"Torment" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were people on such terms! All the more reason," she added, "that I shouldn't needlessly torment you." ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... walked long that night in the moonlit woods up and around Imboden Hill, along a shadow-haunted path, between silvery beech-trunks, past the big hole in the earth from which dead trees tossed out their crooked arms as if in torment, and to the top of the ridge under which the valley slept and above which the dark bulk of Powell's Mountain rose. It was absurd, but he found himself strangely stirred. She was a child, he kept repeating to himself, in spite of the fact that he knew she was ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... love been perfected with us[4:17], that we have confidence in the day of judgment; because as he is, we also are in this world. (18)There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear has torment[4:18]; and he that fears is not made perfect in love. (19)We love, because he first loved us. (20)If any one say, I love God, and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he that loves not his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? (21)And this commandment ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various
... punishment. He, the greatly-daring, once the dear friend and companion of Zeus himself, was chained to a rock on Mount Caucasus by the vindictive deity. There, on a dizzy height, his body thrust against the sun-baked rock, Prometheus had to endure the torment of having a foul-beaked vulture tear out his liver, as though he were a piece of carrion lying on the mountain side. All day, while the sun mercilessly smote him and the blue sky turned from red to black before his pain-racked eyes, the torture went on. Each night, when the filthy bird of prey that ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... years to come— Men to whom my songs are dumb Will remember them and me For that one cry of jealousy, That curse where I had come to bless, That harsh voice of unhappiness. They'll note the curse, but not the pang, Not the torment whence it sprang, They'll note the blow at my friend's back, But not the soul stretched on the rack. They'll note the weak convulsive sting, Not the ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... ill at No. 54, and the gentleman turned out to be a physician of good standing, residing in Cavendish Square. He dared not speak to Kate on the subject, for fear of committing himself and becoming exposed to that little lady's raillery, for he well knew that she would torment him unmercifully if he betrayed the least sign of jealousy. Wishing to be satisfied on a point that so troubled him, he determined to sound his aunt on the matter. He was a great favourite with her, and she was not likely to betray him to ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... as you are never tired of demonstrating to me. Do you think the unfortunate cross has not had his share of the torment? ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... something far greater than the wilderness alone—the wilderness was merely a symbol, a first step, indication of a way of escape. The hurry and invention of modern life were to him a fever and a torment. He loathed the million tricks of civilization. At the same time, being a man of some discrimination at least, he rarely let himself go completely. Of these wilder, simpler instincts he was afraid. They might flood all else. If he yielded entirely, something he dreaded, without being able ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... The skipper sat in torment until the lights were lowered and the curtain went up again. When it fell he began to discuss the play, but Miss Jewell returned such vague replies that it was evident her thoughts were ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... which kill the taker dead on the spot, like a fly in a bottle of prussic acid; others, which—swallowed with a sort of time-bargain—are warranted to do the business within a few seconds of so many hours hence; others again there are (particularly adapted for villains) that cause the most incessant torment, which nothing can relieve but death; a fourth compound (always administered to such characters as Nina Sforza) are peculiarly mild in their operation—no stomach-ache—no contortions—but ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... impart, with tears of disappointment and humiliation, the rudiments of national history. He was immediately responsible to the father of this infant phenomenon, to Henry Jules, Duke d'Enghien, of whose "useless talents, wasted genius, imagination which was a torment to himself and others," Saint-Simon gives so copious an account. We have to think of our delicate and timid La Bruyere now for years the powerless plaything of this "unnatural son, cruel father, terrible ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... in England and Wales. On the eve of committing it to the press however, the Cambrian Briton felt his small heart give way within him: "Were I to print it," said he, "I should be ruined; the terrible descriptions of vice and torment, would frighten the genteel part of the English public out of its wits, and I should to a certainty be prosecuted by Sir James Scarlett. I am much obliged to you, for the trouble you have given yourself on my account—but Myn Diawl! I had no idea till I had read him in English, that Elis ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... this conscious effort leads to nothing but failure and vexation in their hands, and only makes them twofold more the children of hell they were before. The tense and voluntary attitude becomes in them an impossible fever and torment. Their machinery refuses to run at all when the bearings are made so hot and the ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... the austere piety of the king. He perceived the corrupting influence on the simple manners of the Franks of their licentious songs, lascivious music and dissolute lives, but was powerless to dismiss them. The tyrannous temper of his new consort became the torment of his life. He was forced even to conceal his acts of charity. One day, on returning from prayers, Robert perceived that his lance by the queen's orders had been adorned with richly chased silver. He looked around his ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... over-worthiness, like a coistrel he strives to fill himself with wind, and flies against it. Any man's advancement is the most capital offence that can be to his malice, yet this envy, like Phalaris' bull, makes that a torment first for himself he prepared for others. He is a day-bed for the devil to slumber on. His blood is of a yellowish colour, like those that have been bitten by vipers, and his gall flows as thick in him ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... excellence. No one taught us that goodness was beauty, that goodness was greatness, that goodness was glory, that goodness was happiness, that goodness was heaven. The truth was never pressed on us that the want of goodness was deformity, dishonor and shame,—that it was pain, and wretchedness, and torment, and death,—that goodness in full measure would make earth heaven—that its decline and disappearance would make earth hell. Yet a careful and long-continued perusal of the Scriptures left the impression on my mind, that this was really the case. When I compared the eternal ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... accusation is quite ridiculous! Do not torment yourself. I never trouble myself with politics. My verses breathe nothing but philanthropy. Am I to blame, if they have been found among the papers of a secret society?" Agricola disdainfully threw the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... adversary demands of me, I have performed; and that in the most effectual manner. I slew the tyrant when I slew his son; slew him not with a single blow—he could have asked no easier expiation of his guilt than that—but with prolonged torment. I showed him his beloved lying in the dust, in pitiable case, weltering in blood. And what if he were a villain? he was still his son, still the old man's likeness in the pride of youth. These are the wounds that fathers feel; this the tyrannicide's sword of justice; ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... getting to the cart. In the cart sat Karl Johan and Fair Maria eating. "Get up and have something to eat!" they said, and as Pelle was ravenous, he forgot everything while he ate. But then Johan asked about Lasse, and his torment returned. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... But that He was born, better we had never been; life had been a misfortune to which time had brought no change, and death no relief, and the grave no rest. "Glory to God in the highest" that He was born: we had otherwise been lifting up our eyes in torment with this unavailing, endless cry, "O that my mother had been my grave! Cursed be the day wherein ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... the anguish of M. Madeleine that night. He had done all that man could do to obliterate the past, and now it seemed another was to be taken in his place. The torture and torment ended. In the morning M. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... and love Had been the very sum of my confession! O happy torment, when my torturer Doth teach me ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... fear of the distemper itself, which was indeed very horrible in itself, and in some more than others. The swellings, which were generally in the neck or groin, when they grew hard, and would not break, grew so painful that it was equal to the most exquisite torture; and some, not able to bear the torment, threw themselves out at windows, or shot themselves, or otherwise made themselves away, and I saw several dismal objects of that kind. Others, unable to contain themselves, vented their pain by incessant roarings; and such loud and lamentable cries were to be heard, as we walked along ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... there, are you?" I cried, as Tom Jecks came cautiously on deck. "I should have thought that a man of your years would have known better than to help torment ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... weather lasted all through that and the following day, during which, with torment indescribable from thirst and the lash of the boatswains' colts, the miserable slaves propelled the ship no less a distance than one hundred and fifty miles. Oh, how fervently I begged and entreated Mendouca to have mercy upon the unhappy ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... do believe thee, Go—thou shalt lose no time, I must away, My Soul's in torment, till I am confirm'd Of my Clarina's Virtue; I do believe thou hast a generous Shame, For what thou'st said and done to me thy Friend. For could I doubt thy Love, oh, how ridiculous This act of mine would seem! ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... persons seem to be of established respectability, but the right of which to be at all is not fully admitted, stands out the form of speech is being done, or rather, is being, which, about seventy or eighty years ago, began to affront the eye, torment the ear, and assault the common sense of the speaker of plain and idiomatic English." Mr. White devotes thirty pages of his book to the discussion of the subject, and adduces evidence that is more than sufficient to convince those who are content with an ex parte examination that "it can hardly ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... had no belief in what he was saying. The things he knew? What? Nothing but pain and torment. Yet his heart went on wagging out words: "All life is a parting—a continual and monotonous parting. And most hideous of all, a parting with dead things. A saying good-by to things that no longer exist. We part with living things, and so keep them, somehow. Your face makes life for the moment ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... whom they chide and swinge for their sins; and yet those same whom they chide and chastise by these pains they also love, and wish to have for their heirs, and for them hold their worldly goods which they possess, whom they seem in anger to persecute and torment. For love is ever to be held in the mind, and it dictates and determines the measure of the chastisement, so that the mind does nothing at all beside the right rule. Thou likewise addest in thy inquiry, how those things should be compensated which have been taken away from a church ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... believe I should be very easy, now the first shock is over, and now that I see the whole affair with the resentment it merits, did not all my good friends in this neighbourhood, who think me extremely altered, tease me about my gravity, and torment Mr. Villars with observations upon my dejection and falling away. The subject is no sooner started, than a deep gloom overspreads his venerable countenance, and he looks at me with a tenderness so melancholy, that I know not how to ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... heads and the tips of their fingers: this being to signify that the oil of anointing was scraped off. This operation occupied some time. It seemed as if the Bishop and his vile myrmidons took pleasure in prolonging the torment of their victims. Fierce words were spoken to the priests in loud tones. Though we could not hear the words, we knew this by the gestures and by the occasional ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... thee more than mine eyes, O most jocund Calvus, for thy gift I should abhor thee with Vatinian abhorrence. For what have I done or what have I said that thou shouldst torment me so vilely with these poets? May the gods give that client of thine ills enow, who sent thee so much trash! Yet if, as I suspect, this new and care-picked gift, Sulla, the litterateur, gives thee, it is not ill to me, but well and beatific, that thy labours [in his ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... blazing eyes. His soul was in torment with the touch of her; yet somewhere back of his trained brain lingered a spark of wit not yet extinguished along with his other wits by her spell. He ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... guilt requires the burning torches of the Furies to agitate and torment it. Their own frauds, their crimes, their remembrances of the past, their terrors of the future,—these are the domestic furies that are ever present to the ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... feeling with which she was regarded by the Highlanders in the neighbourhood, who looked upon Elspat MacTavish, or the Woman of the Tree, as they called her, as the Greeks considered those who were pursued by the Furies, and endured the mental torment consequent on great criminal actions. They regarded such unhappy beings as Orestes and OEdipus, as being less the voluntary perpetrators of their crimes than as the passive instruments by which the terrible decrees of Destiny had been accomplished; and the fear with which they beheld ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... tender parts: the Pike, moved with anguish, moves up and down the water, and rubs himself against weeds, and whatever he thought might quit him of his enemy; but all in vain, for the frog did continue to ride triumphantly, and to bite and torment the Pike till his strength failed; and then the frog sunk with the Pike to the bottom of the water: then presently the frog appeared again at the top, and croaked, and seemed to rejoice like a conqueror, ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... purpose and motive. "Between thy seed and her seed." Your struggle with her shall be in and for the very life of the race. "It," her life brought forth, "shall bruise thy head," thy whole power, and plan, and insidious cunning; "and thou shall bruise," shalt sting, torment, hinder, and trouble in the way and daily going, "his heel," his footstep. Thou, the subtle and creeping thing of the ground, shalt lurk after and threaten with crookedness and poison the ways of the men-children in their earth-toiling; the woman, ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... and asked her about her work, or her companions, or her studies (upon the latter subject he had grown quite curious, of late), she would feel that she was blushing, and answer, with downcast eyes, and be half glad and half sorry when he ceased to question her, and would then sit and torment herself by recalling what she had said, and thinking how much it might have ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... water and a clean rag, never cared for sponges, and went from one to another, dripping water in behind those bandages to ease the torment of lint splints, brought drinks and talked to call their attention from the indefinite dread which filled the air, and got up considerable interest in—I do not remember what—but something which ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... the garden, miss," said Malachi, "getting out of the way of the soldiers; now that the work is done, they torment her not a little, and she is glad to escape from them; I'd tell them to go away, but they don't mind me; they know I must ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... with the native horses, or should be left unprotected, and the matter is submitted to a special commission. In the meantime, certain horsemen from among the "communal benefactors" jump upon the back of the unfortunate mare, beat and torment her well-nigh to death, and drive her for their ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... not speak. The rush of sorrow for the heavy blow which had fallen on the man she had robbed, the shame and self-reproach, which had been lulled asleep for a while, which now woke up with renewed power to torment and irritate—these were too much for her self-control, and while Mrs. Ormonde and De Burgh eagerly discussed the catastrophe, she kept silence and struggled to ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... the day, so death, eternal repose from all hope and fear, is better than life, as indeed the gods of the poet themselves are nothing, and have nothing, but an eternal blessed rest; that the pains of hell torment man, not after life, but during its course, in the wild and unruly passions of his throbbing heart; that the task of man is to attune his soul to equanimity, to esteem the purple no higher than the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... my savage headaches. For a day and a night I was in blind torment. Have at it, now, with the stoic remedy. Sickness of the body is no evil. With a little resolution and considering it as a natural issue of certain natural processes, pain may well be borne. One's solace ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... behind her, Satan!" he groaned with every blow, while Joan grit her teeth and bore it as long as she could, then screamed and fainted. That was how the truth about heaven and hell came to her. She had never felt physical pain before, and eternal torment was merely an idea. From that day, however, she was frightened and listened to her father gladly and wept tears of thankfulness when, a month after her flogging, he explained that he had wrestled with the Lord for her soul and how it had been borne in upon him ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... again—"But ye're spared a deal o' worrit, seein' ye 'aven't a husband nor childer to drive ye silly. When I 'ad my three boys at 'ome I never know'd whether I was on my 'ed or my 'eels, they kept up such a racket an' torment, but the Lord be thanked they're all out an' doin' for theirselves in the world now—forbye the eldest is thinkin' o' marryin' a girl I've never seen, down in Cornwall, which is where 'e be a-workin' in tin mines, an' when I 'eerd as 'ow 'e was p'raps a-goin' to tie hisself up in the ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... him. And then, with conflicting feelings, I found that all Lisbon mentioned my name in connection with the senhora, and Sir George himself, in appointing me an aide-de-camp, threw increased gloom over my thoughts by referring to the report Power had spoken of. My torment was completed by meeting Miss Dashwood in the Senhora Inez's house under circumstances which led to treat me with ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... towards the world, and were such that it was impossible not to love her, and yet, for an honest man who desired to remain one, equally impossible to do it. For although she was made in shape, line and feature to be a man's torment and delight, she carried her beauties so easily, valued them so staidly, and considered them so unaffectedly her husband's property, that he would have been a highway thief who had dared ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... doctor, the restorative importance of that profound and quiet sleep impressed itself on me so strongly, that I took the responsibility of leaving him undisturbed. The event proved that I had acted wisely. He slept until noon. There was no return of "the torment of the voice"—as he called it, poor fellow. We passed a quiet day, excepting one little interruption, which I am warned not to pass over without a word of record ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... squeezed into narrow space, the working of the joints compressed, and inflammation at the joints, or at the wings of the coffin-bone, is excited; in worse cases navicular disease is established, or, from inadequate circulation, thrush holds possession at the frog, or scratches torment the heels. ...
— Rational Horse-Shoeing • John E. Russell
... don't know, Sir; I have felt myself at times in a state of almost mere physical existence, satisfied to eat, drink, and sleep, and walk about, and enjoy my own thoughts; and I can figure a continuation of this.' JOHNSON. 'Ay, Sir; but if you were shut up here, your own thoughts would torment you. You would think of Edinburgh or London, and that you could not ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... Shakespeare, had a cat named Rutterkin, as the spirit of one of these witches was Grimalkin; and when any mischief was to be done she used to bid Rutterkin go and fly, but once when she would have sent Rutterkin to torment a daughter of the countess of Rutland, instead of going or flying, he only cried mew, from whence she discovered that the lady was out of his power, the power of witches being not universal, but limited, as Shakespeare has ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... conscious of who and what he was. He closed his eyes and shut out the hateful garish world: but that sound he could not shut out. Too tired to sleep, too tired even to think, he could do nothing but submit to the ridiculous torment; watching in spite of himself every note, as one jig-tune after another was fiddled by all the imps close to his ear, mile after mile, and county after county, for all that weary day, which seemed full ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... held out to them; there was no possibility of escape, no hope of going back to the only country they loved. In the South they soon, very soon, sank into an obscure grave. In the North a prolonged life was only a prolongation of torment. For, who among them could ever think of becoming a "convert?" They had been taken from their island-home when over twelve years of age; they had already received from their mothers and hunted priests a religious education, which happily could never be effaced; they were to ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... Laurence, be generous and spare me the torment of questions. So far you have not reproached me; spare me that, too! Don't you understand? I cannot marry you. Accept the inevitable as I do. Forgive me and ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... the tribe. And her talk was a terrible thing to hear. Sometimes she screamed and moaned incoherently, and sometimes the shape of her guttural cries was the mere phantom of thoughts. But she conveyed to Eudena, nevertheless, much of the things that were yet to come, of the Lion and of the torment he would do her. "And Ugh-lomi! Ha, ha! ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... followed many days that were days of hell and torment for him—an unequal struggle between the power of The Brute and the spirit of ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... the better part of me? What can mine own praise to mine own self bring? And what is't but mine own when I praise thee? Even for this, let us divided live, And our dear love lose name of single one, That by this separation I may give That due to thee which thou deserv'st alone. O absence! what a torment wouldst thou prove, Were it not thy sour leisure gave sweet leave, To entertain the time with thoughts of love, Which time and thoughts so sweetly doth deceive, And that thou teachest how to make one twain, By praising him here who doth ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... take the baby whenst he hed the chance, 'kase he knowed 'twould hurt me so. An' he never wanted ter torment me—I reckon he never did mean ter torment me. An' he did 'low wunst he war sorry he spited dad. Oh! I hev been a heap too quick an' spiteful myself. I hev been so terrible wrong! Look a-hyar; he lef' this glove ter show me he hed been hyar, an' could hev tuk the baby ef he hed hed the heart ...
— His "Day In Court" - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... forget what he had seen; the memory of it was a constant torment and a misery to him. And now the chance had come, and ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... a man whose mentality had overpowered his wisdom; the contact with Larry Rivers; the forced marriage and the determined effort to live up to a bargain made in the dark, endured in the dark. It came to Northrup, drifting as he was, that a man or woman can go through slime and torment and really escape harm. The old, fiery furnace legend was based on an eternal truth; that and the lions' den! It put a new light on that peculiar quality of Mary-Clare. She had never been burnt or wounded—not the real woman of her. That explained the maddening thing about her—her aloofness. ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... not reform he would be turned out of the house and all further intercourse between him and his family would he put a stop to. The son did not reform, but made a debt of a thousand roubles, and took the liberty of telling his father that life at home was a torment anyhow. Then Wolf declared to his son that he might go where he pleased—that he was no son of his any longer. Since then Wolf pretended he had no son, and no one at home dared speak to him about his son, and Vladimir Vasilievitch Wolf was firmly convinced that he had arranged ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... as these are only done by crystals which are perfectly good, and good-humoured; and of course, also, there are ill-humoured crystals who torment each other, and annoy quieter crystals, yet without coming to anything like serious war. Here (for once) is some ill-disposed quartz, tormenting a peaceable octahedron of fluor, in mere caprice. I looked at it the other night so long, and so wonderingly, just before putting my ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... flower withered, and her death robbed him of L20,000, and indeed of ten times that sum, for he had now bought experience in trade and speculation, and had learned to make money out of money, a heap out of a handful. Stung by this vulgar torment in its turn, he started suddenly up, and dashed his wife's will down upon the floor in a fury, and paced the room excitedly. Hope still stood aghast, and hesitated to risk ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... that appear in the Little Colonel Series. "Ole Mammy's Torment," "The Three Tremonts," and "The Little Colonel ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... mental troubles to torment him. For some time past he had had a confessor who, although a Jesuit, kept as tight a hand over him as he could. He was a gentleman of good birth, and of Brittany, by name le Pere du Trevoux. He forbade Monsieur not only certain strange pleasures, but many which ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... through the cornfield, over a stubblefield beyond, through a slough, another stubblefield, and on to the open prairie of another section of "Railroad land." The boy and girl made no further attempt to guide them. A cow, with the tickling feet of half a dozen of these devils of torment on the end of a bare, wet nose, was in no state of mind to be argued with, and the tossing horns, threshing about to free the head from the pests, were to be taken into sober account. All they could do was to let the maddened beasts take their ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... as to render weariness and satiety impossible. He is now coquetting a little with the Tories, and especially professes great deference and profound respect for the Duke of Wellington; his sole object in politics, for the moment, is to badger, twit, and torment the Ministry, and in this he cannot contain himself within the bounds of common civility, as he exemplified the other night when he talked of 'Lord John this and Mr. Spring that' (on Thursday night), which, however contemptuous, was too undignified to be effective. He calls this ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... what concerned sacred things, she let all out in the music lesson, and with her murmurs and her inattention, her yawns and her blunders, rendered herself infinitely more dull and unmusical than nature had made her, and was a grievous torment to poor Mrs. Lacy, and her patient, "One, two, ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... whenever she looked out of her window, his name was constantly on the lips of those who made up her little circle of friends, and every day she was haunted by the fear of meeting him. Or, worse than all else, should that fear materialize, the torment of the almost hostile relationship which had replaced their former friendship had to ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... meet her again had not entered his calculations, had found no place in his dreams. They were, he conceived, irrevocably and for ever parted. Yet, in spite of this, in spite even of the persuasion that to her this reflection that was his torment could bring no regrets, he had kept the thought of her ever before him in all those wild years of filibustering. He had used it as a curb not only upon himself, but also upon those who followed him. Never had buccaneers been so ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... good. But they must not go to the judge. They must not. He has been so kind and forbearing and he is so very sick. The doctor told me that he.... They shan't go. They can say anything they please to me, but they shan't torment him." ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... played, there is a general stamping; the audience is set in motion, and follows, with a great deal of trouble and noise, some performer in the orchestra. Delighted to feel for a few moments the rhythm that is so lacking, they torment the ear, the voice, the arms, the legs, and all the body, to chase after a tune that is ever ready to ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... that Stanton was finally liberated from his confinement,—that his pursuit of Melmoth was incessant and indefatigable,—that he himself allowed it to be a species of insanity,—that while he acknowledged it to be the master passion, he also felt it the master torment of his life. He again visited the Continent, returned to England,—pursued, inquired, traced, bribed, but in vain. The being whom he had met thrice, under circumstances so extraordinary, he was fated never to encounter again IN HIS LIFETIME. At length, discovering ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... "I do wish you would contrive some means to get rid of my odious Cousin Jehoiakim, he is the torment of my life." ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... body being delivered to the surgeons for dissection pursuant to his sentence, a stone was found in his gall bladder, of the size of a lark's egg. This unhappy man was remarkable for an extreme irascibility of temper: might it not have been occasioned by the torment that such a substance must produce in so irritable a situation? He however, the night before his execution, confessed that the murder which he committed was premeditated. Notwithstanding which, he had, the day before he was tried, prepared an opening ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... variation of the second exercise. It is practiced by sending to a person seated in front of you in a public place the command to look to the right, or to the left, as you prefer. Do not practice on the same person too long, after succeeding at first—it is not right to torment people, remember. ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... accuses himself of all manner of sins, yet it is improbable that he appeared to others what in later life he appeared to himself. He judged his own conduct as he believed that it was regarded by his Maker, by whom he supposed eternal torment to have been assigned as the just retribution for the lightest offence. Yet he was never drunk. He who never forgot anything with which he could charge himself, would not have passed over drunkenness, if he could remember that he had been guilty of it; and he distinctly asserts, also, ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... the morning light was gay; one got a sort of exhilarated impression of fair conditions and an absence of hindrance. I forget what we spoke of first, but it was because I felt these things pleasantly, and not to torment my companion nor to test her, that I could not help exclaiming cheerfully, after a moment, as I have mentioned having done the first day, 'Well, we are getting on, we ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... little acts of kindness, Jenny gradually obtained the helpless creature's confidence; and daily, whenever able, went at the same hour to disperse the boys, who after school hours have, it sterns, been in the habit of assembling, for their amusement, to torment her. Jenny had often threatened to complain to the parents of the boys, and, should they not attend to her complaints, to place the whole case before the magistrates. She had complained to several whose children she recognised, but they ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... were literally enslaved and scared into submission by dreadful pictures of hell and fear of everlasting torment. After church they would gamble, and they often lost everything, even wives and children. They were low, brutal, unintelligent, with an exceedingly limited vocabulary and an unbounded appetite. A man is as he eats, and, ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... here!" she wailed, lifting her arms in a gesture of despair. "Where is he? Tell me! It was not White Brother of the Snow sent to the torment of evil spirits?" ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... concerned with the innermost essence of Christianity, as clearly presented to us in the Fourth Gospel. He forgets that not only faith, but thought, pertains to a religion. It is no excuse to say, "Did not the learned Dr. Faust torment himself to discover what 'the word' here meant, and did not find it ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... chamber, leaving his knapsack in the outer room. The innkeeper on the watch, waits till all is still and comes noiselessly in to steal the money from the sack. He puts in his hand and draws out—not gold—but scorpions, mice, frogs and other vermin which fly about and torment him till at his cries Hans comes to the rescue and ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... sharp-ribbed settees of Malacca cane, black with age, and uncomfortable to look at as inquisitors' racks, with a large, misshapen arm-chair, which, furnished with a rude barber's crotch at the back, working with a screw, seemed some grotesque engine of torment. A flag locker was in one corner, open, exposing various colored bunting, some rolled up, others half unrolled, still others tumbled. Opposite was a cumbrous washstand, of black mahogany, all of one block, with a pedestal, like a font, and over it a railed shelf, containing combs, brushes, and ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... gathering frost, some Sarsar wind of death, seemed to repel me; some mighty relation between God and death dimly struggled to evolve itself from the dreadful antagonism between them; shadowy meanings even yet continued to exercise and torment, in dreams, the deciphering oracle within me. I slept—for how long I cannot say: slowly I recovered my self-possession; and, when I woke, found myself standing, as before, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... the mountains of Switzerland, alone! Still the victim of an intolerable restlessness, I shouldn't be at all surprised if I wrote to you one of these mornings from under Mont Blanc. I sit down between whiles to think of a new story, and, as it begins to grow, such a torment of a desire to be anywhere but where I am; and to be going I don't know where, I don't know why; takes hold of me, that it is like being driven away. If I had had a passport, I sincerely believe I should have gone to Switzerland the night before last. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... presence only at the price of submission to her tastes and to her desires. How different had it not been with Louise of Stolberg: united to this man twelve years before, a mere child of nineteen, given over to him as his wife, his chattel, his property, to torment and lock up as he might torment and lock up his dog or his horse; losing all influence over him with every day which made her less of a novelty and diminished the chance of an heir; and sickened and alarmed more and more by the obstinate jealousy and drunkenness and brutality ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... for a divine and holy worship (2 Cor 11:12-15): but this failing also, he hath taken in hand at length to fright her into friendship with him, by stirring up the hellish rage of tyrants to threaten and molest her; by finding out strange inventions to torment and afflict her children; by making many bloody examples of her own bowels, before her eyes, if by that means he might at last obtain his purpose: But behold! all hath been in vain, there can be no reconciliation. And why, but because ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... thee leave Valencia with all the lands thereof, and go into Castille, and take with thee all that is thine. And if thou wilt not do this he sends to say that he will fight against Valencia, and take thee and thy wife and thy daughters, and torment thee grievously, in such manner that all Christians who shall hear tell of it shall talk thereof for evermore. This is the bidding ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... end occur to its dense brain? I have associated a great deal with animals, I have lived on intimate terms with them and I have never observed anything to justify me in saying yes. The animal, with its humbler destiny, is spared that apprehension of the hour of death which constitutes at once our torment and ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... the Senator remained in town; he declared that women were always ready to drop any man for higher game; and he attributed his own ill-luck to the Senator's appearance. The fellow was in fact crazy about her beauty and ready to beat his brains out in chagrin. Perhaps Laura enjoyed his torment, but she soothed him with blandishments that increased his ardor, and she smiled to herself to think that he had, with all his protestations of love, never spoken of marriage. Probably the vivacious fellow never had thought of it. At any ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... wind comes into the garden, Like a lover that fears lest he waken his love, And his hands drip with the scent of the roses And his locks weep with the opiate odor of honeysuckle. Sighing, sighing As a lover that yearns for the lips of his love, In a torment of bliss, In a passionate dreaming of bliss, The wind in ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... cry. Do you tell me that the first sounds they make are cries? I can well believe it; you thwart them from the time they are born. The first gifts they receive from you are chains, the first treatment they undergo is torment. Having nothing free but the voice, why should they not use it in complaints? They cry on account of the suffering you cause them; if you were pinioned in the same way, your own cries ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... the whole future history of the soul. It is employed only as an antecedent to a higher and a happier emotion; and when the purpose for which it has been elicited has been answered, it then disappears. "Perfect love casteth out fear; for fear hath torment," ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... come upon her so suddenly. What was the cause? Was it merely a freak of that incomprehensible phenomenon the human mind that had twisted the chain of her affection into so mischievous a knot, or merely a figment of the brain springing from inner consciousness to torment her with devilish ingenuity? or did the fault lie with her in some simpler, more tangible way? Was it possible that her love was not the great and boundless force that she had imagined, but weak, in that it could not dispel and overcome any thought that dimmed ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... To render his punishment more public and conspicuous, he was removed to Paris, there to undergo a repetition of all his former tortures, with such additional circumstances as the most fertile and cruel dispositions could devise for increasing his misery and torment. Being conducted to the Concergerie, an iron bed, which likewise served for a chair, was prepared for him, and to this he was fastened with chains. The torture was again applied, and a physician ordered to attend, to see what degree of pain ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... cried out, saying, What have we to do with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of God? Art Thou come hither to torment us ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of His indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... to be tight, it contracts the nerves, and so shortens the limbs that a tall man finds all the comeliness of his stature taken from him while he is still unmutilated. It is in truth a living death; and when the excruciating torment is gone, it leaves an almost worse legacy behind it—inability to move. Even debtors in the torture chamber have the weights sometimes removed from their feet; but this cruel malady, when it has once taken hold of a man, seems never to relinquish possession. A disease of this kind, bringing ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... was the poem which, written in those rapturous days when he and Madeline first became aware of their mutual adoration, was refused by one editor as a "trifle too syrupy." To read that sticky effusion over and over again became a torment. There were occasions when if a man had referred to "The Greater Love," its author might have howled profanely and offered bodily violence. But no men ever did ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... his hands were so swollen from the tightness of the cord that the pain was unbearable, while his feet bled freely from their many scratches. Exhausted with his burden and wild with torment, he asked the interpreter to beg the Indians either to loose his hands or knock him on the head, and end his torture at once. His appeal was heard by a French officer, who immediately order his hands to be unbound and some of his burden to be removed. Shortly afterwards the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... reader supposing that there is any deep-laid scheme or profound mystery, with which we mean to torment him during the course of our tale, we may as well say at once that the little plot, which Ruth had in view, and which began to grow quite into a romance the longer she pondered it, was neither more nor less than to bring Captain Bream and Mrs David ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... tenderness is clearly not allied to infinite power or the world's anguish would long since have been appeased and extinguished, or never have been permitted to exist at all. The real enemies of Christ are not the souls of men, but "the hates and passions which torment them." Oh those hates and passions! They are the dialectical balls with which Mr. Brown goes through his performance in that circle of petitio principii so hated by all logicians, the middle sphere of intellects too light for the solid earth of fact and too ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... upon him all the affectionate sentiments of a mother towards a son. Had the die of his lot been cast otherwise, all the inhabitants of the village would have raised the death song, and each individual would have been as fiercely unfeeling to torment him, as they were now covetous to show him kindness. It is astonishing to see, in their habits of this sort, no interval between friendship and kindness, and the most ingenious and unrelenting barbarity. Placed between two posts, and his arms and feet extended ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... you piecemeal. No, no, no, Hunston; your fate is sealed. The rope is ready—the noose is waiting for you. In torment and in suffering you shall die the death of a rabid cur, the death of a loathsome reptile, of a poisonous thing of which it is true ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... told you so." What had become of him after his release from prison, nobody knew; some of the boarders said that he was living in the west, or in Australia; others, that he was not living anywhere, unless on the shores of perpetual torment. All agreed that the alleged second Mrs. Surface had long since died—all, that is, but Klinker, who said that she had only pretended to die in order to make a fade-away with the gate receipts. For many persons believed, it seemed, that Surface, by clever juggling of his books, ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... public offices of the legal profession, where writs are issued, judgments signed, declarations filed, and numerous other ingenious machines put in motion for the torture and torment of His Majesty's liege subjects, and the comfort and emolument of the practitioners of the law. They are, for the most part, low-roofed, mouldy rooms, where innumerable rolls of parchment, which ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... does not share in the Englishman's joy; for he imagines that the vision was a warning to him that, from some trifling cause, an overwhelming calamity will burst over him. Thus do the ignorant and the credulous torment themselves; thus do they spread their nets to catch vexation, and pass their lives between hopes which are of no value and fears ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... conscience and make it seem right—what I had done, what I was doing. I tried to make it seem right by telling myself that Rose had enough property of her own and didn't need this, but I couldn't do it. I have been in torment, holding wealth that didn't belong to me, that has gnawed at my very heart all the time. Now I am going to confess. Here is Abrahama White's last will and testament. I found it in a box in the garret with some letters. Abrahama wrote letters to her sister ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... "those who sin and those who are righteous."[3] Again xliv. 12 the text reads: "the new world which does not turn to corruption those who depart on its beginning and has no mercy on those who depart to torment." Here "on its beginning" is set over antithetically against "to torment," whereas the context requires "to its blessedness." The words "on its beginning"—[Hebrew: KR'SHW], a corruption of [Hebrew: B'SHRW]—"to its blessedness." Again in lvi. 6 it ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... though by no fault of his. She had renounced all purpose of their immediate union in deference to her father's protest, but her love was fixed upon him still, and her father felt like one who was beating back the spring. Her mother was torn with the torment of an armed neutrality. Further, my beautiful church had been scarred by the explosive riot of that ordination day, stricken with a soul's lightning; and the whole tragedy of our home life had been laid bare ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... forty-five or seventy. As it turned out, Paul Smiley was within three years of the latter figure. He had on a pearl Fedora very much over one ear, a new suit of store clothes with a mighty watch chain, and new boots, which seemed like little souls put to torment—they screeched ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... "unless my sister consent never to see him again, it is surely an useless torment to ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... poor George wandered about at home, suffering such torment of mind as can hardly be imagined. Truly, in these days he paid for his sins; he paid a thousand-fold in agonized and impotent regret. He looked back upon the course of his life, and traced one by one the ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... cannot think any such thing likely to take place," she continued more positively; "and, sir, you at least will not permit Miss Eve to torment herself with any notions as unreasonable, as monstrous ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... Relieve my anguish, and restore the light, With dark forgetting of my cares, return; And let the day be time enough to mourn The shipwreck of my ill-adventured youth; Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn Without the torment of the night's untruth. Cease, Dreams, th' imag'ry of our day-desires, To model forth the passions of the morrow, Never let rising sun approve you liars, To add more grief to aggravate my sorrow. Still let me sleep, embracing clouds ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... up a day or two since a Number of "N. & Q.," my attention was drawn to a new attempt to give a solution of the difficulty which has been the torment of commentators in the following passage from the Third Act ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... glance now at some of the larger crosses of the Puritan minister. First came a "young brood" of heretics to torment him. Gorton's followers were exasperating enough; they had to be confined in irons separately, one in each town, on pain of death, if they preached their doctrines,—and of course they preached them. But their offences and penalties were light, compared with those of the Quakers. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... two servants was unique, and, at times, somewhat strained. Although Wang Kum, left to himself, would have been the most peaceable of mortals, Janey persisted in treating him as an embodied joke, and lost no opportunity to tease and torment him, until he came to regard her with a strange ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... and the fear of God was upon the people. In a great movement of this kind it is but to be expected that women played no little part; their more sensitive natures caused them to be more easily affected than were the men by the threats of everlasting torment which were constantly being made by the priests for the benefit of all those who refused to renounce worldly things and come within the priestly fold. There was a most remarkable show of contrition and penitence at this time, and thousands of persons, men and women of all classes, were so ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... again, a mere torment-racked mass, deprived of the help of his pretence, defenceless and helpless because his sin had found him out in the person of a slim, dark-faced man, who looked at him with burning pity in ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... of mortals happiest he, Whose quiet mind from vain desires is free; Whom neither hopes deceive, nor fears torment, But lives at peace, within himself content; In thought, or act, accountable to none But to himself, and to the gods alone. Epistle to Mrs. Higgons. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... that have tasted that divinest fruit, Look on this world of yours with opened eyes! Ye are as gods! Nay, makers of your gods, Each day ye break an image in your shrine And plant a fairer image where it stood Where is the Moloch of your fathers' creed, Whose fires of torment burned for span-long babes? Fit object for a tender mother's love! Why not? It was a bargain duly made For these same infants through the surety's act Intrusted with their all for earth and heaven, By Him who chose their guardian, knowing well His fitness for the task,—this, ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... frame. "To feel those clear eyes fastened upon me, piercing through and through my soul, and reading all the guilt and crime that's written there. O, Louise! was it not enough to drive me, by your unrelenting scorn and bitterness, to commit the act which has brought me here, without seeking to torment your victim by penetrating his dungeon to mock at the misfortune ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... side, inflicts great damage on his countrymen, and after our defeat at the bastilles or bastides round Orleans, resumes his machinations against Joan, helps to effect her capture, and does his utmost to torment and insult her, and if possible resume Gilles's attempt, in her imprisonment; while, on the contrary, his brother Olivier (they are both disguised as monks) works on her side, nearly saves her,[365] and attends her on ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... were safe in their usual place, and the cupboard looked quite untouched. Mid-day came, then evening, then midnight, and still no Master Peter appeared, and the matter became really serious. Dame Ilse knew right well what a torment she had been to her husband, and remorse ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... find that more than one half of the species which have survived the ceaseless struggle are parasitic in their habits, lower and insentient forms of life feasting on higher and sentient forms; we find teeth and talons whetted for slaughter, hooks and suckers moulded for torment—everywhere a reign of terror, hunger, sickness, with oozing blood and quivering limbs, with gasping breath and eyes of innocence that dimly close in deaths of cruel torture! Is it said that there are compensating enjoyments? I ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... grasp the essential fact of how this person's contemplated action will affect your own celestial condition? It is a distressing but entirely unavoidable fact, that if this person acts in the manner which he has determined upon, he will be condemned to the lowest place of torment reserved for those who fail at the end of an otherwise pure existence, and in this he will never have an opportunity of meeting the very much higher placed Ah-Ping, and of restoring to him the thirty-thousand taels ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... Middleton's school, there was a great tall dunce of the name of Fisher, who never could be taught how to look out a word in the dictionary. He used to torment everybody with—"Do pray help me! I can't make out this one word." The person who usually helped him in his distress was a very clever, good natured boy, of the name of De Grey, who had been many years under Dr. Middleton's care, and who, by his abilities and good conduct, did him ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... from her life in Chelsea and Sussex, shrank cruelly from this amorphous ugliness of a small colliery town in the Midlands. Yet forward she went, through the whole sordid gamut of pettiness, the long amorphous, gritty street. She was exposed to every stare, she passed on through a stretch of torment. It was strange that she should have chosen to come back and test the full effect of this shapeless, barren ugliness upon herself. Why had she wanted to submit herself to it, did she still want to submit herself to it, the insufferable ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... selues honest. For the croune is not due but to her that shall lawfully combate to the ende." After this the lorde by perswasion of his wife, commaunded that the foole should be auoided the house, that his presence might not grieue or torment her, ne yet renewe the memorie of a thing that neuer was thought or doen. And not without cause: for the Lorde, whiche reclined his eare to euery trifling report, and credited the woordes of euery whistling pikethanke, had much a do to escape from doing thinges unworthy his estate and calling. ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... inward emotions, broke from his parched lips,—"Thou doting fool!" he cried almost furiously,—"Why dost thou mock me then with this false image of a hope unrealized? ... Who gave thee leave to add more fuel to my flame of torment? ... What means this symbol to thine eyes? Speak.. speak! What admonition does it hold for thee? ... what promise? ... what menace? ... what warning? ... what love? ... Speak.. speak! O, shall I force confession from thy throat, or must I die unsatisfied and slain ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... not loved," she said, giving him one of those sly oblique glances with which women question so maliciously the men they are trying to torment. ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... or strange, but what they were, as to the rest, the more I endeavour to retrieve them, the deeper I plunge them in oblivion. So of thoughts that come accidentally into my head, I have no more but a vain image remaining in my memory; only enough to make me torment myself in their quest to ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... now that they made up songs and sang them, songs that were all a boast of how they had killed Kvasir the Poet, and Gilling the Giant, and Gilling's wife. They stayed around Joetunheim, tormenting all whom they were able to torment, and flattering themselves that they were great and strong. They stayed too long, however. Suttung, Gilling's brother, tracked ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... torment'st thyself; And these dread curses, like the sun 'gainst glass, Or like an overcharged gun, recoil And turns the force of ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... eyes to look into his face without a burst of grief sweeping across to shake her like a reed. Jerrem could eat and drink, but Joan's lips never tasted food. A fever seemed to burn within and fill her with its restless torment: the beatings of her throbbing heart turned her first hot, then cold, as each pulse said the time to part ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... endured for the human nature which in his savage youth he had betrayed. Yet out of his supreme and endless striving to undo, to make reparation, to give his life, to find God, had come, it seemed to Wade in his abasement, only a driving torment. ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... bo'sun called to us to follow him, and led the way to the great fissure up which we had climbed, and so, in a minute, we were, each of us, scrambling down with what haste we could make towards the valley. And all the while as I dropped from ledge to ledge, I was full of torment to know whether the monster ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... and ills which human flesh is heir to, on a bright, glowing September morning, we set forward on my homeward journey. "Blessings brighten as they leave us;" and although I had been considered the torment of the whole household, all regretted my departure, and begged ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... would be forgot, all but the exquisite pain of the regret for the years he had wasted on earth, and for the solitary heritage he had left the world. Those children of his brain! They were with him still. Would that he had left them below to sing his name down through the ages! They were a torment to him here, in their futility and inaction. They could not sing to these shapeless ghosts about him; their voices would be unheeded music; nor would any strain sweep downward to that world whose tears he might have drawn, whose mirth provoked, whose passions played ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... was the end of her walk winged with expectancy! A disappointment as sharp as her joy had been pierced her through as she stood there smiling into Susan's discomfited face. With the tragic power of youth to create its own torment, she told herself that life could never be the same after this ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... star; the other fell Beneath, and mended shoes in hell. Thus Partridge still shines in each art, The cobbling and star-gazing part, And is install'd as good a star As any of the Caesars are. Triumphant star! some pity show On cobblers militant below, Whom roguish boys in stormy nights Torment by pissing out their lights, Or thro' a chink convey their smoke Inclos'd artificers to choke. Thou, high exalted in thy sphere, May'st follow still thy calling there. To thee the Bull will lend his hide, By Phoebus newly tann'd and dry'd: For thee they ...
— English Satires • Various
... long a time I cannot guess. I was brought here at night, only forty-eight hours ago, and landed from a vessel which almost immediately departed whence it had come, into the darkness. My captors left me to go with the vessel, the chief of them threatening to return every week to torment me unless I obeyed his slightest command. I stand in great fear of this man, who is tall and bearded, for he brings with him instruments of torture and bottles ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... Our Lord proved Himself to be the perfectly righteous Being, by His very passion. He proved it by being righteous utterly against His own interest; by enduring shame, torment, death, for righteousness' sake. But we feel that our Lord's history could not, must not, end there. Our conscience, which is our highest reason, shrinks from that thought. If our Lord had died and never risen, then ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... Mrs. Edmonstone. 'You have begged every one's pardon, and it had better be forgotten as fast as possible. They have made more fuss already than it is worth. Don't torment yourself about it any more; for, if you have made a mistake, it is on the right side; and on the first opportunity, I'll go and call on Mrs. Deane, and see if she ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with their formidable tails quickly turned up ready for attack or defence. Such companions seem very alarming and dangerous, but all combined are not so bad as the irritation of mosquitoes, or of the insect pests often found at home. These latter are a constant and unceasing source of torment and disgust, whereas you may live a long time among scorpions, spiders, and centipedes, ugly and venomous though they are, and get no harm from them. After living twelve years in the tropics, I have never yet been bitten ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Antony serious or disposed to mirth, she had at any moment some new delight or charm to meet his wishes. She played at dice with him, drank with him, hunted with him; and when he exercised in arms, she was there to see. At night she would go rambling with him to disturb and torment people at their doors and windows, dressed like a servant-woman, for Antony also went in servant's disguise, and from these expeditions he often came home very scurvily answered, and sometimes even beaten severely, though most people guessed who it was. It would be ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... low-water trip on a steamboat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember, as I well do, that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio there were on board ten or a dozen slaves shackled together with irons. That sight was a continual torment to me, and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio or any other slave border. It is not fair for you to assume that I have no interest in a thing which has, and continually exercises, the power to make me miserable. You ought rather to appreciate how much the great body of the Northern ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... it in his power to tell. So, a very lame affair was purposely made of the trial, and his punishment was an allowance of four thousand pounds a year in retirement, while the Countess was pardoned, and allowed to pass into retirement too. They hated one another by this time, and lived to revile and torment each other some years. ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... in the exercise of His eternal vengeance, would have no other aim than to amuse Himself and insult the weakness of His creatures. I appeal to the whole human race! Is there in nature a man so cruel as to wish in cold blood to torment, I do not say his fellow-beings, but any sentient being whatever, without fee, without profit, without curiosity, without having anything to fear? Conclude, then, O theologians! that according to your own principles, your God is infinitely more wicked than ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... Scripture; for it may be proved from the love and justice of God revealed in Scripture. The Protestants divide—in theory, that is—mankind into two classes, the righteous, who are destined to infinite bliss; the wicked, who are doomed to infinite torment; in which latter class, to make their arbitrary division exhaustive, they put of course nine hundred and ninety-nine out of the thousand, and doom to everlasting companionship with Borgias and Cagliostros, the gentle, ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... the draught! the terrible draught! How it raged from my heart to my head.... Nowhere, nowhere may I rest. The night casts me back on the day for ever to feed the sun's rays on my suffering.... The fearful draught which has consigned me to this torment, I, I myself brewed it! Out of [my] father's woe and [my] mother's anguish, out of tears of love ever and aye, out of laughing and weeping, joys and wounds, I have gathered its poisons. Thou draught which I brewed, ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... too, had sly nods and smiles, hints and jokes of a milder sort, which made him color and fume, and once lose his dignity entirely. Molly Loo, who dearly loved to torment the big boys, and dared attack even solemn Frank, left one of Boo's old tin trains on the door-step, directed to "Conductor Minot," who, I regret to say, could not refrain from kicking it into the street, and slamming the door with a ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... it me at large; but as to the surgeon, we told him he had no way to know whether the lion would do so or not, but to cure him first and trust to his honour; but he had no faith, so to despatch him and put him out of his torment, he shot him in the head and killed him, for which we called him the king-killer ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... you not in great suffering?' 'Not at all,' she replied, and I paid homage to her heroism. 'I know not, dear miss, whether to admire more the greatness of your heroism or the generosity of your sympathy. While you are in torment yourself, your tender interest goes forth to my countrywomen in what you believe to be torture. Be comforted, dear miss; the anguish of a squeezed foot is not comparable to that of a waist so cruelly confined as yours, and the consequences, also, are not to ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... rushing hither and thither, in search of some one. The sun still beat upon him, and he streamed at every pore. Not only did he seek in vain, but he could not remember who it was that he sought. This way and that, along the broad and narrow walks, he hurried in torment, until of a sudden, at a great distance, he descried a figure seated on a bench. He bounded forward. In a moment he would see the face, ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... deities that are practically recognized in these rude faiths are generally supposed to be malevolent beings, who have not only fixed an evil fate upon men, but whose active and continued function it is to torment them. Though there is a lingering belief in a Supreme Being who created all things, yet he is far off and incomprehensible. He has left his creatures in the hands of inferior deities, at whose mercy they pass a miserable existence. Looking at the dark facts ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood |
