"Wreak" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the neighborhood, whom he meets as their friend, on equal terms. Mr. Willard, though a young man, is one of the most unique personages in the city. He is now one of the probation officers, under the new law which seeks to save the young offender rather than to wreak vengeance upon him, and his influence for good is great. The house in Chrystie Street is known far and wide as "the Children's House." They have their clubs there, and their games, of which Willard is the heart and soul. "I never saw anything remarkable ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... we wreak our ancient feud On Belgian or on Dane, Nor visit in a hostile mood The hearths of Gaul or Spain; But long as on our country lies The Anglo-Norman yoke, Their tyranny we'll ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... chanced, not for all the wealth in Denmark would I take Iduna the Fair to be my wife. Let her stay with Steinar, whom she has chosen. Still, I do not wish to cause the blood of innocent men to be spent because of my private wrong. Neither do I wish to wreak vengeance upon Steinar, who for many years was my brother, and who has been led away by a woman, as may chance to any one of us and has chanced to many. Therefore I say that my father should accept Athalbrand's ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... powerful man in the republic, and he exerted himself for reformation of his own monastery, the Church, and the state itself. Soon he prophesied the downfall of the Medici, against whom he arrayed a considerable part of the Florentine people. He predicted that one should come over the Alps and wreak vengeance upon the tyrants of Italy. In 1494 Charles VIII of France invaded Italy, warred against Naples, and advanced on Florence. Piero de' Medici, thoroughly frightened, surrendered his strongholds and agreed to pay Charles two ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... do it—I could do it," she thought, with the savage instinct of her many-sided nature dominant, leaving uppermost only its ferocity—the same ferocity as had moved the southern woman to wreak her hatred on the senseless head of her rival. The school in which the child-soldier had been reared had been one to foster all those barbaric impulses; to leave in their inborn, uncontrolled force all ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... were paralysed at the sight of the rubbish, and turning with a yell of terror rushed back the way they had come. Mary sought forcibly to restrain them, but, frantic with fright, they eluded her grasp, and ran shrieking towards the last town they had passed to wreak vengeance on the sorcerers. She ran with them, praying for swiftness and strength: she passed them one by one, and breathlessly threw herself into the middle of the path, and dared them to advance. She felt she was almost as mad as they were, but she relied on ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... he followed one of us, the others would be able to fire at him. Still we had a considerable distance to go, for I calculated that we had penetrated a mile or more into the forest. It was indeed a gallop for life, and the elephant seemed determined to wreak his fury on us. What had offended him so much it was difficult to say—perhaps the sight of a horse, ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... of friction between him and Colonel Danby, who had strolled in last of all, with the vicious look of a man who has not had the good night to which he considered himself entitled, and must somehow wreak it on ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... honour'd head To Caesar sent; then, records so relate, To shroud a gladness manifestly great, Some feigned tears the specious monarch shed: And, when misfortune her dark mantle spread O'er Hannibal, and his afflicted state, He laugh'd 'midst those who wept their adverse fate, That rank despite to wreak defeat had bred. Thus doth the mind oft variously conceal Its several passions by a different veil; Now with a countenance that's sad, now gay: So mirth and song if sometimes I employ, 'Tis but to hide those sorrows that annoy, 'Tis but to chase ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... meal, and sent scouts upstream to forewarn when the Iroquois came. The night was passed in prayer. Next day arrived unexpected reenforcements. Two bands of forty Hurons and four Algonquins, under a brave Huron convert of the Christian Islands, had asked Maisonneuve's permission to join Dollard and wreak their pent vengeance on the Mohawks. Early one morning the scouts reported five Iroquois canoes coming slowly downstream, and two hundred more warriors behind. There was not even care to bring a supply of water inside the barricade or remove kettles from the sticks. ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... the titanic winds, the waves drove in from the gulf and from the bay and smashed into a thousand pieces the houses of the lower section of the city. But the wind and the waves found nothing on which to wreak their vengeance except the empty shells of houses. Without our warnings, thousands of people would have been there and thousands of lives lost. But the hurricane was foiled of its prey, because of the writing of the little instruments ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... he, breathing more freely, and stretching himself up—"ah, I thank God that I now have some one on whom I can wreak my vengeance!" ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... that his act precluded a continuance of friendly relations with the Yamato Court. Six months after his invasion of Mimana he renewed the despatch of envoys to Japan, and it was not until their arrival in Yamato that they learned Japan's mood. Much to the credit of the Yamato Court, it did not wreak vengeance on these untimely envoys, but immediately afterwards an armed expedition was despatched to call Shiragi to account. The forces were divided into two corps, one being ordered to march under Ki ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... had left a deep feeling of humiliation and rancour in the heart of Louis XIV; and he was resolved to leave no stone unturned to wreak his vengeance on Holland and its council-pensionary. The Triple Alliance was plainly an ill-assorted combination. Charles II cared nothing about the fate of the Spanish Netherlands, and there was a strong party in England which hated the Dutch and wished to wipe out the memory of ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... shameful and petty and mean to wreak all my protests against you. You've been splendid. I couldn't ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... be revenged at the time, and he seemed to have chosen the present occasion to wreak his vengeance upon the destroyer of his nasal member. The blow his victim had struck was a set-back to him; but he presently recovered the balance of his head which the shock had upset. It was plain enough that he had not given up the battle, for he had drawn back ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... niggardly to pay for any assistance. This Philip also imagined; and as soon as he had recovered his breath, he began to devise some scheme by which he would be enabled not only to recover the stolen property, but also to wreak a ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... forecast of her pitiful progress through the city, driven onward by the lash, her swooning companion dragging on her arms, the crowd lining the pavements to stare at her, the officers pressing forward to greet her with mocking applause and laughter; for that all this was planned by the officers, to wreak their anger upon her, she now felt certain. She bowed her head as if she were already in the midst of her tormentors. The next moment she could tell by the sound that the horses were slackening speed. They must be close to their destination; but would they stop before ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... head Shall our intolerable self-disdain Wreak suddenly its anger and its pain; For manifest in that disastrous light We shall discern the right And do it, tardily.—O ye who lead, Take heed! Blindness we may forgive, but ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... improbably would, have suffered death from the stern tribunals of the period, for attempting to undermine the foundations of the Puritan establishment. But, in the education of her child, the mother's enthusiasm of thought had something to wreak itself upon. Providence, in the person of this little girl, had assigned to Hester's charge, the germ and blossom of womanhood, to be cherished and developed amid a host of difficulties. Everything was against her. The world was hostile. The child's own nature had something wrong in ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... terrors of his flaming hand: Her venal priests, her kings in luxury lost, Her factious nobles, and seditious host, Call'd down th' unwilling bolt; and many a year Beheld it blaze, and shrunk beneath its flames severe. His angry thunder on a blasted shore } Has wreak'd its vengeance; the collected store } Of wrath is spent, and the last peal is o'er. } Now o'er the land, rich with a new-born spring, Returning Mercy waves her golden wing: Obedient fate draws back its sable line, } And bright events in long ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... forgetfulness, to have made such a mistake. I really only missed four lectures. But my composition was interrupted by the door-bell, and my heart sank in my breast. Mariuccia opened, and I knew by the sound of the stick on the bricks that the lame count had come to wreak his vengeance. ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... Juan sprung to Haidee's bitter shriek, And caught her falling, and from off the wall Snatch'd down his sabre, in hot haste to wreak Vengeance on him who was the cause of all: Then Lambro, who till now forbore to speak, Smiled scornfully, and said, 'Within my call, A thousand scimitars await the word; Put up, young man, put up your ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... rushed into my heart in such a flood that it felt as if it were about to burst. And from motionless that I was, I began all at once to run in the direction of the palace, as though about to wreak my vengeance on the Queen without waiting for a single instant. And then I stopped abruptly and began to laugh. And I exclaimed: Am I actually going mad, for as yet it is still day, and I cannot even get into the garden till the sun has set. And after thinking for a moment, ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... wight that weapon wieldest Spare thy speering why we fled, Oft for less falls hail of battle, Forth we fled to wreak revenge; Who was he, faint-hearted foeman, Who, when tongues of steel sung high, Stole beneath the booth for shelter, While his beard ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... and they had put their idea into execution for one whole week. Marguerite looked at Chauvelin as she would on some monstrous, inscrutable Sphinx, marveling if God—even in His anger—could really have created such a fiendish brain, or, having created it, could allow it to wreak such ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... associated with the crime of which he was accused. Even the judge, who looked at him with keen, penetrating eyes, could not help being impressed by the fact. He was a man capable of controlling other men, a man who could deal with large affairs. Passionate, perhaps, and vengeful, but not likely to wreak his passion like ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... machinery of state. The Jacobins at first said much, but proposed little. They aspired to the abolition of the throne and the establishment of a republic; they wished to overthrow the altar; they promised, vaguely, to wreak upon the rich and titled full revenge for the wrongs of the poor and lowly. Every political and social dream which had found expression for twenty years, every skeptical attack upon things ancient and holy, found in this body of men a party and an exponent. Up to a certain point ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... across the fields and stormed the trenches. A couple of machine guns placed on the trench at Pervyse could have raked the ruined village and killed our three nurses. They shared the terms of peril with the soldiers; but they had no desire for retaliation, no wish to wreak their will on human life. Their instinct is to help. The danger does not excite them to a nervous explosion where they grab for a gun and shoot the ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... to satisfy a curiosity which does me honour. I have been induced to join that committee neither by my "peculiar views on the development of species," nor by any particular love for, or admiration of the negro—still less by any miserable desire to wreak vengeance for recent error upon a man whose early career I have often admired; but because the course which the committee proposes to take appears to me to be the only one by which a question of the profoundest practical importance ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... easily. He should have kept him until morning to be sure that he would do no mischief under cover of darkness. At length, however, he entered the cabin and threw himself upon his cot. He wished to think it all over and keep awake lest the man should return and wreak vengeance upon him in some under-handed way. He felt sure now that Lois' opinion of the man was correct, and that for some unaccountable reason he had a contemptible enemy to deal with, who would stoop to almost ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... him dead upon the spot. A demoniac smile suffused the countenance of Gurty, while he calmly replied to the dying suppliant, that he had no pity for his sufferings; but that he was then satisfying that spirit of revenge, which for a long time he had hoped to have an opportunity to wreak upon him. Nature now almost exhausted from the intensity of the heat, he settled down a little, when a squaw threw coals of fire and embers upon him, which made him groan most piteously, while the whole camp rung with ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... seeing how long it takes to bore a hole through one of the stools with a red-hot poker. Indeed, these luckless pieces of furniture are always marked out by the student as the fittest objects on which to wreak his destructive propensities; and he generally discovers that the readiest way to do them up is to hop steeple-chases upon them from one end of the room to the other—a sporting amusement which shakes them to pieces, and irremediably dislocates all their articulations, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various
... talk had bid another man "Go to Weal Hall, to my Lord Scroggs, for he has received money enough of Dr. Wakeman!" Radley was indicted for "speaking scandalous words of Chief Justice Scroggs." Whereupon at the opening of the court that eminent officer, who did not disdain to wreak public and judicial vengeance on heads that wrought his private and personal grief, made a speech setting forth his magisterial opinions on the liberty of the press. Doubtless this court knows original authority for the opinions they follow; but for your instruction, Gentlemen ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... crimes: and he sent a message to the tyrant himself, saving that he was a strange man, to torture and murder his wretched and innocent citizens every day, and to spare him, who he knew would be sure to wreak vengeance on him if he should escape. The tyrant, admiring his spirit and fearlessness, said, "What! does Pelopidas wish to die?" The other, hearing of this answered, "Yes, that you may become even more hateful to heaven than you are now, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... almost fainted from loss of blood as he spoke; and the Irishman, uttering a wild shout, ran towards the stern, intending to gain the deck by the companion-hatch, and wreak his vengeance on the French. Bill Bowls and Ben Bolter followed him. As they passed the cabin door Bowls said hastily to Bolter, "I say, Ben, here, follow me; I'll show ye ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne
... side of the river, which was both wide and deep, then saw he a great company of folk riding after the knight who bare away the maiden by force, and thus misused her, but he wist not if it was to aid the knight that they thus followed him, or to wreak vengeance on him. He saw many men clad in hauberks, but they were as yet a good mile distant. Sir Gawain rode swiftly after the maiden who went afore, whom the knight thus mishandled, to avenge her wrong; and as he drew near so that she might see him, she smote her hands together ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston
... and his shield uphove, buckler in ward; he the warrior addressed: I make the vow, that I will not hence flee a foot's pace, but will go forward; wreak in the battle my friend and my lord! Never shall about Stourmere, the stalwart fellows, with words me twit now my chief is down, that I lordless homeward go march, turning from war! Nay, weapon shall ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... was hit, and evidently in a terrible temper. She halted not thirty paces from the tent, beside a jhamun tree, and seemed undecided whether to go on or return and wreak her vengeance on me. That moment decided her fate. I snatched down my Express rifle, which was hanging in two loops above my bed, and shot ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... DARIA. Wreak thy rage, if faith divine So offends thee, upon me, Not upon my chastity:— 'T is a virtue purer far Than the light of sun or star, And has ne'er ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... so insulted and hurt at this trick that, not being able to wreak any other vengeance, he began (accompanied by many others) the following night to torment the poor Catolona with visions and cruel threats. Already undeceived as to the weakness of her idol, she sought for conversion, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... one movement he uncocked his rifle and laid it on the ground, then sprang out upon the spur. He did not ask Dale to follow, for somehow it was borne in on him that the mountaineer, having come expressly to wreak vengeance, was making a ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... so, the artist is at liberty to give his views on religion and politics, and by the medium of his art he may even express his private feelings—return insults and wreak revenge." ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... Purlieu came into the hands of Fred Allerton; and the gods, blind for so long to the prosperity of this house, determined now, it seemed, to wreak their malice. Fred Allerton had many of the characteristics of his race, but in him they took a sudden turn which bore him swiftly to destruction. They had been marked always by good looks, a persuasive manner, and a singular ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... what treatment may be accorded his book, he binds himself not to defend it, in whole or in part. If his drama is worthless, what is the use of upholding it? If it is good, why defend it? Time will do the book justice or will wreak justice upon it. Its success for the moment is the affair of the publisher alone. If then the wrath of the critics is aroused by the publication of this essay, he will let them do their worst. What reply should ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... surprised. What advice and exhortations I had to give were lost in the hubbub. "Put up your fists, chaps, and let him have it!" was the order, which was obeyed. The necessity for silence was forgotten; here was something upon which to wreak all the pent-up feelings consequent upon a month's perusal of German atrocities. It was excusable, if unsporting, for the scout to bite the thumb of his nearest assailant—and a good thorough bite ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 30, 1914 • Various
... must hasten to Zbyszko, to see that he is not entrapped by them through Jurandowna as they did with Jurand. They have only to tell him that if he comes by himself they will give her up to him and he would not hesitate to go; then old Zygfried would wreak his vengeance upon him, for the death of Rotgier, ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... trained and competent physician, but a careful and painstaking one as well. A great many questions mingled with doubt are frequently asked us, by those who look upon the Indian more as a curiosity than a human being, or as a painted entity watching for an opportunity to wreak vengeance on the white man. "Do you really think these young people and camp Indians understand what they ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 01, January, 1900 • Various
... the household, who lay stiff and cold in one of those curtained rooms! This terrible white-haired man who roamed feverishly up and down outside the walls was not me—it was some angry demon risen from the grave to wreak punishment on the guilty. I was dead—I could never have killed the man who had once been my friend. And he also was dead—the same murderess had slain us both—and SHE lived! Ha! that was wrong—she must ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... beginning to wonder why her lover did not fight. She grew angry. She wanted to see him wreak vengeance on this beast that had persecuted him so. Even as she waxed impatient, the chance came, and Joe whipped his fist to Ponta's mouth. It was a staggering blow. She saw Ponta's head go back with a jerk and the quick dye of blood upon his lips. The blow, and the great ...
— The Game • Jack London
... much puzzled to know what object Sorais could have had in carrying off the poor little Frenchman. She could hardly stoop so low as to try to wreak her fury on one whom she knew was only a servant. At last, however, an idea occurred to me. We three were, as I think I have said, much revered by the people of Zu-Vendis at large, both because ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... can't drive me out of this island, old man. You have lied about me ever since I beat you up that night. You are sacrificing the best interests of these people in order to gratify a personal spite, in order to wreak a personal vengeance. Stop! You can talk when I have finished. You have set spies upon my track. You have told these husbands that their wives need watching. You have turned them against me and against their wives, who are as ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... struck with certain things which we desire ardently or fear exceedingly—as when Ajax, thinking he saw Ulysses and Agamemnon, or Menelaues, threw himself upon some animals, which he killed, thinking he was killing those two men his enemies, and whom he was dying with the desire to wreak his vengeance upon—on this supposition, the apparition will not be less difficult to explain. There was neither prepossession nor disturbed imagination, nor any preceding emotion, which led Abraham to figure to himself that he saw three persons, to whom he gave hospitality, ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... in the schooner called the Ariel," she added, still unheeding his affected indifference to her communication; "and when permitted to return to St. Ruth, he lost sight of his solemn promise, and of his plighted honor, to wreak his malice. Instead of effecting the exchange that he had conditioned to see made, he plotted treason against his captors. Yes, it was most foul treason! for his treatment was generous and ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the chief, 'that while you are afraid to face men, you wreak your vengeance upon an ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... destroyed it in 452. Forty years later Theodoric took the lordship of Italy from Odoacer on the banks of the Isonzo, and in 552 the citizens who had returned were again driven away to the deltas of other rivers by Alboin, who was, it is said, called from Pannonia by Narses to wreak his vengeance ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... road and Bud Goble's camp, but they did it without making noise enough to alarm him. What they were most afraid of was that he would hear them coming and drag his prisoners away from the fire and deeper into the woods, where they could not be found until Bud had had time to wreak vengeance upon them. But they need not have borrowed any trouble on that score. If Bud Goble had had the faintest idea of the commotion his senseless act had caused among the academy boys, money would not have hired him to lay a ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... base, prepared to relinquish their own. Talents, capacity, and force of mind, possessed by a person of the first description, serve to plunge him the deeper in misery, and to sharpen the agony of cruel passions; which lead him to wreak on his fellow creatures the torments that prey on himself. To a person of the second, imagination, and reason itself, only serve to point out false objects of fear and desire, and to multiply the subjects of disappointment and of ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... strangers reviled his religion. It is no part of his creed to love his enemies and pray for those who despitefully use him. The Koran does not adjure him to turn the other cheek to the smiter. He has nursed his wrath to keep it warm, and prayed for an opportunity to wreak barbaric vengeance upon his oppressors. When Christian Europe marches forth to do battle with America she will need to wear armor upon her back as well as upon her breast, for while terror stalks ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... isolated from that multitude? Do you suppose that you can reach at one bound what I ultimately had to win for myself only after long and determined struggles, in order even to be able to live like a philosopher? And do you not fear that solitude will wreak its vengeance upon you? Just try living the life of a hermit of culture. One must be blessed with overflowing wealth in order to live for the good of all on one's own resources! Extraordinary youngsters! They felt it incumbent upon ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Scott's Anne of Geierstein will recall the Vehmgericht, that 'Secret Tribunal' whose deeds were notorious in medieval Germany, and it chanced that the Luzensteins were in touch with this body. Its minions were called upon to wreak vengeance on the younger Palatine prince. On several occasions his life was attempted, and once he would certainly have been killed had not Rafaello succoured him in the ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... ruling of the Texas appellate court to settle the issue whether such comment was improper under Texas practice, Justice Douglas concluded that the record suggests only that "the judge picked a quarrel with this lawyer and used his high position to wreak vengeance." There having been no substantial obstruction of the trial, Justice Murphy believed that the trial judge's use of his power was inconsistent with due process; whereas Justice Rutledge, in dissenting, contended ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... to tremble in the grip of sudden, overmastering fear. This was the last thing she had anticipated. What could it mean? Had she driven him demented? Had he pursued her to wreak his vengeance upon her, perhaps to ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... use them, but they ran about in great excitement, each with his knife drawn, blindly ready to do whatever should be ordered. The poor negroes were greatly frightened. They had but one idea about the approaching boats: they believed that the men in them were Rackbirds coming to wreak vengeance upon them. The same idea had come into the mind of the captain. Some of the Rackbirds had gone back to the cove. They had known that there had been people there. They had made investigations, and found ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... by prayers and representations, she might gain a brief postponement of the matter. He himself hurried up to the count, who with great self-command had immediately retired into the inner room, and would rather allow the most urgent affair to stand still, than wreak on an innocent person the ill humor once excited in him, and give a ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... failed, Drooped through the air; and still it shrieked and wailed, And casting back its eager head, with beak And talon unremittingly assailed The wreathed Serpent, who did ever seek 215 Upon his enemy's heart a mortal wound to wreak. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... and the priest seized Manuel by the arms, leaving him at the mercy of the salesman, who, beholding the boy thus corralled, tried to wreak vengeance; but when he was ready to strike, Manuel gave him such a forceful kick in the stomach that the fellow vomited up his ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... his cousin;—in answer to which Mr. Camperdown suggested that the question was one for the decision of the Vice-Chancellor. Frank Greystock found that he could do nothing with Mr. Camperdown, and felt that he could wreak his vengeance only ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... beside his bier, Our words are sobs, our cry or praise a tear: We are the smitten mortal, we the weak. We see a spirit on earth's loftiest peak Shine, and wing hence the way he makes more clear: See a great Tree of Life that never sere Dropped leaf for aught that age or storms might wreak; Such ending is not death: such living shows What wide illumination brightness sheds From one big heart,—to conquer man's old foes: The coward, and the tyrant, and the force Of all those weedy monsters raising heads When Song is muck from ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... girl's face blushed beneath the reproachful look of the old tyrant, whilst the governess rose defiantly from her place, and in order that she might wreak her anger upon some one, industriously proceeded to pick holes in Henrietta's sewing and effectually spoil ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... sacredness to memory upon marble." Then, if you are to do this,—if you are to put off your kindness until death,—why not, in God's name, put off also your enmity? and if you choose to write your lingering affections upon stones, wreak also your delayed anger upon clay. This would be just, and, in the last case, little as you think it, generous. The true baseness is in the bitter reverse—the strange iniquity of our folly. Is a man to be praised, honored, pleaded for? It might do harm to praise or plead for him while ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... the air. Her choice had not yet been made: but at this moment when Caligula and his guard turned toward the studio door, she knew that it would not be long in the making. Never should that demented tyrant cross the threshold of her studio and wreak his hatred and revenge upon the fallen hero. Rather than that should happen she would call to the people, and hand over the Caesar—her kinsman—to an infuriated mob. Better that than to deliver a wounded man into the claws ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... no emotion, it seemed, had ever tinged. The failure of her first attempt had exasperated her hatred against her husband and against the Countess to the verge of fury, but a concentrated fury, which was waiting for another occasion to strike, for weeks, patiently, obscurely. She had thought to wreak her vengeance by the return of Gorka, and in what had it ended? In freeing Lincoln from a dangerous rival and in imperilling the life of the only being ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Take down our sentence as we speak it, And he shall wreak it! (Indicating Strephon.) ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... coming, four times as strong as ever!" for she supposed that the one man whom her brother had offended had become so angry as to make four of himself in order to wreak his vengeance. ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... "the archers and men-at-arms are furiously wrath with the Saracens. They would wreak their vengeance on the prisoners, ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... meadow. The Greeks were in their tents in the meadows beside the Black Forest. The Saxons who were observing them were encamped opposite them. The duke's nephew was left all alone on a hill to keep a look-out, and see whether, peradventure, he might gain any advantage over those yonder or wreak any ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... of stout rowing to reach it. Alighting there, we cross the narrow strip of land, and find ourselves upon the huge sea-wall—block piled on block—of Istrian stone in tiers and ranks, with cunning breathing-places for the waves to wreak their fury on and foam their force away in fretful waste. The very existence of Venice may be said to depend sometimes on these murazzi, which were finished at an immense cost by the Republic in the days of its decadence. The enormous monoliths which compose them had to be brought across the ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... alone amounted to 1 1/4 million pounds; whilst Yuan Shih-kai himself was placed in possession by a system of weekly disbursements of a sum roughly amounting to ten million sterling, which was amply sufficient to allow him to wreak his will on his fellow-countrymen. Exasperated to the pitch of despair by this new development, the Central and Southern provinces, after a couple of months' vain argument, began openly to arm. On the 10th July in Kiangse province on the river Yangtsze the Northern ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... our sepulchre. If Fate, If tempests wreak their wrath on us, serene We watch the bolt of heaven, and scorn the hate Of angry gods that smite us in their spleen. Perchance the jealous mists are but the screen That veils the fairy coast we would explore. Come, though the sea be vex'd, and breakers roar, Come, for the air of this old world ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... in the same room with this man whose existence was a menace to the entire white race, whilst placidly he pursued an experiment designed, if his own words were believable, to cut me off from my kind—to wreak some change, psychological or physiological I knew not; to place me, it might be, upon a level with such brute things as that which now hung, half floating, in the ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... the framing of a deathless lay The pastime of a drowsy summer day; But gather all thy powers And wreak them on the verse that thou dost weave. ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... exclaimed the bandit, gritting his teeth. "If I kill you off and slay Aslitta it will only be to wreak my vengeance upon that man, whom I despise. Oh, he called me a ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... Catholics in England welcomed the Armada, since both Lord Burghley[38] and Philip II. were convinced that Spain could not rely on their co-operation, and though in many parts of the country Catholics volunteered for service to fight the invader, the government determined to wreak its vengeance on the helpless victims in prison. Within three days six priests and eight laymen were executed near London (August); nine priests and three laymen were put to death in October, and before the end of the ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere. We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine expression. There is a mortifying experience in particular which does not fail to wreak itself also in the general history; I mean "the foolish face of praise," the forced smile which we put on in company where we do not feel at ease in answer to conversation which does not interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved, but moved by a low ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Beaumont's having preserved the life of a wounded officer, soon reached the ears of Morgan, who concluding it must be one of his own party, imagined he should now have ample opportunity to wreak his vengeance on a man whom he had marked for destruction, in revenge for the insult he had received from Eustace, and the disappointment of his hopes of obtaining Constantia. It was, however, necessary to ascertain the fact of his harbouring a Royalist taken in arms, ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... shockingly treated house in the whole town. We have the misfortune to be equally feared by both sides, because we will blackguard neither. So the Yankees selected the only house in town that sheltered three forlorn women, to wreak their vengeance on. From far and near, strangers and friends flocked in to see the ravages committed. Crowds rushed in before, crowds came in after, Miriam and mother arrived, all apologizing for ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... Pyncheon, the maiden under the dreadful power of a wizard, who, to wreak his revenge, compelled her to surrender her will to his and to do whatsoever he list, the legends of ghosts and spectres in the Twice-Told Tales, the allusions to the elixir of life in his Notebooks, the introduction ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... sits," he repeated, and envied him. Yet in that heat and hunger, waiting for his savage captor to wreak some new fancy upon him, so saturated with philosophic interest in life was Birnier, that he wandered off into a meditation upon the mechanical fatuity of human conduct; illustrating his reflections by his own actions when stirred by emotion. "The loaded gun may be as wise as Solomon was reputed ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... herself becomes tormented "in the face of authority," before the eyes of the magistrates and the awestruck crowd. Her power to afflict ceases as she breaks loose from her compact with the Devil, who sends some unseen confederate, not then brought to light, to wreak his vengeance upon her for having confessed. Tituba, as well as the girls, showed herself an adept in the arts taught ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... Camaya, the ship being promised there for a fag end of cargo, and prayed for a quick departure from the Philippines. In vain. They fell into the hands of unfriendly natives, who, having learned to distrust the Spanish, were always ready to wreak small injuries on them when the chance afforded. These natives attempted to separate the pair and drag the girl to their huts. The friar attacked them with spirit, but the brown men were too many for him, and in the melee both he and Maria ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... turned away, for he was jealous of this strange member of his band. In his little evil brain he sought for some excuse to wreak his hatred upon Tarzan. ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... say no to that, but I meant Estella. That girl's hard and haughty and capricious to the last degree, and has been brought up by Miss Havisham to wreak revenge ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... he, an innocent man, should have been made the scapegoat for the shortcomings of his companion; declaring that in doing this Kuiktuk had overreached himself. If he had wanted to punish Gibbs he should not have selected the whole party of five to wreak his vengeance upon in this manner, not knowing when they left Selawik that three of their number would return so soon to Nome. The three latter were in reality as much dupes of the old native as they themselves, for had they not gone on to town ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... hard to leave; I, so star-weary, over-warred, That have no joy in this your day— Rather foul fume englutting, that of day Confounds all ray— But only stand aside and grieve; I yet have sight beyond the smoke, And kiss the gods' feet, though they wreak Upon me stroke and again stroke; And this my seeing is not weak. The Woman I behold, whose vision seek All eyes and know not; t'ward whom climb The steps o' the world, and beats all wing of rhyme, And knows not; 'twixt the sun and moon Her inexpressible front enstarred Tempers the wrangling spheres ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... dismissed his lictors, descended from the rostra, and retired on foot to his house, accompanied only by his friends, passing through the midst of the populace which he had given every reason to desire to wreak vengeance upon him. It was audacity of the supremest sort. Sulla afterwards withdrew to his estate at Puteoli, where he spent the brief remainder of his life in the most remarkable alternation of nocturnal orgies ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... they ended; the banquet was prepared; the feasting was too luxurious. The woman great of heart was stern, she warred on Budli's race; on her spouse she would cruel vengeance wreak. ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... and the wind hurled itself against the house as if to level it with the ground; failing in this, it banged and battered, making windows and doors shake like loose teeth in their sockets. Then it swept by to wreak its fury elsewhere, and there was a grateful lull out of which burst a peal of thunder. And now peal followed peal, and the face of the sky, with its masses of swirling, frothy cloud, resembled an angry sea. The lightning ripped it in fierce zigzags, darting ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... secure of a more convenient opportunity, at no distant period, to wreak his vengeance upon us: at any rate there was no time for it now; he merely menaced us with his clenched fist, as they swept by. Almost at the same moment a great sea came rolling smoothly in, and, as our oars dipped to back water, we floated free: ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... its way, Each flaunting Caesar climbing to his fate Scorning the utmost steps of yesterday. Never a shallow jester any more! Let not Jack Falstaff spill the ale in vain. Let Touchstone set the fashions for the wise And Ariel wreak his ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... English army fresh from the defeat of Humbert in 1798. Then, if ever, Irishmen might have run from a victorious and pitiless enemy, who having captured the French general and murdered, in cold blood, the hundreds of Killala peasants who were with his colors, were now come to Killala itself to wreak vengeance on the last stronghold ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... weightier matters of the law, justice, judgment, and mercy, as serpents, a generation of vipers, whited sepulchres, and what not, had enraged these superstitious fanatics to the last degree. But they could not wreak their vengeance, because he was protected, by the people whom the gospels represent as expecting with the most anxious impatience, that he would announce himself as their deliverer.[fn100] But when repeated importunity, accompanied by ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... see this letter. It roused his jealousy fearfully. A sense of "honor" would allow him to lavish his attentions upon guilty favorites, while that same sense of "honor" would urge him to wreak vengeance upon his unhappy, injured wife, because, in her neglect and anguish, with no false, but only a true affection, her memory turned to the loved companion of her childhood. According to the standard of the fashionable world, Beauharnais ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... brawling, bruising, ignorant pillar of low pothouses. As a gentleman by birth, and a scholar by taste and education, I was the type of all that he least understood and most detested; and the mere view of our visitors would leave him daily in a transport of annoyance, which he would make haste to wreak on the nearest victim, and too often ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... quality. Some elephants remain passive throughout the year, while others appear to be thoroughly demented, and, although at other seasons harmless, would, when "must," destroy their own attendant and wreak the direst mischief. At such a crisis the mahout must always be held responsible for accidents, as the animal, if properly watched and restrained, would be incapable of active movements, and would of course be comparatively harmless. Upon many occasions, ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... Teodora, and strikes the speaker of the insult in the face. A duel is forthwith arranged, to take place in a vacant studio adjacent to Ernesto's. When Don Julian learns about it, he is troubled by the idea that another man should be fighting for his wife, and rushes forthwith to wreak vengeance himself on the traducer. Teodora hears the news; and in order to prevent both her husband and Ernesto from endangering their lives, she rushes to Ernesto's rooms to urge him to forestall hostilities. Meanwhile her husband encounters ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... continued to wreak vengeance on the traitors. Caste lines formed automatically. The children of the traitors were persecuted by the children of the workers who had been betrayed, until it was impossible for the former to ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... regret; and that is, that you didn't suffer in place of Younker, who is the only one whose torments I would I had had no hand in. But you—you I could see tormented forever, and laugh heartily throughout. But I'll wreak my vengeance on you yet; I will by ——!' and with these words he left me to the charge of my guards, with whom he spoke a short time in the Indian tongue—probably giving them instructions ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... ma tante," here interposed Crystal with sudden calm. "We must yield to brute force. Let us get out and allow this abominable thief to wreak his impious will with us, else we lay ourselves open to further outrage at his hands. Be sure that retribution, swift and certain, will overtake him ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... had refrained from disclosing the hiding-place merely that the pirates might wreak their vengeance on Captain Rolls, now, perceiving that the ...
— The Corsair King • Mor Jokai
... we are captives together, and we will all be saved, or perish together. You shall not be left alone for them to wreak their vengeance upon. We will not enter the cave unless ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... part of Catharine de' Medici's plan, at this juncture, to wreak her vengeance for the blow that had been aimed at her authority, either upon her son or upon her son-in-law. The Montmorencies, also, though suspected and long since the objects of jealousy, ultimately escaped with little difficulty. It is true that the eldest brother, Marshal ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... about to turn, to wreak his vengeance, perchance. But the bird, sufficiently fortunate itself, whatever woe it presaged for others, suddenly took its awkward flight through sheen and shadow across the quadrangle, and when they heard ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... of the British navy cast all ring ethics to the winds. He struck, kicked and clawed and sought to wreak what damage he could upon his enemies without regard for the niceties of fighting. He knew that they would ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake
... and at the right moment sought by a strategic movement to snatch the rubber from her, the palpable unfairness of the attempt caused the animal instantly to fly into a towering passion, and seek to wreak vengeance upon me. Her lips drew far back in a savage snarl, and she denounced my perfidy by piercing cries of rage and indignation. She also did her utmost to seize and drag me forcibly within reach of her teeth, for the punishment which she felt ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... hideous dream. Jambai launched his javelin into the animal's chest, and then turned and fled. The other natives also darted and scattered hither and thither, so that the elephant could not make up its mind on which of its enemies to wreak its vengeance. We, too, turned and took to our heels at once with right good will. All at once I heard Jack utter a wild shout or yell, very unlike to anything I ever heard from him before. I looked back, and saw that his foot had got entangled in a thorny shrub, and that the elephant ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... janitor, was terror-stricken. Evidently, the Judge had been murdered and his body was now being made away with. What was to be done? If he interfered, the murderers would wreak their vengeance on him; if he refrained, he would be blamed for the murder or at least ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... with a shattered skull and neck the terrible "forest demon," as the negroes call the gorilla. The King, however, for greater certainty or through inborn fury, pinned the gorilla with his tusks to the ground and afterwards did not cease to wreak his vengeance upon it until Stas, disquieted by the roar and howling, came running up with a rifle ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... he, "these unfortunates upon whom you intend to wreak your vengeance, implore your compassion and) have chosen me for this task. I believe that I am a man, by no means unknown, and they desire that, somehow, I will effect a reconciliation between them and their former friends. Surely ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... there are others as fair as you—if, I say, another beauty should bind him under new thralls, if in the state in which you are now, alone and defenceless at his mercy, he should go so far as to offer violence, on whom should the king wreak his vengeance for this ...
— Psyche • Moliere
... experienced from the psychic portion of the subjects, which popular language dignifies with the name of ghosts. But the man of philosophic temperament—to whom alone the experiment is appropriate—will be little prone to attach importance to the feeble efforts of these beings to wreak their vengeance on him. I contemplate with the liveliest satisfaction the enlarged and emancipated existence which the experiment, if successful, will confer on me; not only placing me beyond the reach of human justice (so-called), but eliminating to a great ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... cursed by too much of the missionary spirit. We must needs voyage into the China of our brother's brain, and explain there that things are seriously wrong in that heathen land, and make ourselves unpleasant in the hope of getting them put right. We have all our own brain and body on which to wreak our personality, but this is not enough; we must extend our personality further, just as though we were a colonising world-power intoxicated by the idea ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... ask thee. Let me speak As thou hast spoken; then, with knowledge, wreak Thy judgement. I accept it ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles
... formerly slew my dear friend Hidimva, living in this forest and ravished his sister! And that fool hath now come into this deep forest of mine, when the night is half spent, even at the time when we wander about! Today I will wreak my long-cherished vengeance upon him, and I will today gratify (the manes of) Vaka with his blood in plenty! By slaying this enemy of the Rakshasas, I shall today be freed from the debt I owe to my friend and my brother, and thereby attain supreme happiness! If ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the widow in despair, unable to wreak her vengeance on one who kept in a secure position, and whose movements were ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... the tidings bound That Ranild's prisoner taken; Had he been aware how it would fare He had not Hielm forsaken. The death of woe, spaed long ago, They'll wreak on him now, ...
— The Songs of Ranild • Anonymous |
