"In cold blood" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... children at her side, that, as a mother, she might appeal to their hearts. The sight moved the sympathies of the multitude; and execrating, as they did, Maria Antoinette, whom they had long been taught to hate, they could not have the heart, in cold blood, to massacre these innocent children. Thousands of voices simultaneously shouted, "Away with the children!" Maria, apparently without the tremor of a nerve, led back her children, and again appearing upon the balcony alone, folded ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... flounders like a caught fish, stares hard at the map of North America on the wall, and sits down in disgrace. And when the other boys are chasing you and pulling off your hair ribbons, he mopes off in a corner of the school yard, though he looks as if he'd like to shoot down all the other boys in cold blood." ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... effort of the Negro to help himself rather than depend on other human agencies for the protection which could come through his own strong arm; for the spirit of Nat Turner never was completely quelled. He struck ruthlessly, mercilessly, it may be said, in cold blood, innocent women and children; but the system of which he was the victim had less mercy in subjecting his race to the horrors of the "middle passages" and the endless crimes against justice, humanity and virtue, then perpetrated throughout ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... their number are missing, and knowing that some of them are pretty sure to make a clean breast of it, they will hesitate to complete their crime. It is one thing to rob a man in the streets, quite another to murder him in cold blood. There is likely to be a good deal of difference of opinion among them, some of the more desperate being in favor of carrying the thing through, but others are sure to be against it, and nothing may ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... mother regularly every week, telling her most of my doings. She knew all my friends by name. I dare say she formed in her mind notions of what sort of people they were. Thus I had frequently mentioned Agnes and her family in my letters. But you can't write even to your mother and say in cold blood: 'I think I am beginning to fall in love with Agnes,' 'I think Agnes likes me,' 'I am mad on her,' 'I feel certain she likes me,' 'I shall propose to her on such a day.' You can't do that. At least I couldn't. Hence it had ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... deefault of jestice," he made response, "an' I don't believe any co'te could hardly err in a case like this one.... Ken Thornton war my brother-in-law an' him an' me loved one another—but ther man he kilt in cold blood war my own brother by blood—an' I loved him more. A crime like thet calls out louder fer punishment then one by a feller ye didn't hev no call ter trust—an' hit stirs a man's hate deeper down. I aims ter use all ther power I've got, an' spend every cent I've got, ef ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... there burns a more passionate hatred of a barbarous enemy. "Push open this window, enter this house, talk with any person whatever whom you may happen to meet, and they will tell you of the torture of old men, carried off as hostages and murdered in cold blood, or of the agonies of fear deliberately inflicted on old and frail women, ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... previously his father had appeared to be bracing all his intellect to a problem that struck Edwin as entirely simple, so now Edwin seemed to be bracing all his intellect to another aspect of the same problem. Time, revenging his father! ... What! Go across to the Dragon and in cold blood demand Mr Enoch Peake, and then parley with Mr Enoch Peake as one man with another! He had never been inside the Dragon. He had been brought up in the belief that the Dragon was a place of sin. The Dragon was included in the generic term—'gin-palace,' and quite probably in the Siamese-twin ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... or two things I've learned about Mr. Lidgerwood: he doesn't often hit when he's mad, and he doesn't take back anything he says in cold blood. I'm afraid ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... was already night. Then, rising, he walked slowly homewards, wearied and spent in spirit. As he went he bound up his hand that was still running with blood. His coat was torn, his hat lost, and his face scratched right across with briars. Now in cold blood he began to reflect on what he had done and to repent bitterly having set his wife free. He had betrayed her so that now, from his act, she must lead the life of a wild fox for ever, and must undergo all the rigours and hardships of the climate, and all the hazards of a hunted creature. When ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett
... not, as we think proper or reasonable. We have no way of verifying the propositions by the trial of our senses. There they lie, to be received by us in the construction that first suggests itself to us, or not. They are something like an agreeable imagination or fiction: and a sober observer, in cold blood, will be disposed deliberately to weigh both sides of the question, and to judge whether the probability lies in favour of the actual affirmation of the millions of millions of miles, and the other incredible propositions of the travelling of light, and the rest, which even the most cautious ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... is introduced into history, which by means of selection and omission can be made as fictitious as any fiction. Twenty historians mention the way in which the maddened Christian mob murdered the Moslems after the capture of Jerusalem, for one who mentions that the Moslem commander commanded in cold blood the murder of some two hundred of his most famous and valiant enemies after the victory of Hattin. The former cannot be shown to have been the act of Tancred, while the latter was quite certainly ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... persons, it is said, suffered death, or utmost hardships, for their faith in Jesus Christ. Of this number, 7,000 went into voluntary banishment; 2,500 were shipped to distant lands; 800 were outlawed; 680 were killed in battle, or died of their wounds; 500 were murdered in cold blood; 362 were, by form of law, executed. We have no account of the number that perished in shipwrecks, or succumbed to the horrors of transportation; nor of hundreds that were shot at sight by the soldiers who ravaged the country for years; nor of the thousands who wasted away through cold, hunger, and ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... can do it—not in cold blood, anyhow. Good-night! I'm going to sleep on it." He crossed to the door of his room, but as he went she noted that he slipped the knife and scabbard inside the bosom ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... you choose to consider Jael as one who lured a weary and unsuspecting soldier into her tent,—shewed him hospitality,—and when he was asleep, murdered him in cold blood,—you certainly cannot help recoiling from the inspired decision that, "Blessed above women shall Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite be." But I take the liberty of saying that this is quite the wrong way to read her story. You must begin it ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... features of Barkswell. Nevertheless his face was pale and drawn, and his breath came in short, hot gasps. It was no ordinary thing to take the life of a human being, much less to perpetrate the deed in cold blood. ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton
... that this is no concern of mine," said General D'Hubert, whose every word was dictated by a consummate delicacy of feeling. In anger, he could have killed that man, but in cold blood, he recoiled from humiliating this unreasonable being—a fellow soldier of the Grand Armee, his companion in the wonders and terrors of the military epic. "You don't set up the pretension of dictating to me what I am to do with what ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... of one of the prisoners. One, he said, never would be counted, and it would not only be very interesting to him, but would give me the opportunity of an instalment of revenge. He was greatly astounded when I told him that it was not our custom to avenge ourselves in cold blood, and that we left vengeance to the law and a higher power, of which he knew nothing. I added, however, that when I recovered I would take him out shooting with us, and he should kill an animal for himself, ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... Jean, flushing and throwing back her head, "ye speak what ye believe to be true, and many hard things are done in these black days on both sides; but after I have spoken with Claverhouse, I cannot think that he would have any good man killed in cold blood." ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... Nature claimed her own, when the voices of the deepest impulses of our bodies and souls were heard first and the chatterings about careers and social triumphs were left to settle themselves. Now folks only allow themselves to marry in cold blood, calculating with accuracy their bank accounts. My mother had been married six months at your age, and yet here I sit on a pedestal and have the impudence to talk to ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... the king, "is one of the senseless pleasures which excites the body but leaves the mind unemployed. We are more cruel than the wild beasts themselves. He who can murder an innocent animal in cold blood, would find it impossible to show mercy to his fellow-man. Is hunting a proper employment for a thinking creature? A gentleman who hunts can only be forgiven if he does so rarely, and then to distract his thoughts from sad and earnest business matters. It would be wrong to deny sovereigns ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... Boxer rebellion, and had just suppressed the Arab rising in German East Africa by the wholesale massacre of men, women, and children. As a preliminary von Trotha invited the Herero chiefs to come in and make peace, "as the war was now over," and promptly shot them in cold blood. Then he issued his notorious "extermination order," in terms of which no Herero—man, woman, child, or babe—was to receive mercy or quarter. "Kill every one of them," he said, ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... it over a lapful of red roses. I have been there and seen her. Is romance dead—is it? Go and look at Stefana!" But she held him back from going. "No, no, I didn't mean it! Not in cold blood—I didn't go in cold blood. You will have to take my ...
— Miss Theodosia's Heartstrings • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... of secrecy until completion. But the complete publicity in the negotiations makes it insistent that the great public, the country behind, and above all the leaders, must keep cool. The match must be played out in cold blood, and the end will be satisfactory if the peoples of the Monarchy support their representatives at ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... late to think of such things now. Had he yielded to the first murderous impulse, it would have been better. But he had never struck a man from behind and he knew that he could not do it in cold blood. Yet how much better it would have been! He would not be lying now on the rock, holding his breath and clenching his fists, listening to his Excellency the Count of San Miniato's love making. By this time the Count of San Miniato would be cold, ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... said, "you are a liar and a coward. You tried to butcher me because Marie loves me and hates you, and you want to force her to marry you. Yet I cannot shoot you down in cold blood as you deserve. I leave it to God to punish you, as, soon or late, He will, here or hereafter; you who thought to slaughter me and trust to the hyenas to hide your crime, as they would have done before morning. Get you gone before I change ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... attract the attention of Jacopo as soon as it was light enough for him to see it, and probably in his fury at being outwitted the man would rush frantically down, and try to get on board; but in that case Stephen should have to shoot him in cold blood, which he felt he could not bring himself ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... allow his soldiers to march to Angers, and to return within a week to inflict new cruelties on our poor peasants. M. Quetineau must surrender without any terms: the practices of our army must be his only guarantee, that his men will not be massacred in cold blood, as the unfortunate royalists are massacred when they fall into the hands ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... his activities for three years, during which space he was said to have murdered in cold blood over 500 Englishmen. He was eventually chased by Commander Jones in H.M.S. Asia, sixty-four guns, into Timor, and after a close siege of the town for twelve months, Angria was shot by one of the mob while ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... were glad enough to win back our freedom, and yet who had no wish to have murder on our souls. It was one thing to knock the soldiers over with their muskets in their hands, and it was another to stand by while men were being killed in cold blood. Eight of us, five convicts and three sailors, said that we would not see it done. But there was no moving Prendergast and those who were with him. Our only chance of safety lay in making a clean job of it, said he, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... house-burning, and all the accompanying outrages committed by an unrestrained army, flitted through the minds of the Secessionists. The story spread, and gained intensity with each repetition. "The Dutch are rising; we shall all be slain in cold blood!" was the cry, echoed from house to house. Not less than five thousand people fled from the city on that day, and as many more within the succeeding twenty-four hours. Carriages, wagons, drays, every thing that could transport ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... man, in good circumstances, who was weary of existence, and feeling disposed to take a journey to "that bourne whence no traveller returns," committed suicide. There may be many who would call it murder—but the community are murderers—they sometimes murder in cold blood. But lately a man was taken to the gallows, and they hung a young man because he had killed somebody else, and yet there are many persons who believe this is right, and that suicide, such as the speaker had selected, ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... her limbs over the fire till they are charred, etc., will be inconsolable over the death of a son for a long time, and will wear a curl, a tooth or a finger-joint of the dead as a valuable relic round his neck; and the same man who is capable of preparing a murder in cold blood for days, may, in some propitious evening hour, relate the most charming and poetic fairy-tales. A priest whom I met knew quite a number of such stories from a man whom he had digged alive out of the grave, where his relatives had buried him, thinking him old enough ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... less fat he has to carry the better, if you're in the way of heaving him over such hedges on to the hard road. In my best days I should never have faced a jump like that in cold blood," said the rector. ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... frequently despatched to Granada. Such was the resolution, or rather ferocity of the Moors, that Malaga closed its gates against the fugitives from Alora, after its surrender, and even massacred some of them in cold blood. The eagle eye of El Zagal seemed to take in at a glance the whole extent of his little territory, and to detect every vulnerable point in his antagonist, whom he encountered where he least expected it; cutting off his convoys, surprising his foraging parties, and retaliating by a devastating ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... himself, so rapturously sweet was the thought of her humiliation. Suddenly a new thought flashed through his mind. He had sworn that he would kill Captain Forest—lay him dead at her feet; but that, thanks to circumstances, would not now be necessary. The thought of killing a man in cold blood was not pleasant even to one of Don Felipe's temperament in his present state of mind. But should circumstances compel him to do so to complete his revenge, he would stop at nothing, let the consequences ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... Alice was eighteen it was time a suitable husband was found for her. Poor Alice! Balls, parties, receptions there would be, and trips to the seashore and all the other society manoeuvers, made ostensibly to introduce Alice to the world; but if the truth were told in cold blood all this was simply a parading of the girl before a number of rich and ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... systematic, malignant slaughter, in cold blood, continued for some two minutes. Jennka, who had at first been looking on with her customary malicious, disdainful air, suddenly could not stand it; she began to squeal savagely, threw herself upon the housekeeper, clutched her by the hair, tore off her chignon ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... Angela Wren had vanished and was probably captured; that Blakely had followed and was probably killed. "They might shoot Blakely in fair fight," said Stout, who knew him, and knew the veneration that lived for him in the hearts of the Indian leaders, "but they at least would never butcher him in cold blood. Their unrestrained young men might do it." Stout's awful dread, like that of every man and woman at Sandy, and every soldier in the field, was for Angela. The news, too, had been rushed to the general, and his orders were instant. "Find the ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... in red, blue and gold," replied the priest promptly with precision, "and in this striking, and even showy, costume he entered Himylaya Mansions under eight human eyes; he killed Smythe in cold blood, and came down into the street again carrying the ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... be some consolation for the loss of our old regards, if our reason were enlightened in proportion as our honest prejudices are removed. Wanting feelings for the honor of our country, we might then in cold blood be brought to think a little of our interests as individual citizens and our ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... will not take even such a jump as your garden wall," said Hardy, "in cold blood. I will give him a gallop down the field below, and then bring him up and jump the wall. You will see the grand spread of his ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... case-knife, to the horror of poor Philip, who concluded he was to be butchered in cold blood. Still, he did not dare to leave his seat, lest his jailer's threat should be carried into execution. He was happily undeceived, however, for from the floor of the closet Temple lifted a portion of a clothesline, and with some ...
— The Tin Box - and What it Contained • Horatio Alger
... Sultan Cabugatan of Maciu, seeing that his efforts to suppress the Americans were in vain, rushed into camp, bolo in hand, in wild, frenzied excitement, determined to slay in cold blood everybody wearing an American uniform. But his savage intentions were brought to a speedy termination by the troops, who, on seeing him approach them, rushed towards him and overpowered him. However, he unfortunately succeeded ...
— The Battle of Bayan and Other Battles • James Edgar Allen
... good risk, anyhow, and he could see that it was justified by success. When his conscience reproached him for pretending he knew more Latin than he did, he told it that he would soon know heaps. If all by himself, in cold blood, and for no particular reason, he could keep slogging away at a difficult language evening after evening, what couldn't he do with Aggie's love as an incentive? Why, he could learn enough Latin to read Virgil in two months, and to teach Aggie, too. And if any one had asked ...
— The Judgment of Eve • May Sinclair
... less uncertain whether or no this strange personage poisoned in Egypt an hospital—full of his own soldiers, and butchered in cold blood a garrison that had surrendered. But not to multiply instances; the battle of Borodino, which is represented as one of the greatest ever fought, was unequivocally claimed as a victory by both parties; nor is ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... tribes settled in the neighborhood because they refused to acknowledge his claims and believe in him as a prophet foretold in their Scriptures; two of these tribes were exiled, and the third exterminated in cold blood. In the second year after the Hegira[a], or flight from Mecca (the period from which the Mohammedan era dates), he began to plunder the caravans of the Coreish, which passed near to Medina on their mercantile journeys between Arabia and Syria. So popular did the cause of the now militant ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... successive condemnations in no way shook Balzac's confidence in his own genius. He wished to be a great man, and in spite of all predictions to the contrary he was going to be a great man. No doubt he re-read his tragedy in cold blood and laughed at it, realising all its emphatic and bombastic mediocrity. But it was a dead issue, and now with a new tensity of purpose he looked forward to the works which he previsioned in the nebulous and ardent future; no setback could turn ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... lesson, he learnt it then; no fresh laurels were brought out for him—and the old ones had withered already; people were beginning to feel slightly ashamed of their former raptures over 'Illusion,' or had transferred them to a newer object, and they could not be revived in cold blood, even for the person legitimately entitled. Jacob had intercepted the birthright, and for this Esau there was not even the ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... last resting-place of the victims was erected a cone-shaped cairn, twelve feet high. Against its northern base was a slab of rough granite with the following inscription: “Here 120 men, women, and children were massacred in cold blood, early in September, 1857. They were from Arkansas.” Surmounting the cairn was a cross of cedar, inscribed with the words: “Vengeance is mine; I ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... town of Stoneham, Maine. "This, ladies and gentlemen," said I, pointing my umbrella (that weapon which is indispensable to every troo American) to the stattoo, "this is a life-like wax figger of the notorious HENRY WILKINS, who in the dead of night murdered his Uncle EPHRAM in cold blood. A sad warning to all uncles havin' murderers for nephews. When a mere child this HENRY WILKINS was compelled to go to the Sunday-school. He carried no Sunday-school book. The teacher told him to go home and bring one. He went and ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 2 • Charles Farrar Browne
... a serious charge against you. The charge may be wholly false, of course, but officers and soldiers are sent, in the dead of the night, to arrest you. These wretches, when they serve wicked enough officials, shoot you down in cold blood. Then they lay beside your body a revolver in which are two or three discharged cartridges. They report, officially, that you resisted arrest and did your best to kill the members of the arresting party. This ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... She exists, that is quite enough. Her whole nature—her moral being—is antagonistic to mine. What is your opinion of a young woman who declares in cold blood that she means ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... that went up from America was one of anguish, but still more one of rage. This attack upon non-combatant travelers, citizens of a neutral state, had been callously premeditated and ruthlessly executed in cold blood. The German Government had given frigid warning, in a newspaper advertisement, of its intention to affront the custom of nations and the laws of humanity. A wave of the bitterest anti-German feeling swept down the Atlantic coast and out to the Mississippi; ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... showing the advantage of eyes. He went so far with that resolution as to seize his spade, and then he discovered a new thing about himself, and that was that it was impossible for him to hit a blind man in cold blood. ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... moving out towards the hills. This the boys were prepared for, and simultaneously with the movement the whole band—divided into parties of six, each of which had its fixed destination and instructions, all being alike solemnly pledged to take no life in cold blood, and to abstain from all unnecessary cruelties—started quickly ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... perfectly smooth line—almost too smooth. I could have wished for some difficulty, some obstruction; but there was none—absolutely none. The traitors walked deliberately into the trap set for them. Over and over again I asked myself quietly and in cold blood—was there any reason why I should have pity on them? Had they shown one redeeming point in their characters? Was there any nobleness, any honesty, any real sterling good quality in either of them to justify my consideration? And always the answer came, NO! Hollow to ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... self-conceited righteousness which he had before his conversion, made up of forms, and ceremonies, and doctrines, which made him narrow-hearted, bigoted, self-conceited, fierce, cruel, a persecutor; the righteousness which made him stand by in cold blood to see St. Stephen stoned. But the righteousness which is by faith in Christ is a loving heart, and a loving life, which every man will long to lead who believes really in Jesus Christ. For when he looks ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... waited in vain for somebody, were only too glad to have a victim thus extemporized to their hands, and if a few of the cooler and more humane bystanders had not interfered, the Englishman might have been murdered in cold blood and in broad daylight. As it was, he got off with no more serious injury than torn clothes and a mauling which may keep him to his bed ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... morally as he is intellectually stimulating. In a private letter to a friend who was praising his finest book, he whimsically mourns the fact that he must write for a living and hence feel like disowning so many of his children when in cold blood he scrutinizes his offspring. The letter in its entirety (it is unpublished) is proof, were any needed, that he had a high artistic ideal which kept him nobly dissatisfied with his endeavor. There is in him ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... also," said Mr. Punch, swelling out his chest. "You carn't murder a fellow-countryman in cold blood, now can you? Hi s'y, you couldn't do that, you know. We're both subjects of her gracious Majesty, we ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... like monkeys generally. An' then th' police'll get wind of it. Savey, policee-man, you fat old murderer? Th' price I'm askin' is cheap, Charley. How do I know but what these two poor boys has been murdered in cold blood? There's somethin' rotten in Denmark, my bully boy, an' you'll save time an' trouble an' money by ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... his warriors, I am sorry to tell you, would have butchered the prisoners in cold blood, had not Washington sternly forbidden them. They therefore consoled themselves as best they might for this disappointment by scalping the dead; which, however, yielded them but sorry comfort, as there were but ten scalps to be divided ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... held no bright prospects for him. Already he had begun to despair of ever getting back to his home. But to give up like a white-hearted coward, to let himself be handcuffed and jailed, to run from a drunken, bragging cowboy, or be shot in cold blood by some border brute who merely wanted to add another notch to his gun—these things were impossible for Duane because there was in him the temper to fight. In that hour he yielded only to fate and the spirit inborn in him. Hereafter ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... flesh creep to think of it, more now, I fancy, than when I was face to face with it. When I was lying helpless on the hill, there seemed something unreal about it, and I could not appreciate the position, but now that I think of it in cold blood it makes me shiver. I will take your watch to-night; I am quite sure that if I did get to sleep I should have a ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... is the true way to acquire an education. All of our best things are done incidentally—not in cold blood. Hawthorne says in his Journal that most of Emerson's and Thoreau's farming was done leaning on the hoe-handles, while Alcott sat on the fence and explained the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... apologize. And do not smooth over a mean, low trick with the name of an escapade. It was not an escapade, for an escapade is the overflow of high and reckless spirits, and what I did was done in cold blood and with a purpose. I have come to ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... he said good-humoredly. He knew that, like anybody else, he was capable in a moment of passion of committing some folly, perhaps something dishonest, and—who knows?—even more: but he would have thought shame of himself if he had boasted of it in cold blood, and certainly it would be dangerous to confess it to Ada. Some instinct warmed him that the beloved foe was lying in ambush, and taking stock of his smallest remark; he would not give ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... you must go to Sampaolo, and see it with your own eyes. Isola Nobile, Castel San Guido, the Palazzo Rosso, Villa Formosa—you must see them all, with their gardens and their pictures and their treasures. And then you must ask yourself in cold blood, 'Is that woman I left at Craford really ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... Continental Congress at Philadelphia, and his wife and children were left for twelve months, as John Quincy Adams says,—it is to be hoped with a little exaggeration of the barbarity of (p. 003) British troops toward women and babes,—"liable every hour of the day and of the night to be butchered in cold blood, or taken and carried into Boston as hostages, by any foraging or marauding detachment." Later, when the British had evacuated Boston, the boy, barely nine years old, became "post-rider" between the city and the farm, a distance of eleven miles ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... after another new doctrines which repudiate everything her neighbors have held sacred from the time when a common Christianity first began to influence the states of Europe. The violation of the Belgian territory is on a par with the murder of civilians in cold blood, and after admission of their innocence, with the massacre of priests and the sinking without warning of unarmed ships with their passengers and crews. To regard these things as something normal to warfare in the past is as monstrous an historical ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... Q. C., in presenting his case, said: "I propose to show that the prisoner murdered his friend and fellow-lodger, Mr. Arthur Constant, in cold blood, and with the most careful premeditation; premeditation so studied, as to leave the circumstances of the death an impenetrable mystery for weeks to all the world, though fortunately without altogether baffling the almost superhuman ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... had had no idea that such things could be. How was it possible that two men who called themselves friends, could ruin one another thus in cold blood? How was it possible that a man could enter the house of an affectionate host as a welcome guest in the evening, and by next morning leave him not an inch of land on which to put his foot, or a roof to cover his head! "And one has to get accustomed ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... Paul and Stanley passed them. Baldry was not far wrong. Paul was far from pleased with himself. He was going to fight in cold blood a boy with whom he personally had no quarrel, and he had not the slightest notion who his opponent was. He might be a noble-hearted fellow, as much averse to quarrelling and fighting as he was, but ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... all this, Sir Knight," said the Abbot; "be it enough to answer, that with our will we war no longer with carnal weapons. We of the spirituality will teach you of the temporality how to die in cold blood, our hands not clenched for resistance, but folded for prayer—our minds not filled with jealous hatred, but with Christian meekness and forgiveness—our ears not deafened, nor our senses confused, by the sound of clamorous ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... height, he follows his sister the whole length of the stage, and forbears killing her till they are both withdrawn behind the scenes. I must confess, had he murdered her before the audience, the indecency might have been greater; but as it is, it appears very unnatural, and looks like killing in cold blood. To give my opinion upon this case, the fact ought not to have been represented, but to have been told if there was any ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... objected Gloriani, "you don't mean to say you are going to make over in cold blood those poor old exploded ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... man whom he had so materially assisted in his criminal plans was so basely ungrateful as to turn against him, and hire assassins to murder him in cold blood, inspired in Raoul a resolution to take speedy vengeance upon his treacherous accomplice, and at the same time ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... the winding-up of the latter, Antonio, with an irrelevancy that seemed to stagger Elvira herself,—for she had been coolly arguing the point of honor with him,—suddenly whips out a poniard, and stabs his sister to the heart. The effect was as if a murder had been committed in cold blood. The whole house rose up in clamorous indignation, demanding justice. The feeling rose far above hisses. I believe at that instant, if they could have got him, they would have torn the unfortunate ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... take long to think about it, Watson. Again I saw that grim face look over the cliff, and I knew that it was the precursor of another stone. I scrambled down on to the path. I don't think I could have done it in cold blood. It was a hundred times more difficult than getting up. But I had no time to think of the danger, for another stone sang past me as I hung by my hands from the edge of the ledge. Halfway down I slipped, but, by the blessing of God, I landed, torn and bleeding, upon the path. I took to my heels, ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the Christian burns the Jew at what is called an Auto-da-fe, because he clings to the faith of his fathers; the Roman Catholic condemns the Protestant to the flames, and makes a conscience of massacreing(sp.) him in cold blood; this re-acts in his turn; sometimes the various sects of Christians league together against the incredulous Turk, and for a moment suspend their own bloody disputes that they may chastise the enemies to the true faith: then, having glutted ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... by and see that little baboon-thing with the hairy bosom and leg-of-mutton fists murder in cold blood a noble gentleman to ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... narrow escape," he exclaimed to the chief the next day. "I might have been murdered in cold blood. I'll have a burglar alarm put in at once and a telephone, too. I had no business to let all the servants except old James go for the night. Who did you say brought the news? Tom Harlowe's little girl? She always was a wide awake youngster. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... Sir Walter Scott says that "the number of slain in the field did not exceed three or four hundred." All the authorities I have seen state the number at a thousand. He also accuses Lesly of abusing his victory by slaughtering many of his prisoners in cold blood. Now, it is true that a hundred of the Irish adventurers were shot; but this was in pursuance of an act of both Parliaments, and not from any private revenge on ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... Wharton! surely those traitors to the king would never dare to commit another murder in cold blood; is it not enough that they took the life of Andre? Wherefore did they threaten you with ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... that load lay on it still, and his breath expired with a hoarse "haugh." "I got out of the way because it was my load. I didn't want no help from them." He paused and sat picking at his hands. "It's a dreadful ugly story. I'd most as soon live it over again as have to tell it in cold blood. I feel ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... thus murdered in cold blood. The natives rushed in crowds from the spot, naturally supposing that a general massacre would follow so unprovoked an outrage. The body was dragged by the heels a few paces outside the camp, and the vultures were its sextons within a few ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... no answer, for another engagement seemed terrible enough to think of now in cold blood, and they were soon after joined by Small, who said nothing, but held out his hand to Mark, to give the lad's fingers a long silent pressure, which seemed to him to mean only one thing, ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... a bird came and chirped near me and a butterfly flitted by. At length, as it appeared to me useless to wait by a dead man, I determined to get back to camp, if possible, instead of waiting to be either shot in cold blood, or made a prisoner. After carefully going through all his pockets, from which I took his purse, watch, whistle, pipe, pouch, and notebook, and, attaching his glasses to my belt, having arranged him a little and laid ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... foreigner, but severely on his own open defiance of his father's wishes. Her anger was, however, reserved for that unholy post-obit. Here the hearty genial wife's love overcame the mother's affection. To count, in cold blood, on that husband's death, and to wound his heart so keenly, just where its jealous, fatherly fondness ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to express his resentment of her behavior toward the friend whom with her formal permission he had brought to her house. It was owed to Mrs. Hawthorne not to let the incident pass. He had ceased to be furious at Antonia; he had not written in cold blood the wrathful, finishing letter planned in heat of brain. That, after all, was Antonia as he had always known her and been her friend: Antonia, capable of heroisms and generosities, fineness and insight, density and petulance. One could not drop the great woman ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... looked on as the centre of the civilization of the world. National monuments have been destroyed, peaceable citizens robbed and murdered, the venerable Archbishop, many of the clergy, and leading members of the civil and military authorities, massacred in cold blood. In other cities of France, too, we have seen anarchy and irreligion proclaimed—miscreants in arms against the property, and liberty, and lives of their fellow-citizens, often of the helpless and unprotected; and all this at a moment when ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... the Marquise, one must have formed no conception of this depraved though haughty spirit, if astonished at her persistence, in cold blood, and after reflection, in the perfidious plot which the imminence of her danger had suggested to her. She saw that the suspicions of the General might be reawakened another day in a more dangerous manner, if this marriage proved only a farce. She loved Camors passionately; ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... said he, placing his right hand on his heart, and rolling his eyes in a way which almost always makes a woman laugh when she, in cold blood, sees such a look. "A lover! A ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... that his assailant had attempted to murder him, Hal could not find it in his heart to kill him in cold blood. Therefore, even as he turned, he raised the rifle high above his head, and, holding it tightly by the barrel, ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... enthusiasm which was hardly needed on the occasion. And then Peregrine came after them leading Graham's horse. He had been compelled to return to the field and ride both the horses back into the wood; one after the other, while the footman held them. That riding back over fences in cold blood is the work that really tries a man's nerve. And a man has to do it too when no one is looking on. How he does crane and falter and look about for an easy place at such a moment as that! But when the blood is cold, no ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... OCTAVIO. Nay, in cold blood he did confess this to me And having construed my astonishment Into a scruple of his power, he showed me His written evidences—showed me letters, Both from the Saxon and the Swede, that gave Promise of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... something of a tumult. In telling the story he had felt, not a recurrence of its conditions, but a certain sense of their influence; and the girl's manner and words were extraordinary. It could hardly be possible, even in cold blood, to understand their meaning. She was indisputably not acting. What she had said was very strange and unconventional, but from whatever source the words had sprung, they had not been uttered with the intention premeditated or spontaneous ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... signature of the treaty, the manner in which the unhappy youth was alternately cajoled and bullied to his ruin, the loathsome treachery in which those around him engaged, with the connivance of the English; and, lastly, the murder in cold blood, which Meer Jaffier, our creature, was allowed to perpetrate; rendered the whole transaction one of the blackest in ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... somebody's—I should say, a century old, but she told it with a becoming air of appropriation that made it family history, for she's come down in the world, and this fellow had a stain of red upon him, and wanted cleaning; and, "What!" says the good father, "Mika! you did it in cold blood?" And says Mika, "Not I, your Riverence. I got myself into a passion 'fore I let loose." I believe she smoked this identical pipe. She acknowledged the merits of my whisky, as poets do hearing fine verses, never clapping hands, but with ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... would read it to them, if they pleased. There were ten Sheets of it, which might have been reduced to two, had there not been those abominable Interpolations I have before mentioned. Upon the reading of it in cold Blood, it looked rather like a Conference of Fiends than of Men. In short, every one trembled at himself upon hearing calmly what he had pronounced amidst the Heat and ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... suffer no duelling in my army. I despise the principles of those who attempt to justify the practice, and who would run each other through the body in cold blood. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... wall-paper; they have even been known to leave home for several days at a time when angry; in extreme cases they have even been known to seek death at their own hands; but it is not at all usual for a young husband to leave home for several days and then in cold blood sew himself in a sack and jump into the river. In the first place there are easier ways of terminating one's life; in the second place a man can jump into the river with perfect ease without going to the trouble of sewing himself in a sack; and in the third ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... says. He was on the ridge an' swears he seen it all. They killed Guy an' Jacobs in cold blood. No chance fer their lives—not even to fight! ... Wall, hen they surrounded the Isbel cabin. The fight last all thet day an' all night an' the next day. Evarts says Guy an' Jacobs laid out thar all ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... the duel was painful to him; for although he considered that he was perfectly justified in taking up the quarrel forced upon his regiment, yet he sincerely regretted that he should have been obliged to kill a man, however dangerous and obnoxious, in cold blood. ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... it: And the Asse, more Captaine then the Lyon? The fellow loaden with Irons, wiser then the Iudge? If Wisedome be in suffering. Oh my Lords, As you are great, be pittifully Good, Who cannot condemne rashnesse in cold blood? To kill, I grant, is sinnes extreamest Gust, But in defence, by Mercy, 'tis most iust. To be in Anger, is impietie: But who is Man, that is not Angrie. Weigh but the Crime ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... given to the stragglers and fugitives, except to a few considerately reserved for public execution. No care or compassion was shown to their wounded; nay more, on the following day most of these were put to death in cold blood, with a cruelty such as never perhaps before or since has disgraced a British army. Some were dragged from the thickets or cabins where they had sought refuge, drawn out in line and shot, while others were dispatched by the ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... of the thoughtless ferocity which characterized too many of the Orange troops, that, along the whole line of this retreat, they continued to burn the cabins of Roman Catholics, and often to massacre, in cold blood, the unoffending inhabitants; totally forgetful of the many hostages whom the insurgents now held in their power, and careless of the dreadful provocations which they were thus throwing out to the ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... their settlement in the "Great American Desert," as it was then called, Mormons repudiated United States authority. Gentile pioneers and recreant saints they dealt with summarily, witness the Mountain Meadow massacre of 1857, where 120 victims were murdered in cold blood after ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... that he could have sent his best friend to Daniel Granger, and made an end of the quarrel in a gentlemanlike way, in some obscure alley at Vincennes, or amidst the shadowy aisles of St. Germains. But a duel nowadays is too complete an anachronism for an Englishman to propose in cold blood. Mr. Fairfax came to his enemy's house for one special purpose. The woman he loved was in Daniel Granger's power; it was his duty to explain that fatal meeting in Austin's rooms, to justify Clarissa's conduct ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... would you think of a man who, to save himself, condemns another in cold blood to ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... sort of evil deed, he does so before the horrible pictures of his phantasies, the hallucinations of his unconscious. Here is where Shakespeare's genius enters. The Macbeth of the Chronicle commits throughout all his acts of horror apparently in cold blood. At least nothing to the contrary is reported. With Shakespeare on the other hand Macbeth, who is represented in the beginning as more ambitious than cruel, is pathologically tainted. From his youth on he suffered from frequent ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... of consumption? He was no philanderer. If he hadn't really loved her nothing would have torn him from San Francisco and his brilliant career; of course. Duelling days were over, and the doctor was not the man to shoot another down in cold blood, with no better excuse than the poor things had given him. It was all very thrilling and romantic. Even the girls talked of little else, and regarded their complacent prosperous swains with disfavor. "The Long Long Weary Day" was ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... the 'general scope, tendency, and design of an important part of our institutions of which surely none can have a greater moral significance, or be more closely connected with broad principles of morality and politics, than those by which men rightfully, deliberately, and in cold blood, kill, enslave, or otherwise torment their fellow-creatures.'[89] The phrase explains the deep moral interest belonging in his mind to a branch of legal practice which for sufficiently obvious reasons ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... from this Island, which they have usurp'd from the original Natives. Capt. Cuffey's returning the Service you once did him, by saving your Life, which we shall not, after the Example of your Country, take in cold Blood, may give you a Specimen of our Morals. We believe in, and fear a God, and whatever you may conclude from the Slaughter of your Companions, yet we are far from thirsting after the Blood of the Whites; and it's Necessity alone which obliges us to what bears the face of Cruelty. Nothing is so dear ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... Haddington, of September 16, represents the Cavaliers as making a good fight. The mounted Border lairds galloped away. Most of the Irish fell fighting: the rest were massacred, whether after promise of quarter or not is disputed. Their captured women were hanged in cold blood some months later. Montrose, the Napiers, and some forty horse either cut their way through or evaded Leslie's overpowering cavalry, and galloped across the hills of Yarrow to the Tweed. He had lost only the remnant of his Scoto-Irish; ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... two young Hili-lites having been assigned to that duty. Then the poor wretches who remained threw down their flimsy bows, and fell face-downward on the ground, at the feet of the victors. Under the circumstances, what could so noble a people as were the Hili-lites do? They could not slaughter in cold blood nearly twenty thousand trembling human creatures. So it was finally decided to build a thousand large-sized row-boats, and it being the best time of the year for that purpose, take them back to their own islands. This was done. But in punishment for their offence, and as a constant ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... an Anglo-Saxon, however justifiably, let him tremble for his life if he is to be tried in our courts. On the other hand, if an Anglo-Saxon murders a negro in cold blood, without the slightest provocation, he will, if left to the pleasure of our courts, die of old age and go down to his grave ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... remediless despair, yet those impulses act only to the extent of inflicting injury on ourselves. No love ever seeks the death of its object. It is then mere ruffianism, brute cruelty, savage fury; and even this becomes more the act of a ruffian, when the determination to destroy is formed in cold blood. Hackman carried two loaded pistols with him to the theatre. What other man carried loaded pistols there? and what could be his purpose but the one which he effected, to fire them both, one at the wretched woman, and the other at himself? The clear case is, that he was neither more nor ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... his flank. At the instigation of Tallien, the French Convention disavowed the promise of its officers at Quiberon to spare the lives of those who laid down their arms; and 712 Royalists were shot down in cold blood at ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... programme, the commencement of the division of European Turkey. What Britain had failed to induce Germany to help her in executing, was to be attained with the sword's point directed against Germany. And Britain proceeded in cold blood to conjure up an era of might-struggles, which, in the island language, is called preserving the balance ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith |
