taking both her hands in his, "I will not urge you longer. I am called bad, and you think me so; but I am not brutal. It was a promise made over the wine. Varin, the drunken beast, called you Queen Vashti, and challenged me to show your beauty to them; and I swore not one of their toasted beauties could match my ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... his final leave of the University. He was freed from college rule, that emancipation so ardently coveted by the thoughtless student, and which too generally launches him amid the cares, the hardships, and vicissitudes of life. He was freed, too, from the brutal tyranny of Wilder. If his kind and placable nature could retain any resentment for past injuries, it might have been gratified by learning subsequently that the passionate career of Wilder was ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... but it was Lebrun who had the talent to express it in art. It was a time when France was fully awake, more fully awake than Italy who had, in fact, commenced the somnolence of her art; she was strong with that brutal force that is recently up from savagery, and she took ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... yourself, know or not know, that the little red flowers are there, putting out for the pollen?' he asked harshly. His voice was brutal, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... in 1975, Mozambique was one of the world's poorest countries. Socialist mismanagement and a brutal civil war from 1977-92 exacerbated the situation. In 1987, the government embarked on a series of macroeconomic reforms designed to stabilize the economy. These steps, combined with donor assistance ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... staring at the ground as if he were overwhelmed; and what hurt him so deeply was less the painful sense of having been cheated by such coarse cunning, than the annihilation of the treasured hopes which he had founded on the experiences of the past night. He felt as though a brutal foot had trampled down the promise of future joys on which he had counted; his sister's revelations had spoiled not merely his life on earth, but all eternity beyond the grave. Where hope ends despair steps in; and Philip, with reckless ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... say that was sung in Castleisland, but it might have been the local hymn and verbal companion to the brutal misdeeds of the ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... OF FREEDOM is one of the rarest of spiritual flames, and it can not be quenched. Make your appeal to history. Again and again militarism has sought to crush it, but it has seemed to share the very life of God. Brutal inspirations have tried to smother it, but it has breathed an indestructible life. Study its energy in the historical records of the Book or in annals of a wider field. Study the passion of freedom amid the oppressions of Egypt, or in the captivity of Babylon, ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... lusty lions are brutal torn And dragged; thy strong, young eaglets, heav'nward borne, By foul-mouthed ravens snatched, and all undone. Can food still tempt my taste? Can light of sun Seem fair to shine To ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... opinions he possesses also a true and distinct conception. (79) Lastly, he who is ignorant of the Scriptures and knows nothing by the light of reason, though he may not be impious or rebellious, is yet less than human and almost brutal, ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza
... on your account—that you should take this occasion to air your fire-eating manners against your own attorney? There are serious hours in life, Mr. Anne," he said severely. "A capital charge, and that of a very brutal character and with singularly unpleasant details; the presence of the man Clausel, who (according to your account of it) is actuated by sentiments of real malignity, and prepared to swear black white; all the other witnesses scattered and perhaps drowned ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Excellency has furnished this House with official information of this outrage, I have felt it my duty as a representative to express in positive, forcible terms my utter abhorrence and condemnation of this brutal outrage. The Governor has faithfully performed his duty in furthering the arrest of the guilty parties, and I hope the Court of justice will administer a lesson that will not soon be forgotten by that community. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... trumpeter, of Captain Kleinsorg clambered like a monkey up the mast of the St. Augustine, hauled down the admiral's flag, the last which was still waving, and gained the hundred florins. The ship was full of dead and dying; but a brutal, infamous butchery now took place. Some Netherland prisoners were found in the hold, who related that two messengers had been successively despatched to take their lives, as they lay there in chains, and that each had been shot, as he made his way ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... only knew as night-bombers, and yet, when the Boche was being hunted out and offered to take all civilians back to safety in motor lorries, 300 men, women and children, headed by the Deputy Mayor, heroically refused to leave their town, preferring, as they said, to risk the bombardment and the "brutal English" than to remain one ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... a child, eh?" with a brutal sneer. "I'd like ter know whar you git yer old gals then, ef Miss Vic war a ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton
... by prefixing to his that of the vessel which was the scene of this act of insubordination, in the event the grave of many a noble spirit, that might otherwise have proved an honour to themselves and a credit to their country. The brutal tyranny that characterised his conduct on this occasion, would have alone sufficed to brand him with the imputation of "coward," had it been even unconnected with the many subsequent acts of oppression which have stamped his career, and of which it is to be hoped for the prevention ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... came up the winding road three men, apparently father and sons,—low-browed, heavy-eyed, brutal looking creatures,—who followed the foot path up toward the house, and glaring sullenly at the young men, shuffled around ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... growing more brutal as he found that his victim made no resistance, and giving him a blow on the jaw which sent him staggering against one of ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... courageous, even to rashness; but cross-grained and incorrigibly obstinate: his genius was fertile in mathematical experiments, and he possessed some knowledge of chemistry: he was polite even to excess, unseasonably; but haughty, and even brutal, when he ought to have been gentle and courteous: he was tall, and his manners were ungracious: he had a dry hard-favoured visage, and a stern look, even when he wished to please; but, when he was out of humour, he was the true picture ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... Commodus, to whom it should have been very easy to hold the empire, for, being the son of Marcus, he had inherited it, and he had only to follow in the footsteps of his father to please his people and soldiers; but, being by nature cruel and brutal, he gave himself up to amusing the soldiers and corrupting them, so that he might indulge his rapacity upon the people; on the other hand, not maintaining his dignity, often descending to the theatre to compete with ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... Bosephus and Horatio as they sat side by side in the doorway of a deserted lumberman's cabin in the depths of an Arkansaw forest. The cub rescued from the brutal Italian and brought with them on their hasty journey out of Louisiana, stood a few feet away watching them intently. Now and then he made an awkward attempt at dancing, which caused Bosephus and Horatio to ...
— The Arkansaw Bear - A Tale of Fanciful Adventure • Albert Bigelow Paine
... not like the Old Cure, and, besides, was it not stepping between the woman and her confessional? Yet he felt that something ought to be done. It never occurred to him to speak to Jean Jacques. That would have seemed so brutal to the woman. It came to him to speak to Carmen, but he knew that he dared not do so. He could not say to a woman that which must shame her before him, she who had kept her head so arrogantly high—not so much to him, however, as to the rest of the world. He had not ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... dinner, a niece of the Duke of Norfolk, CATHERINE HOWARD, a young lady of fascinating manners, though small in stature and not particularly beautiful. Falling in love with her on the spot, the King soon divorced Anne of Cleves after making her the subject of much brutal talk, on pretence that she had been previously betrothed to some one else—which would never do for one of his dignity—and married Catherine. It is probable that on his wedding day, of all days in the year, he sent his faithful ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... but for the half-pail of vodka, though they could buy four pails of vodka for the twenty roubles. Indeed they were dirty, drunken, and dishonest, but for all that one felt that the peasant life as a whole was sound at the core. However clumsy and brutal the peasant might look as he followed his antiquated plough, and however he might fuddle himself with vodka, still, looking at him more closely, one felt that there was something vital and important ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... the continuity of progress; he believes in a better and more merciful future, a more complete humanity, ruled by more harmonious or less brutal laws. ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... thank God!" Notwithstanding this manifestation of hatred, which, indeed, might be that of an individual and not of the whole body, the Burschen invited their enemies to be present at Dittmar's funeral. A brutal refusal, and a threat to disturb the ceremony by insults to the corpse, formed their sole reply. The Burschen then warned the authorities, who took suitable measures, and all Dittmar's friends followed his coffin sword in hand. Beholding this calm but ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... struggles up to-day against many obstacles, the entailment of a brutal slavery. Leaving out of consideration the many who have already emerged, let us apply our thoughts to the great body of submerged people in the congested districts of city and country who present a real problem, and who must be helped to higher things. We note some of the heritages ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... the clearing, under the drifted smoke, the shattered regiments were re-forming for a second charge. Gripping the colours he staggered out to join them, and as he went a bullet sang past him and his left wrist dropped nerveless at his side. He scarcely felt the wound. The brutal jar of the repulse had stunned every sense in him but that of thirst. The reek of gunpowder caked his throat, and his tongue crackled in his mouth like a ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... in the narrow sense. The old knightly chivalry was a beautiful thing in its way, and it gave an uplift to an age which would have been frankly brutal without it: yet it had its well-spring in what appeals to us now as ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... round self-rowl'd, His head the midst, well stor'd with suttle wiles: Not yet in horrid Shade or dismal Den, Not nocent yet, but on the grassie Herbe Fearless unfeard he slept: in at his Mouth The Devil enterd, and his brutal sense, In heart or head, possessing soon inspir'd With act intelligential; but his sleep 190 Disturbd not, waiting close th' approach of Morn. Now whenas sacred Light began to dawne In Eden on the humid Flours, that breathd Thir morning Incense, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... could not but know, struggled for breath under that brutal form and idiotic brain. I wonder when it will be free. Not in this life: the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... ridicule me; what had I left me, but to pursue the concerted scheme, and to seek a pretence to quarrel with her, in order to revoke my promised permission, and to convince her that I would not be upbraided as the most brutal of ravishers for nothing? ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... in a mild sort of tone, "keep on continually bringing things to eat until this old brutal sea ruffian has satiated his ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... who promised him his life if he would submit to be stripped, have one end of a rope fastened round his neck, and the other round that of a wild young colt, and would race the colt as long as it could run. He agreed to the ordeal; the brutal Generals and no less brutal soldiers collected round the young man to prepare him for the race, close to the Bussex Rhine in Weston. Away they started at a furious rate till the horse fell exhausted by the side of his ill-fated ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... types of womankind known to the Middle Ages, Guinevere, Iseult, Enid, are derived from Arthur's court. In the Carlovingian poems woman is a nonentity without character or individuality; in them love is either brutal, as in the romance of "Ferebras," or scarcely indicated, as in the "Song of Roland." In the "Mabinogion," on the other hand, the principal part always belongs to the women. Chivalrous gallantry, which makes the warrior's happiness ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... regiment in Algiers, where he remained three years in a post of danger, always hoping for the epaulets of a general. But some malignant influence—that, in fact, of General Giroudeau,—continually balked him. Grown hard and brutal, Philippe exceeded the ordinary severity of the service, and was hated, in spite of his bravery a ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... or persons shall assault a white female with intent to commit rape, or be accessory thereto, he or they, upon conviction, shall suffer death;" but there was no prohibition and no penalty prescribed for the same crime against a negro woman. She was left unprotected by law against the brutal lust and the violence ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... boots, a helmet under his arm, a cuirass on his breast, he will now enter like a chicken-hearted charity-school boy, and that assembly which he formerly whipped with a strong hand, like school-boys, laughed at and caricatured in often brutal sarcasm, ridiculed at every instant, ignored in the calculation of the budget and the army estimates during long years, and sometimes divided and dispersed by his strokes, they, the rabble, will ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... see these bareheaded women, with their hanging hair, their ferocious eyes, their brutal mouths; if you could see them there, half dressed, and that in a draggle-tailed slovenliness incomparably horrible; and if you could hear their appalling language loading their hoarse voices, and from their phrases receive into your mind some impression of their modes of ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... writer of the above remarkable story, was hanged in the jailyard at A—— for the wilful and brutal murder of Doctor Ambrose Matthai, a retired practitioner of that place. The plea of insanity, so strongly urged by the prisoner's counsel, proved unavailing, and the condemned man paid the penalty for his crime on Friday ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... intensity of a nightmare. The horrors, for a short time repelled, were stronger than ever. She was tensely awake. Every word exchanged between Toby and herself came ringing into her head. She was aghast at the stupidity, the cruel and brutal stupidity, of her lover. He her lover! Love! why he didn't know what love meant! He would take everything she had to give; and when he was asked to stand by her Toby would repudiate her claim upon him. She was filled with vicious ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... heard the terse and brutal truth. In an instant he believed it, some lower, animal intuition in him reiterating and confirming the fact. But even then he hated to think that people were so low, so vile. One day, however, he was looking through the volumes of the old Encyclopaedia ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... Doctor Context, it had attained just popularity. Yet the increasing infirmities of age obliged the doctor to relinquish much of his trust to his assistants, who, it is needless to say, abused his confidence. Before long their brutal tyranny and deep-laid malevolence became apparent. Boys were absolutely forced to study their lessons. The sickening fact will hardly be believed, but during school-hours they were obliged to remain in their seats with the appearance, at least, of discipline. It is stated by good ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... complete as that which she possessed. Awed by elegance and luxury, they returned to their homes with a sense of inferiority. They had met and fought side by side with warriors of such polished manners that they felt ashamed of their own brutal ways. They had seen strange costumes and listened to strange tongues. Henceforth no nation of Europe could be entirely indifferent to the fact that there was ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... not guiltless in this matter of interpretation of the scriptural injunction. In the matter of State rights, Southern election laws, and mob violence, our Government has turned the other cheek also. What has been the result? Why the tyrants continue to become more and more brutal, until they are not only running black men out, but they have recently, at the muzzle of the shot gun, forced their own kith and kin, men to the manor born, to leave the States. I have no hesitancy in proclaiming that this brutality ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... She spoke very slowly, and for a moment Owen wondered whether it would be possible to continue the present arrangement. Then common sense and creative ardour combined to utter a decided negative, and feeling himself to be brutal he ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... either because it made her despise herself a little for the part she had played, or because she was just Felicity. Surely she was more brutal than she ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... Mr. Morton, with more tact and delicacy than might have been expected from him, began to soften to Catherine the hard ship of the separation he urged. He dwelt principally on what was best for the child. Boys were so brutal in their intercourse with each other. He had even thought it better represent Philip to Mr. Plaskwith as a more distant relation than he was; and he begged, by the by, that Catherine would tell Philip to take ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he demanded. The words might have sounded brutal had the tone been different, but though they were harshly spoken, they bore no suggestion of denial or rebuff, no faintest hint of insulting disclaimer. "You know," he continued, "we both know, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... should never give way to temper. How often do we see horses stumble from being conducted, or at least "allowed," to go over bad ground by some careless driver, who immediately wreaks that vengeance on the poor horse which might, with much more justice, be applied to his own brutal shoulders. The whip is of course useful, and even necessary, but should be rarely used, except to encourage and ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... groups of revellers, dressed in scarlet, dressed in purple, dressed in white and gold, gay with satins and ribbons, gorgeous with glittering chains and jewelled swords: stern, manly faces, that had been singed with powder in the Palatinate; brutal, swarthy faces, knowing all that sack and sin could teach them; beautiful, boyish faces, fresh from ancestral homes and high-born mothers; grave, sad faces,—sad for undoubted tyranny, grave against the greater wrong ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... property and of public office was to substitute for the centralised state of the Carolingians a lax federal system, in which each unit was a group of men attached to the person of a hereditary superior. This nascent feudalism was often brutal, always summary and short-sighted, in its methods of government. The feudal group was engaged in a perpetual struggle for existence with neighbouring groups. Feudal policy was aggressive; for every lord had his war-band, whom he could only hold together ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... why." The real reason is that we are not sure he could bear the brutal chloroform, ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... return, neither observation nor reproach;—at first trembling and change of colour were the only indications of his feelings—then he moved restlessly on his seat, and his bright and deeply sunken eyes gleamed with untamable malignity; but, as Roupall followed one jeer more brutal than the rest, with a still more boisterous laugh, and, in the very rapture of his success, threw himself back in his chair, the tiger spirit of Robin burst forth to its full extent: he sprang upon the trooper so suddenly, that the Goliath was perfectly conquered, and lay upon the floor ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... brutal attitude had much to do with this sudden change. The colonists had nursed the belief that the king was misled by his ministers. A last petition, couched in respectful terms, was drawn up by Congress in the summer of 1775, and sent to England. ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... and public opinion? Yes, and the experience and observation of every fair-minded man will confirm the assertion. One cardinal proof is that a white man seldom receives punishment for assault, however brutal, however unprovoked, however cowardly, be it maiming, homicide, or murder upon a Negro unless, forsooth, the assailant be some degraded creature, disowned by his own caste. Of the numberless instances—running into the thousands—during the past twenty-three years, of homicide and murder of ...
— A Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 1 • Kelly Miller
... Telt dead! The brutal impact of the man's death had driven all thought of its consequences from Brion's mind. Now he began to realize. Telt had never sent word of his discovery of the radioactive trace to the Nyjord army. He had been afraid to use the radio, ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... 8, Palm Sunday, the Arrabbiati attacked St. Mark's Convent. Savonarola was seized and bound by a brutal rabble, and he and two of his monks were lodged in prison. Cruel proceedings followed. For a whole month he was brought day after day to examination and he was repeatedly subjected to torture. The Pope's Commissioners were never able to extract ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... has a people been more shamelessly betrayed. King Nikola had used the poor creatures as a cat's paw, had failed, and now brutally cast them out, and pretended to the Powers that Montenegro was innocent. By brutal threats the Maltsors were induced to accept the Turkish terms. But they stipulated I was to return with them and stay the winter. This I undertook to do, and before leaving was told by some one who had just had audience with the King that owing ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... French devour my brethren, the English eat beef," croaked out the frog,—"great, big, brutal, bellowing oxen." ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... its own sake, nor excellent in itself. It is obedience to law, practised and valued, loved for what resulted from it, for the strength and rigid endurance which it gave, but not loved for itself. The Roman nature was fierce, rugged, almost brutal; and it submitted to restraint as stern as itself, as long as the energy of the old spirit endured. But as soon as the energy grew slack, when the religion was no longer believed, and taste, as it was called, came in, and there was no more ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... Teddy thought, Captain Lennard was the man for him. He looked easy and kind-hearted and would not bully people, as he had read of some brutal captains doing. ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... Blackstock, Greystock was my Lord Surrey, and Thinstock Richard Brinsley Sheridan. The treatment of women by the police is traditional. The 'unfortunate'—unhappy creatures!—are their pet aversion; and once in their clutches, receive no mercy. The 'Charley' of old was quite as brutal as the modern Hercules of the glazed hat, and the three adventurers showed an amount of zeal worthy of a nobler cause, in rescuing the drunken Lais from his grasp. On one occasion they seem to have hit on a 'deserving case;' a slight ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... Charles. He had given loose rein to his passion, and it was at this moment beyond control. The scene reminds us of a poor wife, the hapless victim of a drunkard's home, drawing on herself brutal treatment, when, in the lonely hours of midnight and in the pent-up feelings of a breaking heart, she would incautiously reprove the maddened retch who is reeling home to her under the fumes of intoxication; ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... was still wanting to pay for Mary's funeral, I thought I might have had a little quiet time to prepare myself as I best could for to-morrow. But this was not to be. When I got home the landlord met me in the passage. He was in liquor, and more brutal and pitiless in his way of looking and speaking than ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... tinge of color rose on her pale face; she broke into an outburst of rage. "Think of my daughter being brought up by charity! She may suffer poverty, she may be treated with contempt, she may be employed by brutal people in menial work. I can't endure it; it maddens me. If she is not saved from that wretched fate, I shall die despairing, ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... is the most brutal and the most pathetic scene that profane history has to record; it was, as Goethe has said, the most senseless deed that ever was done. It was wholly useless, for it did not and could not save Rome from monarchy. The deed was done by a handful of men, who, pursuing ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... interesting thing about Culhane was this different, very original and forthright if at times brutal point of view. It was a blazing material world of which he was the center, the sun, and yet always I had the sense of very great life. With no knowledge of or interest in the superior mental sciences or arts or philosophies, still he seemed to suggest and even live them. He was ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... brigands who, though smaller in size and of a more astute expression of countenance, was equally characterised by an aspect of brutal ferocity—for a moment appeared to quail before ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... of Jugurtha was one in accordance with the brutal cruelty of Rome, yet it was one which he richly deserved. It was in the month of January, 104 B.C., three years after his capture, that Marius entered Rome in triumphal procession, displaying to ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... clearness of speech, what the devil he was doing. But these modern plutocrats could not bear a poor man near to them, either as a slave or as a friend. That something had gone wrong with the servants was merely a dull, hot embarrassment. They did not want to be brutal, and they dreaded the need to be benevolent. They wanted the thing, whatever it was, to be over. It was over. The waiter, after standing for some seconds rigid, like a cataleptic, turned round and ran madly out ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... exertion of benevolence which the infection of our infamy prevents even in the humane, had I been thrust out from this miserable place which misfortune has yet left me; exposed to the brutal insults of drunkenness, or dragged by that justice which I could not bribe, to the punishment which may correct, but, alas! can never amend the abandoned objects of its terrors. From that, Mr. Harley, your goodness has ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... of darkness; but now she felt quite safe in his strength. The thought of her own unprotected girlhood drew her heart closer to him. She remembered with pleasure the stories of his personal prowess, which had once made her think him coarse and brutal. For the first time in her life she knew the delight of dependence—the holy charm of weakness. And as they paced on silently together, through the black awful night, while the servants lingered, far out of sight, about the horses, she found out how ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... and misrule. Next to ignorance of these laws, the primitive source, the causa causarum, of the acts and neglects which have blasted with sterility and physical decrepitude the noblest half of the empire of the Caesars, is, first, the brutal and exhausting despotism which Rome herself exercised over her conquered kingdoms, and even over her Italian territory; then, the host of temporal and spiritual tyrannies which she left as her dying curse to all her wide dominion, ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... Lopez. "Oh, senorita! won't you understand? Let me explain. This castle is full of rough, rude men. It would not be safe for you to move about. They are not trained servants; they are brutal and fierce. If you went among them you would be ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... Peak continued, 'is revolted by the triumphal procession that roars perpetually through the City highways. With myriad voices the City bellows its brutal scorn of everything but material advantage. There every humanising influence is contemptuously disregarded. I know, of course, that the trader may have his quiet home, where art and science and humanity are the first considerations; but the mass of traders, corporate and victorious, ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... the zeal of the Roman magistrates, disdaining every consideration of moral virtue or public decency, endeavored to seduce those whom they were unable to vanquish, and that by their orders the most brutal violence was offered to those whom they found it impossible to seduce. It is related, that females, who were prepared to despise death, were sometimes condemned to a more severe trial, [64a] and called upon to determine whether they set a higher value on their religion ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... historical fiction, there are none which appeal to a larger number of Americans than Horseshoe Robinson, and this because it is the only story which depicts with fidelity to the facts the heroic efforts of the colonists in South Carolina to defend their homes against the brutal oppression of the British under such leaders as ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... the very nations on whom she had freely poured the light of civilization; to see the fierce soldiery of Europe, from the Danube to the Tagus, sweeping like an army of locusts over her fields, defiling her pleasant places, and raising the shout of battle, or of brutal triumph under the shadow of those monuments of genius, which have been the delight and despair of succeeding ages. It was the old story of the Goths and Vandals acted over again. Those more refined arts of the cabinet, on which the Italians were accustomed to rely, much ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... crisis with man instinctively resorts to weakness' strongest weakness, tears, I might have a different story to tell. But she fought back the tears in which her eyes were swimming and gathered herself together. "That is brutal," she said, with not a touch of haughtiness, but not humbly, either. ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... long if the conditions were reversed," Frank suggested, "still, I wouldn't like to be in with anything as brutal as that." ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson
... mountains, merely like wild beasts—impressed by the example of the others, began to be peaceable and tame, and to prepare themselves for holy baptism. This, for those who are acquainted with their savageness and brutality, is wonderful beyond exaggeration. But this very brutal and barbarous nature renders them (a marvelous thing!) less incapable of our holy faith, and less averse to it—because in their state of pure savagery they have not, as I know from observation, any idolatries or superstitions, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... to his confederate, asked, "Who, to see the lady they were now speaking to, could believe that she had once been called the beautiful Mrs. Robinson?" To this he added other observations not less savage and brutal; and, after throwing on the bed a subpoena, quitted the apartment. The wretch who could thus, by insulting the sick, and violating every law of humanity and common decency, disgrace the figure of a man, was a professor and a priest of that religion which enjoins ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... himself. Each leader gathered round him a little party of men, who helped him build the fort which was to be the stronghold of the district. Among the earliest of these town-builders were Hugh McGarry, James Harrod, and Benjamin Logan. The first named was a coarse, bold, brutal man, always clashing with his associates (he once nearly shot Harrod in a dispute over work). He was as revengeful and foolhardy as he was daring, but a natural leader in spite of all. Soon after he came to Kentucky his son was slain by ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... "You think I'm brutal, dear," Conyers went on, as he patted her hand. "Remember, I've seen men killed—that's what makes the difference, Olive. Yes, I am different! We are all different, we who've tackled the job. Thomson's different. Your young man at luncheon, Geraldine—what's his ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... his army accuse three generals of insubordination and mutiny on the field of battle. McClellan prevents investigation; the brutal rule of Yanitschars is inaugurated, thanks to you, Messrs. ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... concerned in the attack on the engine-house; but no evidence could be obtained against him, and he would have been released had he not been recognized as a man who had, five years before, effected a daring escape from Portland, where he was undergoing a life sentence for a brutal manslaughter. ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... we received into our hands about as degraded a specimen of the genus 'murderer,' as it was ever my lot to see. He had killed a woman in a most cowardly and cruel manner, and was, to my way of thinking, (and I was used to such fellows,) about as brutal-looking a human beast as one need look at. However, we had hardly got him into a cell, before a carriage drove up to the door, and a splendidly-dressed lady, with a basket of oranges and a five-dollar camellia bouquet, asked ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... people to whom the truth has been permitted to come. They do not need to be stated again. We seek no material advantage of any kind. We believe that the intolerable wrongs done in this war by the furious and brutal power of the Imperial German Government ought to be repaired, but not at the expense of the sovereignty of any people—rather a vindication of the sovereignty both of those that are weak and of those that are strong. Punitive damages, the dismemberment ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson
... property. The demand was made that there should be trial by jury in contempt cases, thereby most seriously impairing the authority of the courts. All this represented a course of policy which, if carried out, would mean the enthronement of class privilege in its crudest and most brutal form, and the destruction of one of the most essential functions of the judiciary in ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... begin like that. It was only Berwick's brutal and incessant threats of suicide that made me accept him at all, and before the year was out, he was running after all kinds of petticoats, every colour, every shape, every material. In fact, before the honeymoon was over, I caught him ...
— Lady Windermere's Fan • Oscar Wilde
... "What a brutal suggestion," said the Puddin'; but no notice was taken of his objections, and as soon as he was turned safely upside down, Bill and Sam ran straight at the puddin'-thieves and commenced sparring up at them with the ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... marriage to be real enough, and he would not mar her delight by undeceiving her. Later, since she was wretched at home with her scolding mother and a brutal step-father, and there were dangers in allowing her to go on waylaying him in streets when too long a period elapsed between his visits to her, he quietly took her away and established her in a small house on the outskirts of the city, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... peoples has days of joy and days of grief: sunshine follows the storm. The whole history of European peoples is one of alternate victories and defeats. It is the business of civilization to create such conditions as will render victory less brutal and defeat ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... Catholic Church of St. Peter, built in 1863. The interior is very ornate. Just here, where Back Hill and Ray Street meet, was Hockley Hole, a famous place of entertainment for bull and bear baiting, and other cruel sports that delighted the brutal taste of the eighteenth century. One of the proprietors, named Christopher Preston, fell into his own bear-pit, and was devoured, a form of sport that doubtless did not appeal to him. Hockley Hole was noted for a particular breed of bull-dogs. The actual site of the sports is ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... up and down, shaking that horrid ring of enormous keys, while with angry eye I measured his gigantic, lean, and aged figure. His features, though not decidedly vulgar, bore the most repulsive expression of brutal severity which I ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... weapon. They were crowded together indiscriminately, high and low, rich and poor, black or white or red, in all states of disorder and disarray, just as they had been seized the night before, some of them having been dragged from their very beds by the brutal ruffians. ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... the morning went out at a stroke, and the birds muffled their song. But neither girl by word or gesture revealed her blankness. "He's getting on towards the end of his time wi' me," added the dairyman, with a phlegm which unconsciously was brutal; "and so I suppose he is beginning to ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... other men, and cultivated a small field of maize, millet, and pumpkins. Samuel's temper grew worse under the stress of his solitary life, and Martha suffered much from his ill-treatment. Shortly after an act of particularly brutal violence on his part she was confined, and the poor little baby, a boy, was found to be hopelessly deformed. According to native custom, such a child would have been destroyed, but when Samuel suggested this, the mother blazed out into such wrath that ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... of the letter which I am discussing has a whole-hearted dislike of the Germans, and especially of the Prussians; charges them with "cruelty, brutal arrogance, deceit, cunning, manners and customs below those of savages"; includes in the indictment professors, commercial men, and women; recites the hideous list of crimes committed during the present war; and roundly says that, however you label him, "the Prussian ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... instance of this commanding influence is found in the case of General Vandamme, an old revolutionary soldier still more brutal and energetic than Augereau. In 1815, Vandamme said to Marshal d'Ornano, one day, on ascending the staircase of the Tuileries together: "My dear fellow, that devil of a man (speaking of the Emperor) fascinates me ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... statement of Professor Henderson relating to the awful fate that had overtaken his friends and Phineas Roebach was so uncompromising—almost brutal—that not a word ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... slaughtered sons and fathers, and drunken soldiery, cursing and carousing in the midst of tears, terror, and murder. Why does the stately Muse of History, that delights in describing the valor of heroes and the grandeur of conquest, leave out these scenes, so brutal, mean, and degrading, that yet form by far the greater part of the drama of war? You, gentlemen of England, who live at home at ease, and compliment yourselves in the songs of triumph with which our chieftains are bepraised—you pretty maidens, that ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... "For Sale," enclosed by rotten boards, where one could always see tufts of nettles and a goat tied to a stake, and upon the high wall above which by the end of April the lilacs hung in their perfumed clusters, the rains had not effaced this brutal declaration of love, scraped with a knife in the plaster: "When Melie wishes she can ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... only nigh the craftsmen of his particular trade. But, on the whole, the lot of the men of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was by no means an unhappy one. They were very quick, easily aroused, turbulent, savage in their punishments, brutal perhaps in their sport; but they had many sterling qualities which helped to raise England to attain to her high rank among the nations of the world, and they left behind them sturdy sons and daughters who made London ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... upheld him to the last, he escaped to a country where freedom of speech is not a byword. But misunderstanding followed close upon his footsteps, even his wife doubted his sanity, mistaking his genius for folly, and died undeceived. Calumny, hate, brutal criticism, the contempt of the so-called learned class—and all the train of woe that want and debt can bring to bear ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... confessional. Almost all his heroes make love either like Seraphim or like cattle. He seems to have no notion of anything between the Platonic passion of the Glendoveer who gazes with rapture on his mistress's leprosy, and the brutal appetite of Arvalan and Roderick. In Roderick, indeed, the two characters are united. He is first all clay, and then all spirit. He goes forth a Tarquin, and comes back too ethereal to be married. The ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... rugged, noisy fellows, and quite brutal among themselves, though civil enough to their two passengers. Thus, when a quarrel arose between the man who was steering and his friend in the cabin, upon the question who had first suggested the propriety of offering Nell some beer, and when the quarrel led to a scuffle in which they beat each ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... This brutal usage dismayed me; but Althea said, 'Poor wretch! he is half crazed with fear; that makes mean men cruel; care not for him;' and when we were ready, giving our packages to Will, she led the way out with ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... to describe the fight between Myles Falworth and Walter Blunt. Fisticuffs of nowadays are brutal and debasing enough, but a fight with a sharp-edged broadsword was not only brutal and debasing, but cruel ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... here very concise; better the Bresi. Edit. (xii. 326). Here we have the Eastern form of the Three Wishes which dates from the earliest ages and which amongst us has been degraded to a matter of "black pudding." It is the grossest and most brutal satire on the sex, suggesting that a woman would prefer an additional inch of penis to anything this world or the next can offer her. In the Book of Sindibad it is the story of the Peri and Religious Man; his learning the Great Name; and his consulting with his ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... quarters, sacked the houses, and assailed everyone that came within their reach. The most distinguished Jews were not spared, and thirty members of the Council of Elders were dragged to the marketplace and scourged. Philo's account gives a picture strikingly similar to that of a modern pogrom. The brutal indifference of Flaccus did not indeed avail to ingratiate him with the emperor, and he was recalled to Italy, exiled, ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... out to German contractors. Here they toiled on the railway, clearing the land, bringing in wood from the jungle building roads, half starved and savagely ill-treated. They might burn with fever or waste their feeble strength in dysentery, it made no difference to their brutal jailers. To be sick was to malinger in German eyes: so they got "Kiboko" and their rations reduced, because, forsooth, a man who could not work could also not eat. To "Kiboko" a prisoner of war and an Indian ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... pugilistic and criminal celebrities of the quarter, and their sycophants. Its revels rendered the nights cacophonous, its portals sucked in streams of sweethearts and more impersonal lovers of life and laughter, and spewed out sots close-locked in embraces of maudlin affection or brutal combat. Bobbies kept an eye on the Red Moon, a respectful one: interference with the time-hallowed customs and prerogatives of its clientele was something to ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... not accuse such a father of caprice, cruelty, folly, and a want of reason, if he visited with his anger the children whom he had himself excluded from his presence? Would you not impute to him an injustice of which none but the most brutal of our species could be guilty if he actually punished them for not having executed orders which he was never pleased ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... oh, lady fair," he cried, "I pray thee have mercy on thy humble servant, and open thy gates and speak with him. Thou art far too beautiful to live in these cold Northern climes, among rough and brutal men. Come with me, and I will dress thee in cloth-of-gold, and take thee along with me to London. King Edward will welcome thee, for thy beauty will add lustre to his court, and we shall be married with ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... the manners of all nations have been more or less brutal and corrupt. I only know of one exception, and that is in favour of the Americans of the United States, who are spread, few in number, over a wide territory. Up to this time, among all nations, legal inequality has existed between men and women; and it would not be difficult to show that, ...
— The First Essay on the Political Rights of Women • Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat Condorcet |
