"Cruel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hopeless, but who will not, or cannot, die and be at rest. There was the expression of those who will no longer make any effort except for the bare, hard bread that keeps them above ground, and who, having toiled through the terrible daylight that is their cruel task-master, lie down as they are, when work is done, to forget daylight and life if they can, in a mercifully heavy sleep. But before their bones are half rested, the pitiless day is upon them, and drives them out to labour ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... the black and coloured peoples of the Earth who have for long enough already said how hard and cruel the faces of the white men seemed to them, and who now think how black ...
— NEVER AGAIN • Edward Carpenter
... seriously attempted. Laws of the most sanguinary and unconstitutional nature have been enacted; the country has been disgraced and exasperated by frequent and bloody executions; and the gibbet, that perpetual resource of weak and cruel legislators, has groaned under the multitude of starving criminals; yet, while the cause is suffered to exist, the effects will ever follow. The amputation of limbs will never eradicate a prurient humour, which must be sought in its source ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... invader had ruled, perhaps only yesterday, perhaps only a few hours ago: Now he had vanished, like a bad dream from which one suddenly awakes, leaving behind him only his dead, and certain grim marks of his occupation, and vivid memories of many brutal and cruel and thoughtless acts, to prove that he was worse and more real ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... cruel thing to do, and my sister could not consent," said Victoria, "even if we were able ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... from defendant, which she had intended to be, she thought herself in a condition to become accuser; and to demand justice of those who, abusing the confidence of the King, had drawn upon her such a long and cruel punishment, and made her a show for the two kingdoms. All that happened to her surpassed her hopes. Several times when with me she has expressed her astonishment; and with me has laughed at many people, often of much consideration, whom she scarcely knew, or who had been ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... from about B.C. 630 to B.C. 610. When Assyrian protection was withdrawn from Syria, as it must have been during this period, and when every state and town had to look solely to itself for deliverance from a barbarous and cruel enemy, the fiction of a nominal dependence on a distant power could scarcely be maintained. Without any actual revolt, the Phoenician cities became their own masters, and the speedy fall of Assyria before the combined attack of the Medes and Babylonians,[14191] ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... a good state, and generally, though no painter of the highest rank has been so much neglected, or suffered more from the actual destruction of his works, yet for the most part Gaudenzio has been spared the reckless restoration which is the most cruel ill that can ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... favourable, the heaviest burden would be lifted from his soul; in the opposite case the old house would be shaken to its foundations. Yet even its fall would have been easier for him to endure than this cruel uncertainty, to which was added the torturing anxiety of bearing the responsibility of things for which he was not to blame, and of which, moreover, he was even denied a clear view. Yet he felt absolutely certain that his father was concealing many things, perhaps ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the cruel is heavier than the arm of the kind. The unjust get the better of the just and tread on them. I have seen tyrant kings crush their helpless folk. I have seen the fields of the innocent trampled into bloody ruin by the feet of conquering armies. I have seen the wicked nation overcome ...
— The Spirit of Christmas • Henry Van Dyke
... mighty forces of the insensate world around, so pitiless, so silently cruel, it seemed to my city-bred soul. It was the spot where Nature spread her wonders before us, one tiny spring dividing its waters east and west for the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, for this ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... life should shut down before her in such cruel bareness? Was she not young, very young to be unhappy? She began to fight a little with herself and Providence in savage mood; favored the crimped hair and Scotch plaids again, tried a nutting-party and a sewing-circle, as well as a little ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... woe, Age following age, the living on the dead, Fresh sorrow falling on each new-ris'n head, None freed by God from ruthless overthrow. E'en now a smiling light Was spreading to our sight O'er one last fibre of a blasted tree,— When, lo! the dust of cruel death, Tribute of Gods beneath, And wildering thoughts, and fate-born ecstasy, Quench the brief ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... huge drifts of ashes, and clouds of flaming, noxious, gaseous emanations to suffocate every living thing. Nothing could withstand such a bombardment from the exhaustless magazines within the vast chambers of the planet, no longer kindly Mother Earth, benign in the beauty of May-time, but cruel, relentless, merciless alike ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... Before those cruel Twins, whom at one birth Incestuous Change bore to her father Time, 50 Error and Truth, had hunted from the Earth All those bright natures which adorned its prime, And left us nothing to believe in, worth The pains of putting into ...
— The Witch of Atlas • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... and deeds left undone. "She never knew how I loved her." "He never knew what he was to me." "I always meant to make more of our friendship." "I did not know what he was to me till he was gone." Such words are the poisoned arrows which cruel Death shoots backward at us from the door ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... baying pack.* (*It was impossible to call the hounds off their game; therefore the only chance lay in the boar being seized, when I could have immediately rushed in with the knife. It was thus necessary to cheer the pack to the attack, although a cruel alternative.) In vain I cheered them on. I heard no signs of his being seized, but the fierce barking of old Smut, mingled with the savage grunts of the boar, and the occasional cry of a wounded dog, explained the hopeless nature of the contest. ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... struck where the white and fleecy waves Looked soft as carded wool, But the cruel rocks, they gored her side Like the horns of ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... I wish I was a fish. I would not look At your hook, But lie still and be cool At the bottom of the pool And when you went to look At your cruel hook, You would not find me ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... did, has brought more trouble, more shame, more annoyance to me than I can ever explain. I do not ask you to tell me why you did it—it was cruel and mean, unmanly; but you did it. And it can never be undone, so I ask for no reasons, no explanations. They—they do not interest me now. You have brought me trouble and—even danger—and so I turned to you, to ask your help. I have the right, have ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... have I? Until you have seen a man fight can you know him? Is family tradition, after all, as good a school as the hard world? A life like Ben's does not always make a man good, I know, but it has made him so. If this were not true—if any one could prove to me that he had been false or cruel to any living creature—man, woman, or animal—I'd give him up to-day and not ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... every emotion of the male, and covertly playing upon his sex-nature in her task of "catching a husband," it is small wonder that women have developed the traits of the cat animal, and are frequently both treacherous and cruel. ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... the unhappy Virginius, unless, like him, they shortened life. The victims, too, are as little free-will agents in the matter as Virginia would have been; and many thousands of daughters have fallen, not by their father's hand to save their honor, but by cruel deception, and died to all that was beautiful or pure on earth, and to ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... as its own speed increases; 'it sets on fire the whole course of nature' (literally the wheel of nature). You may tame the wild beast; the conflagration of the American forest will cease when all the timber and the dry underwood is consumed; but you cannot arrest the progress of that cruel word which you uttered carelessly yesterday or this morning,—which you will utter, perhaps, before you have passed from this church one hundred yards: that will go on slaying, poisoning, burning beyond your own ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... too, of a physical organization, especially two vast shadowy, circular plates upon either side, which may have been eyes, and a perfectly solid white projection between them which was as curved and cruel as the ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... faith only, our imperfect sanctification and obedience to the law; the nature, number, and use of the holy sacraments; his five bastard sacraments, with all his rites, ceremonies, and false doctrine, added to the ministration of the true sacraments without the word of God; his cruel judgment against infants departing without the sacrament; his absolute necessity of baptism; his blasphemous opinion of transubstantiation, or real presence of Christ's body in the elements, and receiving of the ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... at least they are described. But those who take to the mountains must be either escaped slaves, or fugitives from the cruelty of the Spaniards; and even the gentlest man, when driven to desperation, becomes savage and cruel. To these men our white skins would be like a red rag to a bull. They can never have heard of any white people, save the Spaniards; and we need expect little mercy if we fall into their hands. I think ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... "How cruel you are! You must want to drive me mad. Let his father and mother see to him, while I see to my own father. If you had a daughter, you would understand. Am I crying? Do ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... was turning the key, which worked with great difficulty, Madame Cardinal, holding the light, was pale and breathless; but, oh! cruel deception! the cupboard, at last unlocked and open, showed only an empty space, into which the light in her hand ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... have brought Jesus—whom they in mock'ry call their king— To have, by this grim power, their vengeance wrought; By this mean reptile, innocence to sting. Oh! could I but the purposed doom avert, And shield the blameless head from cruel hurt! ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... the sunny sky. No sound of shell or gun disturbed the whisper of the breeze as it passed over the sweet-smelling fields. Even the trenches were filling up and Mother Nature was trying to hide the cruel wounds which the war had made upon her loving breast. One could hardly recall the visions of gloom and darkness which had once shrouded that scene of battle. In the healing process of time all mortal agonies, thank God, will be ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... also much affected at the kindness of Bertha, whom he thanked for her attempt to bring a little wandering lamb back to the fold. He made much of his wife, when his last night at home came, left men-at-arms about his castle, and then set out with the Dauphin for Burgundy, having a cruel enemy in his bosom without suspecting it. The face of the young lad was unknown to him, because he was a young page come to see the king's court, and who had been brought up by the Cardinal Dunois, in whose service he was ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... passions been excited by an obstinate and bloody struggle. The horrors of the sack of Dinant[1] were surpassed, although many of the citizens were able to escape across the Meuse. The deliberate vengeance of the Duke was more searching and not less cruel than the lust and rapine of his army; all prisoners who would not pay a heavy ransom were drowned. Although the cold was so intense that wine froze, and that his men lost fingers and toes from frost-bites, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... "but the will can control any heredity. It can only manifest itself when we let ourselves drift. The tragedy of it is that we have drifted too far sometimes before we learn that we could have directed the course if we had willed. Ignorance is seemingly the most cruel foe we have to encounter, because we are so defenseless, ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... skirmish among the Alemanni, crossed his right cheek and one side of his nose, giving him an expression more curious than pleasing. His general appearance was after the common type of an old, war-worn soldier, rough and unscrupulous by nature, hardened by camp life and dissipation, grown cruel by excess of petty authority, overbearing with his inferiors, jovial and complaisant with his equals, cringing to his superiors, and with an air of discontent overlaying every other expression, as though he was continually tortured with the belief that his success in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... to me this instant," she said, with such a show of passion that I passively surrendered it, and started to walk away. Yet some cruel power held my feet. I tried again to ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... least, that you have forgiven my presumption, and I shall wait with all the patience I have," he said. "If I am not to know, I must do without. It is cruel, but I can bear more upon a push. Only do not add to my troubles the thought that I have made ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... met her doom before I saw the light. Yet I have heard the tale so ofttimes told that methinks I see myself the threatening crowd hooting the old woman to her fiery death, the stern knight and his servants watching that the cruel law was carried out, and the gipsy tribe hanging on the outskirts of the wood, yet not daring to adventure themselves into the midst of the infuriated villagers, watching all, and treasuring up the curses and maledictions poured upon the proud head of Sir Richard as the ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... leave of the company, and gave himself up, in the solitude of his own room, to the torrent of thought and feeling which that night's conversation had let loose. So, then, it was true; Emily Varnier was no fabulous being! Hallberg had loved her, his love had been returned, but a cruel destiny had separated them. How wonderfully did all he had heard explain the dream at the Castle, and how completely did that supply what had remained doubtful, or had been omitted in the officers' narrative. Emily Varnier, doubtless, possessed ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... listened to Mrs. Akemit's artless disclosure that she found life too complex—far too hazardous, indeed, for a poor little creature in her unfortunate position, so liable to cruel misjudgment for thoughtless, harmless acts, the result of a young zest for life. She had often thought most seriously of a convent, indeed she had—"and, really, Mr. Bines, I'm amazed that I talk this way—so freely to you—you know, when I've known you so ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... thousand guileless and peaceful people from a scene of rural felicity rarely equaled on earth, to scatter them in the misery of abject poverty, among strangers speaking a strange tongue and hating their religion. The agents who faithfully executed the cruel decree were Massachusetts men, reluctantly obedient to "his Majesty's orders," given them specifically in writing by Charles Lawrence, Governor ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... Victorian Era began June 20, 1837, and an Act for the abolition of the death penalty for forgery, &c., was passed nearly a month later. Here is the relation of Sequence or Con. The main motive for enacting the law was doubtless sympathy. Death appeared to be too cruel for the crime; hence the sympathy on the part of the Sovereign, the founder of the Era, and of the legislators brought the Act into existence. Here we have the ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... Rome. Here he was received with royal honors; he rode through the streets on a charger, escorted by Francesco Cibo, a relative of the Pope, and count d'Aubusson, brother of the grand master. He is described as a man fond of sight-seeing, about forty years old, of a fierce and cruel countenance, tall, erect, well proportioned, with shaggy eyebrows, and aquiline nose. His brother Bayazid, fearing that he might be induced to try another rebellion with the help of the knights, the Pope, and the Venetians, treated ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... couldn't a woman sometimes take the opportunity to separate from a husband who either was cruel to her or was an idler and only ate and drank, and refused to work to support his wife and children? Or she might take a fancy to some one else and make it so hot for her husband that, contrary to his intention, he would let her go. I argue that worse trouble might arise from such an arrangement. ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... youth was gone for ever. I seemed to be past the capability of further suffering, and one day when Jack handed me a letter and the keys to Boris' house, I took them without a tremor and asked him to tell me all. It was cruel of me to ask him, but there was no help for it, and he leaned wearily on his thin hands, to reopen the wound which could never entirely ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... life, to be more capable of treading the eternal path into the eternal light. Is that how we daily think of our own circumstances? Do we bring that great thought to bear upon all that we, sometimes faithlessly, call mysterious or murmuringly think of—if we dare not speak our thought—as being cruel and hard? What does it matter if some precious things be lifted off our shoulders, and out of our hearts, if their being taken away makes it more possible for us to tread with a lighter step the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... as those piteous words she spoke, They struck a fearful "snag" Their grips they lost, And both were tossed Upon the cruel "flag". ...
— The Adventure of Two Dutch Dolls and a 'Golliwogg' • Bertha Upton
... superhuman effort and backed the brute up against a tree. Gripping his nose and jaw, I had doubled up my leg and thrust my knee into his stomach, which was of course cruel ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... obliging; and I found on firing these old grenades at the school that about 30 to 40 per cent did not burst properly or even at all. The situation in the trenches was getting very bad. Shelling by the enemy's artillery was now less frequent, but the annoyance from enemy trench-mortars was something cruel. Not only large oil-cans, full of explosives, came over both by day and by night, but a horrible 9-inch trench-mortar now made its appearance and blew large craters in the C.T.s and supports. I had two of ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... we came to Cecilhurst? and even last year, when she had hopes of her uncle's recovery, and when he talked of taking her to London, how she enjoyed the thoughts of going there! The world was bright before her then. How cruel of that uncle, with all his fondness for her, never to think what was to become of her the moment he was dead: to breed her up as an heiress, and ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... that our troops brutally destroyed Louvain. It is not true that we make war in contempt of the rights of mankind. Our soldiers commit neither undisciplined nor cruel acts...." ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... destroyed it, and rased the walls to the ground, and overran the whole country, and took men, women, and children for a prey, and wrought devastation. Then did those in Adrianople beseech the Emperor Henry to succour them, seeing that Demotica had been lost in such cruel sort. ...
— Memoirs or Chronicle of The Fourth Crusade and The Conquest of Constantinople • Geoffrey de Villehardouin
... prepared to exert the united forces of the Gothic state; but he soon discovered that his vassal tribes, provoked by oppression, were much more inclined to second, than to repel, the invasion of the Huns. One of the chiefs of the Roxolani [59] had formerly deserted the standard of Hermanric, and the cruel tyrant had condemned the innocent wife of the traitor to be torn asunder by wild horses. The brothers of that unfortunate woman seized the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... put it to his mouth and drank; then he sent the can clattering through the window of the first-best house, till the panes rattled again. Looking round—as if bewildered and set going, roused by what he had done—he caught sight of the frightened little dairy-maid. A mocking grin played on his cruel face; he flung his rough arm round her little body and lifted the girl out of the cart right up to his face in ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... questions concerning services, etc. All such quarrels might be submitted to the issue of the duel, which was pre eminently the means of invoking the judgment of God. To us no proceeding appears less effectual or more cruel, but even so wise a man as Dante ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... vicious life; moreover, Catholic plotters would hardly murder a king who was at heart devoted to Catholic policy. England, however, was in a nervous state of mind; Charles II was known to be intriguing with France; and a cruel fury surged through the nation. For a share in the supposed plots, a score of people, among them one of the great nobles of England, the venerable and innocent Earl of Stafford, were condemned to ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... now to the full their singular situation, practically hanging on the side of a mighty cliff, with cruel enemies seeking them below and equally cruel enemies ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... rank, her family being intimately connected with the royal family of France. She was now, too, by title at least, herself a queen. The children were very intelligent and beautiful, and the misfortunes and cruel captivity of their father and brother were known and talked of in all the country around. So the peasants and their families crowded around the chateau to see the children. They brought them wreaths of flowers and other votive offerings. They sang songs to ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... proclaiming that they are determined to deprive millions of their own countrymen of every political and social right, and to send them to a barbarous continent, because the Creator has given them a sable complexion. Where exists a more rigorous despotism? What conspiracy was ever more cruel? What hypocrisy and tergiversation so enormous? The story is proclaimed in our pulpits, in our state and national assemblies, in courts of law, in religious and secular periodicals,—among all parties, ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... this moment, an indian maiden, with dishevelled hair, came rapidly running across the plaza toward the schoolhouse. Rushing past me, she entered the school-room, and seeing the subject lying on the floor clasped her hands and cried, "Florencito! My Florencito, why wait here? Stay not with these cruel men; flee with me!" Seizing him by the hand, they dislodged the plaster from his shoulders and started for the door, but catching sight of me, cast a glance around, saw the open window, and leaping ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... cared!" She held her arms outstretched, the hands clenched. Her small body was tense with passion. "Don't tell me. It's a lie. You never cared. You hated him from the first. You kept me from him lest I should love him better than you. You would have taken me away and left him here. You were cruel. And you knew it. You stayed away because you knew it. You were afraid, and no wonder. I know why you did it. You thought I didn't love you. Was that the way to make me ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... solemnities of worship, we follow our Lord in His Passion, live it over again, as in Psalm and Hymn, in Proper Lessons, in Epistles and Gospels and pleading, prayers the whole record of the Royal Reception, the final Teachings, Betrayal, the cruel mockery, the desertion, and the awful Agony on the Cross, the Death and the Burial of the Lord of Life is solemnly recited as a memorial before God. Each {138} day is significant, thus: The first day of the week, the Sixth ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... golden hair, and dark eyes and lashes, with kind o' long dark corners to 'em, and a sad little mouth the prettiest shape you ever saw. We got to talkin' and she told me about herself. It was like a story. She had a cruel stepmother who didn't want her around, so kept her away at school, and a handsome, extravagant father without enough backbone to stand up for her; and on top of everything he died suddenly. Her stepmother had money and she ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... he must be slain; I, ignorant wretch, wished to display my zeal and hence my action of that day. How many times have I seen the same thing since, traveling unceasingly through cities and ages! Whenever zealotry penetrated into a submissive soul, it became cruel or ridiculous. My crime ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... The Rapture, are the beautiful "Ask me no more," the first stanza of which is the weakest; the fine couplet poem, "The Cruel Mistress," whose closing distich— ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... in firm reason from the quiet state which it possesseth? When a tyrant thought to compel a certain free man by torments to bewray his confederates of a conspiracy attempted against him, he bit off his tongue, and spit it out upon the cruel tyrant's face,[113] by that means wisely making those tortures, which the tyrant thought matter of cruelty, to be to him occasion of virtue. Now, what is there that any can enforce upon another which he may not himself be enforced to sustain by another? We read that Busiris, ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... Griffin, the Welsh thane, and I did not like the looks of him at all. He was a black-haired man, clean shaven, so that the cruel thinness of his lips was not hidden, and his black eyes were restless, and never stayed anywhere, unless he looked at Ragnar for a moment, and then that was a look of deadly hatred. He wore his armour well, ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... at Madame d'Argeles with pro-found amazement. "What!" said he; "you knew this and you allowed it? You were cruel enough to remain silent when that innocent man entreated you to testify on his behalf! You allowed this atrocious crime to be executed under your own roof, and under ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... you are thinking," she said with grave sorrow. "And it is base of you, it is cruel! You would use even me whom you ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... saying," continued Reggie, "that Biddle isn't a very fair pitcher, but it's cruel to send him against the Pirates, and somebody ought to stop it. His best friends should interfere. Once a team gets a pitcher rattled, he's never any good against them again. He loses ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... My life depends on it, that's all. You are cruel and bad; but still I can speak to you—for months now, I haven't had a soul to speak to. Be kind to me this once, Heinz. I CAN'T go on living without him. I haven't lived since he left me—not an hour!—Oh, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... of admiration, if one knew it to be an expedition directed against the red pirates of the plains, en route to chastise them for their many crimes—a long list of cruel atrocities committed upon the defenceless citizens of Chihuahua and New Mexico. But knowing it is not this—cognisant of its true purpose—the impression made is altogether different. Instead of admiration it is disgust; and, in place of sending up a prayer for its success, the spectator ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... know, that after all you have said, Mr. North, I cannot understand the passion and the pleasure of fox-hunting. It seems to me both cruel and dangerous." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various
... first time, "Alves." A tear dropped on his hand beneath the lamp, then another and another. He started up from his seat and strode to the window, keeping his back turned to the quiescent woman. It was terrible! He knew that he was a fool, but none the less something awesome, cruel, forbidding, tainted the atmosphere. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... the doctor had talked so very kindly to her and offered her so much money. He had appealed so directly to her conscience, patted the child, and said that when it came to the point, he was sure she was not the mother who could be so cruel as to bring misery upon such a pretty little fellow, let him suffer want, let his pretty little feet be cold, when he might lie both comfortable and warm and like a ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... of six months' absence—perhaps a little longer. I 'll have this looked up and will notify you. Desertion is an ugly word; but, after all, it sounds better than cruel and abusive treatment." ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... a cruel blow alike to the affection and pride of Lord Fairfax, and wrought a change in both character and conduct. From that time he almost avoided the sex, and became shy and embarrassed in their society, excepting among those with whom he ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... be dissolved, but should be "kept firmly united." On May 20th, 1833, another monster meeting was held on Newhall Hill, at which the Government was censured for passing the Irish Coercion Bill; for refusing the right to vote by ballot; for persevering in unjust and cruel Corn Laws; and for continuing ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... a reason for everything in this world. Still, the spectacle of a good man fighting dumbly with a cruel disappointment—and disappointment is perhaps the bitterest pill in all the pharmacopeia of life—is certainly a severe test of one's convictions on ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... sufferings were nothing in comparison with the anguish of my soul, a sense of oppression, of stifling, and of pain so keen, accompanied by so hopeless and cruel an infliction, that I know not how to speak of it. If I said that the soul is continually being torn from the body, it would be nothing, for that implies the destruction of life by the hands of another but here it is the soul ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... me, thou ungrateful one, hard of heart, unnatural child, base, cruel, and polluted. Go from me, if it be possible, ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... methinketh that God bindeth me of duty to pray you now, good uncle, in this short time that we have you, that I may learn of you such plenty of good counsel and comfort, against these great storms of tribulation with which both I and all mine are sore beaten already, and now upon the coming of this cruel Turk fear to fall in far more, that I may, with the same laid up in remembrance, govern and stay the ship of our kindred and keep it afloat from peril of ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... my dog," said Eda, while her face flushed and her eyes sparkled; "and he is always rude to everybody, and very, very cruel ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... Jeremy Taylor and the latest Reverend Mr. Orotund, you find a liberal and privileged utterance; but honest John Foster, made of powerful, but ill-composed elements, and replete with an intelligence now gleaming and now murky, could wring statements from his mind only as testimony in cruel ages was obtained from unwilling witnesses, namely, by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... require different training from boys, never "identical" education; that it is trying to their health to recite before young men; "the strain upon the nervous system from mortifying mistakes and serious corrections is to many young ladies a cruel additional burden laid upon them in the course of study"; "that the provision we offer to girls is not the best, and is even dangerous"; that "where women are admitted, the college becomes second or third-rate, and that, worst of all, young men will be deterred from coming to this ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... "witty, wise, and cruel," and the "amaranthine" Louis Sherwin, who understands better than anybody else how to plunge the rapier into the vulnerable spot and twist it in the wound, making the victim writhe, have been having some fun with the art of acting lately, or to be exact, with the art of actors. ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... Tournebut d'Aubevoye near Gaillon. She was a fervent royalist, and had heard through common friends of my father's disappearance, and compassionating our misfortune placed a house near her own at the disposal of my mother, who would there find the safety and peace that she needed, after her cruel sorrows. As my mother hesitated, Mme. de Combray's messenger urged the benefit to my health, the exercise and the good air indispensable at my age, and finally she consented. Having obtained all necessary information, ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... to persuade my mother to leave the Forks. All the best people there are against us. Some of them have been very cruel to her and to me, and, besides, I despise and fear the men who come ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... with a melancholy smile, "there is no such thing, child. Talk of hate—for that exists," he clenched his hands again, "hate that is as cruel as the grave." ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... infant boy as the "King of the Jews," and saw them falling down before him in reverent worship, and then laying their offerings at his feet. Immediately following this came the flight into Egypt. How the mother must have pressed her child to her bosom as she fled with him to escape the cruel danger! By and by they returned, and from that time ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... my son in reassurance and dissuasion; and there by the shadow of a group of trees they stood—near, so near! Their faces were toward me, the eyes of the elder man fixed upon mine. He saw me—at last, at last, he saw me! In the consciousness of that, my terror fled as a cruel dream. The death-spell was broken: Love had conquered Law! Mad with exultation I shouted—I MUST have shouted, "He sees, he sees: he will understand!" Then, controlling myself, I moved forward, smiling and consciously ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... the destruction of slavery would be unworthy a people who possessed any gallantry. "You will," he declared, "do a cruel wrong to many fine ladies. They know nothing about working with their hands, and consider such knowledge disgraceful. If their slaves are taken from them, ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... cruel thing. But how are we to help it? The London Trader is too large for the purpose, and she is under suspicion now. I tell you everything, Daniel, because I know that you are a true-hearted fellow, and far above all blabbing. ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... and she represented herself as using the most frightful threats, if they would not go to school. Breaking every bone in their skin was the least injury she promised them; till Mary, beginning to think her a cruel old woman, took hold of her brother's ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... in starting the car. Besides, it was headed directly for the huge cat, and the latter undoubtedly had fastened its cruel gaze upon the big car and its ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... stalk, you are free to use it. Her slow, sweet smile gave the beholder an actual physical pang. Only her family knew she was lazy as a behemoth, untidy about her person, and as sentimental as a hungry shark. The strange and cruel part of it was that, in some grotesque, exaggerated way, as a cartoon may be like a photograph, Sophy resembled Flora. It was as though Nature, in prankish mood, had given a cabbage the colour and texture of a rose, with none of its fragile ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... of the day there in a state of cruel anxiety, accusing the hours of being lame, and again of walking too speedily. The crime which he was about to commit, although he was only, in some sort, the instrument of it, and though he was only yielding to an irresistible ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... In vain the cruel curse of earth Hath torn our lives apart; The man-made barriers of gold Weigh down the humble heart. Oh, hadst thou been a village maid— A simple wayside flower— With nought to boast, save honest worth, And beauty all thy dower! Such ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... E. H. A.'s acquaintances have come round me as I scribble here in the verandah. A brute, a grey crow perched this moment on the jalousies, and let out that bitter raucous caw, that would waken the Seven Sleepers or any respectable gamekeeper within a mile; abominable, thieving, cruel brutes they are, with rooks they should be exterminated by law. Once they were, in the reign of James the Fourth, I think, for he needed timber for his fleet. The law was then that if a crow built for three ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... wisdom. It behoveth thee to act righteously as I indicate. Possessed of learning and endued with excellent behaviour, thou art adorned with every excellent quality. They that are born in ignoble families, or are wicked-souled, cruel, and shameless, they only, O sire, act in the way that seemeth acceptable to thee. In this world, the inclinations of those only that are righteous seem to be consistent with the dictates of virtue and profit. The inclinations, however, of those that ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Christ in a far different way. The descriptions of the sufferings not written by inspiration would have been in this wise: The physical sufferings, how they scourged Him, all the sickening details of that which even cruel Rome called the intermediate death, would have been pictured. Then would have followed a description of how the nails were driven into the blessed hands who had lovingly touched so many weary, sin-laden and disease-stricken bodies. All the agony of the cross and its shame would have ...
— The Work Of Christ - Past, Present and Future • A. C. Gaebelein
... great nation lasted about five hundred years; and the last three centuries of her life after the death of Commodus, about 192 A. D., illustrate curiously the fact that, even if a people be immoral, cruel, and base in many ways, their existence as an independent state may be continued long, if military requirements be understood, and if the military forces be preserved from the influence of the effeminacy of the nation as a whole. In Rome, the army was able to maintain ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... came to a low brush fence running zigzag through the woods, with snares set every few yards in the partridge and rabbit runs. At the third opening a fine cock partridge swung limp and lifeless from a twitch-up. The cruel wire had torn his neck under his beautiful ruff; the broken wing quills showed how terrible had been his struggle. Hung by the neck till dead!—an atrocious fate to mete out to a noble bird. I followed the hedge of snares for a couple of hundred yards, finding three more ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... are a man who yet lives beneath the sun, though how you came here I do not know. I hate men, all hares do, for men are cruel to them. Still it is a comfort in this strange place to see something one has seen before and to be able to talk even to a man, which I could never do until the change came, the dreadful change—I mean because of the way of it," and it ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... thought I might vent on her, because she truly loved me with all her heart, and did whatever she could to please me. By unfounded and absurd fits of jealousy, I destroyed our most delightful days, both for myself and her. She endured it for a time with incredible patience, which I was cruel enough to try to the uttermost. But, to my shame and despair, I was at last forced to remark that her heart was alienated from me, and that I might now have good ground for the madness in which I had indulged without necessity and without cause. ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... leave the canoe to seek for it in the intense darkness, and so clinging to the little craft, which soon filled again, they drifted about. The waters of the lagoon were now white with the breaking seas, and the wind blew with fierce, cruel, steadiness, and although they knew it not, they were being swept quickly away from the land towards the passage ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... "superstition" was displeasing; any indulgence of fantasies not within the measured and beaten track of healthful imagination more than displeased me in her,—it alarmed. I would not by a word encourage her in persuasions which I felt it would be at present premature to reason against, and cruel indeed to ridicule. I was convinced that of themselves these mists round her native intelligence, engendered by a solitary and musing childhood, would subside in the fuller daylight of wedded life. She seemed pained when she saw how ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... know that you will act wisely and kindly. I do not desire to have him pampered and spoiled by riches, if I could give them, but I cannot bear the thought of his being left friendless and in poverty to fight his way through this often hard and cruel world. You will see to this, Andrew? I am sure ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... she said. 'I am so sorry for you, and sorry I said those cruel words about your size. It was only in fun. Your size has nothing to do with my refusal. I know you have a big, kind heart, and next to Harold and Dick, and Mr. Arthur, I like you better than any man I ever knew; but I cannot ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... accord. 'For indeed,' said she, 'what with all these clocks and chemicals, without a drop of the creature life would be impossible entirely. And you seen yourself that even M'Guire was glad to beg for it. And even himself, when he is downhearted with all these cruel disappointments, though as temperate a man as any child, will be sometimes crying for a glass of it. And I'll thank you for a thimbleful to settle what I got.' Soon after, she began with tears to narrate the deathbed dispositions and lament the trifling assets of her husband. ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... hate, all the ignominy, the cruel death drawin' so near—He could bear it all through love and pity—the highest heights love ever went, ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... passed with that parting and although I was but a few months younger than I am to-night, I am here just one year, I feel much changed and older." Her lids closed and Jaffray did not interrupt. "Mr. Starr, do you know of any experience more cruel than this parting of parents in Europe with their children to come to America? I think of it now so often. I think there cannot be in all ...
— The Little Immigrant • Eva Stern
... clamour has been made in all times. Indeed, men seldom raise a more indignant outcry than when they are prevented from doing some injury to their neighbours. How the feudal barons must have chafed, when deprived of the right of hanging in their own baronies: how cruel it doubtless seemed to the monopolists of olden times, when some "factious" House of Commons summoned to its bar the Sir Giles Overreaches, and made them disgorge their plunder; how planters in all climes storm, if you but touch ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... no less an expression of goodness, than proof of the cruel severity of the law. The news of death soon brought curious debtors into the long aisle, while sorrow and sympathy might be read on every face. But he was gone, and with him his wants and grievances. A physician was called in, but he could not recall life, and, after ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... mean it, Angelique!" exclaimed he; "you will not give me death instead of life? You cannot be so false to your own heart, so cruel to mine? See, Angelique! My saintly sister Amelie believed in your love, and sent these flowers to place in your hair when you had consented to be my wife,—her sister; you will ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... O cruel is the conquer-lust in Hohenzollern brains: The paths they plot to gain their goal are dark with shameful stains: No faith they keep, no law revere, no god but naked Might;— They are the foemen of mankind. Up, Liberty, ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... lips, and when he mutely pointed to the sky and to the sun, and when he pointed to his heart which still beat warmly, the mob ran up and struck him. And when the mob struck him the malefactor fell to his knees, and he knelt and clasped his hands and testified mutely, without words, in spite of the cruel blows. ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... yet another thing: it is the flower and the knife, it is to see red one day and blue the next, it is hatred and love, ravishing, delightful hatred, cruel love." ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... formal, ornamental design or type forms of plants, flowers, etc., yet omit to state how many of the best compositions they reject in their search for the happy hit or to allow for the fact that in those which they cite, cruel disturbance of the beautiful scheme could easily be wrought by slight reconstruction, leaving the work quite as good. The author's contention is directly opposed to the notion that pictorial art is dependent ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... supposed earl, "since I no longer hold a place in your affections, it would be idle to pursue the matter further. Heaven be praised, there are other damsels quite as beautiful, though not so cruel. Farewell for ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... water and revive his parching soul. He found himself, to his surprise, surveying with equanimity the pile of books in the corner which had led him to the conviction of the emptiness of the universe—but the universe was no longer empty! It was cruel, but a warring force was at work in it which was not blind, but directed. He could not say why this was so, but he knew it, he felt it, sensed its energy within him as he set ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... enthusiasm for beauty or truth or goodness. They are altogether remote from intelligent sacrifice. To every test they betray vileness of texture; they are mean, cold, wicked. There are people who seem to cheat with a private self-approval, who are ever ready to do harsh and cruel things, whose use for social feeling is the malignant boycott, and for prosperity, monopolisation and humiliating display; who seize upon religion and turn it into persecution, and upon beauty to torment it on the altars of some joyless ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... Withers had used me ruthlessly as their criminal stop-gap, but since I had paid the penalty and still bore the criminal odium, I could postulate no possible reason why they should reach out across the three-year interval to add cruel persecution to injury. ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... bowl of lilacs in her room And twists one in her fingers while she talks. "Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know What life is, you should hold it in your hands"; (Slowly twisting the lilac stalks) "You let it flow from you, you let it flow, And youth is cruel, and has no remorse And smiles at situations which it cannot see." I smile, of course, And go on drinking tea. "Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall My buried life, and Paris in the Spring, I feel immeasurably at peace, and ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... makes her fall into a swoon; neither can she suffer the least motion of sucking, for the very pain bereaves her of her sences. What shall we do then? to keep a Wet-Nurse is both very damageable, and cruel chargeable; for Wet-Nurses are generally very lazy and liquorish, and they are ever chatting and chawing something or other with the Maids; and in their manner they baptize it, with saying it is very necessary & wholesom for the ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... Government of the United States and that of the German Empire. And a waiting and willing nation was left in no doubt that war there would be. The cabinet had become a war cabinet and the country warlike, goaded to retaliatory action by the wanton deeds of the most cruel government of this or any ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... half-senses. But the long habit of living indisposeth us for dying; when avarice makes us the sport of death, when even David grew politickly cruel, and Solomon could hardly be said to be the wisest of men. But many are too early old, and before the date of age. Adversity stretcheth our days, misery makes Alcmena's nights,* and time hath no wings ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... so ignorant of geography were the youths that the falsehoods were not detected. Day by day they awoke with fresh hope which was fed by the sight of a castle or walled town which they thought might be Jerusalem, and night after night they lay down victims of a cruel deception—poor deluded, wilful, little pilgrims! On and on they marched through central France, through Burgundy, and beautiful Provence, and finally from the last range of hills they had to climb, there burst on them a view of the cool, blue sea, and from their ranks there ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... that he should have formed so foolish and cruel and fatal an attachment," the widow said, "which can but end in ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the laager was hourly becoming more miserable. The wounded clamouring for relief was in itself a misery to those who were compelled to hear it, but to allow such appeals to go unanswered was heartrending. To have the dead unburied seemed cruel enough, but to have the corpses before one's eyes day after day was torture. To know that the enemy was in ten times greater strength was disheartening, but to realise that there was no relief ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... England, dying at Vincennes just after he had conquered France, and this poor jade cut off by a cold draught in a great man's doorway before she had time to spend her couple of whites—it seemed a cruel way to carry on the world. Two whites would have taken such a little while to squander; and yet it would have been one more good taste in the mouth, one more smack of the lips, before the devil got the soul, and the body was left to birds and vermin. ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... trust you. I know 'tis a strange step to take, and the world will blame me; but what can I do? If I refuse your offer I shall be kept a prisoner here until I consent to marry John of Lorne, whom I hate, for he is as rough and cruel as his father, without the kindness of heart, which, save in his angry moments, the latter has ever had toward me. All my relations are against me, and struggle against my fate as I may, I must in the end bend to their will if ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... wizened, scarred and cruel old face—how it speaks of a seared and bitter heart! so dull yet so alert, so changeful yet so impassive, so immobile yet so cunning—a paradox in wrinkles, where half-stifled desperation has clawed at the soul until it has fled, and only dead indifference or greedy ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... son of Pope Alexander VI.; was made cardinal at the age of 17, an honour he relinquished to become a soldier, in which capacity it is alleged he gave himself up to deeds of inhumanity, which have made his name a synonym for every action that is most crafty, revolting, and cruel; a portrait of him by Raphael, in the Borghese gallery, is a masterpiece. Notwithstanding the execration in which his memory is held, he is reputed to have been just as a ruler in his own domain, and a patron of art and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... bright large eye, which betrayed a restlessness of thought and purpose, singularly at variance with the studied composure and sobriety of his mien, and with his quaint and sad apparel. It had nothing harsh or cruel in its expression; neither had his face, which was thin and mild, and wore an air of melancholy; but it was suggestive of an indefinable uneasiness; which infected those who looked upon him, and filled them with a kind of pity for the man: though why it did so, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... the brilliant outline of some cunning scheme occurred to him. A thin, cruel smile crept over his lips. Never had he been in a tight place yet without discovering a loophole of escape almost before he ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... is often more cruel than men; and a business vendetta is frequently mere murder without the incident of blood. I don't suppose the life of your Arizona town would show these trade wars. It would take Eastern—that is, older—conditions, to provoke and carry ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... with emotion trembling in his voice, "did iron-hearted War itself ever do so hard and cruel a thing as ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... venerable form, thine antediluvian physiognomy, to thousands of badauds, who either pass thee without a glance, or examine thee with unfeeling curiosity, bestowing not a thought upon thy great age or thy cruel fate, or with a whit more respect for thee and thine awful history, than a cockney would show to a whitebait caught but yesterday in the Thames, and served up to him as a fraction of his fishy feast ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... think, my dear mother, that I would raise such hopes if I had not good reason to suppose that they would be realized? No, my dear mother, I am not so cruel." ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... tries to make believe that he is scared, And really, when I first began, he stared, and stared, and stared; And then his under lip came out and farther out it came, Till mamma and the nurse agreed it was a "cruel shame"— But now what does that same wee, toddling, lisping baby do But laugh and kick his little ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... "Oh, it is cruel! it is frightful! to see him again, and lose him directly; his life, monseigneur, his life, I beg; and let me never see him ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... such words," she said, "and I won't stay here to hear them sung. The boys in the streets say just such words as that, and I am not going to sing them. You can't scare me into being good with your cruel hymn-book!" ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... it possible that such things could be printed about one whom she had admired and respected above all men—nay, whom she had so passionately adored from childhood? A monster of iniquity, a pariah! The cruel, bitter calumny of those names! Cynthia thought of his goodness and loving kindness and his charity to her and to many others. His charity! The dreaded voice repeated that word, and sent a thought that struck terror into her heart: Whence had come ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... in love to take any notice of what seemed to me then mere trifles," replied Schinner. "But I was soon cured of that folly, for it was in the Venetian states—in Dalmatia—that I received a cruel lesson." ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... children from the dangers of Popish superstition and idolatry, and their bodies from the miseries of idleness and beggary." In reality the scheme was one by which it was hoped to prevent the growth of Catholicism. The conditions and methods of instruction were positively cruel, since the children were actually withheld from any communication with their parents. Mr. Lecky deals with the subject fully in the first volume of his "Ireland in the Eighteenth Century," Froude gives the scheme his praise and admiration, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... flaming eyes added the words: "And it is particularly on that account that I want him." All the long torture born of her infirmities, all her rage at having always seen her mother beautiful, courted and adored, was now stirring her and seeking vengeance in cruel triumph. At last then she was snatching from her rival the lover of whom she had so long ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... retrograde in human rights, or a greater prostration of liberties. Taxes were imposed according to the pleasure or necessities of the government. Provincial governors became still more rapacious and cruel. Judges hesitated to decide against the government. A vile example was presented to the people in their rulers. The emperors squandered immense sums on their private pleasures, and set public opinion at defiance. Patriotism, in its most enlarged ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... heather (erica); The yellow, gorse—call'd sometimes "whin." Cruel boys on its prickles might spike a Green beetle as if on a pin. You may roll in it, if you would like a Few holes in ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Majorca, and to Otho of Brunswick, of the imperial family of Saxony. We will pass rapidly over these years, and come to the denouement of this history of crime and expiation. James, parted from his wife, continued his stormy career, after a long contest in Spain with Peter the Cruel, who had usurped his kingdom: about the end of the year 1375 he died near Navarre. Otho also could not escape the Divine vengeance which hung over the court of Naples, but to the end he valiantly ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... withdraw it. The disagreeable old woman who showed us this place, brought with her a wretched dog with a rope round his neck, bleared eyes, thin ribs, and altogether of a most pitiful aspect. She was most anxious to exhibit the common but cruel experiment of suspended animation, by holding his head over the mephitic vapour, insisting that he was accustomed to it, and even liked it; of course, we would not suffer it. The poor animal made no resistance; only drooped ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... open air. A second, similarly hooded, followed. The pair, stupefied in their headgear, stood rigid and bewildered in their tracks, clucking uneasily. Their tails were closely sheared. Their legs, thickly muscled, and extraordinarily long, were furnished with enormous cruel-looking spurs. The breed was unmistakable. Annixter looked once at the pair, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... the body, the chest began gently to heave with the breath of life, and soon the spirit gazed out through the eyes. Kawelu was now restored to consciousness, and seeing her beloved Hiku bending tenderly over her, she opened her lips and said: "How could you be so cruel as to leave me?" ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... is, draw inferences from premises, make deductions from facts. There is the great fact of slavery; it is "the sum of all villanies;" men holding their fellow-men in bondage for the sake of gain; the heart naturally covetous, oppressive, and cruel, where power is unlimited. As though the law of kindness could, in such circumstances, possibly prevail and mitigate the sorrows of the bondman! The direct influence of slavery is to debase, to make ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams |
