"Torturing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of private ingratitude. The inimitable Hogarth has traced the gradual workings of an unfeeling heart in his progress of cruelty. He has shewn, that malevolence is progressive in its operation, and that a man who begins life by impaling flies, will find a delight in torturing his fellow creatures before he closes it. We have heard that even at school these poetical propensities were strongly manifested in Lord BYRON, and that he began his satirical career against those persons to whom the formation ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... looks, the mien, and the voice of the man awed them, and not a weapon was raised against him. He might, even then, have passed scathless through the crowd; he might have borne to other climes his burning passions and his torturing woes: but his care for life was past; he desired but to curse his dupes, and to die. He paused, looked round and burst into a laugh of such bitter and haughty scorn, as the tempted of earth may hear in the halls below from the ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... plain sight, though at some distance. She began at once calling and posturing, clearly for our benefit. We, of course, understood her tactics. She wished to draw us away from the neighborhood of her infant, and as it was impossible to penetrate the thicket, and we did not enjoy torturing an anxious mother, we decided to yield to her wishes, and see ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... could not bear my own thoughts, the revulsion was too sudden, too full of turbulent, fierce, torturing emotions; I fled for a short relief to the house to which Madeline's father had invited me. But in vain I sought, by wine, by converse, by human voices, human kindness, to fly the ghost that had been raised from the grave of time. I soon returned ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... themselves odious by their cruelty, and failed to prove the true anatomy of the brain and nerves, while Sir Charles Bell did succeed, and thus made one of the greatest physiological discoveries of the age without torturing animals, which his gentle and kindly nature abhorred. To Lady Bell I am indebted for a copy of her husband's Life. She is one of my few dear and valued ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... purely selfish. It occurred to me, if he should thus suddenly die, and I be found alone in his cell, I might be charged with being his murderer; and my courage, which, from long inaction, had sadly declined of late, deserted me at the thought. After the most torturing suspense, the dial at length showed me that the two hours had elapsed, and I hastened to ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... Frank Helper. He was a Kentuckian by birth, kind and open-hearted,—a slave-holder by habit, not by nature. Warm feelings of regard had long existed between him and Mr. Noble; and to him the broken merchant applied for advice in this torturing emergency. Though Mr. Helper was possessed of but moderate wealth, he had originally agreed to endorse his friend's note for fifteen hundred dollars; and he now promised to empower some one to expend three thousand dollars in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... was that he betook himself to examine Antipater of Samaria, who was the steward of [his son] Antipater; and upon torturing him, he learned that Antipater had sent for a potion of deadly poison for him out of Egypt, by Antiphilus, a companion of his; that Theudio, the uncle of Antipater, had it from him, and delivered it to Pheroras; for that Antipater had charged him ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... that the Boxers had caught a lot of native Christians, and had taken them to a temple where they were engaged in torturing them with a refinement of cruelty. One of our leaders collected a few marines and some volunteers, marched out and surrounded the temple and captured everybody red-handed. The Boxers were given short shrift—those that had their insignia on; but in the sorting-out process it was impossible ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... set up a whistle, inwardly pleased at the sketch he had made of Christine's head, and buoyed up by one of those flashes of hope whence he so often dropped into torturing anguish, like an artist ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... redound to public benefit; and I only ask, if my suggestion be approved of, that I may be remembered as the inventor, and not treated as Admiralty Lords do the constructors of new targets, testing the metal and torturing the man. Bear in mind, therefore, if the political 'Wreck Register' be ever carried into execution, its device must be ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... were attempting to crush or drive back the Third Brigade and to sweep around and overwhelm our left wing. The last attempt partially succeeded. German troops swung past the unsupported left of the brigade and, slipping in between the wood and St. Julien, added to our torturing anxieties by apparently isolating us from ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... exceedingly unprepossessing individual will endeavour to entertain you." This is a collection of Kai Lung's entertaining tales, told professionally in the market places as he travelled about; told sometimes to occupy and divert the minds of his enemies when they were intent on torturing him. ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... that she was the centre of one endless conspiracy by Spain and Rome against the throne and life of Elizabeth? Who doubts that her long imprisonment in England was a violation of all law, all justice, all humanity? Who doubts that the fineing, whipping, torturing, hanging, embowelling of men, women, and children, guilty of no other crime than adhesion to the Catholic faith, had assisted the Pope and Philip, and their band of English, Scotch, and Irish conspirators, to shake Elizabeth's throne and endanger her life? Who doubts that; ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... cried the Tzigana, with a rapid glance toward the daggers, before which stood Menko, preventing her from advancing, and regarding her with eyes which burned with reckless passion, wounded self-love, and torturing jealousy. "Yes, coward!" she repeated, "coward, coward to dare to taunt me with an infamous past and speak of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... employed this engine of arbitrary power; once she had all the servants of the Duke of Norfolk tortured. I have seen in a MS. of the times heads of charges made against some members of the House of Commons in Elizabeth's reign, among which is one for having written against torturing! Yet Coke, the most eminent of our lawyers, extols the mercy of Elizabeth in the trials of Essex and Southampton, because she had not used torture against their accomplices or witnesses. Was it for ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... expression, it usually uttered itself in one or the other of the two ways, and more usually in both ways. And when he had drunk, his brain a-lilt with unsung song and the devil in him aroused and rampant, his soul found its supreme utterance in torturing Batard. ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... were all that and more. But even that does not justify you in torturing these men to death. Destroy them, by all means, if you will, so that they may never again have the opportunity to do perhaps irreparable mischief; and let their death be so ignominious that it shall be a warning to all others; but let it be humane. In a word, hang them, even as M'Bongwele ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... yellow silk and black velvet borders—alabaster lamps shedding their soft light upon small marble busts—and sofas and chairs corresponding with the curtains—(and upon which a visitor might sit without torturing the nerves of the owner of them) these, along with some genuine pictures of Wouvermans, Berghem, and Rysdael, and a few other (subordinate) ornaments, formed the furniture of Lorenzo's Drawing Room. As it was en suite with the library, which was fitted up in a grave style or character, the contrast ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... greet thee With all that love that I must die concealing? Will my tear-laden eyes sin in revealing The agony that preys upon my soul? Is't not enough through the long, loathsome day, To hold each look, and word, in stern control? May I not wish the staring sunlight gone, Day and its thousand torturing moments done, And prying sights and sounds of men away? Oh, still and silent Night! when all things sleep, Locked in thy swarthy breast my secret keep: Come, with thy vision'd hopes and blessings now! I dream the only happiness ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... tear Speak woe he might not stop to cheer: Then, trusting not a second look, In haste he sped hind up the brook, Nor backward glanced till on the heath Where Lubnaig's lake supplies the Teith,— What in the racer's bosom stirred? The sickening pang of hope deferred, And memory with a torturing train Of all his morning visions vain. Mingled with love's impatience, came The manly thirst for martial fame; The stormy joy of mountaineers Ere yet they rush upon the spears; And zeal for Clan and Chieftain burning, And hope, from well-fought ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... syllogism that the Irish must blunder, we might rest satisfied with our labours; but there are minds of so perverse a sort, that they will not yield their understandings to the torturing ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... Thine hour of dire despair; By Thine agony of prayer; By the cross, the nail, the thorn, Piercing spear, and torturing scorn; By the gloom that veiled the skies O'er the dreadful sacrifice,— Listen to our humble cry, Hear our ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... out with torturing clearness, and Dale saw the criminal renewing the outrage after long years. He was quite old, shaky, infirm, and yet strong enough to consummate the final act of his infinite wickedness. And Dale saw those yellow-white hands, with their ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... her life! to see Evie—dear, sweet, graceful Evie—limping about, crippled and helpless; to keep ever in one's mind the memory of that last wild run—the last time Evie would ever run! Could retribution possibly have taken to itself a more torturing form? She had spoiled Evie's life, and brought misery into a ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... test-tubes. Jealously guarded they have been, to be sure, but there has not been, by any means, the solitary confinement that the words might seem to imply. On the contrary, each little whiff of gas has been subjected to a variety of experiments—made to pass through torturing-tubes under varying conditions of temperature, and brought purposely in contact with various other substances, that its physical and chemical properties might be tested. But in each case the experiment ended with the return of the substance, as pure as before, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... contending with good from its birth, Wrenching in battle the heartstrings of earth,— Ah! what infinities circle us here, Strangeness and wonderment swathing the sphere! Providence ruleth with care most minute, Yet is fell cruelty torturing the mute, Infinite marvels of wrong and of right, Blessing and blasting each day ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... during these feasts and dances, he was seized with a boundless, unspeakable dread, a torturing anxiety. He felt inexpressibly desolate, and the consciousness of his lost, his wasted existence haunted him, while it seemed as if an inner voice was whispering—"Go, flee to her! with Elise is peace and innocence. If you are to be ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... Napoleon? no; he is no longer Napoleon. They have given him some Austrian name, because the other frightened them. Everything frightens them. Do you know what they are doing with the son of the Emperor?" resumed the marshal, with painful excitement. "They are torturing him—killing him by inches!" ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... ran through Henrietta's body at these words. The very air of the room was all at once difficult to breathe, and she only felt better when she sat in the carriage again. But even there she was haunted by some unendurable, undefinable, torturing feeling which struck her still more unpleasantly when Clementina remarked: "Yes, there is nothing but good ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... We cannot be wholly mistaken in thinking that it is these rare spirits which sustain, enliven, and enrich the world. And yet they seem to be regarded with no special favour by the Creator; they have to contend with insuperable obstacles; the very sensitiveness of their spirit is a torturing disability. The selfish, worldly, hard, brutal temperaments have almost invariably a far better time of it in the world; yet both the exalted spirit and the brutal spirit are undeniable facts; the lofty, unselfish, pure spirit ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... for being an intrigante, And somewhat mechante in her amorous sphere; One of those pretty, precious plagues, which haunt A lover with caprices soft and dear, That like to make a quarrel, when they can't Find one, each day of the delightful year: Bewitching, torturing, as they freeze or glow, And—what is worst of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... the repeated and painful surmises of Roughgrove respecting Mary's piteous condition. Glenn, and the rest, with perhaps one or two exceptions, likewise seemed disposed to make an instantaneous termination of the torturing suspense respecting the ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... and gone, To the rice-swamp dank and lone, There no mother's eye is near them, There no mother's ear can hear them; Never when the torturing lash Seams their back with many a gash, Shall a mother's kindness bless them, Or a mother's arms caress them. Gone, gone—sold and gone, To the rice-swamp dank and lone, From Virginia's hills and waters, Woe is me ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... sturdy Dutchmen rose with the emergency. Small parties were sent out against the Connecticut savages in the vicinity of Stamford. Indian villages on Long Island were surprised and the natives put to the sword. In two instances at least the victors disgraced humanity by torturing the captured. ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... Guest's face was too plainly visible to Maruja, as well as himself, to permit a doubt that the idea was as new as the accusation. Forgetting her bewilderment at these revelations, her wounded pride, a torturing doubt suggested by Guest's want of confidence in her—indeed everything but the outraged feelings of her lover, she flew to his side. "Not a word," she said, proudly, lifting her little hand before his darkening face. "Do not insult me by replying to such an accusation ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... I have the fever, and you will be telling him no lie, for I am ill of this little priest who is torturing ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... this chapter, the early commercial voyages of the English East India Company have been detailed; and it is now proposed to conclude this part of our arrangement, by a brief narrative of the unjustifiable conduct of the Dutch at Amboina, in cruelly torturing and executing several Englishmen and others on false pretences of a conspiracy, but the real purpose of which was to appropriate to themselves the entire trade of the spice islands, Amboina, Banda, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... or conceivable by the amateur chemists—of which there are not few in the counties in which the hills are situated—was put in requisition, and a voice evoked by them, but it would not speak as desired. Others, who knew nothing of chemistry, were torturing it in every possible way—beating it with hammers, to see if it would expand, like gold, into leaf; but instead of this, it only flew off in splinters: then putting it into the smith's forge, to see if it would liquefy and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... The torturing temptation to reveal the truth, roused once already by his companion's merciless gayety of spirit, possessed itself of Midwinter for the second time. He leaned back in the dark against the high side of ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... Life for him meant torturing death to whatever lay in his path. It meant untold agony for whomsoever his hand fell upon. And greater to me than these then was the murderous conflict just ended, in which I had by very miracle escaped death again and again. Men do not fight such battles to weep forgiving tears ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... blissfully nearly all the day, after his exhausting labors and torturing pains. But with the sunset bugle he fretted to be let out. Ailie had wept and pleaded, Mrs. Brown had reasoned with him, and Mr. Brown had scolded, all to the end of persuading him to sleep in "the hoose ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... toasted by name, taking occasion to remark at the same time that if he had been a little more alive to his own interest, he might have been rolling at that moment in his chariot-and-four. These reminiscences appeared to awaken no very torturing pangs in the breast of Mrs Snevellicci, who was sufficiently occupied in descanting to Nicholas upon the manifold accomplishments and merits of her daughter. Nor was the young lady herself at all behind-hand in displaying her choicest allurements; but these, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... followed,— Followed to seek her, and keep, if she would, the promise between them, Or, were a haunting doubt confirmed, to break it and free her. Then, at Naples we met, and the love that, before he was conscious, Turned his life toward mine, laid torturing stress to the purpose Whither it drove him forever, and whence forever it swerved him. How could he tell me his love, with this terrible burden upon him? How could he linger near me, and still withhold the avowal? And what ruin were that, if the other ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... Antoinette lay sleepless upon her bed in the night that followed this vain attempt at flight, and was torturing herself with anxious doubts whether Fidele had fallen a victim to his devotion, suddenly the tones of a huntsman's horn broke the silence; Marie Antoinette raised herself up and listened. Princess ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... first effort, to raise it to the level of the great classic models of which their minds were full. The attempt was bold, and the Pleiad did not pretend to consult the taste of the vulgar. "The obscurity of Ronsard," says M. Guizot, in his Corneille et son Temps, "is not that of a subtle mind torturing itself to make something out of nothing; it is the obscurity of a full and a powerful mind, which is embarrassed by its own riches, and has not learned to regulate the use of them. Furnished, by his reading of the ancients, with that ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... of reason would soon have ended it; that merciful potion of magic which can bring a torturing misery in the guise of a quaint conceit to a mind made simple as a little child's. Another day or so, and the frightened agony that glittered in her eyes—fusing slowly towards the last great conflagration—would have burnt up in the sudden ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... still With that respect which youth doth owe to age, And till ye ceased to speak, refrain'd to show Mine own opinion. But there is a breath From the Almighty, that gives life to thought, And in my soul imprison'd utterance burns Like torturing flame. So, will I give it vent Though I am young in years, and ye are old, And should be wise. I will not shun to uphold The righteous cause, nor will I gloze the wrong With flattering titles, lest the kindling wrath Of an offended Maker, sweep ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... light, her hands stretched forth in a suppliant gesture, confronted him from the far-off end of the verandah; and in the space between him and the obstinate phantom floated the murmur of words that fell on his ears in a jumble of torturing sentences, the meaning of which escaped the utmost efforts of his brain. Who spoke the Malay words? Who ran away? Why too late—and too late for what? What meant those words of hate and love mixed so strangely together, the ever-recurring names falling on ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... the bargain for stuffing chairs with; and between us, who knows—many rottener ship has come to land—but that some genty Miss, fond of plays, poems, and novels, may fancy our Benjie when he is giving her red hair a twist with the torturing irons, and run away with him, almost whether he will or not, in a stound of ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... girl will have a friend," mused the elder man. "Well, in moments when I could think, that torturing thought of my dragging her down with me was too much. It drove me back always to the old, old despair." The look of terror, that Jack noticed before came back into the haggard face. It was as if ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... of the human in it, so his practical reasoning is decidedly human in its superstition. Granted that we are in the hands of a childish and capricious God, who amuses himself with torturing us, who laughs at our faces distorted with pain, what is the thing we ought to do? How shall we best manage? Caliban's advice is dear: don't let Him notice you: don't get prominent: above all, never boast ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... with the men from whom I chanced to recede, to whom I ceased to give, and, by this action, denied good, I experienced a torturing ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... a soldier could desire, and had finally conferred upon him the command of West Point. He had admired his courage and palliated his misconduct, and now the scoundrel had turned on him and fled. Mingled with the bitterness of these memories of betrayed confidence was the torturing ignorance of how far this base treachery had extended. For all he knew there might be a brood of traitors about him in the very citadel of America. We can never know Washington's thoughts at that time, for he was ever silent, but as we listen in imagination ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... desiring an investigation. These petitioners were members of a faction which desired to break up the Virginia Company. In the Relation of the Assembly, Smith is charged with all the cruelties to the Colonists which are mentioned in this "Brief Declaration"; torturing and starving to death being the punishments for minor offences; and asserting their confidence in the truth of these statements by concluding it with these words: "And rather to be reduced to live under the like government we desire his Ma^{ties} commissioners may be sent over w^{th} authoritie ...
— Colonial Records of Virginia • Various
... either principle or religion is concerned, if the witness is telling what he believes to be true. Next, some devotees of science aver that these studies may bring back faith by a side wind, and, with faith, the fires of Smithfield and the torturing of witches. These opponents are what Professor Huxley called "dreadful consequences argufiers," when similar reasons were urged against the doctrine of evolution. Their position is strongest when they maintain that these ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... have killed six men in a gambling fight in California. John and Jim Younger killed the Pinkerton detectives Lull and Daniels, John being himself killed at that time by Daniels. A little later, Frank and Jesse James and Clel Miller killed detective Wicher, of the same agency, torturing him for some time before his death in the attempt to make him divulge the Pinkerton plans. The James boys killed Daniel Askew in revenge; and Jesse James and Jim Anderson killed Ike Flannery for motives ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... which we contrast it. What are the chorus of mariners, and the astute Ulysses, and the boyish generosity of Neoptolemus—what is the lonely cave on the shores of Lemnos—what the high-hearted old warrior, with his torturing wound and his sacred bow—what are all these to the vast Titan, whom the fiends chain to the rock beneath which roll the rivers of hell, for whom the daughters of Ocean are ministers, to whose primeval birth the gods of Olympus are the upstarts of a day, whose soul ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... cold and hard. She knew him to be Valmond's enemy, and she had no idea of sparing him. She knew also that he had been courteous enough to send a man each day to inquire after Valmond, but that was not to the point; he was torturing her, he had prophesied the downfall of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... silence for any great length of time, is next door to murder. I verily believe it sometimes is murder. The health, and even the lives of these little ones, are sacrificed to a false theory of teaching. There is no occasion for torturing a child in order to teach him. God did not so mean it. Only let your teaching be in accordance with the wants of his young nature, and the school-room will be to him the most attractive spot of all the earth. Time and again have I seen the teacher ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... Catholics, it is this Church which is charged with their protection. There are priests in every town, and in nearly every camp. And do we find them lifting their voices in behalf of the miners, protesting against the starving and torturing of thirty or forty thousand human beings? Do we find Catholic papers printing accounts of the Ludlow massacre? Do we find Catholic journalists on the scene reporting it, Catholic lawyers defending the strikers, Catholic novelists writing books about ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... "Thus addressed by Bhimasena, the high-souled king Ajatasatru firmly devoted to truth, mustering his patience, after a few moments said these words, 'No doubt, O Bharata, all this is true. I cannot reproach thee for thy torturing me thus by piercing me with thy arrowy words. From my folly alone hath this calamity come against you. I sought to cast the dice desiring to snatch from Dhritarashtra's son his kingdom with the sovereignty. It was therefore that, that cunning gambler—Suvala's son—played against ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... hazing a fellow and torturing him. Some mighty gritty people can't stand snakes or suckers. You kids ought to use sense. Who ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... whole of the forenoon in the most torturing state of suspense through contradictory reports. One passing officer telling us that he had just heard the order given to attack, and the next asserting, with equal confidence, that he had just heard the order to retreat; and it was not until about two ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... incidents in the panorama are intended to exhibit the barbarity of the Dacians, one being the exhibition of a row of heads stuck upon spears on the walls of a town or fortress; another the burning and torturing of naked Roman prisoners by Dacian women. Altogether these bas-reliefs, which are said to be the work of several artists, present anything but an edifying spectacle of the ancient ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... same day, or the next, that the man fell and could not rise again? The woman did not know. Something had got into her brain and was dancing there and would not stop; something blent of sun and glare, sand, mirage, torturing thirst. There was a little gray scorpion, too—but no, that had been crushed to a pulp by the man's heel. Or had ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... instance of divine agency, which has overtaken him at last, and punished him by the hands of those very people who have suffered so much from him; he being well known to have exercised his barbarous disposition in murdering or torturing any who unfortunately came within his reach."—The Derwent Star, January ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... an inherent power to run itself clear of taint that human ingenuity cannot devise the means of making it work permanent mischief, any more than means can be found of torturing people beyond what they can bear. Even if a man founds a College of Technical Instruction, the chances are ten to one that no one will be taught anything and that it will have been practically left to a number of excellent ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... any attack they might make upon the intruders, even though circumstances justified it. But as the Indian's evidence could not be received in a court of justice, the white man's oath would condemn him to the most torturing punishment." ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... terms with him to save their herds and stores, the rather that all attempts to dislodge him from his mountain fastness, and destroy his band, had failed. Blackburn seemed to enjoy the same kind of protection as Ughtred, and practised the same atrocities, torturing and imprisoning his captives unless they were heavily ransomed. He also led a life of wildest licence, and, when not engaged in some predatory exploit, spent his time in ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... whose bravery and unparalleled endurance held out to the end, although hunger gnawed at their vitals, disease and death daily decimated their ranks, intense anxiety for dear ones exposed to dangers, privations, all the horrors which everywhere attended the presence of the invaders, torturing them every hour. ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... you done with him?" she breaks forth, advancing toward him, as though to compel him to give her an answer to the question that has been torturing ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... very materially to arouse the Marchese's wrath and jealous agony. Bianca, perhaps, under the circumstances, ought not to have danced as frequently as she did with the Marchesino. She at least knew that the Marchese Lamberto had already conceived the most torturing jealousy of his nephew. Ludovico, on his part, was of course utterly unconscious that he was giving his uncle the remotest cause for umbrage by his attentions to ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... later, when the sun began to throw elongated shadows, that one is seen there, upon horseback, and going in a gallop; but he is heading from the house, and not toward it. For the rider is Cypriano himself, who, no longer able to bear the torturing suspense, has torn himself away from aunt and cousin, to go in search of his uncle and another cousin— the last ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... man, your folks are off in such a hurry?' she observed, thrusting snuff into her nose. I looked at her, and a load was taken off my heart. The word 'loan,' dropped by Philip, had been torturing me. She had no suspicion ... at least I thought so then. Zinaida came in from the next room, pale, and dressed in black, with her hair hanging loose; she took me by the hand without a word, and drew ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... she quits the chamber All the slaves are dumb, Dumb with rapture, till the Minx Back shall come to strum, Dumb the throats of thunder, Hushed chromatic skips, Lacking all the torturing ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various
... the future. And she was abashed by this arid, incurable egotism in the most secret place of her soul. She felt it making itself known continually in her hard determination to make the best of things; she knew that it was this feeling which was determined to close the death chamber, to deny all torturing memories; which said, in effect, "what is finished is finished, and the dead ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... distinct from the Spanish bull-fights. There is no brutality, no torturing of the beast with arrows and crackers, no goring of horses. The bull is uninjured, and, though he gets furious, clearly relishes the fight, and in some cases cannot be induced to abandon it. The old proconsular seat ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... The torturing of this unhappy man lasted for three hours, and the horrible scene was immediately succeeded by another quite as bad. Villa called Father Domingo Campo and, after taking from him the little money that he had, ordered him stripped. He was then given numberless kicks ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... with a feeling of gratitude that he wished to make some recognition of what had been done for him, and instead of torturing the negro with English words, he resolved on teaching him deportment and the true principles of ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... seemed very lonely indeed when they had gone, but Dorothy was a healthy, prairie-bred girl, and not given to torturing herself ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... the silk and silver of one fine saddle with the blood of its owner. The point of the dying man's lance pierced his face, but he noted the bleaching of Kearney's, as one dragoon after another was flung upon the sharp rocks over which his bewildered brute stumbled, or was caught and held aloft in the torturing arms of ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... felt caught in some torturing nightmare as he watched the countless tentacle-feelers waving thus from one side to the other. It was a ceremony, he knew—some strange rite springing perhaps from dim memory alone, that these worm monsters carried out thus before the looming shape of their worm god. Only ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... that you make these torturing communications to me. God knows I wish to love and respect you, but when, under solemn circumstances, you utter, by your own admission, a deliberate falsehood to a man of the purest truth and honor; when you knowingly and wilfully ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... to expect these visits, each time the bar rattled down he trembled with the hope that the jailer brought him freedom. Each successive disappointment was as acute as the last, made more poignant by the torturing certainty that his hopes were vain. The effect of one was not at ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... as the monster, recovering itself, was turning madly to finish off its insignificant but torturing opponent, A-ya came leaping back to the rescue, with a blazing and sparkling faggot in each hand, and the old men, some with fire-brands, some with spears, clamoring resolutely behind her. With fearless dexterity, ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... had a strangely disturbing effect on me. A torturing voice would whisper in my ear: "Yes, you are evidently going mad. By and by you will rush howling through the forest, only to drop down at last and die; and no person will ever find and bury your bones. Old Nuflo was more fortunate in ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... dear honored father feel when the sad story should reach his ears? would it indeed break his heart as Grandpa Dinsmore had said? The boy's own heart was overwhelmed with grief, dismay, and remorse as he asked himself these torturing questions. ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley
... Kirillov abroad.... Surely you knew that? What's so annoying is that perhaps you are only putting it on before me, and most likely you knew all about this poem and everything long ago! How did it come to be on your table? It found its way there somehow! Why are you torturing me, if so?" ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... reached for it—pipe, tobacco, matches were proffered to him. Before he accepted the articles he swept their faces with a glance of satisfaction. Without attempting to change the position which must have been torturing him, he filled the pipe bowl, his fingers moving as if he had partially lost control of them. He filled it raggedly, shreds of tobacco hanging down around the bowl. He bent his head to meet the left hand which he raised with difficulty, then he tried to light a match. But he seemed ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... dust before these bearded armed men, praying them to slay him with their weapons there where he stood, and put him mercifully and at once out of his mysterious misery. But an invisible influence stronger than himself, prevented him from becoming altogether the victim of his own torturing emotions, and he remained erect and still as a marble figure, with a wondering, white piteous face of such unutterable affliction that the officer who watched him seemed touched, and, advancing, clapped his shoulder in a ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... there is no reason why it should be one to my readers. Grace Carden, for the first time in her life, was in the clutches of a fiend, a torturing fiend, ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... Emperor's rapt glance, and I saw the sailor lying on the floor, alive but hideously rent, and the royal torturers were at work all round him. They had torn long strips from him, but had not detached them, and they were torturing the ends of them far away from the sailor." The man that I met at dinner told me many things which I must omit. "The sailor was groaning softly, and every time he groaned Thuba Mleen tittered. I had no sense of smell, but I could hear and see, ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... made to me that you are forcing negroes into the military service, and even torturing them—riding them on rails and the like to extort their consent. I hope this may be a mistake. The like must not be done by you, or any one under you. You must not force negroes any more than white men. Answer ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... anything—perhaps, a wandering up courts and passages, a turning round the corners of old narrow streets, an unsavoury acquaintance with the regions of trampery, and an uncomfortable perambulation along corn-torturing causeways and clumsily paved roads. Pigeon flyers, dog fanciers, gossipping vagrants, crying children, old iron, stray hens, women with a passion for sitting on door steps, men looking at nothing with their hands in their pockets, ancient rags pushed into broken windows, and the ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... lassitude, which we find in Botticelli. Only that in Neroni's work it seems not the outcome of a certain dreamy spiritual dissatisfaction—the dissatisfaction which makes us feel that Botticelli's flower-wreathed nymphs may end in the pool under the willows like Ophelia—but rather of a torturing of line and attitude in search of grace. Grace! Unclutchable phantom, which had appeared tantalisingly in Neroni's recollections of the antique, a something ineffable, which he could not even see clearly when it was there before ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... in which he was kneeling filled with frightful figures; I saw all the sins, wickedness, vices, and ingratitude of mankind torturing and crushing him to the earth; the horror of death and terror which he felt as man at the sight of the expiatory sufferings about to come upon him, surrounded and assailed his Divine Person under the forms of hideous spectres. He fell from side to side, ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... resentment towards Slimak for having beaten him and driven him away; the gospodarz was in the right, of course; neither was he afraid of having no roof over his head; people like him never had any roof of their own; he was not thinking of the future. Another thought was torturing him...the horses. For Slimak the horses were part of his working machinery, for Maciek they were friends and brothers. Who but they in the whole world had longed for him, had greeted him heartily when he returned, or looked after ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... regarding Mr. Tuckham. Reminding herself that she might be behind time at Itchincope, where the guests would be numerous that evening, and the song of triumph loud, with Captain Baskelett to lead it, she kissed the young lady she had unintentionally been torturing so ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... this torturing Witch-catcher can by all or any of these meanes wring out a word or two of confession from any of these stupified, ignorant, unitelligible, poore silly creatures, (though none heare it but himselfe) he will adde and ...
— The Discovery of Witches • Matthew Hopkins
... cast over him the reflection of its hidden light. That soul was joyously greedy to feel everything, to suffer everything, to observe and understand men, women, the earth, life, desires, passions, thoughts, even those that were torturing, even those that were mediocre, even those that were vile: and it was enough to lend them a little of its light, to save Christophe from destruction. It made him feel—he did not know how—that he was not altogether alone. That love of being ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... delight; but suddenly sobered down, and a look of care stole over the little face, as the torturing question recurred to her mind, ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... employers and allies were eventually forced to proceed as the chief of a gang of ruffians, and who, not content with assassinating political prisoners and stealing their property in Paris, roamed all over the Departments of the Seine and the Seine-et-Oise, torturing farmers to make them give up their money, and maddening the countryside with outrages not to ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... you think it doesn't," he said, in a relieved tone, for he had been torturing himself with the thought that he was a most ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard
... as sinks a stone through water. He realized, as his mother had realized a little while before, that in Garnache they had an opponent who took no chances. In a voice thick with the torturing rage of impotence he gave the order upon which the grim Parisian insisted. There followed a silence broken by the fall of Rabecque's heavily shod feet upon the stones of the yard, as he crossed it to do ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... all things: Why her Lord had sent her? What were these torturing gifts, and wherefore lent her? Scornful as spirit ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... in that torturing frame of mind—chained, helpless, in our ignorance, or by reason of the Chinaman's supernormal genius—that we lived throughout the ensuing days. My friend began to look like a man consumed by a burning fever. Yet, we ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... patient is killing herself; I see that she is not fully herself; I understand, too, that if she did not consider herself on the point of death, she would never have thought of me; and, indeed, say what you will, it's hard to die at twenty without having known love; this was what was torturing her; this was why, in, despair, she caught at me—do you understand now? But she held me in her arms, and would not let me go. 'Have pity on me, Aleksandra Andreyevna, and have pity on yourself,' I say. 'Why,' she says; 'what is there to think of? You know ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... notoriety because of his sweetheart's affliction. The women accosted him, the old fishermen stopped him to inquire about the animal that was torturing his girl. 'The poor thing! The poor thing!' he would groan, in accents of amorous commiseration. He said no more; but his eyes revealed a vehement desire to take over as soon as possible Visanteta and her toad, since the ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... he were wrong, why, then there was no further need to toil after a beauty of character to match the beauty of seas and hills. Good heavens! Beauty in the Mudros Hills! They were but homes of thirsty grass and dying thistles, dust and torturing flies. These ideals of Monty's were vapoury. Why not throw them up—throw up moral effort? I would. ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... With torturing clearness, imagination built up the scene in the garden: the arrival of Broadstone's letter; the hand of the stricken man groping for the newspaper; the effort of those pencilled lines; and, finally, that wavering mark, John Ferrier's last ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... upon his mind did fall Thoughts of old longings half forgot, Matters for which his heart was hot A while ago: whereof no more He cared for some, and some right sore Had vexed him, being fulfilled at last. And when the thought of these had passed Still something was there left behind, That by no torturing of his mind Could he in any language name, Or into form ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... came, and the battle raged on with unceasing violence. Lying uncomfortably on a slope, propped against a dead Turk, he scarcely seemed to feel the burning heat of the sun, the irritation of the flies, the torturing thirst nor the pain of his wound, for his spirit lay soothed in a strange restfulness, in the satisfaction of peace, in a manner like the weary wishing for nothing but sleep after a day of honest work. For Mac the fight was over; he had done what had been asked of him, ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... hear what that French woman has to say to the assignation," exclaimed Soulis, whose polluted heart could not suppose the existence of true purity, and whose cruel disposition exulted in torturing and death; "question her, and then her majesty may ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... glad of that," said Pierre. "Father Marquette hath not the strength of the Sieur Jolliet for such rude wanderings. These southern mists, and torturing insects, and clammy heats, and the bad food have worked a ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... I, 30:5a, 31:1a] And after the death of Herod's brother Pheroras, the king devoted himself to examining his son Antipater's steward; and upon torturing him he learned that Antipater had sent for a potion of deadly poison for him from Egypt, and that the uncle of Antipater had received it from him and delivered it to Pheroras, for Antipater had charged ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... white tunics, their throats bare, hair flowing like waves, and assuming attitudes which the gods could not resist, but which saints withstood, and looks inflexible and ardent like those with which the serpent charms the bird; and then he gave way before looks that held him in a torturing grasp and delighted his senses as with a voluptuous kiss. It seemed to Franz that he closed his eyes, and in a last look about him saw the vision of modesty completely veiled; and then followed a dream of passion like that promised by the Prophet to ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... nothing left to hope for," whispered Stanley after a time, "we might as well close the air valves and get it over with at once. No use torturing ourselves...." ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... could not speak as the French girl had spoken for her man. She could not swear the mouths to silence. She could not cry out the bursting, torturing truth that alone would close those mouths. No, not even to Jeffrey himself could she ever by word, or even by the faintest whisper, or even by a look, show that she knew more than his and other living mouths could tell her! Never would she be able to look ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... Dutch. Lamentable events which had taken place in the Spice Islands were repeatedly brought on our stage. The Englishmen were all saints and heroes; the Dutchmen all fiends in human shape, lying, robbing, ravishing, murdering, torturing. The angry passions which these pieces indicated had more than once found vent in war. Thrice in the lifetime of one generation the two nations had contended, with equal courage and with various fortune, for the sovereignty of the German Ocean. The ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... end, out of sheer pity that overcame the strange delight he had in torturing her, he desisted in his appeals and demands and subtle arguments. The long strain left him spent. And with the sudden let-down of his energy, the surrender to her stronger will, he fell prey at once to the sadness that ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... tenderness, but the merry twinkle was gone from his eye, and the gladsome note from his voice. For eight consecutive days, the fatal snow fell with but few short intermissions. Eight days, in which there was nothing to break the monotony of torturing, inactive endurance, except the necessity of gathering wood, keeping the fires, and cutting anew the steps which led upward, as the snow increased in depth. Hope ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... lake. The naked savages were never tired of testing their respective strengths. They would paddle away like so many black devils—dashing up the water whenever they succeeded in coming near each other, and delighting in drenching us with the spray. The greatest pleasure to them, it appeared, was torturing others with impunity to themselves. Because the Wazungu had clothes, and they had none, they cared not how the water flew about; and the more they were asked to desist, the more obstinately they persevered. For fear of misapprehension, I must state that though these negroes go stark naked when cruising ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... watched with torturing fluctuations the signs of solicitude in Hope, the timid withdrawing of her fingers, the questioning of her eyes, the weary drooping of her whole expression. Often he cursed himself as a wretch for paining that pure and noble ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... you say, Mahatma? A man! One of those two-legged beasts that hunt hares; a thing like Giles and Tom—yes, Tom? Oh! not that—not that! I'd almost rather go through everything again than become a cruel, torturing man." ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... could not be put in words. Brooke saw Death awaiting himself, and, worse than that, he saw Talbot—alone, friendless, despairing, in the hands of remorseless fiends. Talbot, on the other hand, saw Death awaiting Brooke, and never could shake off the torturing thought that his death was owing to her, and that he was virtually dying for her. Had it not been for her he might still have been safe. And it seemed to her to be a very hard and bitter thing that ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... torturing thought of a promise unkept, the Hawk's thumb and forefinger moved in their slight grinding motion on the first sheet of the sheaf ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore
... of Zola, the book, which, because of an alleged dry rot in the German army, prophesied mischance in the future, produced its effect not so much through an apparently objective but gloomy depiction of life in the garrisons, as through the nourishment that it gave to the torturing doubts which during the last decades of the nineteenth century grew rank as a fatalistic pessimism. The very principle of naturalism as a form of art, with its one-sided preference for disease, crime, and weakness, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... moment was now at hand when the miserable Thomson's state of torturing suspense was to cease, when he would know for certain whether these men were actually relentless, or whether, having already wreaked an ample vengeance upon him, they would be content to ignore the remainder ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... as well? You know how ill I was not long ago at Basle, more than once. I was beginning to suspect that that year would be fatal to me: illness followed illness, always more severe. But, at the very time when this illness was at its height, I felt no torturing desire to live and no trepidation at the fear of death. My whole hope was in Christ alone, and I prayed only that he would give me what he judged most salutary for me. In my youth long ago, as I remember, I would shiver ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... historian, knew him, and had heard him say, that "if the king put forth the New Testament in English, he would not live to bear it."[554] And yet he could not bear to see a heretic die. What was it? Had the meaning of that awful figure hanging on the torturing cross suddenly revealed itself? Had some inner voice asked him whether, in the prayer for his persecutors with which Christ had parted out of life, there might be some affinity with words which ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... "The robbing and torturing of travellers, the plundering and burning of Saxon Villages... Almost all the Towns and Villages hereabouts are so plundered out, that many a one now has nothing but what he carries on his body. Plundering was universal: and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle |
