"Torturer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... He talks too much of his chains and his uneasy posture; he is rather too much depressed and agitated. His resolution seems to depend on the knowledge which he possesses that he holds the fate of his torturer in his hands, and that the hour of his release will surely come. But Satan is a creature of another sphere. The might of his intellectual nature is victorious over the extremity of pain. Amidst agonies which cannot be conceived without horror, he deliberates, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... of ugly instruments, putting one in mind of a torturer's kit of tools, there are some articles of defence and offence of a bygone age. A coat of mail, with links so flexible, close, and light, that it resembles steel tissue, hangs from a box beside iron cuishes and arm-pieces, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... nothing, we will proceed," said the cruel torturer. "The fourth letter is to Noemi. I tell her in it all she does not yet know: that you have a lawful wife out in the world—that you are a gentleman who has dishonored her, and can never be her husband; who only sacrificed her to his base lusts, and who is a murderer besides. ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... such wedges constituted ordinary and eight extraordinary torture; and this latter was seldom inflicted, except on those condemned to death, as almost no one ever survived it, the sufferer's legs being crushed to a pulp before he left the torturer's bands. In this case M. de Laubardemont on his own initiative, for it had never been done before, added two wedges to those of the extraordinary torture, so that instead of eight, ten were ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... sought again for words, and he glanced at his torturer timidly, like the hare on the ever-nearing hounds. Why did she pursue him, he asked, in this terrible way? Had she gone mad? What was he to say? He had not the courage to answer no to her face. Besides, ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... rather chuse, Arm'd with Hell flames and fury, all at once O'er Heavens high tow'rs to force resistless way, Turning our tortures into horrid arms Against the Torturer; when to meet the Noise Of his almighty Engine he shall hear Infernal Thunder, and for Lightning see Black fire and horror shot with equal rage Among his Angels; and his throne it self Mixt with Tartarean Sulphur, and strange Fire, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... suffered to live, because as a living man he yielded up into the hands of his tormentor his whole capacity of suffering; no part of it escaped the hellish range of his enemy's eye. But this advantage for the torturer had also its weak and doubtful side. Use and monotony might secretly be wearing away the edge of the organs on and through which the corrosion of the inner heart proceeded. On the whole, therefore, putting together the facts of the case, it seems to have been ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... received the confidence with so much calmness. But the calmness of Madame de Tecle at this terrible moment was that of the martyrs; for all that could have been suffered by the Christians under the claws of the tiger, or on the rack of the torturer, this mother was suffering at the hands of her best-beloved daughter. Her beautiful pale face—her large eyes upturned to heaven, like those that artists give to the pure victims kneeling in the Roman circus—seemed to ask God whether He really had ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... shrank perceptibly, painfully, as the victim must shrink, despite all his resolution, from the hot iron of the torturer. ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... Cecil was thinking. "What a terrible future is before her as the wife of that inhuman torturer of men!" ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... first time she did not weep for Pierre, the old lost Pierre who had so changed into a torturer, but, wakeful, her brain on fire, she pondered over and over the things she had just heard, feeling after their meaning, laying aside for future enlightenment what was utterly incomprehensible, arguing with herself as to the truth ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... away toward the house, and I stood watching her until she was hidden behind the old man's "stockade." Torturer she was, sometimes with her dignity, but worse with her whimsical, childish ways, when she seemed to dance on the outer edge of my life, daring me to catch her in my arms. But was it not my size ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... complexion of the sky The state in inclination of the day; So may you by my dull and heavy eye, My tongue hath but a heavier tale to say. I play the torturer, by small and small To lengthen out the worst that must be spoken: Your uncle York is join'd with Bolingbroke; And all your northern castles yielded up, And all your southern gentlemen in arms Upon ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... great faintness seized me, for I knew that I was condemned to be tortured, and that de Garcia was to be the torturer. What mercy had I to expect from his cruel heart when I, his deadliest foe, lay in his power to wreak his vengeance on? But still my will and my honour prevailed against my terrors, ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... The torturer must talk; he must explain the immediate future to double the agony. He could have maimed them both, then trampled them to death, but he had to inform them of the fact. He pointed the automatic at Cutty because he considered this man the more dangerous of ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... kiss he waved aside, And prattling boys, as one disgraced, They tell us, and with manly pride Stern on the ground his visage placed. With counsel thus ne'er else aread He nerved the fathers' weak intent, And, girt by friends that mourn'd him, sped Into illustrious banishment. Well witting what the torturer's art Design'd him, with like unconcern The press of kin he push'd apart And crowds encumbering his return, As though, some tedious business o'er Of clients' court, his journey lay Towards Venafrum's grassy floor, ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... Confesse and loue Had beene the verie sum of my confession: O happie torment, when my torturer Doth teach me answers for deliuerance: But let me to ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... a prisoner's head like a shell, and crushed it slowly by means of a screw. It bore the stains of blood that had trickled through its joints long ago, and on one side it had a projection whereon the torturer rested his elbow comfortably and bent down his ear to catch the moanings of the sufferer ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... you, and scalp you afterwards!"—but this sentiment you ignobly retain in your own bosom. You lift one leg in an apologetic way, and poodle instantly dashes at you with all the vehemence of a charge of his compatriots the Cuirassiers. You shut your eyes and wait for the shedding of blood; but the torturer has all the malignant subtlety of an Apache Indian, and he tantalizes you. Presently the lady of the house appears, and, finding that you are beleaguered by an ubiquitous foe, she says sweetly, "Pray do not mind Moumou; his fun gets the better of him. Go away, naughty Moumou! Did Mr. Blank ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... solemn investigation into the truth of the charges brought against the citizens, and without separating the innocent from the guilty, he discarded all ideas of right or justice, as if they had been expelled from the seat of judgment. And while all lawful defence on trials was silent, the torturer, and plunderer, and the executioner, and every kind of confiscation of property, raged unrestrained throughout the eastern provinces of the empire, which I think it now a favourable moment to enumerate, with the exception ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... happened to Mr. Milburgh between the time of his discovery lying bound and helpless and showing evidence that he had been in the hands of a Chinese torturer and the moment he left Sam Stay. He had read of the murder, and had been shocked, and, in ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... her gazing up to Heaven with wide open eyes and trembling lips-living, but already with the Lord—on the rack, and yet in bliss. My stronger body clung to the earth; she found deliverance at the first blow of the torturer. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... has manners that betray less sophistication than is to be expected, she may never survive the torture that begins on the instant and follows her relentlessly, in the schoolroom and out, until she either adapts herself to her environment, becoming in turn a torturer, or is removed to a ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... But, for the departing minutes of life, both are oftentimes alike. At the farewell crisis, when the gates of death are opening, and flesh is resting from its struggles, oftentimes the tortured and the torturer have the same truce from carnal torment; both sink together into sleep; together both sometimes kindle into dreams. When the mortal mists were gathering fast upon you two, bishop and shepherd girl—when the pavilions of life were closing up their shadowy curtains about you —let us ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... saw the swords of the robbers before he heard what was the matter, the entrance of Dolabella, raging,—his ill omened voice, and infamous countenance,—the chains, the scourges, the rack, the armourer who was both torturer and executioner, all which they say that the unhappy Trebonius endured with great fortitude. A great praise, and in my opinion indeed the greatest of all, for it is the part of a wise man to resolve beforehand that whatever can happen to a brave man is to be endured with ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... from the outside. You are forever—Oh, alas, that the pain is intermittent, that the piercing agony sometimes ceases! That is the reason why it lasts so long! The tortured man imagines he is resting when the torturer merely pauses to get his breath. It is like a drowning man's catching his breath on the waves, when the current that has drawn him under spews him forth again only to seize him once more and draw him down. He has nothing but a double, futile ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... to make of the moral standards of an eminent prelate of the Roman Church who can hold and express so appalling a theory? It is based on the moral standard of the Prussian officer, of the medieval torturer. The majority of clergymen have at length come to realise, tardily and reluctantly, that the man or woman who rejects the creeds they offer may quite possibly not believe in them. The practice of describing a refusal to assent to the doctrine of hell ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe |
