"Atrocity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... household, and waylaid the Count of Masino, as he was returning with his brother and eight or nine servants, late one night from supper. Both the brothers and the greater part of their suite were killed: but Don Pietro was caught. He revealed the atrocity of his mistress; and she was sent to prison. Incapable of proving her innocence, and prevented from escaping, in spite of 15,000 golden crowns with which she hoped to bribe her jailors, she was finally beheaded. Thus did a vulgar and infamous Messalina, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... almost maddened by these proceedings, carried this letter to the abbe, the poor priest read it and re-read it; so amazed and horror-stricken was he to see the perfection with which his own handwriting and signature were imitated. The dangerous condition into which this last atrocity threw poor Ursula sent Savinien once more to the procureur du roi ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... for some time past, I think of you everywhere I go. I do not know what has come to me: I live in a constant state of excitement, which, as you told me, is a sign of true love. I am in fact madly in love with you. I know that it is an atrocity, a crime, but I cannot help myself. ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... inhabitants of Africa, those inhabitants would not thereby gain; on the contrary, they would lose, for they would be handed over to the tender mercies of individual traders, operating with armies of reprobate bravos, and committing every atrocity to which the civilized barbarian is prone. The European governments cannot divest themselves of responsibility in regard to Africa. They must govern there, and the best that can be hoped is that they should govern ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... the roof. Amongst other ominous sounds, the guard was heard to click his long horse-pistols. "Stop the York four-day stage!" said he, forcing his smoky voice through a world of throat-embracing shawl; "the fastest coach in the kingdom: vos ever such atrocity heard of? I say, Joe, keep them ere leaders steady; we shall all be in the ditch. Don't you see where the hind wheels are? ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... towards the parlour door. A voice discoursing on the other side (it was but a matchboard partition), rose so loudly that the concluding words became quite plain in all their atrocity. ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... Virginia's crew were by this time fully aroused; they thought of nothing but the fact that their enemies were pirates, men steeped to the lips in crime of the vilest description, and guilty of unnumbered deeds of blood-curdling atrocity, and many of the Spaniards were ruthlessly slaughtered before George and Bowen could induce them to stay their hands. Then, when order and authority were once more restored, heads were counted, and it was found that, out of a crew of over eighty, twenty-three ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... indignant denunciation of precisely these outrages; and though he refuses to give details, he supplies their place by epithets: "revolting,"—"inhuman and not to be justified,"—"acts of barbarity and cruelty,"—"acts of atrocity,"—"this course of proceeding dignifies the rebel and the assassin with the sanctity of martyrdom." And he ends by threatening martial law upon all future transgressors. Such general orders are not issued except in rather extreme cases. And in the parallel columns of the newspaper ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... and last public atrocity. He had killed men since, but always when they were alone with him. No one had seen him at his murders. He would have been destroyed when his racing days were over, but he possessed the ability to transmit a large measure of his stamina and speed to his offspring, and was greatly ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... flocks and herds, could neither have obtained food on so small and arid a desert as that over which they were said to have wandered during forty years, nor water from a single well; and that the butchery of two hundred thousand Midianites by twelve thousand Israelites, "exceeding infinitely in atrocity the tragedy at Cawnpore, had happily only been carried out on paper." There was nothing of the scoffer in him. While preserving his own independence, he had kept in touch with the most earnest thought both among European ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... 31st chapter of Numbers, but it is unfit to read. It tells a story of shame and crime unequalled in atrocity. It tells that God commanded Moses and Eleazar, the priest, to produce vice and perpetrate crime on an unparalleled scale. It tells us that they obeyed the order, and that 16,000 helpless girls were dragged in the mire of infamy and divided amongst the victorious ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... back on his breath and the Kid asked him to stick out his tongue so he could see was they any revenue stamps on it. In the mornin' he grabbed a container of ice water and a pen and dashed off a atrocity in five reels based on what atmosphere of Montana Joe's that was still with him. He called the thing "The End of the World!" Potts says the title alone sounded good enough to him to remove the bumpers from his bankroll without ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... suspecting. To make the best of anything, it is not necessary to declare that it is the best thing. Children must be taken care of, but it is altogether probable that there are too many of them. Some people think that opinion several times more atrocious than murder in the first degree; but I see no atrocity in it, and there is none. I think there is an immense quantity of nonsense about, regarding this thing. For my part, I don't credit half of it. I believe in Malthus,—a great deal more than Malthus did himself. The prosperity of a country is often measured by its population; but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... pitiful figure he was about to cut before his countrymen, laid aside his splendid apparel, resumed his seal skin clothes, and returned to the missionaries. These holy men, who neglected no opportunity of representing to him the guilt of his crimes, now pointed out the atrocity of the murders he had committed, or occasioned, and sharply reproved him for seducing the baptized to participate with him in his heathenish abominations. Tuglavina trembled, grew pale, and confessed he was an horrible sinner; but, like some men who call ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... again as furious, while it lasted, as ever it had been. The first time in Sweden, in 1669, and the second in Germany so late as 1749. Both these instances merit particular mention. The first is one of the most extraordinary upon record, and for atrocity and absurdity is unsurpassed in the annals of ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... from the barbarous massacre of Saint Spiridion. The soldiers quarrelled and fought over the blood-stained spoil. The officers were occupied with mutual recriminations and excuses regarding their several shares in the atrocity. Karaiskakes found himself unable to establish order, and had to entreat Sir Richard Church to take back his ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... etiquette and the chosen avocation of the very best men of the race, to the level of a riot of peasants. All the wars of Christendom are now disgusting and degrading; the conduct of them has passed out of the hands of nobles and knights and into the hands of mob-orators, money-lenders, and atrocity-mongers. To recreate one's self with war in the grand manner, as Prince Eugene, Marlborough and the Old Dessauer knew it, one must ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... which this music is written, the incredible history of Holy Russia, the history of its rulers and people—the mad caprices and horrid deeds of the Romanoffs, who, in centuries gone by, surpassed in restless melancholy and atrocity the insane Caesars, and were more to be pitied, as well as detested, than Tiberius or Nero—the nature of the landscape, the waste of steppes, the dreariness of winter, and the loneliness of summer—the barbaric extravagance of aristocratic life—the red tape, extortion, ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... and rapine, desolation and atrocity, perpetrated upon a high-spirited and generous people, cannot conduce to the best moral condition. Left in poverty and galled by outrage, wrongs will be resorted to which otherwise would be foreign to a natural disposition. If the influences of a more ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... information he closed with a double-jointed oath of remarkable atrocity, and, having done so, would have recommenced the performance of acrobatic feats had I not stopped him by asking the reason of his action. He looked ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... speaking, illegal. The court, however, decides, that though the prisoner was not taken in the act, yet his guilt was so manifest, that the gendarmes were justified in acting as if they had caught him perpetrating the crime, while in offences of great atrocity the police have also a discretionary power to arrest offenders, even without warrants. Though in this particular instance the result is not much to be regretted, yet it is obvious, that the admission of such a principle, and such an interpretation ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... protection to the weak, seeks to overturn all law and order, and pandering to the worst passions of an ignorant and ferocious populace, goads them, by the most unfounded and mischievous statements, to the commission of crime, and then adduces the atrocity of their acts as a proof of the injustice of their treatment. Every murder is palliated, because it arises from "the occupation of land." Every brutal assassination is paraded as "a fact" for Lord Devon, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... sentiment to the atrocity of this barbarous survival of the ordeal of private battle. That one of the most justly renowned of public men, of unsurpassed ability, should be shot to death like a mad dog, because he had expressed the general feeling about an unprincipled schemer, ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... of the troop were three parts drunk, it only required a CAPTAIN BIRLEY to lead them on, and a SQUIRE HULTON to give the word, to have caused a scene in which, though it would not have been equal in atrocity and cruelty to the murders of the 16th of August, at Manchester, the blood of innocent and unarmed, although misled persons, might, and in all human probability would have been spilt. However, by the advice of myself and a few other, who had retained our senses, and who felt degraded ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... exclaimed aloud, "nothing short of it." Why, such glaring wholesale hypocrisy had not been committed since Satan first introduced the vice into Paradise. What atrocity, what barefaced blasphemy! It was the part of a Christian and a friend to attribute the extravagant proceedings of the baron to absolute insanity, and to nothing else; and I did so accordingly, alarmed for the safety of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... Christian Church at Rome was founded exclusively by Paul, and that the apostle Peter never was at Rome, he having been all his life employed in founding churches in the East. 'By their fruits ye shall know them;' and we have only to reflect on the lives of the popes, many of them monsters of atrocity, and the fearful acts of persecution which they encouraged and authorised, to be convinced that paganism, the invention of Satan, had usurped the name of Christianity, and that the Romish Church, as it is called, instead of being the mother of all Churches, is truly the ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... study he whom Duhamel called Maximilien strode to and fro, his hands clasped behind his back, his head bent, his chin thrust forward, denouncing the seigneurial system, of whose atrocity he had received that evening instances enough—for he had heard the whole story of La Boulaye's rebellion against the power of Bellecour and the causes ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... the moment by the arrival of Edith Symmes, and the little group paid her the momentary attention of an awed silence, for she had perpetrated what was, perhaps, the greatest atrocity of her life—a vivid scarlet gown which made her face look ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... turned to rest me in the herdsmen's cots,[51] Where I was host and guest, until I gain'd The cheerful homes and social haunts of men. Already through these distant vales had spread The rumor of this last atrocity; And wheresoe'er I went, at every door, Kind words saluted me and gentle looks. I found these simple spirits all in arms Against our rulers' tyrannous encroachments. For as their Alps through each succeeding ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... easy range of the firm. Armed men, to the number of a hundred, had issued from Mulinuu, had "taken charge" of the house, had pointed a gun at Scanlon's head, and had twice "threatened to kill" his pigs. I hear elsewhere of some effects (Gegenstaende) removed. At the best a very pale atrocity, though we shall find the word employed. Germans declare besides that Scanlon was no American subject; they declare the point had been decided by court-martial in 1875; that Blacklock had the decision in the consular archives; and that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... avowed some years ago by a number of sugar planters in Louisiana. If, instead of accusing Mrs. Stowe of exaggeration, you had brought the same charge against the author of the 'White Slave,' I should not have been surprised; for his book presents some of the most revolting instances of atrocity and crime that the miserable abuse of irresponsible power is capable of producing, and it is by no means written in the spirit of universal humanity which pervades Mrs. Stowe's volumes: but it is not liable to the charge of exaggeration, any more ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... land." "It particularly concerns us to observe that the whole matter was, in the first instance, referred to Jehovah; that David was plainly informed of the intention of the Gibeonites of 'hanging up' the seven persons 'before Jehovah' as an 'atonement;' that he willingly surrendered them for that atrocity; that he evidently expected from that act a cessation of the famine; and that this calamity is reported to have really disappeared in consequence of the offering" (Ibid, p. 392). Kalisch, in his anxiety to diminish as far as possible the evidence that human sacrifices were enjoined by the law, ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... whom they are accredited have to pay them, under ordinary circumstances, certain sums monthly, to prevent their inventing or exaggerating cases of abuse of power or neglect of duty on their part; but, when they happen to be really guilty of great acts of atrocity, or great neglect of duty, they are required to pay extraordinary sums, not only to the news-writers, who are especially accredited to them, but to all others who happen to be in the neighbourhood at the time. There are six hundred and sixty news- writers of this kind employed ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... chivalry of the region beyond the Loire, and were ill fitted to face enemies who, in every country from Ireland to Palestine, had been victorious against tenfold odds. A war, distinguished even among wars of religion by merciless atrocity, destroyed the Albigensian heresy, and with that heresy the prosperity, the civilization, the literature, the national existence, of what was once the most opulent and enlightened part of the great European family. Rome, in the meantime, warned by that fearful ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... outraged and himself insulted, as he would assuredly be, were he to look down upon the courts from the galleries of the Bicetre. And yet in this prison of Madrid were some of the most desperate characters in Spain: ruffians who had committed acts of cruelly and atrocity sufficient to make the flesh shudder. But gravity and sedateness are the leading characteristics of the Spaniards, and the very robber, except in those moments when he is engaged in his occupation, and then no one is more sanguinary, pitiless, and wolfishly eager for booty, is a being ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... intents and purposes, her own mistress. What was there to prevent her from insuring her life, if she pleased, and from so disposing of the insurance as to give Van Brandt a direct interest in her death? Knowing what I knew of him—believing him, as I did, to be capable of any atrocity—I trembled at the bare idea of what might have happened if I had failed to find my way back to her until a later date. Thanks to the happy accident of my position, the one certain way of protecting her lay easily within my reach. I could offer to lend ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... discussion, shall be allowed. And, doubtless, as regards merely the treatment of convivial or purely social communication of ideas, (which also is a great art,) this practice is right. I admit willingly that an uncultured brute, who is detected at an elegant table in the atrocity of absolute discussion or disputation, ought to be summarily removed by a police officer; and possibly the law will warrant his being held to bail for one or two years, according to the enormity of his case. But men are not always enjoying, or seeking to enjoy, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... two men were killed outright, to-wit, one James Mattox and one Leon Smyers, and the same were left there. The sheriff managed to make his escape, albeit he was followed and repeatedly fired upon. And be it known that the report now reaches here that the atrocity did not cease with the firing on of the sheriff's posse, but that a sharp fight afterward took place between negroes and white men near by; and we are now informed that a strong force of negroes, at the instance ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... him, for they made him believe that the captain feared that some of the Rackbirds might come back. He had had a great deal of talk with the other negroes about those bandits, and he was fully impressed with their capacity for atrocity. It grieved his soul to think that the captain would stay here alone, but the captain was a man who could defend himself against half a dozen Rackbirds, while he knew very well that he would not be a match for half a one. With tears in his eyes, he begged Captain Horn not to stay, for Rackbirds ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... more rapid means of transit the present generation would be as little concerned at the pains of the post-horse as they are at the horrors enacted behind the closed doors of the physiological laboratories, the atrocity of the steel trap, the continual murdering by our big game hunters of all the noblest animals left on the globe, and finally the annual massacre of millions of beautiful birds in their breeding time to provide ornaments for the ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... a man of little sentiment. He could in cold blood have married this girl for the wealth he knew that she would inherit; but the thought that she was to be united with such a THING—"Lord! It is horrible," and his mind pictured the fearful atrocity which was known as ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... giving the Minister an opportunity of disapproving of them: he hoped he should not hear the principle avowed. Crowned heads, he thought, were at present led by some fatal infatuation to degrade themselves and injure mankind. But some, it seems, regard any atrocity in monarchs as if it had lost its nature by not being committed by low and vulgar agents. A head with a crown, and a head with a nightcap, totally altered the moral quality of actions—robbery was no longer robbery—and death, ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... to commit an atrocity by writing to an overworked man on a subject which may seem to him of secondary importance. Still, to the soldiers out here, the said subject means encouragement or discouragement coming to them through the medium of their home letters,—so vital a factor in victory or failure ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... with five hundred white troops and about the same number of Indians, led by Colonel Procter, whom Brock had placed in command of the fort at Amherstburg. Procter's name is infamous in the annals of the war. The worst traditions of Indian atrocity, uncontrolled and even encouraged, cluster about his memory. He was later promoted in rank instead of being degraded, a costly blunder which England came to regret and at last redeemed. A notoriously incompetent officer, on this one occasion of the battle of the ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... his devil's raids, tore a baby from its mother's breast by the leg, dashed its brains out against a tree, and then—I daren't tell a woman what happened." [Note: Tom was confusing Touan with Michael Howe. The latter actually did commit this frightful atrocity; but I never heard that the former actually combined the ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... America to the other by various defenders of the German cause. Germany's official documents issued in defence of her position at the beginning of the war, her charges of atrocities against her enemies and her supposed proofs of the falsity of atrocity charges against the Germans, have all been published fully and widely, although you seem not to be aware of ...
— Plain Words From America • Douglas W. Johnson
... that whatever interest Burley might have in rendering the breach between the presbyterians and the government irreconcilable, by putting the young nobleman to death, it was by no means that of the moderate party to permit such an act of atrocity. And it is but doing justice to Mr Poundtext to add, that, like most of his own persuasion, he was decidedly adverse to any such acts of unnecessary violence; besides, that his own present feelings induced him to listen with much complacence to the probability held ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... humiliate us in the most abominable way. The whole family have sworn to make us blush publicly. Publicly blush! They have written to Mama to come and speak out. Now will you attend to me, Caroline? You do not credit such atrocity? I know ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Scotland were beheld by Europe with horror and detestation. The murder of the king, the impunity with which his assassins were suffered to escape, and the marriage of the queen with the man accused of being their chief, were a series of incidents, which, for their atrocity and rapid succession, were scarcely to be paralleled in the pages of history. A general infamy fell upon the Scotch nation, which was regarded, from these circumstances, as a people void of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... the lusts, being severe mistresses of the thoughts, command and compel many an unbridled action. And as they cannot be satisfied or appeased by any means, they urge those whom they have inflamed with their allurements to every kind of atrocity. ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... himself colouring. This was what he had been waiting for—the day the Colonel should wantonly sacrifice some innocent person. And could his wife be a party to that final atrocity? Lyon had reminded himself repeatedly during the previous weeks that when the Colonel perpetrated his misdeed she had already quitted the room; but he had argued none the less—it was a virtual certainty—that he had on rejoining her immediately ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... fled. Her crime was ever in her thoughts; it rose before her in all its horror and atrocity. She knew that she was lying upon her bed, at Courtornieu; and yet it seemed as if she was there in Chanlouineau's house, pouring out poison, then watching its effects, concealed in ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... had hoped that the time had passed away when the perpetration of such acts of atrocity could have been tolerated; and that the law by which they are permitted or enjoined, although it might still disgrace the Mahomedan code, had fallen so completely into disuse as to have become virtually ...
— Correspondence Relating to Executions in Turkey for Apostacy from Islamism • Various
... at war with them, and had frequently been defeated. They had come from a long way off in the interior, and year after year had been advancing towards the coast. They were not only fierce and cruel warriors, but cannibals, and capable of committing every atrocity. ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... and for the most part unsubdued. Like all such hinterland sciences, it is a happy hunting-ground for adventurers. Just as in the early days of British Somaliland, rascals would descend from nowhere in particular upon unfortunate villages, levy taxes and administer atrocity in the name of the Empire, and even, I am told, outface for a time the modest heralds of the government, so in this department of anthropology the public mind suffers from the imposition of theories and assertions claiming to be "scientific," which have no more relation to that organized ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... Washington" must ever stand as the true type. The author is so fearful that he will not think well of his subject that he conceals every attribute of our common humanity, and gives us a being almost devoid of eyes, ears, organs, dimensions, passions. Next to Weems, in point of literary atrocity, comes John S. C. Abbott, whose life of Napoleon is a splendid ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... committed by human beings under pretext of necessity and of interest in my behalf. I refer now to those remorseless men who came first and tore up the beautiful lawn and cut away the roots of trees and digged a deep, long pit in which to lay sewer pipes; who came again and committed another similar atrocity under plea of laying a water-pipe; who came still again and for the third time abused and seared and seamed and blighted that lawn for the alleged purpose of laying a gas-pipe! O civilization! what crimes ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... their strength, Abdul Hamid hit upon the new method of killing them, so that the Turks should still maintain their domination. And the policy set on foot by him was developed but a few years ago into a scheme of slaughter, which in atrocity has far surpassed the killings of Attila, of whom the Nationalist poet sings, or even the designs of the deposed Sultan. The Armenian nation, with the exception of such part of it as has escaped into Russian territory, has been exterminated, and similar measures ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... Mexico were ill-treated he would execute two thousand Spaniards and send him their heads. Drake never wasted thought about reprisals or made frothy apologetic speeches as to what would happen to those with whom he was at religious war if they molested his fellow-countrymen. He met atrocity with atrocity. He believed it to be his mission to avenge the burning of British seamen and the Spanish and Popish attempts on the life of his virgin sovereign. That he knew her to be an audacious flirt, an insufferable ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... 'I have no doubt but that each of these women has destroyed some of her children.' Mr. Bennet exclaimed, 'Impossible; such motherly, respectable women could never have been guilty of so great an atrocity.' 'Well,' I added, 'we will ask them.' Addressing the first, I said to her, 'Friend, how many children have you destroyed?' She was startled at my question, and at first charged me with unkindness, in harrowing up her feelings, by bringing the destruction ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder
... been made responsible for all the blunders of his subordinates. A rich man, and the scion of an historic house, he has led the life of a galley-slave; an honest man, he has been doomed to perpetual prevarication; a humane man, he has had to condone every atrocity; an independent man, he must cringe before his master; a peaceful man, he must submit to the continuation of insensate slaughter; a highly gifted intellectual, he has had to pursue a policy of insane stupidity. Twenty-five years ago a professor of the ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... altogether, he thought, with despair. Peter Ivanovitch, meditating behind his dark glasses, became to him suddenly so odious that if he had had a knife, he fancied he could have stabbed him not only without compunction, but with a horrible, triumphant satisfaction. His imagination dwelt on that atrocity in spite of himself. It was as if he were becoming light-headed. "It is not what is expected of me," he repeated to himself. "It is not what is—I could get away by breaking the fastening on the little ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... the Kroonstad Native Location for an outrage upon a coloured woman. He arrested her in the location ostensibly because she could not produce her residential pass, and in the field between the location and the town through which he had to escort her to prison he perpetrated the atrocity. In sentencing him to four years' hard labour, the Chief Justice said for a similar crime upon a white woman a black man would be liable to the ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... remember in reading Mr. Gleason's testimony concerning these deeds of the German Army that he has never received a dollar of money for anything he has spoken or written on the subject. He gave without payment the articles on the Spy, the Atrocity, and the Steam Roller to the New York Tribune. The profits from the lectures he has delivered on the same subject have been used for well-known public charities. The book itself is a gift to ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... past atrocities than for this atrocity should we make piety responsible. At most we may blame piety for not availing to check our natural passions, and sometimes for supplying them with hypocritical pretexts. But hypocrisy also imposes obligations, and with the pretext usually couples some ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... into his ear. And from this he had awakened, had awakened to the reality—to the weird and depressing surroundings of human life in its most cruel and debased form; to the recollection of scenes of recurring and hideous peril, of pitiless atrocity, which seemed to render the burning, brassy glare even as the glare of hell; and to the consciousness of similar scenes now immediately impending. Yet the remembrance of that sleeping vision shut him in, surrounded ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... on the continent of Europe. Hannah More wrote for the lower classes, and in a style of great clearness and simplicity. Her admirable dialogue, called "Village Politics," by Will Chip, a country carpenter, exposed the folly and atrocity of the revolutionary doctrines then in vogue. Its circulation was immense. The Government purchased several thousand copies for distribution. It was translated into French and Italian. Similar in spirit was the tract in reply to the infidel speech of M. Dupont in the French ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... prophecy Attila saw predicted the death of Aetius, his most formidable enemy; and the struggle commenced. There is no precise information about the date; but "it was," says Jornandes, "a battle which for atrocity, multitude, horror, and stubbornness has not the like in the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... certain," continued Captain Gales, "Admiral Fletcher has wired me that this proposed atrocity must be prevented, and the American captives rescued at all hazards. Now, attend me while I show you the detail chart for this part ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock
... their highest ridges faintly silver. There was not a sound in the world except the ring of our horses' hoofs upon the road. And yet this sinister excitement hammered, from somewhere, at me as I had never felt it before. It was as though the lovely evening were a painted scene lowered to hide some atrocity. ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... recent murder merely by way of reviving the impression of his own dreadful character in Klosterheim, which might have decayed a little of late, in all its original strength and freshness of novelty; or, as though he wished to send immediately before him an act of atrocity that should form an appropriate herald or harbinger of his own ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... the atrocity of fainting, but found herself thoroughly chilled and weak. Cousin Sue bustled about with brandy and blankets, and Sharley, watching her through her half-closed eyes, speculated a little. Had she anybody's wedding-cards laid up on a shelf? She had the little black ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... Bouffiers, which were ready to be sent to the Tribunal, placed at the bottom of the file."—Mallet-Dupan, " Memoires," II., 495. "Fouquier-Tinville received a pension of one thousand crowns a month from Mesdames de Bouffiers; the ransom increased one quarter each month on account of the atrocity of the circumstances. This method saved these ladies, whilst those who paid a sum in gross lost their lives... It was Du Vaucel, fermier-general, who saved the Princess of Tarente....for five hundred louis, after having saved two other ladies for three hundred louis, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... whole range of his voluminous contributions to imaginative literature. The passages selected to this end from his famous story of Oliver Twist were those relating more particularly to the Murder of Nancy by Bill Sikes. A ghastlier atrocity than that murder could hardly be imagined. In the book itself, as will be remembered, the crime is painted as with a brush dipped in blood rather than pigment. The infamous deed is there described in language worthy of one of the greatest ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... cruelty to animals which English tourists report, and in Spain I saw none at all. If the reader asks how with this gentleness, this civility and integrity, the Spaniards have contrived to build up their repute for cruelty, treachery, mendacity, and every atrocity; how with their love of bull-feasts and the suffering to man and brute which these involve, they should yet seem so kind to both, I answer frankly, I do not know. I do not know how the Americans are reputed good and just and law-abiding, although they often ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... indignation of generous youth (he was but twenty-two years old) at the French atrocity in Algiers, when, during the campaign, General Pelissier filled with straw the mouth of the caves of Dahra, wherein the opposing Arabs, with their women and children, had taken refuge, and set fire to the mass. This foul act of the future Duke of Malakoff caused a thrill ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... furnished us also with important lessons. It has proved what a creature man is! how devoted he is to his own interest! to what a length of atrocity he can go, unless fortified by religious principle! But as if this part of the prospect would be too afflicting, it has proved to us, on the other hand, what a glorious instrument he may become in the hands of his Maker; and that a little ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... soul on the plantation, if I may except the guilty wretch who had committed the hell-black deed. While the slaves generally were panic-struck, and howling with alarm, the murderer himself was calm and collected, and appeared as though nothing unusual had happened. The atrocity roused my old master, and he spoke out, in reprobation of it; but the whole thing proved to be less than a nine days' wonder. Both Col. Lloyd and my old master arraigned Gore for his cruelty in the matter, but this amounted to nothing. ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... them, now that it has been published, like so many flies with pins stuck through them, fastened to the paper. Poor Charles Lamb stands there, bloodless, fleshless; but we think scarcely the less of gentle Elia as we look upon him, but far less of the cruel perpetrator of the atrocity. Leigh Hunt, too, has a pin quite through his warm heart; and Stuart Mill, and many others. One wonders sometimes if Froude himself escaped, or if he were there too, like a giant bluebottle, desiccated as the rest; ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... Brant these proved days of bitterness. His sole comfort was the feeling that he had performed his duty; his sustaining hope, that the increasing rumors of Indian atrocity might soon lead to his despatch upon active service. He had called twice upon Hampton, both times finding the wounded man propped up in bed, very affable, properly grateful for services rendered, yet avoiding all reference to the ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... Though a prominent speaker, he in no sense directed the movement. Burdett and Cochrane, the orthodox leaders of London reformers, were not concerned in this demonstration, which, according to an informer who gave evidence, was to be the signal for an attack upon the Tower and other acts of atrocity. As it was, before Hunt chose to appear, the mob, headed by the younger Watson, broke into gunsmiths' shops, not without bloodshed, and marched through the Royal Exchange, but were courageously met by the lord mayor, with a few assistants, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... valiant and in a way not ungenerous, yet not merely an incorrigible scapegrace, but somewhat unamiable and even distinctly ferocious. That, being made gooseherd, and finding the birds troublesome, he knocks them about, killing some goslings, may not be an unpardonable atrocity. And even when, being set to scratch his father's back, he employs a wool-comb for that purpose, much to the detriment of the paternal skin and temper, it does not very greatly go beyond the impishness of a naughty ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... toxicology might be studied by a Marquise de Brinvilliers. Machiavelli became the scapegoat of great political crimes; and during the religious wars of the sixteenth century there were not wanting fanatics who ascribed such acts of atrocity as the Massacre of S. Bartholomew to his venomous influence. Yet this book was really nothing more or less than a critical compendium of facts respecting Italy, a highly condensed abstract of political experience. In it as in a mirror we may study the lineaments of the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... ostentatiously, and Kitty's glance slunk home again. She closed her eyes and opened them to find Lucy's eyes looking at her over the top of his book. Poor Lucy was so perturbed at being detected in that particular atrocity that he rose, drew his chair to the hearth, and arranged himself in an attitude that ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... stream of blood after which so many bitter tears must flow. The sight indeed cut her to the heart, and yet she was thankful for it; for the first time the reckless cruelty of that laughing monster was evident in all its naked atrocity. Horror, aversion, loathing for that man to whom everything but power, cruelty, and cunning, was as nothing, left no room for fear or pity, or even the least shade of self-reproach for having aroused in him a desire ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... distance from her home, whose tender age and helplessness would have been protection against any but incarnate fiends. The last dreadful act of barbarity, which led to their punishment and expulsion from the country, exceeded in atrocity all ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... listeners. There the deepest tragedy and the broadest farce are represented in the career of the murderer and the thief, and are applauded in proportion to their depth and their breadth. There, whenever a crime of unusual atrocity is committed, it is brought out afresh, with all its disgusting incidents copied from the life, for the amusement of those who will one day ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... we have developed ideas and sentiments which are opposed to this demoniac Nature,—much as voluntary movement is opposed to the blind power of gravitation. But the possession of such ideas and sentiments does but aggravate the atrocity of our situation, without lessening in the least the gloom ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... straw and delivered the dreariest orations to all comers, at all sorts of unseasonable times. So, unwieldy young dredgers and hulking mudlarks were referred to the experiences of Thomas Twopence, who, having resolved not to rob (under circumstances of uncommon atrocity) his particular friend and benefactor, of eighteenpence, presently came into supernatural possession of three and sixpence, and lived a shining light ever afterwards. (Note, that the benefactor came to no good.) Several swaggering sinners had written their own biographies ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... in like manner expanded; for it is sickening to read of such monstrous prodigality of wickedness; whole families butchered—husbands, wives, children, anything obstructing the path to the throne—with an atrocity which makes Richard III. seem a mere pigmy in the art of intrigue and killing. The chapter closes with the daughter and mother of kings (Brunhilde or Brunhaut), naked, and tied by one arm, one leg, and her hair to the tail of an unbroken horse, and amid jeers ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... east, we heard of an atrocious murder committed by two Ohio men. This turned the tables on my native state, and I was compelled to confess that bad men came from Ohio as well as from other states; but, if so, Ohio people excelled in the atrocity of their crimes as well as in the excellence of ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... What further atrocity the ruffian was about to utter, I know not, for while his odious voice was yet hissing in my ear these atrocious epithets, before the footman who was standing, as I have said, a few yards off at the other side of the carriage, ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... the Avenger. You have seen every trampler down, in turn, from Buonaparte to the simplest individuals. You saw how some were avenged even upon my insignificance, and how in turn * * * paid for his atrocity. It is an odd world; but the watch ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... spirits of the English were suddenly revived, by an event which crowned the scene by an act on the part of one of the consorts of the Richard, the incredible atrocity of which has induced all humane minds to impute it rather to some incomprehensible mistake than to the malignant ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... harnessed. But I'm afraid we cannot afford to be pioneers, and I'm sure the neighbors are not ready to co-operate. We must still 'go by water,' and the important question is where to send the lower end of the main drain. There is no sewer in the street, and a cesspool is an atrocity worthy of the darkest ages. The only safe thing appears to be the sub-surface irrigation plan, for which, fortunately, there is plenty of room on our lot. This comes very near to Uncle Harry's notion of 'earth to earth' in the quickest time possible. If ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... principle which reigned more openly in other countries. In the majority of cases, the monitory, which had, as a fact, been instituted in order to encourage informers in the name of religion, was a marvel of ridiculous atrocity; it frequently set forth the crime and all the imaginary circumstances the plaintiffs were eager to prove; it was, in short, the publication of a ready-made case, which gave the first knave that came a chance of earning some money by making a lying deposition in favour ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... was the first politician to make a speech upon the Bulgarian massacres, [Footnote: See reference to Eugene Schuyler's letter in speech of August, 1876, p. 207.] I afterwards refused to follow Mr. Gladstone into what was called the "atrocity agitation," because I feared that we should find ourselves plunged into a war with Turkey in alliance with Russia, of which ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... one just here suggests that it was Jane who was faithful forever, not Frederic. That indeed makes the title appropriate, but does not relieve the atrocity of the plot. ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... presenting himself at their rendezvous, getting enrolled in the corps, and offering as a candidate for the captaincy, were all done under instructions, and with a design which, for wickedness and cold-blooded atrocity, was worthy of Satan himself. Had he succeeded in becoming the leader of this ill-fated band, for them the upshot might have been no worse; though it would not have been better; since it was his intention to betray them to the ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... the soi-disant de Worms, pulling his beard and looking out of the window, "that when we broke up rather hurriedly the whole arrangements for the atrocity were left in the private hands of the Marquis and Dr. Bull. The Marquis is by this time probably crossing the Channel. But where he will go and what he will do it is doubtful whether even the President knows; certainly we don't know. The only man ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... well this day, Norman of Torn," replied De Montfort. "Verily do I believe we owe our victory to you alone; so do not mar the record of a noble deed by wanton acts of atrocity." ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... sentiments by their geographical affinities, but they behaved very well, and caused no trouble. They either entered the service of the South or held their peace. I can recall but one instance of a Northern man who had breathed the free air of Minnesota going over to the South, and the atrocity of his case was aggravated by the fact that he was an officer in the United States army. I speak of Major Pemberton, who at the breaking out of the war was stationed at Fort Ridgely in this state, in command of a battery of artillery. He was ordered to ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... surrounded by all the forms of law, which hung witches at Salem,—which affirmed the constitutionality of the Stamp Act, while it admonished "jurors and the people" to obey,—and which now, in our day has lent its sanction to the unutterable atrocity of the Fugitive Slave ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... sorrow into rage, follow Brutus as their leader, who from that time ceased not to solicit them to abolish the regal power. They carry Lucretia's body from her own house, and convey it into the forum; and assemble a number of persons by the strangeness and atrocity of the extraordinary occurrence, as usually happens. They complain, each for himself, of the royal villany and violence. Both the grief of the father moves them, as also Brutus, the reprover of their tears and unavailing complaints, and their adviser to take up arms ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... came stumbling up the steps, gasping with experiences. But the aged couple either did not hear or did not heed. With old hand embracing old hand they sat staring at the rapine of the lightning, the tigerish atrocity that had butchered and mutilated their beloved trees. Susan dropped into Mrs. Coburn's lap what mail she brought and hurried inside ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... this massacre, God forbid that I should say a single word in defense of it! As a white man and a Christian, I feel it is an act of horrible atrocity; but it should not make such an impression upon your people, who make wars solely to obtain victims, whom they may sacrifice at the altars of their gods; and who, every year, slay in cold blood fully twenty-five thousand people who have done them no wrong. By the side ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... began, "the defendant, Wilbur Whately, is here charged with political irresponsibility and excessive atrocity in exercising his constitutional right of criticism of a ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... to obtain any reply therefor, from the authorities at Washington, the Richmond people determined to pour out all their vengeance on the immediate perpetrators of this last Yankee atrocity; and forthwith there was issued from the rebel War Department a General Order number 60, we believe, of the series of 1862—reciting that 'as the government of the U. S. had refused to answer whether it ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... vociferously pro-German. Not that they cared a ha'penny damn really for Germany, but it was a far more original attitude than all this sobbing over France...and then there was Reinhardt, the Secessionist School, the adorable jugendstyl. And the atrocity stories were all lies anyway. The bourgeois president resigned, but no one else paid any attention ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... every prisoner he had, wounded or not. Amongst others, a Captain Bayona, who had received two desperate wounds, and was at the point of death, was dragged from his bed and shot on the public square of the village of Lacunza. Zumalacarregui might have repaid this atrocity by the slaughter of the Christino prisoners who were still in his power, but having promised them their lives, he would not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... thee. Be proud of having lived a moment when thy atrocity was so great that it almost made the deeds of the devils themselves forgotten. I speak of that moment when thou didst command me to withdraw the veil which concealed the Eternal from thy sight. The angel whose charge it was to register thy sins ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... swung out of life from the gallows with the settled air of a man who feels he has lost the game at which he played, and that he may as well pay the stake calmly? There was a true British composure about the unutterable atrocity of this villain—murderer he was, and a most detestable murderer too—but his character belongs to our country as fully as that of our heroes. Hunt and Probert were pitiful wretches, fit for the Bicetre. Doubtless the agony of Hunt's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... positive confutation rather nonplussed Sarp, his theory not being able at once to assimilate his fact, and he himself feeling, that, if he pushed the comparison farther, he would reach some such atrocity as that, if the white and shining flower produced in its season again the black bean from which it sprung, so the white and shining soul must once more clothe itself in the same sordid, unpurified body from which it first had sprung. He had a vague glimmer that perhaps ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... usual, had been the real authors of this new atrocity, but Figgins felt convinced that the guilt lay at the door of Mole, on whom he turned ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... Morhange-Saint-Avit mission,' said a Captain. 'The opinion of the officers there, I am sorry to say, differed very little from what the Major describes. But I must add that they all admitted that they had nothing but suspicions to go on. And suspicions are certainly not enough considering the atrocity of the affair.' ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... was absorbed in listening to the villainous plot that Lord Vincent was unfolding to his companion. It was the very same plot that he had communicated to his valet, the atrocity of which had shocked even that cut-throat. It did not shock Faustina, however. She listened with avidity. She co-operated with zeal. She suggested such modifications and improvements for securing the success ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... and atrocity, the spot where his children met their untimely end, and where may be seen the tumuli erected over the remains of the Britons who fell ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 547, May 19, 1832 • Various
... bring out words and phrases from every living tongue with which you may happen to be slightly acquainted; boast of "the continent;" mince your gait; wriggle forward upon your toes when you walk; and swim and dip, whenever led into the atrocity of committing a quad-rille. In brief, give yourself unimaginable airs; then protest that your manners, as well as your costume, are of the newest Parisian mode—and it is ten to one but that affectation will be accepted in lieu ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... originally instituted as a pretence, soon became in Gordon's energetic hands very real. Circumstances, moreover, soon enlisted the sympathies of the Egyptian Government on the side of their zealous agent. The slave dealers had committed every variety of atrocity for which the most odious traffic in the world afforded occasion; but when, under the leadership of Zubehr Rahamna, they refused to pay their annual tribute, it was felt in Cairo that their crimes had cried aloud ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... of an insubordinate soldiery. Rarely had so tempting a prize fallen into the hands of a conquering army; rarely were the exactions of war more remorsely inflicted.[178] But the barbarities of a licentious army were exceeded in atrocity by the cooler deliberations of the Norman parliament. That supreme court, always inimical to the Protestants, had retired to the neighboring city of Louviers, in order to maintain itself free from Huguenot influence. It now returned to ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... confused and imperfect. I could see that the courthouse was filled to overflowing, and this increased my feebleness. The case was one that had occasioned considerable excitement in the community, It was one of no ordinary atrocity. This was a sufficient reason why the audience should be large. There was yet another. There were two new debutants. In a community where popular eloquence is, of all others, perhaps the most desirable talent, this circumstance was well calculated to bring many listeners. Besides, ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... am no more able to answer than yourself. There seems, however, only one plausible way of accounting for them—and yet it is dreadful to believe in such atrocity as my suggestion would imply. It is clear that Kidd—if Kidd indeed secreted this treasure, which I doubt not—it is clear that he must have had assistance in the labor. But, the worst of this labor concluded, he may have thought it expedient to remove all ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... it is much better so. Some fine day Gryphus will commit some atrocity. I am losing my patience, since I have lost the joy and company of Rosa, and especially since I have lost my tulip. Undoubtedly, some day or other Gryphus will attack me in a manner painful to my self-respect, or to my love, or even threaten my personal safety. I don't ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere) |
