"Cruelty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hereditary trait of the Coverlys) an intense pride of race and a fierce jealousy of any infringement upon what she regarded as prerogatives of birth; secondly, a susceptibility to sudden infatuations which invariably terminated in a mood of ferocious cruelty. ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... add, that Mrs. Norton has communicated to the family the posthumous letter sent her. This letter affords a foundation for future consolation to them; but at present it has new pointed their grief, by making them reflect on their cruelty to so excellent a daughter, niece, and sister.* I ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... in Sybilla no hardness nor cruelty, only the disappointment and vexation of a child deprived of an expected toy. She might have grown weary of her little daughter almost as soon, even if her pride and hope had not been crushed by the knowledge of ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... more laps ... the rest of the field were a lap and a half behind, fighting for third place amongst themselves ... jeered at by the instinctive cruelty of the onlookers.... ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... gray-green, starred in a vague pattern with the jewels of sunset. Carmen did not see the beauty of the magic temple, though she was conscious of her own. She hated to think that Nick Hilliard should keep her waiting, and there was cruelty in the clutch she made at a cluster of orange blossoms as she passed a long row of trees in terra-cotta pots on the terrace. Under the bamboos she scattered a handful of creamy petals on the golden brown ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... for his return, and the shrine was built upon the place where she waited; and wives pray there to her for the safe return of absent husbands .... An almost similar kind of propitiatory worship is practised in cemeteries. Public pity seeks to apotheosize those [129] urged to suicide by cruelty, or those executed for offences which, although legally criminal, were inspired by patriotic or other motives commanding sympathy. Before their graves offerings are laid and prayers are murmured. Spirits of unhappy lovers are commonly invoked by young ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... bid him if he lov'd his life Retire, for thou wouldst deere revenge my honour. But he pursueing me, I cry'd out Murder! At which sad noise methought I saw thee enter, But, having nere a sword, I counselld thee To strangle him with a Lute string, for which cruelty Of mine, me thought he threw an Arrow at me, Which, if thou hadst not wak'd me as thou didst, Would as I slept with my ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... Individuals that need not unite for the birth and rearing of each generation, might retain a savage independence. For them it would not be necessary that any vision should fascinate, or that any languor should soften, the prying cruelty of the eye. But sex endows the individual with a dumb and powerful instinct, which carries his body and soul continually towards another; makes it one of the dearest employments of his life to select and pursue ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... are supposed to number at least 150,000. The Czigany, as they are called, made their appearance early in the fifteenth century, having fled, it is believed, from the cruelty of the Mongol rulers. They were allowed by King Sigismund to settle in Hungary, and were called in law the "new peasants." Before the reforms of 1848 they were in a state of absolute serfdom, and could not legally take service away from the place where they were ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... own part, I thought it a judgment upon them for their cruelty; and, expecting that worse would happen, I had made up my mind to my fate. I thought of Marie, and hoping for pardon yet fearing the worst, I vowed, if I escaped, that I ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... bile, in order to bathe in it. The latter the witness has heard from people who were captives there, and who saw him commit these and many other abominations. He has also heard it said that when any noble or chief dies, the king orders some women to be burnt alive, with terrible cruelty, with the body of the deceased; for, according to their religion, the dead are burnt. Lastly it was about a year ago, when Gregorio de Vargas and his companion Blas Ruiz escaped from Chanpan to Canboja; they said that their ship had been stolen from ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... held for him an overpowering fascination, he advanced a step, and then another, until he reached out and took from Philip the thing which he held. He uttered no word. But from his eyes there disappeared the greenish fire. The lines in his heavy face softened and his thick lips lost some of their cruelty as he held up the snare before his eyes so that the light played on its sheen of gold. It was then that Philip saw that which must have meant a smile ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... quiescent on one of the upper seats just below the gangway on the Conservative side of the House, that such a man should really be punished. When the new laws regarding bribery came to take that shape the hearts of members revolted from the cruelty,—the hearts even of members on the other side of the House. As long as a seat was in question the battle should of course be fought to the nail. Every kind of accusation might then be lavished without restraint, and every ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... have gone out from the assembly of robbers, that we might lead honest and cleanly lives. There is not one among us that hath not lost houses, lands, brothers, parents, children, or friends, through their treacherous cruelty. There be those whose wives and sisters have been forced into the Borgia harem; there be those whose children have been tortured before their eyes,—those who have seen the fairest and dearest slaughtered by these hell-hounds, who yet sit in the seat of the Lord and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... was intensely interesting to Marjorie, she had but lately read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and her tears and indignation were ready to burst forth at any suggestion of injustice or cruelty. But the thing that she was laughing at was a quotation from one of the older versions of the Bible, Roger's Version Mr. Holmes told them when he quoted the passage: "And the Lord was with Joseph and he was a luckie felowe." She lifted her head from her father's shoulder ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... the girl to do would seal our fate as well, since if I bowed to the inevitable decree of age-old superstition we must all remain and meet our fate in some horrible form within this awful abode of horror and cruelty. ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... places. He essayed to speak, but at first could not. His body bent forward, and his fingers spread out in a spasm of hatred, then clinched with the stroke of a hammer on his knees, and again opened and shut in a gesture of loathsome cruelty. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... cruelty is due. He cannot bear the white man's presence now, Or bear to hear his name or see his works; He thinks that wrong is stamped upon his brow, That in his good ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... noble stags, as they helplessly lay in various attitudes on the sward, looking up at their conquerors with those large black eyes of theirs in a way which seemed to ask how human beings could be guilty of such cruelty. ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... lordling's slave, By Nature's law designed, Why was an independent wish E'er planted in my mind? If not, why am I subject to His cruelty or scorn? Or why has man the will and power To make his ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... murmured the detective scornfully, looking down at the giant frame that lay prostrate before him. Even in his wide experience he had known of no case of a man of such strength and such bestial cruelty, combined ...
— The Case of The Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner
... lesson that [5] is quickly learned, A signal this which all can see! Thus nothing here provokes the strong To wanton [6] cruelty. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... generalizations of some chance cases, exaggerations of a bit of truth, or expressions of a mood of anger, of love, of class spirit, or of male haughtiness. The analysis of woman's mind is typical. "Inclination to lies, falsehood, foolishness, greediness, hastiness, uncleanliness, and cruelty are inborn faults of the woman"; or "Water never remains in an unbaked vessel, flour in a sieve, nor news in the mind of women"; or "The mind of a woman is less stable than the ear of an elephant or the flash ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... on a Friday, would be reproved by his conscience were he to indulge his appetite by doing so;—and the conscience of the zealous Musselman, which would smite him for indulging in a sip of wine, would commend and reward him by its approval, for indulging in cruelty and injustice to the unbeliever in his faith. The executive functions of conscience then act independently of the legislative, and frequently in opposition to them. There must be a feeling of wrong, before the executive powers ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... of chivalry, we must not yield too much to the attraction of its brilliant show, its high flown sentiments, and knightly valor. Beneath religion there ever lurked a bigoted superstition; beneath valor, cruelty; beneath love, mere brutal passion. The sympathies of the order were much confined to the higher classes, and there was little feeling for the sufferings of the common people. The reign of Edward the Third embraces the most ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... hear a letter from Frederick the Great, the Unique, the Incomparable. He has pardoned me, and I am ashamed. My last evening in Sans-Souci I was irritated, and in my cruelty I was mean enough to remind him of his father's stick. The moment that the word escaped, I felt his retort in the air, but he restrained it. He had only needed to return the thrust with a reference to the stick which had played a certain part in ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... cruelty and savageness were making the whole kingdom miserable; and at last the great barons could bear it no longer. They met together and agreed that they would make John swear to govern by the good old English laws that had prevailed before the Normans came. The difficulty was to be ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... they feared, and that therefore they ought to prosecute the war against them with much greater animosity than against the Carthaginians. For with the latter the contest was carried on for empire and glory almost without any exasperated feeling, while they had to punish the former for perfidy, cruelty, and villany. That the time had now arrived when they should take vengeance for the horrid massacre of their fellow soldiers, and for the treachery which was prepared for themselves, had they been carried in their flight to the same place; and by the severity ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... little girl was very much afraid, because she had heard of the cruelty of wolves; but when he repeated the words, ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... to its quality. In Unyanyembe it is about $1-10 per pound, but in Manyuema, it may be purchased for from half a cent to 14 cent's worth of copper per pound of ivory. The Arabs, however, have the knack of spoiling markets by their rapacity and cruelty. With muskets, a small party of Arabs is invincible against such people as those of Manyuema, who, until lately, never heard the sound of a gun. The discharge of a musket inspires mortal terror in them, and it is almost impossible to induce them to face the muzzle of a gun. They believe that ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... why did not an English bullet put an end to me at once, instead of my lingering on in this slow torture? Nothing to look forward to, nothing to be done to make one ray of hope possible! There is the horror, there is the cruelty! I would plunge with gaiety into dangers, and endure without a murmur the tortures of the Red Indian, if only there were hope at the end. But here I am—I, who looked forward greedily to a career of honour and distinction—caught like a rat in a trap, ...
— The French Prisoners of Norman Cross - A Tale • Arthur Brown
... and beratings were devilish. There was a certain boudoir in the house in Hill Street which was to Joan like the question chamber of the Inquisition. Shut up in it together, the two went through scenes which in their cruelty would have done credit to the Middle Ages. Lady Mallowe always locked the door to prevent the unexpected entrance of a servant, but servants managed to hover about it, because her ladyship frequently forgot caution so far as to raise her voice at ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... down, amid the execrations of the populace, and his name rendered synonymous with selfishness and oppression. The glory of his arms was forgotten, and nothing was remembered but his reverses, his extravagance, and his cruelty. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... landowners like Lord Townshend and Coke of Norfolk. Already was abroad in society a divine discontent at existing abuses. It brought Warren Hastings to trial on the charge of plundering India. It attacked slavery, the cruelty of the criminal law, which sent children to execution for the theft of a few pennies, the brutality of the prisons, the torpid indifference of the church to the needs of the masses. New inventions were beginning the age of machinery. The reform of Parliament, votes for the toiling ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... them: "With this new body I have new feelings and purposes. I repent of my cruelty to my uncle, and instead of getting rid of him as I had intended, it is my pleasure that he shall be taken from prison and treated ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... the children's court in New York, in his report for 1905, says: "Removing a boy or girl from improper environment is the first step in his or her reclamation." The New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, after thirty years of investigation of cases involving the social and moral welfare of over half a million of children, has also come to the conclusion that ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... all, stooping and swaying and gesticulating round the table-cloth. Amiable and modest, respectable in many ways, lovable even in their contentment and desire to be kind, how mediocre they all were, and capable of what insipid cruelty to one another! There was Mrs. Thornbury, sweet but trivial in her maternal egoism; Mrs. Elliot, perpetually complaining of her lot; her husband a mere pea in a pod; and Susan—she had no self, and counted neither one way nor the other; ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... sense that He could change the Order of Things, for He is the Order of Things Himself. Is there even in Him complete Freedom of Will, freedom to make a world other than this? One wishes, in a sense, to say so, but the horror of it! for then He is responsible for the cruelty of the ant-heap, the feeding of the carnivorous upon the vegetable eaters, the preying and persecution of the malevolent upon the kindly—and He could have made it all otherwise! With a Free Will He could have brought ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... into inch pieces; set up for the dogs to tear, or hung up and whipped to death." Now I am convinced that Mrs. Stowe must have a credulous mind; and was imposed upon. She never could have conceived such things with all her talent; the very conception implies a refinement of cruelty. She gives, however, a mysterious description of a certain "place way out down by the quarters, where you can see a black blasted tree, and the ground all covered with black ashes." It is afterward intimated that this was the scene of ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... had wrought the destruction of my unhappy wife. You will easily conceive that the terms of my answer to the Duke of Buckingham were those of unmeasured indignation—yet he, the parasite, the ready instrument of royal vice, and the malignant associate of Charles in his last act of premeditated cruelty, suffered the accusations of the injured husband to pass unnoticed and unrepelled; and I am persuaded that nothing but the dread of exposure prevented me from feeling the full abuse of the power of the crown by the master I had served with so much fidelity and affection. ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... "Aucassin and Nicolette", by an unknown trouvere of the thirteenth century. It is an alternation of prose narrative and dainty narrative lyrics. The story is that of two lovers parted temporarily by the pride and cruelty of the youth's father. But, remaining true to each other, they are, after many vicissitudes, happily united. Our extracts are ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... my young life to the cruelty of your customs? I cannot endure the thought of being burnt alive—it is ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... Huntin's great sport, an' it can't be bad, 'cause I can't for the life of me see that it makes men bad. 'Pears to me men as hunt is humaner than them as is above it; as for the cruelty—wall, we know that no wild animal dies easy abed. They all get killed soon or late, an' if it's any help to man to kill them I reckon he has as good a right to do it as Wolves an' Wildcats. It don't hurt any more—yes, ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... He had a passion for cruelty. I never knew it till I married him. I found out afterwards he had been the same even as a child. He loved torturing things." She paused, then added with a simplicity that was infinitely pitiful: "So you see, I had ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... bad as they are called?" asked Betty. "I have heard as many stories of their nobility as of their cruelty." ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... it was—as the surgeon's knife is cruel. But it is the truth, and it hurts but to make way for healing. The woman who blames has in her eye something worse than a cataract. The woman who sheds tears over her "fate" is moved by the "meanest of emotions." She attracts "cruelty," not only from that ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... quasi-physical fear of pain. It is impossible for the lawgiver to appeal to Man's better nature, to say to him: "Cannot you see for yourself that this course of action is better than that,—that love is better than hatred, mercy than cruelty, loyalty than treachery, continence than self-indulgence?" What he can and must say to him is this, and this only; "If you obey the Law you will be rewarded. If you disobey it you will be punished." And this he must say to ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... But as a temporal ruler Clement feared to have in Italy a neighbor so powerful and unchecked as the Emperor was becoming. Charles had his revenge. A German army of "Lutheran heretics" marched into Italy swearing to hang the Pope to the dome of St. Peter's. They stormed Rome, sacked it with such cruelty as rivalled the barbarian plunderings of over a thousand years before; and if they did not hang Clement, it was only because his castle of St. Angelo proved too strong for their assaults. The marvellous art treasures which had been slowly garnered in Rome since ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... the Skipper protested. "The creese, would you see it? It is in the cabin, behind the door, with other arms of piracy. Still, Colorado, it is of a fact that I was not born in Polynesia, no. As to the fierceness and the cruelty, we shall see, my son, we shall see. If I kept you here on the 'Nautilus' always, took you with me away, suffered you no more to live with your gentle Sir Scraper, that would be cruelty, do you think ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... ye get that hunger'd-lookin' radger, Sandy?" says he. "That beast's no' fit for gaen aboot. The Cruelty to Animals 'ill nip you, as shure's ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond
... American. You cannot know the Spanish blood—the peon bandit's hate and cruelty. I wish to die before Rojas's hand touches me. If he takes me alive, then the hour, the little day that my life lasts afterward will be tortured—torture of hell. If I live two days his brutal men will have me. If I live three, the dogs of his ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... no ambition but in their love, and they would fain rule over the past as they rule over the future of their beloved! But you hate her! And in that word, you give me more proof of love than you have given me for the two years that we have loved. If only you knew with what cruelty this stepmother has put me on the rack, by her questions! But ...
— The Stepmother, A Drama in Five Acts • Honore De Balzac
... rose above the tumult,—"you will have your way for a season. You will commit injustice with a high hand. You will glut your cruelty upon the defenceless and oppressed. But, as there is a God in heaven,"—he lifted up his blind white face, and with his trembling hands shook his staff on high, like a prophet foretelling woe,—"as there ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... strangers to him. Nor could the tears of the old man turn the heart of his cruel lord, nor the rebellious murmurings of the brothers avail. Thank God such cases are not very frequent; and the reader of monkish annals will not find many instances of such cold and unfeeling cruelty to distress his studies or to arouse his indignation. But obedience was a matter of course in the monastery; it was one of the most imperative duties of the monk, and if not cheerfully he was compelled to manifest ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... to himself between his clenched teeth, as he thought of the man who had wrought this cruel deed. Paul was one of those brave lads who would never wittingly have done an act of cruelty, least of all to one of God's dumb creatures. It touched him to the quick to see the poor horse dying. He knelt by its side, and his hand went caressingly over it. Falcon turned to him with such a look of pathos in its eyes that a big lump rose ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... and night. My province is evil; my existence is mockery; my pleasure and my purpose are destruction. In a word, this Fiend, towering to the loftiest summit of cold intellect, is the embodiment of cruelty, malice, and scorn, pervaded and interfused with grim humour. That ideal Mr. Irving made actual. The omniscient craft and deadly malignity of his impersonation, swathed in a most specious humour at some moments (as, for example, ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... this career, he met with many adventures and reverses, but his course was still onwards, and uniformly distinguished by enterprise and cruelty. His enemies expected no mercy when vanquished in the field; and when accidentally seized in private, they were treated with equal rigour. It is reported that he even roasted alive on spits some of ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... forwarded it immediately to the comtesse d'Egmont, with the following note:— "The many proofs of tender attachment with which the widow Rossin honored young Moireau make me believe that she will learn with pleasure of my having the good fortune to rescue the ill-fated youth from the cruelty of the comtesse d'Egmont. This interesting young man no longer groans a wretched prisoner in the gloomy abode that haughty lady had selected for him, but is at this minute safe in a neighboring kingdom, under the powerful patronage of king of France, who is in possession of every circumstance ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... stated once that writing compositions was not required by Schoolmaster Crawford, but "Abe took it up on his own account," and his first essay was against cruelty ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... she should not be your mother," his tormentor resumed, "to show such a dislike to any woman is nothing less than cruelty." ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... Brothers; from the Life of Timoleon The Wound of Philopoemen A Roman Triumph; from the Life of Paulus Aemilius The Noble Character of Caius Fabricius; from the Life of Pyrrhus From the Life of Quintus Fabius Maximus The Cruelty of Lucius Cornelius Sylla The Luxury of Lucullus From the Life of Sertorius the Roman, who endeavored to establish a separate Government for himself in Spain The Scroll; from the Life of Lysander The Character of Marcus Cato ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... reason? A tyrant thought to drive a man of free birth to reveal his accomplices in a conspiracy, but the prisoner bit off his tongue and threw it into the furious tyrant's face; thus, the tortures which the tyrant thought the instrument of his cruelty the sage made an opportunity for heroism. Moreover, what is there that one man can do to another which he himself may not have to undergo in his turn? We are told that Busiris, who used to kill his guests, was himself slain by his guest, Hercules. Regulus had thrown into bonds many ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... physicians. It hated geologists, persecuted the chemists, and imprisoned the naturalists, and opposed every discovery of science calculated to improve the condition of mankind. There is no crime that the Catholic Church did not commit, no cruelty that it did not reward, and no virtue that it did not persecute. It was the greatest and most powerful enemy of human rights. In one hand, it carried an alms dish, and in the other, a dagger. It argued with the sword, persecuted with poison, and convicted ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... that the people have been betrayed by the ministry into expenses, merely that Hanover might be enriched. When the grand confederacy is once revived, and revived by any universal conviction of the destructive measures, the insatiable ambition, and the outrageous cruelty of the French, what may not the friends of liberty presume to expect? May they not hope, my lords, that those haughty troops which have been so long employed in conquests and invasions, that have laid waste the neighbouring countries ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... tribes, were ready to support this officer. After some skirmishing, Damodar’s party being evidently the strongest, Rana Bahadur retired privately to Banaras with the character of insanity but, except in an ungovernable ferocity and cruelty of temper, and in a credulity, evidently the fault of education, he seems to have been abundantly judicious, and in fact finally overreached all ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... improvidence of the natural head of the family, the wife, if she have the ability, can conduct business, make contracts, earn and retain money for the good of the household; and I am sure no one can say that immense injustice and cruelty ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... you are prepared to allow me, before we begin, the same freedom of opinion that you claim for yourself. It is no good ruling out opinion—or rather conviction—and supposing that we can agree, apart from conviction, on what is cruelty in this case, and what isn't. The omitted point is vital. I find it difficult to write about Marcia—perhaps because my heart and mind are so full of her. All I can say is that the happiness she has ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... pictured to himself a pale girl, with sorrowful, tear-stained eyes, pining away in the old gray house behind the cedars for love of him, dying, perhaps, of a broken heart. He would hasten to her; he would dry her tears with kisses; he would express sorrow for his cruelty. ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... appeared in such overwhelming strength that the insurgents hastily put off to sea. Many succeeded in escaping to Formosa and Singapore. The leader was accidentally shot off Macao. The restoration of Imperial authority was followed, however, by terrible scenes of official cruelty and bloodthirstiness. The guilty had escaped, but the Emperor Hienfung's officials wreaked their rage on the helpless and unoffending townspeople. Hundreds of both sexes were slain in cold blood, and on more than one occasion English ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... well-bred bird instead of a breviary. Here too I was told that the famous Derby breed of the twelfth Earl had extended in past times throughout the length and breadth of the land; and the next visit to Knowsley convinced me that the legend was based on fact. As regards cruelty, all popular sports, fox-hunting and pigeon-shooting, are cruel. Grallus, however, has gained since the days of Cock-Mondays and Cock-Fridays, when he was staked down to be killed by 'cock-sticks' ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... expressing their opinion of the impolicy, injustice, inhumanity, and cruelty of the act, from which they appealed to God, and to the world; and also inviting the other colonies to join with them in an agreement to stop all imports and exports to and from Great Britain, Ireland, and the West Indies, until the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... repentance for the wrongs done to-day, of future reward for the good to-day achieves, all deeds being balanced on a mercantile account of profit and loss. His was a cry almost fierce, demanding, in the name of human woe, that to-day shall hold no cruelty, no evil done, even to the smallest and most ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... sharpened iron resembling the blades of knives. The individual remained in this state for twenty-four hours, and the punishment was repeated at three distinct intervals. It is considered a rare occurrence for a person to survive the second infliction of this species of cruelty. In this instance, however, the sufferer did not perish—From the last Report ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... him to trenchant measures, and he had nothing of modern humanitarianism; but he was not inhuman, and he shrank from the cruelty of forcing whole communities into exile. While Knowles and others called for wholesale expatriation, he still held that it was possible to turn the greater part of the Acadians into safe subjects of the British Crown; [Footnote: Shirley says ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... reason. Indeed, there is no doubt but that he would have formally abdicated and retired to the great Trappist monastery at Granada, of which he was already titular Prior, had he not been afraid to leave the little Infanta at the mercy of his brother, whose cruelty, even in Spain, was notorious, and who was suspected by many of having caused the Queen's death by means of a pair of poisoned gloves that he had presented to her on the occasion of her visiting his castle in Aragon. Even after the expiration of the ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... whole English literary revolt. And the accident of going to Paris colored vividly the superficial layers of George Moore's soul. This book partly represents a flaunting of such borrowed colors. It was the fashion of the Parisian diabolists to gloat over cruelty, by way of showing their superiority to Christian morality. The enjoyment of others' suffering was a splendid pagan virtue. So George Moore kept a pet python, and cultivated paganness by watching ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... Catholic Emancipation and of political Reform, so in later years we find them advocating the Repeal of the Corn Laws, taking part in the Anti-Slavery agitation, working for improvement in the laws that affected women and children, and supporting the Bill for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. A more debatable subject—that of spiritualism—was investigated by them in a friendly but impartial spirit. 'In the spring of 1856, 'writes Mrs. Howitt, 'we had become acquainted with several most ardent and honest spirit mediums. ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... surmised readily by their air of perfect confidence and freedom that they were renegades, also, and he was not wrong. As he was soon to learn, they were Simon Girty, name of incredible infamy on the border, Moses Blackstaffe, but little his inferior in cunning and cruelty, and McKee, Eliot and Quarles. So Braxton Wyatt, white youth among the Indians, was not alone. He had found men of his race as bad as himself, and Henry knew that he would thrive ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... exiled and forgotten, were ill fed, scantily clothed, untaught, and beaten. Do-the-boys' Hall was his type, and many a school prison under that name was fearfully exposed and scourged. The people read with wonder and applause; these haunts of cruelty were scrutinized, some of them were suppressed; and since Nicholas Nickleby appeared no such school can live, because Squeers and Smike are on every lip, and punishment ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... tell what great and glorious things God is about to bring forward in the world, and in this world of America in particular? Oh, may the time come when these deserts, which for ages unknown have been regions of darkness and habitations of cruelty, shall be illuminated with the light of the glorious Gospel, and when this part of the world, which till the later ages was utterly unknown, shall be the glory and joy of the ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... saw Fanny's grief, and heard her sobs, she at first thought that in mercy she should now give up the subject of the conversation; but then she reflected that such mercy might be the greatest cruelty, and that the truest kindness would be to prove to Fanny ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... riding-whip. He scowled at her, but it was only for a moment. She held him tightly by the hand, while she sent the gardener to put his victim out of its misery, and then she talked to him, not sentimentally, her feelings were too strongly stirred, but with all her horror of cruelty. He muttered that Mervyn and the grooms always did it; but he did not hold out long—Lucilla was holding aloof, too much horrified to come near—and finally he burst into tears, and owned that he had ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Southern Confederacy. From the hour of firing upon Fort Sumter to the present moment, the war has not been waged by the rebels as if in defense of the great principles of truth and justice, but with the malignity, the cruelty and barbarity which would, in many instances, put to blush the savages upon our western borders. In our dealing with them, the honor, integrity, fidelity and dignity of the nation have never been forgotten; and the policy of the noble President, laid low by the hand of the assassin, was never to ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... put off. "You will come, however, to hear Burke? To hear truth, reason, justice, eloquence! You will then see, in other colours, 'That man!' There is more cruelty, more oppression, more tyranny, in that little machine, with an arrogance, a self-confidence, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... the English and Dutch had been trading in the Indian seas for more than fifty years; and the Portuguese had lost nearly all their power, from the alliances and friendships which their rivals had formed with the potentates of the East, who had suffered from the Portuguese avarice and cruelty. ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... trumpets and their bells, their horns and their flutes, but "come, hangmen come, vultures!"' The castle of the tyrant, as pictured by the popular mind, is lofty and solitary, full of dungeons and listening-tubes, the home of cruelty and misery. Misfortune is foretold to all who enter the service of the despot, who even becomes at last himself an object of pity: he must needs be the enemy of all good and honest men: he can trust no one and can read ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... between the Sitkans and Konaegi there is no want of true American customs amongst them. Cruelty to prisoners, indifference to pain when inflicted on themselves, and the habit of scalping are common to the Indians of King George's Archipelago, and those of the water-system of the Mississippi. On the other hand, they share ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... revolt of Cairo the necessity of ensuring our own safety forced the commission of a terrible act of cruelty. A tribe of Arabs in the neighbourhood of Cairo had surprised and massacred a party of French. The General-in-Chief ordered his aide de camp Croisier to proceed to the spot, surround the tribe, destroy the huts, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... to be," exclaimed my wife indignantly. "I think there is no worse sin and no more disgraceful thing than cruelty." ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... the few, taking the place, as they did, of the older creeds of specifically Christian society, and inviting those who would to work their full emancipation and so become the servants of God and mankind. By the very bitterness of their antecedents, the cruelty of their inheritance, they gained a deeper sense of the reality of life, a more just sense of right and wrong, a clearer vision of things as they were, than happened in the case of those who had no such experience of the deep brutality of the regime ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... kept under firm control, and that he showed far less severity than most men would have done under similar provocation. Bartholomew was made of sterner stuff, but his whole career presents no instance of wanton cruelty; toward both white men and Indians his conduct was distinguished by clemency and moderation. Under the government of these brothers a few scoundrels were hanged in Hispaniola. Many more ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... has ever had the sense to keep within the conventionalities of her own fashionable 'coterie,' which is the only world she knows anything about, and whose unwritten laws are her only creed and religion. Her disappointed suitors can justly charge her with cruelty, silliness, ignorance, and immeasurable vanity, but never with indiscretion. She has to perfection the American girl's ability to take care of herself, and no man will see twice to take a liberty ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... New Delhi, I visited only two, the Mosque Roshun-ad-dawla, and the Jumna Mosque. The former stands in the principal street, and its pinnacles and domes are splendidly gilt. It is made famous through its connection with an act of cruelty on the part of Sheikh Nadir. This remarkable, but fearfully cruel monarch, on conquering Delhi in the year 1739, had 100,000 of the inhabitants cut to pieces, and is said to have sat upon a tower of this mosque to watch the scene. The town was then ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... cruelty to animals, but they occurred to me just now when thinking of Norman, and we must try to get him to learn them, as I am afraid that he does not consider that all God's creatures have feeling, and that he would carelessly injure them if they came in ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... under the blazing sun. All the animals at the Hippodrome had been better treated since she had been there. It was characteristic of the man that he laughed at her to her face for her campaign against the national cruelty, and in secret thought of ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... of that contrivance, or if you had not met me, that upon Solmes, will not procure me your hatred: for, had they come as I expected as well as you, what a despicable wretch had I been, could I have left you to the insults of a brother and other of your family, whose mercy was cruelty when they had not the pretence with which this detected interview would have ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... caught by an officer seldom saved himself with the mere sacrifice of knup, coat, peot, and beard. And when the time arrived for the execution of the more important laws, such as the Exportation Act of April 20, 1843, no fiendish ingenuity could surpass the cruelty of the Cossacks. This ukase more than any other, it is claimed, embittered Lilienthal against Russia, and caused him to flee to where he could say as one awakening from a nightmare: "The horrible hatred against the Jews in Russia is nothing more to me than a hazy remembrance. My soul ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... to the complaints of all: no man's want of means or want of friends excludes him, I don't say from access to you in public and on the tribunal, but even from your house and chamber: in a word, throughout your government there is no harshness or cruelty—everywhere clemency, mildness, ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... kindled at the thought. He cherished for his preceptor an ardent and enthusiastic love, and he had his share of that chivalrous devotion and self-sacrifice which has been the brightest ornament of days that have much of darkness and cruelty to ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Temple of Jupiter and other like things. But while he did this, Sextus, that was the youngest of his three sons, fled to Gabii, as if he were a deserter from the army of his father, and complained grievously to the men of the city of the cruelty which the King had used towards him. "Surely now," he said, "my father has turned away his fury from others upon them that are of his own household; and that same solitude which he has made in the Senate he would have also in his own home, being so jealous of his kingdom ...
— Stories From Livy • Alfred Church
... revenge, and despoiled of his riches, he said, "I am ill. Let me go home; send the deed after me, and I will sign over half my riches to my daughter."—"Get thee gone, then," said the duke, "and sign it; and if you repent your cruelty and turn Christian, the state will forgive you the fine of the other half of ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... she died. The girl kissed her lover, promising to return soon, and was hurried away by Oponui toward the Spouting Cave. Arrived there, she looked up and down the shore, but saw none other than her father, who was smiling into her face with a look of craft and cruelty that turned her sick at heart. In a broken voice she asked his purpose. Was her mother dead? Had he killed her? Oponui seized her arms with the gripe of a giant. "The man you love is my foe," he shouted. "I shall kill him, if I can. If not, he shall never see you again. ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... Indians will not come here and find us out," said Catharine, shuddering; "I think I should be more frightened at the Indians than at the wolves. Have we not heard fearful tales of their cruelty?" ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... Chap. VII. Sec. 10 that this very rage was, in fact, a beneficent power,—creative, not destructive; and as all its apparent cruelty is overruled by the law of love, so all its apparent disorder is overruled by the law of loveliness: the hand of God, leading the wrath of the torrent to minister to the life of mankind, guides also its grim surges by the laws of their delight; and bridles the bounding rocks, ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... civilization and mutual tolerance which is important to ourselves and to the world. Life in Russia has always been fierce and cruel, to a far greater degree than with us, and out of the war has come a danger that this fierceness and cruelty may become universal. I have hopes that in England this may be avoided through the moderation of both sides. But it is essential to a happy issue that melodrama should no longer determine our views of the Bolsheviks: they are neither angels to be worshipped nor devils to be exterminated, but merely ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... implicitly trusted by both of them; I saw them in their most private moments. I declare—in the face of what she appears to have written to her friends and correspondents—that my son never gave his wife any just cause to assert that he treated her with cruelty or neglect." ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... intention to keep his mouth shut, first for his own sake and, secondly, because he did not like to talk of his deeds. But when thus appealed to by these somber-faced, intent-eyed men he divined that the more carefully he described the cruelty and baseness of their enemies, and the more vividly he presented his participation in the first fight of the feud the more strongly he would bind these friends to the Isbel cause. So he talked for an hour, beginning with his meeting with Colter up on ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... little things and large, I found the Spaniards everywhere what I heard a Piedmontese commercial traveler say of them in Venice fifty years ago: "They are the honestest people in Europe." In Italy I never began to see the 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, ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... was densely peopled; "none more so under the sun," remarks the Augustinian friar Nicolas de Witte, who visited it in 1543; but even then he found it almost deserted and covered with ruins, for, a few years previous, the Spaniards had acted towards its natives with customary treachery and cruelty. They had invited all the chiefs to a conference, had enticed them into a large wooden building, and then set fire to it and burned them alive. When this merciless act became known the Huastecs deserted their villages and scattered among the ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various
... this motto: "For the Crown and Covenant of both Kingdoms." This I saw, and suffered by it. But when I look back upon the ruin of families, the bloodshed, the decay of common honesty, and how the former piety and plain dealing of this now sinful nation is turned into cruelty and cunning, I praise God that he prevented me from being of that party which helped to bring in this Covenant, and those sad confusions that have followed it. And I have been the bolder to say this to myself, because ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... Westminster, and the now extinct St. Anthony's. The headmaster, Dr. Gill, was an admirable scholar, though, as Aubrey records, "he had his whipping fits." His fitful severity was probably more tolerable than the systematic cruelty of his predecessor Mulcaster (Spenser's schoolmaster when he presided over Merchant Taylors'), of whom Fuller approvingly records: "Atropos might be persuaded to pity as soon as he to pardon where he found just fault. The prayers of cockering mothers prevailed with him as much as the requests of ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... she went on. "It was part of my husband's cruelty to detach him from me. He has the law on his side. I may not even see Rudolf. Very well, I do my best to steel my heart. I come here to live. I have many friends, but Falkenberg is the only man to whom I have ever belonged, and he has treated me as he would have treated ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... luxuriously in the sun. To Vere the world never seemed quite awake till the summer came. Only in the hot sunshine did there glow the truthfulness and the fulness of life. She shared it with the ginestra. She saw and felt a certain cruelty in the gold, but she did not fear or condemn it, or wish it away. For she was very young, and though she spoke of cruelty she did not really understand it. In it there was force, and force already appealed to the girl as few things did. As, ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... fell into the hands of the Spaniards, and being brought back to Buenos Ayres on the charge of having left the city contrary to orders, the governor, a man of cruelty, condemned the unfortunate woman to a death which none but the most cruel tyrant could have thought of. He ordered some soldiers to take her into the country and leave her tied to a tree, either to perish by hunger, or to be torn to pieces by wild beasts, as he expected. Two days after, ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... stone, and the captives were fed on bread and water within smell of the roasting and broiling of the Guildhall kitchens immediately beside them. I will not conjecture with "R. N." that they were put there "by a refinement of cruelty," so that they might suffer the more in that vicinage. "The magistrates" who had "used them courteously and shewed them what favour they could," would not have willed that; but perhaps "the Counsell-table" did; and it was certainly a hardship that the dungeons and the kitchens ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... hear of the disturbance among your slaves, and of the severity with which you have thought it necessary to proceed against them. You will bear me witness that I have often warned you that the cruelty with which Tiro exercised his authority would lead to difficulties, if not to violence and murder. I am not surprised to learn his fate: I am indeed very free to say that I rejoice at it. I rejoice not that you are troubled in your affairs, but that such an inhuman overseer as Tiro, a man ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... and brutality as wrung Nadia's heart, and filled Nicholas with indignation. But what could they do? They could not speak the Tartar language, and their assistance was mercilessly refused. Soon it occurred to these men, in a refinement of cruelty, to exchange the horse Michael was riding for one which was blind. The motive of the change was explained by a remark which Michael overheard, "Perhaps that Russian can see, ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... born after your time,' said the child, with calm, unconscious cruelty. 'But you will see her presently. She has gone to the bar to pay the bill, and when she has finished disputing it she is bound to ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... her listless walk brought her up alongside him, and still he said nothing. The cruelty of fooled honesty is often great after enlightenment, and it was mighty in Clare now. The outdoor air had apparently taken away from him all tendency to act on impulse; she knew that he saw her without irradiation—in all her bareness; that Time was ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... And monks do whip each other well, or else their Prior great, Or Abbot mad, doth take in hand their breeches all to beat In worship of these Innocents, or rather, as we see, In honor of the cursed king that did this cruelty. ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... the companion of his childhood and confidential friend of his whole life. Veli chose a different course. Realising the Marquis de Sade, as his father had realised Macchiavelli, he delighted in mingling together debauchery and cruelty, and his amusement consisted in biting the lips he had kissed, and tearing with his nails the forms he had caressed. The people of Janina saw with horror more than one woman in their midst whose nose and ears he had caused to be cut off, and had ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... excellence, were they regarded by him in a favorable light. Those pleasing qualities so apparent in the earlier history of the king were fast disappearing, to give way to pride, vanity, peevishness, and even cruelty. ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones
... English officer who occupied my room with the inscription "I'd leave my happy home for you." We then put the cook, the kitten, the dog and Cecil in the cart and I got on the horse and we let out for Kronstad at a gallop. We raced the thirty miles in five hours without one halt. That was not our cruelty to animals but Christian's who whenever I ordered him to halt and let us rest, yelled that the Englesses were after us and galloped on. The retreat was a terribly pathetic spectacle; for hours we passed ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... as he recalled his conversation with Miss Denham on the rocks overhanging the Mer de Glace. With unwitting cruelty he had told Ruth her own pathetic story, and she had unconsciously pitied herself! A lump came into his throat as he ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... reports of Hannibal's death; but when the news of it came to the senators' ears, some felt indignation against Titus for it, blaming as well his officiousness as his cruelty; who, when there was nothing to urge it, out of mere appetite for distinction, to have it said that he had caused Hannibal's death, sent him to his grave when he was now like a bird that in its old age has lost its feathers, and ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... as the results finally and inevitably are, we need only glance at the reigns of Tiberius, Nero, and Caligula, of Heliogabalus and Caracalla, of Domitian and Commodus, to recognize that the difference between freedom and despotism is as wide as that between Heaven and Hell. The cruelty, baseness, and insanity of tyrants are incredible. Let him who complains of the fickle humors and inconstancy of a free people, read Pliny's character of Domitian. If the great man in a Republic cannot win office without descending to ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... legs. Small fear of the poor wretches running away after that! At Exeter the county jail was the private property of a gentleman, John Denny Rolle, who farmed it out to a keeper, and received an income of twenty pounds per annum for it. Yet why multiply instances! In all of them, dirt, cruelty, fever, torture and abuses reigned unchecked. Prisoners had no regular allowance of food, but depended on their means, family, or charity; the prisons were farmed by their keepers, some of whom were women, but degraded and cruel; many innocent prisoners were slowly rotting to death, because of ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... world had suddenly corrupted about her. It was incredible, she told herself, that this ravening monster, dripping blood from claws and teeth, that had arisen roaring in the night, could be the Humanity that had become her God. She had thought revenge and cruelty and slaughter to be the brood of Christian superstition, dead and buried under the new-born angel of light, and now it seemed that the monsters yet stirred and lived. All the evening she had sat, walked, lain about her quiet house with the horror heavy about her, flinging ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... fickle and bloodthirsty race who claimed the lordship of the forests, these colonists, excepting only in the treacherous slaughter at Port Fortune, bore themselves in a spirit of kindness contrasting brightly with the rapacious cruelty of the Spaniards and the harshness of the English settlers. When the last boat-load left Port Royal, the shore resounded with lamentation; and nothing could console the afflicted savages but reiterated promises ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... all was confusion and contradiction in the Government. None of its members trusted the others or believed in the duration of the Bourbon dynasty. Years of corruption, tyranny, falsehood, and cruelty had undermined the whole system, and it fell before the storm as if by magic. Francis II determined to leave his capital. When he ordered the troops which still remained faithful to him to retreat upon Capua and Gaeta, two-thirds of the staff ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... painful impression of fatigue on Friday—fatigue and something like depression. After twenty minutes' talk she threw herself back against the iron pillar behind her, her White Lady's hood framing a face so pale and drooping that we all got up to go, feeling that it was cruelty to keep her up a minute longer. Mrs. Stuart asked her about her Sundays, and whether she ever got out of town. "Oh," she said, with a sigh and a look at her uncle, who was standing near, "I think Sunday is the hardest day of ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... follow'd by animated descriptions of reaping, gleaning, the honest exultation of the Farmer, the beauty of the Country Girl, and the wholesome refreshment of the field. Animals teazed by insects, the cruelty of docking horses, the insolence of the gander, the apathy of the swine, are drawn in a striking manner: and the Book concludes with masterly pictures of a twilight repose, a midnight storm of thunder and lightning, and views of the ancient and ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... he said simply. "I felt as though I were offering stones for bread. The stones were better, perhaps, but the cruelty was the same." ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... terror was a well-kept secret which only her brother shared. The big, crudely handsome brute had been "jobial" and suave of manner among his fellows and was held in favourable esteem. Only a day or two ago, when the brother had remonstrated in a low voice against some recent cruelty, the husband's wrath had blazed out. Witnesses to that wordy encounter had seen Thornton go white with a rage that was ominous and then bite off his unspoken retort and turn away. Those witnesses had not heard what was first said and had learned only what was revealed in the indignant ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... indifference as to what would result from the interview, for to his mind the story was ended, and he had only to retire with the dignity still possible to a dishonoured man. To touch the note of pathos would be unworthy; to exert what influence might be left to him, a wanton cruelty. But he had heard such unexpected things, that it was not easy for him to remember how complete had seemed the severance between him and Sidwell. The charm of her presence was reasserting itself, and when avowal of continued love appeared so unmistakably in her troubled countenance, ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... the heroic valour and daring of Cortez, Pizarro, Hernando de Soto, Orellana, and the rest of the conquistadores who carved out in a single generation the vast Spanish empire in Central and South America; but it is equally impossible to exaggerate their cruelty, which was born in part of the fact that they were a handful among myriads, in part of the fierce traditions of crusading warfare against the infidel. Yet without undervaluing their daring, it must be recognised that they had a comparatively easy ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... present offices, without the slightest sacrifice, but on the contrary with the approbation of all, is in any degree to depend on my taking such a course, I can only say that, as friends, I cannot believe it possible that you should be guilty of such wanton cruelty without any national object. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... in the cruelty of his desires, fearful in the havoc he had wrought, could he be subdued? Foiled, he tore and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... ponds were maintained, and the cruelty of Vellius Pollis who fed his lampreys on the bodies of slaves he caused to be slain is well known. This cruelty Domitian disapproved ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... impossible to overrate the advantages that must have resulted both to the Zulus and their white neighbours from the adoption of this obvious plan, among them being lasting peace and security to life and property; or to understand the folly and cruelty that dictated the present arrangement, or rather want of arrangement. Not for many years has England missed such an opportunity of doing good, not only at no cost, but with positive advantage to herself. Did we owe nothing to ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... the comment as a tribute to her delicacy, a proof of his strength. It was this strength that drew her, so that she swayed toward him involuntarily; but even though it contained an element of possible cruelty, it was not purely physical. Perhaps a realisation of this fact allowed her to shelve upon him entirely the responsibility ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... into a laugh at herself: "Of course. But don't you think that a man who is able to put things as he does—who can make you see, for example, the stupidity and cruelty of things that always seemed right and proper before—don't you think that he's guilty of a kind of hypocrisy if he doesn't feel as ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... attributing this doctrine of Neifty to the Norman Conquest, which merely supplied names; in definiteness and cruelty nothing could exceed the practice of serfage under the Saxons. "The slave," says Green, "became part of the live stock of the estate, to be willed away at death with the horse or the ass, whose pedigree was kept as carefully as his own. His children were bondmen, ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... also a member of the Bourbon family, to secure the crown of Spain to which he claimed to have prior rights to those of Queen Isabella's branch of the family. This war, which really was a civil war, was accompanied by a great deal of bloodshed and cruelty and finally brought about the abdication of King Amadeus. For a short time after that Spain became a republic, but in 1874 the people decided that their interests would be better served by a monarchy and they made the son of Queen Isabella, Alfonso XII, their King. The ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... as a nation we should be purged of selfishness, of luxury, of sensuality, of all the vices that peace engenders. That is surely a shameful confession, that our religion had been in vain. We had to wait for, and partake in, a three years' orgy of cruelty and violence to learn what our Lord had taught us in three years of gentleness. If we are going to teach the same lessons about war when peace is made, to keep alive the fires of hate, and to keep smouldering the embers of suspicion, we ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... shrieks against heaven—your cruelty, your stupidity. Since ever the first poet came into this world it has been the same story of agony, indignity, and shame. And what ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... and many phases of the passion," replied my father. "Shakspeare is speaking of an ill-treated, pining, wobegone lover, much aggrieved by the cruelty of his mistress—a lover who has found it of no avail to smarten himself up, and has fallen despondingly into the opposite extreme. Whereas Signior Riccabocca has nothing to complain of in ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... maiden of the Tengger was the chosen victim offered to Siva, who, in his attribute of a Consuming Fire, occupied the volcanic abyss. The worship of the Divine Destroyer has ever been a fruitful source of crime and cruelty, and a tangible atmosphere of evil lingers round those hoary temples of India dedicated to the Avenging Deity, whose fanatical followers are reckoned by millions. Through the inversion of creed peculiar to Hindu Pantheism, the propitiation of Divine wrath has become the fundamental principle ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... Ellen was thrown by the anticipation of meeting her friends once more, may be readily imagined by those similarly constituted with her, and the reaction occasioned by her disappointment, also. Her heart had been entirely fixed upon it, and what but cruelty was it in her husband to deprive her thus so unreasonably of so great an enjoyment—to her so ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... sway the hardened bosom leads To cruelty's remorseless deeds: As (or, so) the blue lightning when it springs With fury on its livid wings, Darts on the goal with rapid force, Nor heeds that ruin marks ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... acutest sharpener of tyranny is an unsuccessful attempt to destroy it—to arouse the suspicion of power is almost to compel it to cruelty. Hitherto we have seen that Hippias had graced his authority with beneficent moderation; the death of his brother filled him with secret alarm; and the favour of the populace at the attempted escape of Aristogiton—the ease with which, from a personal ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... soon be numbered. During all the time that has passed since we have met, my mind has never been at rest; for though too proud to acknowledge it, I have ever been sensible that I treated you with cruelty and injustice. But my pride is now humbled and I beg of you to forgive me; for, believe me, I have ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... impartial fury. The unbounded forest, which covered hill and valley with a curtain of unbroken foliage, afforded a thousand lurking-places, and it was well-nigh impossible for an armed force to get within striking distance of the marauders. So, almost daily, stories of horrible cruelty came to the fort, plunging the commander into an agony of rage and dejection at his very impotence. The fort was soon crowded with refugees,—wives bewailing their husbands, husbands swearing to avenge their wives, parents ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... condemning as unsportsmanlike, simply because they have not the remotest idea what they are talking about. Why it should be cruel to kill a thousand head in a day instead of two hundred on five separate days, one fails to understand. As a matter of fact, the bigger the "shoot" the less cruelty takes place, because bad shots are not likely to be present on these occasions, whilst in small "shoots" they are the rule rather than the exception. Instead of birds and ground game being wounded time after time, at ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... the harmony, the fitness, and beauty of nature, inspiring a keenly sympathetic soul. He cannot close his eyes to the fact that all this lovely world is made to perish; that its individuals are engaged in a fierce warfare upon one another; each preys upon its fellows with a savagery which shuns no cruelty and recks of no crime. Love itself in its mortal embodiment withers and turns to evil. His moral sense tells him that this ought not to be; there must be some delusion; is it in nature or is it in his own understanding? ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight |
