"Maim" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... poor boy?" Antonio was so refreshed and charged anew with vital energy that he had raised himself completely up; his eyes flashed, and he shook his doubled fist above his head, crying, "Oh! that rascal Nicolo; he tried to maim me, because he envies me every wretched penny that any generous hand bestows upon me. You know, old dame, that I barely managed to hold body and soul together by helping to carry bales of goods from ships and freight-boats to the depot of the Germans, the ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... heather Till it turn'd up straight again, Then it drew itself together Like a tender thing in pain; Scarce a single green leaf straggled From its twigs so bare and draggled— And it really looks ashamed When I'm passing by that way, Just as if it tried to say— "Please don't look at such a maim'd Little Cripple-Dick as I; Look at all the rest about, Look at them and pass me by, I'm so crooked, do not flout me, Kindly turn your head awry; Of what use is my poor gnarl'd Body in ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... shorter, perhaps, owing to their simpler methods of attack." Selwyn laughed. "In their day, warfare being largely a personal or tribal affair, little time was necessary for preparation. With us the whole machinery of government is needed to murder and maim and devastate and ruin. Civilization and science and education have complicated pretty hopelessly the adjustments of disputes, the taking of territory, and the acceptance of opposing ideals. The biggest ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... one triumph, of one travail born, Doomed to one death, in one brief life we moil; The pangs that maim us and the powers that spoil Are common sorrows heired from worlds outworn. Alike in weakness, time too long hath torn Our mother, Patience, and our father, Toil. Brothers in hatred of the fates that foil, Say not in vain we ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... other offensive weapon but only such tools or implements as serve for the end of their coming. If any Englishman shall presume to take from the Indians so coming in any of their goods, or shall kill, wound, maim any Indian, he shall suffer as he had done the same to an Englishman and be fined ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... the same in the world to come," grumbles the old man, setting straight his cap, which had slipped on the back of his head from the jolt. "He'll maim ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... still could sting, So they watch'd what the end would be. And we had not fought them in vain, But in perilous plight were we, Seeing forty of our poor hundred were slain, And half of the rest of us maim'd for life In the crash of the cannonades and the desperate strife; And the sick men down in the hold were most of them stark and cold, And the pikes were all broken or bent, and the powder was all of it spent; And the masts and the rigging were lying over the side; But Sir Richard ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... who are struggling against a barbaric tyranny. In that reckless crusade which the Central Powers are waging against all the higher laws of morality and civilization, some of the heaviest of the blows fall on the defenceless. It is this appalling inhumanity, this godless desire to maim and wound and kill, which nerves the arms of the Allies, who know that in a case like this they are fighting for freedom and for the Divine laws of ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... adversary angered him to blind rage. He forgot everything but contact, rushed, closed and caught his antagonist in the brawny grip of his arms. The battle at once resolved itself into the wrestling and battering match of the frontier. And it was free! Each might kill or maim if so ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... the victim, whose things are carried in the bundle, is supposed to make their enemies weak and tottery. Strong young men are not given the bundle to carry, lest the ghost should spoil their manly figures; whereas if he should wound or maim a couple of poor cripples, no great ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... deliberately, with a more or less unconscious insight into the secrets of Nature, offer up human sacrifices on their altars, and when some ignorant European intrudes and calls them "blood-thirsty" we all meekly acquiesce. In Europe we kill and maim people by the hundred thousand, not seriously and deliberately for any sacred ends that make Life more precious to us or the Mystery of Nature more intelligible, but out of sheer stupidity. We spend the half, and sometimes more than the half, of our national incomes ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... told me there were plenty in his land; had Fate with a cruel irony led me into this land of wealth only to maim me and keep me a lonely prisoner here in this ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... away went Thomas at a dog-trot again: the lust to punish, maim or kill in his heart. He was not a university man; he had not played cricket at Lord's or stroked the crew from Leander; but he was island-born, a chap for cold tubbings, calisthenics and long tramps into the country on pleasant Sundays. Thomas was ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... into all the practices by which he has attempted to maim the Company's records, I shall state one more to your Lordships,—that is, his avowed appointment of spies and under-agents, who shall carry on the real state business, while there are public and ostensible agents ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... hand encouragingly. "It had to be done. He was in a desperate predicament, and he would have shot Haggerty had the detective been careless in has turn; and he wouldn't have aimed to maim, either." ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath
... the donkeys on Hampstead Heath, even Tennyson would have been unable to poetise their exploits. When one sees stuck up in an omnibus-office that omnibuses "will have to make a circuit from cause de bombardement;" when shells burst in restaurants and maim the waiters; when the trenches are in tea-gardens; and when one is invited for a sou to look through a telescope at the enemy firing off their guns, there is a homely domestic air about the whole thing which is quite inconsistent with "the pomp ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... to pick one's steps in, of a dark night,' muttered Sampson, as he stumbled for the twentieth time over some stray lumber, and limped in pain. 'I believe that boy strews the ground differently every day, on purpose to bruise and maim one; unless his master does it with his own hands, which is more than likely. I hate to come to this place without Sally. She's more protection than ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... up here because he thought I was in danger," she mused. "And MacNair would have killed him. Oh, it is terrible," she moaned. "This wild, hard wilderness, where human life is cheap; where men hate, and kill, and maim, and break all the laws of God and man; it is all wrong! ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... large, deep eyes, fiery black and bold, there seemed tokens of a spirit that would dare a thousand devils. And besides all this, there was a certain lofty bearing about the Pagan, which even his uncouthness could not altogether maim. He looked like a man who had never cringed and never had had a creditor. Whether it was, too, that his head being shaved, his forehead was drawn out in freer and brighter relief, and looked more expansive than it otherwise would, this ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the experiment for himself, I make him a present of my manner of operation, which may save him time at the outset. The insect intended for a long journey must obviously be handled with certain precautions. There must be no forceps employed, no pincers, which might maim a wing, strain it and weaken the power of flight. While the Bee is in her cell, absorbed in her work, I place a small glass test-tube over it. The Mason, when she flies away, rushes into the tube, which enables me, without touching her, to transfer her at once into a screw of paper. ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... a moment the savages turned and gazed around them astonished. One of their number was hit and wounded in the leg. Granville had aimed so purposely, to maim and terrify them. The natives faltered and fell back. As they did so, Granville emerged from the shelter of the acacia bush, and fired a second shot from another point at them. At the same instant the Namaqua raised a loud native battle-cry, and brandished his assegai. ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... truth in old faiths. A pretty mess we mortals made of life! I might almost have laughed at the irony of it all, except that my laughter would have choked in my throat and turned me sick. They were beasts, and worse than beasts, to maim and mutilate each other like this, having no real hatred in their hearts for each other, but only a stupid perplexity that they should be hurled in masses against each other's ranks, to slash and shoot and burn in obedience to orders by people who were their greatest enemies—Ministers of ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... I know—and wise it were If each could know the same— That every prison that men build Is built with bricks of shame, And bound with bars lest Christ should see How men their brothers maim. ...
— The Ballad of Reading Gaol • Oscar Wilde
... evident that Levi was coming for his boat. Stooping down, he adjusted the plank over the chasm in such a way that his victim would be pitched down upon the sharp rocks beneath, the instant he stepped upon it. The fall would not kill him—it would only bruise and maim him. Levi was beneath the rocky precipice, and ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... law to be this: That a sentinel shall not use more force or violence to prevent the escape of a prisoner than is necessary to effect that object, but if the prisoner, after being ordered to halt, continues his flight the sentinel may maim or even kill him, and it is his duty to ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... poor child, but proud and vain. She had a bad disposition, people said. When she was little more than an infant it was a pleasure to her to catch flies, to pull off their wings, and maim them entirely. She used, when somewhat older, to take lady-birds and beetles, stick them all upon a pin, then put a large leaf or a piece of paper close to their feet, so that the poor things held fast to it, and turned and ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... at liberty to return to your wife and family, to whom I am about to conduct you; but it is on this express condition, to which you must bind yourself by a solemn oath, viz. that you will never maim or kill a seal in ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... an Apprentice, unless he be a perfect youth having no maim or defect that may render him uncapable ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... maim me for a month," said he; "and if the V.C. comes out alive, the wound he gave may be identified with the wound ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... Then you institute laws, and substitute custom to make them null. It is a poor apology for a namesake. But do you assert that in the freest and happiest country-a country that boasts the observance of its statute laws-a man is privileged to shoot, maim, and torture a fellow-being, and that public opinion fails to bring him ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... for friendship, comradeship, and love. And so, I call them my neighbours—these hurrying throngs who pass me daily. Because they are my neighbours, they are my friends. Their rights are sacred. I will not rob, maim, or kill them, and I will defend them against ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... bright and happy, for mother taught us many things and brought us up well. I remember that there was a door leading from the rear of the store into a garden. Sunny days mother would take us out and give us lessons in natural history. She taught us not to kill or maim song-birds, but said that we could kill and eat field mice or little blind moles, although we never saw any of them. She warned us that bees and wasps were too heating to the blood, and not to eat them, but if very hungry, a grass-hopper ...
— The Nomad of the Nine Lives • A. Frances Friebe
... to tell how much foundation the press and the public had for this opinion. There had been no decisive disaster, if there had been no actual gain; and the main result had been to maim men and show that both sides would fight well enough to leave ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... own superstition, as a man trifles with the loaded gun that may kill him, or with the savage animal that may maim him for life. He mentioned the age (as he had reckoned it himself) of the woman in the black gown and ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... carry a sure stiletto, honest Jacopo," he whispered. "A hand of thy practice must know how to maim as well as to slay. Strike the Neapolitan smartly, but spare his life. Even the bearer of a public dagger like thine may not fare the worse, at the coming of Shiloh, for having been tender of his strength ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... past six, and I am alone, sir, alone in this workman's house, Belle and Lloyd having been down all yesterday to meet the steamer; they were scarce gone with most of the horses and all the saddles, than there began a perfect picnic of the sick and maim; Iopu with a bad foot, Faauma with a bad shoulder, Fanny with yellow spots. It was at first proposed to carry all these to the doctor, particularly Faauma, whose shoulder bore an appearance of erysipelas, that sent the amateur below. No horses, no saddle. Now I had my horse and I could ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bear is a larger animal and far more ferocious, than the black bear. A bullet seems to prick rather than to maim him, and he will attack the hunter with the most desperate and persevering fierceness. Carson was helpless. He had discharged his rifle. The brutes were close upon him, and there were two of them. They could outrun him. His fate ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... vessels ranged before him, one after another, to see what they contained. Say, good M'Choakumchild. When from thy boiling store, thou shalt fill each jar brim full by-and-by, dost thou think that thou wilt always kill outright the robber Fancy lurking within - or sometimes only maim him ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... himself the better man, throwing the assailant, and at the same time slashing open his left leg. The wounded man lay in the "bush" till he gathered strength to "dot and go one" homewards. Amongst these tribes the Diyat, or "blood-money," reaches eight hundred dollars; consequently men will maim, but ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... fell upon each other, like young bulls, in all the glory of youth, with naked fists, with hatred, with desire to hurt, to maim, to destroy. All the painful, thousand years' gains of man in his upward climb through creation were lost. Only the electric light remained, a milestone on the path of the great human adventure. Martin and Cheese- Face were two savages, of the stone age, of the squatting place and the tree refuge. ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... Province, upon conviction he was punished with forty lashes, and branded on the forehead with a red hot iron, "that the mark thereof may remain." If a white man met a slave, and demanded of him to show his ticket, and the slave refused, the law empowered the white man "to beat, maim, or assault; and if such Negro or slave" could not "be taken, to kill him," if he would not "shew ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... as there is any subject which men may not freely discuss, they are timid upon all subjects. They wear an iron crown and talk in whispers. Such social conditions crush and maim the individual, and throughout New England, as throughout the whole North, the individual was ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... Poor hunted crow, against whom every man's hand is raised! She feels, with reason, that every human being is a deadly enemy thirsting for her life, that every cylinder pointed upward is loaded with death, that every string is a cruel snare to entangle and maim her,—yet whose offspring, dear as ours to us, clamor for food. How should she know that it is wrong to eat chickens; or that robin babies were made to live and grow up, and crow babies to die of starvation? The farmer ignores ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... both my own I gripped them to show her that I intended to be her champion, while she turned to me in confidence as though happy that it should be so. What, I wondered, was her history? What was the mystery surrounding her? What could be that secret which had caused her enemies to thus brutally maim and mutilate her, and afterwards send her to that grim, terrible fortress that still loomed up before us in the gloom? Surely her secret must affect some person very seriously, or such drastic means would never be employed ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... to go and throw yourselves into the Ganges than to curse the earth with a miserable progeny, conceived in disgust and brought forth in agony. What mean these asylums all over the land for the deaf and dumb, the maim and blind, the idiot and the raving maniac? What all these advertisements in our public prints, these family guides, these female medicines, these Madame Restells? Do not all these things show to what a depth of degradation the women of this Republic have fallen, how false they have been to the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... self-culture. But giving up right pleasure is. If you surrender the pleasure of walking, your foot will wither: you may as well cut it off: if you surrender the pleasure of seeing, your eyes will soon be unable to bear the light; you may as well pluck them out. And to maim yourself is partly to kill yourself. Do but go on maiming, and you ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... that brother mine, Umaym, * Yet would shoot back what shafts at them I aim: If I deal-pardon, noble pardon 'tis; * And if I shoot, my bones 'twill only maim."[FN159] ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... opposed me all my life. These pro-slavery Democrats abuse the negro. I defended him, and they mobbed me for doing it. Oh, justice! [Loud laughter, applause, and hisses.] This is as if a man should commit an assault, maim and wound a neighbor, and a surgeon being called in should begin to dress his wounds, and by and by a policeman should come and collar the surgeon and haul him off to prison on account of the ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... get back to the work we are doing; Let us reckon its joys and its pain; Let us pause while our tasks we're reviewing, To sum up the cost of each gain. Let us give up our whining and wailing Because of the bruises that maim, And battle the chances of failing As being a part of ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest
... repugnant duty. Men essentially gentle and essentially wise, with really valuable work in hand, laid it down voluntarily and spent months forming fours in the barrack yard, and stabbing sacks of straw in the public eye, so that they might go out to kill and maim men as gentle as themselves. These men, who were perhaps, as a class, our most efficient soldiers (Frederick Keeling, for example), were not duped for a moment by the hypocritical melodrama that consoled and ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... "That's always your way, Maim—always sailing in to help somebody before they're hurt. I hain't done nothing to him. He's told some stretchers, I reckon, and I said I wouldn't swallow it all; and that's every bit and grain I DID say. I reckon he can stand a little ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Have you been hunting on the Windy Height? Your hands are not thus gentle after hunting. Or have I heard you singing through my sleep? Stay with me now: I have had piercing thoughts Of what the ways of life will do to you To mould and maim you, and I have a power To bring these to expression that I knew not. Why do you wear my crown? Why do you wear My crown I say? Why do you wear my crown? I am falling, falling! Lift ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh) |
