"Torture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... country, determined to invent one; and there was brought to birth that modern Ireland, passionate for freedom, which has occupied the stage ever since. In our own time it has knit, as a fractured limb knits, into one tissue with the tradition of the Gaelic peasantry. Hanging and burning, torture and oppression, poison and Penal Laws, bribes and blackguardism so far from exterminating the Irish people actually hammered them into a nation, one and indestructible, proud of its past and confident ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... testify under oath, but a slave's oath is counted worthless. The slaves may be the only important witnesses to a given act, but under only one condition can they testify. With the consent of their master they may testify UNDER TORTURE. It is a critical moment at this hearing when a litigant who is confident of his case proudly announces, "I challenge my enemy to put my slaves under torture"; or the other, attacking first, cries out, "I demand that my enemy submit his slaves to torture." Theoretically ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... giggle, who ought to have been in the nursery instead of serving his master with liquid stimulants and assisting in all sorts of wickedness, was a peculiarly nauseating object, and got on my nerves far more than the terrors of the torture-chamber. This painful business was done off, and indeed most of the bloody work was carried on out of sight—a curious economy in a play where there was so much talk of lethal tools. It is true that an arrow once flopped on to the stage, but it only brought a note from a friend's hand. Swords, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... slipping, slipping down the greasy slate. And now a new peril threatened. A chill ran through me of cold and nervousness, and I slid an inch. I suppressed the growing shivers with all my will. I would keep perfectly quiet till Muir came back. The sickening pain in my shoulders increased till it was torture, and I could not ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... fight this out single-handed. Two courses lie before me. I might become this woman's lover. Or I must endure such persecutions as she can inflict upon me. Even if none come, I shall live in a hell of apprehension. But she may torture me, she may drive me mad, she may kill me: I will never, never, never give in. What can she inflict which would be worse than the loss of Agatha, and the knowledge that I am a perjured liar, and have forfeited the name ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Hell, and all the horrors and cruelties of the torture chamber of the lost! The man who walks with open eyes and bleeding heart through the shambles of our civilization needs no such fantastic images of the poet to teach ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... hitherto escaped. Perse and Moter began to row toward the ship, but Perse soon fainted, and Moter was left to manage the boat alone, as he had escaped unwounded. The body of Greene was thrown immediately into the sea. Wilson and Thomas died that day in great torture, and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... shine upon the black And hideous structure of the guillotine; Beside the haloed countenance of saints There hangs the multiple and knotted lash. The Christ of love, benign and beautiful, Looks at the torture-rack, by hate conceived And bigotry sustained. The prison cell, With blood-stained walls, where starving men went mad, Lies under turrets matchless in ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... brought before it could be taken. Even while the conflict between the Mormons was going on, in 1846, there was vitality enough in this old organization, in Pope and Massac counties, to call for the interposition of a band of "regulators," who made many arrests, not hesitating to employ torture to secure from one prisoner information about his associates. Governor Ford sent General J. T. Davies there, to try to effect a peaceable arrangement of the difficulties, but he failed to do so, and the "regulators," who found the county officers opposed ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... examined about the matter whose interest it was so much to conceal it. When they had once gained the king's ear for insinuations of this sort, they went on to show a thousand grounds of suspicion against Philotas, till at last they prevailed to have him seized and put to the torture, which was done in the presence of the principal officers, Alexander himself being placed behind some tapestry to understand what passed. Where, when he heard in what a miserable tone, and with what abject submissions Philotas ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... at her horse's neck; she did not see him smile. He had felt quite sure that she sought relief for the silences of her life in literary composition. When an unattractive woman has not talent she finds a double revenge in the torture of words, he thought. What shall I say to her? That she is whittling thorns for her own soul? Bah! Did I not find enjoyment once in the very imaginings of all that has scourged me since? Would I have thanked anyone for opening my eyes? And the ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... second time he found that he had fainted. He gave him a toss and a rude kick, leaving him to lie lifeless, as he thought, upon the floor. Turning again to the old lady, he pulled her lack from the fire and removed her gag, threatening to again torture her if she persisted in refusing to reveal the secret. Although her feet were horribly burned by the coals and her suffering was so intense that her whole frame shook convulsively with the inexpressible pain she endured, she remained silent. His ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... of faith. The religious basis of government was not so much that people put their trust in princes, as that they did not put their trust in any child of man. It was so with all the ugly institutions which disfigure human history. Torture and slavery were never talked of as good things; they were always talked of as necessary evils. A pagan spoke of one man owning ten slaves just as a modern business man speaks of one merchant sacking ten clerks: "It's very horrible; but how else can society be conducted?" ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... it is that a man or a boy, not radically destitute of generous comprehensions, will often cruelly torture and tyrannize over a woman whom he both loves and reveres, who stands in his soul in his best hours as the very impersonation of all that is good and beautiful. It is as if some evil spirit at times possessed him, and compelled him to utter words which were felt at the moment to be ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... a coincidence about the convent," Mary told herself. Why should Miss Bland wish to torture Angelo's wife, even if she knew anything? And she could not know. It was impossible that she should know. But suddenly the girl remembered Marie's hints about a long-ago flirtation between the cousins. And Idina's manner had been odd when she begged Angelo to smoke because of old ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... cruel. The games they play, at least those they invent, instinctively partake of some element of brute nature. They chase, they capture, they imprison, they torture, and they kill. No secret rendezvous of a boy's pirate gang ever failed to be soaked with imaginary blood! And what group of boys have not played at being pirates? The Indian games are worse—scalping, with red-hot cinders thrown ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... whimpered a little, but he shrieked outright when those in the tongue were removed. Rolf had hard work to hold him, and any one not knowing the case might have thought that the two men were deliberately holding the dog to administer the most cruel torture. ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... And Mercy from that hour implored in vain. Ah! who will e'er believe the words I say? His daughters he accused, and the same day They both were cast into the dungeon's gloom, That dismal antechamber of the tomb, Arraigned, condemned, and sentenced to the flame, The secret torture and the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... life I have sometimes suffered with hunger, cold and pain, and have some idea of what starving, freezing and torture may be, but among all the ills to which flesh is heir, I doubt if there is one so trying to the nerves and brain of man as enforced and long-continued vigilance, when all his failing nature sinks for want of sleep. Insanity and death must soon be ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... Little by little confidence had waned, and doubt and dread replaced it. Some, probably, had been earlier shot by the storm of centring bullets; some, possibly, had sent their last shot into the reeling brain,—death by one's own hand being better at least than by slow and fiendish torture; and at last, probably just at dusk, the triumphant savages were able to close in upon their helpless prey and reap their reward of scalps and plunder and wreak their fury on a mute ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... the work of "a milder age," consider the hanging of Penelope's maids and the abominable torture of Melanthius. There is no torturing in the [blank space] for the Iliad happens not to deal with ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... failed. And so annoyed was he at his failure, that he suggests to Thurloe, that it would 'not to be unfit to make' the malignants 'speak forcibly, by tying matches, or some kind of pain, whereby they may be made to discover the plot;' and as he re-urges his craving to inflict torture on his prisoners, the proposal had drawn no disapproval from ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... headed by two brothers, of the name of Zeck, George and Luke. When it was quelled, George, not Luke, was punished by his head being encircled with a red-hot iron crown: 'coron candescente ferre coronatur[16].' The same severity of torture was exercised on the Earl of Athol, one of the murderers of King James I. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... arranged my plans—had relieved my heart of every burden, when, a second time, he throws a mountain upon it. Stop, friend conscience, why do you take his part?—For twenty years thus you have used me, and been my torture. ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald
... myself, while God permits man to wreck himself, he denies him the power to destroy the world. The grass covers the graves; the flowers grow in the furrows of the cannon balls; the graceful foliage festoons with blossoms the ruins of the prison and the torture-chamber; and the corn springs alike under the foot of the helot or the yeoman. And I said to myself that, even though civilization should commit suicide, the earth would still remain—and with it some remnant of mankind; and out of the ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... hourly, the hideous instrument of torture claimed its many victims—old men, young women, tiny children until the day when it would finally demand the head of a King and of a beautiful ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... Thank God it had grown dark—dark enough to hide the whiteness that she knew had crept over her face, and the horror that had crept into her eyes. "You mean"—her voice was very low—"you mean you're going to torture ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... dignify with the name of a canal, runs through the centre. There is generally but little water in this ditch, but millions of restless mosquitoes, which populate the whole town, and (I speak from experience) are a perfect torture. The houses being mostly plastered, have a stone-like and cleanly appearance, with their green Venetian blinds, and plantations of acacias and other Eastern trees, waving gracefully in front of them. The climate is salubrious, and provisions of all kinds abundant and cheap. I ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... amongst us. Going out shooting, and dragging his gun through a hedge after him, the trigger caught in a bush, and the poor little man was brought home to his father's house, only to live a few days and expire in pain and torture. Under the yew-trees yonder, I can see the vault which covers him, and where my bones one day no doubt will be laid. And over our pew at church, my children have often wistfully spelt the touching epitaph in which Miles's ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... accomplice, the "neighbour" who had put them up to the crime, were caught. The "neighbour," as soon as he arrived in the village, was given twenty-five lashes, and for two hours was subjected to the agonizing torture of having his head and his feet in the stocks at the same time. Next day he was given ten lashes, and the following day five, and eight days later they took him to Durango. His two Indian associates, father and son, were also put in the ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... abstinence, to refrain from fault or reduce the body to subjection, though starvation is the antidote for desire; the more active, and, perhaps, more effectual operation of periodical flagellations and bodily torture were added. Ingenuity was taxed to find new means of personal infliction. A hermit who never permitted himself to sleep more than an hour without being awakened endured torments not inferior to those of ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... Although much blood was shed in their pursuit, this lawless, misguided man and his band were never taken. Great as their sin would naturally seem to the noble family at the castle, no less lamentable and equally worthy of torture and death would the heretics of Bruneck appear. About the same time the sacrilegious books, as they were called, of Zwingli and Luther were sold there openly, conventicle hymns were sung in the streets, and the priest Stephan Gobi preached against the holy ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... did not tamely submit to the yoke sought to be imposed upon their necks, they only acted as human beings, civilized and uncivilized, have always acted upon like provocation. Those who have characterized the Indian as inhuman and fiendish because he put his prisoners to the torture, seem to have forgotten that the wildest accounts of Indian ferocity pale beside the undoubtedly true accounts of the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition. Christian Spain—nay, even Christian England—tortured prisoners with a diabolical ingenuity which never entered into the heart of a pagan Indian ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... waiting heap. Then he heard a low, evil, chuckling laugh from someone beside the rift, and he understood. Saya Chone was there, playing with him, as a cat plays with a mouse. The half-caste was tossing torches within Jack's reach, simply to torture him with the idea of what would happen when one of the flaming splinters of pine fell into the heap of tinder ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... land, and houses; but behind his delight stood a ghost that cried out that his enjoyment of these things should not be of long duration. It was the ghost of the rich relative, who had been permitted to return to earth to torture his nephew into the grave. Wherefore, under the spur of this constant reminder, John Hay, always preserving the air of heavy business-like stolidity that hid the shadow on his mind, turned investments, ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... the curtain began Edward Henry's torture and bewilderment. The scene disclosed a cloth upon which was painted, to the right, a vast writhing purple cuttle-fish whose finer tentacles were lost above the proscenium arch, and to the left an enormous crimson oblong patch with a hole in ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... dark hour of the Church, there flashes out some bright form of human heroism, to be a beacon and a comfort to all future time. Victor, for instance, tells the story of Dionysia, the beautiful widow whom the Vandals tried to torture into denying the Divinity of our Lord.—How when they saw that she was bolder and fairer than all the other matrons, they seized her, and went to strip her: and she cried to them, 'Qualiter libet occidite: verecunda tamen membra nolite nudare,' but ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... the paper, bowed with a certain languid, easy grace that camp life never cured him of, and went. He knew that the man who should take the news of his treasure's loss to the Emir Ilderim would, a thousand to one, perish by every torture desert cruelty could frame, despite the ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... viper thoughts, that coil around my mind, Reality's dark dream! 95 I turn from you, and listen to the wind, Which long has raved unnoticed. What a scream Of agony by torture lengthened out That lute sent forth! Thou Wind, that rav'st without, Bare crag, or mountain-tairn, or blasted tree, 100 Or pine-grove whither woodman never clomb, Or lonely house, long held the witches' ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... a child!" observed Hester, aside to the minister. "O, I have much to tell thee about her! But, in very truth, she is right as regards this hateful token. I must bear its torture yet a little longer,—only a few days longer,—until we shall have left this region, and look back hither as to a land which we have dreamed of. The forest cannot hide it! The mid-ocean shall take it from my hand, and swallow ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... attained to the long-desired dignity of attorney-general, a post which he filled with power and energy, but which he disgraced by the torture of Peacham, an old clergyman, who was charged with having written treason in a sermon which he never preached nor published. As nothing could be extorted from him by the rack, Bacon informed the king that Peacham "had a dumb devil." It should be some palliation of this deed, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... indifference and interest. The awful Brother, you must die, of the Trappists seemed constantly legible in the eyes of the peasants with whom Raphael was living; he scarcely knew which he dreaded most, their unfettered talk or their silence; their presence became torture. ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... and drew herself up until she stood straight and tall before him. "Have you not punished me enough?" she asked, in a whisper. "Are you not satisfied? Was it brave? Was it manly? Is that what you have learned among your savages—to torture a woman?" She stopped with a quick sob of pain, and pressed her hands ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... tobacco, a knife and tinder to ignite their tobacco. At the close of the Sixteenth Century tobacco was introduced into the East. In Persia and Turkey where at first its use was opposed by the most cruel torture it gained at length the sanction and approval of even the Sultan himself. Pallas gives the following account in regard to ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... which she quenched her thirst renewed his own momentarily forgotten torture. His tongue seemed to swell. He ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... face of the Blessed One receding into an infinite distance. She knew that every day added a link to the heavy Karma that was bound about the feet she loved, and her soul said "Set him free," and her heart refused the torture. But her soul was the stronger. She set ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... minded the physical discomfort," he went on. "It's the mental torture that's been killing me. We've pushed hot on your trail hour after hour, day in and day out. When they made me rest, I could only lie and listen to you sob for help until—O my ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... that they might be tormented for ever in Gehenna—granted that they did not desire to burn their bodies on earth; those words are still dark and unchristian. They could only be written by men who believed that God hates sinners, that his will is to destroy them on earth, and torture them for ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... without food and water, and loaded their limbs with fetters. This was their second imprisonment; and what followed these few severities your Lordships will remark,—still more severities. They continued to persecute, to oppress, to work upon these men by torture and by the fear of torture, till at last, having found that all their proceedings were totally ineffectual, they desire the women to surrender their house; though it is in evidence before you, that to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... of color of the Niagara region made Mosely's case their own and determined to prevent his delivery up to the American authorities to be taken to the land of the free and the home of the brave, knowing that there for him to be brave meant torture and death, and that death alone could set him free. Under the leadership of Herbert Holmes, a yellow man,[31] a teacher and preacher, they lay around the jail night and day to the number of from two to four hundred to prevent the prisoner's delivery up. At length the deputy sheriff with ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... becomingly? Dreamest thou they talk and act like checkmen at Banbury fair? How can thy shallow brain suffice for their vast conceptions? How darest thou say, as they do: 'Hang this fellow; quarter that; flay; mutilate; stab; shoot; press; hook; torture; burn alive'? These are royalties. Who appointed thee to such office? The Holy Ghost? He alone can confer it; but ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... breathing frosty air directly into the lungs. Invalids shut themselves scrupulously indoors for weeks and even months at a stretch, for fear of the terrible results of a "blast of raw air" striking into their bronchial tubes. All sorts of absurd instruments of torture, in the form of "respirators" to tie over the mouth and nose and "keep out the fog," are invented, and those who have the slightest tendency to bronchial or lung disturbances are warned upon pain of their life to wrap up their mouths ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... Imagination onely makes it monstrous. When we are sick we endure a hundred fitts, This is but one; a hundred waies of torture, And cry and howle, weary of all about us, Our frends, allyes, our children teadious to us, Even our best health is but still sufferaunce. One blow, one short peece of an howre dos this, And this cures all; maintaines no more phisitians, Restores our memories, and there's ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... religion. Here it is sufficient to observe that the old law which had been hitherto altogether arbitrary—either the will of the Emperor or of the Shogun—was revised on the model of the Napoleonic code and soon published throughout the land. The use of torture to obtain testimony ...
— The Constitutional Development of Japan 1863-1881 • Toyokichi Iyenaga
... rid of the burden of existence, is by re-absorption into Brahma. But this return to Brahma is dependent upon the soul's purification, for no impure soul can be re-absorbed into the primal essence. The necessary freedom from passion and the required purity of soul can best be attained by self-torture, by a severe mortification of the flesh; hence the asceticism of ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... as you think," said Harold, pointing to Chimbolo, whose sad story he had heard; "they will try every kind of torture before they ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... fatigue combined, together with the oppressive sensations caused by the ponderous native saddle, or recado, with its huge surcingle of raw hide drawn up so tightly as to hinder free respiration. The suffering animal remembers how at the last relief invariably came, when the twelve or fifteen hours' torture were over, the toil and the want, and when the great iron bridle and ponderous gear were removed, and he had freedom and food and drink and rest. At the gate or at the door of his master's house, the sudden relief had always come to ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... disapproving of the divorce, and making severe comments upon it, he also banished her [607]. At last he (365) put her to death, upon a charge of adultery, so impudent and false, that, when all those who were put to the torture positively denied their knowledge of it, he suborned his pedagogue, Anicetus, to affirm, that he had secretly intrigued with and debauched her. He married Poppaea twelve days after the divorce of Octavia [608], and entertained a great affection for her; but, nevertheless, killed her ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... were of that faith. Not until they refused to make a statue of AEsculapius did he vow vengeance and turn on them, venting his fury. In the persecution that followed four Master Masons and one humble apprentice suffered cruel torture and death, but they became the Four Crowned Martyrs, the story of whose heroic fidelity unto death haunted the legends of later times.[63] They were the patron saints alike of Lombard and Tuscan builders, and, later, of the working Masons of the Middle Ages, ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... have said, like a venomous toad it lurks in dark corners. It deserves neither quarter nor sympathy; but as we can never reconcile it let our rule of conduct be to scorn it with a good heart, and as our happiness and glory is torture to it we ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... he, when the Prince was dragged before him, 'you have deserved death, but you shall live only to suffer more cruelly. Go, and add to the number of those whom it is my pleasure to torture.' ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... took the medicine and choked on it, and when he could speak said he wouldn't be with them. He could tell by his feelings, he said, that he would never get through this day of torture, and he wanted to say some last words. Then he said that he wanted the 'Coon to have his Sunday suit, which was getting a little tight for him and would just about fit Mr. 'Coon, and that he wanted the Crow to have his pipe and toilet articles, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... cause out; I had ne're been mad to fight else: I confess Sir, The daily torture of my side that vext me, Made me as daily careless what became of me, Till a kind sword there wounded me, and eas'd me; 'Twas nothing in my valour fought; I am well now, And take some pleasure in my life, methinks now, It shews as mad a thing to me to see you scuffle, And kill one another foolishly ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (2 of 10) - The Humourous Lieutenant • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... was always a local governor. The first of these, Hubert de Grandfontaine, came out in 1670. He and some of his successors were men of force and ability; but others, such as Brouillan, who issued card money without authority and applied torture to an unconvicted soldier, and Perrot, who sold liquor by the pint and the half-pint in his own house, were unworthy ...
— The Acadian Exiles - A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline • Arthur G. Doughty
... some good man's bosom-flower, And gather children round your matron knees! Then, when all this is past, and you and I Remember each our youth but as an hour Of joy—or torture; one, serene, at ease, May meet the other's grave yet steadfast eye, Thinking, 'He loved me well!'—clasp hands, and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... and not pertaining in the least degree to their profession? If not, then each officer may define cruelty according to his own temper, and if it is not usual he will make it usual. Corporal punishment, imprisonment, the gag, the ball and chain, and all the almost insupportable forms of torture invented for military punishment lie within the range of choice. Third. The sentence of a commission is not to be executed without being approved by the commander, if it affects life or liberty, and a sentence of death must be approved by the President. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... lonely. There isn't a soul that I can speak out to, except you. You don't know what that means. I go about in the schoolroom, and up and down the streets, and see things—horrible things. The world gets to be one big torture chamber, and then I have to cry out. I come to you to cry out,—because you really care. Now I can go away, and keep silent for a ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... for me from twenty to thirty people whose friends and relatives were in the suspected institution, all in such acute distress of mind that to see them was to look upon the victims of deliberate torture. In most cases my visitor would state that it seemed impossible to put their invalids in any other place, but if these stories were true, something must be done. Many of the patients were taken out only to be returned after a few days or weeks to meet the sullen hostility of their attendants ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... any Invention visit the human pericranium? Are we forever to be doomed to the thousand inconveniences of the balloon? Will nobody contrive a more expeditious mode of progress? The jog-trot movement, to my thinking, is little less than positive torture. Upon my word we have not made more than a hundred miles the hour since leaving home! The very birds beat us—at least some of them. I assure you that I do not exaggerate at all. Our motion, no doubt, seems slower than it actually is—this on account of our having no objects ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... their home. The last of these bodies fell upon the Jews, who are indeed enemies of the Christian faith, but who have now, at least, nothing to do with the question of the holy sepulchre. As soon as they entered into Germany the Crusaders put them to death with horrible torture. Plunder and rapine indeed appeared to be the object of the crusaders. On this as well as on most other preceding bands, their misdeeds drew down the vengeance of the people. At an early period of their march, and as soon as they reached Hungary, the people fell upon them, and put the greater ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... brother at Eltham, as they were keeping their Christmas festivities there, and that this attempt failed through the Court receiving intimation of the design and suddenly removing to Westminster."[26] Lord Cobham was put to death by cruel torture in St. Giles's Fields, London, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... large, and kept slipping off, so that she could not wear them. For a time, they persevered in making what they considered their escape from certain death, for, as I have said, the children had been taught, by the tales they had heard, to regard all strange Indians as ministers of torture, and of horrors worse than death. Exhausted with pain and fatigue, the poor little girl at length declared she ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... inequality fills me with disgust. The example of Christ is too sublime. He was human only in His sufferings. He bore our burdens and He shared our agonies. He was deceived, despised, rejected: the first torture and the firstfruits of His Passion was the treachery of a disciple. When I am sorrowful and wretched, He seems Real to me and vivid. But when I am well and wildly happy, He seems far away and unreal—an invisible God, watching mortals with a certain contempt. Now the Pagans had a ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... ever see a "Jim-Crow" waiting-room? There are always exceptions, as at Greensboro—but usually there is no heat in winter and no air in summer; with undisturbed loafers and train hands and broken, disreputable settees; to buy a ticket is torture; you stand and stand and wait and wait until every white person at the "other window" is waited on. Then the tired agent yells across, because all the tickets and money are ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... exhortation, sound reason, nor friendly entreaty had any avail on these hardened offenders, they resorted to the more urgent arguments of torture; and having thus absolutely wrung the truth from their stubborn lips, they condemned them to undergo the roasting due unto the heinous crimes they had confessed. Some even carried their perverseness so far as to expire under the torture, protesting their innocence to the last; but these were ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... that they will melt it and will pour it into her palms rather than fail to make her speak. They seek and search for fire and lead; they kindle the fire; they melt the lead. Thus the base villains maltreat and torture the lady, for they have poured into her palms the lead, all boiling and hot just as they have taken it from the fire. Nor yet is it enough for them that the lead has passed through and through the palms, ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... his coming, for the strain had been great, and every minute beyond his customary time for returning was torture to her fond heart, since, in imagination, she could see him being possibly arrested for something that any one with half a heart must know he would ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... a famous classic she had read with a favourite teacher at school came to her, and she knew that she was the witness of a retribution, of a suffering beyond conception of a soul prepared for suffering,—not physical suffering, but of that torture which is ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... boy, shouting "My God! Oh! my God!" writhed and leaped so as to displace the gratings, and scatter the nine tails of the scourge all over his person. At the next blow he howled, leaped, and raged in unendurable torture. ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... sacrifice; there is room for the innocent lamb that goes to the slaughter; there is room in those realms of infinity for every bird of the air and every beast of the field that either the necessity (that tyrant's plea) or the ignorance of man has condemned to torture, injustice, or neglect! ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... blockhouse burst into flames. Paully and his men were landed at the Ottawa camp, where a horde of howling Indians, including women and children, beat them and compelled them to dance and sing for the entertainment of the rabble. Preparations were made to torture Paully to death at the stake; but an old squaw, who had recently lost her husband, was attracted by the handsome, dark-skinned young ensign, and adopted him in place of her deceased warrior. Paully's hair was cut close; he was dipped into the stream to wash the white ...
— The War Chief of the Ottawas - A Chronicle of the Pontiac War: Volume 15 (of 32) in the - series Chronicles of Canada • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... his own men. The Bishop of Clogher was routed by Coote and Venables and shared the same fate. "All their friars were knocked on the head promiscuously," Cromwell wrote at Drogheda—as the Catholic martyrologies assert, with torture. Peaceable inhabitants were not to be molested. But all who had taken part in or supported the rebellion of 1641 were ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... in having reserve drivers and brassies, even if one is only a very moderate golfer. Everybody knows what it is to suffer torture during the period when one is said to be "off his drive," and I think there is no remedy for this disease like a change of clubs. There may be nothing whatever the matter with the club you have been playing with, and which at one time gave you so much delight, ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... Demetrius!" exclaimed Nisida. "And this is how our aims shall be accomplished," she continued, in a lower and less excited tone: "The ambitious views of Ibrahim Pasha must experience a signal defeat; and as he is too powerful to be personally injured by us, we must torture his soul by crushing his relations—we must punish him through the medium of his sister and his aunt. This evening I had a long discourse with Dr. Duras, who is devoted to my interests, and over whom I wield a wondrous power of persuasion. He has undertaken to induce his brother, Angelo Duras, ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... Northern Railway is the tsetse fly: especially was he to be found at a place called Same, and during the long trek from German Bridge on the Northern Railway to Morogoro in the south. At one place there is a belt thirty miles wide, and our progress was perpetual torture, unless we passed that way at night. For the Glossina morsitans sleeps by night beneath leaves in the bush, and only wakes when disturbed. For this reason we drive our horses, mules, and cattle by night through these fly-belts. Savage and pertinacious to a degree are these pests, and their ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... Very few showed any great signs of fear, with the exception of the overseers, who had been often and often the actual instruments of cruelty towards those who now had them in their power. I am surprised that the ignorant savage blacks did not torture them as they had themselves been tortured, before putting an end to their existence. Perhaps they wished to set an example of leniency to the civilised whites. They went about the execution, however, with deliberation, sufficient to make it a ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... uncle was to "educate" him, though this was to be paid for out of that money of his very own. He was rudely shocked to learn that you had to pay money to go to school. Loathing school as he did, to pay money for your own torture—money that would buy things—seemed unutterably silly. But despite this inbecility the prospect retained ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... information that the chemical symbol for raw rubber is C10H16, which turns into isoprene, or 2C5H8. Suddenly, without precedent, Babbitt was not merely bored but admitting that he was bored. It was ecstasy to escape from the table, from the torture of a straight chair, and loll on the davenport ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... is called Sakar and is prepared for those who neglect prayer. The sixth is called Hatamah and is appointed for Jews and Christians. The seventh is named Hwiyah and is prepared for hypocrites. Such be the seven stages.' Quoth Bulukiya, 'Haply Jahannam hath least of torture for that it is the uppermost.' 'Yes,' quoth King Sakhr, 'the most endurable of them all is Jahannam; natheless in it are a thousand mountains of fire, in each mountain seventy thousand cities of fire, in each city seventy thousand castles of fire, in each castle seventy thousand ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... headsman's 'prentice, and folding his arms he stood right in front of the defenceless wretch. "My lad," said he, "you know, don't you, that I have been the headsman's assistant these six years? You know, don't you, that I am accustomed to torture and kill man and beast in cold blood? You know the sort of smile with which I am wont to reply to the agonised despair of my victim, and the memory of it ought to make your brain freeze in your skull. Very well! Let me tell you that I am prepared to ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... railings, without the dread of beginning to talk to them of an impenetrable mystery destined. . . . He was becoming scientifically afraid of insanity lying in wait for him amongst these lines. "To hang for ever over." It was an obsession, a torture. He had lately failed to keep several of these appointments, whose note used to be an unbounded trustfulness in the language of sentiment and manly tenderness. The confiding disposition of various classes of women satisfied the needs of his self-love, and put some material ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... continuity. It was also difficult to speak of Adrian in terms that did not tear our hearts. As a despoiler of the dead, his offence was rank. But we had loved him; and we still loved him, and he had expiated his crime by a year's unimaginable torture. ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... to which of the two passes the deer would choose. As it was a physical impossibility to have his eyes on both passes at once, the old gentleman soon found that turning his head every few seconds from one side to the other became irksome. Then it became painful. At last it became torture, and then he gave up this plan in despair, resolving to devote a minute at a time to each pass, although feeling that by so doing his chances were ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... do? What am I to do? The Good Book says forgive your enemies, but how can I forgive a wrong like that? And my poor girl—he deserted her, drove her to the streets. Ugh! if I could kill him by slow torture, gloat over his agony—but I ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... living skeleton, wandering about and condemned to live forever without food. More than once he bitterly regretted the resolution he had taken, but having taken it, he would never alter it. His silent, concentrated nature would not let him. Yet he endured undoubted torture day by day. Torture was the only name ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... with felt miseries, to sign the Devils Laws in a Spectral Book laid before them; which two or three of these poor Sufferers, being by their tiresome sufferings overcome to do, they have immediately been released from all their miseries and they appear'd in Spectre then to Torture those that were before their Fellow-Sufferers. The Witches which by their covenant with the Devil, are become Owners of Spectres, are oftentimes by their own Spectres required and compelled to give their consent, for the molestation ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... of poisoned cups, but found it not. I tried to extinguish this memory of the past, that tears my heart to shreds like a devouring flame; in vain. When the body succumbed, the pitiless heart kept watch. With this corroding torture making life a burden, do you wonder that I should seek rest which can only be ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... weighs upon me as a continued torture. During the first few days I wandered about as if bereft of reason; I could not fix my thoughts, or apply myself to any occupation. The illness of the princess has restored some energy to my soul. The injury to her foot, which she at first neglected, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... caught by Friedel, and made him say to Ebbo, who would again have escaped the disagreeableness of the scene, "We had better tarry at hand. Unless we hold the folk in some check there will be no right execution. They will torture him to death ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... from their good-nature, or from their not being able to tell the truth firmly, a commendation, of which he may afterwards avail himself.' JOHNSON. 'Very true, Sir. Therefore the man, who is asked by an authour, what he thinks of his work, is put to the torture, and is not obliged to speak the truth; so that what he says is not considered as his opinion; yet he has said it, and cannot retract it; and this authour, when mankind are hunting him with a cannister at his tail, can say, "I would not have published, had not Johnson, or Reynolds, ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... you spoke as you did. I'm glad to know that you've got a kind heart," said Uncle Solon. "Kind-heartedness to man and beast is one of the best things in life. It's what holds this world together. Anybody that uses Cayenne pepper to torture an animal, or play tricks on it, is no friend of ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... desperate passage through the rifted wall revived, fearfully vivid, on his mind. He remembered all the emotions of his first night's labour in the darkness, all the miseries of his second night's torture under the fallen brickwork, all the woe, danger, and despondency that accompanied his subsequent toil—persevered in under the obstructions of a famine-weakened body and a helpless arm—until he passed, in delusive triumph, the last of the hindrances in the long-laboured breach. One after another ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... 'Don't torture me,—you're not. Atherton!' He seized me by the lapels of my coat, seeming half beside himself,—fortunately he had drawn me into a recess, so that we were noticed by few observers. 'What ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper, or from that old baboon, who descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs—as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... vault, from which the cheerful sun is for ever excluded, the victim lay extended upon the rack, until death itself became a welcome relief; and upon its walls were arranged, in dreadful order, all the infernal instruments of torture, by which the cruelty of man endeavoured to extort from the wretched prisoners a confession of crimes, perhaps never committed, and of conspiracies, existing only in the guilty imaginations of their oppressors. A little court within the precincts of the building ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... guilty would be counted against them by grain and ounce. "But Christ died for our sins, say ye, and we are no longer subject to the law. But I say unto you, hell will not be cheated of a single one of you, and not a single iron tooth of the torture wheel of hell shall pass beside your flesh. You build upon the cross of Golgotha, come, come! Come and look at it! I shall lead you straight to its foot. It was on a Friday, as you know, that they thrust Him out of one of their gates and laid the heavier end of a cross ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... twilight, the people work. The roads are mere tracks among the blocks and hills of broken marble, yellow, black, and white stones, that are hauled on enormous trolleys by a line of bullocks in which you may often find a horse or a pony. Staggering along this way of torture, sweating, groaning, rebelling, under the whips and curses and kicks of the labourers, who either sit cursing on the wagon among the marble, or, armed with great whips, slash and cut at the poor capering, patient brutes, the oxen drag these immense wagons over the sharp ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... his chin, and a weak growth of hair on his upper lip; with a look half brazen, half shamefaced; with eyes half wistful, half malicious; his pear-shaped face expressing some love of the beautiful, some wit, some cynicism, much personal vanity, vicious inclinations and practices, restlessness, the torture of secret self-reproach, a vague distress, a longing to escape ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... his teeth in a firm resolutions not to say a word. The taunts of his captor were harder to bear in silence than the prospects of torture. ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... like an insurance agent? If so, say that I have already policies in three Hartford companies. Meanwhile prepare the stake, and see that the squaws are ready with their implements of torture." ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... the man fell out of the balloon into a warm lake and was delighted with the change, for his very soul was chilled—until he realised, at first dimly, that the water was growing hotter every minute and that the intention was to torture him to death! I was that man, moreover, and I kicked and screamed wildly, though every motion in the boiling water was agony. Just at the point when my breath was failing and my heart slowed, they turned off the water in the lake from a tap, and as it slowly receded, I was safe again, and ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... fetched half a dollar apiece," observed Higson; "had these rascals any bowels of compassion, they would have spared them all the sufferings they've had to endure; but for the sake of the few dollars they may pocket, they would not mind what amount of torture they inflict. I wish we had liberty to string up the whole lot of them at our yard-arms, they would only get their ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... dropping her hold of Miss Haight, and turning to face the others. "You call me a bully, and you yourselves, eight great grown girls, standing around to torment and torture this poor helpless child? Shame on you! Shame on you all, every one! I'm ashamed to be in the same school with you. I—" (Here, I am sorry to say, Peggy forgot that she was a young lady, forgot everything save that she was the daughter ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... dreadful to think of the power placed in their hands. Already thousands of the inhabitants of the Netherlands have been burned, or drowned, or hung, or killed on the rack; those who can taking to flight, till many parts are well-nigh depopulated. Nothing can be more dreadful than the system of torture employed. The accused person is carried off to prison, often without knowing the crime he is accused of, or his accusers. He is tortured to make him confess. The torture takes place at midnight in some gloomy dungeon, dimly-lighted by torches. The victim, whether man, woman, ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... the shegrin wagers is his courage and endurance in the face of torture and an unknown fate. On his side, the stakes are clearly determined beforehand. But if he loses, his punishment or penalty is at the whim of the one who has accepted him, and he may be put to whatever doom ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... impelled by the same feelings, threw ourselves before him, and by signs showed that we had resolved to protect him. The Indian seemed to comprehend what we were about, though perhaps he thought we wanted to preserve his life only to torture him, for he did not show that he was in any way obliged to us. The moment the lance was withdrawn, he sprung up with his weapon in his hand, ready to fight on; but one of the rancheroes threw his lasso over his shoulders, and, with a jerk which, had it been round ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... little lad ever hangs to a bigger, were he to torture the life out of him. Small thanks for us women after our good looks be past. But I'll look in on the child in early morn, thanks or no thanks; for I know his mother well, and if I can help it, the hyenas shall not make game ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in the flame of a candle and you will feel the pain of fire. But our earthly fire was created by God for the benefit of man, to maintain in him the spark of life and to help him in the useful arts, whereas the fire of hell is of another quality and was created by God to torture and punish the unrepentant sinner. Our earthly fire also consumes more or less rapidly according as the object which it attacks is more or less combustible, so that human ingenuity has even succeeded in inventing chemical preparations to check or frustrate its ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... exist in Ireland I believe no one who hears me can deny. That such laws have existed in former times many and various examples clearly evince. The Saviour of the world suffered by the Roman laws—by the same laws His Apostles were put to the torture, and deprived of their lives in His cause. By my conduct I do not consider that I have incurred any moral guilt. I have committed no moral evil. I do not want the many and bright examples of those gone before me; but did I want this encouragement, ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... to the table against which I leaned. His face had grown white and quiet at my attack and he waited to answer for a long horrible minute that pulled me apart like one of those inquisition machines they used to torture women with when they didn't know any better modern way to ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... next morning. Here I met for the first time Andrew Johnson, Military Governor of Tennessee. He delivered a speech of welcome. His composure showed that it was by no means his maiden effort. It was long, and I was in torture while he was delivering it, fearing something would be expected from me in response. I was relieved, however, the people assembled having apparently heard enough. At all events they commenced a general hand-shaking, which, although ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... wretched portion of the human race, and was making exertions to dissuade them from taking either side in the war, the enemy has not scrupled to call to his aid their ruthless ferocity, armed with the horrors of those instruments of carnage and torture which are known to spare neither age nor sex. In this outrage against the laws of honorable war and against the feelings sacred to humanity the British commanders can not resort to a plea of retaliation, for it is committed in the face of our example. They can not mitigate it by calling it ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Madison • James Madison
... Here a gallows in our sense of the word, but usually a stake on a scaffold, to which the condemned to a death of torture was bound hand ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... had pointed up her finger to the sky, and immediately brought down upon his head all the combined waters of heaven; how she had vanished from his sight in this storm, he knew not how; and how immediately intense pains began to torture his joints, until he became half frantic with agony, and had been compelled, by hideous visions, to quit the shelter he had sought, in order to be exposed to all the peltings of the storm. He had since suffered, he declared, the tortures of the damned in all his limbs, with occasional fits ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... strange to men unacquainted with the masquerade of life: I deceived others, and I endeavoured to deceive myself; and have worn the face of pleasantry and gaiety, while my heart suffered the most exquisite torture. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... love, and to lose that which you cherish, but it is unluckier still never to know the meaning of love, or to find 'Him whom your soul loveth.' I try to be kind to that poor forsaken woman. I am sorry for his sake that she calls out his name, but she seems to be in such torture of mind and body that she is unable ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... over him what state of suspense and torture Fay and Jane must be in at that very moment. And, leaping up, he ran out of the cedars to the slope behind and hurried down at risk of limb. The sun had set by this time. He hoped he could catch up with the party before dark. He went straight ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... swear at his jailers was like trying to make a noise in a vacuum. Not to be able to make himself felt became a positive torture ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... despair resound; that is, the farewell of the vanquished. The two condemned are again in the hands of the archers. D'Artagnan approaches them, seeing them pale and sinking: "Console yourselves, poor men," said he, "you will not undergo the frightful torture with which these wretches threatened you. The king has condemned you to be hung: you shall only be hung. Go on, hang them, and it ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... only show themselves!" thought he, his leaden eyes closing in an overmastering lassitude, a vast swooning weakness of blood-loss and exhaustion. Not even his parched thirst, a veritable torture now, could keep his thoughts from wandering. "If they'd tackle again, I could score with—with lead—what's that I'm thinking? ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... road, with their shoes, which were brand-new, strung across their shoulders. When they got near the church, they sat on the side of the road and, with many grimaces, tenderly packed their feet into those instruments of torture. This furnished, indeed, a trying test of their religion. The famous preachers come from near and far and take turns in warning sinners of the day of wrath. Food, in the form of those two Southern luxuries, fried chicken and roast pork, is plentiful, and no one need go hungry. On the ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... who did not either kick or strike us. When we went first on board, I perceived a humour in my finger, which I neglected at first, till it spread over my hand and swelled up my arm, afflicting me with the most horrid torture. There was neither surgeon nor medicines to be had, nor could I procure anything to ease my pain but a little oil, with which I anointed my arm, and in time found some relief. The weather was very bad, and the wind almost always against us, and, to increase our perplexity, the whole ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... tie the bushranger hand and foot, and then place him on an ant hill. The black ant of Australia has a bite that is very painful, and when hundreds of thousands of ants are biting a man all at once, the feeling is something fearful. The ant-hill torture was generally successful. After submitting to it for a time, the bushranger generally gave up the secret of the whereabouts of his gold. I do not mean to say that all the police officials indulged in this ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... quieter down below there . . . No water - no light - no air - seven days battened down, and the seas mountain high, and the ship labouring hell-deep! Two hundred and five, two hundred and five, two hundred and five - all to eternal torture! ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... that Dick had almost paid the penalty for having roused them, and the matter would have to rest where it was; for Ford was just. As to the jug, he could empty it upon the ground and be done with that particular form of torture. But he felt sure that Josephine was secretly "keeping cases" on the jug; ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... hooks, which are passed through the tender parts of their backs. Sometimes they swing for half an hour; sometimes an hour. The longer they can bear the torture of the swinging, the more acceptable they suppose it will be to their goddess. It occasionally happens, that the flesh in which the hooks are fastened gives way, in which case the poor creature is dashed to the ground. When this occurs, the people hold him in the greatest ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder
... what I meant," said the other, passively. "Then the week is not to be finished until to-morrow at noon. Twenty-four hours of torture to me! I suppose that the ingrates will count time to the last shadow! Oh, Mata, Mata, you once were a faithful servant! Why did you let me make that foolish promise of giving them an entire week? A day would have been ample, then Tatsu and I could ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... concluding bang—"On thy seven hills thou satt'st of yore,"—another still more desperate and discordant flourish, which continues alternating with her "most sweet voice," till she has piped through the whole of her song: when the group around, apprehensive of a repetition of the torture to which they have been subjected, overwhelm her with thanks and expressions of admiration, under cover of which they hurry her to her seat. Such is the stuff palmed off on us, varied as it is by glees, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... has quite recovered himself now. Whatever torture his secret soul may impress upon him in the future, no ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... rooms. The first room, with a large, dilapidated stove and two dirty windows, had a black measure for measuring the prisoners in one corner, and in another corner hung a large image of Christ, as is usual in places where they torture people. In this room stood several jailers. In the next room sat about twenty persons, men and women in groups and in pairs, talking in low voices. There was a ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... have to fight for their lives, and defend the persecuted church of the Lord against foes who knew nothing of conformist or nonconformist, but who were as proficient as Queen Mary herself in the use of fire and torture. These misgivings might now be dismissed; if the ruler of so many tribes was willing to stand their friend, who should harm them? So they all gathered round Samoset on that sunny spring morning; the women observing curiously and in silence his strange aspect and gestures, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... valiant Stranger, haste away, Lest you become the Giant's prey. On his return he'll bring another Still more savage than his brother;— A horrid, cruel monster, who, Before he kills, will torture you. Oh, valiant Stranger! haste away, Or you'll become ...
— The Story of Jack and the Giants • Anonymous
... turning it over and over and scrutinizing both the stones and the setting with the closest attention, though Ray could see that his hands were trembling with excitement, and knew that his heart was undergoing the severest torture. ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... of Ten on the night of the twentieth of January, 1406, the warrant for his examination authorized the use of torture. But even ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... accomplices. This method failing to reveal anything except that Gruet had written on one of Calvin's tracts the words "all rubbish," his judges put him to the rack twice a day, morning and evening, for a whole month. The frightful torture failed to make Gruet incriminate anyone else, and he was accordingly tried for heresy. He was charged with "disparaging authors like Moses, who by the Spirit of God wrote the divine law, saying that Moses had no more power than any other ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... lictors[146]—all that we now understand by the police force—waited subserviently on his nod. It rested with him, says Lydus, to establish the authority of the Court of Justice by means of the wholesome fear inspired by iron chains and scourges and the whole apparatus of torture[147]. Nay, not only did the subordinate magistrates execute their sentences by his agency, he had even the honour of being chosen by the Emperor himself to be the minister of vengeance against the persons who had incurred his anger or his ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... called "a sealed book" to you, begin by reading Hazlitt's famous essay on the nature of "poetry in general." It is the best thing of its kind in English, and no one who has read it can possibly be under the misapprehension that poetry is a mediaeval torture, or a mad elephant, or a gun that will go off by itself and kill at forty paces. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine the mental state of the man who, after reading Hazlitt's essay, is not urgently desirous of reading some poetry before his next meal. If the essay so inspires you I would suggest ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett |
