"Rapine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... warred against witchcraft and woodcraft, against village crones and forest children, against helpless old women and stealthy young savages—all without mercy when delivered into their hands! Was it in partial reparation for the rapine, the swindling, and stealing dealt out by her Pilgrim forefathers to the Indian of the East that Aunt Agnes had become the vehement champion of the Indian of the West? President of a famous Peace Society was she, ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... escaped. Months rolled on under the terrible dominion of these uncontrollable miscreants, while the length and the breadth of the land were scourged by their cruelty, polluted by their lust, and desolated by their rapine. The pestilence was partially arrested by a glut of gold. A treasure of many lacs of rupees being intercepted on its way to Lahore, enriched and mollified its captors. But at last, gorged with slaughter, and surfeited with excess, they modified their claims within limits to which the government ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... offerings, and to lie for God, is a greater disservice to His Majesty than to rob for rapine ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... is the only conviction that can make a man bear to see the world as it is. Brethren, which of these two is the gloomy—the creed that says, Look at all these men dying—in dumb ignorance, living in brutal sin; look at blood, rapine, lies, battlefields, broken hearts, hopes that never set to fruit but died in the bud, the stream of sad groans, and sadder curses, and wild mirth, saddest of all. Look at it all, coming to pass on this fair ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... The innocent rapine of nutting taught him to feel that there is a spirit in the woods—a presence which too rude a touch of ours will ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... the same strong energetic head, crowned with coarse black hair, and the same frank but somewhat stern eyes set in a face of clear complexion, barred by thick moustaches. But his mouth differed—a sensual, voracious mouth it was, with wolfish teeth—a mouth of prey made for nights of rapine, when the only question is to bite, and tear, and devour others. And for this reason, when some praised the frankness in his eyes, another would retort: "Yes, but I don't like his mouth." His feet were large, his hands plump ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... cast down their arms and all as with one voice confessed themselves prisoners; whereupon quoth Cimon to them, 'Young men, it was neither lust of rapine nor hate that I had against you made me depart Cyprus to assail you, arms in hand, in mid sea. That which moved me thereunto was the desire of a thing which to have gotten is a very grave matter to me and to you a very light ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... very easy to assign the motive. It secured a wealthy and timorous nation from the incursions of barbarians, whose unskilfulness in the arts made it easier for them to supply their wants by rapine than by industry, and who from time to time poured in upon the inhabitants of peaceful commerce as vultures descend upon domestic fowl. Their celerity and fierceness made the wall necessary, and their ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... sent Remus to Amulius, making grievous charges against him, as a lawless desperado, who, with his brother, Numitor said, were the terror of the forests, through their domineering temper and their acts of robbery and rapine. ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... there fall in with some of the piratical vessels which so completely infest the Indian Archipelago; and if so, we trusted to give them a lesson which might for a time put a check to their nefarious and cruel system of plunder and rapine. I found that my name was down in the list of the party selected for the expedition. Bidding, therefore, a temporary adieu to Sincapore, on the 2d of August we set off on the expedition, with a force consisting of two barges, one cutter, and a ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... so, Since knaves are still in fashion; Men of souls so base and low, Meer bigots of the nation; Whose designs are power and wealth, At which by rapine, power, and stealth, Audaciously they vent're ye; They lay their consciences aside, And turn with every wind and tide, Puff'd on by ignorance and pride, And all ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... he came of a good mother, he had a very ill sire. He was a man bred toward the Law, and betook himself, as his best practice, to be a sub-committee-man, or, as the stile ran, one of the Assistant Committee in Northamptonshire. In the rapine of that employment, and what he got by picking the teeth of his masters, he sustain'd himself till he had raked together some little estate. And then, being a man for the purpose, and that had begun his fortune out ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... himself have been absolute abandonment of all claim of our citizens for indemnification and submissive acquiescence in national indignity. It would have encouraged in these lawless men a spirit of insolence and rapine most dangerous to the lives and property of our citizens at Punta Arenas, and probably emboldened them to grasp at the treasures and valuable merchandise continually passing over the Nicaragua route. It certainly would have been most satisfactory to ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... that the sea pirate was exhausting his strength in his futile struggles. His long career of cruelty and rapine was rapidly ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... us," Pete went on. "You know they say the Wilmington 'Blue' brought bad luck to everybody who owned it. Anyway, battle, murder, adultery, rape, rapine, and sudden death have followed it right along the line down through history. Oh, it's been a busy cake of ice—take it from muh! Hope the mermaids ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... bursting forth, 'to see the gallant defenders of their country drawn up in brilliant array before its peaceful citizens; their faces beaming—not with warlike ferocity, but with civilised gentleness; their eyes flashing—not with the rude fire of rapine or revenge, but with the soft light ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... hours old was I when Tostig Lodbrog first laid eyes on me. His was the lean ship, and his the seven other lean ships that had made the foray, fled the rapine, and won through the storm. Tostig Lodbrog was also called Muspell, meaning "The Burning"; for he was ever aflame with wrath. Brave he was, and cruel he was, with no heart of mercy in that great chest ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... exposed to his scrutiny by the operation. "I have heard of Christian men who have sold themselves to gain, and who, forgetting religion and the love of their race—have been known to league with the savage in order to pursue rapine in the settlements. This wretch hath the subtlety of one of the French of the ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... further additions are made to the English regiments in the disturbed districts, this state of things will not only continue, but extend itself. The fall of Delhi will act to some degree as a check; but where rapine and outrage have raged uncontrolled, even for a few hours, it is to be feared that nothing but the actual presence of force will bring the country ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... that which here on oath I say to thee— Unless ye find the man who made this grave And bring him bodily before mine eye, Death shall not be enough, till ye have hung Alive for an example of your guilt, That henceforth in your rapine ye may know Whence gain is to be gotten, and may learn Pelf from all quarters is not to be loved. For in base getting, 'tis a common proof, More find disaster ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... it had been an ally of Troy. "I sacked the city, I destroyed its people;" he treated them as he did the Trojans, "taking as booty their wives and property." Such is the spirit begotten of that ten years' war in the character of Ulysses, a spirit of violence and rapine, totally unfitted for a civilized life, at bottom negative to Family and State. This is the spiritual starting-point from which he is to return to home and country through a long, long, but very ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... can be sent to England; and there are many who desire to remain, in hopes of finding among the Ruins some of the little Cash they may have lost in their Habitations. The best orders have been given for preventing Rapine, and Murders, frequent instances of which we have had within these three Days, there being swarms of Spanish Deserters in Town, who take hold of this opportunity of doing their business. As I have large sums ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... empty-handed, bribed Lunison with four pieces of gold and five of silver to give him access to the chest. This Lunison did, and Hunus helped himself to as much as would fill a gallon measure (vas sextarii mensuram) of the sacred remains. Eginhard's indignation at the "rapine" of this "nequissimus nebulo" is exquisitely droll. It would appear that the adage about the receiver being as bad as the thief was not current in the ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... calculated to encourage the wicked or harden them in crimes, than to persuade them that there exists an invisible being, who has a right to forgive acts of injustice, rapine, and outrage committed against society? By these destructive ideas, perverse men perpetrate the most horrid crimes, and believe they make reparation by imploring divine mercy; their conscience is at rest, when a priest assures ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... he said, "came out of the woods, pulled the beards of the senators, destroyed the Roman state, murdered and pillaged the Roman people, and left the world the Gothic arch; the Vikings came over the sea, roaring their sagas of rapine and slaughter; the conquerors came to Europe with spear and sword and torch and left the outlines of the map, the boundaries of states. Luther married his nun, and set Christendom to fighting over ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... 700 eminent men. Portraits, decorative and scene painting, seem to have engrossed the art. The example, or rather the pretensions, of Nero must also have contributed to encourage painting in Rome; but Roman artists were, however, but few in number; the victories of the consuls, and the rapine of the praetors, were sufficient to adorn Rome with all the master-pieces of Greece and Italy. They introduced the fashion of having a taste for the beautiful works of Greek art. At a later period, such was the corrupt state of taste, that painting ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... nor prosperity, nor time, can heal; Those wounds which Fate severely hath decreed, Mention'd or thought of, must for ever bleed; Those wounds which humbled all that pride of man, Which brings such mighty aid to Virtue's plan— Once, awed by Fortune's most oppressive frown, By legal rapine to the earth bow'd clown, My credit at last gasp, my state undone, Trembling to meet the shock I could not shun, 110 Virtue gave ground, and blank despair prevail'd; Sinking beneath the storm, my spirits fail'd Like ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... humane and generous conduct at once secure the good-will of the province, and the admiration and reverence of its inhabitants, so on the other hand, we see Hannibal enter Italy, and by methods wholly opposite, to wit, by violence and rapine, by cruelty and treachery of every kind, effect in that country the very same results. For all the States of Italy revolted in his favour, and all the Italian nations ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... your oath! [21]Greedy that you are of gain, every man's hand lusting for his neighbour's pelf, every heart set on pillage and rapine;[21] who, of ye all, if the crown were set on his head, would give an empire up for the mob to scramble for? The people are not yet fit for ...
— Vera - or, The Nihilists • Oscar Wilde
... Crusaders went to take the Lord's sepulchre from the infidel, while their brothers left at home rose against one another, each petty state against its neighbor, in unsparing wars of rapine and devastation,—wars that slew, or, less mercifully, mutilated prisoners,—that snatched the babe from the embrace of its violated mother, and dashed out its brains upon the desolated hearth. ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... writing on the iniquitous system of slave holding and traffic, that "Life and liberty with the powers of enjoyment dependent on them are the common and inalienable gifts of bounteous heaven. To seize them by force is rapine; to exchange for them the wares of Manchester or Birminghan is improbity, for it is to barter without reciprocal gain, to give the stones of the brook for the gold ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... proportions fall, That, like a stink, 'tis nothing to them all. How they love England, you shall see this day; No map shows Holland truer than our play: Their pictures and inscriptions well we know; We may be bold one medal sure to show. View then their falsehoods, rapine, cruelty; And think what once they were, they still would he: 30 But hope not either language, plot, or art; 'Twas writ in haste, but with an English heart: And least hope wit; in Dutchmen that would be As ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... Orleans, he was waited upon by a deputation of fifty reformed ministers, who urged him to look well to the discipline and purity of the army. They begged him, by salutary punishment, to banish from the camp theft and rapine, and, above all, that more insidious and heaven-provoking sin of licentiousness, which, creeping in, had doubtless drawn down upon the cause such marked signs of the Lord's displeasure, that, of all the congregations in France, only ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... Lust of rapine and greed for booty glittered in many a fiery, longing look, but their leaders kept them in check with the sword. So they rushed on without stopping, like a thunderstorm pregnant with destruction which the wind drives over a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... was the man in the Iron Mask. A grey metallic face with iron cheek-bones and a narrow iron brow; iron folds, hard and unchanging, ran perpendicularly down his cheeks; his nose was the iron beak of some thin, delicate bird of rapine. He had brown eyes, set in sockets rimmed with iron; round them the skin was dark, as though it had been charred. Dense wiry hair covered his skull; it had been black, it was turning grey. His ears were very small and fine. ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... Je suis la Duchesse de Weimar. Je vous plains, he retorted fiercely, J'ecraserai votre mari; he then added, 'I shall dine in my apartment,' and rushed by her. The night was spent on the part of the soldiery in all the horrid excesses of rapine. In the morning the duchess sent to inquire concerning the health of his majesty the emperor, and to solicit an audience. He, who had now benefited by his dreams, or by his reflections, returned a gracious answer, and invited himself to breakfast ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... a Czar. One of these stolen treasures was the picture we are studying. In 1852, the French government bought it of him for more than $120,000. There is but one mitigating thought regarding this rapine of the French, and that is that many art treasures, heretofore virtually locked to the public, were opened to the world—were made ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... destroy? And would his creature, nay, his friend, betray him? Why then no bond is left on human kind! Distrusts, debates, immortal strifes ensue; Children may murder parents, wives their husbands; All must be rapine, wars, and desolation, When trust ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... interesting study of a type of mankind existing in the easiest natural conditions. The arbitrary rule of their chiefs, and the iron shackles of slavery, were abolished by the Spaniards shortly after their arrival; and peace and security reigned in the place of war and rapine. The Spanish rule in these Islands was always a mild one, not because the laws, which treated the natives like children, were wonderfully gentle, but because the causes did not exist which caused such scandalous cruelties in Spanish America and in ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... Will. This is so loveable that as says the Philosopher in the fifth book of the Ethics, its enemies love it, such as thieves and robbers; and, therefore, we see that its opposite, that is, Injustice, is especially hated; such as treachery, ingratitude, falsehood, theft, rapine, deceit, and their like; the which are such inhuman sins, that, in order to excuse himself from the infamy of such, it is granted through long custom that a man may speak of himself, as has been said above, and may ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... brings Victory home,... O yet a nobler task awaites thy hand; For what can Warr, but endless warr still breed, Till Truth, & Right from Violence be freed, And Public Faith cleard from the shamefull brand Of Public Fraud. In vain doth Valour bleed While Avarice, & Rapine ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... insensibility. "To-day," says Mrs. Burr, "a child's illness, an over-gay season, the loss of an investment, a family jar,—these are accepted as sufficient cause for over-strained nerves and temporary retirement to a sanitarium. Then, war, rapine, fire, sword, prolonged and mortal peril, were considered as furnishing no excuse to men or women for altering the habits, or slackening the ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... iniquities—within this dismal and unhallowed labyrinth—it was most natural to cast an eye of indignation and concern over the wide and towering forest of enormities—all rising in the dusky magnificence of guilt; and to fix the dreadfully excited attention upon the huge trunks of revenge, rapine, tyranny, and oppression; yet it became not less necessary to trace out the poisonous weeds, the baleful brushwood, and all the little, creeping, deadly plants, which were, in quantity and extent, if possible, more noxious. The whole range of this far-spreading calamity was sown in the hot-bed of ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... to the Devil;— In one of which he meekly said: 635 'May Carnage and Slaughter, Thy niece and thy daughter, May Rapine and Famine, Thy gorge ever cramming, Glut thee ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... city from the tower of Ivan Veliki, I certainly derived the most exquisite sensations of pleasure from the novelty, extent, and variety of the whole scene. Yet, calmly and peacefully as it now slumbers in the genial sunshine of a summer's afternoon, what visions it conjures up of bloodshed and rapine, plague, pestilence, and famine, and of all the calamities wrought by human hands, and all the appalling visitations of a divine power by which this ill-fated spot has been afflicted. Looking back through the wide waste ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... Then destructive iron came forth, and gold, more destructive than iron; then War came forth, that fights through the means of both,[33] and that brandishes in his blood-stained hands the clattering arms. Men live by rapine; the guest is not safe from his entertainer, nor the father-in-law from the son-in-law; good feeling, too, between brothers is a rarity. The husband is eager for the death of the wife, she {for that} of her husband. Horrible stepmothers {then} mingle the ghastly wolfsbane; the son ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... tolerate murder, rapine, thefts, piracies, conflagrations, with every outrage violating the happiness and safety of society, but are the first to set the example and to consecrate the atrocity—where the people are taught no one principle of morality or religion—where ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... unquestionable that he was entirely devoid of moral sense. He possessed a genius for organization, and he succeeded in consolidating the unruly Doomsmen into a compact and disciplined body of outlaws. Murder and rapine were quickly reduced to exact sciences, and, unfortunately, the House People could not be made to see the necessity of united action; the townsman and the stockade dweller preferred to contend with each other rather than against the common enemy. As a consequence, the freebooters had a ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... the Philistines "came and pitched in Shunem, and Saul gathered all Israel together, and they pitched in Gilboa," and unseen by any of the mighty hosts death and rapine, treachery, revenge and murder, smilingly waited ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... sweetest shade The sun in all its round surveyed; And still I thought that shattered tower The mightiest work of human power; And marvelled as the aged hind With some strange tale bewitched my mind, Of forayers, who, with headlong force, Down from that strength had spurred their horse, Their southern rapine to renew, Far in the distant Cheviots blue, And, home returning, filled the hall With revel, wassail-rout, and brawl. Methought that still, with trump and clang, The gateway's broken arches rang; Methought ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... hundred miles from the abodes of civilised men, between which and them lay the dreary wilderness and the Orange River; such was their position, with the human lion in his lair, ready to rouse himself up to deeds of rapine and blood. ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... in work make of these persons individuals incapable of production, who therefore try to live upon the productions of others. This fundamental fact, which tends to unite a dislike of productive labor with impulses towards rapine, causes them to make use of all those surrounding causes which prepare the external means for crime. These men are "bad." But if we observe more closely we see that it is not wickedness with which ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... whatever calling, and persuade them of his attachment; while, either by himself or by means of the troops of the line, he made them bear the most frightful yoke (le joug le plus affreux). He defamed honest people, encouraged insubordination, and closed his eyes to the rapine of his soldiers." ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... the later Roman republic, the draining of the provinces by robber-governors with their publicans and sinners, the building up of monstrous fortunes without any production proper, but through usury and rapine alone: all this is made to revive again through the instrumentality of the national-economic disease called a paper crisis, in a less violent form, indeed, but in one which is much more insidious ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... into peace, brought order out of confusion, made the fierce savages placid, and turned away their hostile weapons from our country! May the same Almighty Goodness banish the accursed monster, war, from all lands, with her hated associates, rapine and insatiable ambition! Let peace, descending from her native heaven, bid her olives spring amid the joyful nations; and plenty, in league with commerce, scatter blessings ...
— The Adventures of Daniel Boone: the Kentucky rifleman • Uncle Philip
... was an enchantress of mighty and wonderful power, with her damp, and mud, and mould, her ill-fed, ill-housed populace, her ruins of old glory rising dim and ghostly amid her palaces of to-day. With all her awful secrets of rapine, cruelty, ambition, injustice,—with her foul orgies of unnatural crime,—with the very corruption of the old buried Roman Empire steaming up as from a charnel-house, and permeating all modern life with its effluvium ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... larger mass there must be also a larger amount of goodness. It seems a source of complacent satisfaction to many to sit in contemplation of the fact of the extreme wickedness of the world. They are like children who delight in a "bluggy" story,—who gloat over murder and rapine. ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... so," the Dean murmured reflectively, "than in diffusing these horrid revolutionary and atheistical doctrines." For the Church was as usual in accord with the sword; theoretically all peace, practically all bloodshed and rapine and aggression: and anything that was not his own opinion envisaged itself always to the Dean's crystallised mind ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... ceilings and walls; and the gilding and colours are still fresh and bright. The brickwork is perfectly solid and firm, and appeared as if finished yesterday. On the whole the impression on my mind was, that not the slow and gentle hand of time, but sudden rapine and violence had caused the devastation around us; and looking into Nardini on my return, I found that the baths of Titus were nearly entire in the thirteenth century, but were demolished with great labour and difficulty by the ferocious Senator Brancaleone, who, about the ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... their state, And we, I take it, have not much of that. Well monarchies may own religion's name, But states are atheists in their very frame. They share a sin; and such proportions fall, That, like a stink, 'tis nothing to them all. Think on their rapine, falsehood, cruelty, And that what once they were, they still wou'd be. To one well-born th' affront is worse and more, When he's abus'd and baffl'd by a boor. With an ill grace the Dutch their mischiefs do; They've both ill nature and ill manners ...
— English Satires • Various
... of a delirious Revolution went careering through the giddy maze of treachery and madness until a frenzied wave of rapine and disorder swept all the noblewomen of the Imperial household into a barricaded fortress around which lust and inebriety held unsated and remorseless vigil for the ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... Dalton's more intimate associates, and the Cavaliers, who had from time to time obtained security therein; but, if its bare, bleak walls had been gifted with speech, they might have rehearsed such tales of rapine and plunder as few writers would venture to record. The cavern appeared, to those who might wander along the sea-shore, to be but a deep and natural excavation into a huge rock, the western extremity of which ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... Kaiser claims to have won the victory of "a superman." In that he has carried murder, arson, lying, rapine, lust up to the nth power, let us concede his claim. Not otherwise two hundred years ago the Indian, with his scalping knife, his war-whoop and his tomahawk, was "a superman" in terms of savagery. Not otherwise ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Stealing.— N. stealing &c. v.; theft, thievery, latrociny|, direption[obs3]; abstraction, appropriation; plagiary, plagiarism; autoplagiarism[obs3]; latrocinium[obs3]. spoliation, plunder, pillage; sack, sackage[obs3]; rapine, brigandage, foray, razzia[obs3], rape, depredation, raid; blackmail. piracy, privateering, buccaneering; license to plunder, letters of marque, letters of mark and reprisal. filibustering, filibusterism[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... should therefore expect to find in him some consciousness of the racial difference. He writes of the Highlanders with some ill-will, describing them as a "savage and untamed people, rude and independent, given to rapine, ... hostile to the English language and people, and, owing to diversity of speech, even to their own nation[14]." But it is his custom to write thus of the opponents of the Anglo-Norman civil and ecclesiastical institutions, and he brings all Scotland under the ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... the patch-box fell; The tott'ring China shook without a wind. Nay, Poll sat mute, and Shock was most unkind! A Sylph too warn'd me of the threats of fate, 165 In mystic visions, now believ'd too late! See the poor remnants of these slighted hairs! My hands shall rend what ev'n thy rapine spares: These in two sable ringlets taught to break, Once gave new beauties to the snowy neck; 170 The sister-lock now sits uncouth, alone, And in its fellow's fate foresees its own; Uncurl'd it hangs, the fatal shears demands, And tempts once more thy sacrilegious ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... delicate frame and advanced in years, was committed to prison, where, with many other female sufferers, she was closely confined for eleven months, during which time she was compelled to endure all sorts of privations. After the committee of rapine had settled their black account, and had remitted the guilty balance to their employers, the latter, in a letter of "friendly collusion, and fraudulent familiarity," after passing a few revolutionary jokes upon what had occurred, observed that the G——s seemed to bleed ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... liberty. The word is porpentine, not porcupine, Mr. Inspector. A common corruption. Verify your quotations. Have them (in future) attested by two resident magistrates. And now to work. All in strict confidence. Let not the world hear of these things. Let not the people know that violence and rapine walk hand-in-hand with my administration. Nameless in dark oblivion let it dwell. Let it be sub rosa, sub sigilla confessionis, sub-auditer, sub everything. Tell it not in Gath, proclaim it not in Askalon, for behold, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... Napoleon was dreaming of universal monarchy, I beheld in a less extensive sphere the inevitable consequences of the ambition of a single man. Pillage and robbery were carried on in all parts over which my diplomatic jurisdiction extended. Rapine seemed to be legally authorised, and was perpetrated with such fury, and at the same time with such ignorance, that the agents were frequently unacquainted with the value of the articles which they seized. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... many military men, had crossed his lips. The framed photograph of his wife and daughters on his desk and his respectful references to women indicated he was not the type of soldier who lusts for rapine. But seated before that dull mahogany bar, whatever inhibitions, whatever conventional shackles, whatever selfdenials and repressions had been inculcated fell from him swiftly and completely. He barked his orders at the bartender, who seemed to know him very well, as though he were addressing ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... after starting they crossed the border and were among the hills of Cumberland. They found that among the villages great apprehension existed. The tales of the rapine and destruction wrought in the old times by the Scottish forays had been handed down from father to son, and nothing less than the destruction of their homes and the loss of their flocks and herds was looked for. Malcolm ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... almost inaccessible castle, retired far among the recesses of wild and solitary mountains, along whose distant skirts were scattered towns, and cities, whither wealthy travellers were continually passing—this appeared to be the situation of all others most suited for the success of schemes of rapine, and she yielded to the strange thought, that Montoni was become a captain of robbers. His character also, unprincipled, dauntless, cruel and enterprising, seemed to fit him for the situation. Delighting ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... and undermine, one knows not well; this however one does know: that his War-Office has become a den of thieves and confusion, such as all men shudder to behold. That the Citizen Hassenfratz, as Head-Clerk, sits there in bonnet rouge, in rapine, in violence, and some Mathematical calculation; a most insolent, red-nightcapped man. That Pache munches his pocket-loaf, amid head-clerks and sub-clerks, and has spent all the War-Estimates: that Furnishers scour in gigs, over all districts of France, and drive bargains;—and ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... down to hear the language of a Pierre deploring the miseries of his oppressed countrymen. But when, instead of glorying in the risk they ran, and the sacrifice they made for their country, their whole object clearly appears to be rapine and murder, the liberal mind turns with horror from such a prostitution of the writer's talents, which, had they been under the government of a sound judgment and correct principles, would have reflected high honour on the age and country ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... both sides to a great extent made up of such predatory material, and that even their officers were frequently little more than chiefs of guerrillas, who rallied sometimes under one flag, sometimes under the other, but in either case were always ready for rapine, the brutal character of the ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... extorted from one of the drivelling descendants of Charlemagne, and which they had called by the defiant title of Normandy. Taylor's ancestors belonged to that pious and not less heroic race, which, under the name of Huguenots, battled, not for rapine and conquest, but for the rights of conscience and for a large public liberty, and which, though defeated and driven from their ancestral land, the beautiful land of the fig, the olive, and the vine, to the chalky ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... of the ends of civil government, all people are agreed. That it is designed to protect our persons and our property; that it is designed to compel us to satisfy our wants, not by rapine, but by industry; that it is designed to compel us to decide our differences, not by the strong hand, but by arbitration; that it is designed to direct our whole force, as that of one man, against any other society which may offer us injury; these are propositions ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... stirring; not a beast. Not a man, except the two felons. A right glorious night it was for rapine and midnight murder. The house-dog had slunk in his straw, and the watchman was dozing away, under some shed, or stoop, or in some dark door-way. There was nothing to stand in the way of these enterprising men, save ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... Who were our bullies? Who struck down Charles Sumner, the Senator of Massachusetts, the eminent scholar and orator, on the floor of the Senate, for denouncing the horrors of slavery? A South Carolinian, whilst all slavedom approved the deed. Who endeavored to force slavery on Kansas by murder and rapine, and the forgery of a constitution? Who repealed the Missouri Compromise, in order to force slavery upon all the Territories of the United States? Who are endeavoring now to dissolve the Union, and spread slavery over all this wide domain? There is a plain answer to all ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... tomahawked by Williamson and his associates; the unprovoked murder of the family of Logan; the assassination of Bald Eagle, of the gallant and high-souled Cornstalk, and his son Elinipsico: we need but recall these, from the long catalogue of similar cases, to satisfy every candid mind, that rapine, cruelty and a thirst for human blood are not peculiarly the attributes of the ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... And their mere mortal frames have left below, Implore thee this long civil strife may cease, Which kills all confidence, nips every good, Which bars the way to many a roof, where men Once holy, hospitable lived, the den Of fearless rapine now and frequent blood, Whose doors to virtue only are denied. While beneath plunder'd Saints, in outraged fanes Plots Faction, and Revenge the altar stains; And, contrast sad and wide, The very bells which sweetly wont to fling Summons to prayer and praise ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... the French and Spanish rule, and at Milan, on the repeated expulsions and returns of the Sforzas; at such times those men who have never in their hearts recognized the bonds of law and society, come forward and give free play to their instincts of murder and rapine. Let us take, by way of example, a picture drawn from a ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... discourse understood by them which are dissolved, they themselves would then rather have wished to have stolen out of the world without noise, than to be put in mind that they have purchased the report of their actions in the world by rapine, oppression, and cruelty, by giving in spoil the innocent and labouring soul to the idle and insolent, and by having emptied the cities of the world of their ancient inhabitants, and fitted them again with so many and so variable sorts ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... great poverty; which was no doubt natural, now that rapine was put down, and the chiefs kept no longer an open house; and the roads (even such a wandering, country by—track as the one I followed) were infested with beggars. And here again I marked a difference from my own part of the country. For ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thought that shattered tower The mightiest work of human power; And marvelled as the aged hind With some strange tale bewitched my mind, Of foragers who, with headlong force, Down from that strength had spurred their horse, Their Southern rapine to renew, Far in the distant Cheviots blue; And, home returning, filled the hall With revel, wassail-rout and brawl."—"Marmion." Introduction to Canto Third. See Lockhart for a description of the view from Smailholme, a propos of the stanza ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... polygamy is a right and even a divine institution; in another, it is a crime. Individual murder is generally considered as criminal, but in warfare the slaughter of masses becomes a duty and even a virtue. Theft and rapine are regarded in times of peace as crimes, but in time of war, under the form of annexation and plunder they are the uncontested rights of the victor. In a kingdom, the monarch is looked upon as a holy person and offense to his majesty as a crime; in a democracy, ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... the window and an uncanny silence fell on the beleaguered carriage. Abbleway neither moved nor spoke. Perhaps the brutes had not clearly seen or winded the human occupants of the carriage, and had prowled away on some other errand of rapine. ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... months quiet,—another, and a totally different one. That they must either be fighting somebody or going somewhere, else, their life isn't worth living to them; the activity and mercurial flashing and flickering hither and thither, which in the soul of it is set neither on war nor rapine, but only on change of place, mood—tense, and tension;—which never needs to see its spurs in the dish, but has them always bright, and on, and would ever choose rather to ride fasting than sit feasting,—this childlike dread ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... sinew strings which do our bodies tie Are ravelled out; and fast there by one end Did this Soul limbs, these limbs a Soul attend; And now they joined, keeping some quality Of every past shape; she knew treachery, Rapine, deceit, and lust, and ills enough To be a woman: Themech she is now, Sister and wife to Cain, Cain that first ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... they could not calculate upon a single year's immunity from invasion and slaughter. From the days of Innocent their history becomes one long harrowing tale of papal plots, interdicts, excommunications, of royal proscriptions and perfidies, of attack, of plunder, of rapine, of massacre, and of death in every conceivable and horrible way,—by the sword, by fire, and by unutterable tortures and torments. The Waldenses had no alternative but to submit to these, or deny their Saviour. Yet, driven to arms,—ever their last resource,—they ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... shopkeeper has ever been foolish enough to do such a thing; and yet all our shopkeepers, the moment a discussion arises on marriage, will passionately argue against all reform on the ground that nothing but the most severe coercion can save their wives and daughters from quite indiscriminate rapine. ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... log of oak, some rustic's blade Hewed out my shape; grotesquely made I guard this spot by night and day, Scare every vagrant knave away, And save from theft and rapine's hand My humble master's cot ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... Brussels! then what thoughts were thine, When ceaseless from the distant line Continued thunders came! Each burgher held his breath, to hear These forerunners of havoc near, Of rapine and of flame. What ghastly sights were thine to meet, When rolling through thy stately street, The wounded showed their mangled plight In token of the unfinished fight, And from each anguish-laden wain The blood-drops laid thy dust like ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... will return to his people; but we shall both be cut off utterly and leave our cousins desolate." When Kanmakan heard this, he laughed and knew that he was a coward: so he left him and rode down the hill, intent on rapine, shouting and ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... fleets of dingy, hide-bound barks discharge on the shores of Erin their successive cargoes of human fiends, bent on rapine and carnage, and altogether proof against fear of even the most horrible death, since such death was to them the entry to the ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... ever. How it is to be supplanted, I know not. I hope, however, that it is not doomed, like the old Roman civilization, to be quenched in blood. I trust that the works of ages are not to be laid low by violence, rapine, and the all-devouring sword. I trust that the existing social state contains in its bosom something better than it has yet unfolded. I trust that a brighter future is to come, not from the desolation, but from gradual, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... Hundred Years' War, which, indeed, was not yet entirely ended by the Peace of Tours, was the existence of bands of men trained to nothing but war and rapine, and devoid of any other means of subsistence than freebooting on the peasantry or travellers, whence they were known as routiers—highwaymen, and ecorcheurs—flayers. They were a fearful scourge to France in the early part of the reign of Charles VII., as, indeed, ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Rome might be considered as a vast and various mine: the first labor of extracting the materials was already performed; the metals were purified and cast; the marbles were hewn and polished; and after foreign and domestic rapine had been satiated, the remains of the city, could a purchaser have been found, were still venal. The monuments of antiquity had been left naked of their precious ornaments; but the Romans would demolish ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... forced. They were recognised in the neighbourhood as the most sanguinary and terrible marauders of the coasts,—men stained with a thousand murders, and who had never hitherto failed in any attempt to which the lust of rapine had impelled them. The footsteps of many others were tracked to the seashore. It seemed that their accomplices must have fled on the death of their leaders. But when the Venetian Proveditore, or authority, of the island, came to examine into the matter, the most ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... sincerely thinks me a blackguard, and my play a grossly improper one, because, like Tolstoy's Dominion of Darkness, it produces, as they are both meant to produce, a very strong and very painful impression of evil. I do not doubt for a moment that the rapine play which I have described, and which he licensed, was quite incapable in manuscript of producing any particular effect on his mind at all, and that when he was once satisfied that the ill-conducted hero was a German and not an English officer, he passed the play without studying its moral ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... too.] By heaven, he comes on this, who strikes the first. You both are mad; is this like gallant men, To fight at midnight; at the murderer's hour; When only guilt and rapine draw a sword? Let night enjoy her dues of soft repose; But let the sun behold the brave man's courage. And this I dare engage for Diomede,— For though I am,—he shall not hide his head, But meet you in ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... converted to Islam as in the earliest days of Mahomedan domination. Hindu members of the Legislative Assembly, realising that their co-religionists owe their safety only to the military forces which are being rushed up by a Satanic Government to arrest a campaign of sheer murder and rapine, may well ask, as Mr. Jamnadas Dwarkadas has just done, how long such men as Mahomed and Shaukat Ali are to be allowed to go on preaching the doctrines which the Moplahs have so effectively carried into practice. ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... personall oth before the altar of S. Peter at Westmister, to defend the holie church, and rulers of the same, to gouerne the people in iustice as became a king to doo, to ordeine righteous lawes & kepe the same, so that all maner of bribing, rapine, and wrongful iudgements should for euer ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (1 of 12) - William the Conqueror • Raphael Holinshed
... service-book in English,"—which is as much as to say that there was not one fairly educated man in the richest and most progressive part of the island. For more than three hundred years, the history of England is an almost continuous record of anarchy and rapine. ...
— A Comparative Study of the Negro Problem - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 4 • Charles C. Cook
... weeks the pillage continued.[496] Twenty-two towns and villages were utterly destroyed. The soldiers, glutted with blood and rapine, were withdrawn from the scene of their infamous excesses. Most of the Waldenses who had escaped sword, famine, and exposure, gradually returned to the familiar sites, and established themselves anew, maintaining ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... pretty much as friends' misfortunes are usually regarded in life—occasions for a tender pity, and a hopeful trust in Providence. Let them—the writer speaks of the Allied armies—let them go on in the career of rapine and cruelty; let them ravage the Duchies and dismember Denmark; but a time will come when the terrible example of unlawful aggression shall be retorted upon themselves, and the sorrows of Schleswig be expiated on the soil of ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... of the upper, or even the educated, classes. Slowly and reluctantly, the Baltimorean abandoned his cherished ideal of the British aristocrat—a covert Caligula, with all modern improvements—varying the monotony of orgies with interludes of murder and rapine; the instrument of these pleasant vices being always ready in the shape of a Frankenstein-monster, whose mission it is to tyrannize perpetually over the guilty lordling or lady whose secret he holds; doing a steady trade of two assassinations or abductions weekly; and utterly ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... barbarians and the insurgents outnumbered the Augustans five to one. My colleague in office, Titus Honius the Abulcian, going out to pacify the people, was slain. I and my companions fled just before daybreak yesterday. Many people have taken to the forest. The city is now a very hell of drunkenness, rapine, fire, and smoke. And this, it seems to me, is but the beginning. Those barbarians who have long been settled here, upon the Eastern Shore, and those who still keep coming, will together outnumber us, insurgents and Augustans ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... were very busy in those days. And perhaps that accounts for their taking no notice of the actions of various portions of the Allied soldiery. Wholesale robbery, cruelty, and the raping of women were going on all round; a regular orgy of rapine surged through the captured city. Yet not one solitary voice ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... always thirsting for the marvelous in the adventures of heroes, has it that he found in the ruins of a church a treasure which enabled him to reconstitute his party. But he himself has contradicted this story, stating that it was by the ordinary methods of rapine and plunder that he replenished his finances. He selected from his old band of brigands thirty palikars, and entered, as their bouloubachi, or leader of the group, into the service of the Pacha of Negropont. But he soon tired of the methodical life he was obliged to lead, and passed into Thessaly, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... character of foreign travellers, was our best protection. The violences of the fuorusciti are, it is well understood, mingled and tempered with a strong sense of honour. I imagine, indeed, that they originate for the most part in that principle, developed in vendetta, though degenerating into rapine and robbery. Outlaws must find means of subsistence as well as honest men, and are not likely to be very scrupulous as to the mode of obtaining them. Among such characters there will be miscreants capable of any crime, and therefore there ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... many who have a vague kind of suspicion that things might be better, are mingled a few, who seem very desirous they should remain as they are. These are the rich; who, having by extortion and rapine plundered the defenceless, and heaped up choice of viands and the fat of the land, some sufficient to feed ten, some twenty, some a hundred, some a thousand, and others whole armies, and being themselves each only able to eat for one, say to the hungry, who have no food—'Come! ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... And in this era of friendship, when peaceful immigration has replaced armed invasions, when the free exchange of capital and the international ownership of industrial and commercial enterprises, of manufactures, of mines, have replaced rapine and plunder—in this era of commercial conquest and industrial acquisition, of more frequent intercourse among men, of more intimate knowledge and better understanding, there has come to you in this your great misfortune the friendship and the ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... yet been seen by men. As for France and England, with all their pre-eminence in science, the one is a den of robbers, and the other of pirates. And if science produces no better fruits than tyranny, murder, rapine, and destitution of national morality, I would rather wish our country to be ignorant, honest, and estimable, as our neighboring savages are. But whither is senile garrulity leading me? Into politics, of which I have taken ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... havoc with that jungle town which had defied him, to see it strewn over with corpses and enveloped in flames. Listening to his pitiless, panting voice, I could imagine how he must have looked at it from the hillock, peopling it with images of murder and rapine. The part nearest to the creek wore an abandoned aspect, though as a matter of fact every house concealed a few armed men on the alert. Suddenly beyond the stretch of waste ground, interspersed with small patches of low dense bush, excavations, heaps of rubbish, with trodden paths between, ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... treaties. Even in Algiers, a truce may be bought for money; but when ratified, even Algiers is too wise or too just, to disown and annul its obligation. Thus we see, neither the ignorance of savages, nor the principles of an association for piracy and rapine, permit a nation to despise its engagements. If, sir, there could be a resurrection from the foot of the gallows, if the victims of justice could live again, collect together, and form a society, they would, however loath, soon find themselves obliged to make justice, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... wretchedly poor place. All are needy, from the Sarkee downwards, and when they get any property it all comes from the razzias. The system of living on rapine and man-stealing seems to bring its own punishment along ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... victor once, now vile and base, Deservedly made vassal, who, once just, Frugal, and mild, and temperate, conquered well, But govern ill the nations under yoke, Peeling their provinces, exhausted all By lust and rapine; first ambitious grown Of triumph, that insulting vanity; Then cruel, by their sports to blood inured Of fighting beasts, and men to beasts exposed, Luxurious by their wealth, and greedier still, And from the daily scene effeminate. What wise and valient men would seek to free These ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... occurs to a rational curiosity, but it is just this sort of question to which it is often most difficult to find an answer. Historians are generally too engrossed with the details of battles, all as drearily similar to one another as scenes of murder and rapine must of necessity be, to spare a glance for the far brighter and more instructive field of the mutations or of the progress of manners. The following work is an attempt to supply the ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... chariots bundles of bank-notes to appease the wolves of justice. Universities grow ignobly rich upon their hush-money. They were accurately described three centuries ago by Robert Burton as "gouty benefactors, who, when by fraud and rapine they have extorted all their lives, oppressed whole provinces, societies, &c., give something to pious uses, build a satisfactory almshouse, school, or bridge, &c, at their last end, or before perhaps, which is no otherwise than to steal a goose and stick down a feather, rob ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... I have become more aware than usual of the worries and annoyances connected with the management of my estates. We live, sir, in a world of robbers"—Melrose suddenly rounded on his companion, his withered face aflame—"a world of robbers, and of rapine! Not a single Tom, Dick, and Harry in these parts that doesn't think himself my equal and more. Not a single tenant on my estate that doesn't try at every point to take advantage of his landlord! Not a single tramp or poacher that doesn't covet my goods—that wouldn't murder me if he could, ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a clear prospect of dwelling in [the] midst of a furious pandemonium for several years after an unfavorable termination of the war; but was this prospect realized? Where were the highway robberies, the bloody vengeances, the arsons, the rapine, the murders, the outrages, the insults? They WERE, not anywhere. With great calmness the soldier cast behind him the memory of all wrongs and hardships and reckless habits of the war, embraced his wife, patched his ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... Over the battlefield he drives his chariot yet, and his hammer strikes fire as of old. The British remember it from Nelson's raid on Copenhagen; the Germans felt it in 1849, and again when in the fight for very life the little country held its own a whole winter against two great powers on rapine bent; felt it at Helgoland where its sailors scattered their navies and drove them from the sea, beaten. Yet never did the White Christ work greater transformation in a people, once so fierce, now so gentle unless when fighting for its ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... first three reigns (of the Norman kings) * * the intolerable exactions of tribute, the rapine of purveyance, the iniquity of royal courts, are continually in the mouths of the historians. ' God sees the wretched people,' says the Saxon Chronicler, 'most unjustly oppressed; first they are despoiled of their possessions, and then butchered.' ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... and thus years rolled on. During all this time the Black Prince distinguished himself greatly as one of the chief of his father's generals. He grew up to full manhood; and while, like the other warlike chieftains of those days, his life was devoted to deeds of rapine and murder, there was in his demeanor toward those with whom he was at peace, and toward enemies who were entirely subdued, a certain high-toned nobleness and generosity of character, which, combined with his ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... itself with alcohol, resumed its work of destruction, with the co-operation of the peasants who had been summoned by the Ispraynik and the assistance of the soldiers and policemen. It was on this occasion that those wild, savage scenes of murder, rapine, and plunder took place, the account of which as published in the newspapers is but the pale shadow of the real facts.... The pogrom of Balta was called forth not by the mere inactivity but by the direct activity of the ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... of ornament and of merchandise, and stimulate in them the worst conditions of pugnacity, bigotry, and rapine. That is the broad geographical and political relation of races. Next, you must consider the conditions ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... carry on the war in Asia, though he marched first against Athens, which had become the head-quarters of the allies of Mithridates in Greece. The siege of this city was long and obstinate, and it was not until March I, 86, that it was overcome, when Sulla gave it up to rapine and pillage. He then advanced into Boeotia, and success continued to follow his arms until the year 84, when he crossed the Hellespont to carry the war into Asia. Mithridates had put to death all Roman citizens and allies, wherever ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... people of this happy country ought to do any thing rather than submit to have its streets stained with the blood of their monarch. I was in the habit of hearing all the ridiculous stories of invasion, rapine, and murder, and of listening to all the hobgoblin accounts of what we were to expect from our fellow creatures on the other side of the channel, and my young mind was worked up to such a pitch, that ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... manners, and, by the introduction of the manufacture of silken housings tapestry, and carpeting, to increase the comforts and pleasures of society, and compelled those who were anxious to exhibit the insignia of gentility, to seek distinction by other means than rapine and violence. ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... of crime and deeds of violence. The men back from the front told gloatingly of rapine and feastings in lonely Belgian villages or dwelt ghoulishly on the horrors of the battlefield, the mounds of decaying corpses, the ghastly mutilations they had seen in the dead. There were tales, too, of "vengeance" wreaked on "the treacherous English." One story, in particular, ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... the lot of the wild tribes of nature," said Isabella, "but chiefly of those who are destined to support themselves by rapine, which brooks no partner; but it is not the law of nature in general; even the lower orders have confederacies for mutual defence. But mankind—the race would perish did they cease to aid each other.—From the time that the mother binds the child's head, till the moment that some kind assistant ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... Revolution was altogether moral. There was an entire absence of the spirit of revenge, or rapine, or blood. They never for a moment placed as much reliance upon their numbers and strength as upon the justice of their cause and the existence of a Supreme Ruler, who controls the affairs of men. Such ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... breach of faith which could disgrace an infidel; by every act of cruelty which could disgrace our nature; by extortion, by rapine, by injustice, by mockery of all laws, or human or divine. The thirst for gold, and a golden country, led you on; and in these scorching regions you have raised the devil on his throne, and worshipped him in his ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... surety, at last, it would seem the lovers were to be wed. What time, in the flying ages, they had greeted each other with hearts full of the hope of peace and happiness, some tyrant king and his armies had come between them. Then what a carnival of lust, rapine and bloody murder! Man was broken on the wheel of power and thwarted Hope sat brooding in his little house. History had been a long siege, like that of Troy, to deliver a fairer Helen from the established power of Kings. Now, beyond three thousand ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... have mistaken the place and temple for the Deity, to whom it was consecrated. The whole history of Castor and Pollux, the two Dioscuri, is very strange and inconsistent. Sometimes they are described as two mortals of Lacedaemon, who were guilty of violence and rapine, and were slain for their wickedness. At other times they are represented as the two principal Deities; and styled Dii Magni, Dii Maximi, Dii Potentes, Cabeiri. Mention is made by Pausanias of the great regard paid to them, and particularly by ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... Commandant of Artillery, a brave officer, but a bad man; Varin, a proud, arrogant libertine, Commissary of Montreal, who outdid Bigot in rapine and Cadet in coarseness; De Breard, Comptroller of the Marine, a worthy associate of Penisault, whose pinched features and cunning leer were in keeping with his important office of chief manager of the Friponne. Perrault, D'Estebe, Morin, and Vergor, all creatures of the Intendant, swelled ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... successor. The same custom is observed at Badagry also, and although the king's son may be of age at the period of his father's death, he inherits his authority and influence only. He is left to his own sagacity and exertions to procure wealth, which can seldom be obtained without rapine, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... throughout their traffic; and that they who have no stings of conscience, in relation to unjust dealings, have by indirect ways scraped together the greatest part of their estates. But in things where money has to do, many are so hardened, that, being charged with rapine, they have either no scruple concerning it, or so very light, that ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... the grim storm-clouds overcast, Even like a spectre of the past,— Of rapine, feudal strife, and blood, Thou tellest an old, wild, warlike story, When squadrons on thy ramparts stood, With spear and shield ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... long tormented with a fruitless itching of its palms; their bowels yearned for usury, that had long missed the harvest of its returning months; they felt for peculation, which had been for so many years raking in the dust of an empty treasury; they were melted into compassion for rapine and oppression, licking their dry, parched, unbloody jaws. These were the objects of their solicitude. These were the necessities for which they were ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... flashing green— "The fruit shall be what the seed has been— His realm shall reap what his hosts have sown; Debt and misery, tear and groan, Pang and sob, and grief and shame, And rapine ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... not under yours. You have no power over my life. It is sacred with respect to you, who are neither judges nor executioners. Speak! Show yourselves openly as you really are. I have offended you by checking your rapine. You are ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... chivalry. Scott says: "James was, in fact, equally attentive to restrain rapine and feudal oppression in every part of his dominions. 'The King past to the isles, and there held justice courts, and punished both thief and traitor according to their demerit. And also he caused great men to show their holdings, wherethrough he found many of the said ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... prove his powers on a larger scale. One of his first exploits was the capture of the town of Hoyan, where he manifested a high order of courage and political wisdom in saving the inhabitants from rapine by his ill-paid and hungry soldiers. Here was a degree of self-restraint and power of command which none of the Chinese leaders had shown, and which seemed to point out Choo as the man destined to win in the coming ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... his venerable name, was no more. Something might still be done. The Houses might still avert that worst of all evils, the triumphant return of an imperious and unprincipled master. They might still preserve London from all the horrors of rapine, massacre, and lust. But their hopes of a victory as spotless as their cause, of a reconciliation which might knit together the hearts of all honest Englishmen for the defence of the public good, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... her beams to bid the golden grain Spread plenty's blessings o'er the smiling plain; No power has she, except from shore to shore To bid the ocean's troubled billows roar. With hungry cries the wolf her coming greets; Then Rapine stalks triumphant through the streets; Avarice and Fraud in secret ambush lurk, And Treason's sons their desperate purpose work. But, lo! the Sun with orient splendour ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... waters of Europe." They were soon to be let loose for the suppression of a wholly imaginary Bulgarian insurrection, and it was they and their comrades who, together with the Bashi-Bazouks, carried the banner of rapine, fire and slaughter throughout the land. They gave us a mere taste of their quality before they had occupied their quarters for a week. A Greek lady and her daughter, drawn by curiosity, ventured through their lines. They were subjected to unspeakable outrages and, together with ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... when he pleased, the cottage and garden of his poor neighbour? The being rightfully possessed of great power and riches, exceedingly beyond the greatest part of the sons of Adam, is so far from being an excuse, much less a reason, for rapine and oppression, which the endamaging another without authority is, that it is a great aggravation of it: for the exceeding the bounds of authority is no more a right in a great, than in a petty officer; no more justifiable in a king than a constable; but is so much the worse in him, ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... toward the conquered took the place of rapine, and Victory was content with herself and clapped her wings unstained by any blood. Thou, too, immortal sage, defender of thy country, didst win the meed of the conqueror's tears, thou whom ruin smote down, all unmoved, as thou broodedst o'er ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... head, and gout-ridden Governor Steed sitting on the ruins of a wall beside him, they glumly watched the departure of the eight boats containing the weary Spanish ruffians who had glutted themselves with rapine, murder, and ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... Farmers and Inhabitants than the common Enemy. Horses are taken out of the Continental Teams; the Baggage of Officers and the Hospital Stores, even the Quarters of General Officers are not exempt from Rapine." At the most critical moment of the war the New Jersey militia not merely deserted, but captured and took with them nearly the whole stores of the army. As the General truly wrote, "the Dependence which the Congress have placed ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... culture of his hand To bloom along the fairy land, But springs as to preclude his care, And sweetly woos him—but to spare! Strange—that where all is Peace beside, There Passion riots in her pride, And Lust and Rapine wildly reign 60 To darken o'er the fair domain. It is as though the Fiends prevailed Against the Seraphs they assailed, And, fixed on heavenly thrones, should dwell The freed inheritors of Hell; So soft the scene, so formed for joy, So curst ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... have suggested a thousand delightful reflections. But what charms could it have for the soul of Alexander, whose breast was filled with schemes of ambition and conquest; whose eye was familiarised with rapine and slaughter; and whose ears were accustomed to the clash of arms—to the groans of the wounded and the dying? Onward, therefore, he marched. Yet, overcome by fatigue and hunger, he was soon obliged to halt. He seated himself on the bank of the river, took a draught of the water, which ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... fleetest of his horses. He was pursued and taken by the titular Khan of Zagatai; and, after his capture and the defeat of the Ottoman powers, the kingdom of Anatolia submitted to the conqueror, who planted his standard at Kiotahia, and dispersed on all sides the ministers of rapine and destruction. Mirza Mehemmed Sultan, the eldest and best beloved of his grandsons, was despatched to Bursa, with thirty thousand horse; and such was his youthful ardor that he arrived with only four thousand at the gates of the capital, after performing in five days ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Bamee[a]n and Ir[a]k rivers, are the remains of an old castle called Zohawk, after a noted freebooter, who, secure in the strength of his fortress, was the terror of the surrounding villages, and lived by rapine, pillage, and plunder of every kind. To a careless observer the diminutive tower, which alone remains standing, would not convey an adequate idea of the original extent of the castle; but on a close examination the whole face of the mountain will be found to be covered ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem |
