"Torture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that had occurred during a few years past, in efforts among the slaves to learn to read and write, was magnified and construed as pointing toward a long and settled purpose among the slaves to rise in insurrection. A majority of this committee decided by whipping and other torture to compel confessions from all these marked slaves, and then to hang them. A number of the committee resigned because they would not consent to these severe measures. Many negroes were dragged out of their cabins or yards without knowing ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... the sparrow; the fox devours the young rabbit; the cat leaps from under a bush and kills the mother robin while the young are left to starve in the nest. There is neither right nor wrong among the brutes because they have no moral sense. They do not kill for revenge nor torture for the love of cruelty, as Comrade Bannerman would in praying that the train be wrecked and the rich men burned to death in the ruin. The beasts can feel no pity, no sympathy, no regret, for nature gave them no conscience. But ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... place of punishment one of terrible frigidity. Somewhere on the other side of the Tweed and Cheviots was the spot selected by the Celt of southern Britain. On the other hand, the eastern mind, which knew the terrors of a sun-smitten land and of a heat that was torture, had for a hell a fiery ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... trembled like aspen-leaves; the chief looked up full in our faces, kneeling on the ground; light seemed to flash from his dark rolling eyes, his body was convulsed all over, as though he were enduring the utmost torture, and with a timorous, yet undefinable expression of countenance, in which all the passions of our nature were strangely blended, he drooped his head, eagerly grasped our proffered hands, and burst ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... examination being made whether he were slain or not: it was found that he had drunk much wine, and over-lading himself with pillage, and hasting to go before us, had lost himself in the woods. And as we afterwards knew, he was taken by the Spaniards that evening: and upon torture, discovered unto them where we had ...
— Sir Francis Drake Revived • Philip Nichols
... as a madman's dream. The mob howled around the walls until late in the night. Inside, a lumber trust lawyer and his official assistants were administering the "third degree" to the arrested loggers, to make them "confess." One at a time the men were taken to the torture chamber, and so terrible was the ordeal of this American Inquisition that some were almost broken—body and soul. Loren Roberts had the light in his brain snuffed out. Today he is a shuffling wreck. He is not interested ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... doctor hoped to find from the death of the one some means for preserving the life of the other. The councillor was in a violent fever, agitated unceasingly both in body and mind: he could not bear any position of any kind for more than a few minutes at a time. Bed was a place of torture; but if he got up, he cried for it again, at least for a change of suffering. At the end of three months he died. His stomach, duodenum, and liver were all in the same corrupt state as his brother's, and more than that, the surface of his body was burnt away. This, said ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... things. No appellation could be so terrible as that first. He would take the thirty thousand dollars if it should be forthcoming, vote and take the first train west the same day. In the Orient he could lose his identity as a bribe-taker and a murderer. The torture never relaxed during the days ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... their folly. There used to be special houses of correction in those days, mad- houses built upon an approved system, for the special treatment of cases of this kind; mediaeval dungeons, an occasional application of the rack, and other gentle instruments of torture of an inventive age, were wonderfully efficacious in curing a man of his folly. Nor was there any special limit to the time during which the treatment lasted. And in case of a dangerous fit of folly, there were always a few faggots ready, or a sharpened axe, to put ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... pleaded the seaman respectfully. "You've got us, sir, and you've got Jerry, there; but you ain't goin' to torture ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... "I can; therefore I will." He knows that the forces fighting for him are more than those that fight against him, strong as these are. Man in his noblest relationships, the songs of the poet (the best interpreter, from Homer and Virgil to the "Winepress" of Alfred Noyes), the torture, the pains, the sufferings, the woes, the vision of the prophet of a loving and perfect humanity, the reason of logic—all these and more are to him inspirations, and strengthen him in his great quest. He is a knight of the Holy Grail that is filled from ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... be one long torture," he cried with uplifted hands. "May every enterprise in which he engages end in disaster; may his father and mother die, and let him be left desolate; may a subtle and incurable disease lay its grip upon him; may misfortune pursue him in every shape and form; may he become a beggar with ulcered ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... a little lad ever hangs to a bigger, were he to torture the life out of him. Small thanks for us women after our good looks be past. But I'll look in on the child in early morn, thanks or no thanks; for I know his mother well, and if I can help it, the hyenas shall not make game of his bones, as I hear them ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of them were killed; but the women and children were captured to the number, it is said, of seven hundred. [Footnote: Relation des Decouvertes, MS. Frontenac to the King, N.Y. Col. Docs., ix. 147. A memoir of Duchesneau makes the number twelve hundred.] Then followed that scene of torture, of which, some two weeks later, La Salle saw the revolting traces. [Footnote: "Ils [les Illinois] trouverent dans leur campement des carcasses de leurs enfans que ces anthropophages avoient mangez, ne voulant meme d'autre nourriture que la chair de ces infortunez."—La ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... not spoken them it was my purpose to kill myself, here before your eyes, since that is a sin for which none can be asked to suffer save the sinner. Also, I say that this Inquisition which you have set up shall eat out the heart of Spain and bring her greatness to the dust of death. The torture and the misery of those Jews, than whom you have no better or more faithful subjects, shall be avenged on the heads of your children's children for so ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... at your taking the step, nor can I blame you. Your life was one of torture, and it was torture to others to see ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... apology to her for not killing a man who had laid a rough hand upon her person. He was ashamed and seemed to be in a torture that she would not understand why he had not killed the man. There seemed to be something of passionate scorn in him that he had not been able to avenge her ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... he who had annoyed the gentle maiden, and given her so much trouble with Monsieur Hautmartin, because he bore a grudge against her; he had been the one who had teased her with flowers, in order to torture her curiosity. Wherefore? He hated Marietta. He behaved himself always most shamefully toward the poor child. He avoided her when he could; and when he could not, he grieved the good-natured little one. With ...
— The Broken Cup - 1891 • Johann Heinrich Daniel Zschokke
... what I observed to-night, she loves you. You are a dangerous man for a jealous woman to love. You are not a cloistered monk, you are a man before the public; you win the admiration of many; some women do not hesitate to show you their preference. To a woman like Mildred that would be torture; she could not and would not separate the professional artist ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... to get that letter, to have to read so many lines in that loathsome, large, neat, inflated handwriting, but she took it that it meant that those toys which he had sent Roger every six months were not, as she thought, mere attempts to torture her by reminding her of his existence, but signs that he had really wanted to be a father to his son, and that now that Harry was dead he was declaring his desire freely. That made her very happy, ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... divine, but all of earth, Half-way 'twixt hell and heaven, near to man, The whole world's tangle gathered in one span, Full of this human torture and this mirth: Life with its hope and error, toil and bliss, Earth-born, earth-reared, ye know it ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... impressed by some shock of fear or sudden pain, and does the remembrance of prolonged strain pass away? Who can tell? But it would seem strangely merciful if nature should blot out these weeks of slow but inevitable torture. ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... A new torture came from it now. Did she love me—or Tarrano? I remembered the gentleness of the man with her. His dignity, his power—his undoubted genius. And who, what was I? A mere news-gatherer. A man of no force, and little personality. A nonentity. Sometimes as in my jealousy I contemplated Elza ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... commence with the sack of the great Roman city of Verulamium by the followers of Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni[e] (A.D. 61). Our knowledge of the event is largely drawn from Tacitus, and Dion Cassius, who give revolting details of the torture of the inhabitants by the Britons. The martyrdom of St. Alban (circa A.D. 304) the Synod of Verulam (429), the second destruction of that city by the Saxons towards the end of the sixth century and the siege of Hertford by the Danes in 896, when Alfred the Great grounded their vessels by cutting ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... place Before his eyes appeared; and, noisome, dark, A lazar-house it seemed; wherein were laid Numbers of all diseased; all maladies Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms Of heart-sick agony, all feverous kinds, Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs, Intestine stone and ulcer, colic pangs, Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy, And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy, Marasmus, ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... excitable, Pocahontas assented absently; she was bracing her will, and steeling her nerves to endure without flinching. Not for worlds would she—even by the quivering of an eyelash—let Norma see the torture she was inflicting. She felt that Norma had an object in this disclosure, and was dimly sure that the object was hostile. She would think it all out later; at present Norma must not see her anguish. A ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... thinks at all, With the sweet milk of human kindness bless'd, The furious ardour of my zeal repress'd. Canst thou, with more than usual warmth she cried, Thy malice to indulge, and feed thy pride; 60 Canst thou, severe by nature as thou art, With all that wondrous rancour in thy heart, Delight to torture truth ten thousand ways, To spin detraction forth from themes of praise, To make Vice sit, for purposes of strife, And draw the hag much larger than the life, To make the good seem bad, the bad ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... drawn together on the opposite corner. Le Duc narrated how he had been captured just as he was quitting the village. His great fear had been lest he should be compelled to betray them; and he declared to Rayner, who believed him, that he would have undergone any torture rather ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... I expected my unwelcome visitors would seize me, and in their insane glee practise upon me some savage torture. Would they never cease? For nearly thirty minutes I sat still as death, where they had flung me. Safety lay in not attracting their attention; but a dreadful ordeal was in store ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... me some small coins, when she bent swiftly down to my hand, and tried to kiss it, evidently imaging that I had given her the ruble. I muttered something, and quitted the kitchen. I was ashamed, ashamed to the verge of torture, as I had not been for a long time. I shrank together; I was conscious that I was making grimaces, and I groaned with shame as I fled from the kitchen. This utterly unexpected, and, as it seemed to me, utterly undeserved shame, made a special impression on me, because ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... by vivisection. As regards the second, it is by no means sure that anything can be proved of direct use to mankind from discoveries made by doctors and scientists after operating on animals. "What sort of tenderness for man can we expect from surgeons who can thus teach by torture, or from students who can endure to listen?" Here Francis Newman puts his finger on a very significant factor in the case—that of the barbarizing, the deteriorating of the mind that cannot touch the black pitch of torture and ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... Tumultuous Sitting of the Convention A Committee appointed to frame a Plan of Government Resolutions proposed by the Committee William and Mary proclaimed; the Claim of Right; Abolition of Episcopacy Torture William and Mary accept the Crown of Scotland Discontent of the Covenanters Ministerial Arrangements in Scotland Hamilton; Crawford The Dalrymples; Lockhart; Montgomery Melville; Carstairs The Club formed: Annandale; ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Complete Contents of the Five Volumes • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... decision there is but one appeal, the appeal open to all condemned persons, but rarely made— the appeal to Long ju-ju. This Long ju-ju means almost certain death, and before it a severe frightening that is worse to a negro mind than mere physical torture. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... vigorous, and pointed, in no ordinary degree. When one remembers how much co-operation is needed to bring out even the slightest volume, one is truly astonished at the feat of bringing out so many and such good ones, while the hourly fear of capture, torture, and death hung over the heads of all. When threatened with danger in one place the press ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... friend, I am undone. I am slighted, rejected, by the man who once sought my hand, by the man who still retains my heart. And what adds an insupportable poignancy to the reflection is self-condemnation. From this inward torture where shall I flee? Where shall I seek that happiness which I have madly ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... preux chevaliers. We have at the other extremity the people who are craving for loot and vengeance, who clamour for the humiliation and torture of the enemy, who rave against the village burnings and shootings by the Prussians in one column and exult in the same proceedings by the Russians in another, who demand that German prisoners of war shall be treated as criminals, who depict our Indian ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... I have been in danger," he said to himself, wiping his brow, "since at one time that black brute, disregarding the sanctity of an envoy, had it in his mind to torture and to kill me. So, so, king Ithobal, Metem the Phoenician is also an honest merchant who 'always pays his debts,' as you may learn in the market-places of Jerusalem, of Sidon and of Zimboe, and I owe you a heavy bill for the fright ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... the spirit of their owner could, from his "gilt tub," have witnessed the grimaces and jokes which marked the sale—with the distorted countenances and boisterous laughter which were to be seen on every side—how it must have writhed under the smart of general ridicule, or have groaned under the torture of contemptuous indignation! Peace to Henley's[384] vexed manes!—and similar contempt await the efforts of all ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the words; but the boy held the cross very tenderly, and looked long upon the face of the Man there in torture—and was grieved ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... began afresh, tearing her, he turned aside, and could not look. But his heart in torture was at peace, his bowels were glad. He went downstairs, and to the door, outside, lifted his face to the rain, and felt the darkness striking unseen ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... grimly relished his own agony. Heaven only knows how bitterly this hard man may have felt the separation between himself and his only son, or how much the more terrible the anguish might have been made by that unflinching self-conceit which concealed the torture. ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... me if it isn't the little girl we saw this morning," shouted Dudley, without, however, stopping the torture of the defenseless Susan Jemima. "Where did you ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... be tortur'd if thou dost not agree to go back to the Door from when thou camest, and to which we will conduct thee in Peace." But the Soldier calling to mind how God had before delivered him, despised their Menaces: Then the Devils cast him down on the Ground, and began to torture him. But upon his invocating the Lord Jesus, they failed in ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... with thine own hand killed my father and my two brothers. Torture me as thou wilt; I shall rejoice in having freed ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... torture of the strain, and his thoughts were full of the deed that should change his whole life, Aquilina was lying luxuriously back in a great armchair by the fireside, beguiling the time by chatting with her waiting-maid. As frequently happens in such cases ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... fire has burned within my brain. He knows the wrongs that wrought upon my poor weak nature; that converted the tenderest of affections into the deadliest of fury. He knows best whether a frail erring creature has expiated by long-enduring torture and measureless remorse, the crime of a moment of madness. Often, often have I prostrated myself in the dust, and implored that he would give me a sign of his forgiveness, and let ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... ever see a "Jim-Crow" waiting-room? There are always exceptions, as at Greensboro—but usually there is no heat in winter and no air in summer; with undisturbed loafers and train hands and broken, disreputable settees; to buy a ticket is torture; you stand and stand and wait and wait until every white person at the "other window" is waited on. Then the tired agent yells across, because all the tickets and ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... one of the gravest of my life, I had happily no leisure to think of myself. My whole soul sickened with anxiety for the girl. I knew enough of Indian ways to guess her fate. For Shalah and myself there might be torture, and at the best an arrow in our hearts, but for her there would be things unspeakable. I remembered the little meadow on the Rapidan, and the tale told by the grey ashes. There was only one shot in my pistol, but I determined that it should be saved for her. In such a crisis the memory ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... on, stumbling from street to street, holding Hilda to her breast. Famine gnawed incessantly at her stomach; walk though she might, turn upon her tracks up and down the streets, back to the avenue again, incessantly and relentlessly the torture dug into her vitals. She was hungry, hungry, and if the want of food harassed and rended her, full-grown woman that she was, what must it be in the poor, starved stomach of her little girl? Oh, for some helping hand now, oh, for one little mouthful, one little ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... the first alarm, terror will spread over all. Many will seek safety by flight. Those that are reputed rich will flee, through fear of torture to make them produce more than they are able. The man that has a wife and children, will find them hanging on his neck, beseeching him to quit the city, and save his life. All will run into confusion, amid cries and lamentations, and the hurry and disorder of departures. The few that remain, will ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... mind he took with him—what torture of questions! Was he being lifted or pulled down? His tastes,—were they rising or sinking? Were little negligences of dress and bearing and in-door attitude creeping into his habits? Was he losing his discriminative sense of quantity, time, distance? Did he talk of small achievements, small ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... bull; and if a horse is gored in the fair fight, there are men especially in attendance to put him out of his misery at once. It is doubtful whether the animal suffers more than, or as much as, the unhappy favourites, that are sent alive, and in extremest torture, to Amsterdam and other foreign cities, to be manufactured into essence of meat and such-like dainties, after a life of cruelly hard work in our omnibuses and cabs has made them no longer of ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... our critic says your people worship. You had Brantome, you had Tallemant, you had Retif, and a dozen others, to furnish materials for scenes of voluptuousness and of blood that would have outdone even the present naturalistes. From these alcoves of "Les Dames Galantes," and from the torture chambers (M. Zola would not have spared us one starting sinew of brave La Mole on the rack) you turned, as Scott would have turned, without a thought of their profitable literary uses. You had other metal to work on: you gave us that superstitious and tragical true love ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... madness for rejecting her. Why had he done it? Surely women, weak women, must be at times divinely inspired. She warned him against the step. But he, proud of his armoury, went his way. He choked, he suffered the torture of the mailed Genoese going under; worse, for the drowner's delirium swirls but a minute in the gaping brain, while he had to lie all, night at the mercy of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Perhaps he had gone, fled already to France to avoid this dreadful, useless torture. I could see the hounds with open mouths, dripping white fangs, and greedy eyes all closing in on the defenceless quarry. Would the huntsman give the word? We were ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... haunting to the imagination. It represents the youthful, slender figure, nude, save for slight drapery, laid on the gridiron while the fire is being kindled under it and the fagots shovelled in. The physical shrinking of the flesh—of every nerve—from the torture, the spiritual strength and invincible energy of the countenance, are wonderfully depicted. The great aisle was painted by order of Pius IX by Cesare Fracassini; in it are two pulpits of marble. A double staircase of marble conducts to that part of the Basilica of Constantine which by Honorius ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... he answered with coolness, thrusting his elbow into the cushions and smoking hard: "But, no, he is not dead. Selamlik Pasha has as great an instinct for a bargain as for revenge. Also Selamlik Pasha would torture before he kills. Is ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the Templar; "such discourse now avails but little. Thou art condemned to die not a sudden and easy death, such as misery chooses, and despair welcomes, but a slow, wretched, protracted course of torture, suited to what the diabolical bigotry of these men calls ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... impressive. It was the sculptured counterfeit of a human face, that of a man distraught with agony. The eyes stared wildly from their sockets, the hair struggled in maniac disorder, the forehead was wrung with torture, the cheeks sunken, the throat fearsomely wasted, and from the wide lips there seemed to be issuing a horrible cry. Above this hideous effigy was carved the legend: 'MIDDLESEX HOUSE ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... be full, and that Mr. Puddleham's first Sunday would be a success. And the chapel, of course, had a bell,—a bell which was declared by Mrs. Fenwick to be the hoarsest, loudest, most unmusical, and ill-founded miscreant of a bell that was ever suspended over a building for the torture of delicate ears. It certainly was a loud and brazen bell; but Mr. Fenwick expressed his opinion that there was nothing amiss with it. When his wife declared that it sounded as though it came from the midst of the shrubs at their own front gate, he reminded her that their own church bells ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper; or from that old baboon, who, descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs—as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practises infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... them as humorous. And yet he was utterly indifferent to their love. He'd got beyond caring for what anybody thought of him. He was too absorbed in establishing reasons for thinking well of himself. I learnt things about him—one does in the presence of physical torture. I learnt secrets about the fineness of his spirit which, I believe, he never allowed you to suspect. Probably he never suspected them himself until the ordeal of terror had sifted the gold from the dross. It ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... sincere," Nancy cried; "women must have loved you deeply, tragically, and have suffered all the torture ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... already introduced into the palaces of Italian nobles, strangely contrasted the rough pavement, spread with heaps of armour negligently piled around. At the farther end of the apartment, Adrian shudderingly perceived, set in due and exact order, the implements of torture. ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... a very short time the blessed numbness was gone, and consciousness became once more a torture, the medium of terrors not to be borne. Isaac hated her—she would be taken from her children—she felt Watson's grip upon her arm—she saw the jeering ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... tended carefully as any babe; he is permitted to indulge his pugnacity, which it would be harsh to restrain, and at worst he dies fighting like a gentleman. A Tenerifan would shudder at the horror of our fashionable sport, where ruffians gouge or blind the pigeon with a pin, squeeze it to torture, wrench out its tail, and thrust the upper through the ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... through the agony of death," said Varney, "and have again endured the torture—for it is such—of the re-union of the body and the soul; not having endured so much, not the faintest echo of such feelings can enter into ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... could their course hold that way, and—it was Anna who first proposed retreat. The very havoc was fascinating and the courage of Constance and Miranda, though stripped of its mirth, remained undaunted; but the eye-torture of the cotton smoke was enough alone to drive them back ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... people writhe in despair. Once it becomes the instrument of a regenerate humanity, that is to say, when men have become compassionate, loving, and devoted, then the social question will cease to exist, and the old instrument of torture will become ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... carieth him, as it were captiue. They punish no man with sentence of death, vnles hee bee taken in the deede doing, or confesseth the same. But being accused by the multitude, they put him vnto extreame torture to make him confesse the trueth. They punish murther with death, and carnall copulation also with any other besides his owne. By his own, I meane his wife or his maid seruant, for he may vse his slaue as he listeth himself. Heinous theft also or felony they punish with death. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... according to the offense. They told me they had known them taken down chilled to death. It was said to be one of the most cruel punishments. They showed me the stump of the whipping post, where hundreds of writhing victims had suffered this kind of torture. But it did seem as if the better day was coming, to see a hundred and fifty-three black children here so eager to learn, and to hear them read so well after only four months' schooling. I met a woman on the street in deep mourning who was weeping. I inquired the cause of her grief. She ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... on, Wulf," Beorn said as they threw themselves down on the ground late that night, when the carousal was ended, "I shall snatch the count's dagger from his belt and bury it in his heart, though they put me to death by torture afterwards." ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... the one who causes me these palpitations for the slightest thing. I know that we do not run any danger, that everybody is in his own room by this time, and yet, somehow, I feel terribly frightened. There are women, so they say, who get used to this torture, and end by being guilty and tranquil at the same time. It is an unworthy thought, but I'll confess that, sometimes, when I suffer so, I wish I were like them. But it is impossible; I was not made for wrong-doing. You can not understand this, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... at moments jealous doubt made my torture, so the moment's relief from it sufficed for my rapture. But I had a cause for disquiet less acute but ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... observe any thing—that she had no living soul belonging to her, neither father, mother, brother, nor sister, to pity her or to blame him; since to think him either blamable or blamed would have been the sharpest torture she could have known. ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... by what I have been interrupted? By a legal notice from Bechet, who summons me to furnish her within twenty-four hours my two volumes in 8vo, with a penalty of fifty francs for every day's delay! I must be a great criminal and God wills that I shall expiate my crimes! Never was such torture! This woman has had ten volumes 8vo out of me in two years, and yet she complains ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... he cried, when we were out of earshot of the crowd. "I have told her everything. I have insisted that it's simple torture for me to wait with this idle view of loving her less. It's well enough for her to ask it, but I feel strong enough now to override her reluctance. I have cast off the millstone from round my neck. I care for nothing, I know ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... good reason. I came because I was awfully lonely. There isn't a soul that I can speak out to, except you. You don't know what that means. I go about in the schoolroom, and up and down the streets, and see things—horrible things. The world gets to be one big torture chamber, and then I have to cry out. I come to you to cry out,—because you really care. Now I can go away, and keep silent for ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... clear. None of the physical torture he had felt in the past mile was now registered upon his consciousness. No thought but ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... it, and crying aloud with wild cries as if their lives were in danger. If any man were to injure the tree, which of course is no more valuable than any other bush of its sort, they'd tear him to pieces on the spot, and kill or torture every member of his family. And so too, in England, most people believe, without a shadow of reason, that if men and women were allowed to manage their own personal relations, free from tribal interference, all life and order would go to rack and ruin; the ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... You may torture me, but you must do it yourself; I won't help you. [Hotly] Let me alone! [The Doctor presses button ...
— The Light Shines in Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... jail. This was a sweet morsel for the Federalists. It mattered not that the Governor denied it; that McComb contradicted it; that no proof supported it; or that the Assembly acquitted him by a party vote of thirty-five to twenty; the story did effective campaign service, and lived to torture Aaron Burr, one of the commissioners, ten years afterward. Burr tried to escape responsibility by pleading absence when the contracts were made; but the question never ceased coming up—if absence included all the months of McComb's negotiations, what time ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... look at it Here you are in hell! Caged up with two old crows picking the life out of you. They'll kill you-I can see it; you're being killed by inches. You can't go anywhere, you can't have anything. Life is just torture ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... it, Billy. It's to save you torture, old fellow, just to save you useless suffering, Billy." He drew his pistol from his belt, took careful aim just behind the pony's ear, and, turning his head ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... into women's fashions, he had unearthed the origin of the fashionable aigrette, the most desired of all the feathered possessions of womankind. He had been told of the cruel torture of the mother-heron, who produced the beautiful aigrette only in her period of maternity and who was cruelly slaughtered, usually left to die slowly rather than killed, leaving her whole nest of baby-birds to starve while they awaited the return of ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... about three o'clock and was immediately told by the quartermaster that we were leaving for France in a few hours. He told me that I needed a complete change of equipment. At this news I rejoiced, because so far we had all worn, in our battalion, the leather harness known as the "Oliver torture." I knew that the active service, or web, equipment could ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... prosecutrix, and so was already prejudiced against her. The defendant, knowing this, turned the tables on her opponent by bringing an accusation of witchcraft against her, and Catherine Kepler was imprisoned and condemned to the torture in July, 1620. Kepler, hearing of the sentence, hurried back from Linz, and succeeded in stopping the completion of the sentence, securing his mother's release the following year, as it was made clear that the only support for ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... Prussian principle. Any European might feel a genuine fear of the Yellow Peril; and many Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Russians have felt and expressed it. Many might say, and have said, that the Heathen Chinee is very heathen indeed; that if he ever advances against us he will trample and torture and utterly destroy, in a way that Eastern people do, but Western people do not. Nor do I doubt the German Emperor's sincerity when he sought to point out to us how abnormal and abominable such a nightmare campaign would be, ...
— The Barbarism of Berlin • G. K. Chesterton
... in a flood of new emotion; she tried once or twice to be discreetly angry with herself for admitting so unreservedly the pleasure she felt in Pierre's admiration; she placed her soul on a rack of self-questioning torture, and every inquisition she made of her heart returned the self-same ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... but though her heart longed to believe, her mind remained unconvinced. She shrank from all mention of the subject with her step-mother, knowing how one-sided a partisan she would be, but could not deny herself the self-torture of questioning Lola again. The child relentlessly stuck to her text, painting the scene with a vividness that did credit to her descriptive powers; and being one of those vivacious and ubiquitous children never to be ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... would have slain them at once without torture, but Signy besought him that they might breathe the earthly air a day or two before their death, and he listened to her, for he saw how he might thus give them greater pain. He bade his men lead them to ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... her companion had advanced. As her eyes became used to the ruddy dusk, she could see better, but everywhere they lighted on shapes inexplicable, whose forms to the first questioning thought suggested instruments of torture; but cruel as some of them looked, they were almost too strange, contorted, fantastical for such. Still, the wood-cuts in a certain book she had been familiar with in childhood, commonly called Fox's Book of Martyrs, ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... torture. The cast is bad enough in itself; but having to lie in one position like this makes me sore ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... had taken his seat. Why had he not emigrated to Australia, and escaped all this,—escaped all this, and Mrs. Smiley also? That was John Kenneby's reflection as he slowly mounted the two steps up into the place of his torture. Near to the same spot, and near also to Dockwrath who had taken these two witnesses under his special charge, sat Bridget Bolster. She had made herself very comfortable that morning with buttered toast and sausages; and when at Dockwrath's instance Kenneby had submitted to a slight infusion of ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... orders of the Afridi who is now dead. They made ready to torture me, showing me the knives they would use. But she came, and they obeyed her, binding the Afridi fast to me. After that I heard the sahib's voice, and then this ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... I tell you that if you won't deliver up the ornament by fair means—of course I am willing to pay you double for it—you shall soon see me march up with Argenson's serviceable underlings."—"Well, then, may Satan torture you with scores of red-hot pincers, and hang three hundredweight on the necklace till it strangle your bride." And therewith, thrusting the jewellery into the bridegroom's breast pocket, Cardillac seizes him ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... could not stomach the peculiar Moorish saddle with its high-peaked cantle and crupper, and its catch-and-carry stirrups. We took a calesa, as I have said. To my dying day I shall not forget that vehicle of torture. But it may be necessary to tell what is a calesa. Procure a broken-down hansom, knock off the driver's seat, paint the body and wheels the colour of a roulette-table at a racecourse, stud the hood with brass nails of the pattern ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... with this secret gnawing at my heart; every piece of gold I count out, I see his hands outstretched over it, and hear him whisper 'Mine!' He gives me no peace night or day; he is always by me; I have no rest. And you must come, adding to my torture, and striving to tear from me that for which I bartered conscience, peace, soul, everything that would make life desirable. If there is mercy in you, leave me with what I give you, and come back no more. Life has so little to offer, that rather than bear this continued ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... with Mr. Matthew Arnold, that the extravagance of thought and diction which characterizes much of our modern poetry is traceable to the influence of Shakspeare. We see in it only the futile effort of misguided persons to torture out of language the secret of that inspiration which should be in themselves. We do not find the extravagances in Shakspeare himself. We never saw a line in any modern poet that reminded us of him, and will venture to assert that it is only poets of the second class ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... no more; 'Tis now a torture worse than all I bore; I'll not be bribed to suffer life, but die, In spite of your mistaken clemency. I was your slave, and I was used like one; The shame continues when the pain is gone: But I'm a king while this is in my hand—[His sword. He wants no subjects, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... hunchback, and his body was twisted and distorted to a remarkable degree yet in spite of his curved shoulders he was of more than average height, and of a breadth incredible. But his face! who can describe it? Seamed and scarred in deep gashes, as though by some hideous torture, the nose broken and flattened almost upon the cheek, there remained but little human about the awful countenance except the eyes. But these, as I found later, were of a beauty and expressiveness to make one forget their terrible setting. Large, pellucid, ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... temerity of the Titan by chaining him to a rock of Caucasus, and causing a vulture to devour his still-renewed heart. There was a prophecy afloat in heaven portending the fall of Jove, the secret of averting which was known only to Prometheus; and the god offered freedom from torture on condition of its being communicated to him. According to the mythological story, this referred to the offspring of Thetis, who was destined to be greater than his father. Prometheus at last bought pardon for his crime of enriching mankind with his gifts, by revealing the prophecy. ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... strikes, in the 1st of May demonstrations, where they promoted the idea of a general strike for an eight hours' day, and in the anti-militarist propaganda in the army, violent prosecutions were directed against them, especially in the Latin countries (including physical torture in the Barcelona Castle) and the United States (the execution of five Chicago Anarchists in 1887). Against these prosecutions the Anarchists retaliated by acts of violence which in their turn were ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... I suppose, through being myself a victim. Oh, I don't say there's any torture involved, but now and again mamma gives me an anesthetic, and when I wake up I find something has been done that I don't like—something vital taken ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... all thy lifelong weary years, A Man of sorrows and of tears, The cross, where all our sins were laid, Upon thy bending shoulders weighed; And death, that sets the prisoner free, Was pang and scoff and scorn to thee; Yet love through all thy torture glowed, And ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... procure whom the father and mother were shot. No reproach is inherited by the mistress who, day after day, tied up her female servant in an agonising posture, and had her beaten until there was no sound part in her body, securing her in the stocks during the intervals of torture. That man did not lose caste who tied up another woman and had her thrashed until she brought forth at the whipping-post. These are merely examples of thousands of cases which could be proved were an Imperial Commission to sit, and could the wretched victims ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... and receded. On our return we visited the ancient town of Aigues-Mortes, near the sea, famous for having been the place where the Protestant women were confined and punished even to death. We entered most of the strong and gloomy cells, and saw the instrument of torture. The tower and fortress are a perfect ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... truth, I was suffering more torture than if I had been run through, for in Diane's last word I felt all my hopes vanish, I was taken off my cross, however, by the necessity for action, for Pechaud, who had discreetly retired at mademoiselle's entrance, ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... out now, the thing he longed to know. It had been writing its fiery way through his soul. Had she meant to torture him this way all along, or was it the yielding to a sudden impulse that perhaps she had already repented? He looked at Marcia with piteous, almost pleading eyes, and her tortured young soul would have given anything ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... or would he be Christian? All the Roman in him said "No!" when he thought of submission to the patent and open injustice and fiendish tyranny which had disinherited him, slain his kindred, and held its impure reign by torture and by blood. He looked on the splendid snow-crowned mountains whose old silver senate engirdles Rome with an eternal and silent majesty of presence, and he thought how often in ancient times they had been a shelter to free blood that would not endure oppression; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... he needed money. The informers were there and he got it, and with it that spectacle of torture and of blood which he needed too. Curiously, his melancholy increased; his good looks had gone; Psyche was no longer amorous of his eyes. Something else haunted him, something he could not define; ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... much she dared not think—but she would not believe that his threat to take her boy from her was genuine. All she could think of, as she sat huddled up on the ground, was to cling to the belief that her boy would not be taken away, and that somehow the mental torture the man's existence caused her, and the physical pain he never hesitated to inflict, might some ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... at low water. The Island was very much out of the world; and the echoes of what went on in the world came vaguely as from a distance to the ears of the Island people. They were like enough to be safe, though there was blood and fire and torture on the mainland. They were all old and helpless people, and they might well be safe from the soldiery. There was no yeomanry corps within many miles of the Island, and it was the yeomanry, tales of whose ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... Carrier called his Republican Baptisms. The Republican Marriages were, if possible, a still greater refinement of cruelty. Two persons of different sexes, bereft of every species of dress, were bound together, and after being left in torture in that situation for half an hour, thrown into the river. Such was the quantity of corpses accumulated in the Loire, that the water of that river was affected, so as to render a public ordinance ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... He finds little children crying in the dark and leads them Home! Batholommey and the rest of them sneer at me for sticking to the old hell-fire Calvin doctrines in these days of pew-cushion religion. But I tell you, in all reverence, if there's no hell for the people who torture children, then it's time the Almighty turned awhile from pardoning ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... began to resume its normal position again, though he felt that this seeming ignorance of his identity might be a mere veneer, a wile of guile, as the bard puts it. He remembered, with a pang, a story in some magazine where a prisoner was subjected to what the light-hearted inquisitors called the torture of hope. He was allowed to escape from prison, and pass guards and sentries apparently without their noticing him. Then, just as he stepped into the open air, the chief inquisitor tapped him gently on the shoulder, and, more in sorrow than in ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... discover, that your aim is to torture me, for relinquishing a beloved object, whom you are, at this moment, attaching to yourself;—to know, that a diabolical disposition, for which I cannot account, prompts you to come here, without ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... from the rest of the cafe, so that only the waiters commented on the strange party. At first there was oppressive silence; then the host turned to Europena and asked her what she liked best to eat. A moment of torture ensued for the small lady, during which she nearly twisted her thumb from its socket, then she ...
— Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch • Alice Caldwell Hegan
... with her, sit opposite to her while she ate and drank, see her, perhaps, with her hair in curl-papers, know possibly that she had a corn upon her foot, hear her speak maybe of a decayed tooth, or of a chilblain, would have been torture to me. Into such abyss of the commonplace there was no fear of my dragging her, and for this I was glad. In the future she would be yet more removed from me. She was older than I was; she must be now a woman. Instinctively ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Since Christ is the corner stone whereon we are laid, it must be only through him that we are to treat with God, as we have heard sufficiently above; for God does not look upon my cross even though I torture myself to death, but he looks upon Christ through whom my works are acceptable before God, which otherwise would not be worth an alms of a straw's value. Therefore Scripture calls Christ properly a precious corner stone which imparts its virtue to all who through faith are built upon it. So, ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... months before escaping, Washington had been secreted in order to shun both master and auction-block. Smith believed in selling, flogging, cobbing, paddling, and all other kinds of torture, by which he could inflict punishment in order to make the slaves feel his power. He thus tyrannized over about ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... say. "This world is the real hell, ending in the eternal naught. The dreams of a life beyond and of re-union there are but a demon's mocking breathed into the mortal heart, lest by its universal suicide mankind should rob him of his torture-pit. There is no truth in all your father taught you" (he was a clergyman and rather eminent in his profession), "there is no hope for man, there is nothing he can win except the deep happiness of ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... not forget either their merit or their sufferings. There are men (and many, I trust, there are) who, out of love to their country and their kind, would torture their invention to find excuses for the mistakes of their brethren; and who, to stifle dissension, would construe even doubtful appearances with the utmost favour: such men will never persuade themselves to be ingenious and refined in discovering disaffection ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... are indoor compositions, enclosed spaces in which wander aimlessly or deliriously the wraiths of damned men, not a whit less wretched nor awful than Dante's immemorial mob. Piranesi shows us cavernous abodes where appalling engines of torture fill the foreground, while above, at vertiginous heights, we barely discern perilous passageways, haunted windows peering out upon the high heavens, stone-fretted ceilings that are lost in a magic mist. By a sort of diabolic modulation the artist conducts our eye ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... one of a class of religious fanatics, who, ignorant of a God of love and mercy, believe that holiness can be obtained by practising the most rigid self-denial and the infliction of every variety of torture on themselves. ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... shuddering undergraduate life flitting about the place—luckless youths, in white ties and bands, who are undergoing the peine forte et dure with different degrees of composure; and their friends who are there to look after them. You may go in and watch the torture yourself if you are so minded, for the viva voce schools are open to the public. But one such experiment will be enough for you, unless you are very hard-hearted. The sight of the long table, behind which sit Minos, Rhadamanthus & Co., full-robed, stern of face, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... "only suffered from not being able to prove to Satan how much she burned to suffer for his sake;" here she has no Satan. Both European and African are the firmest believers in their own powers; they often confess, although knowing that the confession leads directly to torture and death, with all the diabolical ingenuity of which either race was capable. In Tuckey's time a bargain was concluded by breaking a leaf or a blade of grass, and this rite it was "found necessary to perform with the seller of every fowl:" apparently it is ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... the Bible and other absolutely loathsome literary lepers, dwell among broken pens, bad, groundy ink and ruled blotting-paper made in France—all eagerly burning to write, and all inflicted with incurable aphasia. I should not have thought upon that torture had I not suffered it in moderation myself, but it is too horrid even for a hell; let's let 'em ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of inaction to which we were doomed, aggravated by the stings of mosquitoes and large green-eyed flies, became a perfect torture. ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... of her judgment told her it was better for them to remain apart, but her longing to see Brandon grew stronger as the prospect of it grew less, and she became angry that it could not be gratified. Jane was right; an unsatisfied desire with Mary was torture. Even her sense of the great distance between them had begun to fade, and when she so wished for him and he did not come, their positions seemed to be reversed. At the end of the third day she sent for him to come to her rooms, but he, by a mighty effort, ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... little from the force of the blast by a huge stack of chimneys that rose to windward: while he clung thus waiting—louder than he had yet heard it, almost in his very ear, arose the musical ghost-cry—this time like that of a soul in torture. The moon came out, as at the cry, to see, but Donal could spy nothing to suggest its origin. As if disappointed, the moon instantly withdrew, the darkness again fell, and the wind rushed upon him full of keen slanting rain, as if with fierce intent of protecting the secret: there was little ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... could not help her and that his presence only made matters worse, went away perplexedly. The following week was a miserable one for him. His duties were distasteful to him and meeting his people a positive torture. Sometimes Mrs. Danby looked dubiously at him and seemed on the point of saying something—but never said it. Isabel King watched him when they met, with bold probing eyes. In his abstraction he did not notice this any more than he noticed ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the great masters mentally; on one side the holy figures of El Greco, with their greenish or bluish spirituality, slender and undulating; beyond, the wrinkled, black heads of Ribera, with ferocious expressions of torture and pain—marvelous artists, whom Renovales admired, while determined not to imitate them. Afterwards, between the railing that protects the pictures and the line of busts, show-cases and marble tables supported by gilded lions, ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... situation and remind me of Booker Washington. They will say, "He was not lynched. He was accepted. Any Negro like him is safe, if he behaves himself." I answer that I have no fancy for mob murder or torture of any human being, ignorant or wise, good or bad. There are, moreover, other answers to the riddle of that great constructive educator's career. One is creditable to the white southerners. They are not all eager for Negro blood. There ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... continuation of present pleasures. His Heaven is a delightful country, far away beyond the unknown Western seas, where the skies are ever bright and serene, the air genial, the spring eternal, and the forests abounding in game; no war, disease, or torture are known in that happy land; the sufferings of life are endured no more, and its sweetest pleasures are perpetuated and increased; his wife is tender and obedient, his children dutiful and affectionate. In this country of ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... call me here the wizard, boy, Of dark and subtle skill, To agonize but not destroy, To torture, not to kill. When swords are out and shriek and shout Leave little room for prayer, No fetter on man's arm or heart Hangs half ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... she "has a hundred hideous deaths" reserved for her victims, "such as the ingenious cruelty of a Nabis or a Domitian never surpassed," which "she uses with the most supercilious disregard both of mercy and justice;" "she inflicts torture in apparent wantonness;" "everything which the worst men commit against life and property is perpetrated on a larger scale by natural agents;" "Nature has noyades more fatal than those of Carrier: her plague and cholera far surpass the poison-cups of the Borgias." Such ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... Nanna, being wakeful with the torture of an aching tooth, happened to glance through the north windows of the room occupied by the sisters and saw a dull-red glow on the horizon—a conflagration. She aroused Esmay, and the two ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... points to the south-west, whilst Dir and all other indications point to the south-east. But Pashai seems to me the reading to which all texts tend, whilst it is clearly expressed in the G. T. (Pasciai), and it is contrary to all my experience of the interpretation of Marco Polo to attempt to torture the name in the way which has been common with commentators professed and occasional. But dropping this name for a moment, let us see to what the other indications ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... but the boy's manifest acquiescence in the affair when his cool moments came next morning, and the melancholy air of kindness with which the Doctor went in to kiss him a goodnight, after such regimen, kept alive her faith in the unvarying justice of the parson. Therefore she tried hard to torture her poor little heart into a feeling of its own blackness, (for that it was very black she had the good man's averment,) she listened gravely to all he had to urge, and when he had fairly overburdened her with the enumeration of her wicked, worldly appetites, she could only say, with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... unshaken Conviction, at least, that our meeting would be Without peril to YOU, although haply to me The salvation of all my existence. "I own, When the rumor first reach'd me, which lightly made known To the world your engagement, my heart and my mind Suffer'd torture intense. It was cruel to find That so much of the life of my life, half unknown To myself, had been silently settled on one Upon whom but to think it would soon be a crime. Then I said to myself, 'From the thraldom which time Hath not weaken'd there rests but one hope of escape. That ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... see," glancing at the empty baskets, "every crumb cleared. This is wonderful air for giving one an appetite," she remarked, turning to Mrs. Vercoe, and Mrs. Vercoe agreed; but the children felt that neither of them understood that fact as they did. It was almost torture to hear Cousin Charlotte say she was going home to her meal. Their longing to join her was almost more than they could bear. They were thankful, though, that she did not ask them how they had enjoyed their lunch, and what Anna's patties were like, or ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... with Artemis Or yield the breast to Aphrodite? Both are mighty; Both give bliss; Each can torture if divided; Each claims worship undivided, In her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his people, but who is racked by the thought that in giving his mind to temporal duties and domestic affections while such spiritual difficulties are still unsolved, he may be preparing for himself an eternity of torture such as that—" and he pointed to an old and blackened picture of the Last Judgment that hung on ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... overboard everything that degrades music to a science, and 'go to nature,' as Mr Ruskin counsels, 'rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing.' What would be the result? The result would be the torture of everybody in the country who had the misfortune to possess a cultivated ear. And yet the music of that time would not be absolutely disagreeable in itself: it would merely involve the deprivation of what had become a necessary to the taste; for nature would still inspire simple ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... 'kelleg'?" said Harvey, who had a vague idea it might be some kind of marine torture, ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... had brought in no prisoners, he did not now witness their horrible mode of torture. Before he left them, however, he saw enough of their awful cruelty in this way. Sometimes the poor prisoner would be tied to a stake, a pile of green wood placed around him, fire applied, and the poor wretch left to his horrible fate, while, amid shouts ...
— The Adventures of Daniel Boone: the Kentucky rifleman • Uncle Philip
... which the cruel punishment of impalement used to be inflicted. And Paul's thought is, not that he has a little, trivial trouble to bear, but that he is, as it were, forced quivering upon that tremendous torture. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... careless Indian would swing himself into the saddle, and in a few rough jerks teach the unruly animal to recognize a master. Of course, long before this, the rooster was dead, for at the first strong clutch his neck was broken, so that there was no unnecessary torture. The stream of riders flowed on, and at last one lucky fellow gave the right kind of a pull, and out came the rooster, to be swung around his head with a fierce ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... in myself, but I become Portion of that around me; and to me High mountains are a feeling, but the hum[320] Of human cities torture: I can see[jg] Nothing to loathe in Nature, save to be[jh] A link reluctant in a fleshly chain, Classed among creatures, when the soul can flee, And with the sky—the peak—the heaving plain[ji] Of Ocean, or the stars, mingle—and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... despatch was necessary in rifling any towns or villages into which they could force an entrance; every one whose appearance indicated the probability of his possessing money was immediately put to the most horrid torture till he either pointed out his hoard or died under the infliction. Nothing was safe from the pursuit of Pindari lust or avarice; it was their common practice to burn and destroy what they could ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... work to a close by the glare of his leaping camp-fire. Now, unless he meant only to perish, he must once more eat and sleep while he might. Then let the storm fall; the moment it was safely over and the wind in the right quarter he would sail. As for the thirst which had been such a torture while thwarted, now that it ruled unchallenged, it was purely a wild, glad zeal as full of method as of diligence. But first he must make his diminished provisions and his powder safe against the elements; and this he did, covering them with a waterproof ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... feet, in maintaining an air of respect and of ease suitable to a superior class of walking gentlemen, while those best qualified are about to do the same thing over in the queen's apartment.[2142]—The king, however, as an indirect consequence, suffers the same torture and the same inaction as he imposes. He also is playing a part; all his steps and all his gestures have been determined beforehand; he has been obliged to arrange his physiognomy and his voice, never to depart from an affable ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... a pause which, the Englishman knew, might be broken by an order to torture and kill him. He did not understand their hesitancy, but he meant at any rate to take advantage of it. He must engage the attention of the giant chief before him. Slowly he pulled from his pocket his heavy silver watch and held it up ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... drew his revolver. The bullet would do quickly what the cold would accomplish after lingering hours of torture, yet, facing those pricking ears and the brave trust of the eyes, he was blinded by a mist and could not aim. He had to place the muzzle of the gun against the roan's temple and pull the trigger. When he turned his back he was the only ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... George said, 'I could not sleep for thinking of that light, jab-jabbing the poor fellow in his cell. Nay, it appeared to be in my own bedroom, searching for my face and challenging me, "Are you there? Ha, ha, are you there?" What an eerie torture, to a slumbering soul, in that recurrent flame from the prison darkness! The thing stings and ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... without any thing visible to torment them, groaning more piteously than any that I had hitherto heard in Hell. "Mercy upon us," said I, "what causes these people to complain more than the rest, when they have neither torture nor devil near them?" "O," said the angel, "the less torment they have without, the more they have within. These are refractory heretics, atheists, antichristians, worldly- wise ones, abjurers of the faith, persecutors of the church, and an ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne |
