"Brutality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Sir Colin Campbell in his operations against Lucknow, and to correspond with the Viceroy, Lord Canning, and others about the needs of the time. More perhaps than any one else, he laboured to check savage reprisals and needless brutality, and thereby incurred much odium with the more reckless and ignorant officers, who, coming out after the most critical hour, talked loudly about punishment and revenge. He was as cool in victory ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... where men with whiskey in their heads settle their feuds or work off their sprightliness with the arms of Nature, sometimes aided by the least dangerous of weapons. But England is the land of prize-fights, of scientific brutality, which has flourished under the patronage of her hereditary legislators and other "Corinthian" supporters. The pugilistic dynasty came in with the House of Brunswick, and has held divided empire with it ever since. The Briton who claims ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... be called the patriarch of Australasian Christianity. There is something grand in the bravery of the bullet-headed Yorkshireman, now contending with the brutality of the convicts and their masters, now sleeping among the cannibals of New Zealand. His foundations, too, have received a superstructure on which we cannot dwell; because, happily, the first Bishop of New Zealand is not yet a subject for biography, and the Melanesian Mission, which has sprung out ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... indeed, is an instance of her complex characters so justly praised by Macaulay. One thinks of her mainly as parsimonious; but her parsimony would be worth much less than it is, if it were not set off by her servility to Sir Thomas, her brutality to Fanny, and her undisciplined fondness for her other nieces. Lady Bertram is formed for the enjoyment of all her readers; and a pale example of what she might have become under less propitious circumstances is given ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... against the Jews! Here too, about the same time, the youthful members of the University flocked to hear Burgon's evening sermons—quaint and original as the man himself—in one of which, after describing the episode of Balaam and the ass, he threw up his hands and cried, "To think that that type of brutality should speak with the voice of ...
— Oxford • Frederick Douglas How
... the Huguenots and the Leaguers, have so thickly sown this land with the seed of blood, to bear witness through all time to their merciless savagery, that the unprejudiced mind, looking here for traces of a grand struggle of ideals, will find little or nothing but the records of revolting brutality. ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... all, look up to heaven, since there is true life, not on this earth, a valley of tears. Mariano must modify his instincts—that was his master's advice—must lose his fondness for drawing coarse subjects—people as he saw them, animals in all their material brutality, landscapes in the same form ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... it was to oversee the women and girls slaving with pick and shovel had turned the little abode out of windows, to make it comfortable for himself and his guests, treating the furniture and all the little household gods with the same disdainful brutality that his masters had shown for Louvain Cathedral. The German instinct is always the same, whether it be on a small or a large scale—whether kicking ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... half-smile of contempt passed over her mouth. The answer to the restless question that had intruded itself upon her in the first moments of her grief was now before her. Its promptness, its polished brutality, had given her a shock, but not the pain she had expected. Perhaps her great grief—the real, the true, the grief death brings—recovered its place in her heart, and prevented her from feeling keenly any ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... four times, twice alone, and twice in company with the captain, but Edith refused to see her. Yet, after all, in spite of her scorn for these people, and her conviction that they were in league with Wiggins—in spite of the captain's brutality—it was not without sorrow that Edith dismissed Mrs. Mowbray; for she looked upon her as a kind of tie that bound her to the outer world, and until the last she had hoped that some means might arise through these, if not of escape, at ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... is enough to consider the results. We see that the intellect, so skilful in dealing with the inert, is awkward the moment it touches the living. Whether it wants to treat the life of the body or the life of the mind, it proceeds with the rigor, the stiffness and the brutality of an instrument not designed for such use. The history of hygiene or of pedagogy teaches us much in this matter. When we think of the cardinal, urgent and constant need we have to preserve our bodies and to raise our souls, of the special facilities given to each of us, in this field, ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... chiefly used for the murder of red-skins; a democracy after your model; and with all that, a society corrupt to the core, and at this moment engaged in suppressing freedom with just the same reckless brutality and blind ignorance as the Czar of all the Russias ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... day was more grievous, more intolerable even than the first. He walked from the cabin to the lime-kiln, and from the lime-kiln to the cabin twenty times. He went to Kennedy's cabin, to try if he could kill time by subjecting himself to the brutality of the man or his wife; but the door was locked or bolted, and there was apparently no one in it; he clambered up the hill and then down again—and again threw himself upon the walls of the lime-kiln, and looked upon ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... Buckhurst draw in his breath—once. Some day he would try to kill me for that; in the mean time my crass stupidity was no longer a question in his mind. I had hurt the Countess, too, with what she must have believed a fool's needless brutality. But it had to be so if I played at ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... I have mentioned a curious reason that a jury once gave for not finding a prisoner guilty, although he had been tried on a charge of a most terrible murder. The evidence was irresistible to anybody but a jury, and the case was one of inexcusable brutality. The man had been tried for the murder of his father and mother, and, as I said, the evidence was too clear to leave a doubt ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... extreme brutality of the German soldier of to-day be the result not only of the ruthless command from the official higher up but also of the de-souling, materialistic influence of Socialism on the common people of Germany ...
— Socialism and American ideals • William Starr Myers
... reaction and seeing the other was suffering tremendously for some reason or other unexplained and perhaps inexplicable was profoundly sorry. His friendship for the man who had saved his life was altogether too strong and deep to be shaken by this temporary lapse into brutality which he had known all along was there although held miraculously in abeyance these many weeks. The man was a genius, with all the temperamental fluctuations of mood which are comprehensible and forgivable in a genius. ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... messenger returned: he brought back their own letter with these words inscribed on it, "Condemned to death." The prisoner being called in again, heard his sentence with perfect composure. He requested the attendance of a confessor, and was answered,—"Would you die like a monk?" Without noticing this brutality he knelt for a moment, as in prayer, and rising, ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... English than the comic stage had before attracted? Germs, possibly, of better things to come, that is all, so far as characterisation goes. The Fondlewife episode, in particular, which doubtless was mightily popular—what is there more in it than the mutton fisted wit and brutality of Wycherley, with some of Congreve's English? Such scenes as these, it may be hazarded, so contemptible in the light of Congreve's better work, are ineffective now because they fall between two stools: between ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... believe they are all eligible young men, but many of them may be had for a guinea. The charge in my case is higher as I have a title. I have tried to flatter myself that it was my polished, dignified manner that won me the extra remuneration; but after your exclamation on my brutality to-night, I am afraid I must fall back on my title. We members of the aristocracy come high, ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... in the conversation, and the shipowner was compelled to start afresh. He was far too shrewd to go straight back to the topic burked by his own error. His sledge-hammer methods might be crude to the verge of brutality where Iris was concerned, but they were capable of nice adjustment in the case of wary old ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... vice-consul, informed me that a criminal was to be garrotted on the following morning; and asked me whether I cared to look over the prison and see the man in his cell that afternoon. We went together. The poor wretch bore the stamp of innate brutality. His crime was the most revolting that a human being is capable of - the violation and murder of a mere child. When we were first admitted he was sullen, merely glaring at us; but, hearing the warder describe his crime, he became furiously abusive, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... proceeded in a body, with the laird at their head, and invaded his privacy by exhibiting bottles and glasses at his bedside, Losing all patience, the wretched victim gasped out his indignation—"Sir, your hospitality borders upon brutality." It must have had a fatal influence also on many persons to whom drinking was most injurious, and who were yet not strong-minded enough to resist the temptations to excess. Poor James Boswell, who certainly required no extraordinary urging to take a glass too much, is found in his letters, which ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... But a certain revulsion of feeling had come over Theydon since the sheer brutality of the murder had been revealed. He failed to see now why he should be so solicitous for Forbes's welfare. No matter what private purpose the man might serve by concealing his visit to Mrs. Lester, it ought to give way before the ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... ten times more virulent than ever. Before the commencement of the present disturbances, the coercive power of the mother-country had always been able to restrain those factions from breaking out into any thing worse than gross brutality and insult. If that coercive power were entirely taken away, they would probably soon break out into open violence and bloodshed. In all great countries which are united under one uniform government, the spirit of party commonly prevails less in the remote provinces than in the centre of the empire. ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... that no man who had intellect enough to paint a picture, or write a comic opera, could act as he did; you say that men of genius and talent may have egregious faults, but they cannot descend to brutality or meanness. Would that the case were so! Would that intellect could preserve from low vice! But, alas! it cannot. No, the whole character of Cecil is painted with but too faithful a hand; it is very masterly, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... I, "permit me to point out to you that this is not a case merely of a sister or a wife, but that I am the friend of the lady in question, and that I have the privilege which every gentleman possesses of protecting a woman against brutality. It is only by a gesture that I can show you what I think of you." I had my riding glove in my hand, and I flicked him across the face with it. He drew back with a bitter smile and his eyes ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... good and evil, that the great majority of men move about them unseen, except in a far-away and superficial manner. Men are not influenced at arm's length. It would be interesting to know if some day a preacher or judge, who, offended by Mr. Culhane's profanity and brutality, will be able to reach the gladiator and convert him to his views as readily as the gladiator is able to ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... Commander, and which will endure as long as there is darkness and misery upon the earth; even the battle of the living God against the baser instincts of our nature, against ignorance and folly, against lawlessness and tyranny, against brutality and sloth. Those, the deadly enemies of the human race, you are all bound to attack, if you be good men and true, wheresoever you shall meet them invading the kingdom of your Saviour and your God. But you can only conquer them in others in proportion ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... He can drink an enormous quantity of wine without his head becoming affected. He looks down with entire disregard on the laws of God and man, as made for inferior beings. As for any worthy moral quality,—as for anything beyond a certain picturesque brutality and bull-dog disregard of danger, not a trace of such a thing can be found ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... have been attended with temptations perilous to character. Abundant testimony is not wanting to show that their tendency has been toward rowdyism, gambling, debauchery, and other disgraceful conduct. Some of the games scarcely rise above the brutality of the prize fight. They have no elevating tendency, and no apology can be made for their roughness and ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... eighty, the first letters written to you by your old love, or by your little children, were but newly released from the horror of being ogled through the windows, by the heads exposed on Temple Bar with an insensate brutality and ferocity worthy of Abyssinia ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... are chiefly of the things that took place a generation ago, when there was far more brutality on ocean-going ships than there is in these ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... I have seen Liverpool streets with scarcely a coach or vehicle in them, save such as trade required, and the most enlightened of its inhabitants, at that time, could not boast of much intelligence, while those who constituted its lower orders were plunged in the deepest vice, ignorance, and brutality. ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... were at liberty to indulge themselves in riot and licentiousness. All night long they ravaged the adjacent country without restraint; and as no guards had been regularly placed in the streets and avenues of Cherbourg, to prevent disorders, the town itself was not exempted from pillage and brutality. These outrages, however, were no sooner known, than the general took immediate steps for putting a stop to them for the present, and preventing all irregularities for the future. Next morning, the place being reconnoitred, he determined to destroy, without delay, all the forts and the basin; and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... said Uncle Jack, so that I alone heard him. "Ignorance and brutality. Here," he said aloud, "take my arm. I'll help you on to your house. ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... statue exhibits the highest grade of technical skill. One would like very much to know what was the original purpose of the work. It may have been a votive statue, dedicated by a victorious boxer at Olympia or elsewhere. A bronze head of similar brutality found at Olympia bears witness that the refined statues of athletes produced in the best period of Greek art and set up in that precinct were forced at a later day to accept such low companionship. Or it may be that this boxer is not an actual person at all, ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... his lodgings on this dark errand about eleven o'clock P. M.; not that he meant to begin so soon: but he needed to reconnoitre. He carried his tools closely buttoned up under his loose roomy coat. It was in harmony with the general subtlety of his character, and his polished hatred of brutality, that by universal agreement his manners were distinguished for exquisite suavity: the tiger's heart was masked by the most insinuating and snaky refinement. All his acquaintances afterwards described his dissimulation ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... rapidly swelling assemblage resemble in any measure a mob bent upon violence. It was composed mainly of law-abiding business men who greeted each other genially; in their grave, intelligent faces was no hint of savagery or brutality. All traffic finally ceased, the entire neighborhood was massed and clotted with waiting humanity; then, as the hour struck, a running salvo of applause came from the galleries and a cheer from the street when a handful of ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... am afraid. I can understand those articles seeming lifelike. You see I wrote them almost literally with my blood. It was my last effort. I was starving, poisoned with horrors, sick to death of the brutality of life." ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... I don't," Hammond interrupted him. "Very likely I do: I don't pretend to be any better than my neighbors. But that doesn't matter. If you are so clear-sighted that there's no sending you off under a happy delusion, it would be mere brutality to urge you to undergo sea-sickness in the search for such a fate. As you say, it is attainable ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... His brutality to men and beasts alike was most hurtful to me. He once abandoned his favourite dog on an island, simply because he had kicked it viciously the day before and the dog would not respond to his calls and enter the canoe. He now proposed to kill the other dogs, ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... hundred unfortunate natives in the old African slave-trading fashion, and carried them away to work the guano deposits on the Chincha Islands. Not a score of them returned to their island homes—the rest perished under the lash and brutality of ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... privileges essential to a fair trial. Thus, without even admitting that the privilege against self-incrimination was involved, all the Justices agreed, in Brown v. Mississippi,[880] that the use of a confession extorted by brutality and violence (undenied strangulation and whipping by the sheriff aided by a mob) was a denial of due process, even though coercion was not established until after the confession had been admitted in evidence and defense counsel did not thereafter move for its exclusion. ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... man would treat a dog. Such policemen are decidedly more interested in the extra pay they get on each arrest than in serving the best interests of the community. Many a poor man has been arrested when slightly intoxicated, and driven to desperation by the brutality of the police, that, under charitable and kind treatment, would have been saved. And I wish to ask a civilized and Christian people, if it is just the thing to take a man afflicted with the terrible disease of drunkenness, ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... drawn of the brutality, violent manners and ignorance of the British officer at this period find no confirmation in Nairne's monitions to his son, or in the account of his own military experience which dates from the mid-eighteenth ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... teachers, and of the degree of honesty which may be found in many. I suppose there is no doubt that the accursed system of the cheap Yorkshire schools was by no means caricatured by Mr. Dickens in "Nicholas Nickleby." I believe that starvation and brutality were the rule at these institutions. And I do not think it says much for the manliness of Yorkshire men and of Yorkshire clergymen, that these foul dens of misery and wickedness were suffered to exist so long ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... Mallow without money would have been a bold predatory scoundrel. Craig knew also that he himself was at soul too cowardly to be more than despicably bad. He envied Mallow's absolute fearlessness, his frank brutality, his strength upon which dissipation had as yet left no mark; and Mallow was easily forty-five. Paris. He might never see that city again. He had just enough to carry him to Hongkong and keep him on his feet until the races. ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... savagery of Puritan captains and Prussian nobles; but the land withered under their smile as under an alien frown. Being still at least English, they were still in their way good-natured; but their position was false, and a false position forces the good-natured into brutality. The French Revolution was the challenge that really revealed to the Whigs that they must make up their minds to be really democrats or admit that they were really aristocrats. They decided, as in the case of their philosophic exponent ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... brought from the Colony for this special purpose. Mr. Manion, the Consular Agent, and Mr. K.B. Brown, an American just arrived in Cape Town from the Rand, took me aside and laid the case in all its bare brutality before me. To allow my husband to return to Pretoria was for him to meet certain death. If he were not lynched by the excited Boers, he was sure to get a death sentence. Mr. Brown showed feeling ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... theatre, he loved music and dancing. He loved good talk and good fellowship; he loved an idea and anyone who was susceptible to an idea. He also loved a spirited game of rackets, and though he hated brutality, he has left us a very vivid and sympathetic account of a prize-fight. Above all he loved the words truth and justice and humanity. With such sensibilities, it is no wonder that his last words should have been "I ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... His brutality then knew no bounds. He forced Lucrezia and Beatrice to share the same bed, threatening his wife to kill her if she disclosed to his daughter by a single word that there was anything odious in such an intercourse. So matters went on for ...
— The Cenci - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... sovereignty days was now epidemic in its most malignant form. Those days had bred intense hatred between Missourian and Kansan and had developed a disregard of the value of human life and a ruthlessness and brutality in fighting, concomitant with it, that the East, in its most primitive times, had never been called upon to experience. Granted that the spirit of the crusader had inspired many a free-soiler to venture into the trans-Missouri region after the Kansas-Nebraska bill had become law and that real ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... Just after I was married, I thought it was only the fair thing to tell Mabel about several girls I had been sweet on before I knew her. Would you believe it, she burst into tears, and upbraided me with my brutality; and she brings up that ill-advised disclosure against me to this day. I know several ladies who will not lie, under ordinary circumstances—not for the mere pleasure of it, at least; Clarice, for instance, and Jane, I believe; but not one who will ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... surprised Jimmie, as he wriggled to get free. Without a word, the woman who had been suffering from his brutality, now sprang upon the rescuing policeman with the fury of a lioness robbed of her cub. She clawed at the bluecoat's face and cursed him ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... for a moment softened by the death of the child, soon returned to their accustomed brutality of conduct. "Oh, look here, my friend," said Malicorne to the lapidary, "your child is dead; it is unfortunate, but we are all mortal; we cannot help it, nor can you, so there's an end of it. We have an extra job to do to-day—a swell ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... ideals, the expansion to remote or world heroes is too fast, it may "lead to disintegration of character and reckless living." "If, on the other hand, it is expanded too slowly we shall have that arrested development which makes good ground in which to grow stupidity, brutality, and drunkenness—the first fruits of a sluggish and self-contained mind." "No one can consider the regularity with which local ideals die out and are replaced by world ideals without feeling that he is in the presence of law-abiding forces," and this ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... remarked, with a glance at the nearest bag. As targets, I don't regard my fellow-creatures with great enthusiasm and, moreover, I could easily have made two of this mousy champion of a warlike race. Illogically, I was feeling that to bully him was sheer brutality. Besides this, my dinner was not being improved by ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... peasantry sustain a conversation, and the purity of the language in which they express their thoughts, and yet few of them can read or write; whereas the peasantry of England, whose education is in general much superior, are in their conversation coarse and dull almost to brutality, and absurdly ungrammatical in their language, though the English tongue is upon the whole more simple in ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... than it is possible for a European to conceive; they beat their male relations hollow in their denunciations and hopes of vengeance. It was quite depressing to hear their innumerable stories of Yankee brutality, and I was much relieved when, at a later period of the evening, they subsided into music. After Bishop Elliott had read prayers, I slept in the same room with ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... waiting, for a mind to drift toward me; a mind that would understand my particular case of fear brought on by the constant bullying and nagging from my earliest childhood by those in my home. This fear of brutality has greatly depleted my nervous system and has unfitted me for the strong, useful, forceful life I should have expressed. If I could only rid my mind of the thought that I am always displeasing, or rather, going to displease ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... in her to care so much for a boy, but she had never loved women, and I was handsome, and she liked handsome faces. The brutality in my nature was not written upon my features. I had smiling, frank brown eyes, a lithe young figure, a gay boy's voice. My movements were quick, and I have always been told that my gestures were never awkward, my demeanour was never unfinished, as is the case so ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... the rack, metaphorically, while the Committee was showing him every brutality in its power, refusing to acquaint him with the evidence against him, intimating that they were able to convict him of treason, between the fifth and the eleventh of January a crisis arose in the War Office. Cameron had failed to ingratiate himself with the rising ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... head in sullen shame. I might protest against his brutality and this judgment of me, but to what purpose while he ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... is very necessary to avoid confusing this soul of the savage with mere savagery in the sense of brutality or butchery; in which the Greeks, the French and all the most civilised nations have indulged in hours of abnormal panic or revenge. Accusations of cruelty are generally mutual. But it is the point about the Prussian that with him nothing is mutual. The definition of the true ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton
... you take all you can get?" he asked, almost with brutality. So the passion was stirring in him. All that came to ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... Low was especially fine at the last, when, hearing the doctor and the valet say, 'The Emperor is dead!' he pulled out his watch, and wound up the piece (not the watch) by exclaiming, with characteristic brutality, 'Ha! ha! Eleven minutes to six! The General dead! and the spy hanged!' This ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... Lord," said Tristan, with his usual brutality of manner, "the youth must find another guide. I cannot do without Petit Andre, when there is so like to be business on hand ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... and abhorred for its own sake, much more than for its outward consequences. These owe their chief bitterness to their criminal source. We speak of the miseries which the drunkard carries to his family. But take away his own brutality, and how lightened would be these miseries! We talk of his wife and children in rags. Let the rags continue; but suppose them to be the effects of an innocent cause. Suppose his wife and children bound to him by a strong love, which a life of labor for their support, and of unlearned kindness ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... that something must be done; and the doctor does something. Sometimes what he does kills the patient; but you do not know that; and the doctor assures you that all that human skill could do has been done. And nobody has the brutality to say to the newly bereft father, mother, husband, wife, brother, or sister, "You have killed your lost darling by ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... space of time, to visit Karlsruhe. But the mere expression of this wish seemed, as soon as it was reiterated, to arouse the bitterest feelings against me. Devrient expressed his opinion on the matter with so much violence and brutality that I could not help seeing that what kept me from Karlsruhe was mainly his personal disinclination to have me there, or to be interfered with in ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... stand made by Coke, in the name of the people, against the encroachments of the Crown is not to be overestimated; but respect does not attach to the soiled instrument by which our blessings were secured. A singular instance of the brutality of the Attorney-General, and of his overstrained duty to the Crown, occurred at the trial of the unfortunate and gallant Essex. Well may the present biographer exclaim, "This was a humiliating day for our order!" Essex had striven hard to obtain for ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... a cab and had had the cold brutality to ask for a glass of sherry and a sandwich before going upstairs. She put forward the lame excuse that she had not dined. Kirk gave her the sherry and sandwich and resumed his patrol in a glow of indignation. The idea of any one ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... the curt dismissal in silence, and after she was gone Blount sat up in bed and cursed himself fervently and painstakingly for the little brutality. But the remorseful cursings took nothing from the grim determination which had prompted the brutality. The dusk was thickening, and the street electrics were turning the avenue into a broad highway ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... conversation depends on how much you can take for granted. Vulgar chess-players have to play their game out; nothing short of the brutality of an actual checkmate satisfies their dull apprehensions. But look at two masters of that noble game! White stands well enough, so far as you can see; but Red says, Mate in six moves;—White looks,—nods;—the game ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... savagely, and she held her tongue, worshipping this new development of masterful brutality in a man whom she had regarded as ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... enterprise! The Hong Kong papers coming over in course of another week were full of it, and of appropriate comment on the remarkable depravity of the American race, and Chicago journals, notably the Palladium, bristled with editorial explosions over the oft-repeated acts of outrage and brutality on part of the American officer to the friendless ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... would have expressed his disgust with the fellow. But he was so conscious of how vital to himself was the necessity for being a successful, even a 'strong,' husband, that he never spoke of a distaste born perhaps by the perverse processes of Nature out of a secret fund of brutality in himself. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of unhappy married life Alice Benden had experienced enough of her husband's constant caprice and frequent brutality; but this new development of it astonished her. She had not supposed that he would descend so far as to take the price of innocent blood. The tone of her voice, not indignant, but simply astonished, increased Mr Benden's anger. The more gently she spoke, the harsher his voice grew. ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... officers, from generals and admirals downwards, were put on the retired list or under arrest. And an almost hysterical desire manifested itself to strike terror into every civilian whom his opinions rendered objectionable and his position dangerous to the new order: tactics the full brutality of which was revealed in the treatment of ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... heart. Poor Mary eat no supper the night previous to her last illness. Had it been possible for Elizabeth to have read those pages of Robertson, which paint the long succession of calamities which befel Mary, and the insolence and brutality she received from Darnley, and which so eloquently plead for her frailties, perhaps even these pages would not have softened her bloody disposition, which she seems to have inherited from that insolent monster, her father. "Mary's sufferings (says this enchanting ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... which have been hastily touched upon in the histories of the period, but which the minute descriptions of memoirs of that period show to have been attended with an unusual display of violence and brutality on both sides, broke out upon every anniversary which could recall the Stuarts to recollection. On St. George's day, in compliment to the Chevalier, who, according to an observer of those eventful days, "had assumed the name of that far-famed Cappadocian Knight, though every ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... into some marble hall, and that to satisfy its greed has strangled some rare and splendid bird that a traveller has brought from a distant land. But you! you hypocritical robber, who disregard your own body with beastly pride, and sacrifice it to low brutality—what should you know of the magic charm of beauty—that daughter of heaven, that can touch even thoughtless children, and before which the gods themselves do homage! I have a right to Sirona; for hide her where you will—or even if the centurion ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to feel that, I couldn't have made over my car to you," said I. "Road brutality would be peculiarly brutal in Spain, where motoring's a new sport, and peasants must be made accustomed to it. Every motorist who slows down for frightened animals, or gets out to help, is paving the way for ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... had a charm to me of which I had never before dreamed. I entered the brotherhood of those at life's bottom and found that again I was looked upon as a man superior to my associates and perhaps more fortunate. Even though I exhibited a brutality equal to any, I was regarded as a person of undoubted cleverness. If the great or showy classes of mankind would no longer flatter my vanity, the vicious and uncivilized classes would still perform that office. Fate threw me among them, so that nothing should be left undone to cajole me ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... any of these cases, we are yet at the threshold of our inquiry concerning it. We must go back over some ground which we have cursorily traversed, and look closer at the elements of society, to find a fitting solution to the spirit and conduct of the mob. Men are not given to acts of atrocious brutality, to frightful rage, or to wanton rapine, without the existence of some cause for their proceedings. However depraved a few individuals may be, the love of doing outrageous things for the mere sake of doing ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... be hanged up by the feet, and the people joyfully treated with fresh meat from the gallows. These sentiments only added fuel to the flames of Don Miguel's vengeance, and the kingdom was laid at the mercy of a set of men to whose vengeance, brutality, and avarice there were no bounds. One step downward in the path of moral turpitude ever leads to another. From the moment of his return, Don Miguel had hated his sister Bonna Maria, because she had been her brother's regent, and had ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... irascible, overbearing, and, when angry, vehement beyond all propriety. He was a "tremendous companion," said Garrick's brother; and men of gentle nature, like Charles Fox, often shrank from his company, and perhaps exaggerated his brutality. ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... from this his attitude concerning marriage. He lived in terror of the vulgar, heavy-handed man who would one day win my mother's heart, and at last, this persistent dread killed him. His concern was unnecessary, however, for my mother chose a suitor who was as free of mundane brutality as a husband could be. Her choice was Dauphin, a remarkable white cat which strayed onto the ...
— My Father, the Cat • Henry Slesar
... part meaningless. As a rule, women are less sensitive than men. There are many of your sex who are nothing but lumps of lymph and fatty matter—women with less instinct than the dumb beasts, and with more brutality. There are others who,—adding the low cunning of the monkey to the vanity of the peacock,—seek no other object but the furtherance of their own designs, which are always petty even when not absolutely ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... death, and audacious in attack, but easily discouraged by failure; excessively turbulent and unsubmissive to law or discipline; apparently frank and affable in manner, especially when they hope to gain some object, but capable of the grossest brutality when that hope ceases. They are unscrupulous in perjury, treacherous, vain and insatiable, passionate in vindictiveness, which they will satisfy at the cost of their own lives and in the most cruel manner. Nowhere is crime committed on such trifling ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... had been left alone with John Levine,—a story of unimaginable horrors. Like many cold men to whom the pleasures of the world are, nevertheless, easy, Levine was a voluptuary and cruel. Had his child been safely born, there would have been no measure in his brutality. Rachael had watched for her opportunity, and one night when he had been at a state function in Christianstadt, too secure in her apparent apathy to lock her door, she had bribed a servant to drive her to Frederikstadt, and boarded the ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... stern methodic study; how to give habits of enterprise, patience, accurate observation, which the counting-house or the library will never bestow; above all, how to develop the physical powers, without engendering brutality and coarseness - are questions becoming daily more and more puzzling, while they need daily more and more to be solved, in an age of enterprise, travel, and emigration, like the present. For the truth must be told, that the great majority of men who are now distinguished by commercial ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... matters of sex must probably be attended to in the public schools. It were better done by parents, perhaps; but parents cannot be depended upon to do it. The dangers that await indulgence, the cruelty and brutality of prostitution, should be universally but cautiously taught; too many boys and girls wreck their lives for l ack of such knowledge. It is indeed a delicate task to instruct adolescents in these matters; there ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... inward grace had suffered, which is felt only upon the too near approach of the ab-human, and is more dreadful, in a strange way, than any physical pain that can be suffered. I knew by this more of the extent and closeness of the danger; and for a long time I was simply cowed by the butt-headed brutality of that Force upon my spirit. I can ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... contrast to the humor of Lockhart in the little-known review of the same volume by the Literary Gazette, 1833, pp. (772-774). The latter seized upon some crudities that had escaped the Quarterly's notice, and, with characteristic brutality, decided that the poet was insane and needed a low diet and ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... minds with a desire of doing only great and noble actions, and in the hearts of any others than these barbarians, would have endeavoured to have insinuated itself by pity: but that virtue being unknown to them, the charms of this unfortunate lady only redoubled their cruelty. Their fury and brutality inflamed them; and no intreaty could deter such hardened wretches from being guilty of the most shameful crimes!—-What a spectacle was this for a husband!—-The soul of the wretched Thibault was torn with the most poignant anguish—-distracted ...
— The Princess of Ponthieu - (in) The New-York Weekly Magazine or Miscellaneous Repository • Unknown
... Pan Mikolaj of Dlugolas that the death of Panna Jurandowna's mother was caused by the brutality of a German who wore the crest of a peacock. Therefore I vow to gird my naked sides with a hempen rope, and even though it eat me to the bone, I will wear it until I tear three such tufts of feathers from the heads of ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... so clear-seeing, so reasonable even about their own tragedies, are bitter to the soul when they think of the brutality done to their "douce France." To the French, quite as much as to the Bryanited American, war is a senseless, inhuman thing; but it becomes direfully necessary when the home has been burned and laid waste. The Gallic spirit cannot understand ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... followed by admiring throngs. But few of these things have been due to the extension of the suffrage. Strike out of our history the crimes of slavery, strike out the crimes, unparalleled for ferocity and brutality, committed by an oligarchy in its attempt to overthrow universal suffrage, and we may safely challenge for our national and State governments comparison with monarchy or aristocracy in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... pieces, which they held up to our view, after which they roasted these at a large fire, and eat them. By signs, likewise, they made us understand that they had killed and eaten our two men who went among them eight days before. We were sore grieved at the savage brutality of these people, insomuch that forty of us resolved to go on shore and attack them in revenge of their ferocious cruelty; but our commander would on no account permit us, and we were forced to depart unrevenged ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... was softly ebbing away in this atmosphere of selfishness, brutality, and unbelief. One evening she asked Dr. Tessier impatiently how long ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... been resisted,' was all the answer; and when he would have been to see how it was with poor Smithers, one of the men-at-arms kicked over the body with sickening brutality, saying, 'Dead enough, heretic and ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Gard? And still she deserved far better than Von Tielitz. Perhaps it was this feeling that added to her unhappiness. His vulgarity! To talk as Von Tielitz did about one who might become his wife, and to a stranger, was a new form of German brutality. It steadied and deepened Gard's admiration for her. Who ever heard a young Yankee speak like this about his serious sweetheart? However raw he may be, there is a certain sacred respect at the bottom of his language ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... or not they called themselves Christian, like Constantine, knew no law save the basest maxims of the heathen world. Several of them were barbarians who had risen from the lowest rank merely by military prowess; and who, half maddened by their sudden elevation, added to their native ignorance and brutality the pride, cunning, and cruelty of an Eastern Sultan. Rival Emperors, or Generals who aspired to be Emperors, devastated the world from Egypt to Britain by sanguinary civil wars. The government of the provinces had become altogether military. Torture was employed, ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... (National Code), were progressive and enlightened to an eminent degree; so much so, indeed, that they mystified the people as much as they alienated the patricians; but his actions were often of revolting brutality, and his whole career was vitiated by an incurable double-mindedness which provoked general distrust. Yet there is no doubt that Christian II. was a true patriot, whose ideal it was to weld the three northern kingdoms into a powerful state, independent of all foreign influences, especially ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... have had little significance; but coupled with the fact that his devoted servant was—in spite of all Bourgonef's eulogies— repulsively ferocious in aspect, capable, as I could not help believing, of any brutality,—the suggestion was unpleasant. You will understand that having emphatically acquitted Bourgonef in my mind, I did not again distinctly charge him with any complicity in the mysterious murder; on the contrary, I ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... an overseer,—great, tall, slab-sided, two-fisted renegade son of Vermont—(begging your pardon),—who had gone through a regular apprenticeship in hardness and brutality and taken his degree to be admitted to practice. My mother never could endure him, nor I; but he obtained an entire ascendency over my father; and this man was the absolute ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... admit that it is not always practised with discretion and that it is in most cases not only unnecessary but positively harmful. Children that are treated like animals will behave like animals; violence and brutality do not bring out the best in a child's nature. It would seem that intelligent parents do not need to resort to such methods in the ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... catch a glimpse of its head, its face; my blood freezes—it is horrible. It enters the room, grey and silent—it lays one hand on the man's sleeve and drags him forward. He ascends to the room above, and, with all the brutality of those accustomed to the dead and dying, drags the—— But I will not go on. The grey unknown, the occult something, sternly issues its directions, and the merely physical obeys them. It is all over; the plot of the vice elementals ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... took a large stick from the fire, one of its ends still burning, and with this terrific weapon belaboured his wife over the face, striking especially at the mouth, and cutting the upper lip in two. The poor woman is now very ill. No cause can be discovered for this piece of brutality. En-Noor has, they pretend, two wives here, and one on his estate at Damerghou; but he has only one son and three daughters. No larger family has this great man, with all his wealth and slaves, been able to ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... it whole. Still less can this be said of their followers, who, after the fashion of disciples, imitate and develop their defects, and oscillate between sentimental falsity, and the starkness and brutality which have been familiar in English literature during the last twenty years and in French literature for a much longer period. None of these writers, not even the best, is direct. Like Dickens, they consult their generous hearts, ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... considerable city of Pietermaritzburg. The situation was serious. Either the invaders must be stopped, or the second largest town in the colony would be in their hands. From all sides came tales of plundered farms and broken households. Some at least of the raiders behaved with wanton brutality. Smashed pianos, shattered pictures, slaughtered stock, and vile inscriptions, all exhibit a predatory and violent side to the paradoxical Boer character. [Footnote: More than once I have heard the farmers in the Free State acknowledge that the ruin which had come upon them was a just retribution ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... higher than themselves.' In No. 104 he writes:—'It is dangerous for mean minds to venture themselves within the sphere of greatness.' In the court that Boswell many years later paid to Lord Lonsdale, he suffered all the humiliations that the brutality of this petty greatness can inflict. Letters of Boswell, p. 324. See also post, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... the charge of brutality that is often brought against the English, and which is so successfully depicted by Dickens and Thackeray, there is doubtless good ground for it, though I actually saw very little of it during five weeks' residence in London, and I poked about ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... ultimately adopted creeds and practices abominable and repugnant alike to the excellence of reason and the dignity of man. On the other hand, all the nations that totally or partly succeeded in extricating themselves from a state of brutality and barbarism, must acknowledge that not to the development of their intelligence alone they owe their regeneration, but to certain sublime doctrines—originated in causes quite extrinsical from human nature—which, having found their way to them through a concourse of favourable ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... fear of you, Mr. Martin," cried Charles Stevens, turning on the tall, swarthy southerner a glance which made him quail. "Your profession is brutality. You are a stranger to mercy; yet I will defy you. I fear you not, and, if you seek my life, you had better take heed ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... respect, everyone claims, and very justly, every mark of civility and good-breeding. Ease is allowed, but carelessness and negligence are strictly forbidden. If a man accosts you, and talks to you ever so dully or frivolously, it is worse than rudeness, it is brutality, to show him, by a manifest inattention to what he says, that you think him a fool or a blockhead, and not worth hearing. It is much more so with regard to women; who, of whatever rank they are, are entitled, in consideration of their sex, not only to an attentive, but an officious ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... are told, barbarous brutality. Our commandant's daughter dragged before the provost-marshal. The gun found buried in your yard; your father's work? No, my own. You lie! Out you go—property confiscated, furniture sold; go seek the commandoes and ask them ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... having returned to the Front, he was killed in action in March, 1916) has certainly robbed France of one who should have made a notable figure in her literature. The style, very distinctive, shows poetic feeling and a rare and beautiful tenderness of thought, mingled with an acceptance of the brutality of life and war that is seen in the vivid descriptions of incidents that our own gentler writers would have left untold. The horror of some of these passages makes the book (I should warn you) not one for shaken nerves. But there can be no question of its very unusual interest, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various
... efficient substitute for the finer edge of that nice tact and good manners which they lack. Their very rudeness seems to commend them to the rude natures which confound refinement with trickery and assume that brutality must needs ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... dependent upon his employer for his bread into the independent producer acting at his own risk in free association with free colleagues. It follows, as a matter of course, that in this our work we could use only such workers as were raised above at least the lowest stage of brutality and ignorance. That we thus excluded the most miserable of the miserable, is true; but, apart from the fact that generally the ignorant man lacks a clear consciousness of his misfortune and degradation, and his sufferings are therefore, ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... professes to present the entire text of the Venetian Talmud of 1520, but it does nothing of the kind.[77] The translator, in the Preface, in fact admits that he has left out "sterile discussions" and has throughout attempted to tone down "the brutality of certain expressions which offend our ears." This of course affords him infinite latitude, so that all passages likely to prove displeasing to the "Hebraisants," to whom his work is particularly dedicated, are discreetly expunged. Jean de Pauly's translation ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... I almost thought the boy had heard sunthin' about the elections in the South, and the Congressional vote for cuttin' down the money for the Indian schools. Legislative action to perpetuate the ignorance and brutality of ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... devils, their wives and families, than our squires and squiresses and parsons are to their fellow parishioners. Punch also assumes a tone of virtuous satire, from the mouth of Mr. Douglas Jerrold! It is easy to sit in arm chairs at a club in Pall Mall and rail on the stupidity and brutality of ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... The frankness of Clem's brutality went far towards redeeming her character. The exquisite satisfaction with which she viewed Jane's present misery, the broad joviality with which she gloated over the prospect of cruelties shortly to be inflicted, put her ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... this fiction in their poems, sculpture, paintings, and other monuments of art. The Centaurs were invited to the nuptials of Pirithous, king of the Lapithae. During the marriage feast, one of the Centaurs, named Eurytion, or Eurytus, with the characteristic brutality of his nature, and elated by the effects of wine, offered violence to the person of Hippodamia, the bride. This outrageous act was immediately resented by Theseus, the friend of Pirhitous, who hurled a large vessel of wine at the head of the offender, which brought him lifeless ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... crying to Heaven long waiting but soon at length to hear. And France fiercely, proudly proving her right to live an independent nation. And Germany. Germany! the last word in intellectual power, in industrial achievement, in scientific research, aye and in infamous brutality! Germany, the might modern Hun, the highly scienced barbarian of this twentieth Century, more bloody than Attila, more ruthless than his savage hordes. Germany doomed to destruction because freedom is man's inalienable birthright, man's undying ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... the Chief of the Church, my Father. The fleet of Trieste will, at the same time, cruise before Ancona." This noble address was followed by profound silence. The attitude of several of the bystanders was expressive of doubt when the Emperor affirmed that the brutality of the Piedmontese aggression would alone suffice to prevent any one from making common cause with it. The Count de Thun at length rose. He acknowledged the manifestly just grievances of Austria, and admired the manly resolution of the Emperor. He then ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... representative of his policy, always shouted out the opposite opinion, thinking that the fear of Carthage had a salutary effect on the Roman populace at large. But the ideas of Cato prevailed, and a cruel policy, carried out with needless brutality, led to the extinction of Rome's greatest rival. Cato did not live to see the conclusion of the war; he died in 149, at the age of 84 or 85 years, having retained his mental and physical vigor to the last. He had two sons, one by his first wife, and one by ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... furious. She had listened in a sort of dumb rage as the man's words stung, and stung again. MacNair's uncouth manner, his blunt brutality of speech, his scornful, even contemptuous reference to her work, and, most of all, his utter disregard of her, struck her to the very depths. As MacNair turned to go, she stayed him with a voice trembling ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... few moments ago for you, sir, but I thought you were in bed," and the other tossed a little envelope out to him. Mechanically Rossiter tore it open. He was thinking of the cowering woman in the hallway and he was cursing himself for his brutality. ...
— The Purple Parasol • George Barr McCutcheon
... for one thing, the grossness and brutality of London, with its scramble, its pressure, its hustle of engagements, of preoccupations, its long distances, its late hours, its nightly dinners, its innumerable demands on the attention, its general congregation ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... the thirteenth century. Toggenburg and Frauenlob were both celebrated minnesingers, the former (plate 7) being the subject of many strange legends. The simplicity and melodious charm of his verses seem to contradict the savage brutality ascribed to him in the stories of ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... to her? A girl, one whom they all knew and loved, had been separated from her husband after several years of misery, bravely borne. Her husband had been a confirmed drunkard, and in his cups was as one possessed with devils. They had grieved over Clare, and when her husband's brutality grew such that her brother interfered and insisted on her procuring a divorce for the protection of herself and her children, they had felt that it was right; and while they deplored the necessity, they had sided with Clare throughout. But when, two years later, ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... Morrison—Neddy Morrison he was called. He came more than once, creeping carefully near the edge of the cliff with infirm step, and talking about the lost child, whom he also had loved, about the fearful visitation of the mother's madness, and, with Caius, condemning unsparingly the brutality, known and supposed, of the now bereaved father. It was a consolation to them both that Morrison could state that this youngest child was the only member of his family for whom ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... the more odious in one too young to be steeled by familiarity with the iron trade to which he was devoted. It may be fair, however, to charge this on the age rather than on the individual, for surely never was there one characterized by greater brutality, and more unsparing ferocity in its wars. [23] So little had the progress of civilization done for humanity. It is not until a recent period, that a more generous spirit has operated; that a fellow-creature has been understood not to forfeit his rights as a man, because he is an enemy; that ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... Senor Don't Care to appear. Suddenly Jack's features glowed with action; he took a step as if he would sweep by Ignacio on into the garden. But the impulse instantly passed. He stopped, his face drawn as it had been when he fell limp against the hedge stricken by the horror of his seeming brutality to Pedro Nogales, and turned away into the street with a mask of smiles for the greetings and regrets of the ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... hundred of them waiting in a line. Formerly they had collected in a wild mob, and as the soldiers were let out to them two at a time, had fought for them, as lions for early Christians. This, however, had led to scenes of such disorder and brutality, that the police had been obliged to interfere; and the girls were now marshalled in queue, two abreast, and compelled, by a force of constables specially told off for the purpose, to keep their places and wait their ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... is determined to maintain discipline, and they must suffer. No more pillaging here. It is the worst case of brutality and plunder that we have had ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... his big silk neckerchief from his neck, pulled her toward him with a gentle sort of brutality, and tied the neckerchief over her hat and under her chin. He did it exactly as though he was handling a calf that he did not ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... felt that he was a very valuable master. Boys feel the difference between a master who is a gentleman and one who falls short of that ideal. We were clearly aware that the head-master, Mr. Cape, was a gentleman, and that the usher was not. Nevertheless, in spite of his occasional coarseness and even brutality, the usher was a painstaking, honest fellow, who did his duty very energetically. His best quality, which I appreciate far more now than I did then, was an extreme readiness to help a willing boy in his work, by ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... and sweeping from shore to shore, was the bold dream of the men who plotted the destruction of the American republic. Their object was pursued with a cold-blooded disregard of all right, human and divine, worthy of the pagan brutality of the Roman Triumvirate. Prating about the "Constitution" with hypocritical cant, they trampled upon every safeguard of popular liberty, and at last, in defiance of even the forms of law, plunged the people of the Southern States into a war with the government, which, even if successful ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... contented with the vengeance he had taken, plunged his sword a second time into his body, and killed him on the spot. Having performed this inhuman exploit, he dressed himself with great deliberation, and going to Versailles, immediately obtained a pardon for what he had done; triumphing in his brutality with such insolence, that the very next time he had occasion to be shaved he sat with his sword ready drawn, in order to repeat the murder, in case the barber should commit the same mistake. Yet so tamed are those poor people to subjection, that when Peregrine mentioned this assassination ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... anger in it. But Jesus was not so much vindicating His words to Caiaphas in saying, 'If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil,' as reiterating the challenge for 'witnesses.' He brands the injustice of Caiaphas, while meekly rebuking the brutality of his servant. Master and man were alike in smiting Him for words of which they ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... year. "My dear friend," she wrote to me, not a month before her death, "I have been trying all my life to get a thorough knowledge of the masculine nature, but my woman's plummet will not reach to the bottom of that chaotic pit of selfishness and principle, expedience and firmness for the right, brutality and tenderness, gullibility and devilish shrewdness, which I have tried to sound. Only one thing is clear—we women cannot do without what we have sometimes, alas! sneered at as THE CHIVELRY OF THE SEX. The question of our rights ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... Belgium, knowing as we do that it is based almost entirely on the hearsay evidence of refugees who would be anxious to distinguish themselves as witnesses from the general ruck of destitution; but it happens that the general charges of German aggressiveness and German brutality are fully corroborated by German literature.[66] Unfortunately these distinctions between brutal and chevaleresque methods of warfare remain only questions of method; they concern manners rather than morals, and are as irrelevant ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... to consist in the invention of tortures, that would agonize but not slay. There was a devilish spell in the tragic scene that fascinated my eyes to the spot. A slow, lingering, tormenting mutilation was practised on the living, as well as on the dead; and, in every instance, the brutality of the women exceeded that of the men. I cannot picture the hellish joy with which they passed from body to body, digging out eyes, wrenching off lips, tearing the ears, and slicing the flesh from the quivering bones; ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... by Kotzebue. It is to be hoped that such horrible instances of cruelty are not now to be found in nature. Bryan Edwards, in his History of Jamaica, says that most of the planters are humane; but he allows that some facts can be cited in contradiction of this assertion.] Complaints of his brutality, from time to time, reached his master's ears; but though Mr. Jefferies was moved to momentary compassion, he shut his heart against conviction: he hurried away to the jovial banquet, and drowned all painful reflections ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth |
