"Thug" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are common in India. Even their trumpeting shows a ferocity and unbalance that terrifies the natives. Often these criminal elephants are sufferers of mental ailments. A respectable, law-abiding elephant herd will not allow a thug or rogue to live in their midst. They recognise him as dangerous for their society, and combine to force him entirely away from ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... than where he is! Probably some creature of Dr. Fu-Manchu specially chosen for the purpose; obviously a man of culture, and probably of thug ancestry. I hit him—in the shoulder; but even then he ran like a hare. We've searched the ship, without result. He may have gone overboard and chanced ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... reporter who has to cover a story of this class to acquaint himself with the distinctions that characterize the various kinds of robbery and the various names applied to the people who commit this sort of crime: e.g., robber, thief, bandit, burglar, hold-up man, thug, embezzler, defaulter, ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... I underestimate him gravely he is incapable of such finesse. He is a thug first, a thief afterwards. He would have killed me out of hand if it had been he who had me at his mercy, down here, in the dark. Nor would he have been able to open the safe without using an explosive. That, indeed, is why, as I understand him, Dupont attacked you at Montpellier. ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... that no one of the nations of India had discovered a stronger desire for the Scriptures than this hardy race. At Amritsar and Lahore "the book of Jesus is spoken of, is read, and has caused a considerable stir in the minds of the people." A Thug, asked how he could have committed so many murders, pointed to it and said, "If I had had this book I could not have done it." A fakeer, forty miles from Lodiana, read the book, founded the community of worshippers of the Sachi Pite Isa, and suffered much persecution ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... time the problem and the glory of the men in scarlet and gold. It was their problem because the criminal class which always makes a dead set on a frontier was determined from the outset to make the Klondike country a sort of hell on earth, and it was their glory because they prevented the thug and the outlaw from getting a foothold where the old flag flew. There also the lawless individual sought to get away to some other clime, for he said there as he said in the mountains, "These blamed Mounted Police won't give a man a chance." ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... springin' to her feet. "You give me more sadness every day I live than Dick has altogether; but for pity's sake don't bind yourself by a threat. Wait till he comes back, an' be free to meet him like a man, not like a thug pledged to murder." ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... in this no claim that Mr. Smith had ever neglected his duty, and the whole thing narrows down to the fact that he had incurred the enmity of the liquor dealers, who induced the Company to dismiss him. This action of the Company may please the men who hired a thug to assault Mr. Smith, and nearly batter his life out, but it is a poor way to make friends of peaceful citizens. It speaks poorly for personal liberty when a man is dismissed from a railway because he opposes the liquor traffic,—a traffic which the Company itself acknowledges ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... Louie, blood gushing from the wound, crumpled at his feet, John tossed away the neck of the bottle and barely had time to side-step the onrush of the other thug, who struck viciously at him with the fist armored with the knuckles. As they drew back John was in the position of a boxer, standing lightly on his toes, his left hand extended with the shoulder drawn up to protect his chin, which rested against his collarbone, ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... Garrick remarked. "I knew what the thing was, all right, but I didn't think the spring was as delicate as all that. It is a new and terrible weapon of destruction of human life, one that can be carried by the thug or the burglar and no one be the wiser, unless he has occasion to use it. It is a gun that can be concealed in the palm of the hand. A pull downward on that spring discharges a thirty-two calibre, centre fire cartridge. The most dangerous feature of it is that the gun can be ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... The big, apelike thug who was holding the shotgun had a chance to pull the trigger once more, but he wasn't aiming very well. The blast merely scored the paint off ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... fumbling at the handkerchief round my head; but pretending, I suspect, that he could not undo it, he forced it down over my face, to the considerable damage of my nose, and then, giving his knuckles a turn with the dexterity of a Thug, very nearly throttled me. When I had somewhat recovered, and the stars had done flying about before my eyes, I perceived that I was in a large cave, standing at the foot of a rude table, at the further end of which sat a powerfully-built, bold-looking man, dressed ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... go down to history as the beginning of an infamous period when the sanctity of free speech was a thing to be ruthlessly smashed by the hireling or misguided mobs of an organisation professing democratic principles. The miracle of the Easter Rising was that it put an end to the rule of the thug and the bludgeonman. But many things were to ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... friendships and acquaintances, not only on these "dark runs," but wherever one goes—both on and off duty. In the stores, along the street, on the cars, at the club, the alert reporter gathers many an important news item. The merchant, the cabman, the preacher, the barkeeper, the patrolman, the thug, the club-man, the porter, all make valuable acquaintances, as they are able often to give one stories or clues to the solution of problems that are all but invaluable to the paper. And such facts as they present are given solely ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... great wisdom, I wish you would explain to me why the deuce we let all this crew come over here instead of sending a shipload of perfectly normal, dignified, and right-minded gentlemen. These thug reformers!—Baker will be here in a day or two and if I can remember it I am going to suggest to him that he round them all up and put them in the trenches in France where those of them who have so far escaped the gallows ought to ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... looking at that fellow Etchepare, that thug, in a way that made my blood run cold. As Monsieur Vagret went on with his speech you felt they would have liked to settle his ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... he had when he set a thug on me this afternoon at Carbonate," said Winton sourly; and he told Adams about the misunderstanding in the lobby of the Buckingham. His friend whistled under his breath. "By Jove! that's pretty rough. Do you suppose the Rajah dictated any such Lucretia Borgia ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... young whippersnapper," Mr. Pierce had said, "this fledgling thug of journalism, had stopped to think of the source of his unearned money, perhaps he wouldn't talk ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the Brahmin, like the Thug of seven victims, has tasted the sugar of blood, sweeter upon his tongue than to the lips of an eager babe the pearl-tipped nipple of its mother. Henceforth he must slay, slay, slay, mutilate and ravish, burn and slay, in the name of the queen ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... keep the men submissive and orderly and allow no outbreaks. As for knowledge, a public school education is ample, with such intelligence as may be supposed to go with it; and the experience of a ward heeler or a thug will ordinarily suffice to pass a candidate. As a matter of fact, the community never knows anything about its prison officials until some special scandal transpires under their administration, or unless some heaven-sent ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... the same general place of rendezvous to divide the spoil. They sometimes travel in the disguise of respectable traders; sometimes as sepoys or native soldiers; and at others, as government officers. If they chance to fall in with an unprotected wayfarer, his fate is certain. One Thug approaches him from behind, and throws the end of a sash round his neck; the other end is seized by a second at the same instant, crossed behind the neck, and drawn tightly, while with their other hand the two ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... thug of the city, a brigand of the country, a horse thief of the western plains, attacks a weaker and unprepared victim. A man with red blood in his veins sees the assault, and attacks the attacker with strength enough to save ...
— The Spirit of Lafayette • James Mott Hallowell
... room was open. Lina and her father had been kept in there, with the little thug as their guard. Evidently Cadorna had caught him trying to force his attentions on the girl. Good thing ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... surprising. The late Mr. Barnum was not the first nor the last to observe that the people love to be humbugged. They love an impostor and a scamp, and the best service that you can do for a candidate for high political preferment is to prove him a little better than a thief, but not quite so good as a thug. ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... Hindostan, signifies a deceiver; fraud, not open force, being employed). This gentleman kindly showed me the approvers or king's evidence of his establishment, belonging to those three classes of human scourges, the Thug, Dakoit, and Poisoner. Of these the first was the Thug, a mild-looking man, who had been born and bred to the profession: he had committed many murders, saw no harm in them, and felt neither shame nor remorse. His organs of observation and destructiveness ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... What an instance of conjugal affection; and yet the affection here was all on one side, as is too frequently the case. Her husband was a worthless scoundrel, who had previously abandoned her and betaken himself to Madrid, where he had long lived in concubinage with the notorious she-thug Aurora, at whose instigation he had committed the robbery for which he was now held in durance. "Should your husband escape from Malaga, in what direction will he ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... dead. The reason is that the Thugs were forbidden to shed human blood. The sacrifice could only be accomplished through death by strangling. It might often be easy enough to fall upon solitary travellers, but woe to the Thug who in any way brought about the shedding of blood! Consequently they had to have recourse to all sorts of ingenious methods for allaying suspicion, so that their victims might be hastened into the next world according to the rites approved by their implacable goddess. ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... a crowd! How, when shall we get past This nuisance, these unending ant-like swarms? Yet, Ptolemy, we owe thee thanks for much Since heaven received thy sire! No miscreant now Creeps Thug-like up, to maul the passer-by. What games men played erewhile—men shaped in crime, Birds of a feather, rascals every one! —We're done for, Gorgo darling—here they are, The Royal horse! Sweet sir, don't ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... of Francis Thompson (3 vols.) Social History of Smoking: Apperson The Path to Rome: Hilaire Belloc The Book of Tea: Kakuzo Happy Thoughts: F. C. Burnand Dr. Johnson's Prayers and Meditations Margaret Ogilvy: J. M. Barrie Confessions of a Thug: Taylor General Catalogue of the Oxford University Press The Morning's War: C. E. Montague The Spirit of Man: edited by Robert Bridges The Romany Rye: Borrow Poems: Emily Dickinson Poems: George Herbert The ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... an Egyptian night. Down, down, down I went. There are a great many things in life that I have forgotten. There are a great many more that I expect to forget, but that first ride down the coal shaft I never can forget. Thug! I had struck bottom. It is said that when one starts down hill in this world he keeps on going until he strikes bottom. My readers will certainly agree with me that reaching a resting place eight hundred feet under ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... think your father was strangled by a Thug? My dear child, the Thugs were stamped out years ago. You'll read all about it in the preface of that book, if I remember. But it's long since I read the work. Besides, darling," he added, drawing her to him caressingly, "the Thugs never ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... observer to see the look of grim determination on the faces of all present. It is a representative gathering. There is the Jew, the German, Irishman, Bourbon Aristocrat and "poor bocra." The deacon, the minister of the gospel, the thug and murderer. No one looking upon this strangely assorted gathering in a Southern community would for a moment question its significance. Only when politics and the race question are being discussed is such a gathering ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... burst out. Tommy La Croix, the French Canuck, a quick, grinning, evil-spoken, tobacco-chewing, rather likeable young thug, stared directly at Carl and said, loudly: "'Nother thing I noticed was that Frazer didn't have his pants pressed. Funny, ain't it, that when even these dudes from Yale get to be cranks they're short on ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... roused Mrs. Pett from her literary calm. To her eye, after what Lord Wisbeach had revealed there was something sinister in the very way in which he walked into the room. He made her flesh creep. In "A Society Thug" (Mobbs and Stifien, $1.35 net, all rights of translation reserved, including the Scandinavian) she had portrayed just such a man—smooth, specious, and formidable. Instinctively, as she watched Jimmy, her mind went back to the perfectly rotten behaviour of her own Marsden Tuke (it was only ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... the first chapter of "Frenzied Finance" appeared, Henry H. Rogers turned loose on me one Denis Donohoe, a character thug whom he had imported from California for just such emergencies. Donohoe's first service for Mr. Rogers was a vicious onslaught on Heinze, of Montana, in the New York Commercial. This was an attack of such unusual ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... for the certainty that if the white man's Raj were at an end, once again would the brotherhood follow their profession, and reap booty for ourselves and victims for Kali; for, assuredly, no native prince would dare to meddle with us. Therefore, upon every man who was once a Thug, and upon his sons and grandsons, you may depend. I do not say that they would be useful for fighting, for we have never been fighters, but the stranglers will be of use. You can trust them with missions, and send them where you ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... and was continually clapping my hand to the hilt of my sword, which I had consecrated to this, I was observed by a soldier, that is, he either was a real soldier, or else he was some night-prowling thug, who challenged me. "Halt! Who goes there? What legion are you from? Who's your centurion?" "Since when have men in your outfit gone on pass in white shoes?" he retorted, when I had lied stoutly about both centurion and legion. Both my face and my confusion proved that I had been caught in a lie, ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... promising saint to swear by, though, in the obscurities of Syrian chronology, even of him he could not be sure. The one kindred hyena who, at fifty-five, had defied the world was Tsi An, the Chinese Empress, and he had helped to squelch her. Do you see it now? To burglarise the world, this thug had every advantage. The police were asleep. The coast was clear. The jimmies and the dynamite sticks were ready. Even the dark lantern was packed. The kit was complete. He had everything. He lacked nothing, except the one essential—Youth! The eyes of youth are clear. ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... made a slight correction in the crab boat's course. "Present owner is a man named Merlin. No one knows anythin' about him, and no one asks. Has a big thug with him all the time, and takes exception to people gettin' nosy. Most folks got snubbed and drew back, so to speak. Jim Hardin—he's a fisherman hereabouts—took exception and got beaten up. Hardin's not easy to lick. After that, folks ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... come. Silently Fuzl Khan rose to his feet; he sprang forward with the lightness, the speed, the deadly certainty of a Thug {name of a class of hereditary stranglers}, his hand was on the man's throat. Desmond, close behind, had a gag ready, but there was no need to use it. In the open the Gujarati could exert his strength more freely than through the narrow windows of the shed. Almost ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... you with his fool performances to the point of dancing cursing wild crying rage, and then accepts your—well, reproofs—so meekly that you come off the boil as though some one had removed you from the fire, and you feel like a low-browed thug. ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... He learned that he was at present a professional prize-fighter, most of the time out of an engagement. His appearance tended to establish his veracity in this particular instance. He looked like a thug and looked like a person out of employment for ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... He hoped thug to find help—to get a horse or an ass, and also something to eat, and thus set forth for Salerno. As the road wound on, and as he traversed it, he looked eagerly at every projecting cliff before him; ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... sympathy from Nathaniel Hawthorne or his wife. Nor will they, apparently, from his son, who says of his father, "He was not a teetotaler any more than he was an abolitionist or a Thug." ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... shorter thug staggered and went down under a hail of punches. Bud grabbed his wrist and twisted it mercilessly while he pinned him to ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... me, what, long since, had been your own? But I will save you: I have sworn it. You shall be wax in these hands at last,"—the moment that voice thus claimed and insisted on redeeming him, the ruffian felt a cold shudder, his courage oozed, he could no more have nerved his arm against her than a Thug would have lifted his against the dire goddess of his murderous superstition. Jasper could not resist a belief that the life of this dreadful protectress was, somehow or other, made essential to his; that, were ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not the only amiable character with whom the colonel became acquainted at Calpee, as he sought and obtained an interview with a famous Thug approver, who had retired from the active exercise of his profession, and was travelling the country in company with a party of police, denouncing his former associates to justice. We cannot help suspecting, both from the traits recorded of him, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... are black scum of Limerick, and Jim Varian's language isn't printable. The old men are complaining, and altogether I feel like Louis XVI in 1789. About every day I have to send for the sheriff and have some thug arrested. A blackguard from Oil City has opened a dive just outside the property, on the road to the station, and Cameron tells me all sorts of dope is for sale in the hoarding-houses. We have cocaine-inhalers, opium-smokers, and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... a very aged ex-Thug. In his young days he was transported to the Andaman Islands, but, owing to his sincere repentance, and to some services he had rendered to the Government, he was afterwards pardoned. Having returned to his native village, he settled down to earn ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... would give a fellow, and I bet he's et more men for breakfast than I ever dreamed of murdering. If your appetite's up to it, Big Chief, take a mouthful of that thug living up on the bank above the camp. He's got all the pizen of Russia in him, flavoured with the ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... a sharp, businesslike precision about the American soldier that stood San Francisco in good stead. The San Francisco water rat thug and "Barbary Coast" pirate might flout a policeman, but he discovered that he could not disobey a man who wears Uncle Sam's uniform without imminent risk of being counted in that abstract mortuary list ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... continued, "no one thought of looking for a Thug in Burma! And no one thought of the ROOF! These fellows are as active as monkeys, and where an ordinary man would infallibly break his neck, they are entirely at home. I might have chosen my room especially ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... through the air, Some sailed in shallops over the light waves, And all who came had presents for their Queen,— Rare tints which they had caught just as the Moon Peered o'er the shoulder of the mighty Thug.— Those dwelling in the caverns of the sea Brought up the gayest jewels they could find, And pearls from underneath their low-based bergs Deep in the green waves, that, with thunderous sound, Did lull the giants of ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown
... of reputation, who steals, with stealthy step and coward's mask, to filch good names away in the dead dark of irresponsible calumny; "they say," a giant murderer, iron-gloved to slay you, a fleet, elusive, vaporous will-o'-the-wisp, when you would seize and choke it; "they say," mighty Thug though it be which strangles from behind the purest victim, had not been ever known ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... but he was already pulling his swing, and it only gashed a long streak. The thug shrieked hoarsely and fell over. That left the way clear to the door; Bruce Gordon was through it and into the night in two soaring leaps. After only a few days on Mars, his legs were still hardened to Earth gravity, and he had more than a double ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... on and on, you feel that on the very next page, Bismarck will surely go to the scaffold, or will fall by the dagger of some "friend of the people," a thug ever after regarded as the veritable Savior of his country for the assassination of the ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... create a division in the other world, but not in this"; at another time he wrote, "Violent remedies only aggravate spiritual diseases." And he was now so tested, that these expressions were found to embody not merely an idea, but a belief. For, when the Protestants in La Rochelle, though thug owing tolerance and even existence to a Catholic, vexed Catholics in a spirit most intolerant, even that could not force him to abridge the religious liberties ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... Turk, and the Atheist, Essene, Erastian Whig, And the Thug and the Druse and the Catholic, And the crew ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... "Providing the notorious thug Kai Lung is not thereby brought in," suggested the narrow-minded Ming-shu, who equally desired to learn ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... with a revolver ordered him to hand out the bank's cash yesterday, but he said he couldn't do it unless the thug was identified. This took the fellow so aback, he hesitated ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... to be," I told him. "False modesty is the refuge of the incompetent. I'm going to catch this thug and I'll tell you how I'll do it. He's going to hit again soon, and wherever he hits there will be some kind of a periodical with my plant in it. Whatever else he is after, he is going to take all of the magazines and papers he can find. Partly to satisfy ...
— The Misplaced Battleship • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... not so much that a thug and criminal known as Slimmy Jack should have been murdered by another wretch of his own breed; indeed, that such should prey upon one another is far from being a matter of regret, for we might hope ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... of the orange and myrtle?" where the Thug crawls cautiously with his strangling cord, and the tiger welcomes you ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... slight parting between the two front incisors, the upper only, is considered a beauty by Arabs; why it as hard to say except for the racial love of variety. "Sugar" (Thug) in the text means, primarily, the opening of the mouth, the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... cried, half choking. "O please go away, you—you Thug! How dare you think that when ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... chap! Well, we all have our troubles, don't we! Who is this young thug! Not a friend of yours, ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... place, and sized up the result pretty accurately. The kidnaping proposition had failed, but the guy in the silk hat had got clear away in a bully good car— how good I know now. It seemed to me that, next to rescuing that charming young lady, it was important something should be known about the thug who wanted to carry her off, and, when my eyes lit on a workmanlike motor bicycle with a side-car rig standing close to the curb, and well clear of the arena, said I to myself: 'George T. Handyside, this is where you take a flier, and maybe Illinois will score ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... melancholy in their consequences, that the thing stands alone in man's experience, and has no parallel upon earth. It outdoes all other accidents because it is the last of them. Sometimes it leaps suddenly upon its victims, like a Thug; sometimes it lays a regular siege and creeps upon their citadel during a score of years. And when the business is done, there is sore havoc made in other people's lives, and a pin knocked out by which ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson |
