"Knout" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shaved a cat, and then cut off his own or the cat's tail, he could not remember which. This reminds the Russian of a countess in Moscow who owned a beautiful little dog, to which she was greatly attached. She required her serfs to call it "My noble Prince," and had them well flogged with the knout whenever they approached it without bowing. One day a cat got hold of the noble Prince, and gave him a good scratching. The countess, being unable to soothe her afflicted poodle, caused the cat's paws to be cut off, and served up on a plate for his unhappy highness to play with—after ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... could I be with either?" Humph! N-n-o-o, I can hardly say that! Yet here we are, tripping together, Republics and proud Autocrat! Two cats and a Boreal Bruin!— So satire will say, I've no doubt. And some will declare it must ruin The Russdom once ruled by the knout. I wonder—I very much wonder— What NICK to this sight would have said— I fear he'd have looked black as thunder, And savage as RURIC the Red. For this did we lose the Crimea? For this did we larrup the Jews? I really had not an idea Republics could rule—and amuse. Miss FRANCE looks ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 8, 1891 • Various
... are getting too saucy since you ceased to be serfs, and the knout is the best school for you to learn politics in. ...
— Vera - or, The Nihilists • Oscar Wilde
... living and real socialism,[G] we shall have the doctrinaire socialism of the Germans, who will say no more than the Prussian bayonets will permit them to say. The bureaucratic and military intelligence of Prussia, combined with the knout of the Czar of St. Petersburg, are going to assure peace and public order for at least fifty years on the whole continent of Europe. Farewell, liberty! Farewell, socialism! Farewell, justice for the people ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... the corporal respectfully. "My orders are strict to allow no one to communicate with the prisoners, and the knout is the least I may ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... unceasing efforts of those who happen to be in authority to conceal this and attribute some other significance to it, authority has always meant for man the cord, the chain with which he is bound and fettered, or the knout with which he is to be flogged, or the ax with which he is to have hands, ears, nose, or head cut off, or at the very least, the threat of these terrors. So it was under Nero and Ghenghis Khan, and so it is to-day, even ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... shames me to think what John Reed or other gifted writers for "The Masses" could have done. And I should think that Wallace Morgan would writhe with shame. For, where Art Young would have seen heavy-jowled, pig-eyed Capital, in a silk hat and a checked suit, whirling a cruel knout over the broad and noble (but bent and shuddering) back of Labor—where Boardman Robinson would have found a mother, her white, drawn face half hidden by the shoddy shawl of black, to which cling the hands of her emaciated brood—what has Wallace ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... little ordinary care, you ivory-skulled young son of a gun. Do you think Miss Delane is made of twopences? Keep an eye on him,' he urged the manager. 'These young fellows nowadays want someone standing over them with a knout all the time. Be more careful another time, young man. Eleven-fifteen, remember. Make a note of it, or ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... found missing, and full soon The boatswain's cat, sagacious smelt him out, Gave him a clawing to some tune— This cat's a cousin Germam to the Knout ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... the best protection against every attack on the Fatherland. This is it, then! We, too, wish to defend the Fatherland. Suppose that instead we had said in the hour of need: Yes, we want to protect our Fatherland against the knout regiments of the Czar all right enough, but we demand that protection from the militia! Since we do not as yet have the militia, we shall make no use of the standing army, for we would rather let ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... knout cutting through the decayed fibre of the man and raising a livid welt on his diseased soul. Galled beyond endurance, his countenance convulsed with fury, he struck wickedly; and the vicious blow of his open palm across her mouth brought flecks of blood to the lips as her ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... stick; ratan[obs3], rattan; birch, birch rod; azote[obs3], blacksnake[obs3], bullwhack [obs3][U.S.], chicote[obs3], kurbash[obs3], quirt, rawhide, sjambok[obs3]; rod in pickle; switch, ferule, cudgel, truncheon. whip, bullwhip, lash, strap, thong, cowhide, knout; cat, cat o'nine tails; rope's end. pillory, stocks, whipping post; cucking stool[obs3], ducking stool; brank[obs3]; trebuchet[obs3], trebuket[obs3]. triangle[instruments of torture: list], wooden horse, iron maiden, thumbscrew, boot, rack, wheel, iron heel; chinese ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... sensual and not unmusical chorus, seemed to fade from his ears. He fancied himself in some subterranean place of vast dimensions, through the grim galleries of which men and women with evil faces crept like animals. And towering above them, unreal in size, his scornful face an epitome of sin, the knout which he wielded symbolical and ghastly, driving his motley flock with the leer of the evil shepherd, was the man from whom he had already learnt to recoil with horror. The picture came and went in a flash. Francis found himself accepting ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... knob knave knife knock knowledge knucks knead knight knoll knuckle knarl knee knit know knell knout ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... says that he's heard that the persecution of the Jews has just begun again. Cruel shame, but I daren't say this aloud, in case anyone should understand just that amount of English, and then—whoopski!—the knout and Siberia! So I'll say "nowt." Really humorous that, I'm sure, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 16, 1890 • Various
... shoulders, sprang to his saddle, and cried a retreat. The Cossacks, unable to turn in the aisle, backed cumbrously with a manifold thudding and rearing and clanking, but ere the congregation had finished rubbing their eyes, the last conical hat and leaded knout had vanished, and only the tarry reek of their boots was left in proof of their actual passage. A deep silence hung for a moment like a heavy cloud, then it broke in a ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... Steadfast patience from staunch loyalty have borrowed, Slaved for Slavdom still in Peace, and died in War; We have borne the yoke of power, and its abuses, We have trusted cells and shackles served their turn; Nay, that e'en the ruthless knout had noble uses; Now we starve—and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 10, 1891 • Various
... she has talent. Maria Theresa believed that her daughter's beauty would prove more powerful over France than her own armies. Like Catharine II., her envied contemporary, she consulted no ties of nature in the disposal of her children,—a system more in character where the knout is the logician than among nations boasting higher civilization: indeed her rivalry with Catharine even made her grossly neglect their education. Jealous of the rising power of the North, she saw that it was the purpose of Russia to counteract her views in Poland and ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... considerable jealousy and consequent discord—or some trifle of that sort (Joe had never been in a harem, and was therefore indefinite), when the blackamoor, to punctuate his remarks, slashed the odalisque across her thinly covered shoulders with a knout—a not uncommon mode of enforcing ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... grandmother's chair, her face hidden from Lady Maulevrier's falcon eye. Every word uttered by her ladyship stung like the knotted cords of a knout. She knew not whether to be most ashamed of her lover or of herself—of her lover for his obscure position, his hopeless poverty; of herself for her folly in loving such a man. And she did love him, and would fain have pleaded his cause, had ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the yoke of the Tartars had begun to have a very deteriorating effect upon the Russian character, and the more sanguinary code of the Asiatics had effaced the tradition of the laws of Yaroslav. Mutilation, flagellation, and the abundant use of the knout prevailed. The servile custom of chelobitye, or knocking the head on the ground, which was exacted from all subjects on entering the royal presence, was certainly of Tartar origin, as also the punishment inflicted upon refractory debtors, called ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... your fathers, mothers, wives and children? If not, defend yourselves. Will you see a part of your fellow-citizens sent to the wilds of Siberia, made to serve in the wars of tyrants, or bleed under the murderous knout? If not, defend yourselves. Will you behold your villages in flames, and your harvests destroyed? Will you die of hunger on the land which your sweat has made fertile? If not, ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... true that even the Cossacks forgot the strict discipline which had been commanded them, and entered the houses, robbing and compelling the inhabitants, by blows of the knout, to give them all they wanted. But yet they were less cruel than the Saxons, less barbarous than the Austrians, who, with scoffing and derision, committed the greatest atrocities. Indeed, it was only ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... in the eyes of all. The victim was stripped and stretched against a pillar, or bent over a low post, his hands being tied, so that he had no means of defending himself. The instrument of torture was a sort of knout or cat-o'-nine-tails, with bits of iron or bone attached to the ends of the thongs. Not only did the blows cut the skin and draw blood, but not infrequently the victim died in the midst of the operation. Some have supposed that Pilate, out of consideration for Jesus, may ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... pliers, the bastinado, the hanging hook, the knout I'll make you kiss while the flutes play like the Nubian slave of old. You're in for it this time! I'll make you remember me for the balance of your natural life. (His forehead veins swollen, his face congested) I shall sit on your ottoman saddleback ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... and with Hydra head "It sank hot fangs in breast, and brow and thigh. "Come, Kate! O Anguish is a simple knave "Whom hucksters could outwit with small trade lies, "When thus so easily his smarting thralls, "May flee his knout! Come, come, my little Kate; "The black porch with its fringe of poppies waits— "A propylaleum hospitably wide. "No lictors with their fasces at its jaws, "Its floor as kindly to my fire-vein'd feet "As to thy silver, lilied, sinless ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... highway of the exiles, where they had marched for endless months, beaten and maltreated by their Cossack guards, another had dropped by the way. Always it had been savagery—brutal, bestial savagery. They had died—of fever, in the mines, under the knout. The last two had died after the escape, in the battle with the Cossacks, and he alone had won to Kamtchatka with the stolen papers and the money of a traveller he had left lying in ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... everlasting flight down the rocks. I became accustomed to the sound as I gradually approached, and mused, with gladness, of an early return to England. Heraine would acknowledge my vindication. Suffering more anguish from a sunbeam or a song than others from the knout or the rack, I had yet run the gauntlet of the intensest horrors, cheered by the certainty of her regard. She would confess her error. We should shut out the world again from our shadowy home at Glengoyle, and go down together, hand in hand, to a deeper stillness. ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... the Russian soldier, and in fact with everybody. Honour stands for nothing, but with the knout and brandy one can get anything from them except ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... soldiers and common people, among whom it made a sensation and was much talked of. This, by the way, is the only reference which occurs in the Memoirs to any interest below that of the highest nobility. As for the people of Russia, the right to draw their blood with the knout and make them sweat roubles into the royal treasury was taken as much for granted as the light and the air, by those who, either through fraud or force, could sit in the seat of Peter the Great. They regarded ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... to dare, From huts and ruined halls! On the deep midnight of despair A beam of ancient glory falls: The knout, the chain and dungeon cave To frenzy have aroused the brave; Dismembered Poland calls, And through a land opprest, betrayed, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... dogma in a pre-arranged rotation. The topics are few and ever-recurrent—"dieser uns aufgezwungene Krieg" (this war which has been forced upon us), the glorious uprising of Germany at its outbreak, the miracle of mobilization, the Russian knout, French frivolity, the base betrayal of Germany by envious, hypocritical England, the immeasurable superiority of German Kultur and Technik, the saintly virtues of the German soldier, and so on, through the appointed ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... and draws the load, trembling all over, gasping for breath, moving sideways, with a sort of unnatural spasmodic action—it's awful in Nekrassov. But that's only a horse, and God has given horses to be beaten. So the Tatars have taught us, and they left us the knout as a remembrance of it. But men, too, can be beaten. A well-educated, cultured gentleman and his wife beat their own child with a birch-rod, a girl of seven. I have an exact account of it. The papa was glad that the birch was covered with twigs. 'It stings ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... saw himself free of his assailants, and as he with Edith pressed against the wall of a house, they remained happily safe from the horses' hoofs as well as from the blows of the knout which were being dealt ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... furious bigot who will justify the rancorous lampoons of Gregory Nazianzen. Are we, then, angry on behalf of Julian? So far as he was interested, not for a moment would we have suspended the descending scourge. Cut him to the bone, we should have exclaimed at the time! Lay the knout into every "raw" that can be found! For we are of opinion that Julian's duplicity is not yet adequately understood. But what was right as regarded the claims of the criminal, was not right as regarded the duties of his opponent. Even in this mischievous ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... her ascendancy over you, she will slip out of your clutches like a fish, and you will never catch her again. Be as inflexible as law. Show no more charity than the headsman. Hit hard, and then hit again. Strike and keep on striking as if you were giving her the knout. Duchesses are made of hard stuff, my dear Armand; there is a sort of feminine nature that is only softened by repeated blows; and as suffering develops a heart in women of that sort, so it is a work of charity not to spare the rod. Do you persevere. ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... of this unending calm was understandable: Gregor was always ready to die. What to do with a man to whom death was release? To hold the knout and to see it turn to water in the hand! In lying he had overreached. Gregor, having accepted as fact the reported death of Ivan, had nothing to live for. Having brought Gregor here to torture he had, blind fool, taken away the fiddler's ability to feel. The fog cleared. He himself ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... country. Things were going on badly enough in Mexico just then. On the one hand, Guerrero, Bustamente, Santa Anna; on the other, a race of men to whom, if one wished them their deserts, one could desire nothing better than an Austrian schlague or a Russian knout, to make them sensible of the value of that liberty which they do not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... A Russian knout is shown in Fig. 9. The lower half of the handle is of wood, the upper part iron or steel, which can be imitated by covering a piece of wood that is properly shaped with tinfoil. The whole handle can be made ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... on which burns the sacrifice. The smoke ascends to Heaven. On one side stands the mighty figure of Assyria with uplifted mace ready to strike its awful blow upon the shoulders of helpless Israel. On the other side the lithe, subtle form of Egypt, clasping the knout, watches its chance to bring its treacherous thong upon the helpless shoulders of suffering Israel. But Jehovah may not appear, man may not look on God and live. Jehovah is seen as a glory behind the cloud ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... conversation—he really used to be a good talker, even to his wife, in the old days—are taken from him by this—this kitchen-sink of a Government. That's the case with every man up here who is at work. I don't suppose a Russian convict under the knout is able to amuse the rest of his gang; and all our men-folk here ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... "conservatism" of the American workingman will cause him to patiently endure all this is to brand him a spiritless slave, deserving not only slavery, but the shackles and the knout. He will not endure it much longer, and when his patience reaches its utmost limit— when he tires of filling his belly with the East wind supplied him in such plentitude by aspiring politicians and "able editors," look ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... character. It is true that the Jews were not the only unfortunates whom the fanatic autocrat wished to Russify, that is, compel to see the pure light of Greek Orthodoxy. But they, of course, suffered the most. The slightest laws were enforced by the chinovniks (officials) with the knout and the leaden lash. When the Judeo-Polish gaberdine, the long side-curls (peot), and the wig or turban (knup) fell into disfavor with the Government, the miserable offender caught by an officer seldom saved himself with the mere sacrifice of knup, coat, peot, and beard. And ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... actress than Clairon. From that day to this there has been a continual triangular conflict between critic, composer, and singer, which up to date, it must be admitted, has been won by the academic pundits, for, although the singer has struggled, she has generally bent under the blows of the critical knout, thereby holding the lyric drama more or less in the state it was in a hundred years ago (every critic and almost every composer will tell you that any modern opera can be sung according to the laws of bel canto and enough ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... the little things when he enters the house; how their sports are cut short, and they try to steal away from the room. Would that I were the Emperor of Russia, and such a man my subject! Should not he taste the knout? Should not I make him howl? That would be his suitable punishment: for he will never feel what worthier mortals would regard as the heavier penalty by far, the utter absence of confidence or real affection between him and his children when they grow up. He will not mind that ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... one upon the throne remains what he is, their absolute lord and tyrant, who has the right to-day to scourge them with whips, to-morrow to make them barons and counts, and perhaps the next day to send them to Siberia, or subject them to the infliction of the fatal knout. Whoever proclaims himself emperor or dictator, is greeted by the Russian people, that horde of creeping slaves, as their lord and master, the supreme disposer of life and death, while they crawl in the ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... detraction Ridicule, than which no weapon is more false or deadly Salique Laws Thank Heaven, I am out of harness Traducing virtues the slanderers never possessed Underrated what she could not imitate Where the knout is the logician ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Court Memoirs of France • David Widger
... before. That is, the 'martinet' worse than the 'knout de Russe'; the 'poucettes', the 'crapaudine' on neck and ankles and wrists; all, all as bad as the 'Pater Noster' of the Inquisition, as Mayer said the other day in the face of Charpentier, the Commandant of the penitentiary. How pleasant also to think of the Boulevard ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... right were subjected to the strong mind of Ivan the Great and compressed into a code. Therein were embodied the best processes known to his land and time: for discovering crime, torture and trial by battle; for punishing crime, the knout and death. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... she is here," repeated Samuel Brohl, pointing to an alabaster statuette, posed on a piedouche. The statuette represented a woman bound tightly, on whom two Cossacks were inflicting the knout; the socle bore the inscription, "Polonia vincta ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... gave myself up for lost, yet I continued my flight. I found soon that I was not followed, then I trembled for the fate of my old friend. If he is accused of having harboured a fugitive like me, and cannot give an account of me, the knout and Siberia will be his fate. I felt inclined to turn back, but then I remembered that I should only the more certainly bring ruin on him, by proving him ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... parentage must still be his heavy burden. He had done infinitely more than was generally required to prove a boy's worthiness for acceptance by his fellows. Not a boy in the school but had watched his clothes cut to ribbons before them, under the knout. Not a boy but surmised the hideous state of his bruised body. And yet, not a boy in the school offered the slightest sign of friendliness, even of recognition. Loneliness he had known—was, indeed, to know again—but never thereafter ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... where they set us to work in the mines to dig salt. And some died, and—and some did not die.' Naass swept the blanket from his shoulders, disclosing the gnarled and twisted flesh, marked with the unmistakable striations of the knout. Prince hastily covered him, for it was not nice ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... She had to implore the mediation of the patriarch. Chaklovity was first put to the torture and made to confess his plot against the Czar, and then decapitated. Medviedef was at first only condemned to the knout and banishment for heresy, but he acknowledged he had intended to take the place of the patriarch and to marry Sophia; he was dishonored by being imprisoned with two sorcerers, condemned to be burned alive in a cage, and was afterward beheaded. Galitsyne was deprived ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... Omsk and Kolyvan, will defile before you; and if you do not show me Michael Strogoff, you shall receive as many blows of the knout as men ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... with a ruler." From the Model School of Pekin wrote Professor Cha Han Coo: "Just put their hands into the stocks and beat with a bamboo." From the Normal School of Moscow wrote Professor Ivan Troute: "To make your boys the best of boys, why, just use the knout." From the Muslim School of Cairo wrote the Mufti, Pasha Saido: "Upon the bare soles of their feet give them the bastinado." From the Common School of Berlin wrote Professor Von de Rind: "There's nothing like the old, old way that ever could I find; Just lay them right ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... to me," sounded in Piers' voice, which was steady and good-humoured, "I'm bound to say that Russia isn't altogether without good points. You spoke of it, by the bye, as the country of the knout; but the knout, as a matter of fact, was ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... respect to the author's memory. It is hardly to be supposed that they did not really merit castigation; and we should best show the sincerity of our respect for Mr. Lamb, senior, in all those cases where we could conscientiously profess respect by an unlimited application of the knout in the ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey |
