"Torture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it should believe that equality is so contrary to nature that we have no right to torture nature in order to establish real equality among men, and that the people which has established such a state of things, which is quite possible, must succumb to the fate of those who try to live exactly in opposition to the laws of nature. Instead, ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... between Melchior and the Signor Grimaldi having terminated, the bailiff hastened to join his more important guests, and Sigismund was released from an examination that had harrowed every feeling of his soul, while he even despised the besotted loquacity of the man who had been the instrument of his torture. ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... fell in love with a woman in the valley of Sorek, named Delilah. Then the rulers of the Philistines came to her and said, "Find out by teasing him how it is that his strength is so great and how we may overpower and bind him that we may torture him. Then we will each one of us give you eleven hundred pieces of silver." So Delilah said to Samson, "Tell me how it is that your strength is so great and how you might be bound to torture you?" Samson said to her, "If they should bind me with ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... Ridicules,' when he first discovered "what a labour it is to publish a book, and how GREEN (NEUF) an author is the first time they print him." Or it may be that Campanella turned over, with hands unstrung, and still broken by the torture, these leaves that contain his passionate sonnets. Here again is the copy of Theocritus from which some pretty page may have read aloud to charm the pagan and pontifical leisure of Leo X. This Gargantua is the counterpart of that which the martyred ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... combating love, happiness and inclination,—each conquering alternately, and alternately each vanquished,—I could endure it no longer, I resolved by one effort to finish the strife, and to undergo an instant of even exquisite torture, in preference to a ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... doubtful that the prohibition of the sale of white captives by the Indians would be productive of good. The natural result would rather be that the Indians would kill their white captives at once or torture them to death. At the best the prisoners would in most cases, if adults become slaves and if young be adopted into the tribe. There are numerous instances of white captives being slain because unsaleable while the Negroes escaped death because they found a ready ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... ceremonies of the Mysteries, these material horrors were explained to the Initiates as mere symbols of the unimaginable torture, remorse, and agony that would rend the immaterial soul and rack the immortal spirit, they were feeble and insufficient in the same mode and measure only, as all material images and symbols fall short of that which is beyond the cognizance of our senses: and the grave Hierophant, the imagery, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... her duty—despised her, and could never forgive her for having cheated him into taking her for his wife. She died the victim of his contempt and hatred. Not suddenly, not as with a lightning-stroke, did his contempt kill, but slowly and steadily did it pierce her heart. She bore the torture for one desolate, disconsolate year, and then she died solitary and forsaken. No loving hand dried the death-sweat on her cold forehead; no pitying lips whispered words of love and hope to her; yet on her death-bed, her heart was still warm toward her husband, and even then ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... this manoeuvre the mule's body is kept at full stretch, and the rider is obliged to lean forward over the animal's neck to avoid being thrown head-foremost by the violent jerks when the mule springs from step to step. It is absolute torture to ride down a descent of five or six leagues, along a road such as I have just described: willingly would the harassed rider dismount and pursue his course on foot; but were he to attempt to do so, the mule would stand stock still. I have already remarked the singular ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... from the death of the one some means for preserving the life of the other. The councillor was in a violent fever, agitated unceasingly both in body and mind: he could not bear any position of any kind for more than a few minutes at a time. Bed was a place of torture; but if he got up, he cried for it again, at least for a change of suffering. At the end of three months he died. His stomach, duodenum, and liver were all in the same corrupt state as his brother's, and more than that, the surface of his body ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... entering into unnecessary details—the sufferings of one or two of the unfortunate men must have been prolonged to the extent of quite three hours. The ringleader, Tonkin, had been, singularly enough, the man who had been subjected to certain peculiar refinements of torture which, while inflicting what one could readily conceive would be the most excruciating agony, were not of a nature to produce death save by the long-drawn-out process of physical exhaustion. We spoke such comforting words to the poor creatures ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... sooth, I would you were a little sick, That I might, sit all night, and watch with you. I warrant, I love you more than you do me. Hub. His words do take possession of my bosom.— Read here, young Arthur. [Showing a paper.] How now, foolish rheum. [Aside.] Turning dispiteous torture out of door! I must be brief, lest resolution drop Out at mine eyes, in tender womanish tears.— Can you not read it? Is it not fair writ? Arth. Too fairly, Hubert, for so foul effect. Must you with ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... to its close like so much slow torture. Others might resign, but he had to stand at his post until the end, and it was a happy day for him when he got his discharge. His elation was so manifest that it was noticed by John Adams. Writing to his wife about the ceremony the day after ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... whether you were going to make Julian drink that poisonous stuff or not, you were inflicting a horrible torture upon him," said Janetta, as hotly as Wyvis himself could have spoken. "And I cannot understand how you could allow your own child to be treated in that cruel way. I call it wicked to make a ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... seemed to say. "This world is the real hell, ending in the eternal naught. The dreams of a life beyond and of re-union there are but a demon's mocking breathed into the mortal heart, lest by its universal suicide mankind should rob him of his torture-pit. There is no truth in all your father taught you" (he was a clergyman and rather eminent in his profession), "there is no hope for man, there is nothing he can win except the deep happiness of sleep. Come ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... an attendant, "This is just the director I have long sought!" The friar became archbishop of Granada. Her only defect—yet it is surely great enough—is her approval of the infernal tribunal which consigned to torture, imprisonment, or death, so many thousands of her subjects. Strange that this very lady, whom sufferings so exquisite could not move, should have been the constant and successful advocate of the Moors, whenever any town or ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 553, June 23, 1832 • Various
... the hunger of his brain. His eyes grew old with wincing, and his hand Reckless with ague. Courage leaked, as sand From the best sandbags after years of rain. But never leave, wound, fever, trench-foot, shock, Untrapped the wretch. And death seemed still withheld For torture of lying machinally shelled, At the pleasure of this ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... the pain That man inflicts on all inferior kinds, Regardless of their plaints. To make him sport, To gratify the frenzy of his wrath, Or his base gluttony, are causes good And just in his account, why bird and beast Should suffer torture, and the streams be dyed With blood of their inhabitants impaled. Earth groans beneath the burden of a war Waged with defenceless innocence, while he, Not satisfied to prey on all around, Adds tenfold bitterness to ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... breeze, whistling against our bodies, made itself felt in spite of all the precautions we had taken. The vehicle now brought was broader and more commodious than the previous one, which, somewhat in the shape of a coffin, seemed especially designed so as to torture the occupants, particularly if, like my companion and self, they should happen to be endowed by nature with that curse during a sleigh journey—however desirable appendages they may be when in a crowd—long legs. Three horses ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... witch, who had come to the hall, to try her skill in finding them. She told him that they were in the hall. Then Signy threw her a gold ring, and the witch said that what she had just stated was false. Frothi threatened to torture her if she did not tell the truth; and she said that unless he soon prevented it, which he would not do, the boys would be his death. But the boys, terrified, fled to the wood. The king ordered his men to seize them; but Regin put out ...
— The Relation of the Hrolfs Saga Kraka and the Bjarkarimur to Beowulf • Oscar Ludvig Olson
... tracks and burned to ashes by this time, and, best of all, "that pig of a sergeant," as Moreno called him, that hound and murderer, Feeny,—he who had slain Ramon,—bound, gagged, and left to miserable death by torture. Indeed, as he was jolted along in the ambulance, groaning and cursing by turns, Pasqual wondered why he had not insisted that Harvey, too, should be given the coup de grace before their start. It was an unpardonable omission. Never mind! There in the brand-new Concord that came clattering ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... throbbed and screamed its notes of passion in the desert, seemed to be beating in Max's brain. A horrible irritation possessed him like a devil. He could have yelled as a man might yell in the extremity of physical torture. If ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... of her judgment told her it was better for them to remain apart, but her longing to see Brandon grew stronger as the prospect of it grew less, and she became angry that it could not be gratified. Jane was right; an unsatisfied desire with Mary was torture. Even her sense of the great distance between them had begun to fade, and when she so wished for him and he did not come, their positions seemed to be reversed. At the end of the third day she sent for him to come to her rooms, but ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... A paper of interrogatories was laid before him by order of the Privy Council. He replied to those questions to which he could reply without danger to any of his friends, and refused to say more. He was told that unless he returned fuller answers he should be put to the torture. James, who was doubtless sorry that he could not feast his own eyes with the sight of Argyle in the boots, sent down to Edinburgh positive orders that nothing should be omitted which could wring out of the traitor information against all who had been concerned in the treason. But menaces ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sensation as if his whole body—flesh, muscles, nerves, arteries, veins, every lobe of his brain, every cell within each lobe, had been, as the saying is of an arm or leg, "asleep" and was now "coming to." The tingling sensation increased almost to torture; but he could not ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... and in his rayless wanderings he had made his way into the dungeons, sepulchres, and vaults, which were lying far below the foundations of the castle, and which had for centuries served as places of torture, punishment, and death to the enemies of his long and noble line. In these secret charnel houses were buried the bodies of the oppressed, while in the haughty tombs around and above them lay the bones of their oppressors. The ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... built to protect the city from free-booters, as Manila, like old Panama, offered a tempting prize to pirates. Into the wall was built old Fort Santiago, which still stands. The wall varies in thickness from three to forty feet, and in it were built many chambers used as places of confinement and torture. Until six years ago a wide moat surrounded the wall, but the stagnant water bred disease and the moat was filled with the silt dredged up from the bay. Fort Santiago forms the northwest corner of the wall. Its predecessor was a palisade of bags, built in 1571, behind which the Spaniards ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... it from your lips, curse you!" cried Wilde, furiously. "I will torture you here, starve you here, until you go mad and ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... an old fighting bull walrus; enormously swollen, corrugated with bloats and wrinkles, blotched, bumpy, and bloody, as disgusting as it was painful. All too closely it simulated the ravages of some frightful disease, and for a night or two the torture of this itching fire kept me from sleeping. Three days, fortunately, ended the black fly reign, and left us with a deeper sympathy for the poor Egyptians who on account of their own or some other bodies' sins were the victims ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... satisfaction that mine is going to the press first, though there is little danger that we should think on any subject alike, or stumble on any one character in the same track." De Quincey spoke of the hidden torture shown in Landor's play to be ever present in the mind of Count Julian, the betrayer of his country, as greater than the tortures inflicted in old Rome on generals who had committed treason. De Quincey's admiration of this play was more than once expressed. "Mr. Landor," he said, "who always ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... by the actual fist, though she staggers and sinks under blows quite as cruel and effectual; where, with old wounds yet unhealed, which she strives to hide under a smiling face from the world, she has to bear up and to be stricken down and to rise to her feet again, under fresh daily strokes of torture; where the husband, fond and faithful, has to suffer slights, coldness, insult, desertion, his children sneered away from their love for him, his friends driven from his door by jealousy, his happiness strangled, his whole life embittered, poisoned, destroyed! If ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the Yellow Peril; and many Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Russians have felt and expressed it. Many might say, and have said, that the Heathen Chinee is very heathen indeed; that if he ever advances against us he will trample and torture and utterly destroy, in a way that Eastern people do, but Western people do not. Nor do I doubt the German Emperor's sincerity when he sought to point out to us how abnormal and abominable such a nightmare campaign would be, supposing that it could ...
— The Barbarism of Berlin • G. K. Chesterton
... a struggle of fifteen days, fifteen days of torture, of anguish! Ah! what I suffered in that time! I neglected my business, being totally unfit for work. During the day, I tried by incessant action to fatigue my body, that at night I might find forgetfulness in ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... if the heavens give no rain, if there be an earthquake, if a famine or pestilence, straightway they cry, Away with the Christians to the lions.... But go zealously on, ye good governors, you will stand higher with the people if you kill us, torture us, condemn us, grind us to the dust; your injustice is the proof that we are innocent. God permits us to suffer. Your cruelty avails you nothing.... The oftener you mow us down, the more in number we grow; the blood of Christians is seed. What you call our obstinacy is an instructor. ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith
... a wild creature in her cage. She would not speak when Louis entered the room. She had a horrible fear of his blandishments. There were days and nights,—how many she did not know for there was the torture of hundreds comprised in them. Then she wept and prayed. There was the great Manitou Touchas and many of the Indian women believed in; there was the good God the schoolmaster had talked about, and the minister at the chapel, who had sent his Son to ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... thirteen hundred and nine laws and decrees relative to the general administration of the state. It is impossible, even now, to settle the question whether it did good or ill, on the whole; but it certainly removed many great and glaring evils, and enacted many wise laws. It abolished torture, the lettres de cachet, the most oppressive duties, the privileges of the nobility, and feudal burdens. It established a uniform system of jurisprudence, the National Guards, and an equal system of finance. "It opened the army to men of merit, and divided the landed ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... contemporaries. They were great sentimental comedians, these Peters, Elizabeths, and Catherines who played their Tsarships as eccentric character parts, and produced scene after scene of furious harlequinade with the monarch as clown, and of tragic relief in the torture chamber with the monarch as pantomime demon committing real atrocities, not forgetting the indispensable love interest on an enormous and utterly indecorous scale. Catherine kept this vast Guignol Theatre open for nearly half a century, not as a Russian, but as a highly domesticated ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw
... Galatea? Why will you not change this marble statue into a woman of flesh and blood, with heart and soul? These lips are ready to smile, to utter a cry of rapture and delight, and behind the veil of my eyes lies a soul, which one touch of thine will arouse! O Frederick! Frederick! why do you torture me? Do you not know that your wife worships, loves, adores you; that you are her salvation, her god? Oh, I know these are unholy, sinful words! what then? I am a sinner! I am ready to give my soul in exchange for thee, Frederick. Why do you not hear me?—why have not my sighs, my tears ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... different kinds of these tormenting insects, viz. the mosquito, the black-fly, and the gnat—the latter the same as the midge in N. Britain—who relieve each other regularly in the work of torture. The mosquitoes continue at their post from dawn to eight or nine o'clock, A.M.; the black-flies succeed, and remain in the field till near sunset; the mosquitoes again mount guard till dark, and are finally succeeded by the gnats, who continue their watch ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... her of it. She hastily looked at the others. She liked the one with sheep in it best, only the artist had made them like bolsters, and given the shepherd saucer eyes. Then she came to one of the Crucifixion, a subject on which the artist had lavished all the slumbering instincts of torture that are in so ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... and prophets; by the prelates and confessors; by the doctors of the church; by the holy abbots, monks, and eremites, who dwelt in solitudes, in mountains, and in caverns; by the holy saints and martyrs, who suffered torture and death for their faith, I curse thee, witch!" cried Paslew. "May the malediction of Heaven and all its hosts alight on the head ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... himself, he sank down, and fell into a haunted sleep; and then he wakened again, to a reality worse than any nightmare. That awful man was coming after him again! He was going to torture him, to make him tell what he did not know! All the ogres and all the demons that had ever been invented to frighten the imagination of children were as nothing compared to the image of the man called Guffey, ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... God of War—yea, God of Battle am I, And the evil men speak about me has moved me to fierce reply. Does not the surgeon's knife Torture—to save a life? So, for the life of nations, men learn to ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... chances are," Geoffrey said quietly, "I shall share them with you. Your kindness has saved me from what at best might have been imprisonment for life, and not improbably would have been torture and death at the hands of the Inquisition, and I am certainly not going to withdraw myself from you now when you are entering upon what is undoubtedly a very dangerous adventure. If we escape from Spain we escape together; ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... and sisters, oh, what a hell of torture they suffered in those few tense moments whilst waiting for the news, which, though to a great extent it may relieve many, must break at least one heart. No man, having once seen this, ever wants to witness it again. ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... after this saw an event in the Palatine which was matter of talk for some two days more, and then passed into oblivion. Rumour said that Muscula had been detected plotting against the life of Bessas, that she had been examined under torture, found guilty, and executed. Certain gossips pretended that there was no plot at all, but that Bessas, weary of his mistress, had chosen this way of getting rid of her. Be that as ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... saying called to mind, "The devil through his paw behind Alone shall penal torture find From iron, lead, or steel." Achilles thus had been eternal, Thanks to his baptism infernal, But for his ...
— The True Legend of St. Dunstan and the Devil • Edward G. Flight
... enemy of Bonaparte; but the priest, in hope of reward, disclosed the conspiracy to the master of ceremonies, Salmatoris. The three surviving conspirators are said to have been literally torn to pieces by the engines of torture, and the priest was shot for having given absolution to an assassin, and for having concealed his knowledge of the plot an hour after he was acquainted with it. Even Salmatoris had some difficulty to avoid being ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... could not make the runners stay in the middle of my soles where they belonged, hence my ankles not only tipped in awkwardly but the stiff outer edges of my boot counters dug holes in my skin so that my outing was a kind of torture after all. Nevertheless, I persisted and, while Burton circled and swooped like a hawk, I sprawled with flapping arms in a mist of ignoble rage. That I learned to skate fairly well even under these disadvantages argues a high degree ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... Master, I am not able to stand alone: You goe about to torture me in vaine. Enter a ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... is as indifferent, as careless, as vagrant as she. He browses, he digs, he hunts, he climbs, he halloes, he feeds on roots and greens and mast. He uses things roughly and without sentiment. The coolness with which boys will drown dogs or cats, or hang them to trees, or murder young birds, or torture frogs or squirrels, ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... cruelties. As assignees of Spain, we seem to have succeeded not only to her properties but to her policies in the treatment of subject races. We do not know that in the greatest excesses of the bad colonial government of Spaniards they ever inflicted a torture more exquisite than that of the "water cure." How many of the perpetrators of these atrocities have been adequately punished, or how many have been ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... clergyman of the English Church. I was therefore sufficiently qualified for the task, and was the more inclined to it, over and above my real desire to save the unhappy creature from an eternity of torture, by recollecting the promise of St. James, that if any one converted a sinner (which Chowbok surely was) he should hide a multitude of sins. I reflected, therefore, that the conversion of Chowbok ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... in his hand, he commenced to pound upon that instrument of torture, talking gaily the while. Presently he asked, "Do you care about music?" and on our eagerly agreeing that we did, "All right," he said, "we'll close the shop for a ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... your own making,' said Lord Cadurcis. 'What occasion is there for any of these extraordinary proceedings? I have told you a thousand times that I cannot endure scenes. Female society is a relaxation to me; you convert it into torture. I like to sail upon a summer sea; and you always will ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... Sydney, down to the attractions of an Italian restaurant he had discovered near the jail, the flavor of the Chianti and so forth. On the contrary, it was most interesting to note the play of features in the tortured man, who after all brought his torture on himself by asking so many questions. Soon, when his visitor left him, the bondman could follow the free in all but the flesh, through every corridor of the prison and every street outside, to the hotel where you read the English papers on the veranda, or to the little restaurant where ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... torturers will have a regular festival at our expense every day. Libanus, now we need grit and guile. I've just now come upon such a deed for us to do, that we two will be called the worthiest men alive—to be where the torture's thickest. ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... along the Northern Railway is the tsetse fly: especially was he to be found at a place called Same, and during the long trek from German Bridge on the Northern Railway to Morogoro in the south. At one place there is a belt thirty miles wide, and our progress was perpetual torture, unless we passed that way at night. For the Glossina morsitans sleeps by night beneath leaves in the bush, and only wakes when disturbed. For this reason we drive our horses, mules, and cattle by night through these fly-belts. Savage and pertinacious ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... no spark of pugnacity, and his surrender caused the loss of the entire north-west. Tecumseh and his warriors now advanced against the Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio frontiers; and the nameless horrors of Indian massacre and torture surged along the line of settlements. The frontiersmen flew to arms. General Harrison, with a commission from Kentucky, headed a large expedition to regain lost ground; but he only succeeded in building forts in ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... the sleeve of his surplice in water, from which to squeeze out a few drops and baptize the dying. Hoping all things, and fearing nothing, this valiant soldier of the truth was borne onward throughout by faith and energy. "Whatever form of death or torture," said he, "awaits me, I am ready to suffer it ten thousand times for the salvation of a single soul." He battled with hunger, thirst, privations and dangers of all kinds, still pursuing his mission of love, unresting and unwearying. At length, after eleven years' ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... On this occasion, and on at least one other, when engaged in building in a wet season in the Western Highlands, I had all my fingers oozing blood at once; and those who think that in such circumstances labour protracted throughout a long day can be other than torture, would do well to try. How these poor hands of mine burnt and beat at night at this time, as if an unhappy heart had been stationed in every finger! and what cold chills used to run, sudden as electric ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... all there is to be seen, and we must take this breeze while we've got it.' It was always torture to Davies to feel a good breeze running to waste while he was inactive at anchor or on shore. The 'shore' to him was an inferior element, merely serving as a useful annexe to the water—a ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... been the hope of a passionate embrace. To live with her, sit opposite to her while she ate and drank, see her, perhaps, with her hair in curl-papers, know possibly that she had a corn upon her foot, hear her speak maybe of a decayed tooth, or of a chilblain, would have been torture to me. Into such abyss of the commonplace there was no fear of my dragging her, and for this I was glad. In the future she would be yet more removed from me. She was older than I was; she must be now a woman. Instinctively I felt that in spite of years I was not yet a man. She would marry. The thought ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... understand by the police force—waited subserviently on his nod. It rested with him, says Lydus, to establish the authority of the Court of Justice by means of the wholesome fear inspired by iron chains and scourges and the whole apparatus of torture[147]. Nay, not only did the subordinate magistrates execute their sentences by his agency, he had even the honour of being chosen by the Emperor himself to be the minister of vengeance against the persons who had incurred his anger or his suspicion. 'I myself remember,' says Lydus, ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... where he was gone she knew nothing; then, with great and dignified firmness, she added, even if she had known any thing of his route, Colonel Desbrow must be aware, that as she had the courage and goodness to plan and effect his escape, no threats, not even the torture, should induce her to do any thing that might place him in their power again. Elizabeth was instantly taken into custody and examined also, but she knew nothing more than her sister. They were both consigned to the dungeon that he had quitted, and the scaffold, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... New Testament than happiness and misery. The Supreme Being would appear to us in a very different view if we were to consider him as pursuing the creatures that had offended him with eternal hate and torture, instead of merely condemning to their original insensibility those beings that, by the operation of general laws, had not been formed with qualities suited to a purer state ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... Germany, men very skilled in the use of questions, who profess that the tongue of man, if adequately skilful, may always prevail on guilt to disclose itself; who believe in the power of their own craft to produce truth, as our forefathers believed in torture; and sometimes with the same result. And of course all that was great on the British bench, and all that was famous at the British bar was there,—men very unlike their German brethren, men who thought that guilt ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... her missal. She read the "Candide" of Voltaire, Fenelon on the education of girls, and Locke on that of children. During all this time her mind was troubled by those unanswerable and saddening reflections upon those recondite theological subjects which often torture such children, and which grown up people are too often so forgetful of their own childhood that they fail to sympathize with them. She regarded with disapproval the transformation of the Devil into a serpent, and thought it cruel in God to permit it. Referring to the time when her first communion ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... himself a real friend and an unselfish one. He felt as if getting up out of bed was the final, supreme torture under which a man may live; but he got up, for there was something in Luck's voice that thrilled him even through the clogging sleep-hunger. Presently he was sitting in his trousers and socks and shirt, ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... assembled to pay their tribute of respect to the memory of a revered friend, and to solace the hearts of the disconsolate survivors. They needed all the sympathy they received. It was now the dull dead calm after the torture of the storm, the leaden sea strewn with wrecks, enabling them to realise more fully the extent of their loss. Amid the lulls of the tempest, while Lazarus yet lived, hope shrunk from entertaining gloomy apprehensions. ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... this torture for nothing, in the end! What looked at last like a possible prize (oh, without illusions! but still a prize) broken in her hands, fallen in the dust, the bitter dust, of disappointment, she revelled in the miserable revenge—pretty safe too—only regretting the unworthiness of the ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... unto my trial when you will. Died he not in his bed? where should he die? Can I make men live, whe'r they will or no? O, torture me no more, I will confess. Alive again? then show me where he is: I'll give a thousand pound to look upon him. He hath no eyes, the dust hath blinded them. Comb down his hair: Look! look! it stands upright. Like lime-twigs set to catch my winged soul. ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... alluded to, law being suspended, and the courts of justice closed, the "question" by torture was revived and largely practised. The commercial exchange of Dublin formed a place of execution; even suspected rebels were every day immolated as if convicted on the clearest evidence; and Lieutenant H——'s pastime of hanging on his own ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 559, July 28, 1832 • Various
... had been sold by Arnold. The noble ideal it had cherished, the blood it had given, the bitter hardships it had suffered—torture in the wilderness, famine in the Highlands, long marches of half naked men in mid-winter, massacres at Wyoming and Cherry Valley—all this had been bartered away, like a shipload of turnips, to satisfy the greed of one man. Again thirty pieces ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... see the detestable and extreme pleasure that arch-heretics, and false prophets, and impostors are transported with, when they once find in themselves that they have a superiority in the faith and conscience of men; so great as if they have once tasted of it, it is seldom seen that any torture or persecution can make them relinquish or abandon it. But as this is that which the author of the Revelation calleth the depth or profoundness of Satan, so by argument of contraries, the just and lawful sovereignty ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... loneliness and beauty. And here the dreams come back and SHE is WITH me always. Her spirit is all that keeps me kind and good, as you say I am. But I suffer, I long for her alive. If I love her dead, how could I love her living! Always I torture myself with the vain dream that—that she MIGHT not be dead. I have never been anything but a dreamer. And here I go about my work by day and lie awake at night with that lost girl in my mind.... ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... steer's progress, no matter where it went, until the rope went true. He discovered that it was imperative for him to stand without moving when his master trailed the reins over his head; he early learned that the bit was a terrible instrument of torture, and that it were better to answer to the pressure of Calumet's knee than to be subjected to the ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... weakness. What was the matter? Why did he feel so ill? His eyes burned, his legs seemed weighted, his throat was so dry that there was no comfort when he swallowed. All this he could have stood if it had not been for the fiendish noise which, he began to feel, was being played merely for his torture. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... as you think," said Harold, pointing to Chimbolo, whose sad story he had heard; "they will try every kind of torture before ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... Tarling had made a careful examination of the cuts on his chest, and was relieved to discover that Ling Chu—he did not doubt that the Chinaman was responsible for Milburgh's plight—had not yet employed that terrible torture which had so often brought Chinese criminals ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... offering, consisted of a boat filled with fruit, flowers and any precious gift, which was to be paddled over the foaming cataract by one either drawn by lot or selected by the chiefs; or, as often happened, a voluntary offering of life, as it manifested heroism beyond their usual test of torture. Martyrs thus sacrificed had this consolation: that their spirits were sure to rise in the mist and follow the bright path above, while bad Indians' spirits passed down in the boiling, crashing current, to be torn and tossed in the whirlpool, there ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah
... treacherous—how much she dared not think—but she would not believe that his threat to take her boy from her was genuine. All she could think of, as she sat huddled up on the ground, was to cling to the belief that her boy would not be taken away, and that somehow the mental torture the man's existence caused her, and the physical pain he never hesitated to inflict, might ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... calm waters of Sandusky Bay, they saw the blockhouse burst into flames. Paully and his men were landed at the Ottawa camp, where a horde of howling Indians, including women and children, beat them and compelled them to dance and sing for the entertainment of the rabble. Preparations were made to torture Paully to death at the stake; but an old squaw, who had recently lost her husband, was attracted by the handsome, dark-skinned young ensign, and adopted him in place of her deceased warrior. Paully's hair was cut close; he was dipped ...
— The War Chief of the Ottawas - A Chronicle of the Pontiac War: Volume 15 (of 32) in the - series Chronicles of Canada • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... Farewell, ye honour'd rags, ye glorious bubbles; Fame's but a hollow echo, Gold, pure clay; Honour the darling but of one short day; Beauty, th' eye's idol, but a damask'd skin; State, but a golden prison, to live in And torture free-born minds; embroider'd Trains, Merely but pageants for proud swelling veins; And Blood allied to greatness is alone Inherited, not purchas'd, nor our own. Fame, Honour, Beauty, State, Train, Blood and Birth, Are but the fading blossoms of ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... This was so common that one is tempted to hope, and almost to suppose that the "question" was not ordinarily administered with circumstances of extreme cruelty. We hear, indeed, of slaves having their liberty given them in order that, being free, they may not be forced by torture to tell the truth;[67] but had the cruelty been of the nature described by Scott in "Old Mortality," when the poor preacher's limbs were mangled, I think we should have heard more of it. Nor was the torture always applied, but only when the ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... moment," she said. "It's very simple, after all, what I have to tell you. I don't love my husband, and he doesn't love me, and it has become torture to live together. I have left him with his knowledge and consent, and he understands that I ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... them together, bone to his bone, till Leviathan and Behemoth stand before us in bodily presence and in their full proportions, and we almost tremble lest these dry bones should live again! Let them put nature to the rack, and torture her, in all her forms, to the betrayal of her inmost secrets and confidences. They need not forbear. The foundations of the round world have been laid so strong that they can ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... of Psalms condemned me. I said, I never felt like David. I cannot rejoice. Still I felt that I ought to, but instead, a constant feeling of condemnation and conviction. This was torture to me. I would often have been willing to have died, if I thought it would have been an eternal sleep. My childhood and girlhood were not happy; had so many disappointments. I was called "hard headed" by my parents. ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... amend, and every day I've done the same filthy things. I understand now that such men as I need a blow, a blow of destiny to catch them as with a noose, and bind them by a force from without. Never, never should I have risen of myself! But the thunderbolt has fallen. I accept the torture of accusation, and my public shame, I want to suffer and by suffering I shall be purified. Perhaps I shall be purified, gentlemen? But listen, for the last time, I am not guilty of my father's blood. I accept my punishment, not because I killed him, but because I meant to kill ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... self-preservation asserted itself, he put up a more and more creditable fight, until those who watched thought that he might indeed have a chance to vanquish the Outlaw of Torn. But they did not know that Norman of Torn was but playing with his victim, that he might make the torture long, drawn out, and wreak as terrible a punishment upon Peter of Colfax, before he killed him, as the Baron had visited upon Bertrade de Montfort because she would not ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the door at eleven. Why do you torture me? There's no time to lose now. You will be claimed. Come, and let us two cut the knot. It is the best thing in the world for me—the only thing. Be brave! I have your hand. Give it for good, and for heaven's sake don't play the sex. Be yourself. Dear soul of a woman! I never saw the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... him journey through his earthly day: 'Mid hustling spirits go his self-found way; Find torture, bliss, in every forward stride— He, every moment, ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... my brother, what can these foul tyrants know of either! Already he has perhaps doomed you to some refined and procrastinated torture, already—— Ah! what unutterable woe is mine! fly, my ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... like the kitchen cat when she smelt cream, fawning upon her in a way which soon became repulsive to Hollyhock, refusing to have any other friend, and over and over again in the day kissing Hollyhock's hands, her brow, her cheeks, her lips. All this sort of thing was pure torture to Hollyhock. But although she was terribly tried, she determined to go through with her mission, and hoped ere long to train Leucha into finer and grander ways. By their father's permission, Leucha was invited to accompany the Flower Girls to The Garden on a ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... them on tenterhooks of suspense for days and weeks, until he was tired of the amusement—for this practising on the fears of weaker natures is a horribly keen delight to some—or until some desperate little dog, unable to bear his torture any longer, would threaten to give himself up and make an end ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... satisfied me that the worry and harassment at Louisville were exhausting his strength and health, and that he would soon leave. On a telegraphic summons from him, about the 5th of October, I went down to Louisville, when General Anderson said he could not stand the mental torture of his command any longer, and that he must go away, or it would kill him. On the 8th of October he actually published an order relinquishing the command, and, by reason of my seniority, I had no alternative but to assume command, though much ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... investigation, I would find waiting for me from twenty to thirty people whose friends and relatives were in the suspected institution, all in such acute distress of mind that to see them was to look upon the victims of deliberate torture. In most cases my visitor would state that it seemed impossible to put their invalids in any other place, but if these stories were true, something must be done. Many of the patients were taken out only to be returned after a ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... Odyssey being the work of "a milder age," consider the hanging of Penelope's maids and the abominable torture of Melanthius. There is no torturing in the [blank space] for the Iliad happens not to deal ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... surely they would cry aloud for some better provision against their extremity after battle,—for some regulated and certain assistance to the wounded and agonized,—so that we might hear no longer of men left in cold and misery all night, writhing with torture,—of bodies stripped by prowlers, perhaps murderers,—and of frenzied men, the other day the darlings of their friends, dying, two and even several days after the battle, of famine! The field of Waterloo was not completely cleared ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... office, a servant at your will, But an instrument of torture if 'tis not used with skill. Beauty before her mirror studies its use with care, And deigns, perchance, to choose ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... day they came again to the palace, and they said, "Shoot not at us any more, unless thou desirest such hurt, and harm, and torture as thou now hast, and even more." "Give me thy daughter, and if thou wilt not give her, thou shalt receive thy death because of her." "Where is he that seeks my daughter? Come hither where I may see thee." And they placed him a chair face ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... which seemed ready to burst at any moment. Their hands were just as bad, covered with chilblains and sores. Many were tortured with wounds which had at first seemed slight, but by neglect and exposure had become sources of exquisite torture. The gleaming eyes, matted hair and beard hanging about their cadaverous faces, gave to these men a wild, ghastly look utterly indescribable. As they came in, many sunk exhausted upon the pallets, some falling at once into a deep sleep, from which it was impossible ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... person, in order to get the better price for them." "That's right," says the Jew; "and I'll engage she shall never be mistress of them again; they shall either be seized by us," says he, "in the king's name, or she shall be glad to give them up to us to prevent her being put to the torture." ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... father was closely interrogated respecting his money which they knew he must have. But as he gave them no account of it, he was instantly cut and pounded on his body with great inhumanity, that he might be induced by the torture he suffered to make the discovery. All this availed not the least to make him give up his money, but he despised all the tortures which they inflicted, until the continued exercise and increase of torment, obliged ...
— A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, a Native of • Venture Smith
... waking hours. When morning dawned, he was found lying on his couch but with every trace of life extinct. The family inquisition on the slaves of the household was held as a matter of course. Their statements were never published to the world, but it was believed that under torture they had confessed to seeing certain men introduced stealthily during the night through the back part of the house; these, they thought, had strangled their master.[460] The reason which they assigned for their ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... Landers stood before him, and immediately held forth their hands; all of them trembling like aspen leaves; the chief looked up full in their faces, kneeling on the ground; light seemed to flash from his dark rolling eyes; his body was convulsed all over, as though he was enduring the utmost torture, and with a timorous, yet indefinable expression of countenance, in which all the passions of human nature were strangely blended, he drooped his head, eagerly grasped their proffered hands, and burst into tears. This was ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... looked pinched and pathetic as she spoke, and for the first time her father had a suspicion of what punishment was to this child—a thing as inevitable as disease, a continually recurring torture, but quite without effect upon her conduct—and his heart contracted with a ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... on him with eyes ablaze. "Torture and slay me if you will, but my wealth you shall not thieve. I know not where these jewels are, but wherever they may be, there let them lie till my heirs find them, ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... tens of thousands of us are lying? Do not think it, gentlemen. The thought that it is inevitable is the last infidelity; infidelity not to God only, but to every creature and every law that He has made. Are we to think that the earth was only shaped to be a globe of torture; and that there cannot be one spot of it where peace can rest, or justice reign? Where are men ever to be happy, if not in England? by whom shall they ever be taught to do right, if not by you? Are we ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... silent pain too, a silent scornful one: the lip is curled in a kind of god-like disdain of the thing that is eating-out his heart,—as if it were withal a mean insignificant thing, as if he whom it had power to torture and strangle were greater than it. The face of one wholly in protest, and lifelong unsurrendering battle, against the world. Affection all converted into indignation: an implacable indignation; slow, equable, silent, like that of a god! The eye too, it looks ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... Kuriat, and Zoar[165], all in one night by previous concert, by a private order from the king of Ormuz. This attack was so sudden and well concerted, that above 120 of the Portuguese were slain on that night, and one Ruy Boto was put to the torture by the Moors in defence of the faith. The Portuguese at Ormuz, where Don Garcia Coutino then commanded, exerted themselves as well as they could to defend themselves, and secured the ships which happened to be at that place ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... dimly hinted by those familiar with the technicalities of the Holy Office, that the terms, "Il rigoroso esame," during which Galileo is reported to have answered like a good Christian, officially announce the application of the torture. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... legends were depicted, as on a shifting and transitory window. But my sorrows were only increased, because this change of lighting destroyed, as nothing else could have done, the customary impression I had formed of my room, thanks to which the room itself, but for the torture of having to go to bed in it, had become quite endurable. For now I no longer recognised it, and I became uneasy, as though I were in a room in some hotel or furnished lodging, in a place where I had just arrived, by ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... are!" cried she, finding her voice again. "My dearest, henceforth where you go I go, for I cannot again endure the torture of such waiting.—I pictured you stumbling over a curbstone, with a fractured skull! Killed by thieves!—No, a second time I know I should go mad.—Have you enjoyed yourself so much?—And ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... First Thorpe's feet became numb, then his hands, then his nose was nipped, and finally his warm clothes were lifted from him by invisible hands, and he was left naked to shivers and tremblings. He found it torture to sit still on the top of the bale of hay; and yet he could not bear to contemplate the cold shock of jumping from the sleigh to the ground,—of touching foot to the chilling snow. The driver pulled up to breathe his horses at the ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... cast into this den of roaring waters!—at last, suddenly, over a large fall, and here smooth waters again, smooth and untroubled, and strong and deep. Then, and only then, did a word escape either; but the man had passed through torture and unavailing regret, for he realised that he had had no right to bring this girl into such a fight. It was not her friend who was in danger at Bindon. Her life had been risked without due warrant. "I didn't know, or I wouldn't have asked it," he said in a low ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... possessed a more efficient weapon than my clumsy pistol, I should have tried to shoot one of the latter, in the hope of being able to manufacture shoes or sandals out of the hide to protect my lacerated feet, which were so swollen that I felt it would be almost torture to proceed further without some protection for them. As soon as there was sufficient light, however, I employed myself in picking out the thorns, with which they were full; after which operation I felt some slight relief. I then looked around for water in which I might cool them, but no stream or ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the bed and poor Daddy allowed me to stroke his hand, a thing he usually resents. I know that he was in great pain and feared other unknown tortures. The poor man looked at the tall doctor's big hands as if he deemed them instruments of potential torture. One really couldn't blame him for having scant confidence in a man whose business appears to be the ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... in France, where alone, of all the Catholic states, there were any great numbers of Protestants. In 1762 a Huguenot of Toulouse, unjustly charged with crime, was put to torture and to death, under the pressure of the old persecuting spirit. Many Huguenots thought the persecutions of former times were reviving, and prepared to flee to Switzerland. But Voltaire took up ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... the feeling that ice had formed about her heart, trying to bear unflinchingly the curious or sneering looks of those she had known well enough to call by their first names. It was torture for the sensitive girl who saw in each cold eye the thought that she had killed a man—killed a human ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... when shall the grave hide for ever my sorrow? Oh! when shall my soul wing her flight from this clay? The present is hell! and the coming to-morrow But brings, with new torture, ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... instinct reveals to him its extent. It signifies not that strangers or foes be the sufferers; imagination puts him in their place; something like a personal feeling is mingled with his pity, and makes himself suffer whilst the body of his fellow-creature is in torture. In democratic ages men rarely sacrifice themselves for one another; but they display general compassion for the members of the human race. They inflict no useless ills; and they are happy to relieve the griefs of others, when they can do so without much hurting themselves; ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... Decreed, that the Louvre and the Tuilleries united shall be the habitation of the King, and that all monuments of science and art shall be collected and kept there. 31. Decreed, that the punishment of death shall be inflicted without torture. From thence came the use of the guillotine;-an instrument of death so called from its author, a member of the national assembly. June. Letter of the Abbe Raynal to the assembly. Persecutions against ...
— Historical Epochs of the French Revolution • H. Goudemetz
... went up to Hallam's lips. "Hush! Do you suppose God blunders? I don't. If He had meant her to stay with us, He would have found a way to cure her. To think otherwise is torture. No. No, no, indeed no! Father is left and so are we. We have got to live and take care of ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... him; he on his side had given himself to the Crucified without reserve or return. To uncertainty, disquietude of soul, anguish, longing for an unknown good, bitter regrets, had succeeded a delicious calm, the ecstasy of the lost child who finds his mother, and forgets in a moment the torture ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... What is there in her mind? What meaning lurks In speech begun but to be broken short? Would both deceive me with a vain pretence? Have they conspired to put me to the torture? And yet, despite my stern severity, What plaintive voice cries deep within my heart? A secret pity troubles and alarms me. Oenone shall be questioned once again, I must have clearer light upon this crime. Guards, bid Oenone come, and ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... the mother, as she lies in the very article of death, could still find in his heart to paint on it the dark patches of foul disease. He would have fled with shrieks from those appalling scenes of murder, torture, madness, bestial drunkenness, rapacity, fury—from that delirium of scrofula, palsy, entrails, the winding-sheet, and the grave-worm. Diderot's method was to improve men, not by making their blood curdle, but by warming and softening the ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... story of Pocahontas, she did something more than interfere to save from barbarous torture and death a stranger and a captive, who had forfeited his life by shooting those who opposed his invasion. In all times, among the most savage tribes and in civilized society, women have been moved to heavenly pity by the sight of a prisoner, and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... this quickening of the pulse is, in almost every case, purely agreeable; that these phantom reproductions of experience, even at their most acute, convey decided pleasure; while experience itself, in the cockpit of life, can torture and slay. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a new peril threatened. A chill ran through me of cold and nervousness, and I slid an inch. I suppressed the growing shivers with all my will. I would keep perfectly quiet till Muir came back. The sickening pain in my shoulders increased till it was torture, and ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... on, Wulf," Beorn said as they threw themselves down on the ground late that night, when the carousal was ended, "I shall snatch the count's dagger from his belt and bury it in his heart, though they put me to death by torture afterwards." ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... I am not ashamed. But that outbreak cost me bodily agony, and I wept and sobbed whilst I cursed myself for weeping. Sacred Heaven! how I wrestled with this devil of weakness, which held me so strongly. When I had fought him down, he leapt upon me afresh, and subdued me by sheer torture until I let nature take her way, and cried like a woman! Then, when it was all over, I stood up and ...
— The Romance Of Giovanni Calvotti - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... this people tongues to speak with; you would cut them out that they may be dumb in their agony, silent in their torture! But God hath given them hands to smite with, and they shall smite! Ay! from the sick and labouring womb of this unhappy land some revolution, like a bloody child, shall[21] rise ...
— Vera - or, The Nihilists • Oscar Wilde
... written about the value of a cold bath, particularly in the morning, and many people, from a sense of duty, suffer what is almost torture taking a shower bath or a cold plunge bath on rising. When a cold bath (which should not last more than a few seconds) is followed by a good reaction, that is, when after drying, a distinct glow is felt, there ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... had expected something of the sort. But none the less, I will not make a point of it," said Jurgen, handsomely. "No, I shall be quite satisfied even though you do not torture me at all." ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... might be thirty miles on his way. The trouble with that was that he would then have to spend two nights out, and the long hours of darkness with their flickering shadows cast by the camp-fires would be full of torture for him. On the other hand, if he should stay till morning, word might leak out from the officers' quarters that he was carrying ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... see no reason why you should brood on such things. What's the use? Your health is excellent for your time of life. Your end is not imminent. You are voluntarily undergoing a system of self-torture which is quite unnecessary. We've known each other for years, yet I hardly recognise you in your present humour. I thought you were perfectly happy. Surely you ought to be,—you, David Helmsley,—'King' David, as you are sometimes called—one of the ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... was the Baron de Fontenelles,[203] a man of high family, who had for several years rendered himself peculiarly obnoxious to the King and his ministers, and whose atrocious barbarities caused him to fall unpitied. This wretched man, after having been put to the torture, was, by the sentence pronounced against him by the council, broken alive upon the wheel, where he suffered the greatest agony during an hour and a half. His lieutenant was condemned to the gallows for having been the medium of his communication with the Spanish Government; although, even as ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... marveling at the domestic economies of an English barber shop. I use the word economies in this connection advisedly; for, compared with the average high-polished, sterilized and antiseptic barber shop of an American city, this shop seemed a torture cave. In London, pubs are like that, and some dentists' establishments and law offices—musty, fusty dens very unlike their Yankee counterparts. In this particular shop now the chairs were hard, ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... as anything poetic can be. It is true that ultimately the drama ends in a vindication of what are called the ways of God to man, if indeed people are willing to put themselves off with a form of omnipotent justice which is simply a partial retribution inflicted on the monster, while torture and butchery fall upon victims more or less absolutely blameless. As if the fact of punishment at length overtaking the guilty Franceschini were any vindication of the justice of that assumed Providence, which had for so long a time awarded punishment far more harsh to the innocent ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... snarling for vengeance. Then, perceiving the woman's plight, he flung himself upon her, trying to envelop her in one sweeping embrace that should crush all the virulent pests at once. In this he failed signally; and in an instant the liquid fire was running over his own body. The torture of it, however, was a small thing to him compared with the torture of seeing them sting the woman, and feeling himself impotent to effect her instant succor. He slapped and beat at her with his great ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... so small it had not occurred to them that a man could get into it. Lysander had got into it, however, and there he lay, so cramped, and stifled, and compressed, that he could not endure the torture without an effort to ease it by moving a little. He had stirred; then all was ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... Build me a nation true and strong, Bar out the old world's hate and wrong; For men had traced with blood and tears The trail of weary wasting years, And torn and bleeding martyrs trod Through fire and torture up ...
— Poems • Frances E. W. Harper
... worse!" Eldris flashed back. "I would rather face my lord in the torture-chamber; I would rather be broken on the wheel and die the death—" She shuddered, and again hid her face. "And there is no way out of it but death. What can I ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... was pitiable. While all this was torture to her inexperience and timidity, her fear of her mother rendered her wholly submissive. Each day brought with it some new trial. She was admired for many reasons,—by some for her wealth, of which all had heard rumors; by others ...
— Esmeralda • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of the cab freed him from this torture. The hotel porter opened the door. Pierre stepped out mechanically. Without speaking a word he followed a waiter, who showed him to a room on the second floor. Left alone, he sat down. This room, with its commonplace furniture, ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... The boys learned lessons or played games. The Pastor liked to hear his daughter sing; but it would be doing that worthy man strong injustice to say he liked the piano, which was very old and worse than worthless. It was to Hardy's ear torture to hear it in contrast with Froken Helga's clear voice. At last he could stand it no longer, and the ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary |
