"Torture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they should be cast to the dogs, to be devoured, &c., was mentioned. A rev gentleman could not understand the conduct of Government; could not see that there was any impropriety in torturing men's souls; seemed to think that a good deal might be said in favour of bodily torture as well! These are your teachers, O Israel! Imagine what the pupils ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... which either creates or intensifies all the evils under which the people writhe in despair. Once it becomes the instrument of a regenerate humanity, that is to say, when men have become compassionate, loving, and devoted, then the social question will cease to exist, and the old instrument of torture will become a ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... was yet day. Fierce was the pain of my wound, But I saw it was death to stir, For fifty paces away Their trenches were. In torture I prayed for the dark And the stealthy step of my friend Who, stanch to the very end, Would creep to the danger zone And offer his life as a mark To save ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... there are absurdities in the works of the inventors of Utopias; nevertheless they deserve our sympathy. The hideousness of the world tormented them, and, in order to make it beautiful, they endured everything. Recall to mind More decapitated, Campanella put seven times to the torture, Buonarotti with a chain round his neck, Saint-Simon dying of want; many others. They might have lived in peace; but no! they marched on their way with their heads towards ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... chastisement of man.* (* "Estos mosquitos que llaman zancudos gritones los parece cria la naturaleza para castigo y tormento de los hombres." "Those mosquitos which are called buzzing zancudos, Nature seems to have created for the especial punishment and torture of man." Fray Pedro Simon.) These strange punishments have not always been confined to the lay-brothers. There happened in 1788 one of those monastic revolutions, of which it is difficult to form a conception in Europe, according to the ideas that prevail of the peaceful state of the Christian ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... never had time to come. The cause of most of his trouble, however, was clothes; seatless trousers, elbowless coats, brimless hats, constituted a series of daily mortifications which were little short of torture. ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... Billingsgate. I may say, from intimate knowledge, that we should have lost the services of the greatest character of our country, had he been assailed with the degree of abandoned licentiousness now practised. The torture he felt under rare and slight attacks, proved that under those of which the federal bands have shown themselves capable, he would have thrown up the helm in a burst of indignation. Yet this effect of sensibility must not be yielded to. If we suffer ourselves to be frightened ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... his people took him up and set out with him to visit the Devotee and crave her prayers, and Destiny brought them altogether by the way. So they fared forward in a body till they came to the city wherein the man dwelt for whom she had paid the thousand dirhams to deliver him from torture, and found him about to travel to her by reason of a malady which had betided him. Accordingly, they all journeyed on together, unknowing that the holy woman was she whom they had so foully wronged, and ceased not going till they came to her city and foregathered at the gates of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... had made one, was drowned in the crashing of glass. Better that she should be startled, even to the point of swooning, rather than endure for another second the torture that that fiend was inflicting ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... Modesty is very early taught to little girls by their mothers, and with extreme jealousy, one might say, by esprit de corps. They are watching in advance over the happiness of the future lover. To a timid and tender woman there ought to be no greater torture than to allow herself in the presence of a man something which she thinks she ought to blush at. I am convinced that a proud woman would prefer a thousand deaths. A slight liberty taken on the tender side by the man she loves gives a woman a moment ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the rest halts becoming more and more frequent, and with no break in the monotony of mud and islands. As evening approached they stopped and prepared for the night. Higgins now was all but a wreck. His weight was beginning to tell upon him and his thirst had become torture. With his knife Payne cut armfuls of branches from the nearest island and piled them high upon the mats ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... curvature of the spine; then it is burned off in chunks and triangles and squares; it is yanked out by the handfuls, it is wadded and twisted and tugged at and built up into an Eiffel tower, and—after a few hours of such torture—the little woman takes out the sixty odd hairpins, shakes it loose, gets every hair into a three-ply tangle of its own, and then hops into bed! When she gets up in the morning she pulls out and combs out more hair than she can make grow in ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... an old man, who watched her with solicitude and the most devoted affection; and when arriving alongside, the young lady was requested to come on board, and she complied readily with our entreaty, the despair that shaded the countenance of the old man delineated the torture of his heart. This peculiar appearance of the patriarchal face was not lost upon R——, who was as observant, as he is full of fun, and turning to me, he said, "Let's take her for a sail, and leave ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... Sancho!" here exclaimed Don Quixote; "sixty thousand devils fly away with thee and thy proverbs! For the last hour thou hast been stringing them together and inflicting the pangs of torture on me with every one of them. Those proverbs will bring thee to the gallows one day, I promise thee; thy subjects will take the government from thee, or there will be revolts among them. Tell me, where dost thou pick them up, thou booby? ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... stand it," he said recklessly. "There are certain forms of torture that drive a man crazy. Bear with ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... cannot live, he can at least die, for his country. Do not deny him this supreme consolation. Consider! Every indignity, every torture which Carthage shall heap on his dying hours, will be better than a trumpet's call to your armies. They will remember only Regulus, their fellow-soldier and their leader. They will forget his defeats. They will regard only his services to the Republic. ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... stand for him and yet keep herself clean without complaint made the man worse. He tried to break her spirit in a thousand ways, tried to make her the same as he was, tried to make her a bad woman, like the others he had known. It appeared like the one pleasure he got was to torture her." ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... Lanier that Nemesis has found the most susceptible joint in his conscious being, and with relentless persistence is testing its capacity for torture. ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... brought cooling to Bonbright's head. He had made a fool of himself. He was ashamed, humiliated, and to be humiliated is no minor torture to a young man. ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... awake to attend the fire and guard the camp. Little Mabel Ashbridge slept on in blissful ignorance of the awful fate impending over her childish head. Only the good man himself suffered a torture beyond the power of ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... to think of the follies of the early part of the war, as illustrated by the outfits of the volunteers. They were so heavily clad, and so burdened with all manner of things, that a march was torture, and the wagon trains were so immense in proportion to the number of troops, that it would have been impossible to guard them in an enemy's country. Subordinate officers thought themselves entitled to transportation for trunks, mattresses, and folding bedsteads, and the privates were as ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... the power of speech. It was indeed agony to watch the clear water rippling and washing above my head, yet feel no solace of it on my limbs: as though I had been a senseless brazen image lying at the bottom of a well. But the image, if it felt no refreshment, would have suffered no torture; whereas every inch of my skin throbbed with thirst, and every vein was a mouth of Dives praying for a drop of water. Oh, Father, how shall I tell you the grievous pains that I endured? Sometimes I so feared ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... She had been hunted and caught like a wild animal; and she was soon to find that the walls of her enclosure, which at first seemed so wide that she perceived them not, were closing in upon her day by day as in a mediaeval torture chamber, forcing her step by step towards the ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... will endure to the ever-delayed end! Job, on the other hand, is the more troubled because it is He who is at the head and the heart, who is the beginning and the end of things, that has laid his hand upon him with such a heavy torture that he takes his flesh in his teeth for pain. He cannot, will not believe him a tyrant; but, while he pleads against his dealing with himself, loves him, and looks to him as the source of life, the power and gladness of being. He dares not think God unjust, but not ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... youth have known the torture of apprehension will be able to judge of the poor child's agony when, after four months of a life amid the warmth of sympathy, one of the Jesuit fathers who directed the college announced to him, thinking it would afford him pleasure, the expected arrival of an American, ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... his savage disposition. His attempt to escape was of the boldest kind, and was spoken of with astonishment by those who witnessed it, but so desperate an act only proved how much more these people value liberty than life. I am sure that bold savage would have submitted to torture without a groan; he was the most repulsive native in aspect that I ever saw, and had a most ferocious countenance. The thick lip and white teeth, the lowering brow, and deep set but sharp eye, with the rapidly retiring forehead all betrayed the ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... and I could hear his hard breathing, and see how he was striving to master the fierce emotion in his breast. His eyes were mostly fixed on me with a savage scowl, and for a moment or so I fancied that he must have saved my life so as to take it himself in some way which would add torture and throw dismay ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... convulsions that accompanied its dying now began to torture the vast frame of the Roman Empire, and even the Christians were caught up in the whirlpool of selfish warring interests. We still find scattered references to special knowledge imparted to the leaders and teachers ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... haughty king was seated, In lands and conquests great; Pale and awful was his countenance, As on his throne he sate; For what he thinks, is terror, And what he looks, is wrath, And what he speaks, is torture, And what he writes, is death. And 'gainst a marble pillar He shiver'd it in twain; And thus his curse he shouted, Till ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... the satisfaction of assuring ourselves that the fathers of our liberty had two legs apiece, and crossed them in concert with the utmost regularity. One might think, at first, that these narrow boots were as uncomfortable to the calesero as the Scottish instrument of torture of that name; but his little swagger when he is down, and his freedom in kicking when he is up, show that he has ample ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... the Rhine that society appeared like a vile phantom which had but to be exorcised to vanish. And the exorcism to which he had recourse was threats of vengeance, threats which before had terrified, because they had behind them a force which made them good. Torture had been an integral part of the old law. The peasant expected it were he insubordinate. Death alone was held to be too little to inspire respect for caste. Some frightful spectacle was usually provided to magnify ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... gone wrong?" demanded the witch. "Did yonder sniffling hypocrite thrust my darling from his door? The villain! I'll set twenty fiends to torture him till he offer thee his daughter on his ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... pain of Mr. Lindsay selecting some other lady and learning to love her as his wife, forgetting the child Regina; but when she forced herself to reflect that her guardian would soon be Mrs. Carew's husband, the torture seemed unendurable. ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... strength: it was no mere weakly sentiment, but a powerful type of human love which had been able to carry me through fifteen years of married life without one hour of quarrelling; its roots were deep into my heart and mind: the very strength and perfection of it but made of it a greater instrument for torture. Why should this most beautiful of all human emotions carry with it so heavy a penalty, for which no remedy appeared to exist? It had not then been made clear to me that all human loves must first be offered up and ascend into the love of God: then only are they freed from this Pain-Tax. God ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... to be useless, since it was performed with vicarious promises. Churches were useless, for the Church of God consists of the congregation of the faithful; the Cross, as being the instrument of Christ's torture, was a symbol to be destroyed rather than invoked; there was no real presence and no sacrifice in the Mass, for Christ's body was made and given once for all at the Last Supper; all offerings and prayers for the dead were useless, ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... mind was most pitiable to see. It was the mental torture of a conscientious man, oppressed beyond endurance by an unintelligible responsibility ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... circle, an' all hands an' the oxen inside, an' drove the Indians off, killin' a lot of 'em. They was too strong that way, so what'd the Indians do, to draw 'em out into the open, but take two white girls, captured from some other train, an' begin to torture 'em. They done it just out of gunshot, but so everybody could see. The idea was that the white men couldn't stand it, an' would rush out, an' then the Indians'd have 'em where they ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... players' you are severe—and yet I was glad to hear you severe—it is a happy excess, I think. When men of intense reality, as all great poets must be, give their hearts to be trodden on and tied up with ribbons in turn, by men of masks, there will be torture if there is not desecration. Not that I know much of such things—but I have heard. Heard from Mr. Kenyon; heard from Miss Mitford; who however is passionately fond of the theatre as a writer's medium—not ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... night. The whole surface of sea included in the picture is divided into two ridges of enormous swell, not high, nor local, but a low, broad heaving of the whole ocean, like the lifting of its bosom by deep drawn breath after the torture of the storm. Between these two ridges the fire of the sunset falls along the trough of the sea, dyeing it with an awful but glorious light, the intense and lurid splendor which burns like gold, and bathes like blood. Along ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... much-enduring, good-humoured, kind, royally courteous, and considerate, even beyond what may be gathered from this part of the book, while the loyalty of the Highlanders (as in the case of Mackinnon, flogged nearly to death) was proof against torture as well as against gold. It is the Sobieski strain, not the Stuart, that we here admire in Prince Charles; it is a piety, a loyalty, a goodness like Gordon's that we revere in old ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... perished, for the vision of perfection ever haunted him. At first Christ's words and look of earnest affection filled his heart with a tumult of joy: but having fallen back into the old sordid self, the very memory of his master's face became a curse and torture. And so the vision ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... the end of the line over the bough, sailorwise, and made a running bowline in the part that came down. There is torture in that way, and some of the men grumbled thereat, being less hard hearted. So they began to argue about the matter, and Streone watched my face, for this was pleasure to him, as it seemed, though he did not ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... interrogations that followed; she did not understand what Mrs. Dusautoy was aiming at, in the close questioning, which to her amazement did not seem to offend, but rather to be gratifying by the curious divination of all sensations. It made Albinia feel as if she had been carrying on a deliberate system of torture, when she heard of a pain in the back, hardly ever ceasing, aggravated by sitting upright, growing severe with the least fatigue, and unless favoured by day, becoming so bad at night as to take away many ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fathers, and brothers by brothers. The smoke rises in the valley, and the home is blotted out. All that makes life worth living goes, then life itself. What sterner test can a nation be put to than this? It is a torture long and slow; the agony and bloody sweat. I know well that if my own country were invaded I should, or hope I should, behave exactly as these men are doing; and as I should call it patriotism in my own case, I cannot refuse to ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... power in the state right under the eyes of the wise and good Andrea, who is subject to no illusions with regard to him. No objection can be made to Fiesco's mask of gayety and cynicism in the first two acts, for that is historical. But was it necessary for him to deceive and torture the wife to whom in the end he appears loyally devoted? In any case it is clear that the exposition should have hinted somehow at the true condition of affairs, for it is a good old rule that while the people on the stage may disguise themselves and befool one another as they will, the audience ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... force, what would we think of the world then, poor thing? A poor woman with nothing to live for walks the streets that she may live; a rich woman with much to live for dies slowly and in great torture, of cancer. If we accept the Great Design we shouldn't even feel pity for these two women, we should say of them merely, 'How right! How beautiful!' But we do feel pity for them, and by that mere feeling of pity deny automatically the beauty of the Great Design, in the ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... the ambassadors intimated their intention of employing personal violence; and, one of them having stamped three times with his foot, the Eunuch Sahil entered, followed by the jailers, bearing that frightful instrument of torture, ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... fact that the old Marquise, whose energy no fatigue, no moral torture could abate, fainted from happiness on ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... did not continue to guard her chastity. Ah, yes, it is better to live than to die, that I may be able to look after her! But God cannot wish that I should take such care and pains about a woman's belly without any pay or reward, and receive nothing in return but torture of soul and body. I will not bear all the trouble and anguish of mind that many suffer in living with their wives. It angers me and saddens me to think that God only permits me to live to enjoy the trifling incidents of married life. I want full liberty and freedom to ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... word, though Miss Bibby, going over and over again in her mind the great meeting, tried hard to imagine that she had forgotten some notable thing he had said. Then she began to torture herself with fears that she had behaved stupidly. The suddenness had been too much for her; she could not recollect one solitary thing that she had said except a fluttering "Certainly," when he asked permission to take the children with him. What must ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... dangling by the tongue from the wicked little charmers. If the flower assimilated their dead bodies as the pitcher plant, for example, does those of its victims, the fly's fate would seem less cruel. To be killed by slow torture and dangled like a scarecrow simply for pilfering a drop of nectar is surely an execution of justice ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... till he had time to try the experiment, especially as his own appetite would be improved by the exercise. This was a dreadful prospect for the unhappy prisoner, but meantime it prolonged his life a few hours, as he was immediately hung up in the larder and left to himself. There, in torture of mind and body, like a fish upon a hook, the wretched boy began at last to reflect seriously upon his former ways, and to consider what a happy home he might have had, if he could only have been satisfied with business and pleasure succeeding each ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... up and down the room. His face was white, his eyes were wild. He had the haggard look of one who has come through a long series of harrowing experiences up to the supreme torture where there is nothing ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... by the blows nor the menaces that were directed against him. He only exclaimed, "You have slain my chief and father, and lo! I have also struck down the head of your nation. It is well. Slay me—torture me, if you will. I can bear unmoved any torments ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... gave bases on balls he would prolong the struggle. Though it was torture for him to go slow, he fought his desire to hurry. But it was impossible to lose himself in the game. The edges of his skill were blunted. Little Falls began ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... Pope! I tell you not of things learned by hearsay; I myself have beheld all these horrors in the Holy Land of Palestine. Through the ancient streets of Jerusalem the accursed infidels stalk in the evil pride of conquest. They insult and oppress, they torture and murder the followers of Christ. They rob and maltreat the pious pilgrims from all lands who toil through desert and over mountain to worship at the tomb of their Lord. Scarcely will these heathen ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... finished roues, who are to be found in most genteel societies. The mysteries of his art are manifold, and principally consist in the following rules and regulations, put forth by an old member of the corps, whose conscience returned to torture him when his reign of earthly ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... with contempt of the red-men, but no red-men, cruel and blood-thirsty as they are, ever do that," he observed. "When they take prisoners they torture them, it is true, for a short time, but they then put them to death; they would not subject them to a long life of torture of soul ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... lungs. But there wasn't time for inventory. The aching silence was lost as the second stage fired. Acceleration built again. This time Rick slipped into the enveloping grayness almost at once. The acceleration was less, and the time of burning was less. Had he not been put through the torture of first-stage acceleration he could have taken the second stage without more than great discomfort. But now he had ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... in the same way in great torture, and in the confusion attending upon his death and funeral ceremonies the struggle which was impending with ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... decaying, and infinite torment of flies, Thoughts of the breezes of May blowing over an English field, Cholera, scurvy, and fever, the wound that would not be healed; Lopping away of the limb by the pitiful, pitiless knife— Torture and trouble in vain-for it never could save us a life. Valor of delicate women who tended the hospital bed; Horror of women in travail among the dying and dead; Grief for our perishing children, and never a moment ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... Katherine did not speak to the Medcroft contingent—in fact, they ignored them quite completely. Mrs. Rodney was very pale and very deeply distressed. She cast many glances at the red-eyed and sheepish Mr. Rodney,—glances that meant much to the further torture of ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... The former, who was quite used to adorning Miss Ethel against her will, looked as amused as her mistresses; and, before Ethel knew what was going on, her muslin was stripped off her back, and that instrument of torture, a half made body, was being tried upon her. She made one of her most wonderful grimaces of despair, and stood still. The dresses were not so bad after all; they were more tasteful than costly, and neither in material nor ornament were otherwise than suitable to the occasion and the wearer. ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... foes paled into insignificance compared with the mosquitos. There are very few places on earth where these pests are so formidable as in the bottom lands of the Missouri, and for weeks and even months they made the lives of our explorers a torture. No other danger, whether from hunger or cold, Indians or wild beasts, was so dreaded by the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the perspiration from his forehead, and caught up his hat; he had been through the seventh circle of torture. ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... crew of the Aix vessel detests its cargo of "black-frocks" and would gladly send them to the bottom.—According to this system, which, up to Thermidor 9, grows worse and worse, imprisonment becomes a torture, oftentimes mortal, slower and more painful than the guillotine, and to such an extent that, to escape it, Champfort opens his veins and Condorcet swallows poison.[4121]The third expedient consists of murder, with or without trial.—178 ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... when Squeers, in a violent outbreak of wrath, and with a cry like the howl of a wild beast, spat upon him, and struck him a blow across the face with his instrument of torture, which raised up a bar of livid flesh as it was inflicted. Smarting with the agony of the blow, and concentrating into that one moment all his feelings of rage, scorn, and indignation, Nicholas sprang upon him, wrested the weapon from his ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... do we want to accomplish as good citizens and patriots? Do we mean only to inflict upon the late rebels pain, degradation, mortification, annoyance, for its own sake; to torture their feelings without any ulterior purpose? Certainly such a purpose could not by any possibility animate high-minded men. I presume, therefore, that those who still favor the continuance of some of the disabilities ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon
... which, with one continuous roar of thunder, blurted forth agony, and mutilation, and death upon their assailants. On the bare cold earth—the night was bitterly, intensely cold—with no food and no water—the living and the dying, in their exhaustion and torture, lay with the dead in their tranquillity. Broadfoot, with a happier fate, had already yielded up his spirit; Somerset, sensible, but helplessly benumbed, was lingering through the tedious hours, to die in the morning, knolled ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... uninterrupted possession. Of our health this seems to me especially true; and it is too often the case that nothing but its suspension or the sight of its deplorable loss in others awakens us to a sense of our great privilege in having four sound limbs and a body free from racking torture or enfeebling, wasting disease. As for me, what I should do without my health I cannot conceive. All my good spirits (and I have a wonderful supply, considering all things) come to me from my robust physical existence, my good digestion, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... main subject in this story and its companion—the trial, to a point of utter torture, of knightly faith, and several passages in the conduct of both, more especially the exaggerated scenes in the House of Baldringham, and hermitage of Engedi, are signs of the gradual decline in force of intellect and soul which those who love Scott best have done him the worst injustice in ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... to Hallam's lips. "Hush! Do you suppose God blunders? I don't. If He had meant her to stay with us, He would have found a way to cure her. To think otherwise is torture. No. No, no, indeed no! Father is left and so are we. We have got to live and take care of him and ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... companion. "Any thing is better than passive submission in such circumstances. I see but little, indeed no hope of escape; but idleness is torture. If I endeavour to raise this ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... at Inanda's Kraal, when the vow is over, they will give you a taste of Kaffir habits. Not death, my friend—that would be simple enough—but a slow death with every refinement of horror. You have broken into their sacred places, and you will be sacrificed to Laputa's god. I have seen native torture before, and his own mother would run away shrieking from a man who had ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... flourishing and sending yearly to Salt Lake as many as they can find means to transport. The history of this people will probably never be fully written, but they endured hardships, privations, sufferings, torture and death. Their settlement of Utah was one of extreme peril and anxiety, and for years it was a question whether they would survive or perish. Had they been actuated by conscience, by pure religious zeal, by patriotism, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... demonstrations, where they promoted the idea of a general strike for an eight hours' day, and in the anti-militarist propaganda in the army, violent prosecutions were directed against them, especially in the Latin countries (including physical torture in the Barcelona Castle) and the United States (the execution of five Chicago Anarchists in 1887). Against these prosecutions the Anarchists retaliated by acts of violence which in their turn were followed by more executions from above, and new acts of revenge ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... then the impulse which leads one in the blindness of generous feeling to take up a man who is unworthy of one in every respect, a man who utterly fails to understand one, who is ready to torture one at every opportunity and, in contradiction to everything, to exalt such a man into a sort of ideal, into a dream. To concentrate in him all one's hopes, to bow down before him; to love him all one's life, ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the massacre of citizens before his eyes. You have not, O Romans, to deal with a wicked and profligate man, but with an unnatural and savage beast. And, since he has fallen into a well, let him be buried in it. For if he escapes out of it, there will be no inhumanity of torture which it will be possible to avoid. But he is at present hemmed in, pressed, and besieged by those troops which we already have, and will soon be still more so by those which in a few days the new consuls will levy. Apply yourselves then to this business, as you are ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... taken all care of [2]. For at night, fastened with chains, he shall be watched; in the daytime, beneath the ground, he shall be getting out stone. For many a day will I torture him; I'll not respite him for a ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... advice sent by the governor of Aden to inform them of us. When the Calicut ship was under our command, the governor sent off a boat, manned with Arabs, having on board two Turkish soldiers of the garrison, who had formerly been instruments of Abdal Rahman[363] aga, to bind and torture our men whom they had betrayed. On seeing our men, whom they had used so ill, they were in great doubt what usage they might now receive, as their guilty conscience told them they merited no good treatment at our hands. They brought some ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... Dante's Hell, and all the horrors and cruelties of the torture chamber of the lost! The man who walks with open eyes and bleeding heart through the shambles of our civilization needs no such fantastic images of the poet to teach ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... instruments of torture. The dungeons must be underground, and only a single ray of light must penetrate. He is much troubled to find that the dungeon in the Castle of Chillon is much more cheerful than he had supposed it was. The Bridge ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... learned that for me there was no pleasure in taking needlessly the life of anything that lived. We are only partially civilized as yet in the treatment of our domesticated animals. How many people think of the torture of the curb bit, of the check, of neglect in the case of cold, of thirst, of hunger? How many people, I say, civilized and in our best society, are careful yet as to the comfort, the rights, of those that serve them in these ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... at love with our Simeon for a whole year. Such a Herod, the skunk! I didn't have a whole spot on me. I always went about in black and blue marks. And it wasn't for any reason at all, but just simply so—he'd go in the morning into a room with me, lock himself in, and start in to torture me. He'd wrench my arms, pinch my breasts, grab my throat and begin to strangle me. Or else he'd be kissing, kissing, and then he'd bite the lips so that the blood would just spurt out ... I'd start crying—but ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... society and conversation of the student Hoffland caused him a bitter pang. Denis sincerely loved the bright-faced young girl, and no one who has not loved can comprehend the sinking of the heart which preference for another occasions. The last refinement of earthly torture is assuredly jealousy—and Denis was beginning to suffer this torture. More than once Lucy seemed to feel that she was causing her lover pain; and then she would turn away from Hoffland and gladden poor Denis with one of her brilliant smiles, and with some indifferent word, nothing in itself, ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... on his first day aboard came back to the lad and made him shudder. There had been stories current among the men that gave a glimpse of how Stede Bonnet dealt with those who were treacherous. Which of a dozen awful deaths was in store for him? Ah, if only they would spare the torture, he thought that he could die bravely, a worthy scion of dauntless stock. He thought of Job who must have been seized in his bunk below. The poor fellow was to have short happiness in his changed way of ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... journal. He cowered in agony before these visions. He dared not seek the little park again. He feared to show himself in the streets. He dreaded the short walk from his dormitory to the Vatican. His life became a sustained torture—a consuming agony of uncertainty, interminable suspense, fearful foreboding. The cruelty of his position corroded him. His health suffered, and his cassock hung like a bag about his ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... Sipping only what is sweet, Thou dost mock at fate and care, Leave the chaff, and take the wheat. When the fierce northwestern blast Cools sea and land so far and fast, Thou already slumberest deep; Woe and want thou canst outsleep; Want and woe, which torture us, Thy ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... loved him so was faithful and true, wishing to know truth of the matter, [the Governor] caused the cacique and some of his chief men to be called, on the next day, to his room. And he told them what was being said about them; after investigation had been made and torture had been given to some Indians, it came out that the cacique and the chiefs were without any blame, and it was certified that, neither by word nor deed, had they done anything to the hurt of the Spaniards, but that two chiefs had said that because their ancestors had never been subject ...
— An Account of the Conquest of Peru • Pedro Sancho
... undergraduate life flitting about the place—luckless youths, in white ties and bands, who are undergoing the peine forte et dure with different degrees of composure; and their friends who are there to look after them. You may go in and watch the torture yourself if you are so minded, for the viva voce schools are open to the public. But one such experiment will be enough for you, unless you are very hard-hearted. The sight of the long table, behind ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... heart from my bosom that I must say these things to you. I have risked all my honor in your hands. Is there no reward for that? Is my recompense to be only your assertion that I torment you, that I torture you? What! Is there no torture for me as well? The thought that I have done this covertly, secretly—what do you think that ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... narrow limits of his room. A natural impulse had caused him to interrupt Lydia's triumphant speech, which he knew was not intended for his ears, but her laugh rang in the air and mocked him. What was the torture that she had devised and whose effects she so curiously analyzed? There would ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... its tail, and teach the cat to jump for it.' No sooner did this thought present itself than it was put into practice, and I again was obliged to sustain the shocking sight of a brother put to the torture. I, in the mean time, was placed upon the table, with a pan put over me, in which there was a crack, so that I could see as well as hear all that passed: and from this place it was that I beheld my beloved ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... always considered jealousy a vulgar failing—and her face flushed with shame and humiliation that she, who had always prided herself upon being above petty weakness, should harbour so despicable a sentiment, and that of a dead woman. And yet she could only acknowledge honestly that it was torture to her to hear Francis speak of Phil in terms of such affection. Now that this odious whisper had made itself heard, how could she submit to his embrace? Could she ever forget? What could she do? Her deep, passionate love craved ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... "'What torture on both sides! Octave would be always doubting me, I doubting him. I, quite involuntarily, should give him a rival wholly unworthy of him, a man whom I despise, but with whom I have known raptures branded on me with fire, which are my shame, but ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... my father says!" said a little boy. "He can't swim, for he says it's better for a sailor not to be able to; it only keeps you in torture." ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... our way along the dry bed of the Sha Shin Ho, I jumped out, and for most of that day I either walked or rode the Mongol's pony. A Peking cart may have other and better uses, but as an instrument of torture it is unrivalled. Just as the thing was in Marco Polo's time, so it is to-day. You crawl in on hands and knees, and then painfully screw yourself round, and so sit cross-legged, or with feet outstretched if there is room, your head only escaping ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... discipline of unceasing pain, borne with that fortitude which could make her an entertaining and interesting companion even while the sweat of mortal agony was starting from her brow. Her own room she kept as a last asylum, to which she would silently retreat when the torture became too intense for the repression of society, and there alone, with closed doors, she wrestled with her agony. The stubborn independence of her nature took refuge in this final fastness; and she ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... myself of an influence that would make her father fear me. Well, I played and I lost—and then, like other players and losers, even white ones, I was desperate. You were to be married to another—a man I hated. Life had lost its only charm, I could not bear that you should be his bride. My torture was intense. I asked ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... falls, for there is always a chapter of accedents prepared for us during our residence at them. the musquetoes continue to infest us in such manner that we can scarcely exist; for my own part I am confined by them to my bier at least 3/4ths of my time. my dog even howls with the torture he experiences from them, they are almost insupportable, they are so numerous that we frequently get them in our ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... there is mischief of some sort in the wind. The question is how to get to the bottom of it. Of course, the grand master might order the arrest of this Greek and of the prison officer, but you may be sure that neither would commit himself unless torture were applied; and I, for one, have no belief in what any man says under such circumstances. The most honest man may own himself a traitor when racked with torture, and may denounce innocent men. It is at best a clumsy device. What think you of ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... is being more capricious than the winds! You know, too well, how far my suit is unpleasant to your gardian, to torture a slight departure from cold observances into cause of serious complaint. I had hoped—perhaps, I should say, I have presumed on the contents of your letter, for which I return a thousand thanks; but do not thus cruelly destroy ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... a bad plan after all? You may laugh at my idea, perhaps—but I could not help its occurring to me all the same. Now with the rack and tortures and so on—you suffer terrible pain of course; but then your torture is bodily pain only (although no doubt you have plenty of that) until you die. But here I should imagine the most terrible part of the whole punishment is, not the bodily pain at all—but the certain knowledge that in an hour,—then in ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... her now, that life without love would be more than the agonies of the lowest hells. Then again, to live with Rathunor as his wife, while he all the time thought her to be Nu-nah, would be an incessant torture, keener and more intense than if she were chained by, as a third person, to behold him loving the actual ...
— Within the Temple of Isis • Belle M. Wagner
... pierced with a sword; others have their breasts burnt, and others again have an instrument run through their tongue in order to calm the wrath of their offended deities; nor can they, in their opinions, put themselves to sufficient torture. ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... less oblivious of this monstrous crime. In the course of the following year, while at the fortress of Baux near Arles, Francois de Guise was in the act of firing off a cannon, which burst and wounded him in so frightful a manner that he expired two hours subsequently in extreme torture, thus partially expiating by a death of agony a ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... off, take it off! I don't wonder the poor old boy has the blues with a thing like that on"; and Charlie sat looking at what seemed to him an instrument of torture, with such a sober face that Rose took it gently away, and went in to bid ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... the less of it. Do not imagine that the illusion is, or can be, or ought to be, complete. If it were possible, no Phalaris or Perillus could devise a crueller torture. Here are two imitations: first, the poet's of the sufferer; secondly, the actor's of both: poetry is superinduced. No man in pain ever uttered the better part of the language used by Sophocles. We admit it, and willingly, and are at ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... incomprehensible, and, in doing it, asks you not to question, for she can not explain; asks you to think of her kindly; to trust her still. Here is a test for your friendship. Others may pry, drag her name about, torture her with their curiosity; she has appealed to you. Respect her secret. Let her bury it if she will, and can; you can not help her. If she has become that bad man's wife, she is past human help. Undoubtedly there ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... so why worry your head, dear, over a mere fable? I have already gone very carefully into all the facts that are proved, and have come to the conclusion that the story of the torture of his Eminence is a fairy-tale, and that the supernatural Whispers have only been heard ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... took the whole blame upon himself. Surprised at this magnanimity, the Viceroy—who is described in Don Quixote as "the homicide of all human kind"[74]—sent for him, and found him as good as his word. No threats of torture or death could extort from him a syllable which could implicate any one of his fellow-captives. His undaunted manner evidently overawed the Viceroy, for instead of chastizing he purchased Cervantes from his master ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... placed both out of his sight and of his reach. It is neither visible nor tangible. It is inaccessible by stripes or torments. Thus, while the body is in bondage, on account of the religion of the soul, the soul itself is free, and, while it suffers under torture, it enjoys the divinity, and feels felicity in his presence. But if all these things are so, it cannot be within the province either of individual magistrates or of governments, consisting of fallible ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... bring to your intelligence the battles at Fort Meigs and at the river Raisin. American prisoners were there given by English officers to their Indian allies for torture and death. The English war cry at Sandusky was, "Give the d—— ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... I have sometimes suffered with hunger, cold and pain, and have some idea of what starving, freezing and torture may be, but among all the ills to which flesh is heir, I doubt if there is one so trying to the nerves and brain of man as enforced and long-continued vigilance, when all his failing nature sinks for want of sleep. Insanity and death must soon ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... their feet. When a girl is seven or eight years old, her mother binds them for her, and everybody approves, If the mother did otherwise, the girl herself would be the first to reproach her when she grew up. It is wonderful how they endure the torture; but public opinion has sanctioned the custom for centuries, and made it as much a duty for a Chinese woman to have small feet as it is for us to wear clothes! And yet they do a wonderful thing. When ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... "You torture my words into an interpretation of which I never dreamed, and look upon all things through the distorting lenses of your own moodiness. It is worse than useless for us to attempt an amicable discussion, for your bitterness ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... of His greatness and glory, whether expressed by the simple prayer of a Covenanter on the hill-side or by the ceremonies of a Catholic priesthood, or even by the prostrations of a Mahometan, or by the self-torture of a Hindoo, may and ought to inspire us with respect and with a devout feeling, at least when the worshippers themselves are pious and sincere. Otherwise, indeed, if the mummery is more apparent than ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... raw blood as food at dinnertime. When they were at work they could not even wipe off their faces—they were as helpless as newly born babes in that respect; and it may seem like a small matter, but when the sweat began to run down their necks and tickle them, or a fly to bother them, it was a torture like being burned alive. Whether it was the slaughterhouses or the dumps that were responsible, one could not say, but with the hot weather there descended upon Packingtown a veritable Egyptian plague of flies; there could be no describing this—the houses would be black ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... the rich Marienka lived in her castle, dying of hunger, and seeking in vain for a root to allay the torture that was consuming her. God had humbled ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... appeared, he wrote to a friend that his health had quite failed, and that indigestion, headaches, with a looming hopeless breakdown of body and mind made his life a burden and a curse. The twenty years of research he devoted to the problems of evolution were one long torture. For sixteen more years, during which he worked upon and produced immortal classics of biology, he was the most wretched and unhappy sufferer from neurasthenia. His life was a continuous alternation of small doses of work and large doses of rest. So he was enabled to publish ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... lips as he thought of the miserable girl's confession, following on hours of mental torture at the ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... smiles again. The hard man's eyes filled with tears, as he thought of it. He watched the deep, tearless sobs that shook her breast: he had wounded her to death,—his bonny Margret! She was like a dead thing now: what need to torture her longer? Let him be manly and go out to his solitary life, taking the remembrance of what he had done with him for company. He rose uncertainly,—then came to her: was that the way ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... gave the names of those who had been "made privy afterwards," but he still refused to reveal those of the original traitors. He was accordingly put to the torture. Gentle or ungentle, this worked its office: and on the ninth of November, after half-an-hour on the rack, Fawkes recounted the names of all his accomplices. He made also an admission which proved of considerable ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... old cathedral of Notre-Dame, stripped of everything worth stealing, and going from street to street (we paused a long time in the one where Calvin was born, a disagreeable, but I suppose useful, man!) that we began to realize the slow torture inflicted by the Germans. Of course, "lessons" had to be taught. Rebellious persons had to be "punished." Nothing but justice had been done upon the unjust by their just conquerors. And oh, how thorough and painstaking they were ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... man is rewarded by an eternity of bliss, happiness and joy—without end. Try to think of what ETERNITY means—think of the aeons upon aeons of time, on and on, and on, forever—and the poor sinner is suffering exquisite torture all that time, and in all time to come, without limit, respite, without mercy! And all the same time, the "good" man is enjoying his blissful state, without limit, or end, or satiety! And the time of ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... general, the greatest speaker, the greatest lawgiver, the greatest writer of Latin prose whom the great Roman people ever produced, and also the bravest man of his day, as he was the kindest. In an age when torture was a legitimate part of justice, he caused the pirates who had taken him, and whom he took in turn, to be mercifully put to death before he crucified their dead bodies for his oath's sake, and when his long-trusted servant tried to poison him he would not ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... Constructive thought in Ireland for the solution of her own difficulties and the harmonizing of her own discordant elements had been systematically dammed, or diverted into revolutionary excesses, which, in the traditional spirit of Fitzgibbonism, were made the pretext for more stupid torture. Thus, O'Connell, whose attachment to law was so strong that in 1843, when the Repeal agitation had reached seemingly irresistible proportions, he deliberately restrained it, was tried for sedition. So, too, were dissipated the brilliant talents of the Young Ireland group and the ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... on the 27th of May, 1610, with the most atrocious severities of torture, of which the drawing by horses was but the last out of a scene that continued for many hours. The day before he had been racked to the very extremity of human suffering. The horses dragged at the wretch's body for an hour in vain; at length a nobleman present sent one of his own, which was ...
— Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850 • Various
... given my word to your father. But why did you send for me? Only to torture me? I must keep my word to hold my train apart. I've promised my men to stick ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... and the liberty which he bestowed upon them by driving out the despot Nabis, ought to be had in remembrance. There were some few, however, who in order to gain favour with Deinokrates, advised him to put Philopoemen to death by torture, pointing out that he was a dangerous enemy, and would be peculiarly exasperated against Deinokrates if he now were to regain his freedom after having been his captive and having been insulted by him. Finally they put him into what was called the Treasury, a subterranean ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... until, turning into the yard, we find that one of a party of French gentlemen who were on the mountain at the same time is lying on some straw in the stable, with a broken limb: looking like Death, and suffering great torture; and that we were confidently supposed to have ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... from the edge of the woods overlooking Jaulgonne to the east. It must have been directed upon the village, for no bullets whistled around us, so it was probably our first squadron engaging the German cavalry. When I got to the other end of the bridge my impatience increased. It was torture to think of the time it would take to collect my thirty men and hurry forward to help the others; and I noticed the same impatience in my men's looks. Those who were on the bridge, walking slowly and gently across, seemed to implore me to let them trot; but I pretended ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... behind the sea; to them I could return before it was too late, and here were the rough but honest Thither folk, who would doubtless let me live amongst them if that was to be my fate. One or other alternative were better than going to torture ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... preventing its success; just as, had the Government of Louis XVI shown more vigour at the outset of the Revolution, the Reign of Terror would probably never have taken place. Through evidence obtained by torture, the Government got possession of vast stores of arms which the rebels had prepared; by twice seizing the directors of the movement they deprived it of its central organization; and if they were ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... of his death filled all Achaea with lamentation and thirst for revenge. Messenia was ravaged with fire and sword till it submitted. Dinocrates and all who had voted for Philopoemen's death killed themselves to escape death by torture. All Achaea mourned at his funeral, statues were erected to his memory, and the highest honors decreed to him in many cities. In the words of Pausanias, a late Greek writer, "Miltiades was the first, and Philopoemen the last, benefactor to the ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... chemical symbol for raw rubber is C10H16, which turns into isoprene, or 2C5H8. Suddenly, without precedent, Babbitt was not merely bored but admitting that he was bored. It was ecstasy to escape from the table, from the torture of a straight chair, and loll on the ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... working in every heart—a miserable unrest. The miser stood there, and had forgotten the key of his strong box, and he knew the key was sticking in the lock. It would take too long to describe the various sorts of torture that were found there together. Inge felt a terrible pain while she had to stand there as a statue, for she was tied fast ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... go see Laocoon's torture dignifying pain; A father's love and mortal's agony With as immortal's patience blending; vain The struggle! Vain against the coiling strain And gripe and deepening of the dragon's grasp The old man's clinch; the long envenomed chain Rivets the living links; the enormous ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... how he raves! Let us be silent while the warmth and wine Provoke his sluggish blood to steady flow, And each dead sense comes back to life again, O'er the same path of torture which it trod When it went out from him. He'll slumber soon, And, when he wakens, we ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... evil. I was Trewinion's heir, whom her father wished her to marry, and yet she hated the thought of it; while she could not marry the man she loved because of her father's will. Meanwhile she was suffering a terrible torture—and ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... hearing, his form to grow indistinct. Was he playing with her suspense, or could it be that he—a being with heart and nerves like hers, had no conception of the rack on which she waa stretched—no suspicion that every one of his deliberate sentences was a turn of the screw that redoubled her torture? The Ayletts were a strong-willed race, and she repressed all sign of suffering save intense pallor; made this less palpable by screening her eyes from the lamp-light with a paper she took from the table, and thereby throwing ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... that do accuse me; I know of none." Then turning to Leonato, she said, "O my father, if you can prove that any man has ever conversed with me at hours unmeet, or that I yesternight changed words with any creature, refuse me, hate me, torture me ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... repress'd. Canst thou, with more than usual warmth she cried, Thy malice to indulge, and feed thy pride; 60 Canst thou, severe by nature as thou art, With all that wondrous rancour in thy heart, Delight to torture truth ten thousand ways, To spin detraction forth from themes of praise, To make Vice sit, for purposes of strife, And draw the hag much larger than the life, To make the good seem bad, the bad seem worse, And represent our nature as our curse? ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... Such diseases not unfrequently manifest themselves after marriage, which is answer enough to the objection that if they did not wish children they should not marry. There are also women to whom pregnancy is a nine months' torture, and others to whom it is nearly certain to prove fatal. Such a condition cannot be discovered before marriage, and therefore cannot be provided against by a single life. Can such women be asked to ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... sin dies out in a man of itself, through satiety of earthly things, and because no excitement can any longer affect his exhausted powers, that is a death from which we see no new life proceed. The power of sin must be slain in a man by violence; a man must go through the torture of self-knowledge, showing him the contrast between his wretched condition and the higher life to which he is called; he must hear the cry, and accept it as an irrevocable sentence; that an end is to be put to this ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... under his leg and raising and lowering the hammer with one hand, keeping the muzzle pointed toward the steward's head all the while, the latter grew as white as a sheet and trembled in every limb. After he thought he had inflicted sufficient torture upon the timid fellow, the Confederate put up his weapon ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... day! rejoice, rejoice! Come bouse about the porter! Morality's demure decoys Shall here nae mair find quarter: Mackinlay, Russell, are the boys, That Heresy can torture: They'll gie her on a rape a hoyse, And cowe her measure shorter By ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... bursting in and interrupt them, thought Josephine. And supposing the bell rang in the middle? It might be somebody important—about their mourning. Would they get up reverently and go out, or would they have to wait... in torture? ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... side-tracks, which broke the continuity. It was also difficult to speak of Adrian in terms that did not tear our hearts. As a despoiler of the dead, his offence was rank. But we had loved him; and we still loved him, and he had expiated his crime by a year's unimaginable torture. ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... there was brought to birth that modern Ireland, passionate for freedom, which has occupied the stage ever since. In our own time it has knit, as a fractured limb knits, into one tissue with the tradition of the Gaelic peasantry. Hanging and burning, torture and oppression, poison and Penal Laws, bribes and blackguardism so far from exterminating the Irish people actually hammered them into a nation, one and indestructible, proud of its past and confident ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... out-soared the shadow of our night: Envy and calumny and hate and pain, And that unrest which men miscall delight, Can touch him not and torture not again; From the contagion of the world's slow stain He is secure, and now can never mourn A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain, Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn With sparkless ashes load an ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins
... threshold into this vaster region stimulated by the Earth—all his longings would be housed at last like homing birds, nested in the gentle places his yearnings all these years had lovingly built for them—in a living Nature! The fever of modern life, the torture and unrest of a false, external civilization that trained the brain while it still left wars and baseness in the heart, would drop from him like the symptoms of some fierce disease. The god of speed and mechanism that ruled the world ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... an eye wearied to nausea by the perpetual vision of the neat teacher upon the platform, the backs of the heads of the pupils in front of him, and the monotonous stretches of blackboard threateningly defaced by arithmetical formulae and other insignia of torture. Above the blackboard, the walls of the high room were of white plaster—white with the qualified whiteness of old snow in a soft coal town. This dismal expanse was broken by four lithographic portraits, votive offerings of a thoughtful publisher. The portraits ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... great hooks, which are passed through the tender parts of their backs. Sometimes they swing for half an hour; sometimes an hour. The longer they can bear the torture of the swinging, the more acceptable they suppose it will be to their goddess. It occasionally happens, that the flesh in which the hooks are fastened gives way, in which case the poor creature ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder
... O. bear you to meward, or, clad in short frocks in the West, Are you growing the charms that shall capture and torture the heart ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... What is there in her mind? What meaning lurks In speech begun but to be broken short? Would both deceive me with a vain pretence? Have they conspired to put me to the torture? And yet, despite my stern severity, What plaintive voice cries deep within my heart? A secret pity troubles and alarms me. Oenone shall be questioned once again, I must have clearer light upon this crime. Guards, bid Oenone ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... made a vigorous resistance, and knocked down the first savage who seized him with a well-directed blow of his fist, but he was speedily overpowered by others. Thus we were again prisoners, with the prospect of torture and a violent ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... proverb—"The misfortune of many is the consolation of fools." "Where we are is hell, and where hell is there must we ever be," Mephistopheles continues, to which Faust answers that he thinks hell's a fable and asks him who made the world. And finally this tragic Doctor, tortured with our torture, meets Helen, who, although no doubt Marlowe never suspected it, is none other than renascent Culture. And in Marlowe's Faust there is a scene that is worth the whole of the second part of the Faust of Goethe. ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... fire was a painful effort for him, and to move so as to cook his food was torture, and boys of his age can well feel for ...
— Beadle's Boy's Library of Sport, Story and Adventure, Vol. I, No. 1. - Adventures of Buffalo Bill from Boyhood to Manhood • Prentiss Ingraham
... Mary was devoted to her religion. The fires which had burned in Henry's time were kindled again, but now for the torture of Protestants, bishops, and men of mark. Mary wedded the Catholic king and cruel fanatic Philip II of Spain, the most powerful monarch of Europe; so that only to her death and the reign of the persecuted Elizabeth could Protestant Englishmen look for relief. Thus the accession of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... tho' the text of this covenant be easy to be understood, yet some (who, at least think themselves learned), and whom we have found not only stable but stiffened in their own erroneous principles and opinions, will be trying their skill, if not their malice, to wrest, or, as the Greek imports, to torture and set this covenant upon the rack, to make it speak and confess a sense never intended by the composers, or proposers of it: and whereof (if but common ingenuity be the judge) it never will, nor can be ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... of a feeling which is ever the parent of glorious deeds. Was it not inspired by honor, that the Roman Regulus returned to certain torture and death? that the chivalrous King of Israel, when fainting with thirst, poured out to the Lord the water for which his soul longed? that gallant hearts innumerable have crimsoned the battle-field with their hearts blood, rather than that even a ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams |
