"Merciless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tottered to her seat, and longed for the hour which was to sever her from a Christian world. She thought not of herself, nor of what she was to suffer; she thought but of Philip; of his being safe from these merciless creatures—of the happiness of dying first, and of meeting him ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... only one hundred and twenty soldiers, and less than three weeks' provisions, cut off by one thousand, two thousand, three thousand merciless Indian warriors, and by the French settlers and traders who probably would be glad ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... plots and conspiracies entered into by the whole people, and the more probable charge of concealment of their wealth from the rapacious hands of the King. This led to a strict and severe investigation of their property. At this investigation was present a wicked and merciless Jew, who rebuked the Christians for their tenderness to his brethren, and reproached the King's officers as gentle and effeminate. He gnashed his teeth, and, as each Jew appeared, declared that he could afford to pay twice as much as was exacted. Though he lied, he was useful in betraying their ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... Saint-Germain-des-Pres," on the margins of which the author himself, in the person of Jacques Bouillard, made such substantial notes in his own handwriting?... Master Bonnard, you are an old fool! Your housekeeper—poor soul!—is nailed down upon her bed with a merciless attack of rheumatism. Jeanne is to come with her chaperon, and, instead of thinking how you are going to receive them, you are thinking about a thousand stupidities. Sylvestre Bonnard, you will never ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... The woman who had done the mischief—the stranger in the poor black garments—was standing behind him. She pointed to the prostrate figure on the sofa, with a merciless smile. ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... looked terrible: Grandmother sitting among her spreading skirts, her face trembling with a weak forgiving sweetness, her hands clasped on her stick-handle with a strength which showed that if she was not allowed to forgive she would be merciless; Aunt Alphonsine, covering her bosom with those arms which looked so preternaturally and rapaciously long in the tight sleeves that Frenchwomen always love, and fingering now and then the scar that crossed her oval face as if it were ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... as the social-patriots are concerned, who stood up everywhere in arms, in the most critical moments, against the revolution, a merciless fight is the alternative; in regard to the 'Center,' the tactics consist in separating from it the revolutionary elements, in criticizing pitilessly its leaders and in dividing systematically among them the number of their followers; these tactics are absolutely necessary when ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... years subsequently, Antwerp suffered much in the infamous war against religious freedom, projected by the detestable Philip II. (son of Charles V.) and executed by the sanguinary Duke of Alva, whose cruelty has scarcely a parallel in history. In this merciless crusade, Alva boasted that he had consigned 18,000 persons to the executioner; and with vanity as disgusting as his cruelty, he placed a statue of himself in Antwerp, in which he was figured trampling on the necks ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... scene. The Federal soldiers poured a merciless fire into the trenches. Soon many Confederates fell, and the agonized cries of the wounded who lay there calling for water, smote the hearts of their ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... sufficient reasons for accounting for the zeal of Philip II. on the subject of religion, and his blindness to the consequences of thus abandoning his empire and his people as common plunder to a merciless horde of plunderers, who bound his empire most firmly together, but it was in the bands of national ruin. This, too, may account for his often-repeated remark that he would not shield his own son if he should incur the censure of the Inquisition. When his eldest ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... interminable papers; the whole business connected with which was so repugnant to him. Sigh after sigh escaped his thin lips, as he read the piteous appeals, and knew that he must refuse them; must deal out fresh misery against his will. It was hard to be the tool of such a merciless fiend; to be the servant of such a master of deceit, villainy and fraud; but so greatly did the father love his child that he would scarce have hesitated in committing a murder had Jasper Vermont set that crime as a price of his forbearance and silence. He would have purchased his daughter's ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... dusty path, beset all the way with children selling wild-flowers and dried grasses-it seems providential that they don't all have sunstroke under this merciless sun-we at last reach a semicircle of rocks, a miniature stone bay, slanting slippery rocks leading down to the midst, covered, as my little guide said, in winter by water. From under these rocks burst the Sorgues-not a very tiny ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... difficulties to our forlorn situation. Some became so weak and exhausted that it was with the greatest effort they could travel at all. To divide the company and leave the more feeble behind to starve, or to be murdered by the merciless savages, was not considered for a moment; but one alternative remained, and that was speedily accepted. As soon as a convenient camping-ground could be found, a halt was made, shelter established, and things made as comfortable as possible. Here ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... visage old, My locks are frore, and my bones ice cold. The wolf will howl as I pass his lair, The ban-dog moan, and the screech-owl stare. For breath, at my coming, the sleeper strains, And the freezing current forsakes his veins! Vainly for pity the wretch may sue— Merciless Mara no prayers subdue! To his couch I flit— On his breast I sit! Astride! astride! astride! And one charm alone —A hollow stone!—[23] Can ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... This place has terrors even for the Arabs; they tell a thousand stories of the Pass of Sidi-Mohammed-el-Aoori: it was there, in times remote, that great armies were overpowered and slain by hostile bands, or destroyed by the scarcely less merciless elements; there many travellers have disappeared in the storm, or fallen under the hand of the murderer. It is the 'gate' of the desert; and the tutelar genii have placed the terrific dunes as a hieroglyphic warning to those who rashly approach. They seem to say, 'here begins the empire of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... smoking joints, and plunges you thirstfully into barrels of beer. A day that induces apathetic listlessness and total prostration of energy, even under the aggravating warfare of gnats and wasps. A day that engenders pity for the ranks of ruddy haymakers, hotly marching on under the merciless glare of the noonday sun. A day when the very air, steaming up from the earth, seems to palpitate with the heat. A day when Society has left its cool and pleasant country-house, and finds itself baked and burnt up in town, condemned to ovens of operas, ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... one of his most efficient and successful generals was Haynau. He was also, unfortunately, one of the most cruel and sanguinary, women having been frequently subjected by his orders to the most indecent and merciless ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... The merciless Committee of Sequestration had seized Johnson Hall, Fort Johnson, Guy Park, Butlersbury; Fish House was burned; Summer House Point lay in ashes, and the charming town built by Sir William was now a rebel garrison, and the jail he erected was their citadel, flying a flag that ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... vanish in the fog. From where he stood on slightly higher ground he looked down at her curiously, for in more than one sense she was a puzzle to him. There was a certain indefiniteness in her manner toward him which he felt a passionate desire to construe. She seemed at once merciful and merciless, sympathetic and hard. Then, as he looked at her, he almost forgot all this wilderness of suffering and doubt. All his intense love for physical beauty, ministered to by the whole manner of his life, seemed rekindled in her presence. The tragedy of the present seemed to pass ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... had to let them go. One would think that Great Britain's mercantile navy was recruited solely from her orphan asylums — which we know is not the case. SAMUEL: But, hang it all! you wouldn't have us absolutely merciless? FREDERIC: There's my difficulty; until twelve o'clock I would, after twelve I wouldn't. Was ever a man placed in so delicate a situation? RUTH: And Ruth, your own Ruth, whom you love so well, and who has won her middle-aged way into your boyish heart, ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... away, Tommy's grim hopelessness intensified. The Ragged Men would hunt them for sport and out of hatred for all sane human beings. The men of the Golden City would be merciless to compatriots of Jacaro's gunmen. And Tommy had Evelyn to look ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the clerical caste fare better at the hands of the popular epigrammatist. Where three Kayasths are gathered together a thunderbolt is sure to fall; when honest men fall out the Kayasth gets his chance. When a Kayasth takes to money-lending he is a merciless creditor. He is a man of figures; he lives by the point of his pen; in his house even the cat learns two letters and a half. He is a versatile creature, and where there are no tigers he will become a shikari; but he is no more to be trusted than a crow or a snake without a tail. One of the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... had a long time to think, to compare, to digest all that she knew of him, much that was subconscious impression rising late to the surface, a little that she heard from various sources. The sum total gave her a man of rank passions, of rare and merciless finesse where his desires figured, a man who got what he wanted by whatever means most fitly served his need. Greater than any craving to possess a woman would be the measure of his rancor against ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... fasting and humiliation. In the English army the officers prayed and preached: they "sanctified the camp," and exhorted the men to unity of mind and godliness of life. Among the Scots this duty was discharged by the ministers; and so fervent was their piety, so merciless their zeal, that, in addition to their prayers, they occasionally compelled the young king to listen to six long sermons on the same day, during which he assumed an air of gravity, and displayed feelings of devotion, which ill-accorded with his real disposition. ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... young leader fell to the ground, his panic-stricken followers turned and fled. The troops of Jacqueline pursued them through the streets of Gorkum and out into the open country, and the vengeance of the countess was sharp and merciless. ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... the way grew rough. Sheep lagged, and the blatting increased to an uproar. Old ewes and yearlings these were mostly, and there were few to suffer more than hunger and thirst, perhaps. So Weary was merciless, and drove them forward without a stop until the first jumble of hills and deep-worn gullies held ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... Alison.... At the very thought of the girl, Valerie's resentment welled up anew. Jealousy knows no law. The reflection that it was at her instance that Anthony had gone as footman to the house where Anne was housemaid rode her with a harsh and merciless hand. Often enough, sunk in most bitter contemplation of this ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... in the language which cannot be worn out. No other word could resist the merciless use ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... division' charged, reached the crater, stumbled over the debris, were suddenly met by a merciless fire of artillery, enfilading them right and left, and of infantry fusillading them in front; faltered, hesitated, were badly led, lost heart, gave up the plan of seizing the crest in rear, huddled into the ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... stalk is like a file; the rye straw is glazed with flint; the grasshoppers snap sharply as they fly up in front of you; the bird-songs have ceased; the ground crackles under foot; the eye of day is brassy and merciless; and in harmony with all these things is the rattle of the mower ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... willing? Come on, Pat." Pat Hanrahan, ex-bare-knuckle-prize fighter and roughhouse-expert, stepped forth. The two men came against each other in grips, and almost before he had exerted himself the Irishman found himself in the merciless vise of a half-Nelson that buried him head and shoulders in the snow. Joe Hines, ex-lumber-jack, came down with an impact equal to a fall from a two-story building—his overthrow accomplished by a cross-buttock, delivered, he claimed, before he ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... in its way from Lincolnshire to Westminster. But neither its ornamental situation, the beauty of its structure, nor the noble design of its erection (which did honour to humanity), could preserve it from the merciless zeal of the times; for in 1647 it was demolished by order of the House of Commons, as Popish and superstitious. This occasioned the following not unhumorous sarcasm, which has been often printed among the popular ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... made people think him a fool let loose the stored-up bitterness of years. He who in the beginning should and could have saved his girl wife with love and firmness now judged and rejected her with the terrible wrath, the cold merciless justice of a man slow to anger ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... the refusal of all constructive elements to agree to any compromise with the Bolsheviki; that in the opinion of Russia's representatives in Paris the advance made by the plenipotentiaries would strengthen the Bolshevist movement, render the civil war more merciless than before, and raise up formidable difficulties to the establishment of the League ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... a child's toy train in tin, and a mechanical mouse. All were, no doubt, considered as treasures by the Arab potentate, yet I reflected that nearly every article in the whole of that miscellaneous collection had been acquired by the most ruthless and merciless bloodshed. ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... blest with power t' appease The ruthless rage of merciless disease, O'er the frail part a subtle fluid pour, Drenched with invisible Galvanic shower, Till the arthritic staff and crutch forego, And leap exulting like the ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... But, unfortunately, it is precisely the heroic nation that his own great hero is about to combat and subdue. He is compelled, therefore, upon his part, as the faithful bard and minstrel of his chosen champion, to give them up—them, and their covenant, and Stuart king—to merciless sarcasm. Indeed, he tells us, that the great, the sole fault of the Scots, was precisely this—that they did not produce a Cromwell. "With Oliver born Scotch," he says or sings, "one sees not but the whole world ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... battered tramp steamer; mournful men with brown faces and skinny arms, singing their hymn with sharp cracked voices while they laboured at their utterly preposterous task. Laughter conquered the Queen. She lay back helpless in the merciless grip of uncontrollable merriment. Kalliope could not laugh so much. The joke was beyond her. She sat with a wavering half-smile on her lips watching the Queen. The box of chocolates lay in the bottom of the boat. Kalliope stretched her foot out, touched the box, pushed ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... is the rudest possible way of dropping an acquaintance; and is allowable only in the case of some flagrant offender who deserves public and merciless rebuke. Ordinarily, the result sought—of ending an undesired acquaintance—is attained by a persistently cold courtesy, supplemented by as much avoidance as possible; drifting apart, not sinking each ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... owe to them, if they have not even the courage to wait for the sentence to be pronounced before they condemn me? Their merciless verdict has actually anticipated that of the jury. It was to an unknown person, to you, M. Folgat, that I had to be indebted for the first expression ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... again—now, with this letter she knew that it was over. She did not cry, she scarcely moved. She watched the sea, with the letter on her lap, and felt that a new Dahlia Feverel, a woman who would traffic no longer with sentiment, who knew the world for what it was—a hard, merciless prison with fiends for its gaolers—had sprung ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... rude-stone age was divided into two eras,—the River-drift and the Cave,—in Eastern America the aboriginal Eskimos held sway without interruption, and slowly bettered themselves through unnumbered centuries, until at last they were driven into icy exile by merciless conquerors, where, no doubt, they lost much of the advancement they had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... It was rather a charming face, delicately angled, with cheeks that hollowed slightly beneath the cheek-bones and a chin which would have been pointed had not old Dame Nature changed her mind at the last moment and elected to put a provoking little cleft there. Nor could even the merciless light of a wintry sun find a flaw in her skin. It was one of those rare, creamy skins, with a golden undertone and the feature of a flower petal, sometimes found in conjunction with dark hair. The faint colour in her cheeks ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... OF, a general of the armies of Charles V. and Philip of Spain; his career as a general was uniformly successful, but as a governor his cruelty was merciless, especially as the viceroy of Philip in the Low Countries, "very busy cutting off high heads in Brabant, and stirring up the Dutch to such fury as was needful for exploding Spain and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... of every mountain, Where southward-moving birds repose, In every grove, at every fountain, Lurk merciless, insatiate foes. ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... remember those who, one by one, had betrayed her? Those who first whispered to her that love of country was a narrow creed; those who taught her to abhor violence, and then failed at the test—Bazard, firing to kill, going down to death under the merciless lance of an Uhlan; Buckhurst, guilty of every crime that attracted him; and now Sylvia, her friend, false to the salt she had eaten, false to the roof above her, false, utterly false to all save ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... Pittsburgh, they saw evident traces of Indians along the banks, and there is every reason to believe that a boat which they overtook, and which, through carelessness, was suffered to run aground on an island, became a prey to these merciless savages. Though Captain Hubbell and his party stopped some time for it in a lower part of the river, it did not arrive, and has never to their knowledge been heard of since. Before they reached the mouth of the Great Kenhawa, they had by several successive additions, increased their ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... Injustice is systematically done to the purest, most conscientious, and most industrious Civil Service in the whole world; and our countrymen who are spending the best part of their lives in the effort to promote the welfare and prosperity of India, are too often held up to opprobrium as examples of merciless tyrants, whose only object is to grind down the natives into the dust. We seem to be losing many of the characteristics which formerly distinguished us in the world, but there is one which marks us out very plainly from all other nations—the habit of disparaging our own achievements ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... close of the first half of the fourteenth century, after the terrible ravages of the great plague had abated, the people were prostrate with fear and terrorized by the merciless words of the priests, who had not been slow to declare the pestilence as a mark of the wrath of God and who were utilizing the peculiar possibilities of this psychological moment for the advancement of the ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... filled with crime, had somehow so far been accepted with a guileless reservation in the matter of a ruling majority whose lapses from virtue were at least not openly vaunted treachery, blows struck at any unprepared back presenting itself, merciless attacks on innocence and weakness, and savage gluttings of lust, of fury, with exultant paeans of self-glorification and praise of a justly applauding God. Before such novelty of onslaught the British mind had breathless ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the stiletto of a Bravo is honorable, compared to that sword of pretended justice which St. Mark wields! The commonest hireling of Italy—he who will plant his dagger in the heart of his friend for two sequins, is a man of open dealing, compared to the merciless treachery of some in ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... left free, the thugs standing back to let the pistol do its work. In that instant a broad sword of light swung round a nearby corner and smote the group: the twin, glaring eyes of a motor car flooded with blue-white radiance that tableau of one man at bay in the middle of the road, in a ring of merciless enemies. ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... and tender-hearted Church, they must at least become subject to the iron laws of population and absorption. When the public statutes are no longer drawn up for their special benefit, when no new swarms of brethren come to swell their ranks, when they are abandoned to the merciless laws of loss and gain in numbers, then will people soon see on which side is true morality, and by which the ordinances of God are really respected; then will many vapid accusations against the holy Catholic Church of themselves ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... because Napoleon needed all his soldiers. Then weakness crushed me, like a weight of iron. A mist before my eyes shut out the opposite precipice with its sparse pines, and flashing waterfalls, the mountain heights beyond, and the merciless blue sky. This was death. Who cared? The echo of thirty thousand feet was in my ears as they passed on, leaving me to die by the roadside, as I had ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... fact it occurred to him that he had never wished to come to the war. He had not enlisted of his free will. He had been dragged by the merciless government. And now they were taking ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... their peasant blood by the outrage they were obliged to put upon a courageous garrison. But Edelwald said nothing. His eyes were upon Marie. He would not increase her anguish of self-reproach by the change of a muscle in his face. The garrison was trapped and at the mercy of a merciless enemy. His most passionate desire was to have her taken away that she might not witness the execution. Why was Sieur Charles La Tour sitting in the stockade at the head of Fundy Bay while she must endure the ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... to hunt down the treacherous Spaniards, and stayed to rob and pillage indiscriminately; and not a few of the names now honored as those of eminent English discoverers, were once dreaded as being borne by merciless pirates. ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... noiselessness, a guile, that made her aware of the necessity for caution in her dealings with him. This was a man of many subtleties—she knew it instinctively—a man of tigerish temperament, harmless as a kitten in sunshine, merciless as a fiend in storm. Yes, he was certainly like a tiger, forcible even in repose. She had never before encountered so dominant a personality. It affected her strangely, half-attracting, half-repelling, arousing in her a sense of antagonism ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... as often shaking her head in hopeless renunciation of any present escape from the consequences of that error. She saw her position clearly, yet it seemed that she had so entangled herself in the meshes of a merciless Fate, that the only reparation she could claim, either for herself or her son, would be thrown away by forestalling—after such endless, endless submission and suffering—the Event which ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... coming from the northland, And a great nation is arousing itself from the uttermost parts of the earth. They lay hold on bow and spear; they are cruel and merciless. Their din is like the roaring of the sea, and they ride upon horses. Everyone is arrayed as a man for battle against thee, O ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... expression upon them. They prided themselves greatly on having killed members of rival tribes, and more still upon doing away with Brazilians. In the latter case it was pardonable, because until quite recently the Brazilians have slaughtered the poor Indians of the near interior regions in a merciless way. Now, on the contrary, the Brazilian Government goes perhaps too far the other way in its endeavour to protect the few Indians who still remain ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... vain to give my parishioners more cheerful ideas of religion; to teach them that God is not a jealous, childish, merciless tyrant; that He is best served by a regular tenor of good actions, not by bad singing, ill-composed prayers, and eternal apprehensions. But the luxury of false religion is to ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... should I feign ignorance of that which your unbounded and unselfish devotion has proved so often? Why should you not know that before this deadly stroke fell my one grief was that you suffered; and that as long as I could pray I prayed for your happiness? Now I can see only merciless force or blind chance, that in nature smites with the tornado the lonely forest or the thriving village, the desolate waves or some ship upon them. Men, with all their boasted reason, are even worse. What could be more mad ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... thought enough to imagine the lofty trepidation of these thrilling hours. The neighbors never knew of the merciless joke Fate played on them when, in their ignorance, they believed the Lord had sent them a sign. They dwelt in a fools' paradise for a long time, ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... kept to await their sentence. Twelve hundred men, with scarcely comfortable standing room, without decent clothing, without sanitary accommodations, without proper food, without shelter, detained for months within these stone walls under a merciless guard—who can conceive of their sufferings? They had been stripped, all but naked; the hard ground was their bed; the sky was their roof; they were exposed to the heat of day, and the chill of night; the rains of July drenched them; the ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... a satire of Pope's in four books, the "fiercest" as well as the best of his satires, in which, with merciless severity, he applies the lash to his critics, and in which Colley Cibber figures as ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... having sacked and burned Argos, then laid siege to a monastery, which surrendered upon terms; and it is honorable to the memory of this Tartar general, that, according to the testimony of Mr. Gordon, at a time when the war was managed with merciless fury and continual perfidies on both sides, he observed the terms with rigorous fidelity, treated all his captives with the utmost humanity, and even ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... grow wealthy in the fur, fish or ivory trades, and are so shrewd in their dealings that Russians have christened them the "Jews of Siberia." But although cunning and merciless in business matters this Siberian financier becomes a reckless spendthrift in his pleasures, who will stake a year's income on the yearly Yakutsk Derby (which takes place over the frozen Lena), or squander away a fortune on riotous living and the fair sex. All ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... son of Ethelwulf, succeeded to the crown: in whose reign the Danes committed great ravages through the kingdom. Notwithstanding, in 868, a great famine and plague happened in England, yet those merciless and blood-thirsty Pagans the Danes, in 869, through their aversion to Christianity, set fire to the religious houses in the city of York, murdered the monks, ravished the nuns, and made a sacrifice of Edmund, titular King of the East Angles, by first shooting his body full of arrows, and afterwards ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown
... want you to marry me," he repeated, clearing his throat. "The minister'll be up here next Sunday and we can fix it up then. Or I'll drive you down to Hepburn to the Justice, and get it done there. I'll do whatever you say." His eyes fell under the merciless stare she continued to fix on him, and he shifted his weight uneasily from one foot to the other. As he stood there before her, unwieldy, shabby, disordered, the purple veins distorting the hands he pressed against the desk, and his long orator's ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... dark, and full of an ancient smell, and crowded with groanings and noise. I could not find the fire-box to relight the fallen lamp, and so we had to endure blindly what was dealt out to us. The waves tossed us in merciless sport, and I clung on by the side of Nais, holding her to the bed. We did not speak much, but there was full companionship in our bereavement and ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... merciless cross-examiner," I said. "The classes which had an interest in controling the government—that is, the capitalists and the office-seekers—did the buying. The capitalists advanced the money necessary to procure ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... end of the pass the dog struggled to get down. They looked out upon a stretch of desolation. Sandy had called it six or seven miles. It might have been two or twenty. The deceit of rarefied air was intensified by the dazzle of the merciless sun beating down on powdered alkali, on snaky flows of weathered lava, on mock lakes that sparkled and dissolved in mirage. The broken mesa, across which ran the road to the deserted mining camp, mysteriously changed form before their eyes; unsubstantial masses in pastel lights and ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... gray light of the morning, leaving their village a heap of smoldering ruins, the sad procession was marched off, heavily guarded. For two days their merciless captors drove them under the hot tropical sun without food or water. Late the second afternoon, they suddenly came upon a camp, at a sharp bend of the road, and there, in plain view, stood Dr. Livingstone. Every slave-driver took to his heels and disappeared in ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... sweeps with considerable energy to row her in to a landing again. They were genuinely horrified when he came running down the bank, both arms out-stretched, crying out that his all, his all was floating away on that tumultutius, merciless tide. Before any skiff could be launched, before any effort could be made to reach the trading-boat, she suddenly disappeared. The Mississippi was at flood height, and it was thought that the boat struck some drifting ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... of the French war, and of that with the Indians which immediately succeeded it, the entire frontier from New York to Georgia was exposed to the merciless fury of the savages. In no instance were the measures of defence adopted by the different colonies, adequate to their object.—From some unaccountable fatuity in those who had the direction of this matter, a defensive war, which alone could have checked aggression and prevented the ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... of humanity passing her in the street, these beasts of men, these hairy-breasted toilers, had found in her and her kind the strength or the incentive to endure, to build, to go on. And one of them, stupid, selfish, merciless, a man whom she had really loved, who could have made her better, to whom she had gone with only hope for him and unselfish abnegation for herself—he had put a vile interpretation upon her appeal, he had struck her before a callous crowd, he had called her the name for which ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... Y. One thing is certain: that the latter character has few equals in its demand on the performer's tact and skill and imagination. This wordless opponent of Mrs. X. is another of those vampire characters which Strindberg was so fond of drawing, and it is on her the limelight is directed with merciless persistency. ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... swearing, playing, coveting, and fulfilling the lusts of the flesh, so that when they come to die, the great work that they were sent to do is then to be done; their souls, Christ, eternity, was scarce thought on before; but now, when merciless death begins to gripe them, then do they begin to bethink themselves of those things which they should have got in readiness before, and that is the reason why we so often hear many that lie upon their death-beds to cry out for a little longer time; and no wonder, for they have the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... is merciless: a crack-brained king He raises in the place of Prester John, Smites Priam, and mid-course in conquering Bids Caesar pause; the wit of Salomon, The wealth of Nero and the pride thereof, And battle-prowess—or of Tamburlaine Darius, Jeshua, or Charlemaigne,— Wheedle and bribe ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... not meet again through some horrible blunder, Which a merciless Fate must be asked to explain, And I sometimes sit smoking, and wearily wonder If I ever am destined to see you again. Yet wherever the future may possibly find you, To this final request do not answer me Nay, When I ask that this gift of myself may remind ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 1, 1892 • Various
... I delivered thee." The drowning man just rescued from the merciless wave is unconscious of suffering. Why, then, do you break his [15] peace and cause him to suffer in coming to life? Because you wish to save him from death. Then, if a criminal is at peace, is he not to be pitied and brought ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... could doubtless eat continually without bringing any trace of color into his face or features. A tun of Tokay vin de succession would not have caused any faltering in that piercing glance that read men's inmost thoughts, nor dethroned the merciless reasoning faculty that always seemed to go to the bottom of things. There was something of the fell and tranquil majesty ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... this robbery without a murmur; yet he is sagacious, prudent. I can only explain his gullibility on the ground of his innate snobbery; he thinks it is the "thing to do," and does it, and for this reason it is carried to the most merciless lengths. To illustrate. In the season of 1902, when I was at Newport, Mr. ——, a conspicuous member of the New York smart set, known as the "Four Hundred," lost his hat in some way and rode to his home ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... tore Gavin Brice, showering him with systematic punches to every vulnerable spot above the belt line. It was merciless punishment, and it was delivered ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... Lenau. The reason for this has already been briefly indicated in the preceding chapter. Hoelderlin's Weltschmerz is altogether the most naive of the three; Lenau's, while it still remains sincere, becomes self-conscious, while Heine has an unfailing antidote for profound feeling in his merciless self-irony. And yet his condition in life was such as would have wrung from the heart of almost any other ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... Lescarbot had a literary education, which Champlain lacked, and, unlike the Jesuits, he approached life in America from the standpoint of a layman. His prolixity often serves as a foil to the terseness of Champlain, and suggests that he must have been a merciless talker. Yet, though inclined to be garrulous, he was a good observer and had many correct ideas—notably the belief that corn, wine, and cattle are a better foundation for a colony than gold or silver mines. In temperament he and Champlain were very dissimilar, and evidence of mutual coolness may ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... help to confound every sentiment of justice and injustice. Some planters are condemning to death all the male negro population above six years of age. They affirm that those who have not borne arms will be contaminated by the example of those who have been fighting. This merciless act is the consequence of the result of the continued misfortunes of the colonies. Charault, Reflexions sur Saint Domingue.), the political re-action in Naples and Spain, I may also add, the massacres of Chio, Ipsara and Missolonghi, the work of the barbarians of Eastern Europe, which ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... words fell; there was something merciless in their very utterance. "Then I will answer you; but it is my last word upon the subject. My wife followed her own choice in leaving me, and it is my intention to abide by her decision. ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... of France might be termed the classic ground of atrocities committed in the name of religion. Simon de Montfort's Crusaders and the Albigenses, after them 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 ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... sounds as if Germans and Normans had got confounded. But the damage wrought by the last conquerors is being speedily made good on another site. It is the damage which is doing to the city by the merciless hands of its own people that never can be made good. One would have thought that the Cenomannian city on its height, the proud line of its Roman bulwarks, the noble works of later days which those bulwarks shelter, might have moved the heart of the ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... promontory the more terrible, it was believed to be the haunt of innumerable uncouth and misshapen monsters of the sea, that lived by devouring the hapless seamen who were thrown upon the rocks from their wrecked vessels by the merciless tumult ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... to pay Tribute to ease, and, of its joy secure The heart luxuriates with indifferent things, Wasting its kindliness on stocks and stones, And on the vacant air. Then up I rose, And dragg'd to earth both branch and bough, with crash And merciless ravage; and the shady nook Of hazels, and the green and mossy bower Deform'd and sullied, patiently gave up Their quiet being: and unless I now Confound my present feelings with the past, Even ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... months in the desert; all those months of the slow journeying northward; all the fought battles with memory, when he thought that he had won—all gone for nothing, their slow anodyne serving but to sharpen now the bite of merciless remembering. His hand shook upon his knee. Small beads of moisture oozed out upon his forehead. He sat stunned before the amazing revelation of how little time and distance had done ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... The young Ramon trembled. Other gringos were hidden in the arroyo; perhaps the very man that his uncle had robbed! Even now he could hear the click of hoofs on the gravel. The gunman had been merciful for the moment, only to turn his captives over to the merciless men of the mines; men who held a Mexican's life worth no more than a dog's. The wounded man, stiff in the saddle, turned his head. Round a bend in the dry river-bed, his neck held sideways that the reins might drag free, came ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... Elsa, merciless in her fury, plunged the pin into his wrist. It stung like a hornet; and with a gasp of pain, Craig leaped back out of ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... "Passions moved it in strange orbits. Private depravity and political debasement went with one of the most brilliant intellectual awakenings in the history of the western world. Another dark element is the association of merciless selfishness, violence, craft and corruption with the administration of sacred things. If politics were divorced from morals, so was theology." Hired crime, stealthy assassination, especially by poison, prevailed. Contempt of human life, ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Leaving my senseless companion, I rushed wildly back to the water's edge, and called, shouted, and even waded back into the merciless surf. But no answer: no sign. Who shall describe the anguish of the next half-hour? I was conscious of lights and voices; I had dim visions of people hurrying; I felt something poured down my throat, and some one was trying to lift me from where I sat. But no! I ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... once sounding the tocsin for woman's political emancipation. Many of the women who braved the perils of the treacherous deep, or still more terrible dangers of the weary march over broad deserts, inhospitable mountains, and through the fastnesses of hostile and merciless Indians, to reach California in the early times, entertained broad views upon the intellectual capacity and political rights of women, but their efforts were confined to fields of literature. While this advanced guard of progressive women was moulding into form a social system out of the turbulent ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... in vain. The scholars had heard of the glorious feats of their forefathers in their boyish years, when they set the lash of the master at defiance for days together. Now, alas! all was changed; the master, in the opinion of the boys, reigned a despot absolute and uncontrolled; the merciless cruelty of his rod, and the heaviness of his tasks, were insupportable. The accustomed holidays had been rescinded; the usual Christmas feast reduced to a non-entity, and the chartered rights of the scholars ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... or other, the man was afraid. Arnold was conscious of a sense of apprehension stealing over him. The touch of Fenella's fingers upon his arm left him, for a moment, cold. Sabatini turned his head slowly towards the speaker, and his face had become like the face of an inquisitor, stern and merciless, with the flavor of death in the cold, mirthless parting of ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... things was going steadily forward. There was no stopping the Treasury Counsel now; he was going to get at some truth in his own merciless fashion. He had exchanged one glance with the Coroner, had whispered a word to the solicitor who sat close by him, and now he ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... dog bounding to the attack. Straightway he flung the boiling contents of his cup full in that rage-wracked countenance. The burning liquid swished against the huge bull-head. Blinding, bubbling, scalding, it did its fell work well; nothing escaped that merciless torrent. With a cry of agony, half bellow, half howl, Red Wull checked in his charge. From without the door was banged to; and again the duel was postponed. While within the tap-room a huddle of men and dogs were left alone with a mad man and a ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... convicts had met their death, the hunters could not repress a shudder of horror. Around it lay the repulsive-looking crocodiles, placidly sleeping on the water, and amongst them floated a man's straw hat. It was all that remained of the cruel, merciless band. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... Quocunque modo rem; how many thousands we undo, whom we oppress, by whose ruin and downfall we arise, whom we injure, fatherless children, widows, common societies, to satisfy our own private lust. Though we have myriads, abundance of wealth and treasure, (pitiless, merciless, remorseless, and uncharitable in the highest degree), and our poor brother in need, sickness, in great extremity, and now ready to be starved for want of food, we had rather, as the fox told the ape, his tail should sweep ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... could save the empire but a born statesman. Akbar had already proved himself a born soldier. Had he been only a soldier he might still have held his own against Afghans and Usbegs from Peshawur to Allahabad. Had he been bloodthirsty and merciless, like Bairam Khan, he might have stamped out revolt and mutiny by massacre and terrorism. But he would have left no mark in history, no lessons for posterity, no political ideas for the education of the world. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... of slavery, by setting forth a doctrine of extreme cleverness. This doctrine, like many others of its kind, seemed at first sight to be the balm it pretended, instead of an irritant, as it really was. It was calculated to deceive all except thinking men, and to silence all save a merciless logician. And this merciless logician, who was heaven-sent in time of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... was still against them. The God that meant to cure was merciful and merciless as is the knife. Sinless as was this gentle flower, even she must suffer and endure, for here were obstacles again, even here across their path! They were upon them almost before they knew it, yet upon them unseen, unheard, for, absorbed in each other, this opposing ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... brought false reports to the king. The monarch now thought of nothing but in what manner he might best execute his vengeance. He one night resolved to poison the queen and in the morning to put Zadig to death by the bowstring. The orders were given to a merciless eunuch, who commonly executed his acts of vengeance. There happened at that time to be in the king's chamber a little dwarf, who, though dumb, was not deaf. He was allowed, on account of his insignificance, to ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... lending a helping hand to his injured comrade, for the line in the rear was coming on, yelling like mad, and anything that opposed its progress would have been run down; anything, perhaps, except that well-managed battery on their right, whose steady, merciless fire was more than living men could endure. They broke and fled, and were not called into action again that day; for when Siegel, finding that he could not take the town, withdrew from the field for the purpose of effecting a junction with another Union force stationed at ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... misfortune, that has shed more blood in deliberate judicial severity for two centuries past, constantly increasing, too, in its sanguinary hue, than has ever been sanctioned by the jurisprudence of any ancient or modern nation, civilized and refined like herself; the merciless whippings in her army, peculiar to herself alone, the conspicuous commission and freest acknowledgment of vice in the upper classes; the overweening distinctions shown to opulence and birth, so destructive of a sound moral sentiment in the nation, so baffling to virtue. These are ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... southern armies, after four years of valiant fighting, were no longer able to withstand the superior numbers that had confronted them with merciless regularity in every important conflict of the war, and, in April, 1865, the struggle ceased with the complete subjugation ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... surprising that at the end of the season a local observer reported: "One cannot help noticing now the scarcity of Terns on the New Jersey coast, and it is all owing to their merciless destruction." One might go further and give the sickening details of how the birds were swept from the mud flats about the mouth of the Mississippi and the innumerable shell lumps of the Chandeleurs and the Breton Island region; how ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... have made any form of political reconciliation impossible. With equal skill he had aimed his epithets at every Democratic statesman and politician from Van Buren to Fernando Wood, the sting of his relentless and merciless criticism goading each one into frenzy. For them now to assume to overlook such treatment and accept its author as a political associate and exemplar seemed a mockery. Several Democratic journals, following the lead ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... shadowy ways of intuition, he knew his weakness in that merciless sea with no heart of warmth, that threatened the unknowable thing, vaguely but terribly guessed, namely, death. As regarded himself, he did not comprehend death. He, who had never known the time when he was not alive, could ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... white, drawn face by his merciless eyes. So he looked when a particularly interesting subject lay under his knife and he ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... thought; for in all that region it would have been difficult to find a lovelier specimen of budding womanhood than the young girl who had striven so unsuccessfully to hide her embarrassment as her grandfather proceeded, with the merciless recklessness of age, to criticize Peevy's strength and weakness ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... ransomed by a relative who had never ceased to search for the missing youth. He soon after became a distinguished sea-king, of that class whom we call pirates. His career in this field of adventure is represented to have been one of daring and reckless hardihood, characterized by merciless aggression and great success. Finally Olaf married an Irish princess, embraced Christianity, and fought his way to the throne of Norway, assuming the crown in the year of our Lord 991. From this time he became a ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... stairs the day before, when I came out of the bath; I made haste upstairs, distracted with sorrow and compassion, as I had been the cause of so great a misfortune. For by sacrificing the fairest princess on earth to the barbarity of a merciless genie, I was become the most criminal and ungrateful of mankind. 'It is true,' said I, 'she has been a prisoner these twenty-five years; but, liberty excepted, she wanted nothing that could make her happy. ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... by his piercing merciless eyes, to notice that he slipped one finger upon the pulse at her wrist, keeping her hands firmly in his warm clasp; or that he leaned lower as he spoke, until his noble massive head ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... little exclamation, with a sob following close upon it. There was a sound of tearing cloth, and he held his captive upright, and with a merciless hand turned her face so that the moonlight struck it full. They stared at each other, breathing hard from more than the ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... engross the luxury of the hovel's shelter, and the warmth of the 'precious' straw, while he knows that he has subjects still abroad with senses like his own, capable of the like misery, still exposed to its merciless cruelties. It was the tenant of the castle, it was the man in the house who said, 'Come, let's be snug and cheery here. Shut up the door. Let's have a fire, and a feast, and a song,—or a psalm, or a prayer, as the case may be; only let it be within—no matter ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... courage and cruelty, a disinterested and devoted loyalty to his prince, with a disregard of the rights of his fellow-subjects. He was the unscrupulous agent of the Scottish Privy Council in executing the merciless severities of the government in Scotland during the reigns of Charles II. and James II.; but he redeemed his character by the zeal with which he asserted the cause of the latter monarch after the Revolution, the military skill with which he supported it at the battle ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... rude stone hearth, while the rain fell in deluges outside and the wind went calling and blustering down the valley. The miner piled the fuel high upon the fire and, as the hours passed, told story after story of wild adventure, of desperate escape, of bold crime, and of the quick, merciless justice of the frontier. At last his fund of narrative seemed to come to an end and he was silent for ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... honoured—humbly asking for, instead of bestowing, employment with a lordly hand. Of course, speaking so of the fate that, as a master, might be his own in the fluctuations of commerce, he was not likely to have more sympathy with that of the workmen, who were passed by in the swift merciless improvement or alteration who would fain lie down and quietly die out of the world that needed them not, but felt as if they could never rest in their graves for the clinging cries of the beloved and helpless they would leave behind; who envied the power of the wild bird, that can feed ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... bench, simply because he was supposed to possess a judicial mind. Here he amply justified that opinion,—but not without the sneer and ill-words of many. He was now seventy, and it was declared that years had had no effect on him. He was supposed to be absolutely merciless,—as hard as a nether millstone, a judge who could put on the black cap without a feeling of inward disgust. But it may be surmised that they who said so knew nothing of him,—for he was a man not apt ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... the merciless portraiture of the Second Empire, the unparalleled diorama of the Alma fight, combined to gain for these first four-and-twenty chapters an immediate vogue as emphatic and as widely spread as that which saluted ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... compelled to live in Russia, where he ended his days. "Poland fell," says an eminent writer, "the victim of her own dissensions; of the chimera of equality insanely pursued, and the rigour of aristocracy unceasingly maintained; of extravagant jealousy of every superior, and merciless oppression of every inferior, rank. The eldest born of the European family was the first to perish, because she had thwarted all the ends of social union; because she had united the turbulence of democratic to the exclusiveness of aristocratical societies; because ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... having been spent as a shikaree, he had become well inured to the risk of losing it. Had he been a coward, or unused to such perils as at that moment surrounded him, he would in all likelihood have succumbed through fear; and toppled helplessly over upon the shoulders of the merciless monster that was threatening to destroy him. With all his bravery, however, it was just as much as he could do to keep his balance. Unfortunately, in climbing up the rock, he had been compelled to abandon ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... marble images to lead men to worship? Proof! proof! proof! 'Show us your works, and we will show you our faith,' cry the people. 'Then will we no longer sacrifice our independence of thought to the merciless tyranny of human tradition.'" And he knew that this related to Catholic and ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... decrepit but kind Old Grandmother waiting her call, But the visage that met her Completely upset her: It wasn't familiar at all! With a whitening cheek She started to speak, But her peril she instantly saw:— Her Grandma had fled, And she'd tackled instead Four merciless Paws and a Maw! When the neighbors came running, the wolf to subdue, He was licking his chops, (and ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... that were not so fortunate sprang into the deep waters of the Lualaba, and though many of them became an easy prey to the voracious crocodiles which swarmed to the scene, the majority received their deaths from the bullets of the merciless Tagamoyo and his villanous band. The Doctor believes, as do the Arabs themselves, that about 400 people, mostly women and children, lost their lives, while many more were made slaves. This outrage is only one of many such he has unwillingly witnessed, and he ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... with every resource at her command. She had wept and pleaded, she had stormed and raged, she had feigned submission and had played for time—and her torment had not touched in the slightest degree the merciless and gloating brain of the being who called himself Roger. Now his tantalizing, ruthless cat-play was done, the horrible gray-brown face was close to hers—she wailed her final despairing message to Costigan and attacked that hideous face with the ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... my sorrow,—the sorrow that fell Where the heart battled hard with the merciless foe; It has laughed with my laughter when fortune was well And the blossoms of triumph were blooming below; And far through the black and the bright of each year It has followed my feet till ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... haunches and rumps of our burros only seemed to embarrass the poor creatures, for you can readily see how they would reason the matter out from their own premises: If they were to go no farther, as had been decided by themselves, why should their riders belabor them in that merciless way? For downright dialectics commend me to ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... snarling, inarticulate sound, he caught up a heavy walking cane and strode towards me, whereupon I retreated so precipitately that my heel catching in the worn floor-covering, I tripped and fell; then, or ever I could rise, he stooped and catching me in merciless hands, shook me like the savage monster he was and dragging me across the floor, hurled me into the passage; lying breathless and half-stunned, I heard the slam of the door, the rattle of a bolt and thereafter ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... his nerves, have braced his muscles. Under the pressure of local circumstances there has been developed a creature who can work with little food, with little incentive, very hard for long hours under a merciless sun. Throughout the river campaigns, if the intellect of the army, if the spirit of the troops, have come from without, Egypt herself has provided the sinews ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... closed, and he retired to the dull solitude of his chamber, the last mind-picture which faded on his waking sense was the scene on the crowded race-course, with all its exasperating accessories—the merciless exultation of the triumphant adversary—the jibes and laughter of his companions—the hootings of the mob—to be again repeated with fantastic exaggeration in the dreams which troubled and perplexed his broken sleep. No wonder that the demons ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... throughout this province. These commotions unhappily existed during a protracted period, and whilst they were raging, the regular pursuits of the community were either interrupted by violent party intrigues—suspended by a barbarous warfare—or totally stopped by merciless outrages. ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... silence under it—her equanimity—mislead me. It is the impulse of any hurt thing to cry out. I, myself, have always done it. Half unconsciously, I am led by this reasoning to think that Barbara's wound cannot be very deep, else would she shrink and writhe beneath it. So I talk to her all day, with merciless length, about Roger. I go through all the old queries. I again critically examine my face, and arrive—not only at the former conclusion, that one side is worse-looking than the other, but also that it looks ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... turns to the northeast, at Gamboa, a wild and hilly country forms both banks. The hillsides as well as the plateaux are overgrown with dense vegetation. As in all tropical lands, the fight for survival is fierce and merciless. Trees are destroyed by great creepers, great creepers are destroyed by smaller growths, and every form of life, vegetable as well as animal, has its enemy. Every living thing springs up from the ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... According to the post-Tridentine morality of Rome, that morality which the Jesuits openly preached and published, which was disseminated in every prelate's ante-chamber, and whispered in every parish-priest's confessional, enormous sins could be atoned and eternal grace be gained by the merciless and traitorous murder of any notable man who savored of heresy. If the Holy Office had instituted a prosecution against the victim and had condemned him in his absence, the path was plain. Sentence of excommunication and death publicly pronounced on such ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... youth has been very culpable; that he has committed many indiscretions, much injustice, many imprudences, many errors, and, I fear, even some crimes. I know that he has been the most profligate among the profligate, the most debauched among libertines, the most merciless among the plunderers, and the most perverse among rebels. I know that he is accused of being a Septembrizer; of having murdered one wife and poisoned another; of having been a spy, a denouncer, a persecutor ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... The merciless caution that dictates the methods of a killer animated his movements now. Across the gulch, nearly one hundred and fifty yards from him, the renegade lay crouched. A hunched shoulder was ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... no mitigation of their sufferings. The merciless cold continued without abatement, and the sun seemed to mock their misery. The foxes disappeared, and the ice-bears in their stead swarmed around the house, and clambered at night over the roof. Again they ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... pleasures of the table his gorgeous feasts, his dishes prepared with such delicacy, his choice wines; the miser will remember his hoard of gold, the robber his ill-gotten wealth, the angry and revengeful and merciless murderers their deeds of blood and violence in which they revelled, the impure and adulterous the unspeakable and filthy pleasures in which they delighted. They will remember all this and loathe themselves and their sins. For how miserable will all those pleasures seem to the soul condemned ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... are innocent of any wrong. It is only Ruggedo who deserves punishment, and I will punish him." He paused a moment and then continued in the same cold, merciless voice: ...
— Tik-Tok of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... lines of dead heaped like grass before the mower's scythe? The rear ranks, paralyzed by the terrible disaster, held their ground, but no human courage could withstand the fire that blazed fierce and merciless from the redoubt. A moment's pause, and then a wild, headlong flight to the sheltering boats ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... incapable of understanding the fate that was in store for her. She sheltered herself behind her merciless mother. "I'm going away with you, mamma," she said—"with you ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... slaughter otherwise; for there it is, a presence always about her, darkly menacing him with that penalty whose murky secret has a fascination for all secret and unwholesome thoughts. And when he struggles with his victim at the last, "though he should be hanged for it", it is a merciless wrestle, not with one weak life only, but with that ever- haunting, ever-beckoning shadow of the gallows, too; and with a fierce defiance to it, after their long survey of each other, to come ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... punish evil-doers of the district. Many of these people in some of the relations of life were quite admirable, but when it came to any question of the protection of privilege, the preservation of property, or the rights in general of their superior class, these landowners were as merciless in the North Wales district as in many other parts of the country. Scorn and rage grew in the heart of young Lloyd George as he realized that these individuals had no claim over their fellows in personal worth or understanding, ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... lay his task. There under his eyes was the Enemy. Face to face with him was the titanic primal strength of a chaotic world, the stupendous still force of a merciless nature, waiting calmly, waiting silently to close upon and crush him. For a long time he stood watching. Then the great brutal jaw grew more salient than ever, the teeth set and clenched behind the close-gripped lips, the cast in the small twinkling eyes ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... to conclude with this Emperor Ivan Vasiliwich. He was a goodlie man of person and presence, well favoured, high forehead, shrill voice, a right Sithian, full of readie wisdom, cruell, blondye, merciless; his own experience mannaged by direction both his state and commonwealth affairs; was sumptuously intomed in Michell Archangell Church, where he, though guarded daye and night, remaines a fearfull spectacle to the memorie of such as ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... intense excitement by vague rumours of his intention, he moved a resolution which was practically a vote of censure upon the Government for its Indian policy. Always a fluent, ready, ornate speaker, Sir Rupert was never better than on that desperate night. His attack upon the Government was merciless; every word seemed to sting like a poisoned arrow; his exposure of the imbecilities and ineptitudes of the existing system of administration was complete and cruel; his scornful attack upon 'the Limpets' sent the Opposition into paroxysms of delighted laughter, and roused a storm ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... full of suggestion and threat. Now she found herself face to face with the crisis of all these years. Her only hope lay in the thought that neither could afford the scandal of an open declaration. Bansemer was merciless and ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... felt in his affairs by the late stewardess of the yacht. That excellent woman had volunteered to do all that she could to help him. Her husband had obtained situations for his wife and himself on board another yacht—and they were both eager to assist in any conspiracy in which their late merciless master was destined to play the part of victim. When on shore, they lived in a populous London parish, far away from the fashionable district of Berkeley Square, and further yet from the respectable suburb of Muswell Hill. A room in the house could be nominally engaged for ...
— Miss or Mrs.? • Wilkie Collins
... spoilt darlings of society—would leave the gaieties, the pleasures, the luxuries of London or of Bath, and, taking their lives in their hands, they placed them, together with their fortunes, and even their good names, at the service of the innocent and helpless victims of merciless tyranny. The married men—Ffoulkes, my Lord Hastings, Sir Jeremiah Wallescourt—left wife and children at a call from the chief, at the cry of the wretched. Armand—unattached and enthusiastic—had the right to demand that he should no longer ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... But when women feel fire between their fingers and are reckless before the swift approach of a greater wretchedness than that possessing them, they are merciless to themselves ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton |
