"Lethal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... confined was bare of all lethal implements with which he might effect a suicide, and two stalwart men were ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... members of the human race were carriers of the harmless mutated staphylococcus now, but it was about to mutate again in accordance with Gordon's Law (the reference had no meaning in 1972) and the new mutation would be lethal. In effect, one human being in two carried in his body a semi-virus organization which he continually spread, and which very shortly would become deadly. Half the human race was bound to die unless it was instructed as to how to cope with ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the ambassador. "My action on your behalf is pure diplomatic policy. To encourage the dissatisfied is to insure against universal satisfaction—which is lethal. Walden is in a bad way. You are the most encouraging thing that has happened here in a long time. And you're not ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... rank folly for any man or body of men to take charge of a child which has been neglected by shameless parents; but, on the other hand, let us consider our own self-interest, and leave sentiment alone for a while. We cannot put the benighted starvelings into a lethal chamber and dispose of their brief lives in that fashion; we are bound to maintain them in some way or other—and the ratepayers of St. George's-in-the-East know to some trifling extent what that means. If the waifs grow up to be ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... Akor-Neb people get tired of their current reincarnation they invite in their friends, throw a big party, and then do themselves in in an atmosphere of general conviviality. Frequently they take poison or inhale lethal gas; this fellow had his personal trigger man shoot him through the head. Dalla was one of the guests of honor, along with this Harnosh of Hosh. They'd made rather elaborate preparations, and after the shooting they ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... with reytes, Bear me to your lethal tide. I die! I come! my true-love waits.... Thus ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... and I can't speak any French, except to ask for hot water in Italian, and I don't see how I'm going to find my darling again. They'll snatch him up, to fling him into some terrible, murderous waggon, and take him to a lethal home, or whatever they call it. For heaven's sake, go and ask everybody where he is—and if you find him you can have anything on earth I've got, especially my Italian castle which I can't sell. You can ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... before arrival he had tricked all four of them by giving them drugged coffee. He'd destroyed the lethal bacterial cultures they'd been ordered to dump on Weald. Then he'd sent the four student pilots off separately—so he and Maril claimed—in huge ships crammed with grain. But those ships were not to be believed in, anyhow. Nobody on Dara could imagine stores of food bought up and stored ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... Trust me for that; but my friend Walker was not easily shaken. A strong passionate nature, Walker; a man long habituated to the lethal knife, the unerring pistol. No easy task you may well believe to get rid of him. And his provocation! O my boy, his provocation to justifiable homicide and ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... completeness to carry me rather too far when I included the sword with the other items of the uniform which I had selected for presentation to King Lomalindela; and I resolved, there and then, never again to include lethal weapons of any description among my ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... on a week-day, with the bench all sheeted up and nothing moving but the sunbeams on the wall. A little farther and you strike upon a room, not empty like the rest, but crowded with productions from bygone criminal cases: a grim lumber: lethal weapons, poisoned organs in a jar, a door with a shot hole through the panel, behind which a man fell dead. I cannot fancy why they should preserve them, unless it were against the Judgment Day. At length, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... past ten days, we've worked the clock around. Quantitative analysis, soil, water, flora, fauna, cellular, microscopic. Nothing. Max has discovered a few lethal alkaloids in some greenish tree fungus, but I doubt if the colony were indiscriminate fungus eaters. Bishop has found a few new unicellular types, but nothing dangerous. There's one tentacled thing that reminds me of ...
— Competition • James Causey
... happy to say [he continued] that I have good reason to believe that, with prolonged rest—by which I do not mean idleness, but release from distraction and complete freedom from those lethal agencies which are commonly known as the pleasures of society—I may yet regain so much strength as is compatible with advancing years. But in order to do so, I must, for a long time yet, be content to lead a more or less anchorite life. Now it is not fitting that your President should be a ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... be put to death. A very large proportion of these have been veritable mongrels, not worth the value of their licences—diseased and maimed curs, or bitches in whelp, turned ruthlessly adrift to be consigned to the oblivion of the lethal chamber, where the thoroughbred seldom finds its way. And if as many as 500 undesirables are destroyed every week at one such institution, 'tis clear that the ill-bred mongrel must soon altogether disappear. But the chief factor ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... had tacitly dispensed with gambling and drinking saloons; following the unwritten law of example, had laid aside their revolvers, and mingled together peacefully when their labors were ended, without a single peremptory regulation against drinking and playing, or carrying lethal weapons. Nor had there been any test of fitness or qualification for citizenship through previous virtue. There were one or two gamblers, a skillful duelist, and men who still drank whiskey who had voluntarily sought the camp. Of some such antecedents was the last speaker. Probably with two ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... ashy and sore shaken, I deemed this horrible tragic act came timeously to warn him, so I strove sore to turn him from his ill ways, discoursing of sinners and their lethal end. 'Too late!' said he, 'too late!' and gnashed his teeth. Then I told him 'too late' was the divell's favourite whisper in repentant ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... esper for you. I've got a range of about two blocks for good, solid, permanent things like buildings and street-car tracks, but unfamiliar things get foggy at about a half a block. I can dig lethal machinery coming in my direction for about a block and a half because I'm a bit sensitive about such things. I looked at Lieutenant Williamson and said, "With a range like yours, how come there's any crime in ...
— Stop Look and Dig • George O. Smith
... fell upon the shutter behind the thick, grinning lips, the shutter which released the lethal force, a wild and desperate idea came to me. With a shout, I jerked the gun from my pocket and leaped aside. As I did so, I fired twice into the gaping mouth, and saw the bullets shatter the heavy shutter. Then, with the humming sound ringing in my ears like a note ...
— The Infra-Medians • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... sow) etches the old-time tailor at his work: one gets, as it were, a crow's-eye view of him. Such, I imagine, was his universal aspect, cross-legged on a bench in his little stall or beside his open window, more skilled with shears and needle than with lethal weapon, despite the gallant brigade of tailors who went to battle under the banner of Queen Elizabeth. Yet I cannot imagine my own tailor sitting cross-legged beside an open window; nor, for that matter, sitting cross-legged anywhere, ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... advisable that Krech, since he knew so much, should know all. The single incident he left untold was his dashing of the lethal glass from Ocky's lips—that, as she had stipulated, should remain their ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... and from our own guns. In front the enemy watched the ground so closely that G.A. got his wound by the accident of raising his elbow. But now, as it drew towards noon, there was a clatter as of old iron behind him, and Service, the machine-gunner, rushed up and erected his tripod and lethal toy. No man was more popular than Service in normal times. But to-day he and all his tribe stirred the bitter enmity that Ian Hay tells us the trench-mortar people aroused in France. 'Go away, Service,' his friends entreated. But Service stayed, a fact which precipitated ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... in part, owing to poverty, and partly because neither of the ladies cared much for things domestic. Mr. Hannaford's sanctum alone had character; it was hung about with lethal weapons of many kinds and many epochs, including a memento of every important war waged in Europe since the date of Waterloo. A smoke-grimed rifle from some battlefield was in Hannaford's view a thing greatly precious; still ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... smoking I ever do is about half past midnight, just before "my eyelids drop their shade," to remind you again of your primary school poets. After the toils, rebuffs, and exhilarations of the day, after piaffing busily on the lethal typewriter or schreibmaschine for some hours, a drowsy languor begins to numb the sense. In dressing gown and slippers I seek my couch; Ho, Lucius, a taper! and some solid, invigorating book for consideration. ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... on board the "Startler" there was no little excitement. The grindstone was in full use to sharpen cutlasses, and in addition there was a great demand made on the armourer for files to give to the lethal weapons a keener edge, one which was tried over and over again, as various messmates consulted together as to the probability of taking off a Malay's ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... it happened, was inclined to correct her own views by the opinions of others, and was, moreover, exceptionally sensitive to any association of ridicule with the objects of her attachment—indeed, she once despatched a dog she fondly loved to the lethal chamber at Battersea, merely because all the hair had come off the poor animal's tail! My trenchant sarcasms had depoetised her lover in a similar fashion; their livid lightning had revealed the baldness, ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... adept in the black art can work his fell purpose even without any personal relic of his victim. In the Banks' Islands, for example, he need only procure a bit of human bone or a fragment of some lethal weapon, it may be a splinter of a club or a chip of an arrow, which has killed somebody. This he wraps up in the proper leaves, recites over it the appropriate charm, and plants it secretly in the path along which his intended ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... that Corps after it had once more found itself would have led a French or Japanese regiment to commit suicide by companies, taking the time from the right. A Colonel of Romance Race would have fallen on his sword at once (and borrowed something more lethal ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... to Sawtelle, "Needle-beam cover, please; set for minimum aperture and lethal blast. But no firing, Captain Sawtelle, until I ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... sword on parade?" asks the tyro of himself his first morning. "I'll put it on, and chance it." He invests himself in a monstrous claymore and steps on to the barrack square. Not an officer in sight is carrying anything more lethal than a light cane. There is just time to scuttle back ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... and continued: "The syringe and the rest of the lethal appliances and material have been taken away, I see. Probably the analyst did not return them. But there are the opium-pipe and the jar and the ash-bowl, and I presume those are the clothes that the undertakers removed from the body. ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... his gun down—his second stroke cutting the head with the blade of his bayonet. The Prussian reeled but was not finished, and as he came again our friend pricked him in the left breast with the point of his bayonet in an over-hand thrust of his rifle. Still he had failed to give his foe a lethal stroke, and as he recoiled for a final encounter he resolved to give him the full benefit of a body thrust and drove his bayonet home, the blade breaking as the foe crashed ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... when his speech was done Bent his fierce brows on Raghu's son. With eager eyes he looked around If lethal arms might yet be found. Not far away and full in view A Sal-tree towering upward grew. His lips in mighty strain compressed, He tore it up with root and crest, With huge arms waved it o'er his head And hurled it shouting, Thou art dead. But Rama, unsurpassed in might, Stayed with his shafts ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... are lifted, and we shall strike all traitors wherever they can be found, even amongst yourselves."[2622]—"Court favorites," says a petition of August 6, "have seats in your midst. Let their inviolability perish if the national will must always tamely submit to that lethal power!"—In the Assembly the yells from the galleries are frightful; the voices of those who speak against dethronement are overpowered; so great are the hooting, the speakers are driven out of the tribune.[2623] Sometimes the "Right" abandons the discussion ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... telescope and a compact pair of field-glasses, birds may be studied and known far more pleasurably than as stark cabinet specimens, and, perhaps, with all the certainty that the ordinary observer needs. Patience and a magnifying glass put less constraint on insects than lethal ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... lay about him with his fists, making a breach in the ranks of his captors that would have opened the way to the door in a moment, the outbreak was so unexpected and violent, if it had not been for a quieting tap the bouncer gave him with one of the lethal instruments which ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... would be aboard the Water Witch, making a quick search, spear guns ready to fire their lethal shafts. Now they would be in the cabin and ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... built a platform in the tree, about ten feet from the ground, staked out a calf, climbed up to the platform and waited. The bear came along and killed the calf, and the man in the tree saw the lethal blow, heard the bones crack and changed his plan again. He laid himself prone upon the platform, held his breath and hoped fervently that his heart would not thump loudly enough to attract the bear's intention. The bear ate ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... better away. I mean in the paper, not in my face. Every one of these punk pages must disappear. Letters must be despatched at once, informing Julia Burdett Parslow and the others, and in particular B. Henderson Asher, who, on brief acquaintance, strikes me as an ideal candidate for a lethal chamber—that, unless they cease their contributions instantly, we shall call up the police reserves. Then ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... Sir Gordon, but says she has no more to risk. He promised to build her a big hotel where the Annexe is. He's got many of the Tahitian girls and their mothers mad over his style and his prospects. Finally, he was warned by me to leave the island, and the result was his tryin' to borrow the lethal weapon, the poem and the letter. The Baron Airedale document he showed me when he first landed, to try to get my indorsement. There's no Burke in the South Seas, and there probably is no such bloomin' baron. Sounds more like a dog." ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... passing-bells my ears; finally the lamp smouldered very low, and my charnel fancy teemed with the screwing-down of coffins, lych-gates and sextons, and the grating of ropes that lower down the dead, and the first sound of the earth upon the lid of that strait and gloomy home of the mortal; that lethal look of cold dead fingers I seemed to see before me, the insipidness of dead tongues, the pout of the drowned, and the vapid froths that ridge their lips, till my flesh was moist as with the stale washing-waters of morgues and mortuaries, and with such sweats as corpses sweat, and the mawkish tear ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... than Henry Jekyll. Even as good shone upon the countenance of the one, evil was written broadly and plainly on the face of the other. Evil besides (which I must still believe to be the lethal side of man) had left on that body an imprint of deformity and decay. And yet when I looked upon that ugly idol in the glass, I was conscious of no repugnance, rather of a leap of welcome. This, too, was myself. It seemed natural and human. In my eyes ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... or votary of pleasure; but in order to be able to enjoy, one must be moderate, and the meal, judging by Roman customs, was quite a frugal one, but simple and brilliant. Then the cups were passed round, and the wine awoke memories in spite of its supposed lethal ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... then they lapsed into silence that to him was even sweeter than the kiss she had given him. Love's deepest delight is the ineffable consciousness of our own weakness. We drink the sweetened cup in its entirety when, having ceased to will, we abandon ourselves with the lethal languors of the swimmer to the vague depths of dreams. And it was past midnight when the Marquis left Fitzwilliam Place. The ladies accompanied him downstairs; their hands helped him to his hat and coat, and then the lock slipped back sharply, and ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... coat, "I would be just as well pleased as Mr. Fieschi if this didn't get any publicity. If you do publish anything about it, I wish you'd minimize my own part in it. As you have noticed, I have some slight proficiency with lethal hardware. This I would prefer not to advertise. I can usually avoid trouble, but when I can't, I would like to retain ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper |
