"Torture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... slavery was a bad thing. This story is the things my mother and father told me of slavery and my own observations since I became old enough to remember the general happenings. Mother said the place which had been a place of torture in slavery days turned out to be a haven of rest after slavery, a home where peace, ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... the magistrate. "But if you know all about it, why put my professional discretion to the torture by asking absurd questions?" ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... proclaims that she has, a 'horror of blood.' Nevertheless, when confronted by heresy, she does not content herself with persuasion; arguments of an intellectual and moral order appear to her insufficient, and she has recourse to force, to corporal punishment, to torture. She creates tribunals like those of the Inquisition, she calls the laws of the state to her aid, if necessary she encourages a crusade, or a religious war, and all her 'horror of blood' practically culminates into urging the secular power to shed it, which proceeding ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... put to death. But he must go presently without all delay: and he that hath suffered the iniury, 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 ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... Henry C. Superstition and Force. Essays on the wager of law, the wager of battle, the ordeal, torture. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... near torture, as she played with his tie again, and he controlled himself and spoke ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... born to torture me! O what a fall, what a humiliation! Such a scheme to wreck upon so small a trifle! But ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... permitting glimpses of unfamiliar perspectives within; life suddenly made itself visible to me under a totally novel aspect. I felt as though I had just been born into a new world and a new order of things. A frightful anguish commenced to torture-my heart as with red-hot pincers. Every successive minute seemed to me at once but a second and yet a century. Meanwhile the ceremony was proceeding, and I shortly found myself transported far from that world of which my newly born ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... homes and families from savages who give no quarter, though they have often received it, and where the possibility of defeat in action carries with it the certainty of death and often of preceding torture. ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 6 • P. H. Sheridan
... since you want me to specify the reason, you understand that I am not going to torture my brain to turn it into a romance for you, or commence by recounting in the naturalistic manner of what stuff my first trousers were made, or, as the neo-Catholics would have it, how often I went as a child to confession, and how much ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... could behold the roasting of his own subjects with infinite self-applause and sang-froid. The stone marks the spot, in this area, on which those cruel exhibitions were executed. Here our martyr Latimer preached patience to friar Forest, agonizing under the torture of a slow fire, for denying the king's supremacy; and to this place our martyr Cranmer compelled the amiable Edward, by forcing his reluctant hand to the warrant, to send Joan Bocher, a silly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various
... her now, that life without love would be more than the agonies of the lowest hells. Then again, to live with Rathunor as his wife, while he all the time thought her to be Nu-nah, would be an incessant torture, keener and more intense than if she were chained by, as a third person, to behold him loving the actual ...
— Within the Temple of Isis • Belle M. Wagner
... 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 place of ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... he produced contained exactly these words: "With respect to your ladyship's anxiety to know how far the acquaintance with Mr. De Q. is likely to be of service to your son, I think I may now venture to say that"—There the sibylline fragment ended; nor could we torture it into any further revelation. However, both of us saw the propriety of not ourselves practising any mystery, nor giving any advantage to Mr. G. by imperfect communications; and accordingly, on the day after we reached Dublin, we addressed ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... her seat at the tea-table—"so impulsive and volatile. But he's a dear good boy nevertheless—was so kind to his mother while she was alive, and ran away from school when quite young—and no wonder, for it was a dreadful school, where they used to torture the boys,—absolutely tortured them. The head-master and ushers were tried for it afterwards, I'm told. At all events; Eddy ran away from it after pulling the master's nose and kicking the head usher—so it is said, though I cannot believe it, he is usually so gentle and ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... France, where alone, of all the Catholic states, there were any great numbers of Protestants. In 1762 a Huguenot of Toulouse, unjustly charged with crime, was put to torture and to death, under the pressure of the old persecuting spirit. Many Huguenots thought the persecutions of former times were reviving, and prepared to flee to Switzerland. But Voltaire took up the matter, and so wrought upon public opinion that the Paris parliament reviewed the case, and ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... "You can torture me," she said scornfully. "You can kill me. But I will never give you the papers; you may be ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... party has developed new and alarming modes of torture for our helpless and sleeping victims. Last Thursday night we loaded up a small organ on a hack and with our other usual instruments made an assault upon the quiet air of midnight that made the ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... 'tis not true. In vain, in vain I smother All the torture that racks me. I love Mimi, she is my only treasure! I love her, ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica
... very obscure. Some critics think that Plutarch is speaking of torture. But it is more likely that he is speaking of the debtors being in attendance at the courts and waiting under the open sky at all seasons till the suits about the debts ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... Massacre in the Vivarais. 26. Decreed, that the Louvre and the Tuilleries united shall be the habitation of the King, and that all monuments of science and art shall be collected and kept there. 31. Decreed, that the punishment of death shall be inflicted without torture. From thence came the use of the guillotine;-an instrument of death so called from its author, a member of the national assembly. June. Letter of the Abbe Raynal to the assembly. Persecutions against non-conforming ...
— Historical Epochs of the French Revolution • H. Goudemetz
... often consists of shamming. Good manners are the absence of sham. It is not the gentleman's place, certainly, to insult the lady. Good manners seldom go quite so far as that. But even politeness cannot expect him to endure the torture for more than a limited time, especially if the topic chosen chances to be his own specialty. It is his place to lead the conversation, as gently as possible, back upon more neutral ground, where he may find what consolation he can in sprightly ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... her collection with the swiftness and directness of the entomologist discovering a new bug. She herself loved music—without understanding it very deeply—and Baskinelli, whatever might be his other gifts, could summon all the cadences of love from the machines that people call a piano—engine of torture or ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... back into the machine, and sank limply into the shaded corner of the seat. Six hours of this—it would be torture; and there would be one long night of walking to reach water; another day of waiting for night—without food—and again a long, staggering walk before they reached ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... which he confessed. Afterwards he told me of poor Mr. Spong, that being with other people examined before the King and Council (they being laid up as suspected persons; and it seems Spong is so far thought guilty as that they intend to pitch upon him to put to the wracke or some other torture), he do take knowledge of my Lord Sandwich, and said that he was well known to Mr. Pepys. But my Lord knows, and I told him, that it was only in matter of musique and pipes, but that I thought him to be ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... 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 happened. ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... theatre of sad horrors; past and gone as they are, these things stir a man's blood, like a great wrong or passion of the instant. And with these in their minds, and with a museum there, having a chamber full of such frightful instruments of torture as the devil in a brain fever could scarcely invent, there are hundreds of parrots, who will declaim to you in speech and print, by the hour together, on the degeneracy of the times in which a railroad is building across the water at Venice; instead ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... Clever at self-torture, he continued to harass his soul, always on the same line. "Suppose," he said, "for the sake of argument, that I have tamed my pride, and subdued my body, suppose that at present there were nothing to do, but to go forward, I am still brought up, for the final ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... instrument in the likeness of a straw-cutter, with a decapitated wooden figure under its blade—which the custodian confessed to be a modern improvement placed there by Signor P——. Yet my credulity was so strengthened by his candor, that I accepted without hesitation the torture of the water-drop when we came to it. The water-jar was as well preserved as if placed there but yesterday, and the skeleton beneath it—found as we saw it—was entire ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... gaolers, lictors[146]—all that we now understand by the police force—waited subserviently on his nod. It rested with him, says Lydus, to establish the authority of the Court of Justice by means of the wholesome fear inspired by iron chains and scourges and the whole apparatus of torture[147]. Nay, not only did the subordinate magistrates execute their sentences by his agency, he had even the honour of being chosen by the Emperor himself to be the minister of vengeance against the persons who had incurred his anger or his suspicion. 'I myself remember,' says Lydus, ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... protection one to the other, flew to arms. A short and desperate struggle ensued, but the victory remained in the hands of the abbot of Vezelay. Hundreds of brave men were put, without mercy, to the sword, and many, with less mercy, burnt alive or died by the torture in the dark dungeons of the abbatical palace. Vezelay still preserves in its archives the names of twelve ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... the repentance which God required, was for a man to punish himself bitterly for his sins; to starve and torture himself, to give up all that makes life pleasant, and so to atone. And good and pious men and women, with a real hatred and horror of sin, tried this: but they found that making themselves miserable took ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... pictures to himself a 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 eternal ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... apparitions used to come to my bedside, and if I dropped to sleep with any thought half formed or half developed, the odd half of that thought became impregnated, somehow, and straightway loomed up a goblin, or a giant, or a grotesque something, that proceeded to torture me, like a sort of Frankenstein, for having made it. Amid all these ghastly things, there came beautiful glimpses of form, scene, and sensation, that straightway changed to horrors. I remember, for example, that I was gliding down a stream, where the ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... Holy Father, the Pope! I tell you not of things learned by hearsay; I myself have beheld all these horrors in the Holy Land of Palestine. Through the ancient streets of Jerusalem the accursed infidels stalk in the evil pride of conquest. They insult and oppress, they torture and murder the followers of Christ. They rob and maltreat the pious pilgrims from all lands who toil through desert and over mountain to worship at the tomb of their Lord. Scarcely will these heathen suffer the adoration of Christ ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... reached him. The wonder of the incident was that a thrush should still be left—there had not been one in the garden for two months. Berries all gone, ground hard and foodless, streams frozen, snow lying for weeks, frost stealing away the vital heat—ingenuity could not devise a more terrible scene of torture to the birds. Neither for the thrushes nor for the new-born infants in the tent did the onslaught of the winter slacken. No pity in earth or heaven. This one thrush did, indeed, by some exceptional ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... Americans in the Archangel area they had found the French soldiers wildly aflame with the idea that a man captured by the Bolsheviks was bound to suffer torture and mutilation. And one wicked day when the Reds were left in possession of the field the French soldiers came back reporting that they had mercifully put their mortally wounded men, those whom they could not carry away, out of danger of torture by the Red Guards by themselves ending ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... But what have lovers to do with ridiculous affectations of fearing no man or woman? They know that in the turning of a hand the whole cosmic engine to the remotest star may become an instrument of music or an instrument of torture. They hear a song older than Suckling's, that has survived a hundred philosophies. 'Who is this that looketh out of the window, fair as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... were leading him to a hut where he might be confined and guarded against the coming of the nocturnal orgy that would mark his torture-laden death. He halted as he heard the notes of Tantor's call, and raising his head, gave vent to a terrifying scream that sent cold chills through the superstitious blacks and caused the warriors who guarded him to leap back even though their prisoner's arms ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... follows:— "Ne'er does the clever man, who seeks to advise us in sorrow, Think how little his chilling words our hearts can deliver From the pangs which an unseen destiny fastens upon us. You are happy and merry. How then should a jest ever wound you? But the slightest touch gives torture to those who are suff'ring. Even dissimulation would nothing avail me at present. Let me at once disclose what later would deepen my sorrow, And consign me perchance to agony mute and consuming. Let me depart forthwith! No more in this house dare I linger; ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... about your bag," I cried. "And I don't care a hang if I've lost my pyjamas and my best shoes and my only razor. And I've been through an hour's torture for nothing, and I don't mind that. But oh!—to think that you aren't going ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... abated without his being put to the torture of amputation. But we must surely admire the manly resolution which he discovered while it ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... because I am a man, a free man of Dantzic, that I appeal against this monstrous treatment. Be a man! why, I appeal to you, sir, to be a man, and to give up that situation, if it can only be retained by cruelty to others. I say again, be you a man, and cease to torture me." ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... limits. In the country it is asked "Does he drink?" In the city it is asked "Does he get drunk?" The two methods are essentially the results of two conditions. The mistake of the one locality is to apply its own preliminary to the other. Now, again, to this frightful question of woman-torture: Society knows all about woman. It knows that the wife must be the arbiter of her own sufferings. Her brother, being less wise than Society, separates the ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... fright as she stood alone by the door and stared into the gloomy twilight into which 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, kept haunting her mind's eye—and were they not Papists into ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... person cutting a chicken's head off, and as for shooting a poor, innocent bird for sport, I think it is a great wrong and should not be allowed. Did you ever think what a barbarous set we were—worse than Indians or Fiji Islanders! There is nothing living but what we torture and kill. As for fear . . . my candid opinion is that the only time one is out of danger is when sailing through ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... must go at once and be rigged up. You had better order a hansom—never mind the extravagance—it will be untold torture, but it is a promise, and it must be done. Annie, love, you are exquisite on the subject of dress; come and see Antonia ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... infernal machines, thumb screws, spiked collars, and other dretful implements of torture like black shadders throwed from the past. A piece of the boat that the Doge went to his weddin' in when he married the water wuz interestin'; weddin's always did interest females and males too, no matter whether the bride wuz formed out of dust or nothin' but clear ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... of?" he demanded of himself, "to have forgotten her, and what my madness would bring upon her? I am a selfish fool! Let it go. I will give it up. I will stay in Riggan for the future—it will not be long, and she need torture herself no more. I will give it up. Let them think I am afraid to face him. I am afraid—afraid to wound the woman ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... attend to her hurt, interrupting Amalia's flow of speech, and Harry went out to the animals, full of care and misgiving. What now could he do? How endure the days to come with their torture of repression? How shield her from himself and his love—when she so freely gave? What middle course was possible, without ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... for that, dear, dear Mr. Littlepage! Oh! Thank you for that, from the bottom of my heart. But may they not torture him? Do not these Hurons torture their prisoners? Conceal nothing from me, Corny; you cannot imagine how much self-command I have, and how well I can behave. ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... cruelty which by that beldam ill Was practised on the prisoned cavalier, And who prepared the wretched Child to kill, By torture new and pains unused whilere, While so Rogero pined, the gracious will Of Heaven conveyed to gentle Leo's ear; And put into his heart the means to aid, And not to let ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... wholly perfect harmony, and for this reason musicians deliberately intercalate discordant sounds—what are technically called dissonances. So, finally, it happens that physical exercise, even if it was at first undertaken for pleasure, becomes a torture when continued without interruption. ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... began the man slowly, "isn't that there's danger and death. They are easy. The trouble with war is this. It's dull, damned deadly dull. It's the slowest thing in the world. It wears away at your mind, like water dripping on a rock. The old Indian torture of letting water fall on your skull, drop by drop, till you went raving crazy, is nothing to what war does to the mind of millions of men. They can't think of anything else but war, and they have no thoughts about that. They can't talk of another blessed ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... apart of her arms over her head, Sarah separated the stricks into three and laid them overlapping on the carriage. The ribbon thus created was never-ending and wound away into the torture chambers of wheels and teeth within, while from the rear of the Spreader trickled out the new-created sliver. Great scales hung beside Sarah and from time to time she weighed fresh loads of long line and ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... New England borders, where they surprised and burned farmhouses and small hamlets, killed men, women, and children without distinction, carried others prisoners to their village, subjected them to the torture of "running the gantlet," and compelled them to witness dances of triumph around the scalps of parents, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... once at the watch on his wrist. He did not feel the torture of the tight gold cord. He was thinking in terms of daylight, and of how much time had passed since he ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... pony), as, except in Reykjavik, horse furniture is of the most miserable description, and the constant breakages cause many delays, while there are actually no side-saddles, except in the capital, and a chair is an instrument of torture only to be recommended to your ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... such memorials as these will be the only remains of that noble but unfortunate race who once peopled the continent of North America. War has slain its thousands, but alcohol its tens of thousands; and the fortitude which could bear without shrinking the most cruel inflictions of torture, has proved powerless to resist the seductions of strong drink. It is to be feared a heavy retribution awaits the white man, the ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... door as judge; retains Charon in his old office of boatman over the Stygian lake; puts fabulous people with real among the damned, Dido, and Cacus, and Ephialtes, with Ezzelino and Pope Nicholas the Fifth; and associates the Centaurs and the Furies with the agents of diabolical torture. It has pleased him also to elevate Cato of Utica to the office of warder of purgatory, though the censor's poor good wife, Marcia, is detained in the regions below. By these and other far greater inconsistencies, the whole place of punishment becomes a reductio ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... you can't. If you do I shall go away a sorrowful man. I shall go at once too—to-night or to-morrow morning at latest, for my heart bleeds to look at you and I can't stay here any longer to see you suffer. It is not torture to ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... Yet at the time I must argue with her—with her! When all my courage should have gone to love-making, I was plucking it up to sail as near as I might to plain remonstrance! I little dreamt how the ghost of every petty word was presently to return and torture me. ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... reflections of Agnes were also startlingly alert. She seemed two or three unfortunate people at once. Now it was Lady Jane Grey going to the tower. Now it was Beatrice Cenci going to torture. Now it was Mary Magdalene going to the cross. At almost every house she felt a kindness speak for her, except mankind; a recollection of nursing, comforting, praying with some one, but all forgotten ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... was yet day. Fierce was the pain of my wound, But I saw it was death to stir, For fifty paces away Their trenches were. In torture I prayed for the dark And the stealthy step of my friend Who, stanch to the very end, Would creep to the danger zone And offer his life as a ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... leaders. To San Marco they went, fired the buildings, burst open the doors, fought their way into the cloisters and church, dragged Savonarola from his devotions, and thrust him into a loathsome dungeon. After languishing there, amid every indignity and torture, for some weeks, on May 23, 1498, he was led forth to die. The bishop, whose duty it was to pronounce his degradation, stumbled at the formula declaring—"I separate thee from the Church, militant and triumphant." "From the militant thou mayest, ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... sought by violent emotions and excessive fatigue to escape from the thoughts which were persecuting him like spectres, and driving him to his death. In vain the physicians commanded rest and quiet. When attacked by an incurable lung trouble, he required absolute repose: but repose was torture; he preferred death as a deliverance. Dr. Malfatti, who took the keenest interest in him, and who was much disturbed by his many imprudences, entreated him not to throw away wantonly a life which might be so well and usefully employed. "It is a great ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... of frame must be added the torture of the heart arising from a difference with his father, who, as a Catholic, was disturbed by the skeptical tendencies of his son, and the perpetual irritation of a conflict with the large majority of even philosophical minds. An early death might ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... pitiable. While all this was torture to her inexperience and timidity, her fear of her mother rendered her wholly submissive. Each day brought with it some new trial. She was admired for many reasons,—by some for her wealth, of which all had heard rumors; by others for her ...
— Esmeralda • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... wooden "contraptions" went on with straps and I could not make the runners stay in the middle of my soles where they belonged, hence my ankles not only tipped in awkwardly but the stiff outer edges of my boot counters dug holes in my skin so that my outing was a kind of torture after all. Nevertheless, I persisted and, while Burton circled and swooped like a hawk, I sprawled with flapping arms in a mist of ignoble rage. That I learned to skate fairly well even under these disadvantages argues a high degree ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... confessional is similarly arranged and equally plain. We examined this rather more minutely than the other, and whilst we could find nothing dreadful in the penitents' apartment, we fancied, on entering the priest's side, that, we had met with something belonging the realm of confessional torture as depicted by the Hogans, Murphys, and Maria Monk showmen, and which the officials had forgot to put by in some of their secret drawers. It was hung upon a nail, had a semi- circular, half viperish look, and was cupped at each end as if intended for ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... They generally killed the lords and nobles in the following way. They made wooden gridirons of stakes, bound them upon them, and made a slow fire beneath: thus the victims gave up the spirit by degrees, emitting cries of despair in their torture. 9. I once saw that they had four or five of the chief lords stretched on the gridirons to burn them, and I think also there were two or three pairs of gridirons, where they were burning others; and because they cried ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... Gersay overcame any scruples that might have arisen in her mind against again yielding to the maternal instinct, and another son came to her, one who was destined to meet a most horrible fate and cause her the most exquisite mental torture. ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... and said, "As there is a God in heaven, thou dost not love me, an thou canst go to war and leave me to die o' grief." Then, as though 'twas torn from him, he burst forth, "Now as there is a God, thou dost not love me, to torture me thus!" ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... "They have civilly asked her and grossly forced her to ask civilly to go away, which she has done, with a pension of twelve hundred a year." Such a request is like the embrace of the "virgin" in old torture-chambers. She is robed in soft raiment, but beneath it are the knife-blades which are ready to lacerate and kill the victim, if he awaits the pressure of ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... isolation of the anarchist. So that each man fighting for order may be as brave and good a man as the dynamiter. So that the real lie of Satan may be {251} flung back in the face of this blasphemer, so that by tears and torture we may earn the right to say to this man, "You lie!" No agonies can be too great to buy the right to say to this accuser, "We ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... been indiscriminately herded together to form it, it was (with the exception of Mrs. Alwynn) a dreary or at best an uninteresting ordeal; while to four people among the number, the four who had met last on the church steps, it was a period of slow torture, endured with varying degrees of patience by each, from the two soups in the beginning, to the peaches and grapes at ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... driven him down there, and he cursed with his own lips, while he stifled in the depths of his own soul another name. His years, his life, had been wasted, just as this man Prebol's life was wasted, just as Slip's life was being wasted. Buck gave himself over to the exquisite torture of memories and reflections. He wondered what had become of the woman for love of whom he had let go all holds and degenerated to this heartless occupation ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... you say this to me?" cried Mrs. Vane, with a sudden flash of indignation, and then the tears streamed over her lovely cheeks; and even a Pomander might have forborne to torture her so; but Sir ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... to do 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 ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... striving to master the fierce emotion in his breast. His eyes were mostly fixed on me with a savage scowl, and for a moment or so I fancied that he must have saved my life so as to take it himself in some way which would add torture and throw dismay amongst ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... of the frightful manner in which the knife had cut Merriwell, and then, despite his feeble struggles, Diamond was placed upon the instrument of torture. ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... what numbers of young men in Catholic countries devote themselves to lives of celibacy. Think how many young men lose all their confidence in the presence of the young woman to whom they are most attracted, and at last steal away from a companionship which it is rapture to dream of and torture to endure, so does the presence of the beloved object paralyze all the powers of expression. Sorcerers have in all time and countries played on the hopes and terrors of lovers. Once let loose a strong impulse on the centre of inhibition, and the warrior who had faced bayonets and batteries ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and error. Better any error than persecution! Better any opinion than the thumb-screw, the rack, and the stake! And he knows also how unspeakably absurd it is, for a creature to whom himself and everything around him are mysteries, to torture and slay others, because they cannot think as he does in regard to the profoundest of those mysteries, to understand which is utterly beyond the comprehension of either the persecutor ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... conscience, or nothing can be more unscrupulous. It told Saul that he did well in persecuting the Christians. It has goaded countless multitudes of various creeds to endless forms of self-torture. The cities of India are full of cripples it has made. The hill-sides of Syria are riddled with holes, where miserable hermits, whose lives it had palsied, lived and died like the vermin they harbored. Our libraries are crammed with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... take us home!" Side by side they threaded an aisle between rows of the carefree dead, whom no malignant Miss Juliana could torture. Behind them marched their captor, Merle stepping blithely ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... visible was a slight pallor and a graver aspect. Mrs. Loring scrutinized her countenance closely. This she bore without a sign of embarrassment. She partook but lightly of food. After the meal closed she retired to her own room, once more to torture her brain in a fruitless effort to solve this great problem ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... without reserve or return. To uncertainty, disquietude of soul, anguish, longing for an unknown good, bitter regrets, had succeeded a delicious calm, the ecstasy of the lost child who finds his mother, and forgets in a moment the torture ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... moaned Little, squirming out of his bed and trying to lift his friend up. Then his own world spun around him, and he fell beside Barry, every inch of ant-bitten skin a blazing patch of torture. ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... 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 ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... francs' worth, notes and bonds, the wicked gains of one of her lovers (Grippon, the Marquis's fraudulent intendant), and promptly expiring—may pair off with Falgouet's repeating on himself the Spanish torture-death of the guanches,[530] as pure melodrama. In fact the whole thing is undigested, and shows, in a high degree, that initial difficulty in getting on with the story which has not quite disappeared in L'Abbe Tigrane, but which has been completely ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... asses—One really pitied the poor saints and martyrs for having such blind biographers—such dunghill cocks, who overlooked the pearl of real human love and nobleness in them, in their greediness to snatch up and parade the rotten chaff of superstition, and self-torture, and spiritual dyspepsia, which had overlaid it. My dear fellow, that Calendar ruins your cause—you are "sacres aristocrates"—kings and queens, bishops and virgins by the hundred at one end; a beggar or two at the other; and but one real human lay St. Homobonus to fill up the great ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... delight to torture me; behold the man who loves you more than his own eyes; more than the joys of ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... 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 a ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... brought our instruments of torture with us to the play, and Elfreda agreed to have you girls in her ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... damnable heresy, and have taken refuge in one of two courses. Either they deny that Genesis was meant to teach scientific truth, and thus save the veracity of the record at the expense of its authority; or they expend their energies in devising the cruel ingenuities of the reconciler, and torture texts in the vain hope of making them confess the creed of Science. But when the peine forte et dure is over, the antique sincerity of the venerable sufferer always reasserts itself. Genesis is honest to the core, and professes to be no more than it is, a repository of venerable ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... slumber, at the moment when I was falling into oblivion, a hand seemed to pluck me back into consciousness. In the same instant there gleamed before my eyes a little circle of fire, which blazed and expanded into immensity, until its many-coloured glare beat upon my brain and thrilled me with torture. No sooner was the intolerable light extinguished than I burst into a cold sweat; an icy river poured about me; I shook, and my teeth chattered, and so for some minutes I lay in anguish, until the heat of fever re-asserted itself, and I began once more to toss and roll. A score ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... stations beside it, holding the handspikes, for turning the rending wheels, like muskets, on their shoulders. The moment that Mavrovitch mounted the scaffold, the trumpets and the tolling bells ceased; all was silent, and he walked with a firm tread towards the engine of torture. The executioners stepped forward, each took him by the arm. At the same moment a wild shriek rose; but what ensued is so well known, that I may spare myself from further ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various
... the garden. You were all that I knew of in life to yearn for—you were a wonderful light that had flashed upon me and blinded me; and when I saw my own vileness in it I flung myself down on my face, and felt a more fearful despair than I had ever dreamed could torture a soul. I would have crawled to you upon my knees and groveled in the dirt and begged you to have mercy upon me; and afterwards when you lifted me up, I could have kissed the ground that you trod. But oh, I knew one thing, and it was all that ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... never! Only let my perverse imagination 'light, for the space of a breath, on the possibility, to my unutterable torment. All men's fancies play 'em such tricks now and then, to torture them and take down their vanity. Men would rest too easy in their security, were it ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the 'Tosca' of M. Sardou, the torture of the hero, if we were to see it, might be received with incredulity, but we are far more likely to accept it as real when we perceive it only thru the sufferings of the heroine at the sight of it. So again, in the 'Darling of the Gods,' the destruction of the little band of ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... flowers and any precious gift, which was to be paddled over the foaming cataract by one either drawn by lot or selected by the chiefs; or, as often happened, a voluntary offering of life, as it manifested heroism beyond their usual test of torture. Martyrs thus sacrificed had this consolation: that their spirits were sure to rise in the mist and follow the bright path above, while bad Indians' spirits passed down in the boiling, crashing current, ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah
... fought a long fight with Death for the life that stood between him and the woman. He was not an expert swimmer, his clothes hampered him, he was already blown with his long race, the burden in his arms dragged him down, the water rose slowly enough to make his torture fit for ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... common-sense—and not Eugenics. The human race has excluded such absurdities for unknown ages; and has never yet called it Eugenics. You may call it flogging when you hit a choking gentleman on the back; you may call it torture when a man unfreezes his fingers at the fire; but if you talk like that a little longer you will cease to live among living men. If nothing but this mad minimum of accident were involved, there would be no such thing as a Eugenic Congress, and certainly no such ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... salvation, while Buddhism offered extinction. Turning from the masses to the philosophical ascetic—when he cuts himself off from family life with all its variety of pleasure and interest, not to speak of the self-torture he also sometimes inflicts, he too has some corresponding demand, some adequate motive to satisfy. His is the resolute quest for salvation of the higher, older type. But we are dealing with modern, new-educated ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... delicate sensibilities, you may thank Heaven that you did not become a medical man; your life would have been one of torture, disgust, and agonising sense of responsibility. But do you not see that you must thank Heaven for the sufferer's sake also? I will not shock you again by talking of amputation; but even in the smallest matter—even if you were merely sending medicine to an old maid—suppose that your imagination ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... I told you: Only my son I feared; For I doubt the sapling courage That goes without the beard. But now in vain is the torture, Fire shall never avail: Here dies in my bosom ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... rigid rule, The dull restraint, the chiding frown, The weary torture of the school, The taming of wild nature down. Her only lore, the legends told Around the hunter's fire at night; Stars rose and set, and seasons rolled, Flowers bloomed and snow-flakes ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... patch of grey sea beyond the hole in which their oar worked. The sweat poured off their chests and backs in streams, until their waist-bands clung to the flesh like soaked sponges. Some began to moan and sob; others to entreat Heaven for a respite, as if God were directing their torture and taking delight in it; others again broke out into frightful imprecations, cursing their Maker and the hour of their birth. And while the oars swung and the chains clashed and the cries redoubled their volume, the three ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the Apostate was Emperor, three Christian soldiers were brought before him. Their names were Emmanuel, Sabael, and Ismael. He ordered them to be examined apart, lest they should encourage one another in their faith and endurance under torture. Emmanuel, seeing his object, said, "Tyrant! we Three are one in ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... Important Factor in Health. Few more ingenious instruments of crippling and torture have ever been invented than fashionable tight ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... this infernal torture being at length despatched, and suspended on the muzzle of the gun as a trophy of victory, a rush is made to the bar or counter, and brandy and rum, accompanied by lewd stories, and perhaps quarrelling and ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... content with this Calvin had his spies in all parts of the city, who reported to him what people were saying about his methods and his government. The punishment meted out by the courts were of a very severe and brutal kind. No torture that could be inflicted was deemed too much for any one bold enough to criticise the Consistory or ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... not sleep that night. Every twig and every needle of her pine mattress seemed to have conspired to torture her. She tossed about until she could no longer endure her bed; and in the middle of the night she crept out of the tent, and sat, wrapped in a blanket, before the smouldering embers of the fire. The hobbled horses grazed not far away; a night bird twitted solitarily ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... future path. Nothing is more painful to a man of any energy than the inability to put things in order in himself— to place before himself what he has to do, and arrange the means for doing it. To be the passive victim of a rushing stream of disconnected impressions is torture, especially if the emergency be urgent. So when the sun came up Zachariah began to be ashamed of himself that the night had passed in these idiotic moonings, which had left him just where he was, and he tried to settle what he was to do when he reached Manchester. He did not know a soul; ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... to the pleadings of these men there flashed into my mind a conviction of the malignant humor of my situation. Here was I, father of a plan in the successful execution of which I had figured myself out as a benefactor to all concerned, turning the torture screws of "Standard Oil's" new dollar rack—fashioned from my structure—and I was powerless to stop or rescue the screaming victim. "But why," ask my readers, "did you not denounce the men and renounce the work, instead of profiting ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... has she been requested to answer, under pain of torture, in what state of mind she was when a young nobleman died in consequence of his commerce with her. Then by her speaking has it been replied, that she remained quite melancholy and wished to destroy herself; and prayed God, the ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... and addressed them as follows: "Miserable and heathenish men, calling yourselves priests! Know ye not that to lay claim to a capacity to do anything better than my predecessor is a capital offence? Take that chessboard and, before day dawns upon the torture chamber, cut it into four equal parts of the same shape, each containing sixteen perfect squares, with one of the gems in each part! If in this you fail, then shall other sports be devised for your special delectation. Go!" The four ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... an infuriated bull. "If I had her here—I'd strangle her!" he swore. "That brother of yours is an artist. He has sketched her to the life—the she-devil!" His voice cracked and broke. He was breathing like a man in torture. ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... his hands. He refused to see more. Whether ghost or optical illusion, an emanation from another world, or an image born of his remorse and proceeding from himself, it should torture his ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... there, I heard some news that made me sit up and take notice, as the Yankees say. It seems that, for some time past, the Government of Korea has been playing some very hanky-panky games: taxing the people until the burden has become unbearable; punishing the smallest offences with death by torture; confiscating the goods and money of every man who dared to allow himself a few more luxuries than his neighbours; and, in short, playing the very mischief all round. Naturally, even the mildest-mannered worm will turn under too much of that kind of thing, and the average Korean ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... merry jest! But here I must wander alone in the night, Alas, they have all forsaken me quite! Olaf! The storm is rending my hair! The rain beats against me wherever I fare! Olaf, Olaf! Can you see me thus languish Beneath this unspeakable torture ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... theatre. They applaud, they condemn, they criticise. They know all about it. Into such company as this, even I, whose poor old head is always getting itself wedged in where it has no business to be, have chanced to be thrown. This is torture. My cue is to turn into the Irishman's echo, which always returned for his "How d'ye do?" a "Pretty well, thank you." I cling to the skirts of that member of the party who is agreed to have the best taste and echo his responses an octave higher. ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... said, below. No one heard save the uncouth being who clung to the window, revolver in hand, steadily dying the creeping red death. But they knew that, out of sight, a man who had smiled on them, full of life and hope, but an hour ago was facing such torture as had tried the martyr's courage, and facing it with as high ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... I seem to be a part of this human beast! When I wake up I feel as if my soul had been stained, dragged in the mire, almost lost. It seems as if I could never again feel any self-respect. Oh, doctor," Penelope's voice broke and the tears filled her eyes, "you must help me! I cannot bear this torture any longer! What can I do to ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... on his whole body. This was a formality employed in cases of witchcraft, so that the devil should have no place to hide in; for it was the common belief that if a single hair were left, the devil could render the accused insensible to the pains of torture. From this Urbain understood that the verdict had gone against him and that he was ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the Landgrave's castle. A few scattered cries of triumph were heard from the crowd; but they were drowned in a tumult of conflicting feelings. As human creatures, fallen under the displeasure of a despot with a judicial power of torture to enforce his investigations, even they claimed some compassion. But there arose, to call off attention from these less dignified objects of the public interest, a long train of gallant cavaliers, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... to rescue their companion. This was the signal for the goat to adopt new tactics. He probably thought it was some new form of torture that ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... asserted in England, and by those who really think they know whereof they speak, that although such torture-houses as Dotheboys Hall certainly did exist, even so lately as Dickens wrote, the publication of "Nicholas Nickleby," by turning attention upon the abuse, effectually swept it out of English civilization. We "smile bitterly," as romance people do, whenever we hear this ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... magnitude to our little army (if I may so call it), but we would not think of them. We were now in the situation that I had labored to get ourselves in. The idea of being made prisoner was foreign to almost every man, as they expected nothing but torture from the savages, if they fell into their hands. Our fate was now to be determined, probably in a few hours. We knew that nothing but the most ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... worshiped demons. But above them bent the tender and pitiful Mother of Christ who had seen her Son crucified, and Christ Himself stood surrounded by innumerable witnesses. Among the saints were some who had died at the hands of the heathen, many who had died by torture. The poor and ignorant men who listened were caught up for the moment into the vision of Fray Jeronimo and regained their self-control. When the prayer was ended Gonzalo Guerrero sprang up, and rallied them to furious labor. Under his direction ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... are insulting me! And that is just the point. You may be a very clever lawyer, Mr. Ashley, and everybody says you are—very able, and talented, and all that, but you can't get round that point. You may torture any meaning you please out of my words, but I shall always say you brought it ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... tell him how the title of the picture is to be read. And thus the whole book being gone over by the bare titles of the pictures, reading cannot but be learned; and indeed too, which thing is to be noted, without using any ordinary tedious spelling, that most troublesome torture of wits, which may wholly be avoided by this method. For the often reading over the Book, by those larger descriptions of things, and which are set after the Pictures, will be able perfectly to beget ...
— The Orbis Pictus • John Amos Comenius
... look at his face in the light. "Ah, heart of me, will you grow up too to live in a lightship and leave a poor woman at home to weary for you in her trouble? Rogue, rogue, what poor woman have I done this to, bringing you into the world to be her torture and her joy?" ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... tried to rest your weight on them for a moment they described an arc toward the rear. Moreover, you could not sit well back on the saddle to balance matters, because of the high cantle. The result, whether you did with stirrups or without them, was torture, for anybody but an Arab, who has notions of ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... impressed, busied himself meanwhile on my behalf, and at seven in the morning a springless, open, two-wheeled Arab cart, drawn by a moth-eaten old mule, was ready for my conveyance to Gafsa. In this instrument of torture were spent the hours from 7.30 a.m. to 4.30 p.m., memories of that ride being blurred by the physical discomfort endured. Over a vast plateau framed in distant mountains we were wending in the direction of a low gap which never came nearer; the road itself was full of deep ruts that caused ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... to that!" I cried, jumping up. "I'll sooner earn a precarious livelihood by turning fisherman in this island! Any labor will be preferable to that daily renewing torture." I seized my violin in a desperate clutch, and feverishly leant over the wall, where I could hear the dirge-like boom of the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... suggestion to the test, and the surgeons of Europe had acknowledged with one accord that all hope of finding a means to render operations painless must be utterly abandoned—that the surgeon's knife must ever remain a synonym for slow and indescribable torture. By an odd coincidence it chanced that Sir Benjamin Brodie, the acknowledged leader of English surgeons, had publicly expressed this as his deliberate though regretted opinion at a time when the quest which he considered futile had already led to the most ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... were returned to the Bastile, and there shut up in iron cages: and a King of SIAM, having lost his daughter, and fancying she was poisoned, put most of his court, young and old, to death, by the most exquisite torture; by this horrid act of cruelty, near two thousand of the principal courtiers suffered the most dreadful deaths; the great Mandarins, their wives, and children, being all scorched with fire, and mangled with knives, before ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... gathered in a circle, but took no part in the preparations,—the torture of women ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... angel, I am Iolas, and not Jupiter. I adore you, and I seek to quench the desires which torture me." ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... money is a burden. You are forced to carry it about, for fear. You look guilty as you go running in the streets, because you fear everybody. Do good with it. Let it be money with a blessing on it! It will save us from horrid misery! from death! from torture and death! Think, uncle! look, uncle! You with the money—me wanting it. I pray to heaven, and I meet you, and you have it. Will you say that you refuse to give it, when I see—when I show you, you are led to meet me and help ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in Green Street Court-House that the political offenders in Ireland are tried. Within its narrow and grimy walls I saw many a gallant Irishman, when I was a young reporter, pass through a foregone and prearranged trial to torture, agony, madness, premature death. I can only think of it as of a shambles, or, perhaps, to put it more strongly, but more accurately, as I think of that wooden framework in which I saw the murderer, Henry Wainwright, ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... women. Eyes were gouged out, ears hacked off, arms and legs torn from the body in presence of the victims' children or wives, whose agony was thus begun before their own turn came. Men and women and infants were burned alive. Chinese executioners were specially hired to inflict the awful torture of the "thousand slices."[281] Officers had their limbs broken and were left for hours in agonies. Many victims are credibly reported to have been buried alive. History, from its earliest dawn down to the present day, has recorded nothing so profoundly revolting as the nameless ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... there came to Lenox the peculiar long-drawn note with which the hill villagers call to one another across the valleys. An infectious spirit of jubilation pervaded the air. The sun himself, in these cheerful latitudes, is transformed from an instrument of torture to the golden-locked hero of Norse and Greek legend; and with every step of the ascent Lenox felt the blood course more ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... Berthelier, to whom there stands a memorial on the island in the Rhone; he caused Jean Pecolat to be hung up in an absurd posture in his banqueting-hall, in order that he might mock at his discomfort while he dined; he executed, with or without preliminary torture, several less conspicuous patriots. Happily, however, some of the patriots—notably Besancon Hugues—got safely away, and succeeded in concluding treaties of alliance between Geneva and the cantons of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... rest, Noted the Master's sign and fashion, And unbefooled by the heart's compassion, Undeterred by form and feature, Caught the creature, Tried by the test of water and fire, Pierced and pinioned with silver wire, Circled with signs that could control, Battered with spells that tame and torture The demon nature, Till he writhed in his shape, a fiend confest, And vanished— Then had come back, the poor soul banished, Then had come back the little soul. But now there is nothing to do or to say. Will no one grip him and tear ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... continual rebellion against them; and as they can never convince you that they are right: they can govern you only by beating you, imprisoning you, torturing you, killing you if you disobey them without being strong enough to kill or torture them. ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... disconcerted by his indignation, that he mistook his mark, and applied the sharp heel of his shoe to the side of Mr. Jolter's foot, comprehending his little toe that was studded with an angry corn, which he invaded with such a sudden jerk, that the governor, unable to endure the torture in silence started up, and, dancing on the floor, roared hideously with repeated bellowings, to the enjoyment of Peregrine and the lady, who laughed themselves almost into convulsions at the joke. Hornbeck, confounded at the mistake he had ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... journals characterize as 'princes of science.' For a quarter of an hour I have had to listen to the most contradictory opinions. On one point, however, all agreed: that my patient was a dead man. Finally they compromised and decided that the poor wretch's torture should be needlessly prolonged by a course of moxas. I timidly remarked that it would be simpler to send for a confessor, and then assuage the sufferings of the dying man with repeated injections of morphine. If you had seen their faces! They came as near as anything ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... curse, that his mirth might be encreased. I saw his Father also, when he was possessed, I saw him in one of his fits, and saw his flesh (as 'twas thought) by the Devil, gathered up on an heap, about the bigness of half in Egge; to the unutterable torture and afflict[i]on of the old man. There was also one Freeman, (who was more than an ordinary Doctor) sent for, to cast out this Devil; and I was there when he attempted to do it. The manner whereof was this. They had the possessed into an out- room, and laid him on his belly upon a Form, with ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... that their impersonal and unconscious immortality is a brighter hope than an eternity of personal and conscious existence, the very thought of which they say is torture. This assumes, what there seems to be no ground for assuming, that eternity is an endless extension of time; and, in the same way, that infinity is a boundless space. It is more natural to conceive of them as emancipation respectively from ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith |
