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Scourge   Listen
noun
Scourge  n.  
1.
A lash; a strap or cord; especially, a lash used to inflict pain or punishment; an instrument of punishment or discipline; a whip. "Up to coach then goes The observed maid, takes both the scourge and reins."
2.
Hence, a means of inflicting punishment, vengeance, or suffering; an infliction of affliction; a punishment. "Sharp scourges of adversity." "What scourge for perjury Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence?"






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Scourge" Quotes from Famous Books



... from the cup of Thine indignation. "For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink." An expression which the Scripture employs to describe the extreme infliction of divine vengeance. Ah! if the blood of the prophets has drawn down the scourge of God upon men, what may we not expect from the blood of Jesus Christ? If the blood of martyrs is heard crying out in heaven against the persecutors of the faith, how much more will the blood of the ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser

... adroit to steal, unclench the spoil, deliver, Lest yet that haunch voluptuous, those tender hands caressant, 10 Should take an ugly print severe, the scourge's ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus

... hand dirty, one hand clean, Or with one slipper to be seen: To be detain'd when most in hurry, Might put Griselda in a flurry;— But these, and every other bore, If to the list you add a score, Are not so bad, upon my life, As that one scourge—a scolding wife! ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 12, Issue 328, August 23, 1828 • Various

... them himself? Then, the Nabob amused him; his accent, his frank manners, his rather coarse and impudent flattery, were a change for him from the eternal conventionality of his surroundings, from that scourge of administrative and court life which he held in horror—the set speech—in such great horror that he never finished a sentence which he had begun. The Nabob had an unforeseen way of finishing his which was sometimes ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... till the alliance of Francis I. with the Turks brought the scourge of the Moslem again on the Riviera. The "Saracen towers" with which the coast is studded tell to this day the tale of the raids of Barbarossa and Dragut. The blow fell heavily on San Remo. The ruined quarter ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... leader Theodoric in league with the Roman general Atius. He then entered northern Italy, where he continued his depredations and advanced upon Rome. The Emperor Valentinianus II saved the city by paying tribute. Legend has it that while in Gaul a hermit called Attila to his face the "scourge of God." Attila accepted the designation and replied with the remark quoted in the text. This story is not found in Jordanes, Priscus, or any of the contemporary historians. Gibbon says: "It is a saying worthy of the ferocious ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup

... says one of them, "that this scourge, this affliction, is sent to us not for our correction and improvement, but for our destruction and annihilation? O Merciful Lord, let this chastisement with which thou hast visited us, thy people, be as those which a father or mother inflicts on their children, not out of anger, but to the end ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... this time Tom has taught them how to transgress—sent them home with the long scourge from robbing orchards in Anjou. He writes to me almost with his foot in the stirrup, about to give Douglas and Buchan a lesson. I shall make short halts and long stages south. This is too far off ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... towers, and gay-coloured ones put up in their place, and the King embraced his daughter and her supposed rescuer with tears of joy, and, turning to the coachman, he said, 'You have not only saved the life of my child, but you have also freed the country from a terrible scourge; therefore, it is only fitting that you should be richly rewarded. Take, therefore, my daughter for your wife; but as she is still so young, do not let the marriage be celebrated ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various

... to penetrate walls of houses as easily as we walk through the atmosphere, able to read at will the innermost thoughts of those about him; if not actuated by the most pure and unselfish motives, he would be a scourge to humanity. Therefore that power is safeguarded as we would withhold the dynamite bomb from an anarchist and from the well-intentioned but ignorant person, or, as we withhold match and powder barrel ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel

... of the leg: and the amputation of the limb, rendering him lame for life. It is not often that we have such palpable occasion to record our obligations to the small-pox. But, in the wonderful ways of Providence, that disease, which came to him as a two-fold scourge, was probably the occasion of his subsequent excellence. It prevented him from growing up to the active vigorous English workman, possessed of all his limbs, and knowing right well the use of them; it put him upon considering whether, as he could not ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... nothing is more certain. 'From the most remote ages,' says Professor Lanciani, the highest existing authority, 'the power of a Roman father over his children, including those by adoption as well as by blood, was unlimited. A father might, without violating any law, scourge or imprison his son, or sell him for a slave, or put him to death, even after that son had risen to the highest honours in the state.' During the life of the father, a child, no matter of what age, could own no property ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... of your fashion That take and that give, In their pity and passion That scourge and forgive, They are worms that are bred in the bark that falls off; they ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... dealing out justice; but it must be remembered that a civil war was going on in which thousands of lives were annually sacrificed. Gordon knew perfectly well that he could suppress it if he had a disciplined force under him. He also knew what a frightful scourge an undisciplined army might become. According to the tradition of all nations, each man in Gordon's army had forfeited his life by disobedience in the presence of the enemy. What was the life of one man compared with the thousands of women and children who were suffering ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill

... flock or his master's cottage by night, and a slight caress, and the coarsest food, satisfy him for all his trouble. The dog performs the services of a horse in the more northern regions; while in Cuba and some other hot countries, he has been the scourge and terror of the runaway negroes. In the destruction of wild beasts, or the less dangerous stag, or in attacking the bull, the dog has proved himself to possess pre-eminent courage. In many instances he has died in the defence of his master. He has saved him from ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse

... he went. At the same moment Jack began to roar like a bull, and became similarly distracted. It now flashed across me that they must have been attacked by an army of the Bashikouay ant, a species of ant which is so ferocious as to prove a perfect scourge to the parts of the country over which it travels. The thought had scarcely occurred to me when I was painfully convinced of its accuracy. The ants suddenly came to me, and in an instant I was covered from head to foot by the passionate creatures, which hit ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne

... awful, it may be imagined how an impressive address, like that delivered by the grocer, would be received by those who saw in the pestilence, not merely an overwhelming scourge from which few could escape, but a direct manifestation of the Divine displeasure. Not a word was said. Blaize Shotterel, the porter, and old Josyna, his mother, together with Patience, the other woman-servant, betook themselves silently, and with troubled countenances, ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... Go, view the captive barter'd as a slave! Crush'd till his high, heroic spirit bleeds, And from his nerveless frame indignantly recedes. Yet here, ev'n here, with pleasures long resign'd, Lo! MEMORY bursts the twilight of the mind: Her dear delusions sooth his sinking soul, When the rude scourge presumes its base controul; And o'er Futurity's blank page diffuse The full reflection of her vivid hues. 'Tis but to die, and then, to weep no more, Then will he wake on Congo's distant shore; Beneath his plantain's antient ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers

... day's journey of Tetuan a terrible scourge fell upon the country. A plague of locusts came up like a dense cloud from the direction of the desert, and ate up every leaf and blade of grass that the scorching sun had left green, so that the plain over which it had passed was as black and barren ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine

... steeds detains, And leads them, fasten'd by the silver reins; These, with his bow unbent, he lash'd along; (The scourge forgot, on Rhesus' chariot hung;) Then gave his friend the signal to retire; But him, new dangers, new achievements fire; Doubtful he stood, or with his reeking blade To send more heroes to the infernal shade, Drag off the car where Rhesus' armour lay, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... perished of hunger and thirst? Could you feed and clothe yourself from the naked earth without the assistance of others? Have you seen men, women and children starve, or ruthlessly struck down by your side, or nursed them through some terrible scourge like the smallpox? ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... long to submit to—no, to accept joyfully—the will of God in everything; to see only Love in every trial. But to be made a whip in His hand with which to scourge others—I, who so passionately desire to give pleasure, to give only pain—I, who so hate to cause suffering, to inflict nothing else on my best friends—oh, this is hard!... I write by feeling with eyes closed. It is midnight; ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... ties of community of descent, language, and religion, had united themselves with the most ancient, inveterate, and most powerful of all our enemies. At the same time war was advocated, it was suggested that Chatham, the scourge of the house of Bourbon, was the proper man to occupy the post held by Lord North at such a crisis. But Lord North did not coincide in this opinion. He expressed a total disregard to office, but contended that the interest of the empire, as ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... more races and religions blend. And its streets are made exceedingly picturesque by the many costumes of its polyglot population. Before the arrival of the plague, some eight years ago, Bombay was perhaps the most populous city in India. But this fell scourge has decimated its population and has robbed it of much of ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... Love that desireth not the death of a sinner. A celestial winged messenger carrying a scourge: "Whom ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones

... insist that our Government should as carefully and vigilantly seek to prevent the exportation of contagious cattle diseases as to prevent their importation. This policy would create a feeling of national comity, and an effort to eradicate the scourge ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... fierce I keep my way, Scourge of the lands, companioned by the storm, Tossing to heaven my frontlet, wild and gray, Mateless, yet conscious ever of a warm And brooding presence close ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge

... By this part of their arrangement, in which they establish a debt to the Nabob of Arcot, in effect and substance, they deliver over Tanjore, bound hand and foot, to Paul Benfield, the old betrayer, insulter, oppressor, and scourge of a country which has for years been an object of an unremitted, but, unhappily, an unequal struggle, between the bounties of Providence to renovate and the wickedness ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... virgins, and martyrs, keeping to the same order, shows: St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, with a scourge in his right hand, and a bishop's staff in his left; St. Jerome in a cardinal's hat, with a church in his right hand and a bible in his left; St. Gregory in papal tiara, the legendary club on his shield, his pastoral staff doubly crossed, and a book, typical of his writings, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White

... of the famous Rock Tombs of Thebes, there is a group of figures representing the judging of the departed spirit before Osiris, the presiding deity of the dead. In one hand he holds a shepherd's crook, in the other a scourge; before him are the scales of justice; that which is weighed is the heart of the dead king upon whose lot the deity is called to decide. The pictured symbol is a dim foreshadowing of that perfect judgment which ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson

... This scourge is still prevailing in many parts of Jamaica, having made its appearance in some districts a second ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... 1597, Don Francisco de Gama, count of Vidugueyra, grandson to the discoverer, arrived at Goa as viceroy of India, but carried himself with so much haughty state that he gained the dislike of all men. During his government the scourge of the pride and covetousness of the Portuguese came first into India, as in the month of September news was brought to Goa that the two first ships of the Hollanders that had ventured to navigate the Indian seas had been in the port of Titangone and were bound for ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr

... Muirland George, Whom the Lord made a scourge, To claw common sense for her sins; If ill manners were wit, There's no mortal so fit, To confound the poor doctor at ance, Muirland George, To confound the poor doctor ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... after a long struggle, in distress that horrified him, that she persuaded him to forego the big settlement he proposed making. If she had not loved him his liberality would have hurt her less, but because of her love his money was a scourge. She hated the wealth to which she felt she had no right, to herself she seemed an impostor, a cheat. She felt degraded. She would rather he had bought her, as women have from time immemorial been bought, that she might have paid the ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull

... thy light on us and on thine own, O soul whose spirit on earth was as a rod To scourge off priests, a sword to pierce their God, A staff for man's free thought to walk alone, A lamp to lead him far from shrine and throne On ways untrodden where his fathers trod Ere earth's heart withered at a high priest's nod And all men's mouths that ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... with illustrations, telling how the establishment of rural mail-routes led to improved roads and these, in turn, to consolidated schools and better conditions of living in the country; how the potato-beetle, which seems at first to be a scourge, was really a blessing in disguise in that it set farmers to studying improved methods resulting in largely increased crops, and how the scale has done a like service for fruit-growers; how a friend of mine was drilling for oil and ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... fear the odious individual whose existence and attributes we have discussed must be accepted as a scourge sent to punish us for past sins of the race. Certainly women had a very bad time in days gone by—they were slaves; and at odd moments I am tempted to conclude that the slave instinct survives in some of them, and they take their revenge ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... who kept the rocks of Asturias as a last stronghold against their besiegers, the Chouans made their Bocages a last asylum for the French monarchy." This is a fine phrase, but the facts are very far removed from this assertion. The Chouans were a terror and a scourge to their fellow-citizens: farms burnt, unoffending citizens robbed and murdered, all their possessions seized on and appropriated, stabbing in the dark, and cowardly cruelties of all kinds characterized ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... French are peerless in these things. The childish delight of the people was pleasant to see. Why cannot they be satisfied with their fetes, and with the undisputed empire of cookery and dress, instead of making themselves a scourge to the world, and keeping all Europe in disquietude and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various

... contemptuous glance toward the shelves she indicated, and straightened himself indignantly. He had loved and revered her, ever since she came a bride to Sobrante, and had tended him through a scourge of smallpox, unafraid and unscathed. Though she was a woman, the sex of whose intelligence he had small opinion, he had regarded her as an exception, and ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond

... war and rapine, and devoid of any other means of subsistence than freebooting on the peasantry or travellers, whence they were known as routiers—highwaymen, and ecorcheurs—flayers. They were a fearful scourge to France in the early part of the reign of Charles VII., as, indeed, they had been at every interval of peace ever since the battle of Creci, and they really made a state of warfare preferable to the unhappy provinces, or at least to those where it was not actually raging. In a ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge

... reptiles, many times worse than serpents and vipers; after allowing them half an hour's dalliance with these creatures the devils would seize a bundle of rods of steel, fiery hot from the furnace, and would scourge them till their howling, caused by the horrible inexpressible pain which they endured, would fill the vast abode of darkness, and when the fiends deemed that they had scourged them enough, they would take hot irons and sear their ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... honey And milk doth abound, Where the lash is not heard, And the scourge is not found. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Harp • Various

... York City, because this area is probably the oldest center of infection in the United States. Apparently this is the port of entry where the undesirable immigrants (Japanese or Chinese chestnuts) passed through quarantine and were allowed to disembark carrying their terrible scourge with them unnoticed. According to Metcalf and Collins,[2] this was probably as early as 1893. This was why we selected this area to begin on, for here the disease has had a longer opportunity to run its ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various

... for the scourge, then," said the earl his lord, half smiling, and evidently trying his courage, "unless thou wilt say thou art sorry for ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake

... white as if blasted with leprosy. The same scourge that had maddened the poor laird fell hissing on his soul, and its knotted sting was the same word mother. He turned and walked slowly away, fighting a tyrannous impulse to thrust his fingers in his ears ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... are escaped slaves; there are certainly many of them in the mountains of Cuba. I suppose they saw us sailing in, and came down from the hills in the hope of capturing some of us. It is likely enough they take us for pirates, who are a constant scourge to them, capturing them in their little fishing-boats and either cutting their throats or forcing them to serve with them. I am afraid we shall have but very little opportunity of explaining matters to them, for, of course, they don't ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty

... the town of Tyre or Sur, now barren and deserted; for that mighty scourge of humanity, the plague, was raging there to a fearful extent. A few scattered fragments of fortifications and numerous fallen pillars ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer

... baptised hundreds of men, women, and children, had completed a regular place of worship, and an extensive school-house, both of which were fully and regularly attended, some European vessel paid us a short visit, soon after which, that dreadful scourge the small-pox, broke out amongst the people. Both children and adults were seized, and as soon as one died a dozen ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat

... the torturer of the soul, unseen. Does fiercely brandish a sharp scourge within; Severe decrees may keep our tongues in awe, But to our minds what edicts can give law? Even you yourself to your own breast shall tell Your crimes, and your own conscience be ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... gave them a purge (forgetting OCCIDISTI), (The furies be his scourge!) so of the cure must he; And yet the drug he well knew it, for he gave it to Dr Huit; (78) Had he given it them, he had done it, and they had not turn'd out his son yet; Sing hi ho, brave Dick, Lenthall, and Lady Joane, Who did against lovalty kick is now for a new-year's ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay

... catch the hint of restlessness these words conveyed. Leigh's profession, like the ministry, made him, in the mayor's eyes, a being apart from the life with which he was familiar. It naturally did not occur to him that the astronomer had been driven back to his duty by the scourge of suffering, much less that his own wife had wielded the whip. He saw only an inexplicable devotion ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... ten years longer I shall have probably written the natural sequel to the first two works,—viz., the Thirty Years' War. After that I shall cease to scourge ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... sides by nations of practically naked savages; and it is a very interesting, sight to watch them in the "bazaar" at Kampala, clad in long flowing cotton garments, and busily engaged in bartering the products of the country under the shade of tattered umbrellas. Unfortunately the great scourge of the district round the shores of the Lake is the sleeping sickness, which in the past few years has carried off thousands of the natives, and has quite depopulated the islands, which were once densely inhabited. The disease ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson

... else the world could give; yet still Your rigour I forgive; ye are not yet my foes; My own untutor'd will's my only curse. We grasp asphaltic apples; blooming poison! We love what we should hate; how kind, ye Fates, To thwart our wishes! O you're kind to scourge! And flay us to the bone to make ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... footstool is a Sphinx, and the canopy the overshadowing wings of Ma. Then Amenemhat drew nigh once again and placed the Pshent upon my brow, and on my head the Double Crown, and the Royal Robe about my shoulders, and in my hands the Sceptre and the Scourge. ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard

... presently changed to the rainy south-wester, the builder of the Moroccan 'bars' and the scourge of the coast fringing North-west Africa, Rolling set in with the usual liveliness. Events were not eventful. The first midnight found us off Cape Trafalgar, and the second off St. Vincent. At 4 P.M. (December ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... forth His long-forgotten scourge, and giddy gig: O'er the white paths he whirls the rolling hoop, Or triumphs in the dusty ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... Kolbein.—Bishop Gudmund was a scourge upon the land. On his journeys he devoured the property of one farmer in the morning, and ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various

... whatsoever torment, misery, mischief, hell itself, the devil, [297] fury and rage can invent to their own ruin and destruction; so abominable a thing is [298]war, as Gerbelius concludes, adeo foeda et abominanda res est bellum, ex quo hominum caedes, vastationes, &c., the scourge of God, cause, effect, fruit and punishment of sin, and not tonsura humani generis as Tertullian calls it, but ruina. Had Democritus been present at the late civil wars in France, those abominable wars—bellaque matribus ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... higher tribunal than ours. By an upright course you might atone for the crimes of your youth and manhood, and become the chosen instrument of Heaven to deliver your fellow-Christians from a cruel scourge and sore infliction." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... cry of us forlorn, Incarnate as his seed be born. Three queens has he: each lovely dame Like Beauty, Modesty, or Fame. Divide thyself in four, and be His offspring by these noble three. Man's nature take, and slay in fight Ravan who laughs at heavenly might: This common scourge, this rankling thorn Whom the three worlds too long have borne For Ravan in the senseless pride Of might unequalled has defied The host of heaven, and plagues with woe Angel and bard and saint below, Crushing ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... feeding horses, or throwing them overboard, and "dodging" from island to island, and entered the naval service of the United States. The vessel to which he was attached was stationed in the West Indies, and had been on her station but a very short time, before that scourge of no small portion of the western world, the yellow fever, made its appearance on board. Our navy certainly was not then under so good regulations as at present. The medical department might perhaps be almost as good then as ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames

... you comfort as well as I can, And a precious jewel I will give thee, Called penance, wise voider of adversity; Therewith shall your body chastised be, With abstinence and perseverance in God's service: Here shall you receive that scourge of me, Which is penance strong, that ye must endure, To remember thy Saviour was scourged for thee With sharp scourges, and suffered it patiently; So must thou, or thou scape that painful pilgrimage; Knowledge, keep him in this voyage, And by that time Good-Deeds will ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous

... the Teatro Sicilia, the curtain rose on Christ bound to the column, and there were two Turks armed with scourges. They did not actually scourge him, it was enough that they told Misandro they had executed their orders. Peter denied his master and the cock crew thrice. While Judas was continuing his remorse, Peter appeared to him, and, confessing his sin of denying Christ, proposed to expiate it by throwing ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones

... on medicines, or the cause and effects of diseases. Cholera, for instance, very much affected the land at certain seasons, creating much mortality, and vanishing again as mysteriously as it came. What brought this scourge? and what would cure it? Supposing a man had a headache, what should he take for it? or a leg ache, or a stomach-ache, or itch; in fact, going the rounds of every disease he knew, until, exhausting the ordinary complaints, he went into ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... was a born leader of men. He discovered very soon that in the matter of the performance of "God Save the King" by the town band, fate had a rope round his leg and was likely to scourge him uncomfortably if he pulled against it. The introduction of variations into the tune proved to be a much more difficult matter than he had supposed. He worked hard for six hours on Major Kent's piano, and produced two ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham

... arose in after days. A single strong square tower, or even a defence of wood on a steep mound surrounded by a ditch, was enough to make its owner dangerous. The possession of these strongholds made every baron able at once to defy his prince and to make himself a scourge to his neighbours. Every season of anarchy is marked by the building of castles; every return of order brings with it their overthrow as a ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman

... feel sympathy for her. The hardest nature in the world must yield its pity when the scourge of circumstance falls upon the weak. Devenish only knew in part what she was suffering. The mistress—deserted—is a position precarious enough, undesirable enough for any man to realize and feel sympathy for. To her mind, seeing ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... ashes of Lent come down in good earnest and the town mourns over its scarlet sins. It used to be very fashionable for the genteel Christians to repair during this season of mortification to the Church of San Gines, and scourge themselves lustily in its subterranean chambers. A still more striking demonstration was for gentlemen in love to lash themselves on the sidewalks where passed the ladies of their thoughts. If the blood from the scourges sprinkled ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... at Grand Forks, wife wrote me that an epidemic of small pox had broken out in the neighborhood, but that it was not necessary for me to come home because, she said, "I put the children and myself into the 9lst Psalm and we will remain there until the scourge is over" and I thank God, it did not come ...
— Personal Experiences of S. O. Susag • S. O. Susag

... relentless toward hypocrisy and tender to humanity. We can rejoice in the love of laughter, without ever once letting it lead us to libertinism of fancy. We can reach through humor the heart of man. We can make exaggeration the scourge of meanness and the magnifier of truth on the broad screen of life. By study of him, the nothing new under the sun can be made fresh and fragrant by the supreme art of putting things. Though none ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... But their losses were easily repaired, and sometimes they cruised in fleets of seventy or eighty sail, defying the navies of England and France. It was not until after England, in Nelson's time, had acquired supremacy in the Mediterranean that this dreadful scourge was destroyed. Americans, however, have just ground for pride in recollecting that their government was foremost in chastising these pirates in their own harbours. The exploits of our little navy in the Mediterranean ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... a while there is born, in every State, a soul which is to be "like a star and dwell apart." It is to be gifted with qualities of an exalted character. But it is also to be lashed with the scourge of ambition. It is to ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern

... mentally applied the scourge to herself. It was true; she never had asked. Peggy had said that her mother had no education, and had got along very well without it; this was all that Margaret wanted to know. A shallow, ignorant woman, who had let her child grow up in such ignorance as Peggy's; and now she ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards

... so described consists of the scourge which at this stage is taken from the dishes and presented to the Soul and all kneel and adore, singing Ave flagellum; and Jerome ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente

... fortresses were solely garrisoned with French troops; Elba was close at hand, and the emperor was guarded with criminal negligence. Heavy, indeed, is the responsibility of those who, by thus neglecting their charge, once more let loose this scourge upon the earth![8] Napoleon quitted his island, and, on the 1st of March, 1815, again set foot on the coast of France. He was merely accompanied by one thousand five hundred men, but the whole of the troops sent against him by Louis XVIII. ranged themselves beneath his eagle. He passed, as if in ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks

... they the savants civilized. Doctors cavil at the learned. False science is the excrement of the true, and is employed to the destruction of philosophers. Philosophers, as they produce sophists, produce their own scourge. Of the dung of the thrush is born the mistletoe, with which is made birdlime, with which the thrush is captured. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... the leadership of Professor F. E. L. Beal, America's leading authority on the subject, may give us a full and exhaustive account of what the various birds do for us in the way of keeping down the great scourge of grass and weeds with which the farmers have to deal. In the meantime, however, we may bear in mind that enough evidence already has been accumulated to prove that as destroyers of noxious weed seeds the wild birds ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson

... figure dropped down again behind the wall as quickly as possible. And my Ludecke, being loath to lose the fat morsel he had ready for the flames, resolved to place four guards over her in the refectory; but though the whole town was searched—item, menaced that the executioner should scourge them man by man, yet no one will undertake the dangerous office. At last four fellows are found, who promise, for a tun of beer at the very least, to hold watch in the convent square, so that the witch cannot get away out of the building, with which ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... The amalgamation of various tribes, and of white men of every nation, will in time produce hybrid races like the mountain Tartars of the Caucasus. Possessed as they are of immense droves of horses should they continue their present predatory and warlike habits, they may in time become a scourge to the civilized frontiers on either side of the mountains, as they are at present a terror ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving

... gently in the morning breeze. The whiteweed and clover sent forth an agreeable perfume. In the low ground buttercups were shining like gold dollars, sprinkled through the tall herdsgrass. Yellow-weed, the farmer's scourge, held up its brown and yellow ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various

... Christmas. How clear the notes rang through the wet air that came in at my window! Back into the dim centuries that music led me, into candle-lit Gothic chapels of monasteries on wind-swept heights above the firs, and cathedrals in mediaeval cities. Twilight ages of war and scourge and stress and storm—and faith. "Oh, come, all ye Faithful!" What a strange thing, that faith whose flame so marvellously persisted, piercing the gloom; the Christmas myth, as I had heard someone once call it. Did it possess the power to save ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... great results. There can be little doubt that throughout the world's history man has exhibited a lamentable apathy in his passive submission to the depredations of the insect tribe, whereas by a system of organisation he would at the least have mitigated the scourge which has in many instances resulted in absolute famine. At one time the plague of locusts was annually expected in Cyprus as a natural advent like the arrival of swallows in the usual season, and when the swarms were extreme the ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... thing to do, but it annihilated the only excuse he could think of for looking in at night. He could not help himself. It was like some frightful scourge—the morphine habit, or something of that sort. Every morning he swore to himself that nothing would induce him to mention the subject of rheumatism, but no sooner had the stricken old gentleman's head appeared above the ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... gone by the young King himself had rebelled at the tyranny of that word. Perhaps the smart of its scourge was still upon him. He put forth a kindly hand and drew ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... let us sail unto Etruria, And cause our friends, the Germans, to revolt, And get some Tuscans to increase our power. Deserts, farewell! Come, Romans, let us go— A scourge for Rome, that hath depress'd ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various

... traces of extraordinary beauty, he exonerated her from all blame in the ruinous deception that had blasted more lives than one; and honored the silent heroism which so securely locked her disappointment in her own heart. He knew that consumption was the hereditary scourge of her family, that she bore in her constitution the seeds of slowly but surely developing disease, and did not marvel at the quiet indifference with which she treated symptoms which he had several times pointed out as ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... puppet had been taken in a trap put there to capture some big polecats which were the scourge of ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi

... almost penniless, and suffering mental depression from his misfortunes, which he recklessly sought to remove by the delusive remedy of the bottle. The habit of intemperance thus produced, became his scourge through life. At Ecclefechan he commenced business as a tailor, and married a young country girl, for whom he had formed a devoted attachment. He established a village library, and debating club, became a diligent reader, a leader in every literary movement in the district, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... greater part are my friends, and am at least convinced, that they who demand the test, and appear on my side, will supply, by their spirit, the deficiency of their numbers, and that their enemies will shrink and quake at the sight of a magnet, as the slaves of Scythia fled from the scourge. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... that year or within the spring of 1350. Pestilence was frequent throughout the Middle Ages, but this attack was not only vastly more destructive and general than any which had preceded it, but the disease when once introduced became a frequent scourge in subsequent times, especially during the remainder of the fourteenth century. In 1361, 1368, and 1396 attacks are noticed as occurring more or less widely through the country, but none were so extensive as that ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney

... experimental physiology and pathology will, indubitably, in course of time, place medicine and hygiene upon a rational basis. Two centuries ago England was devastated by the plague; cleanliness and common sense were enough to free us from its ravages. One century since, small-pox was almost as great a scourge; science, though working empirically, and almost in the dark, has reduced that evil to relative insignificance. At the present time, science, working in the light of clear knowledge, has attacked splenic fever and has beaten it; it is attacking hydrophobia ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley

... judgments; all disgusted me and diminished the attention I wished to pay her. I neglected her and she perceived it; this was enough to set her in a rage, and, although I was sufficiently aware how much a woman of her character was to be feared, I preferred exposing myself to the scourge of her hatred rather than ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... the scourge and the fetters, I may speak to the bondman as a brother. I am alone, with none to need me. Therefore I go hence to join the brethren who are giving their ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey

... "The Divine." The book was illustrated as well, not unskilfully, with sketches that professed to be illuminative of the text in the manner of Giulio Romano. These might have pleased the Biscayan, for if he had no Italian, and could, therefore, make nothing of the voluptuousness of the Scourge of Princes, he could, at least, see as well as another savage the meaning of a lewd image. But the privilege was denied him. Scarcely had he got the book in his fingers when it was plucked from them again, ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... still lay before them. The roar of the breakers on the cruel coral reef caught their ears. But there was nothing for it but to risk the peril. They were among the breakers which caught and tossed them on like eggshells. The scourge of the surf swept them; a woman, a man—even the child, were torn from them and ground on the ghastly teeth of the coral. Five were swept over with the craft into the still, blue lagoon, and landing they fell prone upon ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews

... to one shape—famine; a terrific shape, doubtless, but one which levies its penalty of suffering, not by elaborate processes that do not exhaust their total cycle in less than long periods of years. Fortunately for those who survive, no arrears of misery are allowed by this scourge of ancient days; [Footnote: "Of ancient days."—For it is remarkable, and it serves to mark an indubitable progress of mankind, that, before the Christian era, famines were of frequent occurrence in countries the ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... ardor of bravery by the value which they attach to existence, they were ever ready to rush, as without sight, upon the most desperate attempts. Equally incapable of submitting to indigence or quiet; too proud to employ themselves in common labor; they would have been the scourge of the Old World, had they not been that ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... not honour, or chivalric fame, but plunder and profit. The discipline of the crews is not apt to be of the highest order, and privateers are often guilty of enormous excesses, and become the scourge of neutral commerce." ...
— The Laws Of War, Affecting Commerce And Shipping • H. Byerley Thomson

... by no means unknown among them; rum, the greatest scourge and curse of the Indian race, is undoubtedly the principal cause of this dreadful corruption: but is it not strange that religion should have so little effect in reforming their manners? The Mississagays, the neighbours of the Algonquins, who speak the same language, were ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean

... derangement displayed themselves with increasing intensity. An incessant worker, overseer of his operas on twenty stages, he had to pay the tax by which his fame became his ruin. It is reported that he anticipated the coming scourge, for during the rehearsals of "Don Sebastian" he said, "I think I shall go mad yet." Still he would not put the bridle on his restless activity. At last paralysis seized him, and in January, 1846, he was placed under the care of the celebrated Dr. Blanche ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris

... close to the Danube, and looks very picturesque with its old walls and towers. According to the Nibelungen Lied, King Attila once spent a night in the place, and a stone figure of that "scourge of God" forms a feature of the Hainburg Wiener Thor, a rock rising abruptly from the river, crowned with the ruined Castle of Rottenstein. The town cannot be very different from what it was in Haydn's time, except perhaps ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden

... mother, she is my father's soul, she is the soul of the kingdom and of religion, and the scourge of all evil-thinkers. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... the frightful evils that were occasioned in our armies by that doctrine of anarchy which, under the shadow of equality of right, would establish equality of fact? This is universal equality, the scourge of society, as the other is the support of society: an anarchical doctrine which would level all things, talents and ignorance, virtues and vices, places, usages, and services; a doctrine which begot that fatal project of organizing the army, presented by Dubois de Crance, to which it will ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... to refer to antiquity, when Hayti, the glory of the blacks and terror of tyrants, is enough to convince the most avaricious and stupid of wretches—which is at this time, and I am sorry to say it, plagued with that scourge of nations, the Catholic religion; but I hope and pray God that she may yet rid herself of it, and adopt in its stead the Protestant faith; also, I hope that she may keep peace within her borders and be united, keeping a strict look out for tyrants, for if they get ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet

... idleness and luxury—the thought that we could not call the bones and sinews that God gave us our own: but above all, the fact that another man had the power to tear from our cradle the new-born babe and sell it in the shambles like a brute, and then scourge us if we dared to lift a finger to save it from such a ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft

... is recovering of all whom the scourge has smitten. And now I must go to my brother, but first I ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard

... people continually on the move so that they were unable to cultivate. One Umdava originated the practice of eating human flesh. Gathering together the fragments of four scattered tribes, he trained them to hunt human beings as others hunted game. This gang was a greater scourge to the country surrounding the present site of Pietermaritzburg than even Tshaka's murdering hordes. It was broken up in or about the year 1824, when the Europeans first came to the country, and the remnants of many scattered tribes ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various

... It met with great favor among the soldiers, to whom the republicans of the "National" had brought neither fame nor funds; among the great bourgeoisie, who hailed Bonaparte as a bridge to the monarchy; and among the proletarians and small traders, who hailed him as a scourge to Cavaignac. I shall later have occasion to enter closer into the relation of the farmers to the ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx

... have lately developed a serious blight which has reduced the production at least fifty per cent., causing many to abandon the cultivation of the berry. It is not, like the cinnamon, indigenous to Ceylon, but was introduced here from the main-land. Unless this serious scourge can be overcome, coffee, as an export from the island, will very soon cease. The kind best known and mostly grown here is the "Arab," which thrives at an elevation of three or four thousand feet. It ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... get up when I heard the doctor's voice, till I remembered that we were to make war on the alligators. The feeling of utter detestation with which those creatures are regarded is not surprising, when it is recollected what a scourge they are to the people inhabiting the banks of the rivers and lakes of that part of the country. I was soon on foot; and having loaded my gun with ball, I accompanied the doctor to a little creek which ran at no great distance from the ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston

... whimper of a beaten hound, or sees a mouse caught in a trap. There rides the laughing Wife of Bath, bold-faced and fair. She is an adept in love-matters. Five husbands already "she has fried in their own grease" till they were glad to get into their graves to escape the scourge of her tongue. Heaven rest their souls, and swiftly send a sixth! She wears a hat large as a targe or buckler, brings the artillery of her eyes to bear on the young Squire, and jokes him about his sweetheart. Beside her is a worthy Parson, who delivers faithfully the ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... stronger races; and the influence of his brutality and cruelty is felt as restraint and terror on the plantation of his less resolute neighbor. And when we speak of brutality and cruelty, we do not limit the application of the words to those who scourge, but extend it to some of those who preach,—who hold up heaven as the reward of those slaves who are sufficiently abject on earth, and threaten damnation in the next world to all who dare to assert their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... on the sea-board, and in the West great numbers of iron-clad floating batteries threaten to force a passage down the Mississippi, while monster armies are concentrating for the invasion of Tennessee and the Cotton States. Will Virginia escape the scourge? Not she; here is the bull's-eye of the mark they ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... such a time: "Rejoice ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." From most of the discourses he had heard Cyril had gone out depressed rather than inspirited. They had been pitched in one tone. The terrible scourge that raged round them was held up as a punishment sent by the wrath of God upon a sinful people, and the congregation were warned to prepare themselves for the fate, that might at any moment be theirs, by repentance and humiliation. The preacher ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty

... found among the Indians by the expedition of 1622. This same great sickness could hardly have been yellow fever, as it occurred in the month of November. I cannot think, therefore, that either the scourge of the East or our Southern malarial pestilence was the disease that wasted the Indians. As for the yellowness like a garment, that is too familiar to the eyes of all who have ever looked on the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... tendency like the water of some springs, to become soft and mild, when freely exposed to the open day. Who can recognise in the decent and industrious quakers, and ana-baptists the wild and ferocious tenets which distinguished their sects, while they were yet honoured with the distinction of the scourge and the pillory? Had the system of coercion against the presbyterians been continued until our day, Blair and Robertson would have preached in the wilderness, and only discovered their powers of eloquence and composition, by rolling along a ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott

... least among them believes himself superior to the law, "as formerly a Conde,[3245]" and he becomes king on a small scale, self-constituted, an autocratic justiciary and avenger of wrongs, a supporter of patriots and the scourge of aristocrats, the disposer of lives and property, and, without delay or formality, taking it upon himself to complete the Revolution on the spot in every town he passes through.—He is not to be hindered in all this by his ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... failed When the White Demon raged in battle-fray, Wouldst thou have lived had Rustem lost the day?" Then to his friends: "Be wise, and shun your fate, Fly the wide ruin which o'erwhelms the state; The conqueror comes—the scourge of great and small, And vultures, following fast, will gorge on all. Persia no more its injured Chief shall view"— He said, and sternly from ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... even turning her head to see if I had followed, the Princess Y—— knelt down on the step, stripped her shoulders with a singular determined gesture, and then, taking the knout in one hand, began to scourge the ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward

... was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began indolently to study diseases generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into—some fearful, devastating scourge, I know—and, before I had glanced half down the list of "premonitory symptoms," it was borne in upon me that ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... And beg for vengeance, yea, and madness too, And vague, dim fears at night disturb and haunt me, Seeing full clearly, though I move my brow In the thick darkness . . . . and that then my frame Thus tortured should be driven from the city With brass-knobbed scourge: and that for such as I It was not given to share the wine-cup's taste, Nor votive stream in pure libation poured; And that my father's wrath invisible Would drive me from all altars, and that none Should take me in or lodge with me: ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton

... the glowing scourge of the hardest of the heart-hard; the cruel torture reserved for the cruellest themselves; the gloomy flame ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... on, she shall not have even a memory to look upon to warm her. But in the world here, such temptations to discontent abound; but the most guileless votary of the Sacre Coeur might confess regrets and misgivings like these without meriting any extra allowance of fast and scourge. ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence



Words linked to "Scourge" :   someone, Scourge of God, flog, curse, slash, devastate, whip, punish, individual, flagellate, desolate, penalize, lay waste to, waste, destroy, mortal, terror, threat, somebody, bane, person, soul, welt, lash, lather, trounce, ravage, affliction, penalise, Scourge of the Gods, nemesis, flagellum



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