"Atrocity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to obtain any reply therefor, from the authorities at Washington, the Richmond people determined to pour out all their vengeance on the immediate perpetrators of this last Yankee atrocity; and forthwith there was issued from the rebel War Department a General Order number 60, we believe, of the series of 1862—reciting that 'as the government of the U. S. had refused to answer whether it authorized the raising of a black regiment by Gen. Hunter ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... having placed a guard at the doors, slew Themistus and Andranodorus as soon as they had entered the senate-house. A disturbance arising in consequence of this act, which, as none but the praetors knew the cause of it, wore an appearance of atrocity, the praetors, having at length procured silence, introduced the informer into the senate-house; and after he had in a regular manner detailed to the senate every particular, showing that the conspiracy owed its origin to the marriage of Harmonia, the daughter of Gelon, ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... in that paper, I would have said that it was enough to cover any Government with eternal infamy. Indeed, I don't believe that there is a Government under the sun, save the Pope's, that would have done an atrocity like it. I had some talk with our consul, Mr Freeborn, about that case too, and he assured me that, bad as these cases were, they were not worse than scores, aye, hundreds, that to his knowledge had been perpetrated in Rome, and all over the Papal ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... the sword, and of ancient birth, had itself to blame for this degradation. Great alterations in manners or government—such as give a new character to human affairs—always seem brought about by some strange relaxation of morals, or atrocity of conduct, which makes society anxious for the change. The unfortunate custom in France which gave every male member of a noble family a title equivalent to that of its chief, so that a simple viscount with ten stalwart and penniless sons gave ten stalwart and penniless ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... called the military suit), to the American citizen-soldiers, fairly made my blood creep; one instance in particular filled me with horror, for it was a cold-blooded murder of the deepest dye I must, however, do the narrator the justice to say that he viewed the atrocity in the same ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... now take leave of the Indians and their political condition, by observing that the proceedings of the American government, throughout, towards this brave but unfortunate race, have only been exceeded in atrocity by the past and present conduct of the East India government towards the ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... round the great cross. It was a natural consequence in such an emergency. Hitherto they had been accustomed to kneel at the foot of that cross in prayer, now, with life itself at stake, they would instinctively press towards it to escape from the swords of the enemy. But, as far an regards the atrocity of the thing, it makes little difference on what particular spot they were murdered. You cannot relieve the memory of Cromwell from the odium of such murder, but by proving, what it is impossible to prove, that ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... England began her battle against it even before the beginning of the century. The work of the philanthropists, begun as far back as 1786-87, when the Quakers, under the leadership of Clarkson and Sharpe, began to cry out against the atrocity of human bondage, now reached the public authorities, and ministers found it necessary to take heed of what the people were saying and doing. Both Pitt and Fox became abolitionists before the close of the eighteenth century. The first attack was against the slave trade. Bills for the abolition ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... too much. From what I have read of it I am free to say that for stupid injustice, blind, unreasoning, brutal cruelty, treachery and corruption on the part of England from about the middle of the 12th century down to to-night it equals if it does not exceed in atrocity the rule of the Spaniard ...
— The American Revolution and the Boer War, An Open Letter to Mr. Charles Francis Adams on His Pamphlet "The Confederacy and the Transvaal" • Sydney G. Fisher
... not loved him, yes; or, even if he had not loved her; or if, again, though loving him she had stood upon her rights—in any of those events he might have done it. But to leave her whom he did love, and who had said to him so generously: "I will not hamper you—go to her"—would be a black atrocity. Every memory, from their boy-and-girl lovering to the desperate clinging of her arms these last two nights—memory with its innumerable tentacles, the invincible strength of its countless threads, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of Augustus were perhaps equal in atrocity to any which are recorded; and the equivocal apology for those acts (one which might as well be used to aggravate as to palliate the case) is, that they were not prompted by a ferocious nature, but by calculating policy. He ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... blame for the atrocities, for each separate atrocity, is Leopold. Had he shaken his head they would have ceased. When the hue and cry in Europe grew too hot for him and he held up his hand they did cease. At least along the main waterways. Years before he ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... frontiers of France, and the savagery of the populace was let loose. The Tuileries had been stormed, the Swiss Guard butchered, the royal family imprisoned in the Temple. Quickly the Legislative Assembly had given way to a National Convention, and the country was ripe for any and every atrocity the mind ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... the crimes of the three or four generations immediately succeeding Clovis have been in like manner expanded; for it is sickening to read of such monstrous prodigality of wickedness; whole families butchered—husbands, wives, children, anything obstructing the path to the throne—with an atrocity which makes Richard III. seem a mere pigmy in the art of intrigue and killing. The chapter closes with the daughter and mother of kings (Brunhilde or Brunhaut), naked, and tied by one arm, one leg, and her hair to the tail of an unbroken ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... was suspected: not quite so bad in the state of fact as in that of rumor. Crime enough is in it, sin and folly on both sides; there is killing too, but NOT assassination (as it turns out); on the whole there is nothing of atrocity, or nothing that was not accidental, unavoidable;—and there is a certain greatness of DECORUM on the part of those Hanover Princes and official gentlemen, a depth of silence, of polite stoicism, which deserves more praise than it will ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... astonishingly, for we became partial to him almost to fondness. The part he now acts against England may be justified, perhaps, by the spirit of revenge ; but the part he submits to perform of coadjutor with the worst of villains—with Barras—Rewbel—Merlin—marks some internal atrocity of character that disgusts as much as disappoints me. And now, a last stroke, which appears in yesterday's paper, gives the finishing hand to his portrait in my eyes. He has sent (and written) the letter which exhorts the King of Prussia to order the Duke of Brunswick to banish and drive from ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... gazed in awe, which shook the British empire to its centre, and sent a thrill of horror to the heart of that empire, followed by a fierce thirst for vengeance. For the Indian mutiny had broken out, the horrors of Cawnpore had been enacted, the stories of sepoy atrocity had been told by every English fireside, and the whole nation had roused itself to send forth armies for vengeance and for punishment. Dread stories were these for the quiet circle at Chetwynde Castle; yet they had been spared its worst pains. Guy had been sent to the north of India, and had not ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... Kit. "Go on with your weak-minded amusements, taking advantage of a poor lone cripple,—refused by the army, and a victim of the latest German atrocity! I suppose—I suppose,"—he continued darkly, "everyone on and around Granados agrees that I was the ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... will he learn?" Villa Kennan asked. "If he is shrewd enough not to fight you, and merely sits and listens to your English law, it will be no more than a huge joke to him. He will no more than pay the price of listening to a lecture for any atrocity he commits." ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... directly opposite to what short-sighted mortals had anticipated. It was in 1756, scarcely forty years ago, that the French, being in possession of the provinces, attempted to wrest from us those portions of America which we occupied. What was the result? After a war which, for cruelty and atrocity, is perhaps unequaled in history, both parties employing savages, by whom the French and English were alternately tortured and burned to death, France, in attempting to obtain all, lost all, and was compelled, in 1760, to surrender ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... than Knype Wakes; that is to say, no Wakes is more ear-splitting, more terrific, more dizzying, or more impassable. When you go to Knype Wakes you get stuck in the midst of an enormous crowd, and you see roundabouts, swings, switchbacks, myrioramas, atrocity booths, quack dentists, shooting-galleries, cocoanut-shies, and bazaars, all around you. Every establishment is jewelled, gilded, and electrically lighted; every establishment has an orchestra, most often played by steam and conducted by a stoker; every establishment has a steam—whistle, ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... subsistence from the bison. The well-mounted aborigines hung on the flanks of the great buffalo herds, migrating with them, spurning all treaty obligations, and when opportunity offered murdering the advance guard of civilization with the fiendish atrocity of carnivorous animals. But while the government hesitated, the hide-hunters and the railroads solved the problem, and the Indian's base of supplies ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... till at last, having found that all their proceedings were totally ineffectual, they desire the women to surrender their house; though it is in evidence before you, that to remove a woman from her own house to another house without her consent is an outrage of the greatest atrocity, on account of which many women have not only threatened, but have actually put themselves to death. Mr. Hastings himself, in the case of Munny Begum, had considered such a proposition as the last degree of outrage that could ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... the other! There's a beastly draught. The noise you heard was that window which possibly hasn't been opened for a century or two, groaning in pain at being forced into action again! Can't sleep in this beastly room—haven't closed my eyes yet—and when I did get out of that Victorian atrocity over there and take to the sofa by the window, why, the first thing I saw were those flames flickering out across the horizon like signal-fires, or something! I've been watching them for the past twenty minutes and they've got on my nerves. ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... ceaseless discord. It was that Druidic discipline which combined a priestly constitution with civil privileges, and with a very peculiar doctrine of a political and even moral purport. We might be tempted to suppose that the atrocity of human sacrifice was first introduced among them by the Punic race. For they were from primeval times connected with the Carthaginians and Phoenicians, who were the first to traverse the outer sea, and sought in the island a metal which was very valuable ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... the bar, you stand convicted on the most conclusive evidence of a crime of inexpressible atrocity—a crime that defiles the sacred springs of domestic confidence, and is calculated to strike alarm into the breast of every Englishman who invests largely in the choicer vintages of Southern Europe. Like the serpent of old, you ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... system of their day, would have scarcely left this unnoticed when they attack much slighter abuses. If such a thing ever occurred, even in the worst of times, it must have been an isolated case. I have not met elsewhere with any allusion to this passage, or the atrocity recorded in it, and would be glad of more information ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 219, January 7, 1854 • Various
... appeared at it with the infant, in her arms. She herself was almost scorched to death; but, with the presence of mind and humanity of her sex, she was about to put the little babe out of the window. The Captain noticed this, and, with characteristic atrocity, thrust, with a sharp bayonet, the little innocent, along with the person who endeavored to rescue it, into the red flames, where they both perished. This was the work of an instant. Again he approached ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... degree politic. He would have made an excellent member of the Apostolic Camarilla. An alarmist by nature, an aristocrat by party, he carried to an unreasonable excess his horror of popular turbulence. The quiet atrocity of Sparta did not shock him in the same manner; for he hated tumult more than crimes. He was desirous to find restraints which might curb the passions of the multitude; and he absurdly fancied that ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... crevices come foaming down, And turned to rest me in the herdsmen's cots, Where I was host and guest, until I gain'd The cheerful homes and social haunts of men. Already through these distant vales had spread The rumour of this last atrocity; And wheresoe'er I went, at every door, Kind words saluted me and gentle looks. I found these simple spirits all in arms Against our ruler's tyrannous encroachments. For as their Alps through each succeeding ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... no panic, and the women were splendid." How often one has read that in these days of atrocity at sea! We were to realize it now; the women were indeed splendid. There was no crying or screaming or hysteria, or wild inquiries. They were perfectly calm and collected: none of them showed the least fear, even under fire. ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes
... the none too peaceful times of the Middle Ages. Christianity hurled itself at Mohammedanism in expedition after expedition for nearly three centuries. Millions of men perished in battle, hunger, and disease, and every atrocity the imagination can conceive of disgraced the warriors of the cross. When one crusade failed, a papal bull instigated the next. Taxes were imposed to defray the expenses, and Europe was so drained of men and money that it was threatened ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... punished; meanwhile, the plain common sense of our mobs, if not of our magistracy, has pitied the offender, and perhaps acquitted him. But let some apparent murderer be caught, almost in the flagrant deed of his atrocity; let him, to the best of all human belief, have killed, disembowelled, and dismembered; let him have united the coolness of consummate craft to the boldest daring of iniquity, and straightway (though the generous crowd may hoot and hunt the wretch with yelling execration) he finds in law and lawyers, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... after detail of the plot for the overthrow of the king, and the means whereby it had been hoped to accomplish it, including the murder of the six chiefs who, it was believed, were powerful enough to render the scheme abortive. As the full, cold-blooded atrocity of the conspiracy became revealed, murmurs of anger and detestation, low at first, but louder as the story proceeded, began to run round the line of chiefs, while those who sat next the parties implicated edged away from them ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... it was God's turn: and He was not to be hoodwinked or deceived. Every sin would then come forth from its lurking place, the most rebellious against the divine will and the most degrading to our poor corrupt nature, the tiniest imperfection and the most heinous atrocity. What did it avail then to have been a great emperor, a great general, a marvellous inventor, the most learned of the learned? All were as one before the judgement seat of God. He would reward the ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... resulted, for a time, from the barbarous massacre of Saint Spiridion. The soldiers quarrelled and fought over the blood-stained spoil. The officers were occupied with mutual recriminations and excuses regarding their several shares in the atrocity. Karaiskakes found himself unable to establish order, and had to entreat Sir Richard Church to ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... temples; and for this deed, (which now-a-days would be called a perfidious murder,) the prophetess Deborah, in an inspired psalm, pronounces Jael to be "blessed above women," and glorifies her act by an elaborate description of its atrocity. As soon as I felt that I was bound to pass a moral judgment on this, I saw that as regards the Old Testament the battle was already lost. Many other things, indeed, instantly rose in full power upon me, especially the command to Abraham to slay his son. Paul ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... the king and high-handed violations of the laws of the land. Among these last the murder of Lady Neville was specified, and the deed was characterized in the severest terms as a crime of the deepest dye, and one committed under circumstances of great atrocity, although the author of the charges admitted that the details of the affair were ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... hundred leagues was a nightmare. "Robberies, murders, and all kinds of atrocity were perpetrated before, behind, and on both sides" of them; but they passed through it all as if travelling along an English highway. Even when met at the entrance of the Black Pass by a man, his face covered with blood, who besought him not to enter the pass, where he had just been ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... defenseless inhabitants of Africa, those inhabitants would not thereby gain; on the contrary, they would lose, for they would be handed over to the tender mercies of individual traders, operating with armies of reprobate bravos, and committing every atrocity to which the civilized barbarian is prone. The European governments cannot divest themselves of responsibility in regard to Africa. They must govern there, and the best that can be hoped is that they should govern with a minimum of ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... laid to the root thereof. The later witch prosecutions were not to be compared for extent and atrocity to the mediaeval ones; and first, as it would seem, in France, and gradually in other European countries, the old contempt of women was being replaced by admiration and trust. Such examples as that of Marguerite d'Angouleme did much, especially in the ...
— Women and Politics • Charles Kingsley
... precise,' &c. In forming a scale of crimes and punishments, two considerations have principal weight. 1. The atrocity of the crime. 2. The peculiar circumstances of a country, which furnish greater temptations to commit it, or greater facilities for escaping detection, The punishment must be heavier to counterbalance this. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... malignant and envious minister—a snake in the grass—a fly in the ointment of Prince Ahmad's beatitude! And to think of the old witch gaining access to the fairy palace— it was nothing less than an atrocity! And the tasks which she induces the king to set Prince Ahmad to perform—but they are all accomplished for him by his fairy bride. The only thing to regret—the fatal blemish in the tale—is the slaughter of the old king. Shabbar did right well to dash into the smallest pieces the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... deed was done, Romulus was at once overwhelmed with remorse and horror at the atrocity of the crime which he had been so suddenly led to commit. His anguish was so great for a time that he refused all food, and he could not sleep. He caused the dead body of Remus, and also those of Faustulus and of Plistinus, ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... not necessary to declare that it is the best thing. Children must be taken care of, but it is altogether probable that there are too many of them. Some people think that opinion several times more atrocious than murder in the first degree; but I see no atrocity in it, and there is none. I think there is an immense quantity of nonsense about, regarding this thing. For my part, I don't credit half of it. I believe in Malthus,—a great deal more than Malthus did himself. The prosperity ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... originally been a feature of the Aztec worship. But about 200 years before the arrival of the Spanish invaders was the beginning of this religious atrocity, and at last no public festival was considered complete without ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... for the toothpick habit! Let no one ever tell me that that atrocity is American! Here it goes with every course, and without the pretended decency of holding one's serviette before one's mouth, which, in my opinion, is a mere affectation, ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... "rough-and-tumble?" It consists of clawing, scratching, kicking, hair-pulling, and every other atrocity, for which, I am happy to think, a boy at an English school would be well flogged by the master, and sent to Coventry by his companions. Yet, here was as nice a looking lad as one could wish to see, evidently ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... more potential draught of guilt than this With more of wormwood in it! ... ... Courage, Firmilian! for the hour has come When thou canst know atrocity indeed, By smiting him that was thy dearest friend. And think not that he dies a vulgar death— 'Tis poetry demands ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... industry, you have been performing one of the noblest actions of humanity. To knock a man on the head is neither virtuous nor guilty, but it depends upon the language applied to the action to make it murder or glory. Why not say, then, that you have testified the courage of a hero, rather than the atrocity of a ruffian? This is ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... turned, and it could be that it was the black race which violently and lastingly triumphed in the bloody revolution at Wilmington, North Carolina, a few years ago, what would not we excuse to the white man who made the atrocity the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... buildings comparable to them, or was it to console the London mob for their disappointment that Paris was neither pillaged nor burned?" It can hardly be doubted that the flames which consumed the American capital lighted the way to peace. The atrocity of war was again brought vividly to the view of nations whose sole yearning was for peace. Far from discouraging the American commissioners, it fortified their resolution. They knew that it would unite the people of the ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... there was considerable excitement in Mosby's Confederacy when the news of this atrocity was received. The senior officers managed to restore a measure of calmness, however, and it was decided to wait until Mosby returned before taking any action on ...
— Rebel Raider • H. Beam Piper
... to pay them, under ordinary circumstances, certain sums monthly, to prevent their inventing or exaggerating cases of abuse of power or neglect of duty on their part; but, when they happen to be really guilty of great acts of atrocity, or great neglect of duty, they are required to pay extraordinary sums, not only to the news-writers, who are especially accredited to them, but to all others who happen to be in the neighbourhood ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... push from the throne of your brain the cowled form of superstition—then read the holy bible, and you will be amazed that you ever, for one moment, supposed a being of infinite wisdom, goodness and purity to be the author of such ignorance and of such atrocity. ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... all that humanity calls right or even just, the historians produce a saving conception of "greatness." "Greatness," it seems, excludes the standards of right and wrong. For the "great" man nothing is wrong, there is no atrocity for which a "great" man ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... that Henry started the African slave-trade of European nations, that must not be understood as the full-blooded atrocity of the West Indian planters, for the use he made of his prisoners was utterly different, though his action was the cause of incessant abuse of the best end by ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... faith as an Infidel, and therefore common property. These bandits could offer no such excuse, for they plundered people of their own faith and blood. They were Mexicans, a hybrid mixture of Spanish atrocity and Indian cruelty. They numbered from ten to twenty, and for several months terrorized the Mexican inhabitants on both sides of the river. On the American side they were particular never to molest any one except those ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... than enough, to cover his expenditure; the other is in absolute indigence. And so to monarchs, there are not a few, I perceive, so ravenous of wealth that they will outdo the veriest vagrants in atrocity. Want (57) prompts a thousand crimes, you must admit. Why do men steal? why break burglariously into houses? why hale men and women captive and make slaves of them? Is it not from want? Nay, there are monarchs ...
— The Symposium • Xenophon
... arms and head made this very difficult, and presently there rolled upon the scene a policeman, large, Irish and chivalrous. It took Patrolman McDonogh but a second, but one glance at the tableaux and one whisper from the crowd to understand that a kidnapping atrocity ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... law seems, because we have developed ideas and sentiments which are opposed to this demoniac Nature,—much as voluntary movement is opposed to the blind power of gravitation. But the possession of such ideas and sentiments does but aggravate the atrocity of our situation, without lessening in the least the ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... Spanish chieftain failed to reconcile his countrymen to the atrocity of his proceedings. It is singular to observe the difference between the tone assumed by the first chroniclers of the transaction, while it was yet fresh, and that of those who wrote when the lapse of a few years had shown the tendency of public opinion. ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... and commanded both that the slave should be set free, that every crystal vase in the house of Vedius should be broken in his presence and that the fish pond should be filled up. Even women inflicted upon their female slaves punishments of the most cruel atrocity for faults of the most venial character. A brooch wrongly placed, a tress of hair ill-arranged, and the enraged matron orders her slave to be lashed and crucified. If her milder husband interferes, she not only justifies the cruelty, but asks in amazement: "What! is a slave ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... prepared for the event, with tiers upon tiers of seats arranged on every side for the accommodation of the thousands of spectators; and to this inspiring performance came many noble ladies, decked out as if for a bull fight, and eager to witness each act of atrocity in its slightest detail. The names of scores of the women who perished in this way might be cited to show that from all classes the Church was claiming its victims; and even after death, condemnation ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... disgrace. Nearly every Capital there was in possession of its enemy some often and long. But diabolical as they paint that enemy, he burnt neither public edifices nor private dwellings. It was reserved for England to show that Bonaparte, in atrocity, was an infant to their ministers and their generals. They are taking his place in the eyes of Europe, and have turned into our channel all its good will. This will be worth the million of dollars the repairs of their conflagrations will cost ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... universally known, that a fresh rebellion had been in agitation so late as 1752. LOCKHART. He was executed on June 7, 1753. Gent. Mag. xxiii. 292. Lord Campbell (Lives of the Chancellors, v. 109) says:—'I regard his execution as a wanton atrocity.' Horace Walpole, however, inclined to the belief that Cameron was engaged in a new scheme of rebellion. Walpole's Memoirs of George ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... nobody good." We had earnestly desired, during two terms of service in the Levant, to visit Egypt, but some untoward event had always prevented us from doing so. A threatened massacre at Damascus, some consul's squabble at Sidon or Haiffa, or some fresh atrocity reported in the course of the Cretan insurrection, or the desire on the part of our minister to have "the flag shown" at Constantinople, had invariably barred us from getting to the south. But here we were at last within sight of Pompey's Pillar, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... was distracted for the moment by the arrival of Edith Symmes, and the little group paid her the momentary attention of an awed silence, for she had perpetrated what was, perhaps, the greatest atrocity of her life—a vivid scarlet gown which made her face ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... that, as the wicked arts of this regicide and tyrannous faction increase in number, variety, and atrocity, the desire of punishing them becomes more and more faint, and the talk of an indemnity towards them every day stronger and stronger. Our ideas of justice appear to be fairly conquered and overpowered by guilt, when it is grown gigantic. It is not ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... that anything so wonderful and so captivating was never heard. He was found guilty, nevertheless, and sentenced to death. Execution was deferred, and he was taken to the Tower. The two Catholic priests, less fortunate, were executed with the usual atrocity; and Lord Cobham and two others were pardoned on the scaffold. His Sowship thought it wonderfully knowing in him to surprise the people by pardoning these three at the very block; but, blundering, and bungling, as usual, he ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... over forty Negroes were killed. The result of that massacre was that out of a Republican registered vote of 2,894 only one was cast for General Grant. Similar scenes were enacted throughout the State, varying in extent and atrocity according to the magnitude of the Republican majority ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... attached to a thin white line, waving to and fro in mid air, and soon triced up to the very top of the royal pole, and jammed hard to the truck. Is this believed? Perhaps not; yet no statement was ever more true. At the time when this atrocity was perpetrating not an officer interfered. My sufferings were intense. The sun was still hot, my hat had fallen off in my involuntary ascent, and, as the ship was running before the wind under her topsails, the motion at that high point ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... "naught was everything, and everything was naught;" till I began to have doubts whether the riot had ever occurred at all—and, indeed, doubts of my own identity also, when I had heard the counsel for the crown impute to me personally, as in duty bound, every seditious atrocity which, had been committed either in England or France since 1793. To him, certainly, I did listen tolerably; it was "as good as a play." Atheism, blasphemy, vitriol-throwing, and community of women, were among my lighter offences—for had I not ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... no trouble. They either entered the service of the South or held their peace. I can recall but one instance of a Northern man who had breathed the free air of Minnesota going over to the South, and the atrocity of his case was aggravated by the fact that he was an officer in the United States army. I speak of Major Pemberton, who at the breaking out of the war was stationed at Fort Ridgely in this state, in command of a battery of artillery. He was ordered to Washington to aid in the defense ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... that a large part of the Congo atrocity was a German scheme. The head and front of the expose movement was Sir Roger Casement of London. He sought to foment a German-financed revolution in Ireland and was hanged as a ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... tumult roused by this atrocity having been appeased by the princess, who possessed the most consummate skill in the art of persuasion, there was offered on the tower a burnt sacrifice to the infernal deities, the main ingredients of which were mummies, rhinoceros' ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... give a series of discourses on "The Evolution of the Doctrine of Blood and Iron," "Infantile Mortality and its Promotion," "Philosophic Doubts regarding the Value of Mercy," illustrated by photographs taken in Louvain; and a course of lectures on "The Debt of Art to Atrocity" will be delivered by Professor Blutwurst, who occupies the ATTILA Chair of Anatomy in the University ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various
... old church remains, and the famous Solesmes sculpture, dating from the sixteenth century. Unfortunately, there are some quite disastrous windows in the apse: the Virgin between Saint Peter and Saint Paul; modern glass in its most piercing atrocity. But, then, where is decent glass ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... suffered them to fall into disuse. He enforced the necessity of our unremitting attention to personal cleanliness, and to the duties of morality; he dwelt upon the degradation and sin of drunkeness; described the meanness and atrocity of theft; and the high degree of caution against temptation necessary for men who were perhaps standing on the very brink of the grave; and added that, in his opinion, even sailors might as well refrain from profane language, while they were ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... his first and last public atrocity. He had killed men since, but always when they were alone with him. No one had seen him at his murders. He would have been destroyed when his racing days were over, but he possessed the ability to transmit a large measure of his ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... death pronounced by the court-martial, and confirmed by your Grace, was not executed; and I, having done all I could to bring the murtherer of my unfortunate brothers to condign punishment, was satisfied to pursue him no further, tho' the atrocity of the crime committed against the law of nations would have affoarded me ground to have prosecuted him in any country where he could have been found. But to my surprize and sorrow, I have of late been informed that Lieutenant Sinclair has added to the repeated murthers the impudence of returning, ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... atrocity appertains to this rebellion. There is nothing whatever that its leaders have scrupled at. Wholesale massacres and torturings, wholesale starvation of prisoners, firing of great cities, piracies of the cruelest kind, persecution of the most hideous character and of vast extent, and finally assassination ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... generally believed he had found in Francis Albert, Duke of Saxe Lauenburg. The rank of the latter permitted him a free access to the king's person, while it at the same time seemed to place him above the suspicion of so foul a deed. This prince, however, was in fact not incapable of this atrocity, and he had moreover sufficient ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... thinks, will prove that MacNaghten is a Chartist, that he has attended political meetings at Glasgow, and that he has taken a violent part in politics. He yesterday saw a Presbyterian clergyman, who prayed with him; who pointed out the atrocity of his crime, the innocence of his victim, the pangs of sorrowing relatives, and who exhorted him to contrition and repentance. Some impression was made at the moment; but his general demeanour is marked by cold reserve ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... foundation of almost all modern codes. With all their discernment of justice and love of order, the Romans, however, were too often hard and cruel. Their history is stained here and there with acts of unexampled atrocity. In private life, too, when the rigor of self-control gave way, they sunk into extremes of vulgar sensuality. If, compared with the Greeks, they stood morally at a greater height, they might fall to ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... Catholics," p. 375. The atrocity of such a plot seems incredible. We should have classed it at once with the Maria Monk story, and other fabulous horrors of Dr. Brownlee's Protestant Society, but that we find it in the sober and dispassionate pages of Bishop O'Gorman's History, which is derived ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... to excuse and palliate his conduct toward Scotland. They have glossed over his crimes and tried to explain away the records of his deeds of savage atrocity, and to show that his claims to that kingdom, which had not a shadow of foundation save from the submission of her Anglo-Norman nobles, almost all of whom were his own vassals and owned estates in England, were just and ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... meted out to him within it; and his proposed second treachery is based on sound policy.—We may observe, in passing, that the self-righteous governor takes no steps to prevent, by a timely warning, the massacre of the enemy's soldiers, availing himself of the atrocity, instead, to secure a victory for his side.—Consequently, when the final doom does fall upon Barabas, we have begun to be vaguely doubtful whether it is altogether deserved. Yet we feel that it is impossible to let him live. Thus the conclusion, however horrible spectacularly, ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... to manage the affairs of its subject peoples with an eye single to its own material gain, and it may with equal confidence be counted on that in the long run no unadvised excesses will be practised. Of course, an excessive adventure in atrocity and predation, due to such human infirmity in its agents or in its directorate as has been shown in various recent episodes, is to be looked for now and again; but these phenomena would come in by way of fluctuating variations from the authentic routine, ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... Opposition, were not to her liking; or whether the perusal of the Court news had disturbed her serenity; whether it was that the latest discovery in tenors was reported stricken with sore throat that grieved her; or whether it was the last atrocity in crime that made her flesh creep and so disquieted her, it was impossible to say; but that Lady Mary fidgeted considerably over her journal was a fact past dispute. A looker-on, had there been one, would have noticed that her ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... three advisers, Balaam, Jethro, and Job, how he might be healed of the awful malady that had seized upon him. Balaam spoke, saying, "Thou canst regain thy health only if thou wilt slaughter Israelitish children and bathe in their blood." Jethro, averse from having a share in such an atrocity, left the king and fled to Midian. Job, on the other hand, though he also disapproved of Balaam's counsel, kept silence, and in no wise protested against it,[101] wherefor God punished him with a year's suffering.[102] ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... Lindsay was hastening. Deeply interested in the condition of a people whose welfare was so dear to his heart, she had eagerly read all the mission reports, and thus imbibed a keen aversion to the Sepoys, who had become synonymous with treachery and ingenious atrocity. ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... was not till the ardour of his flight had abated, that Alfred could fully realise that his unhappy brother was committed to a deed of scandalous atrocity, and the discovery was hard for him to bear. The strong impression which his dream had made upon him—an impression that he was to be the means of saving his brother from some great sin— came upon him now with greater force than ever, and was of great comfort. The identity ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... and, gathering around their council fires, they clashed their weapons, shrieked their war-whoop, and excited themselves into an intensity of rage. The defenseless settlers along the banks of the Connecticut were now at the mercy of the savages, who were roused to the commission of every possible atrocity. No pen can describe the scenes of woe which, during the autumn and winter of 1636 and 1637, transpired in the solitudes of the wilderness. The Indians were every where in marauding bands. At midnight, startled ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... he says, "can still sharpen daggers. There is within the nation a people which has no dealings with honest folk, which does not belong to the age, which is inaccessible to the progress of reason, and over which the atrocity of fanaticism preserves its empire, like certain diseases which attack only the vilest populace." The best monks are the worst, and those who sing "Pervigilium Veneris" in place of matins are less ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... The only atrocity of this early warfare was the taking of a small scalp lock by the leader, as a semi-religious trophy of the event; and as long as it was preserved, the Sioux warriors wore mourning for their dead enemy. Not all the tribes took scalps. It was only after the bounties offered ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... I remarked, calmly. "But, as you know, even the Romans with all their reputed hardness of heart, were too conscientious to tolerate human sacrifices. And I, being, in the present instance, the pontifex, would never be a party to such an atrocity." ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... to the Rev. John Rankin, of Ripley, Ohio thirteen years since, containing a description of the cutting up of a slave with a broad axe; beginning at the feet and gradually cutting the legs, arms, and body into pieces! This diabolical atrocity was committed in the state of Kentucky, in the year 1807. The perpetrators of the deed were two brothers, Lilburn and Isham Lewis, NEPHEWS OF PRESIDENT JEFFERSON. The writer of this having been informed by Mr. Dickey, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... executive powers of conscience watchful, in deterring the individual from the crime, or in reproving and punishing him if he committed it. But the mere precept would have but little effect in exhibiting to him the full atrocity of the sin, in comparison with an anecdote or a story which detailed its commission. But even this would not be so powerful as the effect produced by a murder committed in a neighbouring street, and still more were it perpetrated in his own presence. The necessary inference to be drawn from this ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... Kroonstad Native Location for an outrage upon a coloured woman. He arrested her in the location ostensibly because she could not produce her residential pass, and in the field between the location and the town through which he had to escort her to prison he perpetrated the atrocity. In sentencing him to four years' hard labour, the Chief Justice said for a similar crime upon a white woman a black man would be liable ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... the man shot in the afternoon. That famous long shot had indeed appalled the beholders. The man in utter security had been struck down, in full view of his friends, dropping with a joke on his lips, and they seemed to see in the act an atrocity which had stirred a bitter rage. That relation of his, Si-Lapa by name, was then with Doramin in the stockade only a few feet away. You who know these chaps must admit that the fellow showed an unusual pluck by volunteering to carry the message, alone, in the ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... themselves in the two wars with Great Britain, in the last and in the present century, and in the Declaration of Independence in 1776, when an enumeration was made of the wrongs which justified the revolt from Great Britain. The climax of atrocity was deemed to be reached only when the English monarch was denounced as having 'excited ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... mine the direction of her eyes, and saw my odious cousin, Dudley, in a flagrant pair of cross-barred peg-tops, and what Milly before her reformation used to call other 'slops' of corresponding atrocity, approaching our refined little party with great strides. I really think that Milly was very nearly ashamed of him. I certainly was. I had no apprehension, however, of the scene which ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... zealots in whom fanaticism had extinguished all reason and charity, that the Roman Catholic was regarded as a man the very tenderness of whose conscience might make him a false witness, an incendiary, or a murderer, as a man who, where his Church was concerned, shrank from no atrocity and could be bound by no oath. If there were in that age two persons inclined by their judgment and by their temper to toleration, those persons were Tillotson and Locke. Yet Tillotson, whose indulgence for various kinds of schismatics and heretics brought on him the reproach of heterodoxy, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... us also with important lessons. It has proved what a creature man is! how devoted he is to his own interest! to what a length of atrocity he can go, unless fortified by religious principle! But as if this part of the prospect would be too afflicting, it has proved to us, on the other hand, what a glorious instrument he may become in the hands of his Maker; and that a little virtue, ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... set close to the street but wide side yards separated it from its newer neighbors. It was pretentiously ugly with its mansard roof, intricate porches, balconies and bay windows that had evidently been added after the original architectural atrocity had been committed. At her first glance as the pert and frilly maid opened the door it seemed as though the whole house were filled with innumerable elaborate draperies and fat-framed paintings and much stuffed furniture. While she waited for the maid to announce her, her quick ears caught ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... are many acts of shame—there are many ordinances of monarchs, and laws which have become a byword and a hissing to the nations. But when we consider the country and the age, I ask fearlessly, what act of shame, what ordinance of monarch, what law, can compare in atrocity with this enactment of ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... him the thought of what Simon and Guy had made themselves; the thought of his father's grief at former doings of theirs, which had fallen so far short of the atrocity of this. He knew that his father had rather have seen each one of his five sons slain, or helpless cripples like the firstborn, than have been thus avenged. Nay, had he this morning prayed for the pardon of a crime, to which he would thus become a ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of any kind, and, indeed, with a certain air of gratification, as though they were performing some peculiarly high and sacred duty. The mildness and benevolence of their faces seemed actually heightened, and the perpetration of this unutterable atrocity seemed to affect these people in the same way in which the performance of acts of ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... being neither legitimately called, nor legitimately chosen, and outraging the sentiments of nineteen twentieths of the community, the illegal election provided for can be regarded only as the crowning atrocity of the long series of atrocities to which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... ring of our horses' hoofs upon the road. And yet this sinister excitement hammered, from somewhere, at me as I had never felt it before. It was as though the lovely evening were a painted scene lowered to hide some atrocity. ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... sensibility nor sullen brutality, and at the last swung out of life from the gallows with the settled air of a man who feels he has lost the game at which he played, and that he may as well pay the stake calmly? There was a true British composure about the unutterable atrocity of this villain—murderer he was, and a most detestable murderer too—but his character belongs to our country as fully as that of our heroes. Hunt and Probert were pitiful wretches, fit for the Bicetre. Doubtless the agony of Hunt's feelings until his reprieve came, would, if properly divided ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... baggage, who could not be prevented from mixing themselves up with the troops. The Afghans occupied the cantonments as portion after portion was evacuated by our people, rending the air with their exulting cries, and committing every kind of atrocity. It was late in the afternoon before the long train of camels following the main body had cleared the cantonments; and meanwhile the rear-guard was massed outside, in the space between the rampart and the canal, among the chaos of already abandoned baggage. ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... shoot at their sergeants. Almost every year there is one crime peculiar to it; a sort of annual which overruns the country but does not bloom again. Unquestionably the Press has a great deal to do with these epidemics. Let a newspaper once give an account of some out-of-the-way atrocity that has the charm of being novel, and certain depraved minds fasten to it like leeches. They brood over and revolve it—the idea grows up, a horrid phantasmalian monomania; and all of a sudden, in a hundred different places, the one seed sown ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of the inquisitorial principle which reigned more openly in other countries. In the majority of cases, the monitory, which had, as a fact, been instituted in order to encourage informers in the name of religion, was a marvel of ridiculous atrocity; it frequently set forth the crime and all the imaginary circumstances the plaintiffs were eager to prove; it was, in short, the publication of a ready-made case, which gave the first knave that came a chance ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... It made her sick. She felt that she must go out of this school, this torture-place. And she hated the schoolmaster, thoroughly and finally. The brute, had he no shame? He should never be allowed to continue the atrocity of this bullying cruelty. Then Hill came crawling back, blubbering piteously. There was something desolate about this blubbering that nearly broke her heart. For after all, if she had kept her class in proper discipline, this would never have happened, Hill would never have ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... The atrocity of this slander was too much. With a little cat-like yowl she went for him, dropping the broken photograph ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... many a town that has been victoriously carried, might have been found impregnable. But one must ever deplore the disgraceful scenes enacted in the streets and houses of Badajoz, Ciudad Rodrigo, and St Sebastian. Unsurpassed in atrocity, they remain everlasting blots upon the bright laurels gathered by the British in the Peninsula. And it is small palliation, that under similar circumstances, the armies of all nations have acted in like ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... fort at Calcutta and locked 146 Englishmen overnight in a stifling prison—the "Black Hole" of Calcutta—from which only twenty-three emerged alive the next morning. Clive, hastening from Madras, chastised Suraj for this atrocity, and forced him to give up Calcutta. And since by this time Great Britain and France were openly at war, Clive did not hesitate to capture the near-by French post of Chandarnagar. His next move was to give active aid to a certain Mir Jafir, a pretender to ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... who had so often indirectly proposed to me their daughters; and if there was anyone more virulent than the rest, I hardly need say that it was Lady Maelstrom, who nearly killed her job horses in driving about from one acquaintance to another, to represent my unheard-of atrocity in presuming to deceive my betters. Harcourt, who had agreed to live with me—Harcourt, who had praised my magnanimity in making the disclosure—even Harcourt fell off; and about a fortnight after I had arrived in town, told ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... reaction of martial tyranny and foreign oppression, such as we of this generation have beheld in the double conquest of Paris by insulted and outraged Christendom. But nothing of all this will be found in Thucydides—he is as cool as a cucumber upon every act of atrocity; whether it be the bloody abuse of power, or the bloody retribution from the worm that, being trampled on too long, turns at last to sting and to exterminate—all alike he enters in his daybook and his ledger, posts them up to the account of brutal Spartan ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... duty to preserve it. Who shall assign limits to the achievements of free minds and free hands under the protection of this glorious Union? No treason to mankind since the organization of society would be equal in atrocity to that of him who would lift his hand to destroy it. He would overthrow the noblest structure of human wisdom, which protects himself and his fellow-man. He would stop the progress of free government and involve his country either in anarchy or despotism. He would extinguish ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... by talking to me of your master, you reptile! Your master is the German government, of which His Majesty the Kaiser is supreme overlord! There is a picture of your master!" He pointed with a thumb over his shoulder to the full-length atrocity in oils ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... human beings under pretext of necessity and of interest in my behalf. I refer now to those remorseless men who came first and tore up the beautiful lawn and cut away the roots of trees and digged a deep, long pit in which to lay sewer pipes; who came again and committed another similar atrocity under plea of laying a water-pipe; who came still again and for the third time abused and seared and seamed and blighted that lawn for the alleged purpose of laying a gas-pipe! O civilization! what crimes are committed in ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... courage allied with so much dissimulation and genius. How cunningly he had found them out! How well he had known how to avenge himself! To be the master, he had only to will it. In a certain way she rejoiced in the strange atrocity of this scene; she felt something like a bitter pride in being one of the actors in it. At the same time she was transported with rage and sorrow in thinking that she had had this man in her power, that he had been at ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... This particular atrocity of his has no interest for the story, beyond the fact that it was the one that led to his separation from his mother, and that it accounts for the very slight knowledge that she seems to have had of the details of his conviction and deportation. It must have happened ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... to be found in the "Richmond Enquirer" for September 6, 1831. It is an indignant denunciation of precisely these outrages; and though he refuses to give details, he supplies their place by epithets: "revolting,"—"inhuman and not to be justified,"—"acts of barbarity and cruelty,"—"acts of atrocity,"—"this course of proceeding dignifies the rebel and the assassin with the sanctity of martyrdom." And he ends by threatening martial law upon all future transgressors. Such general orders are not issued except in rather extreme cases. And in the parallel columns ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... do full justice to a political opponent. He used for many years to prepare one speech, in each session, in which he went over the political issues of the two parties in a violent and extreme fashion. He would give us the whole history of the year and point out the imperfections and weakness and atrocity of the party in power in a most unsparing fashion. This speech he would frank home to Missouri. He seemed to think his duty as a Democratic politician was done, and he would betake himself to statesmanship the rest of the year. I think he has of late discontinued that practice. ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... innocent and helpless people. In Asia Minor the fanatical spirit raged with more ferocity than in European Turkey. At Smyrna a general massacre of the Christians took place under circumstances of peculiar atrocity, and fifteen thousand were obliged to flee to the islands of the Archipelago to save their lives. The Island of Cyprus, which once had a population of more than a million, reduced at the breaking out of the insurrection to seventy thousand, was nearly depopulated; the archbishop ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... interest by any trial in the French Causes Celebres or the English State Trials. Deep sensation and intense curiosity were excited through the whole country, at the time of the occurrence of the event, not only by the atrocity of the crime, but by the position of the victim, and the romantic incidents in the detection and fate of the assassin ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... was so perfectly stupefied by drink, as well as the atrocity, that he simply burst into a maudlin laugh, when I looked at him for an explanation of the charge. I, surely, was not implicated in it; yet, when I demanded the cause of the assault upon my person, in connection with the affair, Brulot ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... importance, which, however, was the first to be accomplished. To the honour of the cause which Morelos upheld, it was of urgent necessity to put an end to the depredations of the two notorious guerilleros, Arroyo and Bocardo; whose deeds of cruel atrocity were rapidly producing the effect of rendering the insurrection as odious to its partisans as to its enemies. The force which these two leaders had under their command was as little known as the whereabouts in which they might be found; but their bloody deeds had rendered them as much dreaded ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... were prisoners in Mexico were ill-treated he would execute two thousand Spaniards and send him their heads. Drake never wasted thought about reprisals or made frothy apologetic speeches as to what would happen to those with whom he was at religious war if they molested his fellow-countrymen. He met atrocity with atrocity. He believed it to be his mission to avenge the burning of British seamen and the Spanish and Popish attempts on the life of his virgin sovereign. That he knew her to be an audacious flirt, an insufferable miser, and an incurable political intriguer whose ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... bright summer morning, 15th July, when fifteen hundred people, chiefly women, were engaged peacefully in marketing in a village on the banks of the Lualaba, and while Dr. Livingstone was sauntering about, a murderous fire was opened on the people, and a massacre ensued of such measureless atrocity that he could describe it only by saying that it gave him the impression of being in hell. The event was so superlatively horrible, and had such an overwhelming influence on Livingstone, that we copy at full length the description of it ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... and close the door. "Casey had no right. It was a betrayal. If the man were bent on this infernal crime—put the atrocity of it aside for a moment—call it just an ordinary crime; . . . but why need he have written that letter? Why involve him? Well, not involve, perhaps; still there ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
