"Torment" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... river, the view was any thing but satisfactory. The wind here was tremendous, and the sleet blew down in long, horizontal lines, every separate particle giving its separate sting, while the accumulated stings amounted to perfect torment. I paused for a while to get a little shelter, and take ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... sometimes how these poor wretches that get but almost to heaven, how fearfully their "almost," and their "but almost," will torment them in hell; when they shall cry out in bitterness of their souls, saying, 'Almost a Christian! I was almost got into the kingdom, almost out of the hands of the devil, almost out of my sins, almost from ...
— The Heavenly Footman • John Bunyan
... "Why torment ourselves by further efforts?" cried another. "We shall have to submit. Heaven itself is against us. See the ice-crust on the Oder. This cold weather is a fresh ally of the French! So soon as the Oder and the ditches are firmly frozen over, they will cross, and take the city by assault. ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... world, and in honour of His holy resurrection, have I this rest" (now, it was the Lord's Day), "and when I sit here it seemeth to me as though I were in the Garden of Eden, by reason of the torments which I shall have this even, for when I am in torment I am like a bit of lead molten in a crucible day and night. In the midst of the mountain which ye have seen, there is Leviathan with his crew, and I was there when it swallowed up your brother, and therefore hell was glad, and sent ...
— Brendan's Fabulous Voyage • John Patrick Crichton Stuart Bute
... carpenters for ten days to repair damages done in late expedition. I had a fluke shot off a bower anchor at Tricheri, and ought to have another one. I must get a new main-sail made here. It is disagreeable to me to torment your lordship with all these statements, but you must be aware that a vessel like this cannot be sailed without great expense. There are here a number of seamen from the brig who want to enter with me. I have as yet refused to ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... fact. Peter threw himself down on his knees beside her, and was like a man struck dazed and speechless. He had a feeling that it was some horrible dream or hallucination, and presently this bewildering dazed sense would pass away and he would find the horror had not been real. Then across his torment he heard a voice that stung him alive with dreadful venom. His uncle and his brother had climbed the fence and had come to see what had happened, hearing from a scared keeper that someone was shot. Peter looked up and saw them. It was a dreadful ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... that forced her to live on beer, which kept her in a continual state of confusion, which was revealed in her exaggerated curtsies. Soft and heavy from drink, she was alarmed at the approach of the hour of the walk, a daily torment for her, as she tried painfully to keep up with Milita's long strides. Seeing the painter looking at her, she turned even redder and made three ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... movement of this kind it is but to be expected that women played no little part; their more sensitive natures caused them to be more easily affected than were the men by the threats of everlasting torment which were constantly being made by the priests for the benefit of all those who refused to renounce worldly things and come within the priestly fold. There was a most remarkable show of contrition and penitence ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... of her hands, but it was declined me; then she desired me to wipe the tears from her eyes, and the sweat from her face, which I did; then she desired that she might lean herself on me, saying she should faint. Justice Hathorne replied she had strength enough to torment these persons, and she should have strength enough to stand. I repeating something against their cruel proceedings, they commanded me to be silent, or else I should be turned out of the room." [Footnote: Chandler's American Criminal Trials, I. p. 85.] It ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... head, fixed on the Roman his hollow eyes, shining with lurid fire, and, with lips contracted by a sardonic smile, said to him, bitterly: "You must be very anxious, my lord, to see me embalmed, and lie in state with tapers, as you were saying just now, for you thus to come to torment me in my last moments, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... foreign influence was used with the Pasha to encourage the application of the torture when some old men, too feeble to survive for a moment the infliction of the bastinado, were subjected a second time to the torment of sleeplessness, under the bayonets of the Egyptian soldiers. But it is indeed too unreasonable and unjust to lay on the Pasha of Damascus the whole blame of these proceedings, unequalled in atrocity since the days of the fourth Antiochus. The guilt ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... of days when life was sweet With poetry, art, and myths devoid of dread, When all the Gods in harmony could meet, And no eternal torment vexed ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... an anaesthetic to Sylvia in those days. She was thankful to occupy her mind and at night to sleep from sheer weariness. The sense of being useful to someone helped her also. She gave herself up to work as a respite from the torment of thought, resolutely refusing to look forward, striving so to become absorbed in the daily task as to crowd out even memory. She and Merston were fast friends also, and his wholesome masculine selfishness did her ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... importance the very conspiracy (if conspiracy there were) which threatened me. But I saw the physician who had attended both my daughter and her child—I sought those who had seen them both when living—seen them both when dead. The doubt on my mind was dispelled—not a pretext left for my own self-torment. The only person needful in evidence whom I failed to see was the nurse to whom the infant had been sent. She lived in a village some miles from the town—I called at her house—she was out. I left word I should call the next day—I did so—she had ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in the dentist's chair,—that ironically luxurious seat, cushioned in satirical suggestion of impossible repose,—after a certain initial period of clawing, filing, scraping, and punching, one's nerves accommodate themselves to the torment, and one takes almost an objective interest in the operation of tooth-filling; and in like manner after two or three wagon-loads of your household stuff have passed down the public street, and all your morbid associations with them have been desecrated, you begin ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... quarter-deck mumbling to himself; and when he ordered his boat to be manned it was in an angry voice. Freya's existence, which lifted Jasper out of himself into a blissful elation, was for Heemskirk a cause of secret torment, of hours of ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... the malignant goddesses is revealed in a most obtrusive form in the village deities of the Dravidians of Southern India.] "The dead were specially to be feared; nor was it only those dead who were unhappy or unburied that might torment the living, for the magician sometimes warns them that their tombs are endangered" (Article "Magic (Egyptian)," Hastings' Encycl. Ethics and Religion, ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... blinded and torn and shattered, Yet with hardly a groan or a cry From lips as white as the linen bandage; Though a stifled prayer 'God let me die,' Is wrung, maybe, from a soul in torment As the car with the ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... and rappings coming from the crypt at a late hour, he speedily locked the outer gate, said an "Ave," and went home to supper; well knowing that, at such a time, none save spirits of evil would be wandering below, in so great torment. ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... chucked ashore after him, and away rowed the boat's crew back to the ship, leaving the poor wretch alone to rave away his life in madness, or to sit sunken in his gloomy despair till death mercifully released him from torment. It rarely if ever happened that anything was known of him after having been marooned. A boat's crew from some vessel, sailing by chance that way, might perhaps find a few chalky bones bleaching upon the white sand in the garish glare of the sunlight, but ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... in our city, that is no longer one, as heretofore, but has in this received such a wound and rupture, as is never likely to close and unite again, or suffer us to be of one mind, and to give over inflaming our distempers, and being a torment to each other." ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... strange when she took her shoes off and showed that cool relish for a walk that might have ended in her death-bed," said my guardian. "It would be useless self-distress and torment to reckon up such chances and possibilities. There are very few harmless circumstances that would not seem full of perilous meaning, so considered. Be hopeful, little woman. You can be nothing better than yourself; be ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... scientific truth, for if with one bound every man may become as God, he will despise that infinitely slow upward progression which is the only real advance. But, above all, it lives estranged from tenderness, in which alone at certain hours of torment the distracted mind finds God's face reflected. It preaches renunciation of all vain aversions and desires; but it repels sweet impulses that are not vain. By exalting apathy in regard to personal suffering, it ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... this shall be my day's business to enquire about. Oh! how he did curse poor Lady C—— as the fiend who had interrupted all his projects, and who would do so now if possible. I think he hinted that she had managed to interrupt this connexion two years ago. He thought she was abroad, and, to his torment and astonishment, he finds her not only in England, but in London. He says he has written some small poems which his friends think beautiful, particularly one of eight lines, his very best—all of which, I believe, I am to have; and, moreover, ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... of their heads and the tips of their fingers: this being to signify that the oil of anointing was scraped off. This operation occupied some time. It seemed as if the Bishop and his vile myrmidons took pleasure in prolonging the torment of their victims. Fierce words were spoken to the priests in loud tones. Though we could not hear the words, we knew this by the gestures and by the occasional ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... Democrat in the State cried, "I told you so." What had become of him after his release from prison, nobody knew; some of the boarders said that he was living in the west, or in Australia; others, that he was not living anywhere, unless on the shores of perpetual torment. All agreed that the alleged second Mrs. Surface had long since died—all, that is, but Klinker, who said that she had only pretended to die in order to make a fade-away with the gate receipts. For many persons ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... with him girth to girth Wherever the Pale Horse wheels, Wait on his councils, ear to earth, And say what the dust reveals. For the smoke of our torment rolls Where the burning thousands lie; What do we care for men's bodies or souls? Bring us ...
— The Years Between • Rudyard Kipling
... character—from translucent lakes shining like mirrors they now became seas and oceans. And now came a tremendous change, which, unfolding itself slowly like a scroll through many months, promised an abiding torment; and in fact it never left me until the winding up of my case. Hitherto the human face had mixed often in my dreams, but not despotically nor with any special power of tormenting. But now that which I have called the tyranny of the human face began to unfold itself. Perhaps some part of my London ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... said he. "I am a blackguard, and you are an angel of purity and goodness. Forgive me, I will never tempt nor torment you again. For pity's sake forgive me. You don't know what ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... Certainly not to God. Then was it not to the Evil One? For that one reigned over us until the soul of Jesus was given as a ransom for us. This he had especially demanded, deceived by the imagination that he could rule over it, and he was not mindful of the fact that he could not endure the torment connected with holding it fast. Therefore death, which appeared to reign over Him, did not reign over Him, since He was "free among the dead" and stronger than the power of death. He is, indeed, so far superior to it that all who from among those overcome by death will follow Him can follow ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... she desireth to stand as a person voide of all trueth and credite with good Princes, if she euer punished any of these men with any strange or newe kinde of torment, then is appointed by the prescript of the ancient lawes of this Realme prouided against such persons, as shall be found and conuicted ...
— A Declaration of the Causes, which mooved the chiefe Commanders of the Nauie of her most excellent Maiestie the Queene of England, in their voyage and expedition for Portingal, to take and arrest in t • Anonymous
... once dear name,— Thee I address:—the cause you must approve; I yield you—what I cannot cease to love. Be thine the blissful lot, the nymph be thine: I yield my love,—sure, friendship may be mine. Yet must no thought of me torment thy breast; Forget me, if my griefs disturb thy rest, Whilst still I'll pray that thou may'st never know The pangs of baffled love, or feel my woe. But sure to thee, dear, charming—fatal maid! (For me thou'st charmed, and me thou hast betray'd,) This last request I need not recommend— Forget the ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... at this time about having "a world of torment," he really took matters very patiently and philosophically. In the devotion of his wife, in the affection of his children, in his beloved organ, "the only instrument," he said, "for expressing one's feelings," he found consolation and peace. He wrote,—"Victoria has taken ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... in a large-natured man, solitude will make the pure heart purer, in the small-natured man it will only serve to make the hard heart still harder; for though solitude may be the nurse of great spirits, it is the torment of ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... black with age, and uncomfortable to look at as inquisitors' racks, with a large, misshapen arm-chair, which, furnished with a rude barber's crotch at the back, working with a screw, seemed some grotesque engine of torment. A flag locker was in one corner, open, exposing various colored bunting, some rolled up, others half unrolled, still others tumbled. Opposite was a cumbrous washstand, of black mahogany, all of ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... do my whole face, as I now do my chin, and to save time, which I find a very easy way and gentile. So she also washed my feet in a bath of herbs, and so to bed. This month ends with very fair weather for a great while together. My health pretty well, but only wind do now and then torment me... extremely. The Queen is brought a few days since to Hampton Court; and all people say of her to be a very fine and handsome lady, and very discreet; and that the King is pleased enough with her which, I fear, will put Madam Castlemaine's nose out of joynt. The Court ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... the likeness of an ape, would make mouths at him. Then swiftly changing his shape, in the likeness of a hedgehog, he would lie tumbling in Caliban's way, who feared the hedgehog's sharp quills would prick his bare feet. With a variety of suchlike vexatious tricks Ariel would often torment him, whenever Caliban neglected the work which Prospero commanded ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... forty-eight hours, and before the end of another week Lyons had rescued the bonds of the Parsons estate from pawn, and disposed of his line of stocks carried by Williams & Van Horne. They were sold at a considerable loss, but he made up his mind to free his soul for the time being from the toils and torment of speculation and to nurse his dwarfed resources behind the bulwark of Elton's relief fund until the financial situation cleared. He felt as though he had grown ten years younger, and without confiding to Selma the details of these transactions he informed her ecstatically ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... They would send a wine-grower who did such foolish acts to the mad-house. Make roads in the Atlas Mountains, when I cannot get out of my own house! Dig ports in Barbary when the Garonne fills up with sand every day! Take from me my children whom I love, in order to torment Arabs! Make me pay for the houses, grain and horses, given to the Greeks and Maltese, when there are so many poor ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... know there are several things that so prey upon his mind as to render him perfectly miserable. They never cross his mind, but he is rendered unfit to do anything for a long time." She describes these financial demons that torment him and begs that her writing should not be told to Watt, as it might only add to his troubles. The appeal brings Mrs. Watt before us in a ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... they call it, on both sides; that is, a match between two beggars. I must, indeed, say, I never saw a fonder couple; but what is their fondness good for, but to torment each other?" "Indeed, mamma," cries Nancy, "I have always looked on my cousin Anderson" (for that was her name) "as one of the happiest of women." "I am sure," says Mrs Miller, "the case at present is much otherwise; for any one might have discerned ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... 'if you only did know how stupid and how miserable it has been! More than half myself gone, and Sophy always glum, and Lucy always plaguing, and Aunt Maria always being a torment, you would not wonder at one's doing anything to ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he would return, that she would hear. She could imagine how that the man, believing her good name in his power, and at his mercy, would not cease to torment and persecute her. ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... one goes into hospital. Such women as are in a hospital should be cool, gentle; anything else becomes a torment to the "prisoner." ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... fury, and intolerable fit, That dares torment the body of my love, And scourge the scourge of the immortal God! Now are those spheres, where Cupid us'd to sit, Wounding the world with wonder and with love, Sadly supplied with pale and ghastly death, Whose darts do pierce the centre of my soul. ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... as he had been bidden, never drew rein across the scorching plateau. He rode to what he knew was like enough to be death, and death by many a torment, as though he rode to a midnight love-tryst. His horse was of Arab breed—young, fleet, and able to endure extraordinary pressure, both of spur and of heat. He swept on, far and fast, through the sickly, lurid glitter of the day, over the loose sand, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... terrible brightness, like the lurid flashes from his own torment, burst from his eye. The very anger and malice he strove to quell made it burn still hotter. His visage gathered blackness, cloud hurrying on cloud, like the grim billows of the storm across a glowing atmosphere. Rapid was the transition. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... truth!——" She let him clasp her. "There's my torment, you see. I thought that was what your silence meant till I made you break it. Now I want to be sure that ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... determination must unavoidably fluctuate. The poet's chaos was no unapt emblem of the state of my mind. A torment was awakened in my bosom, which I foresaw would end only when this interview was past, and its consequences fully experienced. Hence my impatience for the arrival of the hour which had ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... I did and wanting her—and no other on the breadth of the green earth—for my wife, this uncertainty was a torment which I could not stand. I remembered she had told me that the Judge walked each evening after his dinner, and I am ashamed to confess that the next evening dark found me waiting on their street corner, like a scullery maid's beau, until I saw his stoop-shouldered figure come down the steps with ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... stinging tears, and feeling very much more maddened by regret than by mortification, Leonetta fled to her room. She was not only staggered, she was also thoroughly ashamed. A boy suddenly butted by a lamb, which he had believed he might torment with impunity, could not have felt more astonished. A convert brought face to face with the livid wounds which, in her days of unbelief, she had inflicted upon a Christian martyr could not have felt more deeply dejected ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... not what more to say. And she looked at him covertly and saw grief and torment in him, and she was sorry for him. But within herself she said, Woe's me! and how long it shall be belike ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... to have about Kean and Miss Stephens, the only theatrical favourites I ever had! Mrs. Billington had got some notion that Miss Stephens would never make a singer, and it was the torment of Perry's life (as he told me in confidence) that he could not get any two people to be of the same opinion on any one point. I shall not easily forget bringing him my account of her first appearance in the Beggar's Opera. ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various
... companion and the one living thing that had love for me in its heart. I can see its eyes upon me now, with their reproach, and, I imagine, with their distrust. I had cowed its spirit with my passions of rage, my kicks and my curses, for each of which I had felt a torment of regret and with each of which came a hundred vain vows to myself never to let my nature get the best of me again. I had grown old, but I could not trust myself more than before. I even feared that some day I might reveal voluntarily my existence to my daughter, so that a final and terrible, unspeakable ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... obnoxious to speak—a system too intolerable to be endured. I know this from long and sad experience. I now feel as if I had just been aroused from sleep, and looking back with quickened perception at the state of torment from whence I fled. I was there held and claimed as a slave; as such I was subjected to the will and power of my keeper, in all respects whatsoever. That the slave is a human being, no one can deny. It is his lot to be exposed in common with other men, to the calamities ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... waves like beasts fast bound that gnash their teeth, All of these the sun that lights them lights not like his fame; None of these is but the thing it was before he came Where the darkling overfalls like dens of torment seethe, High on tameless moorlands, down in meadows bland and tame, Where the garden hides, and where the wind uproots the heath, Glory now henceforth for ever, while the world shall be, Shines, a star that keeps not time with change on ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... not going to speak to-day anything that will distress those good souls who struggle with, and drive away, evil thoughts when they torment them; God has seen fit to try them with these, as He suffered the Israelites to lie tried by the remnants of the heathen nations which remained in the land,—but I am going to speak to those who indulge in evil thoughts of all kinds, and make no effort to banish them. I tell them ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... why need you apologize for not having visited him, and waste his time and deface your own act? Visit him now. Let him feel that the highest love has come to see him, in thee its lowest organ. Or why need you torment yourself and friend by secret self-reproaches that you have not assisted him or complimented him with gifts and salutations heretofore? Be a gift and a benediction. Shine with real light and not with the borrowed reflection of ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... he contemplated for some time with edifying devotion. The next year saw Fray Diego canonised as a saint, at the intercession of Philip and his son; and thus Don Carlos re-entered the world, to be a terror and a torment to all around him, and to die—not by Philip's cruelty, as his enemies reported too hastily indeed, yet excusably, for they knew him to be capable of any wickedness—but ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... Humiston's letter, refused to go down to the public dining-room. A fear that she might encounter the painter possessed her, and the thought of him was at once a shame and torment; therefore, she had her luncheon sent up, and Lucius himself found time ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... into the scrub, to get rid of the little flies, which torment them. The weather is very fair; the regular westerly breeze, during the day, is setting in again: the dew is very abundant during clear nights: the morning very cold; the water of the lagoon 8 degrees to 10 ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... being forced through a wall of air grown suddenly solid. Myriad fingers pulled at me, seeking to hurl me to destruction. Even through my protecting arms my breath was forced back into my lungs, choking me. The wind howled past with the wail of a thousand souls in torment. ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... the Magnanimous of Naples, as set forth by Pope Pius II in his Commentaries; for I am beginning to take a morbid interest in the unhappy love affairs of other men and to institute comparisons. If they have lived through the torment, why should not I? But Alfonso sighed for Lucrezia d'Alagna, a beautiful chaste statue of ice who loved him; whereas I crave the warm-blooded thing that is mine for the taking, but no more loves me than she loves the policeman who salutes her ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... to sleeping ill again. Io Welland had come back in all the glamorous panoply of waking dreams to command and torment his loneliness of spirit. At night he dreaded the return to the draughtless room on Grove Street. In the morning, rising sticky-eyed and unrested, he shrank from the thought of the humid, dusty, unkempt hurly-burly ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... deny herself these intellectual enjoyments. But her rigid Catholicism was doomed from that hour. Hers was that order of mind which can never give ostensible adhesion to a creed whilst morally unconvinced; never accept that refuge of the weak from the torment of doubt, in abdicating the functions of reason and conscience, shifting the onus of responsibility on to others, and agreeing to believe, as it were, by proxy. She had plunged fearlessly and headlong into Aristotle, Bacon, Locke, Condillac, Mably, Leibnitz, ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... no awakening of his torment during the day, and when he lay down at night, he was disturbed by ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... an intellectual, moral and material effort you must rescue Pyrot from his torment, and in performing this generous act you are not turning aside from the liberating and revolutionary task you have undertaken, for Pyrot his become the symbol of the oppressed and of all the social iniquities ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... was still undiscovered. Sometimes he suspected the colonel, sometimes Captain Edney; then he surmised that it must somehow have come to him from home. But all his conjectures and inquiries on the subject were alike in vain; and he enjoyed the exquisite torment of feeling that he had a lover somewhere who was unknown ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... children in a dark room; that, as the sleep of the night is more refreshing than the trouble of the day, so death, eternal repose from all hope and fear, is better than life, as indeed the gods of the poet themselves are nothing, and have nothing, but an eternal blessed rest; that the pains of hell torment man, not after life, but during its course, in the wild and unruly passions of his throbbing heart; that the task of man is to attune his soul to equanimity, to esteem the purple no higher than the warm dress worn at home, rather to remain in the ranks of those that obey than to press ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... "Father Anselmo said hell-fire wasn't like any kind of fire we have here,—made to warm us and cook our food,—but a kind made especially to torment body and soul, and not made for anything else. I remember a story he told us about that. You see, there was an old duchess that lived in a grand old castle,—and a proud, wicked old thing enough; and her son brought home a handsome young bride to the castle, and the old duchess was jealous ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... encounter, one bright September day in the garden, where, after his wont, old Tummus had been to what he called "torment them there weeds," to wit, chopping and tearing them up with his hoe, and leaving ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn
... been destined for so bold a recusant as myself—the pit, typical of hell, and regarded by rumor as the Ultima Thule of all their punishments. The plunge into this pit I had avoided by the merest of accidents, I knew that surprise, or entrapment into torment, formed an important portion of all the grotesquerie of these dungeon deaths. Having failed to fall, it was no part of the demon plan to hurl me into the abyss; and thus (there being no alternative) a different and a milder destruction awaited me. Milder! ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... had died in his sins and was now nearing the place of eternal torment. He could liken the scene before him to nothing on earth. It must be Hell, and he felt that the lid had been ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... of all the world, I know thee, that thou art the Son of the great Shaddai! Wherefore art thou come to torment me, and to cast me out of my possession? This town of Mansoul, as thou very well knowest, is mine, and that by a twofold right. 1. It is mine by right of conquest; I won it in the open field; and shall ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... perturbed and passionate souls, among others, to whom these futilities have become a rankling, continuous torment and depression. When life on earth appears fragmentary and disordered, not only nonsense but terrifying nonsense, full of hideous injustices, sickening uncertainties, and cruel destructions, men have not infrequently found a refuge in the divine. "Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... precious child, let us hope He will, at last, set me free; for I long, oh so earnestly! to be at rest. Carmen, a guilty conscience is a scorpion which never ceases to torment, and deals a death-blow to all peace and happiness; therefore keep your heart pure, my darling, and ever have God's commandments before your mind, so as to avoid sinning against them. Let me persuade you to come back into the bosom of our faith, and draw your husband ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... devils, coming out of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man might pass by that way. 29. And, behold, they cried out, saying, What have we to do with Thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? art Thou come hither to torment us before the time? 30. And there was a good way off from them an herd of many swine feeding. 31. So the devils besought Him, saying, If Thou cast us out, suffer us to go away into the herd of swine. 32. And He said unto them, Go. And when they were come out, they went into the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... "Poltergeist," or "Robin Goodfellow," who was exorcised by two monks from the guest-chamber of an inn, and who offered his services to them in the monastery. They gave him a corner in the kitchen. The serving-boy used to torment him by throwing dirty water over him. After unavailing protests, the spirit hung the boy up to a beam, but let him down again before serious harm resulted. Luther states that this "brownie" was well known by sight in the neighbouring town (the name of which ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... said. "It was long enough for me, and I was out in the open and stirring. It must have been a slice of torment for you here alone all day, not even knowing if I'd ever get back or have ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... rather it feels an irresistible impulse of conscience to be true to itself. It labors under its guilty possession, and knows not what to do with it. The human heart was not made for the residence of such an inhabitant. It finds itself preyed on by a torment, which it dares not acknowledge to God or man. A vulture is devouring it, and it asks no sympathy or assistance, either from heaven or earth. The secret which the murderer possesses, soon comes to possess him; and, like ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... said that he had gone up into the clouds and had seen the abode of the Devil; that there he saw all the drunkards and that flames of fire continually issued from their mouths, and that all who used liquor in this world would suffer eternal torment in the next; he advocated a return to pristine habits and customs, counseling the tribes "to throw away their flints and steels, and resort to their original mode of obtaining fire by percussion. He denounced ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... said to him, "Up with thee, speak with the Kazi, for thy wife hath complained of thee to him and her favour is thus and thus." He recognised her by their description; and saying, "May Allah Almighty torment her!" walked with them till he came to the Kazi's presence, where he found Fatimah standing with her arm bound up and her face-veil besmeared with blood; and she was weeping and wiping away her tears. Quoth the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... would have been rather absurd," said Mrs. May, laughing, "to begin to torment myself whether you were all fond of me! You all have just as much affection for me, from beginning to end, as is natural, and what's the use of thinking about it? No, no, Margaret, don't go and protest that you love me, more than is natural," as Margaret looked ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... wealth to saue all the iewels abouesayde, that should be defiled and lost if they came in the handes of the enemies of the faith. And also to keepe so much small people, as women and children, that they would torment and cut some in pieces, other take, and perforce cause them to forsake their faith, with innumerable violences, and shamefull sinnes that should be committed and done, if the towns were put to the sword, as was done at Modon, and lately at Bellegrado. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... stumbled upon these two people. It was about seven o'clock. He stopped outside a linen draper's and peered over the goods in the window at the assistants in torment. He could have spent a whole day happily at that. He told himself that he was trying to see how they dressed out the brass lines over their counters, in a purely professional spirit, but down at the very bottom of his heart he knew better. The ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... for some time, and the expression on his face was something terrible to see. The cold, clear truth had for the first time burst upon him to his convincing. He had a 'bright recollection of all his guilt,' and his torment was 'as a lake of fire and brimstone.' The woman, recovering somewhat from her fright, stood before him with innocent, clear-shining eyes, with half pity and half fear showing in her beautiful countenance—for the woman was beautiful. The man stood for a ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson
... Derwent departed, were to him a mere blank of misery. Impossible to open a book, and sleep came only with uttermost exhaustion. How he passed the hours, he knew not. Spying at windows, listening for voices, creeping hither and thither in torment of multiform ignominy, forcing speech when he longed to be silent, not daring to break silence when his heart seemed bursting with desire to utter itself—a terrible time. And Irene persevered in her elder-sister ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... Both flaunt the bloom of perfect health and make the doctor shy. It is spring without, but summer within," ran on Dr. Rob gaily, wondering why both faces were so white and perturbed, and why there was in the air a sense of hearts in torment. "Flannels seem to call up boating and picnic parties; and I see you have discarded the merino, Nurse Gray, and returned to the pretty blue washables. More becoming, undoubtedly; only, don't take cold; and be sure you feed up well. In this air people must eat plenty, and you have been perceptibly ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... retain a vivid memory of that service—William standing in the little yellow pine-box pulpit with his long gray beard spread over his breast, and his blue eyes shadowed with his dark thoughts of Dives's torment. I can still see, distinctly enough to count them, the rows of sallow-faced men and women with their hacking concert cough, casting looks of livid venom at Sears sitting by the open window on the front bench, a great red-jowled man who was regarding the figure in the pulpit with such a ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... sin from her grasp to add to the city's tax. And it is not the green asp of Rumor that sleeps in her breast, covered by jewelled fingers, but under her thin hand burns the flame of Vathek, eating always with its crimson torment till heart and reason are charred and black ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... turns, to hear the jokes of Jean Pottage. Were he to recommend his goods, like the Londoner, with studied eloquence and attentive flattery, he could not hope like him that the eloquence he now bestows on the decorations of a hat, or the varnish of an equipage, may one day serve to torment a minister, and obtain a post of honour for his son; he could not hope that on some future day his flattery might be listened to by some lady of more birth than beauty, or riches perhaps, when happily employed upon ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... saluted them and said to him, "O our lord, Allah give thee joy of thy reunion with thy dear brothers! Where have they been this while?" He replied, "It was they whom ye saw in the guise of dogs; praise be to Allah who hath delivered them from prison and grievous torment!" Then he carried them to the Divan of the Caliph and kissing ground before Al-Rashid wished him continuance of honour and fortune and surcease of evil and enmity. Quoth the Caliph, "Welcome, O Emir Abdullah! Tell me what hath ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... think I am a bigger fool than most men in that way, but I shiver even yet at the memory of all the torment I went through during those days of waiting, for my whole life seemed to revolve before me and I accused myself of a thousand offences which I had thought dead and ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... and comfort, was what I could not endure. I wrote to him; I said I was sorry for his disappointment, but Jane Eyre was dead: she had died of typhus fever at Lowood. Now act as you please: write and contradict my assertion—expose my falsehood as soon as you like. You were born, I think, to be my torment: my last hour is racked by the recollection of a deed which, but for you, I should never ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... rich food had no flavor in his mouth, and though the gin maddened his spirit, it could not drown his wretchedness, for deep within him, like a maggot in a bread-fruit, was the torment of love. Sometimes in prison he would lower his head like a cow, and run at the wall, exclaiming: "I will die, I will die!" And then he would fall, with his beautiful hair all matted with blood, and his beautiful body next to lifeless, though with his purpose unattained, ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... advances to Julia. She again lent her ear to his bland words and the domestic disagreement rapidly became embittered. Tiberius,—this is certain,—soon learned that Julia had resumed her relations with Sempronius Gracchus, and a new, intolerable torment was added to his already distressed life. According to the Lex de adulteriis, he as husband should have made known the crime of his wife to the pretor and have had her punished. He had been one ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... irremediable misery—Fantasia came again and ever when she came tempted me to follow her but as to follow her was to leave for a while the thought of those loved ones whose memories were my all although they were my torment I dared not go—Stay with me I cried & help me to clothe my bitter thoughts in lovelier colours give me hope although fallacious & images of what has been although it never will be again—diversion I cannot take cruel fairy do you leave me alas ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... I, "this is unworthy of you; you have no right thus to mock at and disturb the dead; you only want to torment me; and I have already told you, and I repeat it, I ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... jealously guarded little precincts of good taste, uses inexpressive, ill-bred words, spoken without regard to their just sound-effects, and in a voice which is an injury to the ear of the mind, as well as a torment ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... Nothing, therefore, was done to the vessel—"nothing being needed"—and the loading went on in spite of the remonstrances of Captain Harry Boyns, who, with all the energy and persistency of his character, continued to annoy, worry, and torment every one who possessed the faintest right or power to interfere in the matter—but all to no purpose; for there are times when neither facts nor fancies, fair words nor foul, fire, fury, folly, nor philosophy, will avail to move some ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... I ne'er delighted be By revelling and eating; Be what Thou lov'st belov'd by me, Though others shun it, hating. The lusts wherein the flesh doth roll, To hell will draw us ever; The joys the world doth love, the soul And spirit will deliver To torment everlasting. ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt
... roughly-sharpened knife through raw flesh. Harold groaned in spirit; he felt a weakness which began at his heart to steal through him. It took all his manhood to bear himself erect. He dreaded what was coming, as of old the once- tortured victim dreaded the coming torment of the rack. ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... pity,' she cried, writhing as if in great bodily torment—'my soul is stained with the guilt of a thousand crimes—and the only reparation I can make you, to atone for the wrong I intended, is to warn you to fly from this house as from a pestilence! This is the abode of murder—it ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... heights . . . the so-called spinifex is found in great abundance. This grass (Triodia irritans) is the traveller's torment, and makes the plains, which it sometimes covers for hundreds of miles, almost impassable. Its blades, which have points as sharp as needles, often prick the ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... spirits, and which have, no doubt, often envied man his carnal body and the possibilities that have been permitted him of eventually reaching a higher spiritual plane. It is envy, perhaps, that has made them mischievous, and generated in them an insatiable thirst to torment and frighten man. Another probable explanation of them is, that they may be inhabitants of one of the other planets that have the power granted, under certain conditions at present unknown to us, of making themselves seen and heard by certain dwellers on the earth; and it is, of course, possible ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... going to speak to him, and that he should not be able to answer him. A horrible thought suddenly seized him, and he fancied that the King had seen him slip the letter into Don John's glove, and would ask for it, and take it, and read it—and that would be the end. Thrills of torment ran through him, and he knew how it must feel to lie bound on the rack and to hear the executioner's hands on the wheel, ready to turn it again at the judge's word. He had seen a man tortured once, and remembered his face. He was sure that the King must have seen the letter, and that meant ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... my heart strained and writhed in anguish; the life within me raged and tore to get free. Whole years of the direst mental and bodily agony were concentrated in that one moment of helpless, motionless torment. I never lost the consciousness of suffering. I heard the waiter say, under his breath, "My God! he's dying." I felt him loosen my cravat—I knew that he dashed cold water over me; dragged me out of the room; and, opening a window ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... at the corner when he comes. I sat and laughed at this trick, rubbed my hands with glee, and swore with rollicking recklessness. What a disappointment he will get, the dog! Wouldn't this piece of villainy make him inclined to sink into hell's hottest pool of torment! I was drunk with starvation; my ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... intelligence,' and the occult meaning of Z. Marcas requires a long and elaborate commentary. Repeat the word Marcas, dwelling on the first syllable, and dropping abruptly on the second, and you will see that the man who bears it must be a martyr. The zigzag of the initial implies a life of torment. What ill wind, he asks, has blown upon this letter, which in no language (Balzac's acquaintance with German was probably limited) commands more than fifty words? The name is composed of seven letters, and seven ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... gave the girls the full benefits of her selfishness, and in a certain sense selfish persons are the easiest to live with; they hate trouble, and therefore do not trouble other people; they never beset the lives of their fellow-creatures with thorny advice and captious fault-finding; nor do they torment you with the waspish solicitude of excessive affection that must know all things and rule ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... Torment" has been fitly called "a classic of Southern life." It relates the haps and mishaps of a small negro lad, and tells how he was led by love and kindness to a knowledge of ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... perish by the smoke and the fire. Grim is our torment. The stark heat maketh me so ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown
... last days of Nelly's visit drew near, I fell into a very unhealthy state of mind. To have her so frank and unconsciously coquettish with me was a daily torment; to be looked upon and treated as a child was bitter almonds; but the thought of losing her ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... apparent cruelty with which new boys are treated is not exactly intentional. At first, of course, as they can have no friends worth speaking of, there are always plenty of coarse and brutal minds that take a pleasure in their torment, particularly if they at once recognise any innate superiority to themselves. Of this class was Barker. He hated Eric at first sight, simply because his feeble mind could only realise one idea about ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... religious intolerance which led the Persians to burn the shrines of Greek gods. Thus religion had a restraining influence in war throughout antiquity, and in the Middle Ages. The Pope, who was believed to hold the keys of future bliss and torment, was frequently, though by no means always, obeyed by the turbulent feudal lords, and often enforced the sanctity of a contract by the threat or the imposition of excommunication and interdict. In order to make these penalties more terrible, the torments of those who died under ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge |
