"Tormenting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... act was concluded, the marquis taking away as servants Serpolette and Germaine, the representative of timid beauty in the troupe, and for coachman the stupid Grenicheux. A burst of applause brought them out again holding hands, those who five seconds before had been tormenting one another and were about to come to blows, bowing and smiling here and there to the gallant Manila public and exchanging knowing looks with ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... sorts of impudent things instead of singing. But, as they would then walk away with my dishes, and threaten to pour water on me if I didn't do what they said, in desperation I would sing my songs to get rid of them. One young woman, the lady's-maid, was particularly tormenting in this way; and when Tom, the footman, tried to teach me a new song, I could not help noticing she was in a great fright. I pricked up my ears at once, and showed Tom I was all attention. In a very few days I could say it quite correctly, but no one knew of it except Tom. Seeing the lady's-maid ...
— The Cockatoo's Story • Mrs. George Cupples
... half so much to bring into action all the Chevalier's vivacity, in point of competition: vexation awakened in him whatever expedients the desire of revenge, malice, and experience, could suggest, for troubling the designs of a rival, and tormenting a mistress. His first intention was to return her letters, and demand his presents, before he began to tease her; but, rejecting this project, as too weak a revenge for the injustice done him, he was upon the point of conspiring the destruction ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... length chosen; but she had yet to complete her freight and secure a sufficient number of passengers. Days were consumed in drumming up a cargo. This was a tormenting delay to me, who was about to make my first voyage, and who, boy-like, had packed my trunk on the first mention of the expedition. How often that trunk had to be unpacked and ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... by the little inn, the first houses, the grocer's, the blacksmith's, the large walnut-tree, the church, the watchmaker's, who was also a dealer in curiosities, and the Pigeau farm. The villagers were out in the fields. Some children who were tormenting a wet cat stopped to see the carriage drive past. An old man, seated on a bench in front of his cottage door, with a woollen shawl wrapped round him and shivering in spite of the sun, lifted his cap. Then the ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... was able neither to lift it nor to untie the thong that made fast its neck. Therefore, as, notwithstanding the dew which she had lapped, she needed drink sorely and longed also for the use of her hands to protect herself from the tormenting attacks of stinging gnats and carrion flies, she set herself to try to ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... an additional layer all over, when a flash of lightning, reflected in all its dazzle from the snow without, almost blinded him. A peal of long-drawn thunder followed; the wind rose; and just such a storm came on as had risen some time before at the death of Kuntz, whose spectre was still tormenting the city. The gnomes of terror, deep hidden in the caverns of Teufelsbuerst's nature, broke out jubilant. With trembling hands he tried to cast the pall over the awful white chrysalis,—failed, and fled to his chamber. And there lay the studio naked to the eyes of the lightning, ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... 1060-1108) were able men, and they were almost helpless among the fierce nobles of their own domain, and the great counts and dukes around them. Castles were built of huge strength, and served as nests of plunderers, who preyed on travellers and made war on each other, grievously tormenting one another's "villeins"—as the peasants were termed. Men could travel nowhere in safety, and horrid ferocity and misery prevailed. The first three kings were good and pious men, but too weak to deal with their ruffian nobles. ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the faculty of sleeping well, in spite of the most tormenting worries. He arose on the morning after his interview with Mr. Heidlemann, ready to begin the struggle with all his normal energy and confidence. But the day brought him only discouragement. He had a large acquaintance, ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... that two emissaries were upon the seas from the New World. They were coming to interest the King in behalf of Sir John. So far the Duke had kept everything from his Majesty and must also keep these "bumpkins" from tormenting him with importunities of so rustic a ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... thought that the zancudo of the torrid zone was the gnat of our marshes, become more vigorous, more voracious, and more noxious, under the influence of a burning climate. This is a very erroneous opinion. I carefully examined and described upon the spot those zancudos, the stings of which are most tormenting. In the rivers Magdalena and Guayaquil alone ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... come, must come, when we shall be commanded by mortality not only to cease tormenting others, but also ourselves. A time must come, when man, even on earth, shall wipe away most of his tears, were it only from pride. Nature, indeed, draws tears out of the eyes, and sighs out of the breath so quickly, that the wise ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... embarrassing situation for the new usher. He had never been so fixed before. He had often had a crowd of small boys round him, tormenting him and provoking him to anger; but to be perched up here at a desk, with twenty tender youths hanging on the first word which should fall from his lips, was to say the least, a novel experience. He ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... almost sooner they took my head off at once rather than put me to more of that agony. But no; I hope they won't do that either. There is a remedy for every evil but death." With these reflections, fears, and impotent rages tormenting him, Daireh reached his house, and from a box, which contained what he had of most value, produced the required documents which had cost Harry Forsyth so much anxiety, toil, and suffering to come at. He was strongly tempted to destroy them, and so glean some little vengeance; ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... think I would rather belong to his profession than any other in all the world—yes, I believe I would rather belong to it than to my own; for when you can rescue the body of a man from the cruel and tormenting flames, you have a rare chance ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... depending upon me for support. However, my attempt was frustrated. I was bled; and then placed in a strait-waistcoat, as if I were a madman. Mad! I really believed I should become so. All night long the jailors sat around me, like children amusing themselves by tormenting a chained animal. They watched me, talked about me, and passed the candle to and fro before ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... Universal Judgment containing Paradise and Hell; and even as he strove, in the Paradise, to give the greatest beauty that he knew to the souls of the blessed, restored to their bodies, so too in the Hell he made the strangest forms of devils that can possibly be seen, most intent on tormenting the souls of the damned; and in this work he surpassed not merely the Germans who were working there but even his own self, to his own great credit. And for the reason that he made therein a great number of figures and endured much fatigue, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... this, however, was now less prolonged than during the early days of their captivity, for they had now no longer strength or spirits to resent their treatment, and as no fun was to be obtained from passive victims, even the village boys soon ceased to find any amusement in tormenting them. ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... said I, tormenting myself with the thought that she was acting under some compelling sense of obligation; and that should ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... Lady Mabel, "as much piety, and certainly more wisdom, in frankly enjoying the good things given us, than in despising the world which God made, and rejecting the blessings it teems with, like these self-tormenting ascetics, the monks and friars ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... hopes—I was savage with disappointment, and when I heard Freddy softly calling me from the veranda I zigzagged away through the trees toward the lodge gate. There are moments when a man is better left alone. Besides, I was in one of those self-tormenting humors when it is a positive pleasure to pile on the agony. When you're eighty-eight per cent. miserable it's hell not to reach par. I was sore all over, and I wanted the balm—the consolation—to be found in the company of those cold old stars, who had looked down in their time ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... man is regarded almost as un-English who would have the world believe that there are British boys for whom the acquisition of knowledge has almost the same attraction as for their heroes in fiction has the acquisition of somebody's apples, or the tormenting of helpless animals. ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... feathered tribe in the gorgeous woods and coppices of Paraguay, and all, with the melancholy caw, caw of the toucans overhead, spoke of a tropical land. Parrots chattered in the trees, and sometimes a serpent glided across the red sand road. Unfortunately, flies were so numerous and so tormenting that, even with the help of a green branch, we could not keep off the swarms, and around the horses' eyes were dozens of them. Several menacing hornets also troubled us. They are there so fierce that they can easily sting a man or a horse ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... sleep; yet was it impossible for us to drive out from our hearts that natural sadness which men must feel who know that they have failed in a strong effort to accomplish a project very dear to them, and who know also that they are standing upon the very threshold of a most tormenting death. ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... not without its tormenting thoughts. And she, who feared no physical danger, quailed before a ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... far below, the singer's voice went silent with the slamming of a door in one of the bunkhouses. The song was popular; some rimester in the Tonah Basin camp had written the parody for the tormenting of the drill crews. And, high on the mountainside, Dean Rawson hummed a few bars of the lilting air after the singer's ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... We were both the merest children. I had, and have been, attached fifty times since that period; yet I recollect all we said to each other, all our caresses, her features, my restlessness, sleeplessness, my tormenting my mother's maid to write for me to her, which she at last did to quiet me. Poor Nancy thought I was wild, and, as I could not write for myself, became my secretary. I remember too our walks, and the happiness of sitting by Mary, in the children's apartment, ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... and tosses about with sudden starts, so that she is almost beside herself. And when she has tossed and sobbed and groaned and started up and sighed again then she looked within her heart to see who and what manner of man it was for whom Love was tormenting her. And when she has refreshed herself somewhat with thinking to her heart's content, she stretches and tosses about again, and ridicules all the thoughts she has had. Then she takes another course, and says: "Silly one, what matters it to me if ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... are of course men, and the words encourage us to dim hopes about which we cannot dogmatise of a time when all the wayward self-seeking and self-tormenting children of men shall have learned to know and love their best friend, and 'there shall be one flock and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... stayed for a couple of days. The necessity for detailed lying about his affairs in London—lying which would long ago have been detected, but for the absolute confidence of his mother and sister, and the retired habits of their life—added another cause of unrest to those already tormenting him, and he was glad to escape into solitude. Though with little faith in the remedy, he betook himself to a quiet spot on the coast of Norfolk, associated with memories of holiday in childhood, and there for the rest of the time he had allowed ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... gnashed her teeth; the jealous doubts which had been tormenting her all the evening were confirmed. That the man whom she hated—yes, in her blind anger, she hated him then—should so impose upon her, should excuse himself by lies, lies base and false as he was, from accompanying her out, on purpose ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... she dressed her that morning, and listened to her plans for Herbert's amusement during his holidays. She had banished from her mind all recollection of his wayward temper, and the delight he always seemed to take in tormenting her and teasing her in every way in his power, and only thought how nice it would be to have him at ...
— Carry's Rose - or, the Magic of Kindness. A Tale for the Young • Mrs. George Cupples
... should I sacrifice for? What was I good for? Fortunately, in a few days, the Reverend Lyman Abbott, the Reverend Mr. Lynch, and some other notable laborers for good causes called to urge my reconsideration. I divined their errand and frankly told them they need not speak. My conscience had been tormenting me for declining and I would accept the presidency and do my duty. After that came the great national gathering (the following April) when for the first time in the history of Peace Society meetings, there attended delegates from thirty-five of the states of the Union, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... Necks, fixing their Stings in their Hearts. Others in fine had monstrous big Vultures perching upon their shoulders, and sticking their horrid Bills in their Breasts as if they wou'd pull out their Hearts. Besides all this, the Devils went running over them with dreadful Scourges lashing and tormenting them, so as that the poor wretches never ceas'd Crying and Lamenting. All these Torments (say the Devils to the Soldier) shalt thou suffer, except thou consent to return from whence thou camest. The Soldier despised their Threats, and disabled them to do him any harm, by ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... his head one June afternoon, as they found themselves alone, crossing a beech wood on one of the private roads of the Tallyn estate; the groom having been despatched on a message to a farm-house. Alicia was in her most daring and provocative mood, tormenting and flattering him by turns; the reflections from her rose-colored parasol dappling her pale skin with warm color; her beautiful ungloved hands and arms, bare to the elbow, teasing the senses of the man beside her. Suddenly ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Betty was going: though there are so many of us, you've no idea what a gap it makes in the family when even one is away; and, with all her roughness and tormenting ways, Betty is real nice, too. I didn't actually know what I'd do with both Nannie and her away. I couldn't help wishing that the Ervengs had asked Nora instead of Betty, and I know Betty wished so, too, for you never saw a ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... the world why you are not, my dear, is that you were tormenting yourself with foolish scruples. Can you not see that if you once had the courage to rid yourself of them it would be all that you need. Why are ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... at last," said my mother; "but how silly of them to go to the front door on such a windy night, tormenting boys!" ...
— Amona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... is there in tormenting and killing an enemy, and what good is won by not releasing an enemy in our power? Therefore, O thou of benign countenance, why should we not forgive this serpent and try to earn ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... on that path will have to choose, and it sometimes happens that God's side and the Devil's weigh so equally that the scales oscillate, and it is then that the great choice has to be made. At that point any interference from outside is terribly dangerous and tormenting. It is as though a man were making such terrible efforts to draw a weight over a ridge that the slightest touch would cause ...
— The Light Shines in Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... her too indulgent mother tried to soften her affliction, very injudiciously, we think, as every remark of hers only elicited a fresh burst of feeling; and Mrs. Ellis felt it quite a relief when the self-tormenting girl rose up hastily and retreated to her bedroom, there to ponder over, not her own delinquencies, we fear, but the wrongs inflicted on ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... vulture tearing his liver, as the pains of the mind are greater than those of the body. Jealousy is a ferment of love, hatred, hope, fear, shame, anxiety, suspicion, grief, pity, envy, pride, rage, cruelty, vengeance, madness, and if there be any other tormenting passion which can agitate the human mind. Therefore to express jealousy well, requires that one know how to represent justly all these passions by turns, (see Love, Hatred, &c.) and often several of them together. Jealousy ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... color in her work every day. If you enjoy them, depend upon it you will paint them to a certain point right: or, at least, if you do not enjoy them, you are certain to paint them wrong. If color does not give you intense pleasure, let it alone; depend upon it, you are only tormenting the eyes and senses of people who feel color, whenever you touch it; and that is ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... their wealth and livelihood doth wholly arise; not only in their diet, but in their cloathing, and overworking some of them even to death (which is particularly the calamity of the most innocent and laborious) but also in tormenting and whipping them almost, and sometimes quite, to death, upon even small miscarriages. He apprehends it was from this prejudice against the Negroes, that arose those supercilious checks and frowns he frequently met with, when using innocent arguments and persuasions, ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... some merry couplet. Such is the facility with which he strings together puns and rhyme, that in the course of half an hour he has been known to wager, and win it—that he made a couplet and a pun on every one present, to the number of fifty. Nothing annoys the exquisite Sextile so much as this tormenting talent of Horace; he is always shirking him, and yet continually falling in his way. For some time, while Horace was in the fourth form, these little jeu-d'esprits were circulated privately, and smuggled up in half suppressed laughs; ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... The Worme of Conscience still begnaw thy Soule, Thy Friends suspect for Traytors while thou liu'st, And take deepe Traytors for thy dearest Friends: No sleepe close vp that deadly Eye of thine, Vnlesse it be while some tormenting Dreame Affrights thee with a Hell of ougly Deuills. Thou eluish mark'd, abortiue rooting Hogge, Thou that wast seal'd in thy Natiuitie The slaue of Nature, and the Sonne of Hell: Thou slander of thy heauie Mothers Wombe, Thou loathed Issue of thy ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... torment rose in her mind, a tangible searing hell alive with flame and devils, a sea of liquid fire, an ocean of boiling pitch, Satan commanding in the midst, and a myriad of fiends working his tormenting will. ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... wrongs and sufferings, and bores every publisher of every magazine and paper of which they have ever heard, till he is tormented into printing, or dies of manuscript on the brain. I tell you, Helen, we do our share in aggravating the people we meet daily, without tormenting an innocent man, 'who never did us any harm;' and I for one, don't want an extra sin on my conscience. Moreover, I am afraid it would spoil you, should you happen to succeed. Have you forgotten your old friend Angelina Hobbs? One article ruined her for life. Until ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... has yielded, she has yielded!' Thereupon they took her back to her hut, and the next day to Nangasaqui—although she opposed them violently and protested that she had not given up the faith, and that they had no reason for torturing her, or for tormenting and killing ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... around her temples and a little bit of beard on her chin. She was no blood relation of the family but, as an ancient companion to a former mistress of the house, had long eaten the bread of charity under that roof. She was now engaged upon some eye-tormenting, fine fancy work which could not have afforded the poor ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... say "Allez-vous en—va!" and I said it, not once, but again and again, each time more emphatically than before. Nobody paid the slightest attention, however, except, perhaps to find an extra spice of pleasure in tormenting me. If I had been a yapping miniature lap-dog, with teeth only pour faire rire, I could not have been treated with greater disdain by the crowd. I glanced hastily round to see if Sir Samuel had not taken alarm; but, sitting beside his wife in the big crystal cage, he seemed ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... if despotism were to be established amongst the democratic nations of our days, it might assume a different character; it would be more extensive and more mild; it would degrade men without tormenting them. I do not question, that in an age of instruction and equality like our own, sovereigns might more easily succeed in collecting all political power into their own hands, and might interfere ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... reverence the Deity in all my thoughts and feelings, I for some time enjoyed the most unbroken serenity and peace. The examinations to which I was every two or three days subjected by the special commission, however tormenting, produced no lasting anxiety, as before. I succeeded in this arduous position, in discharging all which integrity and friendship required of me, and left the rest to the will of God. I now, too, resumed my utmost efforts ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... twelve hundred pounds, was offered to the English nation for seven hundred; but we would not give seven hundred, and the whole series would have been in the Munich Museum at this moment, if Professor Owen[10] had not with loss of his own time, and patient tormenting of the British public in person of its representatives, got leave to give four hundred pounds at once, and himself become answerable for the other three! which the said public will doubtless pay him eventually, but sulkily, and caring nothing about the matter all ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... be woebegone and disconsolate, and the next he would be visited with a violent flow of spirits, to which he could only give vent by incessant laughing, whistling, and telling stories. When other resources failed, we used to amuse ourselves by tormenting him; a fair compensation for the trouble he cost us. Tete Rouge rather enjoyed being laughed at, for he was an odd compound of weakness, eccentricity, and good-nature. He made a figure worthy of a painter as he paced along before us, perched on the back of his mule, and enveloped in a huge ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Quarter Circle KT, had deliberately mounted Captain Jack and ridden away. It seemed like little less than an intentional snub! In addition to the half-resentment she felt, there remained in her mind an insistent and tormenting picture of the slender, subtle, young rider swaying easily to the swing of Captain Jack as he galloped down the valley ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... if I would," returned the innkeeper, his surly mood vanishing as he saw before him the opportunity of enjoying himself by tormenting somebody. "But thou art such a sprat of a man that my compassion forbids me. The king looketh for thee to hear thee tell what thou knowest of the whereabouts of the young lord and his companion. If thou canst not tell, he will have thy head; so hath ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... which it was generally reported that the Landgrave slept, was more distinguishable than any other part of Klosterheim, from one brilliant lustre which shot its rays through a large oriel window. There at this moment was sleeping that unhappy prince, tyrannical and self-tormenting, whose unmanly fears had menaced her own innocence with so much indefinite danger; whom, in escaping, she knew not if she had escaped; and whose snares, as a rueful misgiving began to suggest, were ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... made the above-mentioned confession; which he however endeavoured to account for, by protesting that he was forced into it by the continued importunity she used: who vowed, that, as she was sure of his guilt, she would never leave tormenting him till he had owned it; and faithfully promised, that, in such case, she would never mention it to him more. Hence, he said, he had been induced falsely to confess himself guilty, though he was innocent; ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... has recently returned from India, relates that he received a perfect cure for the toothach, in a very remarkable way. He had occasion to land on the Isle of Bourbon, at the time of his being afflicted with a tormenting toothach; and a handkerchief being tied about his head, his appearance excited the curiosity of the natives, who approached him, and inquired, by signs and gestures, the nature of his complaint. Having been satisfied on this point, they made him understand that they ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various
... such an Abuse? It was the Result of a Discourse, lately held at a Meeting of some very Pious and Learned Ministers among us, That the Devils may sometimes have a permission to Represent an Innocent Person, as Tormenting such as are under Diabolical Molestations: But that such things are Rare and Extraordinary; especially when such matters come before Civil Judicature. The Opinion expressed with so much Caution and Judgment, seems to be the prevailing Sense ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... the camp of the praetorians, posted up in the Capitol, and sent over the empire by government couriers. The authorities in each province were themselves threatened with heavy penalties, if they did not succeed in frightening or tormenting the Christians into ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... is not the self-tormenting strife of introspective and self-conscious aspiration, but rather an unrelaxed, diligent intention, a steady acquiescence, a simple and loyal surrender to the great currents of life, a holding on to results achieved in your best moments, that shall do it for you: ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... attention, and care, unless she had dimly supposed him to be something other than he had represented himself. Unable yet to leave his bed, he lay, to all appearances, quietly contented, acknowledging her gentle ministrations with equally gentle words of thanks, while all the time he was mentally tormenting himself with doubts and fears. He knew that during his illness he had been delirious,—surely in that delirium he might have raved and talked of many things that would have yielded the entire secret of his ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... and scalping-knives in a way that made my blood run cold. The red-skins, when they take a captive for whom for any reason they have an especial hatred, generally wait two or three days, that they may have the satisfaction of tormenting him before they commence actually to torture him to death. As I watched them, however, I felt that any moment they might spring up and begin to ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... listened to her? Why hadn't he taken her in his arms and told her not to be a little fool? Why did men ever listen to women? If he had really loved her, would he have gone away? She tormented herself with this last question for a while. She was still tormenting herself with it when a melancholy voice broke ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... subiection, reigned in Britaine. The same witnesseth [Sidenote: Gildas in epist.] Gildas, saieng: Britaine hath kings, but they are tyrants: iudges it hath, but the same are wicked, oftentimes spoiling and tormenting the innocent people. And Cesar (as ye haue heard) speaketh of foure kings that ruled in Kent, and thereabouts. Cornelius Tacitus maketh mention [Sidenote: Some take Prasutagus and Aruiragus to be one man.] of Prasutagus, and Cogidunus, that ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (3 of 8) • Raphael Holinshed
... self-tormenting remorseful stage had worn itself out, found life fuller, freer without her mother. Her step-father she hated—had always hated. But he could be avoided. She went to a boarding-school at Torquay, and some of her holidays were spent with her aunts, the sisters of the boy-father ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... theirs? What a diversity of opinions have been presented during the past three hundred years! One may be as good as another, or they may be all alike untrue!" Timon and Pyrrhon declared that, of each thing, it might be said to be, and not to be; and that, consequently, we should cease tormenting ourselves, and seek to obtain an absolute calm, which they dignified with the name of ataraxie. Beholding the overthrow and disgrace of their country, surrounded by examples of pusillanimity and corruption, and infected ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... have held according to the army list. He therefore became a general in the army and a lieutenant in the Garde de Corps, which, as the regiment was entirely composed of nobles, was a very high situation. Colonel Barbier, with a double motive—first that of tormenting Monsieur de St. Morys and next that of throwing discredit on a corps which he detested—introduced into the Garde room, and circulated wherever he could find access, printed papers blackening the ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... probable. Etna, Stromboli, Hecla, must be, likewise, all mouths of hell; and there were not wanting holy hermits who had heard within those craters, shrieks and clanking chains, and the shouts of demons tormenting endlessly the souls of the lost. And now, how has all this been shaken? How much of all this does any educated man, though he be pious, though he desire with all his heart to be orthodox—and is orthodox in fact— how much of all this does he believe, as he believes that ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... the honest and candid disciples of the religion we profess in common,—I mean revealed religion; nothing sooner makes them take a short cut out of the bondage of sectarian vexation into open and direct infidelity than tormenting men for every difference. My opinion is, that, in establishing the Christian religion wherever you find it, curiosity or research is its best security; and in this way a man is a great deal better justified ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... his soul was full of inexpressible grief. He had lost in De Neufville not only a friend whom he loved, and on whose fidelity he could count, but his own future and his last hope were buried in his grave. But his own tormenting thoughts left him no leisure to mourn over his deceased friend. It was the kind of death that De Neufville had chosen which ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... period of torment, and then let him loose in a much more savage condition (for the chain makes a dog savage) to bite again and expiate again, having meanwhile spent a great deal of human life and happiness in the task of chaining and feeding and tormenting him, seems to me idiotic and superstitious. Yet that is what we do to men who bark and bite and steal. It would be far more sensible to put up with their vices, as we put up with their illnesses, until they give more ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... to exterminate those who dared deny his spiritual supremacy. The people were also taught that by the payment of money to the church they might free themselves from sin, and also release the souls of their deceased friends who were confined in the tormenting flames. By such means did Rome fill her coffers, and sustain the magnificence, luxury, and vice of the pretended representatives of Him who had not where to ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... until, on Holy Saturday, the archbishop going to give the Easter salutations to the governor, the latter addressed him very fittingly—telling him that it seemed very wrong that at a time when Christ our Lord suffered for men, and not only pardoned but even excused those who were tormenting him, his Lordship, who stood in the place of Christ, was incriminating Don Juan de Vargas, and refusing to pardon him even after he had obeyed, in so edifying a manner, all the commands that had been laid upon him, although ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... ugly, with a shaggy head, a shaggy beard, and fierce eyes, and he lived all by himself in a great stone castle on the shore of a large lake. His principal pleasure consisted in tormenting everything and everybody he came near; but if he had any preference, it was for boys; to tease and ill-use them had the power of affording him great happiness. Lazy, loitering little fellows were in especial danger, for he would catch them quite easily by throwing ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... If my memory serves me, you have told me that little fact several times before. Is there anything else tormenting you, or ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... mysterious, utterly unexplainable masculine faces that fill your senses with an odd, impersonal disquietude, an itching unrest, like the hazy, teasing reminder of some previous existence in a prehistoric cave, or, more tormenting still, with the tingling, psychic prophecy of some amazing emotional experience yet to come. The sort of face, in fact, that almost inevitably flares up into a woman's startled vision at the one crucial moment in her life when she is not supposed to ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... you must, in the name of all that's tormenting!" cried he; and down rolled the apples between the boughs, and the ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... frolicked the brisk, cold wind of a Christmas eve, boisterously rattling the luminous checkerboard windows and the Christmas wreaths, tormenting the cheerful flame in the old iron lantern and whisking away the snow from the shivering elms, whistling eerily down the Doctor's chimney to startle a strange little cripple by the Doctor's fire, who, queerly enough, would ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple
... had none. He was happily quite free from that tormenting taskmaster, who, next perhaps to praise, makes the severest demand on human faculty, and human labour. To maintain in the spot where he was born, the character for honesty, independence, and industry, that his father had borne before him, to support in credit and comfort the ...
— The Beauty Of The Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... San Antonio, fenced it in with his new product, and invited the enemies to bring along their wildest specimens About thirty of Texas' most ferocious cattle, placed within the enclosure, spent a whole afternoon plunging at the barbs in a useless and tormenting attempt to escape. This spectacular demonstration of efficiency launched Gates fairly upon his career. He immediately began to sell his new fencing on an enormous scale; in a few years the whole world was ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... suppress a tear. He was losing a sincere and unbounded affection. He had found in Dinah the gentlest La Valliere, the most delightful Pompadour that any egoist short of a king could hope for; and, like a boy who has discovered that by dint of tormenting a cockchafer he has killed it, Lousteau shed ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... This tormenting inequality between the thing felt and the impression conveyed had vexed us unceasingly until one day Simple Martin, the town fool, who always says our wise things, said one of his wisest. He was lounging by the watering-trough one sunny day in June, when a carriage-load of "summer folk" ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... and sore enough when he got on his feet again to hate the giant who handled him so roughly, with all his heart, but he was not unwilling to keep his promise to steal the Apples, if only for the sake of tormenting the other gods. But how was it to be done? Idun guarded the golden fruit of immortality with sleepless watchfulness. No one ever touched it but herself, and a beautiful sight it was to see her fair hands spread it forth for the morning feasts in Asgard. The power which ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... though he found this youth stupid and unmanageable, he never ceased his efforts to amend his character and to conceal his faults. Once only we are told that when on some campaign the young man was tormenting him with unreasonable questions, and offering him advice as though he were appointed assistant-general, Phokion exclaimed, "O Chabrias, Chabrias, I do indeed prove myself grateful for your friendship for me, by enduring this from your son!" Observing that the ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... necessary to have been, like Nebuchadnezzar, something of a wild beast, and shut up in a cage at the Jardin des Plantes without other prey than the butcher's meat doled out by the keeper, or a retired merchant deprived of the joys of tormenting his clerks, to understand the impatience with which the brother and sister awaited the arrival of their cousin Lorrain. Three days after the letter had gone, the pair were already asking themselves when she ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... hands upon him. One smites him with pains in his body, with headache, heartache, backache, shortness of breath, fainting qualms, trembling of joints, stopping at the chest, and almost all the symptoms of a man past all recovery. Now, while death is thus tormenting the body, hell is busy with the mind and conscience, striking them with its pains, casting sparks of fire in thither, wounding with sorrows and fears of everlasting damnation the spirit of this poor creature. And now he begins ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... person and interests, which the jealousy of their mistress compelled them to dissemble. Elizabeth, on her part, was more than ever disturbed by suspicions on this head, which were kept in constant activity by the secret informations of the armies of spies whom it was her self-tormenting policy to set over the words and actions of the Scottish queen and her English partisans. The more she learned of the influence privately acquired by Mary amongst her subjects, the more, of course, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... keeps saying: she ought to be buried alive to punish her! But I love her, I can't bear to lay a finger on her. I did give her a blow or two, but that was at mamma's bidding. It makes one wretched to see her, do you understand that, Kuligin. Mamma's just tormenting her to death, while she wanders about like a shadow, and makes no resistance. She only weeps, and she's wasting away like wax. It's simply breaking my ...
— The Storm • Aleksandr Nicolaevich Ostrovsky
... Bryan," and there was Bryan. Even in these degenerate days there is a hope for the orators when one can make himself a Presidential peril by merely waving the red flag in the cave of the winds and tormenting the circumjacence with a ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... though she had endeavored to change her relations with him without breaking his friendship, had nursed his base passion and his guilty purpose. She was undergoing a just punishment, and acknowledged to herself the fact. Once she would have delighted in tormenting him. Once she would not have hesitated to drive him from her door. Once—but she was changed. A little boy who had learned to regard her as a mother, was thinking of her in the distant woods. She had fastened to that childish life the hungry instincts of her motherly ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... this?" But he soon came to see in it again nothing beyond a very successful poem, and he confidently believed it would enkindle Clara's cold temperament, though to what end she should be thus aroused was not quite clear to his own mind, nor yet what would be the real purpose served by tormenting her with these dreadful pictures, which prophesied a terrible and ruinous end to ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... the higher "qualities" next to be described, and so become a part of the triumphing "light principle." Fire may be only a "fire of anguish" or it may go up into a "fire of love"; it may be a harsh, {182} self-tormenting fire, or it may be a soft, light-bringing, purifying fire. Suffering may harden the spirit, or it may be the condition of joy. Crucifixion may be mere torture, or it may be the way of salvation. It is then here at the great divide between ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... of boorishness as had overtaken it in his father's day. If Blanche had only been different, if she had been the Blanche he once thought her, how sweetly would the whole problem—of loneliness and a standard of decency and of this tormenting thing that pricked at him—have been solved. Even the removal of his mother, though a relief, added to the sense of total disruption which weighed on him. Cloom, the old Cloom that had been so jolly in spite of everything, the Cloom of the first three contested, ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... old Gwyn house was an uneasy, restless one, filled with tormenting doubts as to his strength or even his willingness to continue the battle against ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... his head. Tormenting whispers of "'Fraid cat! 'Fraid cat!" carried to where he stood, and some imp of mischief ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... the old porker! etc.—But I can certify that these insults were all uttered between the Pont-Turnant and the parterre, and by about a dozen men, among which were five or six gunners following the king, the same as flies follow an animal they are bent on tormenting."] ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... brain is not idle. If it do not grow corn, it will grow thistles, which will be found springing up all along the idle man's course in life. The ghosts of indolence rise up in the dark, ever staring the recreant in the face, and tormenting him: ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... "I am a simpleton; and all that has been for tormenting in my heart is sheer nonsense. My crown does not prevent me from being a silly woman. But, my heart's love, forgive my folly for the sake ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... It was but yesterday he saw Jerushe, who shared with him her corn-cakes, which, when she does not meet him at his accustomed spot, she places at the foot of a marked tree. Bob had added a few chips to his night fire, (his defence against tormenting mosquitoes), and made his moss bed. Having tamed an owl and a squirrel, they now make his rude camp their home, and share his crumbs. The squirrel nestles above his head, as the owl, moping about the camp entrance, suddenly hoots a warning and ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... stewardship. And it was for me he wished to toil—for me, and for our daily bread! Yet he would not tell me. And all the while he must have had numberless cares and anxieties without, and his own wife blindly tormenting him at home. Last of all I called him mercenary. And what did he answer? Nothing! Not one reproach—not one word of anger. Yet still—he kept ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... well-bred gentleman you are introduced to, just reflect that there are at least eight chances in ten that he has had the disease, and perhaps three or four in ten that he has it at the minute he's shaking hands with you. And now you think that over, and stop tormenting your poor husband!" ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... thing to have Dora always there. It was so unaccountable not to be obliged to go out to see her, not to have any occasion to be tormenting myself about her, not to have to write to her, not to be scheming and devising opportunities of being alone with her. Sometimes of an evening, when I looked up from my writing, and saw her seated opposite, I would lean back in my chair, and think how queer it was that there we were, alone ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... their minds from such tormenting memories, Haig went deep into his adventures, his wanderings, his search for excitements. He told her of strange lands and peoples, of the beautiful spots of the world, of battles and perils and escapes,—everything he ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... affability, were the long bills occasioned by the mistakes of this domestic quack, who was continually running into errors, which required all his skill to repair. Nay, his wife's mantua-maker did not escape his tormenting and impertinent advice; for he pretended to a profound knowledge in all the modes, from the time of Elizabeth to Victoria, and deemed his judgment in frills, flounces, and ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... away with hands crossed about the knees and eyes looking out into the last light—the tranquil, happy face from which a white handkerchief kept back the flying hair while giving it the likeness of a nun's. Was it a dream? Was it Louie? Or was it only some one of the tormenting phantoms that for so many burning days had haunted him? He tried in vain to ask: his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth; he seemed to be in the power of one of those fierce nightmares where life depends on a word and the word is not to be spoken. Only a vision, then: ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... just this question which was tormenting the mind of the ex-gardener. Would he be able to get out before Jack? He could not imagine where the sailor had taken the children. The dim light of the candle-ends had died out as Jack swam away with Estelle, and Thomas had ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... a bit in Geneva till I can go to Italy, where I think of passing the winter, presumably in Venice. Already I feel quickened by being alone and removed from all tormenting surroundings. It was no use talking of work. As soon as I feel myself in a temper to go on composing 'Tristan,' I shall regard myself as saved. In fact, I must do the best for myself; I ask nothing from the world but ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... his cousin speak but made no response. He was smoking openly and in sight of his entire family the cigar which had, heretofore, been consumed surreptitiously. His mother sat close to his shoulder, rallying him like a tormenting schoolgirl, and, at intervals, turning to look back at her husband who stood on the steps beside her, a little amused, a little proud, a little inclined to be critical of this tall son of his who yesterday ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... already been observed, it is not until Dante reaches a point very far down that anything like what we may call the Christian devil appears.[43] Throughout the upper circles the work, whether of tormenting or merely of guarding, is performed exclusively by beings taken from classic mythology. If we except the Giants, who seem to occupy a kind of intermediate position between prisoner and gaoler, Geryon ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... was tormenting him. His tongue clave to the roof of his mouth; he found, by trial, that ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... place of torment. Whole volumes have been written on the subject, and all agree that is simply what I have described it to be. From the fashionable Fifth avenue establishment down to the cellar lodging-houses of the Five Points, all boarding-houses are alike in this respect. Their success in tormenting their victims depends upon the susceptibility and refinement of feeling and taste on ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... had startled her into fuller knowledge of her dependence on his mere presence to maintain even a mimicry of good spirits; and she heaped contempt upon her own head accordingly. Nevertheless she escaped at an early hour; and lay awake half the night tormenting ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver |
