"Torment" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... doubt the very great share the business and finance of armament manufacture has played in bringing about the present horrible killing, and no one who has read accounts of the fighting can doubt how much this industry has enhanced the torment, cruelty, ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... of the most splendid hunts of the sixteenth century, and down through the ages it has ever held a preeminent place; holds it to-day even. Louis XVI in the Revolutionary torment even regretted the cutting off of his prerogative of the royal hunt, but he had no choice in the matter. In his journal of 1789 one reads: "the cerf runs alone in the Parc en Bas" (Rambouillet), and again in 1790: "Seance of the National Assembly at noon; Audience ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... his body with great inhumanity, that he might be induced by the torture he suffered to make the discovery. All this availed not the least to make him give up his money, but he despised all the tortures which they inflicted, until the continued exercise and increase of torment, obliged him to sink and expire. He thus died without informing his enemies of the place where his money lay. I saw him while he was thus tortured to death. The shocking scene is to this day fresh in my mind, and I have often been ...
— A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, a Native of • Venture Smith
... charms of Miss Matthews, and her excessive endearments, sometimes lulled every thought in the sweet lethargy of pleasure, yet in the intervals of his fits his virtue alarmed and roused him, and brought the image of poor injured Amelia to haunt and torment him. In fact, if we regard this world only, it is the interest of every man to be either perfectly good or completely bad. He had better destroy his conscience than gently wound it. The many bitter reflections which every bad action costs a mind in which there are any remains ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... of eighty-seven, with her son John. I shall always remember with sincere gratitude her care and forbearance manifested toward a rather wild and reckless boy at the disagreeable age of from eight to twelve years. Affection may make a mother bear with the torment of her own child at that age, but will rarely induce an equal leniency toward that ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... truth, I love. You asked me a downright question which I did not then choose to answer by a downright answer. The downright answer was not at that time due to you. It has since been given, and as I like you too well to wish you to be in torment, I send you a line to say that I shall never be in the way of you or ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... that they cannot be praetors at Rome; or, if they get that office, that they are not consuls; or, if they are consuls, that they are only proclaimed second and not first. What is all this but seeking out excuses for being unthankful to fortune, only to torment and punish oneself? But he that has a mind in sound condition, does not sit down in sorrow and dejection if he is less renowned or rich than some of the countless myriads of mankind that the sun looks upon, "who feed ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... Never, probably, never would that sweet be tasteless—with such a straight grim spoon was it mostly administered, and so flavored and strengthened by the competence of their eyes. Women knew so much best how a woman surpassed—how and where and why, with no touch or torment of it lost on them; so that as it produced mainly and primarily the instinct of aversion, the sense of extracting the recognition, of gouging out the homage, was on the whole the highest crown one's felicity could wear. ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... sounds with terror to my soul,—a word too obnoxious to speak—a system too intolerable to be endured. I know this from long and sad experience. I now feel as if I had just been aroused from sleep, and looking back with quickened perception at the state of torment from whence I fled. I was there held and claimed as a slave; as such I was subjected to the will and power of my keeper, in all respects whatsoever. That the slave is a human being, no one can deny. It is his lot to be exposed in common with other men, to the calamities of sickness, death, ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... mats placed with careful precision, he took his dissolve "vision stuff" of the blizzard and the death of Miguel,—scenes which were to torment the conscience of Andy the rustler into full repentance and confession to his father. While the boys huddled around Annie's camp fire and guzzled hot coffee and ate chilled sandwiches, Luck took some fine scenes of the phantom ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... is only fifty-seven, or fifty-eight. He is precisely the man to whom health would be particularly valuable; for he has the keenest zest for those pleasures which health would enable him to enjoy. He is, however, an invalid, and a cripple. He passes some weeks of every year in extreme torment. When he is in his best health he can only limp a hundred yards in a day. Yet he never says a cross word. The sight of him spreads good humour over the face of every one who comes near him. His sister, an excellent old maid as ever ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... has taken place in the scenery around us; the trees are breaking into leaves, and many plants are in blossom, where, but a short time ago, everything bore the aspect of winter. But this almost sudden and pleasing change has brought an unceasing torment: night and day we are perpetually persecuted with the mosquitoes, that swarm around us, and afford no rest but in the annoying respiration of a smoky room. They hover in clouds about the domestic cattle, and drive them (almost ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... leaped and writhed and spat like a tortured snake with the agonies of the narrow passage. And presently it sank into twisting coils, all spattered and marbled with foam, and came weltering up from conflict with the rocks below, and then hurried on to further torment along ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... a young Christian when there is illness in the home, and under pressure he will fly to magic incantations and heathen practices, in order to get deliverance from the malignant spirit which he still believes has power to torment him. Many a convert has fallen on the occasion of a funeral. It takes more faith than a Westerner can realise, to defy the legions of gwei which at that time threaten your home and its inhabitants with numberless ills; and strength of mind is required to resist heathen ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... displesith hym/ And therfore reherceth valerius/ that ther was a wise man named theodore cerem whom his kynge dyde do hange on the crosse for as moche as he repreuyd hym of his euyll & fowll lyf And all way as he was in the torment he said to y'e kynge/ upon thy counceyllours & them that ben cladd in thy clothynge & robes were more reson that this torment shold come/ For as moche as they dar not saye to the The trouthe for to do Justice right ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... are a general, suah." Then suppressed laughter and the gurgling of the flowing enlivener. Jack blissfully fell into dreams, wherein home things and warlike doings mingled in grotesque medley. Relapses into consciousness followed at he knew not what intervals thereafter. He was conscious of cruel torment and a clumsy transfer into another vehicle, confused sounds of groans, curses, waving lights, and the hissing of escaping steam almost in his very ears. Then the anguish of thundering wheels, until his cracked brain reeled and he was mercifully unconscious. How long? His eyes ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... of you, of that slender body moving among fragrances of scented cambrics, and breathing its own dear odour as I come forward to greet you. Why do you seek to torment me?" ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... Wales. On the eve of committing it to the press however, the Cambrian Briton felt his small heart give way within him: "Were I to print it," said he, "I should be ruined; the terrible descriptions of vice and torment, would frighten the genteel part of the English public out of its wits, and I should to a certainty be prosecuted by Sir James Scarlett. I am much obliged to you, for the trouble you have given yourself on my account—but Myn Diawl! I had no idea till I had read him in English, that Elis Wyn ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... right and the left, the front and the rear and from the ground beneath and the air above they were beset by whole companies, battalions, divisions, armies, yea, tribes and nations of thick-set, sharp-billed little devils who had come to torment them before their time and whose every impact brought blood. There was needed no council of war to determine the course to pursue, so a hasty retreat was ordered—an ignominious flight, feeling that it were better to face the perils of the storm without than go down to certain defeat before this ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... carried out; and after her tender limbs had been additionally weighted, her delicate skin was lacerated with terrible stripes. Yet her fortitude never forsook her. Nay more—through the grace bestowed on her she actually sang hymns in the midst of her torment! Sometimes, indeed, her physical strength failed for a brief space. At other times the song of triumph blended with a wail of agony, but she always recovered to renew ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... dying last night," she thought, in her moral torment—her passion to get away from herself. "Is he gone? This is the hour when old people die—the dawn. I will ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and sides, with embroideries. Perhaps a snake or a lizard had dropped on his mother from the roof before he was born; perhaps it was the memory of some hideous fever-bout in a tent. At any rate, that man's idea of The Torment was a hot, crowded underground room, underhung with patterned cloths. Once in his life at a city in the far north, where he had to make a speech, he met that perfect combination. They led him up and down narrow, crowded, steam-heated passages, till they planted ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... determination not to quit the island until she knew him to be safe. And he had remained, actuated by the dual desire, first to exonerate himself personally in her husband's eyes from any possible suspicion of complicity in Molly's flight—the bare thought of which had become a horrible torment to him—then to encompass through that good friend's means an interview and full explanation with Madeleine, which not only the most ordinary precaution for his life, but likewise every instinct of pride forbade him ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... quickly decided that as he had recovered his boots he would subject his enemy only to so much punishment as he thought was necessary to secure his good behavior afterward. He knew that the boys would torment Jake unmercifully if the true story of the night's exploits should become known to them, and while he knew that the culprit deserved the severest lesson, he was too magnanimous to subject him to so sore a trial. He went to sleep, therefore, resolved to release his enemy ...
— Captain Sam - The Boy Scouts of 1814 • George Cary Eggleston
... said: "I was not a happy child, nor a happy woman, until in mature life, I outgrew my early religious faith, and felt free to think and act from my own convictions." Having joined the church in extreme youth, and being morbidly conscientious, she suffered constant torment about her own sins, and those of her neighbors. She was a religious enthusiast, and in time of revivals was one of the bright and shining lights ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... reverses, affliction, calamity, misfortune; vexation, annoyance, inconvenience, worry, disturbance; torment, plague, thorn, bane. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... deep To break on the beach in fiery lines. Echo the far-off roll of thunder, Rumbling loud And ever louder, under The blue-black curtain of cloud, Where the lightning serpents gleam, Echo the moaning Of the forest in its sleep Like a giant groaning In the torment of a dream. ...
— The Red Flower - Poems Written in War Time • Henry Van Dyke
... lose it: thus only shall we save it, thus only have a share in our own being. The self is given to us that we may sacrifice it; it is ours that we like Christ may have somewhat to offer—not that we should torment it, but that we should deny it; not that we should cross it, but that we should abandon it utterly: then it can no ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... and gorillas, engaged in lovingly licking—we don't mean whipping—and otherwise fondling their offspring? Even in Hades we find the lost rich man praying for the deliverance of his brethren from torment, and that, surely, was love in the form of pity. At all events, whatever name we may give it, there can be no doubt it was unselfish. And even selfishness is ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... did more to open up Jean Jacques' eyes to his real position in life than anything he had experienced, than any sorrow he had suffered. He had been in torment in the past, but he had refused to see that he was in Hades. Now it was as though he had been led through the streets of Hell by some dark spirit, while in vain he looked round for his old friends Kant and Hegel, Voltaire and Rousseau and Rochefoucauld, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... commerce. An equivalent may be found among the West Indian islands; but it is perhaps equally vain and invidious to speculate on such very distant concerns, when the wonderful events now occurring in a kingdom so long the torment and the teacher of nations, arrest the imagination from every trivial selfish pursuit, and fix the mind undividedly on the operations of the great source of power, justice, and truth. A new aera commences in the world—May it be remarkable ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... Ordinarily she was accurate: to-night her attention was elsewhere. It had come back to the rows, because there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it ever so much more important than it really is. Loneliness with happy thoughts is perhaps an ideal state; but no torment could be greater than loneliness with thoughts that wound. Jenny's thoughts wounded her. The mood of complacency was gone: that of shame and discontent was upon her. Distress was uppermost in her mind—not the petulant wriggling of a spoilt child, but ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... finds life impossible yet fears to die,—is here portrayed in dramatic language. To Wagner the first movement pictured to him "the idea of the world in its most terrible of lights," something to recoil from. "Beethoven in the Ninth Symphony," he says, "leads us through the torment of the world relentlessly until the ode to ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... blinded by stinging tears, and feeling very much more maddened by regret than by mortification, Leonetta fled to her room. She was not only staggered, she was also thoroughly ashamed. A boy suddenly butted by a lamb, which he had believed he might torment with impunity, could not have felt more astonished. A convert brought face to face with the livid wounds which, in her days of unbelief, she had inflicted upon a Christian martyr could not have felt more deeply dejected and penitent. Like a flash, an old emotion ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... de Langeais under foot, as Othello killed Desdemona, in a burst of fury which at any rate proved the extravagance of his love. It was not like a paltry squabble. There was rapture in being so crushed. Little, fair-haired, slim, and slender men loved to torment women; they could only reign over poor, weak creatures; it pleased them to have some ground for believing that they were men. The tyranny of love was their one chance of asserting their power. She did not know why she had put herself at the ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... the long, deep ravine, and the smoke-streaked clouds of fire, trailing like a yellow mist over them, with a fierce white blast shooting up here and there when the lid of an oven was raised, as though to add fresh temperature to some particular male-factor in some particular chamber of torment. Humanity about was joyous, however. Laughter and banter and song came from the cabins that lined the big ravine and the little ravines opening into it. A banjo tinkled at the entrance of "Possum Trot," sacred to the darkies. We moved toward it. On the stoop sat ...
— A Knight of the Cumberland • John Fox Jr.
... man more than man for you have the will for it. You shall run the plains and hills, all the earth that is so wide, mounted on a horse of flame you shall be tireless, terrible as the tramp of the storms All the voices of earth will cry out whirling about you. They will call you spirit in torment ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... importance of that profound and quiet sleep impressed itself on me so strongly, that I took the responsibility of leaving him undisturbed. The event proved that I had acted wisely. He slept until noon. There was no return of "the torment of the voice"—as he called it, poor fellow. We passed a quiet day, excepting one little interruption, which I am warned not to pass over without a word ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... firebrands and see how he would appear in her eyes, now that she understood him. On a sudden she wished to see him more than any one else in the world, Lord Cedric excepted; and in her adventurous heart vowed to torment and give him pangs to remember her by. Her pride was wrought upon. That any one should presume to love her without thought of espousal! and Janet's words came back to her with great force, making her see her ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... no belief in what he was saying. The things he knew? What? Nothing but pain and torment. Yet his heart went on wagging out words: "All life is a parting—a continual and monotonous parting. And most hideous of all, a parting with dead things. A saying good-by to things that no longer exist. We part with living things, and so keep them, somehow. Your face makes life for ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... the finest in conception and the firmest in execution is Ferdinand of Aragon. Jealousy of his sister and avarice take possession of him and torment him like furies. The flash of repentance over her strangled body is also the first flash of insanity. He survives to present the spectacle of a crazed lunatic, and to be run through the body by his paid assassin. In the Cardinal of Aragon, Webster ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... massive babies springing up with fungus-like rapidity under its forcing influence, or of representatives of the leading nations of the world scrambling with fatuous eagerness for its possession. One huge sombre poster depicted the Damned in Hell suffering a new torment from their inability to get at the Filboid Studge which elegant young fiends held in transparent bowls just beyond their reach. The scene was rendered even more gruesome by a subtle suggestion of the features of leading men and women ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... all the lands thereof, and go into Castille, and take with thee all that is thine. And if thou wilt not do this he sends to say that he will fight against Valencia, and take thee and thy wife and thy daughters, and torment thee grievously, in such manner that all Christians who shall hear tell of it shall talk thereof for evermore. This is the bidding of my ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... many miles of this place who considers it wholesome to withstand me. Yet were this woman purchasable, I would purchase. And—if she refused—I would not hinder her departure; but very certainly I would put Perion to the Torment of the Waterdrops. It is so droll to see a man go mad before your eyes, I think that I would laugh and ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... he inflicts, and in the extent of his punishments, viz, upon whole Families for the miscarriage of one in them. For when the King is displeased with any, he does not alwayes command to kill them outright, but first to torment them, which is done by cutting and pulling away their flesh by Pincers, burning them with hot Irons clapped to them to make them confess of their Confederates; and this they do, to rid themselves of their Torments, confessing far more than ever they saw or knew. ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... a very bad boy. At least his aunt, Mrs Dorothy Grumbit, said so; and certainly she ought to have known, if anybody should, for Martin lived with her, and was, as she herself expressed it, "the bane of her existence; the very torment of her life." No doubt of it whatever, according to Aunt Dorothy Grumbit's showing, Martin Rattler was "a remarkably ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... back of my head was the sensation of which I was first conscious upon awaking from what seemed to have been a sleep haunted by innumerable harrowing nightmares. Then, before I had time to fully realise that I was once more awake and free from the torment of those dreadful nightmares, I became aware of two things; first, that a soft, warm, salt-laden breeze was gently fanning my face and affording me much refreshment, and next, that the air was vibrant with the deep, booming thunder of heavily breaking ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... roughly-sharpened knife through raw flesh. Harold groaned in spirit; he felt a weakness which began at his heart to steal through him. It took all his manhood to bear himself erect. He dreaded what was coming, as of old the once- tortured victim dreaded the coming torment ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... her chronic lack of appetite, that forced her to live on beer, which kept her in a continual state of confusion, which was revealed in her exaggerated curtsies. Soft and heavy from drink, she was alarmed at the approach of the hour of the walk, a daily torment for her, as she tried painfully to keep up with Milita's long strides. Seeing the painter looking at her, she turned even redder and made ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Williams, p. 127.] and r. Palfrey complain [Footnote: Palfrey, ii. 464.] that Mary Prince reviled two of the ministers, who "with much moderation and tenderness endeavored to convince her of her errors." [Footnote: Hutch. Hist. i. 181.] A visitation of the clergy was a form of torment from which even the boldest recoiled; Vane, Gorton, Childe, and Anne Hutchinson quailed under it, and though the Quakers abundantly proved that they could bear stripes with patience, they could not endure this. She ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... out!" cried they laughing, and then they sent her into the kitchen. There she was obliged to do heavy work from morning to night, get up early in the morning, draw water, make the fires, cook, and wash. Besides that, the sisters did their utmost to torment her,—mocking her, and strewing peas and lentils among the ashes, and setting her to pick them up. In the evenings, when she was quite tired out with her hard day's work, she had no bed to lie on, but was obliged to rest on the hearth among the ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... letter to a friend, "you and I had together a tedious low-water trip on a steamboat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember, as I well do, that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio, there were on board ten or a dozen slaves shackled together with irons. That sight was a continued torment to me, and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio or any other slave border." A negrophilist he never became. "I protest," he said afterwards, when engaged in the slavery controversy, "against the counterfeit logic which concludes that because I ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... anything else would seem so small an evil that by his wisdom he would so overmatch it as to make it wholly disappear; and such a man makes no addition to his grief through opinion, and never conceives it right to torment himself above measure, nor to wear himself out with grief, which is the meanest thing imaginable. Reason, however, it seems, has demonstrated (though it was not directly our object at the moment to inquire whether anything can ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Suffolk; thou torment'st thyself; And these dread curses, like the sun 'gainst glass, Or like an overcharged gun, recoil And turns the force of ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... doth, proficere in pejus; more, indeed, than I could reasonably have expected he would have done;—insomuch, that I cannot but profess some relenting thoughts (though I had formerly occasion to use him somewhat coarsely), to see an old man thus fret and torment himself to no purpose. You, too, should pity your antagonist; not as if he did deserve it, but because he needs it; and as Chremes, in Terence, of ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... same risk at the very next corner. That is exactly as Nature intended it should be for, if either man or beast spent the time brooding over the many things that could happen, life would be a perpetual torment and probably of ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... solar walk, or milky-way; Yet simple nature to his hope has given, Behind the cloud-topp'd hill, an humbler heaven; Some safer world in depth of woods embraced, Some happier island in the watery waste, Where slaves once more their native land behold, No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold. To be, contents his natural desire, He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire; 110 But thinks, admitted to that equal sky, His faithful dog ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... in torment lifted up his eyes to Abraham in heaven and begged for a drop of water to cool ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... fall in love with any one. If he did not precisely fall in love with this girl, it was only because the situation precluded sentiment; and yet it was pleasant to sit and watch her paint, and even torment her ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... it mean? What is the object of it? And do you understand it at all, my dear fellow? It's cruel torture! Because I don't understand our relations, I hate, sometimes her, sometimes myself, sometimes both at once. Everything is in a tangle in my brain; I torment myself and grow stupid. And as though to spite me, she grows more beautiful every day, she is getting more wonderful. . . I fancy her hair is marvellous, and her smile is like no other woman's. I love her, and I know that my love ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... torment she had endured since the moment when she knelt, impressed into service as a lady's-maid, with pins in her lips, at the feet of her rival Hortense, and arranged her white satin train, to the hour when Leon, holding his wife by ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... funny that when you are with Eugenia you can't help feeling the same way she does about what she's telling; that it is right to break the rules and skip recitations and torment the teachers and play jokes on the girls not in their set. She seems to have a great influence over Lloyd. I don't believe godmother would like it if she knew how much. Already Lloyd has promised to tease her father and mother into letting her go to New York next ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Death is no riddle, compared to this. I remember a poor girl's story in the "Book of Martyrs." The "dry-pan and the gradual fire" were the images that frightened her most. How many have withered and wasted under as slow a torment in the walls of that larger Inquisition which we ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... them. Although obedient under the master's eye, at times during recess, if thwarted or stung by a fancied slight, M'liss would rage in ungovernable fury, and many a palpitating young savage, finding himself matched with his own weapons of torment, would seek the master with torn jacket and scratched face, and complaints of the dreadful M'liss. There was a serious division among the townspeople on the subject; some threatening to withdraw their children from such evil companionship, and others as warmly upholding ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... brief; whatever her errand, she could hardly have fulfilled it and escaped. At that moment she might be in the power and at the mercy of him who had followed her; providing he were not friendly. And in that case, what torment and what peril might not ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... and enjoys the comforts that fortune has allotted him. You thus impose on the impetuous sallies of cupidity a salutary rein! you calm the feverish ardor of enjoyments which disturb the senses; you free the soul from the fatiguing conflict of the passions; elevate it above the paltry interests which torment the crowd; and surveying, from your commanding position, the expanse of ages and nations, the mind is only accessible to the great affections—to the solid ideas of virtue and ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... with the wit, the quickness, the sense of 20, and I had almost said the size, for so large a proportion of flesh, blood, and bones rarely fall to the lot of male or female at that age. She was alternately the soul of fun and merriment or the plague and torment of every one about her. She had the judgment of mature age and the nonsense of the greatest baby in her. The mother alone obtained unlimited obedience from her. I am afraid I have discovered the "unruly one," ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... heart, and in tears. "My mother! Oh, that I had a mother to love me, to say Annette so kindly,—to share with me my heart's bitter anguish. How I could love Nicholas, now that there is no mother to love me!" she mutters as she sobs, wending her way to that place of earthly torment. How different are the feelings of the oppressor. He drinks a social glass of wine with his friend Blackett, lights his cigar most fashionably, bids him a polite good morning, and intimates that a cheque for the amount of the purchase will be ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... protection being gone, the spring lost much of its freshness and coldness, and more than two-thirds of its volume, and the banished serpents and stinging insects returned, and multiplied, and became a torment and have ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... Frost gathering frost, some Sarsar wind of death, seemed to repel me; some mighty relation between God and death dimly struggled to evolve itself from the dreadful antagonism between them; shadowy meanings even yet continued to exercise and torment, in dreams, the deciphering oracle within me. I slept—for how long I cannot say: slowly I recovered my self-possession; and, when I woke, found myself standing, as before, close to my ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... for you, most unmindfull of my service, For now I may upbraid you, and with honour, Since all is lost, and yet I am a gainer, In being deliver'd from a torment in you, For such you must have been, you to whom nature Gave with a liberal hand most excellent form, Your education, language, and discourse, And judgement to distinguish, when you shall With feeling sorrow understand ...
— The Little French Lawyer - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont
... is, perhaps, the first link in a chain of thoughts and images which will be the torment of your conscience and the bane of your life. That sentiment to which you imprudently pandered is perhaps the source of countless fears, regrets, remorse and sorrows. That imprudent glance is perhaps the first spark of a conflagration which nothing can extinguish, ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... sorry that he had come; the torment which had forced him to leave his own house had lost its sharpness when it lost its uncertainty, now that Odette's other life, of which he had had, at that first moment, a sudden helpless suspicion, was definitely there, almost within his grasp, before his eyes, in the full ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... of these criminals to be pale and ghastly, strongly expressive of the torment they suffered at the heart. They looked inward with a self-abhorrence, now inseparable from their existence. Their crimes themselves had become their punishment, and it was not necessary that greater should be inflicted. They haunted them like hideous spectres, and ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... doubt. Lives there who loves his pain! Who would not, finding way, break loose from Hell, Though thither doomed! Thou wouldst thyself, no doubt And boldly venture to whatever place Farthest from pain, where thou mightst hope to change Torment with ease, and soonest recompense Dole with delight, which in this place I sought; To thee no reason, who knowest only good, But evil hast not tried: and wilt object His will who bounds us! Let him surer bar His iron gates, if he intends our stay In that dark durance: Thus much what was asked. The ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... that good Christian home before I found out what a kettleful of jealousies and hatreds it was. The head master was an old sap-head; and the boys!... I was strange and ugly, and they thought they could torment and bully me; but I fought 'em... by the Lord, I fought 'em day and night, I fought 'em all around the place! And when I'd mastered 'em, you should have seen how they cringed and toadied! They hated the slavery they lived under, but not ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair
... the Esteem of the World it was the most disgraceful, and because the Torment of it was cruel and lingring, because it was meet for him who would invite all the Nations of the World unto Salvation, with his Members stretch'd out into every Coast of the World, and call off Men, who were glew'd unto earthly Cares, to heavenly Things; and, last of all, that ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... I got enough trouble without a young wretch like you coming to torment me? For God's sake go away and leave me alone! I'm telling you the truth, my my poor boy died of ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... going into his den which I know is snug and warm, in the very thickest part of the windrow. Now he is lying down in it with the logs and branches about him, and soon he will be asleep, dreaming happy dreams of tender roots and wild honey with no stings of bees to torment him." ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... rasping voice]. I'm sure I wish I did. An' I'd tell ye quick, an' git ye out of here. 'Tain't no fun fer me to have ye prowlin' all over my house. Ye ain't got no right t' torment me like this. Lord knows how I'll git my day's work done, if I can't ...
— Washington Square Plays - Volume XX, The Drama League Series of Plays • Various
... grows sharp with the torment; Look! my arms are skin and bone!— Rake open the red coals, goodman, And the witch shall have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... for human fame seized me. I drew my sword for Italy; triumphed, was a king, and learned to curse the hour when I first dreamed of fame. A passion for gold seized me. Wealth came to my wish, and to my torment. Days and nights of misery were the gift of avarice. In my passion I longed for regions where the hand of man had never rifled the mine. I found a bold Genoese, and led him to the discovering of a new world. With its metals I inundated the old; and ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... What have I been doing? Why do you torment me with questions like these? Can you not guess? But the story of my life is wanted to give force to my speech, afterwards I will tell it you. Nay! don't change your fickle mind now, and say you don't want to hear it. You must hear it, ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... by the highway," said Sir Brian the Brave, "and I came suddenly upon a crowd of great, rough fellows who were trying to torment a small black dog; and just as I saw them, a little boy ran up, as brave as a knight, and took the dog in his arms, and covered it with his coat. The rest ran away when I rode up; but the child stayed, ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay
... has not given, so far as I remember, the spectacle of any one soul under infliction of actual pain. In all previous representations of the Last Judgment there had at least been one division of the picture set apart for the representation of torment; and even the gentle Angelico shrinks from no orthodox detail in this respect; but Tintoret, too vivid and true in imagination to be able to endure the common thoughts of hell, represents indeed ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... horseshoe will I nail upon the threshold. There, ye night-hags and witches that torment The neighborhood, ye shall not ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... thoughts passed through my mind that night. They come to torment us all at times. I say to torment, for, alas! thinking can only serve to measure out the helplessness of thought. What is the purpose of our feeble crying in the awful silences of space? Can our dim intelligence read the secrets of that star-strewn sky? Does ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... nevertheless, a zeal for God's glory and man's welfare, they shrink from displaying themselves black and filthy in the view of men; because, thenceforward, no good can be achieved by them; no evil of the past be redeemed by better service. So, to their own unutterable torment, they go about among their fellow-creatures, looking pure as new-fallen snow, while their hearts are all speckled and spotted with iniquity of which they ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... only chance I have of feeling a little pleasure in life; of losing for a few moments the dreadful consciousness of being an outcast; of losing for a moment the remembrance of happy days long ago: that's the greatest torment of all, Willis. Don't blame me if I drink; it's the elixir vitae for me just as much as for Paracelsus." And he turned the handle ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... the very bottom of it. Although he never breathed a word of the weight upon his mind to the mermaid, she could see from his altered manner that all was not as it should be. Again and again she implored him with tears in her eyes not to torment both himself and her with evil thoughts. "I am free from every fault against you," she declared, "and I have no secret love nor any other sin against you on my conscience. But your false suspicion makes us both miserable, and will destroy ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... What did we agree upon in London? We were to implore my good mother to assist us a little, and, if she complied with our wishes, we were to be flattering and affectionate in our devotion to her. And what was the result? At the risk of killing the golden goose, you have made me torment the poor woman until she is ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... The spectrum of colors displayed were unbelievably, indescribably beautiful. The brilliant cloud masses that boiled and leaped around were like things alive trying to escape the terrible inner torment. ...
— Jack of No Trades • Charles Cottrell
... friend or foe,—felt the cruel stroke of war. All were driven to an inhospitable grave in the place where the fateful hand of war made them its victims, or perished in the sullen waters of the Volta. For nearly a hundred miles "the smoke of their torment" mounted the skies. Nothing was left in the rear of the Ashantee army, not even cattle or buildings. Pursued by a fleet-footed and impartial disaster, the fainting Fantis and their terrified allies ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... wrought a change. Her eyes were grown restless, her colour came and went. The past stirred in its shallow—ah, so shallow—grave; and dead hopes and dead forebodings, strive as she might, thrust out hands to plague and torment her. If the man who sought to speak with her by stealth, who dogged her footsteps and hung on the skirts of her party, were Tignonville—her lover, who at his own request had been escorted to the Arsenal ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... Laodamia, sometimes amounting to Idolatry—nay, the Love of Friend for Friend, with alle its sweet Influences and animating Transports, yet exceeding the Reasonableness of that of David for Jonathan, or of our blessed Lord for St. John and the Family of Lazarus, may procure far more Torment than Profit: even if the Attachment be reciprocal, and well grounded, and equallie matcht, which often it is not. Then interpose human Tempers, and Chills, and Heates, and Slyghtes fancied or intended, which make the vext Soul readie to wish it had never existed. How smalle a Thing is a ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... when he saw what he thought the sure indication of his lady's misfortune. What a sight met his eyes when he leapt on board! The princess stretched out in apparent death, and robed in the garments of the grave! He could not endure the torment and disillusion. He drove a dirk into his bosom with such passionate might that he fell down, bereft of life, mighty and mightily fallen, on ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... and we can see no cause for't in equally and equity, in cement, regard, torment, rebell, register, long and short in the same words being Acute when Verbs, and penacute when Nounes. But any Child or Foreigner, that never heard the words spoken, might uneasily guess at the true pronunciation by the sense, That an ...
— Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.
... peccatis suae gentis Christ for Israel's transgression Vidit Jesum in tormentis, Saw she suffer thus oppression, Et flagellis subditum; Torment, and the cruel blow: Vidit suum dulcem natum Saw Him desolate and dying; Morientem, desolatum, Him she loved, beheld Him sighing Dum emisit spiritum. Forth ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... them in such immense numbers as in north-eastern Siberia during the month of July. They make the great moss tundras in some places utterly uninhabitable, and force even the reindeer to seek the shelter and the cooler atmosphere of the mountains. In the Russian settlements they torment dogs and cattle until the latter run furiously about in a perfect frenzy of pain, and fight desperately for a place to stand in the smoke of a fire. As far north as the settlement of Kolyma, on the coast of the Arctic Ocean, the natives are compelled, in still, ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... mine own praise to mine own self bring? And what is't but mine own when I praise thee? Even for this, let us divided live, And our dear love lose name of single one, That by this separation I may give That due to thee which thou deserv'st alone. O absence! what a torment wouldst thou prove, Were it not thy sour leisure gave sweet leave, To entertain the time with thoughts of love, Which time and thoughts so sweetly doth deceive, And that thou teachest how to make one twain, By praising him here who doth ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... Hades, man-devouring! will thy maw never be full? Know, fair youth, that you are going to torment and to death; for he who met you (I will requite your kindness to another) is a robber and a murderer of men. Whatsoever stranger he meets he entices him hither to death; and as for this bed of which he speaks, truly it fits all comers, ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... courageous enough to advance, could I be the poltroon to retreat? They were however very good and loving neighbours, and the language they spoke was peculiarly impressive. The whole subject before us was love, and intrigue, and the way to torment the jealous. Whenever a significant passage occurred, and that was very often, either the feet, or the legs, or the elbows of Miss and me came in contact. Our eyes too might have met, but that I did not understand her ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... than in town, where my aunt and such as pretend an interest in me, and a power over me, do so persecute me with their good nature, and take it so ill that they are not accepted, as I would live in a hollow tree to avoid them. Here I have nobody but my brother to torment me, whom I can take the liberty to dispute with, and whom I have prevailed with hitherto to bring none of his pretenders to this place, because of the noise all such people make in a country, and the ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... to let each other enjoy the pleasures of the Earth, and shall hold each other no more in bondage. Then what will become of your power? Truly he must be cast out as a murderer. I pity you for the torment your spirit must go through, if you be not fore-armed as you are abundantly fore-warned from all places. But I look on you as part of the Creation that must be restored; and the Spirit may give you wisdom ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father's house: for I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment. ...
— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous
... enjoyed myself very greatly at my grandmother's, my father and mother looked at me kindly and said that their little Nelly liked to please others as well as herself. Oh how guilty I felt! I hated having anything to conceal, for I was by nature very frank. And oh, what a torment the poor cup and saucer were! I got rid of the bits by throwing them behind a hedge, but I could not tell where to hide my purchase, and I was so terribly afraid of breaking it. It was a relief to my mind ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... there was a great tall dunce of the name of Fisher, who never could be taught how to look out a word in the dictionary. He used to torment everybody with—"Do pray help me! I can't make out this one word." The person who usually helped him in his distress was a very clever, good natured boy, of the name of De Grey, who had been many years under Dr. Middleton's care, and who, by his abilities and good conduct, did him great credit. ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... lady!" he cried; "I pray you, do execution on me here and now. Carry me not to the extreme tortures. Death clears all. And I own that for my crimes I well deserve to die. But save me from the strappado, from the torment of the rack. I am an old man ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... I say so; he, that Caliban, Whom now I keep in service. Thou best know'st What torment I did find thee in; thy groans Did make wolves howl, and penetrate the breasts Of ever-angry bears: it was a torment To lay upon the damn'd, which Sycorax Could not again undo; it was mine art, When I arriv'd and heard thee, that made gape The pine, ...
— The Tempest • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... all that is good I love you so well that I wish from my soul that if you cannot love me, I may die, for life could be to me one perpetual torment. If the Duchess," he adds, "sees company I hope you will be there; but if she does not, I beg you will then let me see you in your chamber, if it be but for one hour. If you are not in the drawing-room you must then send me word at what hour ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... had lain for ten years on her back, and every year the hours had gone more lightly, through the hope of seeing him. She had outlived her time of torment and rebellion. There was a sense in which her life, in spite of its frustration, was complete. The love through which her womanhood struggled for victory in defeat had fulfilled itself by gradual growth ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... a staunch admirer of Lane's and she was the inveterate torment of her girl friends. She gave Helen a sly glance. Helen's ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... the happiness; it was not what one saw, tasted, smelt, felt, that one desired, but the real thing behind it; even the purest thing of all, the sight and contact of one whom one loved, let us say, with no sensual passion at all, but with a perfectly pure love; what a torment that was—desiring something which one could not get, the real fusion of feeling and thought! But the poor body was always in the way then, saying, 'Here am I—please ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... "Torment you! I?... My dear Nicholas, never! But you are so childish in your ideas—and are you unfortunate? I didn't know it. Is it about your inventions that you are speaking? Well, they were never very happy, ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... shape of a notary, without being recognized by the men. The marriage-contract is signed, and the lovers disappear to return in their true characters, full of righteous contempt. Isabella and Rosaura make believe to be conscience-stricken, and for a long while torment and deceive their angry bridegrooms. But at last they grow tired of teasing, they present the disguised Dolores, and they put their lovers to shame by showing that all was a farce. Of course the gentlemen humbly ask their pardon, and old Onofrio is ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... few pinches of powder, and a bottle of water were chucked ashore after him, and away rowed the boat's crew back to the ship, leaving the poor wretch alone to rave away his life in madness, or to sit sunken in his gloomy despair till death mercifully released him from torment. It rarely if ever happened that anything was known of him after having been marooned. A boat's crew from some vessel, sailing by chance that way, might perhaps find a few chalky bones bleaching upon the white sand ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... or door, not daring to knock for fear of disturbing her, but hoping to see one of the physicians or some one of the family, of whom to make inquiries. Oh, the nervousness of those days! the restless, weary nights we passed, till our fears and apprehensions became a racking torment, and we felt almost that we must die (sic) ourselves ourselves or be out of suspense; but when, on the evening of the tenth day after her illness, a messenger came with pallid face and almost wild look to say that she was dead, we ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... goods; he had stood on a form and sung little hymns to a derisive audience; he had answered questions as to his mother, his sister, and other members of his family; he had endured buffeting and kicks, till he was fairly worn out, and till it ceased to be amusing to torment him. ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... Clashnichd, with many stripes, from her natural inheritance. Not satisfied with invading and depriving her of her just rights, he was in the habit of following her into her private haunts, not with the view of offering her any endearments, but for the purpose of inflicting on her person every torment which his brain ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... travel another ell over the atrocities they call roads here," Mrs. Winscombe declared. "I expect to die returning to England as it is, and I won't put up with any more preliminary torment. ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... strength, and spirits sank beneath the blow, and he never wholly recovered them. In vain my mother strove to cheer him, by appealing to his piety, to his courage, to his affection for herself and us. That very affection was his greatest torment: it was for our sakes he had so ardently longed to increase his fortune—it was our interest that had lent such brightness to his hopes, and that imparted such bitterness to his present distress. He now tormented himself with remorse at having ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... for her Maiestie, she desireth to stand as a person voide of all trueth and credite with good Princes, if she euer punished any of these men with any strange or newe kinde of torment, then is appointed by the prescript of the ancient lawes of this Realme prouided against such persons, as shall be found and conuicted for ...
— A Declaration of the Causes, which mooved the chiefe Commanders of the Nauie of her most excellent Maiestie the Queene of England, in their voyage and expedition for Portingal, to take and arrest in t • Anonymous
... her husband. "Is 't not enough to ye Presbyterians to doom one to everlasting torment in the future life without making this ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... many others like him," said Mr. Spencer. "They do not see how helpless a horse is when his head is drawn back with an over-check or hurt by a curb-bit and when he has no chance to drive away the flies that torment him. To cut off a horse's tail not only hurts him very much at the time, but makes ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... elephant on Benjamin's hands. The weeks multiplied, and still Ralph had no employment. He was a constant bill of expense. Willing to work, abhorring a life of idleness, his condition and prospects were a torment to himself. He was more troubled even than Benjamin over his misfortune. At ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... the priestly hand, and fixed his eyes upon Seraphina. I happened to be looking at his face; he seemed to be ready to go out of his mind. His jealousy, the awful torment of soul and body, made him motionless ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... the world, except the social, yet irrational ancient superstitions of Greece and Rome, mankind have vainly thought to propitiate the Almighty beneficence, by ridiculous acts of austere self-torment; and even the ignorant or designing followers of the pure and rational religion of Jesus, have copied all the monstrous mummery, and abominable practices of the heathen, which they have engrafted upon his law of love ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... letter to induce the King to reconsider his decision. But James adhered to it. It was—apart from the indirect profit he derived from it—a clemency full worthy of him. He knew that to spare lives in this fashion was to convert them into living deaths. Many must succumb in torment to the horrors of West Indian slavery, and so be the envy of their ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... "that it should be possible for me to be miserable while I am so dear to your heart. But you know, O my soul! that when love and jealousy come together, the torment is the greatest in the world. Myself—myself, alas! caused the mischief, and myself alone ought to suffer for it. You must keep your promise. You must abide by the word you have given, especially to one who has undergone so ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... offences, and to whose providence you ought to submit, let what will happen?' After this, natural courage would inspire me to resist to the last drop of blood, and sooner die than suffer myself to be taken by boorish, rascally Dutchmen, who had arts to torment beyond death itself. ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... Satan's name," he said, "have you come to torment me with your jeers and scoffs, ye minions of h——? Away with you! Back! back! I say, to your ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... between his teeth the assassin hastily adjusted the straps under her arms. It was but the work of half a minute from the time he had stopped, though to the terror-stricken child it seemed an age of torment. ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... wert fain, Among Thy menials, now, my face Thou findest. Pardon, this troop I cannot follow after With lofty speech, though by them scorned and spurned: My pathos certainly would move Thy laughter, If Thou hadst not all merriment unlearned. Of suns and worlds I've nothing to be quoted; How men torment themselves, is all I've noted. The little god o' the world sticks to the same old way, And is as whimsical as on Creation's day. Life somewhat better might content him, But for the gleam of heavenly light which Thou hast lent him: He calls it Reason—thence his power's increased, To be far beastlier ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... passed uneventfully, until the one romance of their lives befell them. It began with the reappearance in Redlintie of Magerful Tarn, who had come to torment his father into giving him more money, but, finding he had come too late, did not harass the sisters. This is perhaps the best thing that can be told of him, and, as if he knew this, he had often told it himself to Jean ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... invisible nightmare. To suffer through one's own fault is a torment worthy of the lost, for so grief is envenomed by ridicule, and the worst ridicule of all, that which springs from shame of one's self. I have only force and energy wherewith to meet evils coming from outside; ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he was until dark. You know Hooty's eyes are not meant for much use in bright light, and the brighter the light, the more uncomfortable his eyes feel. Blacky knows this, too, and he had chosen the very brightest part of the morning to call his relatives over to torment poor Hooty. Jolly, round, bright Mr. Sun was shining his very brightest, and the white snow on the ground made it seem brighter still. Even Blacky had to blink, and he knew that poor Hooty would find it ...
— Blacky the Crow • Thornton W. Burgess
... are so unhealthily and furiously shaken when he goes abroad, has a craving for disturbing the nerves of others; this in itself makes him the most dangerous of advisers. William II never allows to himself or to others any relaxation of the brain; like all spirits in torment, he must needs find, forthwith, to the very minute, a counter-effect to every thing that confronts him. With him, even a sudden calm contains the threat of a storm, excitement lurks beneath his moods of quietness. The bastard peace which he has authorised Turkey to conclude, conceals a new revolution ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... to his wife, the wife to her husband, and the house kept in quiet. A man is laughed at, when seeing his wife weeping he licks up her tears. But how much happier is it to be thus deceived than by being troubled with jealousy not only to torment himself but set all things in ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... gravels round his blather wrench, An' gouts torment him inch by inch, Wha twists his gruntle wi' a glunch O' sour disdain, Out owre a glass o' whiskey ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... I was more curious than to find out the true remedies of these poisoned arrows. For besides the mortality of the wound they make, the party shot endureth the most insufferable torment in the world, and abideth a most ugly and lamentable death, sometimes dying stark mad, sometimes their bowels breaking out of their bellies; which are presently discoloured as black as pitch, and so unsavory as no man can endure to cure or to attend ...
— The Discovery of Guiana • Sir Walter Raleigh
... prisoners were by this time suffering so acutely from the tightness of the ligatures which confined their arms to their bodies that they were in no mood for conversation, but just lay upon the earthen floor of the hut in silent torment. But, luckily for them, they were not called upon to endure very much longer; for when they had lain there about half an hour the cacique appeared and gave orders that their bonds were to be loosed, at the same time warning them that the first indication of an attempt to escape would ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... a treach'rous smile; Remorse, that never sleeps, brings up the rear, Hates his own deed, and drops a barren tear. There, Love, capricious child, had chose to reign, 60 And pains and pleasures were his motely train; Cruel and kind by turns, but ever blind, The dear delight, the torment of mankind, Thro' ev'ry camp, thro' ev'ry senate glides, Commands the warrior, o'er the judge presides; 65 Still welcome to the heart, he still deceives, Pants in each bosom, ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... begged Sir Francis to "peruse, add to, or take away from," and then to inclose to the Earl. He hoped he should be forgiven if the style of the production was not quite satisfactory; for, said he, "the place where I am doth too much torment my memory, to call every ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... his wife when he is drunk, but, at the same time, he gets angry at a friend when he beats his mistress.... According to his own confession he reads many useless things, nevertheless he can become interested in a serious work. If he drinks to excess, it is to "drive away the thoughts" that torment him. He wants to analyze every question and find out what is at the bottom of it. He is the spiritual brother ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... is that I myself was waked out of my sleep that night by the most oppressive sense of misery and hopelessness I have ever experienced," Mr. Johnson said seriously. "It was so overpowering that it made me think of Saint Theresa's description of her torment in that oven in the wall of hell which had by kindly forethought on the part of the devil been arranged for her permanent tenancy. Of course, it was just a nightmare," he added, doubtfully; "or perhaps a ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... even in Protestant churches who can give a reason for their belief? If the heathen worship degrades mankind because it is a superstition, with fear for its motive, how large a part of Christian preaching consists also of an appeal to terror! Is not the fear of everlasting torment in hell the motive power of much which is called Christianity? Consider Catholics eating their God: is that the worship of the Father in spirit and truth? Think of the religious wars, of the religious ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... every other diseased condition. To take care that he should not be deservedly smitten by this inward reproach is not indeed my duty but his business; nevertheless, it is my duty to do nothing which by the nature of man might seduce him to that for which his conscience may hereafter torment him, that is, it is my duty not to give him occasion of stumbling. But there are no definite limits within which this care for the moral satisfaction of others must be kept; therefore it involves only an ...
— The Metaphysical Elements of Ethics • Immanuel Kant
... and the torment of the world! The despair of philosophers and sages, the rapture of poets, the confusion of ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... colony was torment. Aletha rode behind her cousin on the saddle-blanket, and apparently suffered little if at all. But Bordman could only ride in the ground-car's cargo space, along with the sack of mail from the ship. The ground was unbelievably rough and the jolting intolerable. The heat was literally ...
— Sand Doom • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... render his punishment more public and conspicuous, he was removed to Paris, there to undergo a repetition of all his former tortures, with such additional circumstances as the most fertile and cruel dispositions could devise for increasing his misery and torment. Being conducted to the Concergerie, an iron bed, which likewise served for a chair, was prepared for him, and to this he was fastened with chains. The torture was again applied, and a physician ordered to attend, to see what degree ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... called Bellona, had these thre handmaids ever attendynge on her: BLOOD, FIRE, and FAMINE, which thre damosels be of that force and strength that every one of them alone is able and sufficient to torment and afflict a proud prince; and they all joyned together are of puissance to destroy the most populous country and most richest region ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... on the davenport; Edwards prowled up and down the other end of the room, openly in torment. Those stormy black eyes of his were seldom off Bowman, while the doctor's gray, heavy-lidded gaze never got beyond the toes of the restless man's moving boots. He had begun a grumbling tale of the coroner's incompetence and ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... was to himself that Willie was the torment. "I plague myself 'most to death, Tiny," he would not infrequently confess when the two sat together at dusk in the little room that looked out on the reach of blue sea. "It's gettin' all these idees that drives me distracted. 'Tain't that I go huntin' 'em; they come to me, hittin' me ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett |
