"Decapitation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mutilation, and death; for the past two hundred and fifty years, these have been—beating with the light bamboo, beating with the heavy bamboo, transportation for a certain period, banishment to a certain distance, and death, the last being subdivided into strangling and decapitation, according to the gravity ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... Darerca, mother of Ciaran, Darerca, St., dates of Ciaran's life, dates of documents, deafness cured, decapitation, Decies, Deece, Delbna, Derercha. See Darerca. Dermag (Durrow, King's Co.), Dermicius. See Diarmait (deacon). Desi, Dessi, Diarmait, deacon, See also Iustus. Diarmait, St., Diarmait mac Cerrbeil, king, Dompnanus. See ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... of the harp itself: "He was one of those politicians who are never contented; who plot and counterplot incessantly; who are always running their heads fearlessly, to be sure, but indiscreetly, into danger of decapitation." This fine analytic power appears throughout the book. Describing the enthusiasm of the Londoners for Henry of Bolingbroke, and their coldness towards the captive King Richard, the historian acutely observes: "Ever thus, from the beginning ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... world in a cracked pipkin, and it oozes out entirely as soon as it liquifies in youth. The pipkin, therefore, goes through life empty and cracked, ever sounding flat and false. While in others the Me is enclosed in a sealed straw-covered flask and can only be awakened by either evaporation or decapitation, in other words, by a spiritual revolution. And in the very few among mortals, it emerges out of the iron calyx of a flower of red-hot steel, or flows from the transparent, odoriferous bosom of a rose of light. In the first we have a Caesar, an Alexander, a Napoleon; ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... Infessura, in his own language, 'on the last day of June, when the people were celebrating in Rome the festivity of the most happy decapitation of Saint Paul the Apostle, whose head was cut off by the most cruel Nero—on that very day, about an hour and a half after sunrise, the aforesaid Holiness of our Sovereign Lord caused the Protonotary Colonna to be beheaded in the ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... Singh for his followers were to dress in blue clothes and especially eschew red or saffron-coloured garments and caps of all sorts, to observe personal cleanliness, especially in the hair, and practise ablutions, to eat the flesh of such animals only as had been killed by jatka or decapitation, to abstain from tobacco in all its forms, never to blow out flame nor extinguish it with drinking-water, to eat with the head covered, pray and recite passages of the Granth morning and evening and before all meals, reverence the cow, abstain from ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... philosopher, who was accused of binding the winds in an adverse quarter by the influence of magic, so that the corn-ships could not reach Constantinople; and the emperor was obliged to give orders for his decapitation to satisfy the clamours in the theatre. Not that such requisitions were submitted to without a struggle, or that succeeding sovereigns were willing to make their dignity tacitly subordinate to ecclesiastical domination. It was the aim of Constantine to make theology a branch of politics; it was the ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... is an incantation directed against reptiles and noxious creatures in general. The chief of these was Apep, the great enemy of Ra, who took the form of a huge serpent that "resembled the intestines," and the spell doomed him to decapitation, and burning and backing in pieces. These things would be effected by Serqet, the Scorpion-goddess. The second part of the spell was directed against the poison of Apep, and was to be recited over anyone who was bitten by a ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... Australian, for instance, not content with slaying his enemy, cuts off the right thumb of the corpse, so that the departed soul may be incapacitated from throwing a spear. Even the half-civilized Chinese prefer crucifixion to decapitation, that their souls may not wander headless about the spirit-world. [171] Thus we see how far removed from the Christian doctrine of souls is the primeval theory of the soul or other self that figures in dreamland. So grossly materialistic is the primitive conception ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... the death penalty to be inflicted by means of electricity. The object was to deter evildoers by surrounding the penalty with scientific horror, [Footnote: Hence also the new lingual atrocity, the word "electrocute," derived from "execute" by decapitation and the addition of "electro"] and the idea had its origin in the accidents which formerly occurred much more frequently than now. The "death current" is now almost everywhere, though the care of the men who continually work about "live" wires has grown ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... the Decapitation of S. John the Baptist, the emperor attended service at the Studion in great state. Early in the morning the members of the senate assembled therefore at the monastery, while dignitaries of an inferior rank took their place outside the gate (Narli Kapou) in ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... In the middle of it rises a pyramidal canopy of open stone-work; and upon the wide transom-stone over the door, is sculptured the genealogical tree of Christ, arising from the root of Jesse. The carving over the north entrance is yet more peculiar, and evidently far older. It represents the decapitation of the Baptist, with "Salome dancing in an attitude, which perchance was often assumed by the tombesteres of the elder day; affording, by her position, a graphical comment upon the Anglo-Saxon version of the text, in ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... this good man. But Decius, not finding as much as his avarice made him expect, determined to wreak his vengeance on the good prelate. He was accordingly seized; and on the 20th of January, A. D. 250, he suffered decapitation. ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... Rev. Mizraim Ham made his exit from the boards I could not see—perhaps he rolled or crawled off. But he did not suffer decapitation, like "ole Golly": since in ten minutes, his woolly pate suddenly popped up among the other sacred heads that were visible over the front railing of the rostrum, as all kept moving to and fro in the wild ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... specimen of revolutionary reasoning; but it is rather a definition of Democracy, as Lamartine understands it, than a constitutional argument in favor of the decapitation of "Louis Capet." Lamartine is, indeed, a "Conservative Democrat," that is, ready to immolate the king to preserve the rights of the people; but he does not distinguish in his mind a justifiable act from a righteous one. But it is a peculiarity of the French ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... squeaking of scrannel pipes; a feminine 'break-down' of the most effrenee description, and a general libation to the Bacchus of Blackland. A debauched and drunken Ashanti, who executed for our benefit a decapitation-dance, evidently wishing that we had been its objects, thanked us ironically for a sixpence. We met some difficulty in seeing the swords, which were not to be sold. They were the usual rusty and decayed fish-slicers; Cameron, however, was kind enough ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... States Senate in 1832 that "to the victors belong the spoils of the enemy," and that during his month of cabinet service eighteen hundred employees in his department were dismissed. The Democrats evidently thought that "turn about was fair play," as a few years later, under President Polk, the work of decapitation was equally active. Ransom H. Gillett, Register of the Treasury at that time, became so famous at head-chopping, that he ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... the ground as a moor-hen scuppers across the water, the mechanics having assisted her initial progress by pushing the lower stays and then ducking under the planes, as she gathered way, and just missing decapitation. It's a way they have. She took a run for it, her engine humming like a top, and then rose, and gradually climbed the sky. Peter gazed at her wistfully. "And he promised to take me up some day," ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... and propped it up with a short billiard-cue which fitted into a notch. All danger of sudden decapitation having been removed, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various
... moment, Knox, with peculiar mal-appropriateness, "in a foolish, incoherent sort of speech," says Jefferson, "introduced the pasquinade, lately printed, called The Funeral of George Washington"—a parody on the decapitation of the French king, in which the president was represented as placed on a guillotine. "The president," says Mr. Jefferson, "was much inflamed; got into one of those passions [which only for a moment and very rarely occurred] where he can not control himself; ran on much on the personal abuse that ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... amplification of the "story of meeting and Prescott marriage." And of course, the frivolous Jaffery, now that one really wants him, is sitting astride of a cannon, and smoking a pipe and, notebook and pencil in hand, is writing a picturesque description of the bungling decapitation by shrapnel of the general who has just been unfolding to him the whole plan of the campaign, and consequently is provokingly un-getatable by ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... resistance to any arrest of the circulation and also because its survival is easily shown by its contractility. In man the heart has been seen to beat spontaneously and completely 25 minutes after a legal decapitation (Renard and Loye, 1887), and by massage of the organ its beating may be restored after it has been arrested for 40 minutes (Rehn, 1909). By irrigation of the heart and especially of its coronary vessels the period of revival may be ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... pleasure. Under Anne, to quote but one example, the peerages become extinct since the twelfth century amounted to five hundred and sixty-five. The War of the Roses had begun the extermination of dukes, which the axe of Mary Tudor completed. This was, indeed, the decapitation of the nobility. To prune away the dukes was to cut off its head. Good policy, perhaps; but it is better to corrupt than to decapitate. James I. was of this opinion. He restored dukedoms. He made a duke of his favourite ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... pitch backward as before. Emilia found herself thinking with great seriousness that it was not wonderful for boys to be always teasing and killing flies, whose thin necks and bobbing heads themselves suggested the idea of decapitation. She said to her hostess: "I don't like flies. They seem never to sing but when they are bothered." The woman replied: "Ah, indeed?" very smoothly, and thought: "If you was to bust out now, which of us two would be strongest?" Emilia ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... revenants, sir; several were tracked to their graves, there detected by the usual tests, and extinguished in the usual way, by decapitation, by the stake, and by burning; but not until many of the villagers ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... this country it is every person's interest, however wealthy, to exhibit an appearance of abject poverty; as the suspicion of wealth instantly produces from the Sultan or Pasha a demand for some large sum, which must be forthwith paid or decapitation or torture are the severe alternatives. Here justice is indeed an empty name, the most atrocious criminals escaping unpunished if able to offer a bribe sufficient to tempt the cupidity of those whose duty it is to administer ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... slept. Upon the chance of a successful haul, he had made fervid promises, after the fashion of his race, to the shoemaker Mahommed Nafar. At first the shoemaker would have nothing to do with it: helping prisoners to escape meant torture and decapitation; but then he hated the Khalifa, whose Baggaras had seized his property, and killed his wife and children; and in the end Macnamara prevailed. Mahommed Nafar found some friendly natives from the hills of Gilif, who hated the Khalifa and his tyrannous governments, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... example is named after the Chinese philosopher-warrior, Sun Tzu. The "Sun Tzu" example is based on selective, instant decapitation of military or societal targets to achieve Shock and Awe. This discrete or precise nature of applying force differentiates this from Hiroshima and Massive Destruction examples. Sun Tzu was brought before Ho Lu, the King of Wu, who had read all of Sun Tzu's thirteen chapters on war and proposed ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... sea-basin solely because nothing else would contain it. Notwithstanding this defence, the judge decided that, since he took the boys away and did not bring them back, he was guilty of murder, and sentenced him to decapitation. He entreated leave to pay one visit to his aged mother before his execution, and this was granted. He went alone and told his brothers of his doom, and the second brother returned in his stead to the judge, thanked ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... inseparable from a great mind induced him to sacrifice rank, fortune, and power, to the cause of Greece, his native land. He only saved his life by flight; for the angry Sultan with whom he had previously been a great favourite, had already sent an order for his decapitation! Never was a reverse of fortune borne with greater equanimity than by this charming family, whose virtues, endowments, and acquirements, fit them for the most ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner |
