"Retributory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... long, when my superiority in some bookish accomplishments displayed itself, by results that could not be entirely dissembled, mere foolish human nature forced me on rare occasions into some trifle of exultation at these retributory triumphs. But more often I was disposed to grieve over them. They tended to shake that solid foundation of utter despicableness upon which I relied so much for my freedom from anxiety; and, therefore, upon the whole, it was satisfactory ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... who were in their service. The unfortunate Dr. Cameron was buried in the Savoy in London. The family of the man who betrayed him is said, in the Highlands, to have been visited with a severe retribution, having, ever since, had one of its members an idiot. Such is the notion of retributive ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... construction of some of the rules of the gospel, no one can deny that they do, whether figurative or not, forbid retaliation and revenge; that they do assume that men are not to be judges and executioners of their own wrongs; but that injuries are to be borne with meekness, and that retributive justice must be left to God, and to the laws. If a man strikes, we are not to return the blow, but appeal to the laws. If a man uses abusive or invidious language, we are not to return railing for railing. If a man impeaches our motives and ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... castigator of his age—a reformer in philosophy, in politics, in religion—denouncing its mechanical method of thinking, deploring its utter want of faith, and threatening political society, obstinately deaf to the voice of wisdom, with the retributive horrors of repeated revolutions; and yet neither in philosophy, in religion, nor in politics, has Mr Carlyle any distinct dogma, creed, or constitution to promulgate. The age is irreligious, he exclaims, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... poetic justice in her doom. To drag her out of a steamer wreck, only to make her the victim of a scoundrel, later an adventuress, and finally a murderess, all may be good art, but of a very bad kind. Laura is a sort of American Becky Sharp; but there is retributive justice in Becky's fate, whereas Laura's doom is warranted only by the author's whim. As for her end, whatever the virtuous public of that day might have done, a present-day audience would not have pelted her from the stage, destroyed her future, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... impression of the capabilities of the country, and of the results which are to follow the introduction of steam-navigation on the Amoor. Like a true American, he believes in the manifest destiny of Russia, and looks forward to the not distant time when, with a kind of retributive justice, the Muscovite is to swallow up the Manchew, as Charles Lamb used to call him. Already American merchants have established themselves at the mouth of the Amoor, and, unless Mr. Collins is oversanguine, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... approximately estimated at a thousand millions of dollars. The railroads had created the Trust, the ogre of corporate greed, of which Ryder was the incarnation, and in time the Trust became master of the railroads, which after all seemed but retributive justice. ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... partially succeeded. The proud Nebuchadnezzar whom she served was at last made to confess that there was a God to whom he was personally responsible; and he was encouraged to bear with dignity those sad reverses which humiliated his pride, and drank without complaint the dregs of that bitter cup which retributive justice held out in mercy before he died. It was his wife who revealed the deceitfulness, the hypocrisy, the treachery, and the heartlessness of that generation of vipers which he had trusted and enriched. She was more than the guardian of his interests; she was his faithful ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... her mother had given it to Bertie, she deemed it safe in that sacred repository. Now, like the face of Medusa it glared at her, and that which her father's lips had sanctified, became the polluted medium of a retributive curse upon his devoted child. So the Diabolus ex machina, the evil genius of each human life decrees that the most cruel cureless pangs are inflicted by the instruments ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Mr. Verne as he glanced at the crumpled paper, "and to think they have been foiled in the outset. To think that I have entertained such a monster, and to have heard him applauded until I was nigh sick. Heavens! if there be a retributive justice it shall surely be meted out to that accursed viper, ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... nine, accompanied the army back to winter quarters; for John desired to see his friends, and also to raise recruits for next season's campaign, now that he had learned experience, and had inspiring tales to tell of adventure, victory, and quick retributive vengeance upon a treacherous ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... rising of the god of day. Henry, I love you deeply, devotedly—but Catherine's terrible imprecations make me feel more keenly than I have ever done before the extent of the wrong I am about to inflict upon her—and I fear that retributive punishment will follow it." ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Bismarck were about to be treated just as he treated Count von Arnim. Can it be that everything must be paid for in this world, and that a splendid retributive justice rules the destiny even of super-men and punishes them for committing base actions? It is rumoured that the Duke of Lauenbourg (Bismarck) is threatened with prosecution on a charge of lese majeste, ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... had not forgotten him, in spite of the base treachery practised by the man he had trusted. Through all his painful realizations, this angelic face of his beloved, soothed and comforted and cheered him until he felt a new strength in his arm and a new fire in his heart, urging him on to retributive action. ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... idyllic strain, so characteristic of Jokai, who is nothing if not romantic, runs through the sombre and lurid tableau like a bright silver thread, and the denouement, in which all enmities are reconciled, all evil-doers are punished, and Gentleness and Heroism receive their retributive crowns, ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home. There may be black ingratitude in the thing, and the punishment may be retributive and well deserved; but that it is a miserable thing, ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... fired, and thus retributive justice done to those who had wantonly murdered two white men and ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... the Virginia farmer had some idea of retributive justice when he saw his hopeful son step out of the fire-place into the very jaws of ruin. To say that he was astonished would be expressing his state of mind too tamely; for he was overwhelmed with confusion, fear and mortification. He had ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... did the victory at Worcester, "the crowning mercy." It promised them a return of peace and prosperity. The people of the middle States regarded it as a guarantee for their speedy deliverance from the presence of a hated enemy. But to the southern States it was more than this. It was the retributive justice of Heaven against a band of cruel and remorseless murderers and robbers, who had spread desolation and sorrow through their once happy homes. It is asserted in Gordon's "History of the War" that wherever Cornwallis' army ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... been a blind and a reckless agency, unaccompanied with self-scrutiny, and to a great extent passed from his memory, yet it has all of it been looked at, as it welled, up from the living centres of free agency and responsibility, by the calm and dreadful eye of retributive Justice, and has all of it been indelibly written down in the book of God's sure memory, with a pen of iron, and the point ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... brought off the released white men were waiting for the payment of the promised ransom. I thought this tolerably cool, after the treacherous manner in which they had attacked us during the preceding night; but I was too greatly rejoiced at the success of my mission to be very severe or retributive in my behaviour just then. I therefore paid the full amount agreed upon, but directed Lobo to say that although I paid it I did not consider that Matadi was entitled to claim a single article in view of his unprovoked attack upon the ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... the world to come. While this doctrine again, in its development and detail, differs essentially from that of the Christian faith, it is well to call attention to it as a point of contact. It breathes the spirit of karma, which, in its retributive power, has been compared by some to the doctrine of heredity, and by others, to that of fate. Karma demands the full future fruition of every act done in the body; and many re-births, with intervals of keener suffering ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... there was as comfortless a scene displayed before them as the most retributive justice could have wished to visit on the rebellious. The morning raw and cold, the floor saturated with water, and covered with cases of exploded fireworks; the school-room in horrible confusion, scarcely ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... a retributive power. At the moment of commission it implants a sting in the conscience which, in the impenitent man, lights a flame, which, without the application of the Precious Blood, is never extinguished. In Holiness ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... feel offended at the unjust conduct of the English towards our country and sovereign; and thinking as you do yourself, I know what you must suffer when you are obliged to submit to national insults, unretaliated and unrevenged. But let us not conceive ourselves the agents of that retributive vengeance which Heaven has, in a peculiar degree, declared to be its own attribute. Let us, while we see and feel the injuries inflicted on our own country, not forget that our own raids, ambuscades, and surprisals, have been at least equally fatal to the English ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... book, Spenser is the apologist of Elizabeth for her conduct to her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, and he has been very delicate in his distinctions. It is not her high abstraction of justice, Sir Artegal, who does the murderous deed, but his man Talus, retributive justice, who, like a limehound, finds her hidden under a heap of gold, and drags her forth by her fair locks, in such rueful plight that even ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... Figurantes (never plump on earth) admire, while with uplifted toe retributive you inflict vengeance incorporeal upon the shadowy rear of obnoxious author, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... disparage the educative effect of the belief in a future life even when expressed in the crude and inadequate metaphor of reward and punishment. Few of us, I venture to think, have reached the moral level at which the belief—not in a vindictive, retributive, unending torment, but in a disciplinary or purgatorial education of souls prolonged after death—is without its value. At the same time it is a mere caricature of all higher religious beliefs when the religious motive is ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... her own East he would have paid the same penalty. The method would have been more refined, to be sure; there would have been a long legal squabble, with its tedious delays, but in the end Corrigan would have paid. There was a retributive justice for all those who infracted the rules of the game. It ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... was his; in spite of which, Dorothy's manner toward Teddy Mahr was undoubtedly one of encouragement. Honesty compelled Gard to own that he could not find in the boy the echo of the objectionable sire. Perhaps the long dead mother, who was never a lawful wife, had, by some retributive turn of justice, endowed him wholly with her own qualities. Gard could almost find it in his breast to like the big, large-hearted, gentle boy, but for a final irony of fate—the son's blind adoration ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... remaining life. For as our diseases decline, as it is supposed, with our declining bodily strength, so the quarreling humor of the Greeks abated much with their failing political greatness. But fortune or some divine retributive power threw him down the in close of his life, like a successful runner who stumbles at the goal. It is reported, that being in company where one was praised for a great commander, he replied, there was no great account to be made of a man, who had suffered ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... or cow skin, or beaver's, or ermine's; but not therefore to confuse God with the Hudson's Bay Company, nor to hunt foxes for their brushes instead of their skins, or think the poor little black tails of a Siberian weasel on a judge's shoulders may constitute him therefore a Minos in matters of retributive justice, or an AEacus in distributive, who can at once determine how many millions a Railroad Company are to make the public pay for not granting them their exclusive ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... descended upon the unfortunate colonists of Laudonnire and Ribault and destroyed them, with very few exceptions, in September 1565. On the other hand, every one has heard how the Spaniards, almost all except the absent leader, expiated their murderous cruelty in April 1568, under the retributive justice of De Gourgues. The Spanish settlers of Florida were thus as completely exterminated by the French as the French three years before had been ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... queerest thing," reported Anna Fergus, who knew the whole story. "You see this Mrs. Archington is Esther's grandmother, and Marie never knew it. She said so little to the poor girl that Esther had never chanced to tell her. Talk about retributive justice, this is the most direct piece of retribution I ever heard of. And the queerest part of it is that Esther's grandmother is the real North Avenue Archingtons, while Marie's Cape May friends are a newly-rich family, who happen to live on the same ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... ceased to buy, and for the stipulated three years will pay their rent as usual, and why? Because they expect the Irish legislature to give them even better terms—or even to get the land for nothing. Retributive justice is satisfied. For the last twenty years the landlords have suffered fearfully. The present bill is radically unsound, and I trust it ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... noise than meaning, it is impossible his plays could have been drawn into comparison with those of Settle. But the meretricious ornaments which he himself had introduced were within the reach of the meanest capacity; and, having been among the first to debauch the taste of the public, it was retributive justice that he should experience their inconstancy. Indeed Dryden seems himself to admit, that the principal difference between his heroic plays and "The Empress of Morocco," was, that the former were good sense, that looked like nonsense, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... warmth of these dishes. Tell her she shall be blessed, and above all, respected, most respected, by Felix Gaudissart, son of Jean-Francois Gaudissart, grandson of all the Gaudissarts, vile proletaries of ancient birth, his forefathers. March! and mind that everything is hot, or I'll deal retributive justice by a ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... the causes which operated in the first great intellectual struggle in which Christianity was engaged. No means exist for estimating the amount of harm done by the writings of unbelievers. The retributive destruction of some of them and the indignant alarm of the Christian apologists indicate the probability that these works had excited attention. But under a merciful Providence truth has in the end gained rather than lost by this first conflict of reason against Christianity. The church encountered ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... neither Eric nor his friends took any part in this retributive act; indeed they tried (though in vain) to prevent it. They sat together in the boarders' room till it was over, engaged in exciting discussion of the recent events. Most warmly did Eric thank them for their trustfulness. "Thank you," he said, "with all my heart, for proving my innocence; but thank ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... sister, I can't help myself," she said, urged by the fear lest her anticipated misfortunes might be held retributive, to take comprehensive review of her past conduct. "There's no woman strives more for her children; and I'm sure at scouring-time this Lady-day as I've had all the bedhangings taken down I did as much as the two gells put together; and there's the last elder-flower wine I've ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... superstitious people predicted evil to the spoiler. The late Rev. James Rust, in his Druidism Exhumed, mentions that circles stood on the spot where one of the extensive manufactories at Grandholm, near Aberdeen, has been built. The people, shocked at the removal of the Druidical works, predicted retributive justice to those who disturbed the sacred relics. For a long time every misadventure to the company, or to individuals connected therewith, was ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... college? and what might I not have been had you not, when I was struck down by illness, taken advantage of my weakness, and by sending me to a madhouse, confirmed my malady; but fool as you called me, I can see that Heaven's retributive justice has chastised you through life. Me you got into your power on the ground that I was insane, and the mind of the daughter, in whom you took such pride, often totters on its throne; her son was carried off, as was the rightful heir, and ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... of retributive misfortune could have been severer to Rosamund than to be thrust forward as the object of humiliation for the man she loved. She saw at a glance how much more likely it was (remote as the possibility appeared) that her lord would perform ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... great Mystic Unknown,—the Eden of Balance,—there lies no retributive Cause to right the injustice of that cruel Effect, let us hope there is no Here-after; that we all die and rot like dogs, who know no justice; that what little kindness and sweetness and right, man, through his happier dreams, his hopeful, cheerful idealism, has tried to establish in the world, ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... from death by King George in consideration of his provocation; for was he not, like Wat Tyler, the girl's father? She remembered what she accounted that man's only weakness—his dwelling with joy on the sound of the hammer-stroke of his swift, retributive justice—the concussion of the remorseless wrought iron on the split skull of a human beast. She remembered his words with a shudder:—"Ay, mistress, I can shut my eyes and listen for it now. And many ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... between virtue and vice, and consequently, that I am an accountable creature; that from the seeming nature of the human mind, as well as from the evident imperfection, nay, positive injustice, in the administration of affairs, both in the natural and moral worlds, there must be a retributive scene of existence beyond the grave; must, I think, be allowed by every one who will give himself a moment's reflection. I will go farther, and affirm that from the sublimity, excellence, and purity of his doctrine ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... told; he persisted to the last in this horrible confession. He had no wish to live; and the avenging arm of retributive justice closed the world and its interests for ever on a wretch who had forfeited all claims to its protection—cast out, and judged unworthy of a name and a place amongst ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... in the penult couplet is not uncommon, the idea of retributive justice, of others performing the last offices for the clerk who had so often done the like for his neighbours. The same notion is expressed in the epitaph of Frank Raw, clerk and monumental mason, of Selby, Yorkshire, ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... appears in the chronicles of the times and establishes beyond cavil exactly what Las Casas did, and under what circumstances and for what purposes he made the recommendation which he never afterwards ceased to deplore. Retributive justice has followed these attempts of several lesser contemporaries of Robertson to asperse the character of one of the purest, noblest, and most humane of men, and while discredit has overtaken the inventors and publishers of these falsehoods, the investigations of ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... social pictures which he draws were still fresh, and his exhortations calculated to live in the memory. The poems composed on moral subjects generally inculcate a spirit of gentleness toward others and moderation in personal objects. They represent the gods as irresistible, retributive, favoring the good and punishing the bad, though sometimes very tardily. But his compositions on special and present occasions are usually conceived in a more vigorous spirit; denouncing the oppressions of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... one of them in the wife's regulation terms of virtuous sarcasm, as woman, creature, or thing, for losing their hearts to her husband. But life, what was it, and who was she? She had, like the singer of the psalm of Asaph, been plagued and chastened all the day long; but could she, by retributive words, in order to please herself—the individual—"offend against the generation," as he ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... fellow-citizens who press forward into the wilderness and are the pioneers in the work of its reclamation. In securing to all such their rights of preemption the Government performs but an act of retributive justice for sufferings encountered and hardships endured, and finds ample remuneration in the comforts which its policy insures and the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... his imperfect state of Sagun, they carry along with them a share of those principles, qualities, and attributes that characterize that state, though predominating in very different degrees and proportions; either according to their respective capacities, or the retributive awards of an eternal ordination. Among others it is specially noted, that as Brahm at that time had awakened into a consciousness of his own existence, there does inhere in each separated soul a notion, or a conviction, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... slaughter, torture, and horrible cruelties amongst the conquered people of the Soudan; but to Frank as he sat there the idea of their being slain before his eyes in cold blood half maddened him, filling him with an intense desire to be one of a retributive army whose task it would be to sweep their conquerors from the land and back into the wild districts from which they had flocked in response to the hoisting of the Mahdi's standard of war with its promise of ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... detective-hunger—not to call it a thirst for vengeance—was asserting itself above petty vanity. I squeezed myself into the costume; and then, clapping on the false nose, stood arrayed—as queer a figure, surely, as ever was assumed by retributive Justice. ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Cnut, who is also called Canute, "marked one of his royal Christmases by a piece of sudden retributive justice: bored beyond all endurance by the Saxon Edric's iteration of the traitorous services he had rendered him, the King exclaimed to Edric, Earl of Northumberland: 'Then let him receive his deserts, that ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... French Revolution by saying that if only an Adam and an Eve were left in every country and left free, it would be better than it had been before. Memories of Tory confiscations and penalties were sufficiently fresh to give credence to a rumour that the President-elect contemplated such retributive measures toward his political opponents. Memories of the disunion sentiments contained in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions were still fresher, although Jefferson's close connection with the latter was ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... the finer artistic products from the commoner, modern art-criticism has probably wasted much honest but shamefaced capacity for appreciating the qualities common, because indispensable, to, all good art. It is therefore not without a certain retributive malignity that I end these examples of the storage and transfer of aesthetic emotion, and of the consequent bias to artistic appreciation, with that of the Nemesis dogging the steps of the connoisseur. We have all heard of some purchase, or all-but-purchase, of a wonderful masterpiece ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... the opportunity, during the week I remained, of holding constant intercourse with my own countrymen and with native brethren. From the natives I heard much of what they had seen and suffered. I was shown the scenes of the terrible events which had occurred, and as retributive measures were still carried on, I saw, in spite of myself, scenes which made me shudder. On the other side of the Ganges there were frequent skirmishes between parties sent out and bands there who were resisting our authority; the firing was distinctly heard. On Sunday I preached twice ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... "Essay on the Poetry of Gray," says of this Ode: "The tendency of The Bard is to show the retributive justice that follows an act of tyranny and wickedness; to denounce on Edward, in his person and his progeny, the effect of the crime he had committed in the massacre of the bards; to convince him that neither his power nor situation could save him from the natural and necessary consequences ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... a bad cold, which she caught studying astronomy with Gershom. Poppsy was not in the least put out when she watched me preparing a mustard-plaster for the invalid. My daughter, I am persuaded, has a revived faith in the operation of retributive justice. But I hope Susie is better by the holiday. Whinnie has the Christmas Tree hidden away in the stable, and already a number of mysterious parcels have arrived at Casa Grande. Bud Teetzel very gallantly sent ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... severe, and, at all events, imprudently managed punishment, failed to operate beneficially on the poor wretch that was subjected to it Perhaps it will be discovered to hold universally, that wherever the appearance of revenge characterizes an act of retributive justice, a feeling of the same principle hardens the breast of the culprit, besides influencing the speculative judgments of those who witness it But it were foolish to expect, that either one or other will avow the existence of so dangerous a motive. The only excuse that offers itself in. behalf ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... of the Tower, the Earl Cornwallis, a good and loyal nobleman, who is, at this moment, fighting the rebels in my own native province, Christopher," interrupted the colonel; "that will be what I call retributive justice; but," continued the veteran, rising with an air of gentlemanly dignity, "it will not do to permit even the constable of the Tower of London to surpass the master of St. Ruth in hospitality and kindness to his prisoners. I have ordered suitable ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... had brought on this syncope. Your only comfort lay in the forced reflection, that, real as he looked, the poor caitiff was but imaginary, a bit of painted canvass, whom no delirium tremens, nor so much as a retributive headache, awaited, on ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the doctor regarded the incredulous, terror-stricken face of the father with bewildered fixity. Well he might. The first rod of the moral law had just struck him. The vengeance he had so subtly planned had turned into retributive justice. He had refused Kate's prayer; he had driven her to this mad search and the contagion now periling her life, or, if it were spared, leaving her a hideous specter of herself. This passed through his shattered mind as the doctor ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... him to seek refuge in the Gull's Nest—had effected an almost miraculous escape, considering how closely he was guarded, a few hours before, and secreted himself in the very chamber where he had left poor Fleetword to starvation, little imagining that he was standing on the threshold of retributive justice. He had caught at flight, even so far, as a sort of reprieve; and was forming plans of future villany at the very moment the train was fired. God have mercy on all sinners! it is fearful to be cut off without time for repentance. Sir Willmott had none. In the flower ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... were made. Sheep, fowls, and other articles of provision, which had been brought back, were killed and prepared. Huge bonfires were lit, and the party, secure that, for twenty-four hours at least, the Spaniards could attempt no retributive measures, sat down to ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... confiscation, which formed a prominent feature in her early history, and which furnished, it is believed, the first example of the exercise of this extraordinary power ever known in the United Colonies during the revolutionary struggle. And whatever may have been the effects of this retributive policy in other states, its results here were salutary and important. It put an immediate stop to any further espousing of British interests, especially among men of property, while, within the astonishingly ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... the Major Gontard had in mind to do toward assisting the march of retributive justice is immaterial—since he did not do it. Even as he spoke—in these terms of doom that qualifying conditions rendered doomless—the man suddenly dodged past him, bolted across the platform, ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... be supernatural and divine; and thus the phenomena of conscience as a dictate avail to impress the imagination with the picture of a Supreme Governor, a Judge, holy, just, powerful, all-seeing, retributive."[16] ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... the kindly! Oswald, the lover of men and the adorer of women! Oswald, with the words of the dastardly confession he had partly overheard searing hot within his brain! Oswald, raised in a moment from the desponding invalid to a terrifying ministrant of retributive justice. ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... contributions. Here, indeed, were the supermen of the mad German prophet and philosopher come to life, refuting all classic tragedy. It is true that some of these supermen were occasionally swept away by disease, which in ancient days would have been regarded as a retributive scourge, but was in fact nothing but the logical working of the laws of hygiene, the result of overwork. Such, though stated more crudely, were my contentions when desire did not cloud my brain and make me incoherent. And I did not fail to remind Nancy, constantly, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... persecuted of all ages have been ready, not without reason, to recognize in signal disasters befalling their enemies the retributive hand of the Almighty himself lifting for a moment the veil of futurity, to disclose a little of the misery that awaits the evil-doer in another world. But, in the present instance, it is a candid historian of different faith who does not hesitate to ascribe to ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... many people refused to believe, came Poland's opportunity, in which nobody could have been expected to believe. Out of Russia's collapse emerged that forbidden thing, the Polish independence, not as a vengeful figure, the retributive shadow of the crime, but as something much more solid and more difficult to get rid of—a political necessity and a moral solution. Directly it appeared its practical usefulness became undeniable, and also the ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... is a retributive justice in this world. Even pic-nic parties have their moral, and folly itself affords an example from which a wise saw may be extracted. Captain de Courlay addresses her, and after all, he has the manners and appearance of a gentleman, though it ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... and put to death. The widows were all three put into prison, and all the property and estates were confiscated. The movable property amounted to three lakhs of rupees.[7] The Raja boasted to the Governor- General's representative in Bundelkhand of this act of retributive justice, and pretended that it was executed merely as a punishment for the robbery; but it was with infinite difficulty the merchants could recover from him any share of the plundered property out of that confiscated. The Raja alleged ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... thought is that the punishment of evil-doers is in such exact correspondence with the character of their evil doings as to show that it is the Lord executing vengeance—the penalty shows a designing hand. He who watches the peculiar retributive judgments of God, how He causes those who set snares and pitfalls for others to fall into them themselves, will not doubt that behind such 'poetic retribution' there ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... committed, with all its terrible moral and material consequences. For in the classic school, the remedies against criminality have not the social aim of improving human life, but merely the illusory mission of retributive justice, meeting a moral delinquency by a corresponding punishment in the shape of legal sentences. This is the spirit which is still pervading criminal legislation, although there is a sort of eclectic compromise between the old and the new. The classic school of criminology has substituted ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... has viewed the subject in its most terrible aspect, and drawn it within that domain of the gloomy divinities, whose recesses he so loves to haunt. The grave of Agamemnon is the murky gloom from which retributive vengeance issues; his discontented shade, the soul of the whole poem. The obvious external defect, that the action lingers too long at the same point, without any sensible progress, appears, on reflection, a true internal perfection: it is the stillness of expectation before ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... intemperance, obscenity, and corrupting diseases, to degradation and death. A dissolute, licentious, free-and-easy life is filled with the dregs of human suffering, iniquity, and despair. The penalties which follow a violation of the law of chastity are found to be severe and swiftly retributive. ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... tremendous suicidal sacrifices of this description. The ruin and misery which the South is preparing for itself in every way is incalculable and incredible, and yet there is no diminution of desperation. The prosperity which made a mock of honest poverty is now, as by the retributive judgment of God, sinking itself into penury, and the planter who spoke of the Northern serf as a creature just one remove above the brute, is himself learning by bitter experience to be a mud-sill. Verily the cause of the poor and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... imply the absolute immortality of the soul, at least asserts its existence after the death of the body, for the disembodied spirit becomes incarnate again as soon as it finds a tenement which fits it. To their life after death the Pythagoreans added a doctrine of retributive rewards and punishments, and, in this respect, what has been said of animals forming a penitential mechanism in the theology of India and Egypt, holds good ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... relations of the individual human soul to God*, Christianity opens to our view a department of duty paramount to all others in importance and interest. His fatherly love and care, his moral government and discipline, his retributive providence, define with unmistakable distinctness certain corresponding modes, in part, of outward action, and in still greater part, of action in that inward realm of thought whence the outward life receives ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... compassion than resentment. The queen at length recalled him to court; he was once more distinguished as a statesman and favourite; and the rest of his career is well known to history. But there was something retributive in his death, for it is believed he died by swallowing a draught of poison, designed ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... her life was in danger at his hands, so awful in its baffled rage was the expression of his face when he understood that indeed she knew everything. She even at that moment longed that his cruel instincts should prompt him to kill her. He could never succeed in hiding that crime and retributive justice would of a surety overtake him then, ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... Ophelia, put his mother in a nunnery, and lived happily ever after.[162] And to that edifying assumption, Mr. Feis adds the fantasy that Shakspere dreaded the influence of Montaigne as a deterrent from the retributive slaughter of guilty uncles ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... retributive justice but moral perfectness, which to a good man will be joy, and to a bad ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... in bonds of partnership interest, with the judges who had appointed them, and before whom the motion for disbarment would probably come! For this last curious reason no lawyer could, consistently with his own best interests, inaugurate a movement likely to involve the whole referee system in its retributive effects. A lawyer so doing might, when arguing future cases in court, find a certain apparent disposition of the Bench to show him less courtesy than on former occasions—to snub him, in fact, and thereby permanently prejudice his professional ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... ballads of the Russians are of a remarkably tame character. Lawless and rebellious deeds are sometimes their subjects; but they end mostly with an act of retributive justice. We shall give a specimen of this species before ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... is, punishment is retributive and not corrective. Justice requires that each man shall have the fruits of his own deeds; in this it assumes that each and every man is free and self-determined. It proposes to treat each man as free, and as the rightful ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... transubstantiation assigns to them, they were acknowledged by common consent to be an order apart from the rest of mankind, and being spiritual men, to be amenable only to spiritual jurisdiction. It was not intended that, if they committed crimes, they should escape the retributive consequences of those crimes: offenders against the law might (originally at least) be degraded, if the bishops thought good, and stripped of their commission be delivered thus to the secular arm. But the more appropriate punishment for such persons was of a more awful kind, proportioned ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... them alone has Time hastened to bring that retributive justice which falls alike on empires and individuals. The son of "The Man" moulders in an Austrian tomb, leaving no trace that he has lived; while the lineal descendant of the obscure Creole, of the deposed empress, of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... saying among the lower classes in reference to an unfortunate or crippled child. Here the word ingwa is used especially in the retributive sense. It usually signifies evil karma; kwaho being the term used in speaking of meritorious karma and its results. While an unfortunate child is spoken of as "a child of ingwa," a very lucky person is ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... the torn-out pages all together," continued Smith. "They lay flat, and this was in the middle. I see the hand of retributive justice in that, Inspector. Now we have a reference to a hunchback, and what follows amounts to this: A lascar (amongst several other persons) went up somewhere—presumably upstairs—at Shen-Yan's, and did not come down again. Cadby, who was there disguised, noted a booming sound. ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... in punishing the wicked: retributive justice, second, in rewarding the righteous: ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... history, how sad were the spectacle of these mutilated effigies in marble, exquisite sculptures when fresh from the artist's hand, to-day torsos so hideously hacked and hewn as hardly to look human! We cannot, however, forget that the history of races, as of nations and individuals, is retributive. When the 'Roi-Soleil,' that incarnation of the Bourbon spirit, was so inflated with his own personality as to forbid the erection of any statue throughout France but his own, he paved the way for the revolutionary iconoclasts of a century later. It was simply a recurrence of the old ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Doria, and felt culpable that she had not before, and could not then, tell her brother that he had set up an Idol in his house—an Idol of flesh! more retributive and abominable than wood or brass or gold. But she had bowed to the Idol too long—she had too entirely bound herself to gain her project by subserviency. She had, and she dimly perceived it, committed a greater fault ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... governing power of it throughout. He is the center and springhead of the entire action, giving law and shape to everything that is said and done. This is manifestly true in what occurs before his death; and it is true in a still deeper sense afterwards, since his genius then becomes the Nemesis or retributive Providence. ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... the fraud and injustice that had been perpetrated, they sprang by a generous reaction into an attitude of sympathy for the Roman Catholic system. A more favorable preparation of the way of conversion to Rome could not be desired by the skillful propagandist. One recognizes a retributive justice in the fact, when notable gains to the Catholic Church are distinctly traced to the reaction of honest men from these ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... leaders, and a substantial harvest for entire Holland, with paeans of praise for the coterie and Dr. Leyds from a grateful people for successfully restoring the good fortunes of the Dutch nation, and for effecting a retributive vendetta upon England, all under world-wide, gloating acclaims of ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... which never refunded the booty. Here too was brought forth that monstrous conception which even patrician Rome in its most ruthless period never equalled—the mortgaging of the industry of the country to enrich and to protect property; an act which is now bringing its retributive consequences in a degraded and alienated population. Here too have the innocent been impeached and hunted to death; and a virtuous and able monarch martyred, because, among other benefits projected for his people, he was ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... this world. There are towns and villages, rivers, mountains, bush, plantations, and markets. When the sun rises here it sets in Srahmandazi. It has its pleasures and its pains, not necessarily retributive or rewarding, but dim. All souls in it grow forward or backward into the prime of life and remain there, some informants say; others say that each inhabitant remains there at the same age as he was when he quitted the world above. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... suffering as punishment. If we regard all suffering as punishment, then we need look no higher and no further in order to vindicate the character of God in the infliction of them. For, according to this view, they are the infliction of his retributive justice, merited by the person upon whom they fall, and adapted to prevent sin; and consequently here our inquiries may terminate; just as when we see the criminal receive the penalty due to his crimes. On the other hand, if we may not view all suffering as punishment, then ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... enough to convict them all; the valet will be hanged; and the viscount and the opera singer sentenced to penal servitude for many years. Will not that be sufficient punishment for the conspirators. And is it not better that the law should deal out retributive justice to them, than that you should execute unlawful vengeance?" inquired ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... the sword. In the wrestling, the springing in and recoil, the sword slipped from the scabbard. Without intention to five or six inches it pierced the shoulder. Atto! The wife fell—"Namu Sambo[u]!"[42] Plucking out the sword O'Iwa cast it aside. By the action of retributive fate the point of the weapon pierced the chest of Kosuke. The wound was fatal. Seven revolutions and a fall: alas! he was dying. Close under his feet the blow of Iemon had reached the child. With but a single cry forthwith he died. At the accident ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... richly-wrought tapestry, full of sacred and profane history, and the furlongs of curiously-carved panels, wainscoting, and cornice that floppy, sloppy, vandal brush of pigs' bristles and pail of diluted lime have eclipsed and obliterated for ever, and not a retributive drop of the villainous mixture has fallen into the perpetrator's eye to "make his foul intent seem horrible!" Think of Christian kings of glorious memory, even Defenders of the Faith, with their fair queens, princes of the blood, and knights, noble and brave, all, in one still St. ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... pirate. He would merely go forth as a plunderer to revenge himself on the world which had used him so ill. He would rob— but he would not kill; except of course in self-defence, or when men refused to give up what he demanded. He would temper retributive justice with mercy, and would not suffer injury to women or children. In short, he would become a semi-honourable, high-minded sort of pirate, pursuing wealth without bloodshed! True, in the sad case ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... permitted to leave Florence in the train of the young Cardinal, immediately before the reception of the Interdict. He returned to Rome and abandoned himself to a life of profligacy; his palace became a brothel and a gambling hell, and there he lived for ten years, dishonoured and diseased. His retributive death was by the hand ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... also redemption, we have a wonderful picture of His arraying Himself in armour. Righteousness is His flashing breastplate: on His head is an helmet of salvation. The gleaming steel is draped by garments of retributive judgment, and over all is cast, like a cloak, the ample folds of that 'zeal' which expresses the inexhaustible energy and intensity of the divine nature and action. Thus arrayed He comes forth to avenge and save. His ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... the war commenced, as you gentlemen believe, without provocation; we believe otherwise. This war so commenced, costing a million of lives and countless millions of treasure, has not been expiated by one drop of retributive blood. [Applause.] You must further remember, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, that at the formation of the Constitution every distinguished Virginian was hostile to slavery and advocated its abolition. [Applause.] Patrick Henry, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, all without exception, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... "retributive issues in this life, and the existence in all minds of an impersonal justice which demands that, in the final issue, every being shall receive his just deserts, suppose a being of absolute justice who shall render to every man according to ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... Roost" saloon, the "Quick Fire" lunch-room, "The Englishers' Chop-House," and "The Camel's Drink," are some examples. Not from greed, but purely out of curiosity, mind you, we tested the latter, and it would have taken three of what they gave us to make a regular "Waldorf highball." Thus does the retributive principle of temperance put the rod in pickle for those who would ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... have been the fallibility of his judgment, of the accuracy of his aim there could be no doubt. The general belief that Johnson, after possessing himself of the muleteer's pistol, could have run amuck, gave a certain retributive justice to this story, which rendered ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... retributive plots, was steaming down the channel, cannonading on either side, when he suddenly became aware of breakers ahead. The city marshal and one of the deputies rose up behind some dry-goods boxes half a square to the front and opened fire. At the same time the rest of the posse, ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... individual souls, the designation of 'maker of those persons' also suits only the individual soul. The meaning of the whole passage therefore is 'He who is the cause of the different persons that have their abode in the disc of the sun, and so on, and are instrumental towards the retributive experiences of the individual souls; and to whom there belongs karman, good and evil, to which there is due his becoming such a cause; he indeed is to be known, his essential nature is to be cognised in distinction from Prakriti.' ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... all was! The thought came to her: was it retributive justice pursuing her for having bartered herself for rank? And yet girls as good and better than she, did it every day. She rose and began pacing up and down the floor. What should she do? "Go back to Lady ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... hardly say that neither Eric nor his friends took any part in this retributive act. They sat together in the boarders' room till it was over, engaged in exciting discussion of the recent event. Most warmly did Eric thank them for their trustfulness. "Thank you," he said, "with all my heart, for proving my innocence; but thank ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... of a causeless deprivation settled it. Captain Pharo seized Miss Pray, blushing with alarm and amaze at such sudden retributive lightning on the part of her long-delayed charms, and bore ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... to exercise the severest self-restraint to avoid laughing,—a feeling which was modified by the desire to assure his employer that he understood this sort of thing perfectly, had run the same risks himself, and thought no less of a man, providing he was a gentleman, because of an unlucky retributive knock on the head. But he feared laughter would overclimb speech; and, indeed, with all expression of sympathy stifled, he did not succeed so completely in hiding the conflicting emotion but that Joseph did once turn his pale, grave face surprisedly, ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... delivered to certain wandering tribes in a peculiar and perfectly different social condition from that which prevails among us at this time. We know that the Christian Dispensation did distinctly repeal and annul certain portions of that law. We know that the doctrine of retributive justice or vengeance, was plainly disavowed by the Saviour. We know that on the only occasion of an offender, liable by the law to death, being brought before Him for His judgment, it was not death. We know that He said, "Thou shalt not kill". ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... one of my heresies in an orthodox theological sense, but I certainly cling to the great idea of Eternal Hope; and, after any amount of retributive punishment for purifying the "lost" soul, I look for ultimate salvation to all God's creatures. This short and partial trial-scene of ours is not enough to make an end with: we begin here and progress for ever elsewhere. Evil must die out, and good ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... removal of his monument, are circumstances calculated to excite melancholy emotions in the mind of every one, whatever his condition in life. In all these events, the religious man traces the hand of retributive justice; the philosopher regards the nullity of sublunary grandeur; the historian finds matter for serious reflection; the poet for affecting narrative; the moralist for his tale; and the school-boy for his theme.—Ordericus Vitalis sums the whole up ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... wished to apologise for the same. Not only that, but holding down his big head between his two big hands in order that I might reach it conveniently, he requested me, as an act of justice which would appease his awakened conscience, to raise a retributive bump upon it, in the presence of witnesses. This handsome proposal I modestly declined, and he then embraced me, and we walked away conversing. We conversed respecting the West India Islands, and, in the pursuit of knowledge he asked me with much interest whether in the course of my ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... assurance of retaliation, not only in the limited operations of war in this part of the king's dominions, but in every quarter of the globe; for the national character of Britain is not less distinguished for humanity than strict retributive justice, which will consider the execution of this inhuman threat as deliberate murder, for which every subject of the offending power ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... ended in a more serious manner. The brother of the lady was an officer in the army, and both the descendants of a poor but ancient family; the indignity offered to his name, and the seduction of his sister, called forth the retributive feelings of a just revenge; he sought out the offender, challenged him, but gave him the option of redeeming his sister's honour and his own by marriage. Alas! that was impossible; the earl was already ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... history of the buccaneers. Their motives were the same as those which had governed the conduct of Cortez; and they, too, found a salvo for their consciences by persuading themselves that they were commissioned as a court of vengeance—the instruments of retributive justice in the hands of Providence—to punish the Spaniards for the remorseless cruelties practised upon the unoffending Mexicans. And here another extraordinary fact may be noted in the history of the buccaneers. After their community had become consolidated and their government in a manner ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of pirates in the air. They kindled the boy's lively imagination; they represented the large subject of retributive justice, and he resolved to devote his poetic sense to one ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... cowed; it seemed to him that the disgrace he had been dreading would be worse than he had imagined it. But soon there was a reaction: such power of dislike and resistance as there was within him was beginning to rise against a wife whose voice seemed like the herald of a retributive fate. Her, at least, his quick mind told him that ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... a good Christian to me, and don't be retributive in measuring out the time that shall pass before you write to ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... smiled upon them, while they revelled in the rewards of successful villany, retributive justice came upon them in a shape they had not anticipated. Jealousy and mistrust sprang up between the two confederates, and led to such violent and frequent quarrels, that Dee was in constant fear of exposure. Kelly imagined himself a much greater personage than Dee; measuring, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... Sancho Panza. Even glorious Sir Richard Grenvile makes a mistake: burns an Indian village because they steal a silver cup; throws back the colonisation of Virginia ten years with his over-strict notions of discipline and retributive justice; and Raleigh requites him for his offence by embalming him, his valour and his death, not in immortal verse, but in immortal prose. The 'True Relation of the Fight at the Azores' gives the keynote of Raleigh's heart. If readers will not take that as the text on which his whole life is a ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... science present this universe as not only progressive, but as retributive. There is a rebound of evil which makes for pain. Each broken law exacts a penalty. Each deed of sin is a forerunner of personal and of social disaster. The generation that sins shall be cut off, while the stock of the righteous grows strong ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... indignation and despair of centuries, nor did he hear the voices of hungry and oppressed millions crying to heaven for vengeance. He did not recognize the chastening hand of God on tyrants and sensualists; he did not see the arm of retributive justice, more fearful than the daggers of Roman assassins, more stern than the overthrow of Persian hosts, more impressive than the handwriting on the wall of Belshazzar's palace; nor could he see how creation would succeed destruction ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... invisible; when distant many a mile. It is some relief even to corporal agonies. Even the pain which I just now complained of is lessened since I took up the pen. Oh, Hal! Hal! if you ever prove ungrateful or a traitor to me, and there be a state retributive hereafter, terrible will be ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... Moorside the following entry in the register of burials records the event, which is so replete with a singular retributive justice—so constituted to impress ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... has been described to me as peculiarly affecting. Yet I am satisfied that a higher nature, rising above the levity induced by the mere contemplation of the insignificant details of this breach of trust, would find ample retributive justice in the difficulties that subsequently attended Ah ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... doctrine is monstrous. Can it be said that, in order to evade punishment, the murderer has only to hide or destroy the body of the victim, or sink it into the sea? Then, if he is not seen to kill, the law is powerless and the murderer can snap his finger in the face of retributive justice. If this is the law, then the law for the highest crime is a dead letter. The great commonwealth winks at murder and invites every man to kill his enemy, provided he kill him in secret and hide him. I repeat, your Honor,"—the man's voice was now loud and angry and rang through ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... laboring and pounding. For they saw in the face of this man who had brought his pony to a halt within ten feet of them a decision to adhere to the principles that had governed him all his days, and they knew that a woman's order would not stay the retributive impulse that was gleaming in ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... felt the importance of obtaining the declaration, which I had no doubt would establish my innocence—I ran for my father and Sergeant Lindsay, and, to make assurance doubly sure, brought two of the privates also along with me. It was a striking scene of retributive justice, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... twelve hours to come to an understanding with a lady irrevocably in his power. And all the while, deep in this bold villain's breast lurked a dark, fierce, terrible reflection that one more crime, only one more—almost, indeed, an act of wild retributive justice on his confederate—and that proud, tameless woman would be crouching in the dust, praying for mercy at the feet of the desperate man she ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... Callandar, smiling. "You thought I was the one to blame? There was retributive justice in your eye, ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... learn that I am a prisoner; and in that case he would not, I am sure, lose a day in sending in a flag of truce with a request for my exchange, and a notice that if this was refused he would quickly follow it by retributive measures ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... benighted intellect prompted him, at the imminent hazard of strangulation, to pay a visit to the object of his affections via that unusually circuitous route. Look at the fatal brawl between Sir Mulberry Hawk and his hopeful pupil; and rejoice at the final retributive justice which overtakes Mrs. Squeers, when she falls into the hands of her late victims, and is drenched in her turn with the loathsome brew she had so ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... No word of real sympathy—no declaration of help. Passive acceptance of her predicament—perhaps indeed a retributive feeling of its fitness for her folly. They were annoyed.... Packing her clothes must have been a bother—so was paying ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... intermediate condition, for when the surgeon on board the "Beagle" shot some young ducklings as specimens, York Minster declared in the most solemn manner, "Oh, Mr. Bynoe, much rain, much snow, blow much"; and this was evidently a retributive punishment for wasting human food. So again he related how, when his brother killed a "wild man," storms long raged, much rain and snow fell. Yet we could never discover that the Fuegians believed in what we should call a God, or practised any religious rites; and Jemmy ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... Mrs Chick didn't know it—he had been pretty well blighted by the dress already; and as to the education, even its retributive effect might be produced in time, for it was a storm of sobs ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... that we had committed a 'foul murder.' Master Johnny, however, derided my fears—called it retributive justice—and ignominiously consigned the remains of ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... Circean wine Most perilous is for pain: Grapes of the heavens' star-loaden vine, Whereto the lofty-placed Thoughts of fair souls attain, Tempt with a more retributive delight, And do disrelish all life's sober taste. 'Tis to have drunk too well The drink that is divine, Maketh the kind earth waste, ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... with it the promise of a reward restated by Paul, "Honor thy father and thy mother that it may be well with thee and that thou mayest live long on the earth." In fact this is the logic of life. This retributive justice is bound up in the laws of nature. Plants that array themselves against these laws wither and die. And higher up in the animal kingdom, Kipling's verse tells us that this ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... treatment of the corpse of Hector cannot but offend as referred to the modern standard of humanity. The heroic age, however, must be judged by its own moral laws. Retributive vengeance on the dead, as well as the living, was a duty inculcated by the religion of those barbarous times which not only taught that evil inflicted on the author of evil was a solace to the injured ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... an object of more immediate desire to Christians than animal oils or well-furred skins, and their cupidity and avarice were found at once particularly hateful and particularly useful: hateful when seen as a reason for punishing them by mulcting or robbery, useful when this retributive process could be successfully carried forward. Kings and emperors naturally were more alive to the usefulness of subjects who could gather and yield money; but edicts issued to protect "the King's Jews" equally with the King's game from ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... share of the attention of the colonists, had those encouragements which the government had at their disposal, been bestowed on the former. The manufacturing system, now so rapidly gaining ground, has been one of the retributive consequences of the short-sighted and illiberal policy of which this unfortunate colony has been so long the victim, and will cease of itself, whenever the existing impediments to the extension of agriculture shall be removed, for the best of all reasons, because ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... Otherwise ethics itself tends to grow narrow, strident, and fanatical; as may be observed in asceticism and puritanism, or, for the matter of that, in Mr. Moore's uncivilised leaning towards the doctrine of retributive punishment, or in Mr. Russell's intolerance of selfishness and patriotism, and in his refusal to entertain any pious reverence for the nature of things. The quality of wisdom, like that of mercy, is not strained. To choose, to love and ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana |
