"Barbarity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Captain Lippencott, and hanged in the broad light of day on the heights near Middletown. Testimony and affidavits to the fact, which was never questioned, were duly gathered and laid before Washington. The deed was one of wanton barbarity, for which it would be difficult to find a parallel in the annals of modern warfare. The authors of this brutal murder, to our shame be it said, were of American birth, but they were fighting for the crown and wore the British ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... Persians fought desperately, for they fought for their lives. They were in the heart of an enemy's country, with a broad river behind them to cut off their retreat, and they were contending with a wild and savage foe, whose natural barbarity was rendered still more ferocious and terrible than ever by the exasperation which they felt, in sympathy with their injured queen. For a long time it was wholly uncertain which side would win the day. The advantage, here and there along the lines, was ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... if (like a certain princess) we have a taste that way, in the surgeon's dissecting-room; we do not look upon pictures to have our minds agonized and contaminated by the sight of human turpitude and barbarity, streaming blood, quivering flesh, wounds, tortures, death, and horrors in every shape, even though it should be all very natural. Painting has been called the handmaid of nature; is it not the duty ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... no sound came. His face assumed the expression of one who undergoes the application of some destructive barbarity. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... knowledge of the authorities that such meetings were being held, large bodies of troops were sent into the southern provinces, with orders to disperse them and apprehend the ringleaders. These orders were carried out with much barbarity. Amongst various assemblies which were discovered and attacked in the Cevennes, were those of Auduze and Vigan, where the soldiers fell upon the defenceless people, put the greater number to the sword, and hanged upon the ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... the Sun, which has these several years been building, and is now just completed. This man signalized himself, both under Decius and Valerian, for his bitter hatred of the Christians, and his untiring zeal in the work of their destruction. The tales which are told of his ferocious barbarity, would be incredible, did we not know so well what the hard Roman heart is capable of. It is reported of him, that he informed against his own sisters, who had embraced the Christian faith, was with those who hunted them with blood-hounds from their place of concealment, ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... in the savour of fame Gilbert Elliott of the Cauldstaneslap; but his sons had scarce less glory out of the business. Their savage haste, the skill with which Dand had found and followed the trail, the barbarity to the wounded Dickieson (which was like an open secret in the county), and the doom which it was currently supposed they had intended for the others, struck and stirred popular imagination. Some century earlier the last of the minstrels ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... doctor, whom he found in his study.—To be informed that he was an American and unfortunate, was sufficient to arouse the feelings of Franklin. He desired Alonzo to be seated, and to recite his history. This he readily complied with, not concealing his attachment to Melissa, her father's barbarity, her death in consequence, his own father's failure, with all the particulars of his leaving America, his capture, escape from prison, and arrival in France; as also the town of his nativity, the name of his father, and the particular circumstances of his family; concluding by ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... his task could suppress. The body was hanging from a bar which crossed the street at a considerable height, and served as a stay between the gables of two opposite houses, of which one was two doors only from the unhappy Portail's. The mob, with a barbarity very common in those days, had hung him on ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... bore any practical fruit, Japan found it necessary to send a military expedition to Formosa. That island was claimed as part of China's domains, but it was not administered by her effectively, and its inhabitants showed great barbarity in their treatment of castaways from the Ryukyu, or Loochoo, Islands. The Chinese Government's plain function was to punish these acts of cruelty, but as the Peking statesmen showed no disposition to discharge their duty in that respect, Japan took the law into her own hands. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... the North; and if the North shall not see fit to interfere forcibly with Southern legislation, it may at least feel disposed to emphasize, by its own liberality, its disapproval of Southern injustice and barbarity. ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... to her Cousin Hulot, "you are right to do what you can for them; they are so brave and so kind! They can hardly live on the thousand crowns he gets as deputy-head of the office, for they have got into debt since Marshal Montcornet's death. It is barbarity on the part of the Government to suppose that a clerk with a wife and family can live in Paris on two thousand four hundred ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... in his inimitable manner has defined surely and deftly the peculiar characteristics of the sect in this portrait. On three separate occasions we find William saving unfortunate natives or defenceless prisoners from the cruel and wicked barbarity of the sailors. At page 183, for example, the reader will find a most penetrating analysis of the dense stupidity which so often accompanies man's love of bloodshed. The sketch of the second lieutenant, who was ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... unparalleled barbarity occasioned a general consternation in the city, where there was nothing but crying and lamentation. Here, a father in tears, and inconsolable for the loss of his daughter; and there, tender mothers dreating lest their ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... captive to be regarded as a menace to human safety, and to be forgotten altogether; but how futile to attempt such a task while the world of civilisation is swayed by human instinct and not by barbarity! ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... politic prince. His two greatest faults seem to have been ambition and cruelty; the first was an inheritance, and the second, perhaps, was less an effect of a harsh nature than of hasty passion. We seldom find that he committed any deliberate act of barbarity, and those things which most stain his name were generally done under feelings of great irritation. His conduct to the Earl of March, the heir of Richard II., and the respect he paid to the memory of that unhappy king ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... of it, Don Christoval? How can you suspect me of such barbarity? You are conscious that She took the veil by her own desire, and that particular circumstances made her wish for a seclusion from the World. I used every means in my power to induce her to change her resolution; The endeavour was fruitless, ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... strong one, then, by subjugating its ally, to make itself master of both. By treasons and stratagems, by forged treaties and briberies, by infamies planned in cold blood and executed with more than Kurdish barbarity, the garden spot of the earth, with its teeming millions and inestimable wealth, was made to pay tribute to British greed. Macaulay, the eulogist of both Lord Clive and Warren Hastings, thus describes India when Great Britain, without a shadow ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... bridge. No Scipio arose in the last extremity. In the dead of night the Gothic trumpet rang unanswered in the streets. The Queen of the World, the Eternal City, was the prey of savage soldiers. For five days and nights she was exposed to every barbarity and license. Only the treasures collected in the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul were saved. Although the captor had promised to spare the lives of the people, a cruel slaughter was made, and the streets were filled with the dead. Forty thousand slaves were let loose by the bloody ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... consciousness. Then having time to address herself to the parties about her, Mrs. Rainsfield at once turned to Smithers, and in a voice, and with a look of scorn, said: "I perceive you, sir, are the cause of this, which is in perfect keeping with your usual barbarity. I request you will instantly remove from our presence; as I have no desire, that my cousin's nerves should be again shocked, by either the recollection of the past, or the recurrence of future attrocities; both of which are entailed ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... architecture, and the higher material accomplishments of civilization; the outbreak of immorality and drunkenness, which always accompanies war; the hardening of the finer sensibilities of men through the cruelty and barbarity of modern warfare; the increase of hatred and suspicion; the dividing of humanity and the destruction of its sense of unity, brotherhood, and cooperation; the breakdown of international law and respect for law and order; and the loss of reverence for ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... of female pariahs; and this was frankly and openly admitted. Nowadays, the equal rights of women which are officially recognized in civilized countries no longer allow it, and hygienic arguments only can give such modern barbarity the hypocritical appearance of justification. Lunatics and criminals are only locked up as a measure of safety, and to attempt to improve them; but their bodies are not allowed to become an object of commerce for the pleasure of other ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... schooner, with a black ball in her foretopsail, and had, apparently, a full crew. We now became alarmed, for we could hardly imagine it possible that she did not observe us, and were apprehensive that she meant to leave us to perish as we were—an act of fiendish barbarity, which, however incredible it may appear, has been repeatedly perpetuated at sea, under circumstances very nearly similar, and by beings who were regarded as belonging to the human species. {*2} In this instance, however, by the mercy ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... France, Picardy and Artois, were always exposed to attack from pirates by sea, Northmen and Saxon, and from invaders over the border. But none of these can have exceeded in barbarity that of 1635 to 1641, when Spanish armies—the first under John de Werth and Piccolomini, 40,000 in number, and made up of Germans, Hungarians, Croats as well as Spaniards—poured over the provinces committing the most frightful ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... again, he seized many of the inhabitants and carried them off as slaves, which occasioned Hill, in the account he gives of his second voyage, to use these remarkable words:—"Here began the horrid practice of forcing the Africans into slavery, an injustice and barbarity which, so sure as there is vengeance in heaven for the worst of crimes, will some time be the destruction of all who allow or encourage it." That the trade should have been suffered to continue under such a princess, and after such solemn expressions as those which she has been described ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... public services, which are well-known scenes of wickedness, barbarity, and corruption, we next come to see what his reward is. Your Lordships hear what reward he thought proper to secure for himself; and I believe a man who has power like Gunga Govind Sing, and a disposition ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... was frightfully avenged, Rome being plundered, ravaged, and devastated by his brutal followers to a degree not surpassed by the work of the Vandals of old. For several months the famous city remained in the hands of this licentious soldiery, and its inhabitants were subjected to every outrage and barbarity which brutal desire and ungoverned license could incite, while in none of its former periods of ravage were so many of the precious relics of antiquity destroyed as in this period of occupation by men who called themselves the ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... of our aesthetic journalism is stamped upon the still unformed minds of youths. Here, too, the teacher sows the seeds of that crude and wilful misinterpretation of the classics, which later on disports itself as art-criticism, and which is nothing but bumptious barbarity. Here the pupils learn to speak of our unique Schiller with the superciliousness of prigs; here they are taught to smile at the noblest and most German of his works—at the Marquis of Posa, at Max and Thekla—at these smiles ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... of Hunnish brutality and barbarity only served to intensify the Yanks' desire to strike that enemy low. One of our splendid fellows, a private of the 102nd Infantry, came frequently into our station at Rimaucourt where I was a hut secretary during the first month of my stay in France. I felt instinctively that he had a story which ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... vessels laden with stone, which had been prepared for obstructing the harbours, had been already sunk, and that it is not likely that any others will be used for that purpose[543]." This was no yielding to Great Britain, nor even an answer to Russell's accusation of barbarity. The fact was that the plan of obstruction of harbours, extending even to placing a complete barrier, had been undertaken by the Navy with little expectation of success, and, on the first appearance of new channels made by the wash of ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... of the year 1692 an action of unexampled barbarity disgraced the government of King William III. in Scotland. In the August preceding, a proclamation had been issued, offering an indemnity to such insurgents as should take the oaths to the King and Queen, on or before the last day of December; and the chiefs of such tribes, as ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... appearances and predictions announced this event, than its importance deserved.[30] The truth seems to be, that a belief in omens and prodigies was again become prevalent, as the people were evidently relapsing into pristine barbarity, ignorance being ever the proper soil for ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... carried off from his hut by the side of a mud-walled church to be the secretary of the dreaded Salteador. They had both bent in the lamplight of the Gould drawing-room over the document containing the fierce and yet humble appeal of the man against the blind and stupid barbarity turning an honest ranchero into a bandit. A postscript of the priest stated that, but for being deprived of his liberty for ten days, he had been treated with humanity and the respect due to his sacred calling. He had been, it appears, confessing and absolving the chief and most ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... articles of linen—no dresses, no ornaments, not so much as the fragment of a letter which might help in discovering her friends. Between the risk of keeping her under these circumstances, and the barbarity of turning a sick woman into the street, the landlady herself had not hesitated. She would willingly have kept her tenant, on the chance of the lady's recovery, and on the chance of her friends turning up. But not half an hour since, her ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... stupid savages—who, if they could but once entertain the idea that immediate and unconditional death would not be their portion, would re-enact the St. Domingo tragedy. But the consciousness, with all their stupidity, that a ten-fold force, superior in discipline, if not in barbarity, would gather from the four corners of the United States and slaughter them, keeps them in subjection. But, to the non-slaveholding States, particularly, we are indebted for a permanent safeguard against insurrection. Without their assistance, ...
— No Compromise with Slavery - An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York • William Lloyd Garrison
... purpose, and swallow the morsels with a degree of savage enthusiasm. Sometimes (I presume, according to the degree of their animosity and resentment) the whole is devoured by the bystanders; and instances have been known where, with barbarity still aggravated, they tear the flesh from the carcase with their teeth. To such a depth of depravity may man be plunged when neither religion nor philosophy enlighten his steps! All that can be said in extenuation of the horror of this diabolical ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... and sold in the market-place. And the gloomy fanaticism which afterwards stained the fame of the great Ferdinand, and introduced the horrors of the Inquisition, had not yet made it self more than fitfully visible. But the Moors had treated this unhappy people with a wholesale and relentless barbarity. At Granada, under the reign of the fierce father of Boabdil,—"that king with the tiger heart,"—the Jews had been literally placed without the pale of humanity; and even under the mild and contemplative Boabdil ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book I. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... magazine of powder, we should not have exhibited such a picture of paleness and dismay. The deception was cruel; the duplicity was infamous. The whole trick from beginning to end, was an instance of cowardice, meanness and villany. It proves that cowards are cruel; that barbarity and sincerity never ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... just as the surgeon has an enemy, gangrene, and is pitiless to that. The revolution extirpates kingship in the king, aristocracy in the noble, despotism in the soldier, superstition in the priest, barbarity in the judge, in a word whatever is tyranny in whatever is tyrant. The operation is frightful, the revolution performs it with a sure hand. As to the quantity of sound flesh that it requires, ask Boerhave what he thinks of it. What tumour that has to be ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... other prospect of immortality than that which is common to Cicero and to Bacon; such as never can be interrupted while there exists the beauty of order, or the love of virtue, and can fear no death except what barbarity ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... crimes is perfectly true. But his services and his crimes were equally unknown to the lady who so confidently asserted his perfect innocence and imputed to his accusers, that is to say, to all the greatest men of all parties in the state, not merely error, but gross injustice and barbarity. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that whatever he professes to know, he should really perfectly possess," his mother wrote, "that I spare no pains"; neither to him nor to myself, she might have added. And so when he begged to be allowed to learn the piano, she started him with characteristic barbarity on the scales; and heard in consequence "heart-rending groans" and saw "anguished claspings of hands" as he lost his way among ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... whipped upon the bare back in the court-yard of the prison; that the letter V should be burned into the flesh on each shoulder with a hot iron; and that she should be imprisoned for life. The king and queen were as much displeased with the terrible barbarity of the punishment of the countess as they were chagrined at the acquittal of the cardinal. As the countess was a descendant of the royal family, they felt that the ignominious character of the punishment was intended as a ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... barbarity, equally cruel and indolent, active by necessity, but naturally inclined to repose, is acquainted with little more than the physical effects of love; and having none of those moral ideas which only can soften the empire of force, he is led to ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... confarreatio. Marriage was a matter of simple private agreement in which the man and the woman approached each other on a footing of equality. The wife retained full control of her own property; the barbarity of admitting an action for restitution of conjugal rights was impossible, divorce was a private transaction to which the wife was as fully entitled as the husband, and it required no inquisitorial intervention of magistrate or court; Augustus ordained, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... on a hilltop overlooking a cold and obscure countryside, a civilization, kept alive with much expense on peaks in a sea of human barbarity, radiating while its rays grow dim; its light and warmth fading just as its gleams reach remoter and deeper strata. Nevertheless, both penetrate yet sufficiently far and deep before wholly dying out. If we want ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... hospitably entertained under the Mulberry tree, but all strangers on a proper application were admitted to a sight of it. But when Sir Hough Clopton was succeeded by the Reverend Francis Gastrell, that gentleman, to save himself the trouble of showing the tree to visitors, had "the gothic barbarity" to cut down and root up that interesting—indeed sacred memorial—of the Pride of the British Isles. The people of Stratford were so enraged at this sacrilege that they broke Mr. Gastrell's windows. That prosaic ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... we have had to report crimes to your Excellency as well as to the powers signatory to the Convention of The Hague. Germany, which was aware of our protests, is now trying to deceive and to make use of pretexts and lies in order to indulge in further acts of barbarity in the name of right. Outraged civilization sends your Excellency ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... head of armies that had just fanaticism enough to be ferocious, but not enough to render them ungovernable. In these engagements, many hundreds fell on both sides; and on both sides the most revolting barbarity was practised: the Crusaders cut off the heads of the fallen Mussulmans, and sent them in panniers to Constantinople, as trophies of their victory. After the temporary defeat of Kilij Aslaun, the siege of Nice was carried on with redoubled vigour. The Turks defended themselves with the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... our affairs wear as favorable an aspect as at any time, since the beginning of the war. And the unanimity of all ranks, in the different States, in support of our independence, is greater than at any preceding period. The arbitrary conduct, and the barbarity and cruelty of the enemy, for the twentysix days that they possessed a considerable part of New Jersey, have been of service to our cause. See, upon this subject, the report of a committee of Congress, ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... it one of the loveliest stories I had ever heard; there is no hardness comparable to that of the sportsman, yet here was one, a very monarch among them, who turned sick at his own barbarity and repented. ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... man. And I now say, with all the emphasis of which I am capable, that the last reproach that can rightly be flung at the Russian people, even the least enlightened of them, the Russian peasants, in the darkest reaches of their vast country, is that they are barbarians. Deeds of cruelty and of barbarity there may be among the Russians, as there are among all peoples, and the dehumanizing conditions inevitable to warfare may perhaps increase the number of them, but the outrages of Louvain, Termonde, Rheims and Liege are morally and physically ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... passed through his hands,) carrying off the farmers' daughters to the mountains, and at the head of eighty ruffians, committing the most horrible disorders. His last crime was murdering his wife in the mountains, the night before last, under circumstances of barbarity too shocking to relate, and it is supposed, assisted by the wretch now with him. After committing the crime, they ran to hide themselves in an Indian village, as the Indians, probably from fear, never ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... cried and groaned, and grumbled most piteously; one would have thought they were about to be killed, with the knife at their throats. The Arabs, to prevent their crying, throw some sand into their open mouths. By this little bit of barbarity, the poor young things were obliged to cease crying to chew the unwelcome bolus of sand. When laden, they started off as mad, trying to throw off their load. Do they know, by their powerful and foreseeing instinct, that this was the beginning of their painful labours and journeyings? and do they ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... slain in a broil in Fingall, by tenants or servants of the Bishop. The next year each party repaired to London to vindicate himself and criminate his antagonist. The Bishop seems to have triumphed, for in 1466, John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, called in England, for his barbarity to Lancasterian prisoners, "the Butcher," superseded Desmond. The movement of Thaddeus O'Brien, already related, the same year, gave Tiptoft grounds for accusing Desmond, Kildare, Sir Edward Plunkett, and others, of treason. On this charge he summoned them before him at ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... moral advantage, though the English authorities indignantly repudiated the perpetrator. Shan was content to allow the affair to be hushed up, and established his own rule throughout Ulster with a combination of barbarity and real administrative ability which to students of Indian History recalls the methods and the ethics of Ranjit Singh or Abdurrhaman. Within the Pale, the exceedingly corrupt administration of recent years was overhauled by Sir ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... the British parliament, commonly called the Boston Port Act, came safely to my hand. For flagrant injustice and barbarity, one might search in vain among the archives of Constantinople to find a match for it. But what else could have been expected from a parliament, too long under the dictates and control of an administration, which seems to be totally lost to all sense and feeling of morality, ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... Rome his enactments had been abolished with sweeping indifference to their character and importance, and the old misrule was reestablished in its pristine barbarity. The feud between Orsini and Colonna broke out again in the absence of a common danger. The plague appeared in Europe and decimated a city already distracted by internal discord. Rome was again a wilderness of injustice, as the chronicle says; every one doing what seemed good ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... of the Pope to satisfy the scruples of the Catholics, while the real nomination remained with the Crown. But, as I have before said, the moment the very name of Ireland is mentioned, the English seem to bid adieu to common feeling, common prudence, and common sense, and to act with the barbarity of tyrants and ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... for a short motor drive to-day and they found two wounded men. One was just dying, the other they brought back in the car, but he died also. In the town itself everything seems much as usual except for crowds of refugees. Do not believe people when they say German barbarity is exaggerated. It is ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... astounded as you choose, but confess your barbarity," said the lady, with increasing spirit; "acknowledge your hastiness and your brutal conduct toward me in accusing me as you have done. You are a young man without any experience or any other knowledge than that which is derived from books, which teach nothing about ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... would have rejoiced to see the cibolero tumble over the bluff. Horrible indeed it seems; but such were the men, and the place, and the times, that there is nothing improbable in it. On the contrary, cases of equal barbarity—wishes and acts still more inhuman—are by no means rare under the skies ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... Mahometanism, having wrested Syria from the Saracens, and having, in the year 1065, made themselves masters of Jerusalem, rendered the pilgrimage much more difficult and dangerous to the Christians. The barbarity of their manners, and the confusions attending their unsettled government, exposed the pilgrims to many insults, robberies, and extortions: and these zealots, returning from their meritorious fatigues and sufferings, ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... to be disturbed, and the attack on the mission house and consulate proceeded, while the officials responsible for order remained inactive. Twenty-one foreigners in all were brutally murdered under circumstances of the greatest barbarity, while the number of native converts who fell at the same time ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... of war have not fulfilled my expectations; the enemy penetrated into the heart of my states, and exposed them to the devastations of a war carried on with the most relentless exasperation and barbarity; but, at the same time, he became acquainted with the patriotic spirit of my people and the ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... was arrested and we were all undone. Such perfidious Treachery in the merciless perpetrators of the Deed will shock your gentle nature Dearest Marianne as much as it then affected the Delicate sensibility of Edward, Sophia, your Laura, and of Augustus himself. To compleat such unparalelled Barbarity we were informed that an Execution in the House would shortly take place. Ah! what could we do but what we did! We sighed and fainted on the sofa. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... the title of Augustus, and General of the East; he revenged the fate of Valerian, who had been taken captive and put to death by Shah Poor: the eastern king, with a luxurious barbarity truly oriental, is said to have used the unfortunate emperor as his footstool to mount his horse. But in the midst of his victories and conquests Odenathus became the victim of a domestic conspiracy, at the head of which was his nephew Maeonius. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... between contending factions, like a deer between snarling wolves, the people suffered martyrdom, while thieves and assassins, miscalled soldiers, and brigands, miscalled nobles, ravaged the land and tortured its inhabitants. Outrage was law, and death the only refuge from barbarity, and at no time in the history of England did its people endure such misery as in those years of the loosening of the reins of justice and mercy which began with ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... up their wandering and predatory habits, so injurious to all their neighbours. Under the influence of the forced peace in which the subjection of Asia to the Romans kept the Galatians, their manners rapidly changed. Asiatic luxury took the place of northern barbarity; the worship of the national gods was abandoned, and the idols of the stranger were substituted in their room; the coarse garments of ancient days, gave place to vestments of purple and gold: yet a little while, and the loss of national manners ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... this first cruise, when his mind, ever active in the service of his country, suggested to him a new enterprise in which he might contribute to the cause of American liberty. At this early period of the Revolution, the British were treating American prisoners with almost inconceivable barbarity. Many were sent to the "Old Jersey" prison-ship, of whose horrors we shall read something later on. Others, to the number of about a hundred, were taken to Cape Breton, and forced to labor like Russian felons in the underground ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... Graham of Claverhouse (Viscount Dundee), a relentless Jacobite, so rapacious and profane, so violent in temper and obdurate of heart, that every Scotchman hates the name. He hunted the Covenanters with real vindictiveness, and is a by-word for barbarity ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... success. Some had mentioned of Cecrops, that he underwent a metamorphosis, [504][Greek: apo opheos eis anthropon elthein], that he was changed from a serpent to a man. By this was signified according to Eustathius, that Cecrops, by coming into Hellas, divested himself of all the rudeness and barbarity of his [505]country, and became more civilized and humane. This is too high a compliment to be payed to Greece in its infant state, and detracts greatly from the character of the Egyptians. The learned Marsham therefore animadverts with great justice. [506]Est ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... in several Tennessee counties and on the Kentucky road, Sevier, Robertson, and Anthony Bledsoe had persuaded Governor Samuel Johnston of North Carolina to address Gardoqui and request him to exert his influence to prevent further acts of savage barbarity. In letters to Governor Johnston, to Robertson, and to Sevier, all of date April 18th, Gardoqui expressed himself in general as being "extremely surprised to know that there is a suspicion that the good government of Spain is encouraging these acts of barbarity." ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... own mother. I saw the sturdy Dudgeon's mouth working like a bull-terrier's over a shrewmouse. And between them, Alain had never a chance. Not for the first time in this history, I found myself all but taking sides with him in sheer repulsion from the barbarity of the attack. It seemed that it was through Fenn that Mr. Romaine had first happened on the scent; and the greater rogue had held back a part of the evidence, and would trade it now—"having been led astray—to any gentleman that would let ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... corrupted young persons of both sexes, that he might attach them to him; and afterwards killed them for the sake of their blood, which was necessary to form his charms and incantations. Such horrid excesses are credible when we recollect the age of ignorance and barbarity in which they were practised. He was at length (for some state crime against the Duke of Brittany) sentenced to be burnt alive in a field at Nantes, in 1440; but the Duke, who witnessed the execution, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... government had expected from him were performed, not merely without flinching, but eagerly and triumphantly. His first exploit was the judicial murder of Algernon Sidney. What followed was in perfect harmony with this beginning. Respectable Tories lamented the disgrace which the barbarity and indecency of so great a functionary brought upon the administration of justice. But the excesses which filled such men with horror were titles to the esteem of James. Jeffreys, therefore, very soon after the death of Charles, obtained a seat in the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... are as ricketty as if they had been the offspring of an Earl or a Seatonian prize poet. The patrons of this poor lad are certainly answerable for his end; and it ought to be an indictable offence. But this is the least they have done: for, by a refinement of barbarity, they have made the (late) man posthumously ridiculous, by printing what he would have had sense enough never to print himself. Certes these rakers of "Remains" come under the statute against "resurrection men." What does it signify whether a poor ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... tortures which were inflicted upon the living. The features of this wretch, who had known Colonel Crawford at Fort Pitt, were clad in malicious smiles at beholding the brave soldier in his present strait; and toward Dr. Knight he conducted himself with insolence as well as barbarity. The Colonel was soon stripped naked, painted black, and commanded to sit down by a large fire which was blazing close at hand; and in this situation he was surrounded by all the old women and young boys of the town, and severely beaten with sticks and clubs. While this was going ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... old customs of their country. To even the most absurd and superstitious of these, they cling with such tenacity, that it would be a work of incalculable labour, and of many years, to induce them to abandon them altogether, even after they should be made conscious of their absurdity and barbarity. The European Missionaries of the present day would never do it. It was attempted some years ago with much zeal, but there is not at this moment, I believe, a single convert to Christianity in Boollam, to reward the labour, or repay ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... "This barbarity has kept me ever at a distance from the most beautiful object my eyes ever beheld. It is thus also she deals with all mankind, and you must make love to her, as you would conquer the sphinx, by posing her. But ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... hope that some American poet will one day be able to write in the past tense similar verses of the barbarity of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... want of Powder and tobacco, and beat this Depont. after they had Stript him, that if an Irishmen had not Interceeded he beleves they would have kild him with the flat of their Curtle-axes,[9] the Cruelty being used to them by french men, and saw no Englishmen, all which and much more barbarity this Depont. affirmeth ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... bunkum and Barnumisation—must have seen a gigantic speculation realising shiploads of dollars if the Tower could have been taken over to the States, and exhibited from town to town—the Stars and Stripes flying over it—with a four-horse lecture to describe the barbarity of the ancient British Barons and ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... Sicily, and in Crete. The earliest navigators who touched on the shores and islands of the Mediterranean, brought back romantic tales, receiving their colouring from the terrors of the narrators, of the barbarity and the stature of the races they found on those then inhospitable shores. They were robbers, and even cannibals; enemies of the gods and men. Such tales are not without their parallels in the annals ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... to this request than for his favorite to put the grant into effect. The Frisons, true to their old character, held firm to their privileges, and fought for their maintenance with heroic courage. Albert, furious at this resistance, had the horrid barbarity to cause to be impaled the chief burghers of the town of Leuwaarden, which he had taken by assault. But he himself died in the year 1500, without succeeding in his projects of an ambition unjust in its principle and ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... be thought of so much simplicity, childishness, or barbarity of those ivy-clad ruins, the forms of which can scarcely be discerned, they must be subjected to a closer inspection; and if there were no other, this one consideration would be enough to incline us to it: while in the theatre of Bacchus the tragedies of Sophocles were played once and no more, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... can urge even consideration. Still, I do ask mercy. I do entreat you to use clemency; not because I deserve it, but because I do not believe that you would be guilty of aught that savored of inhumanity or barbarity." ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... non-combatant inhabitants of the island were killed or died of starvation and incident disease before the end of the Spanish-American War. Yet a war was maintained by the insurgents under the leadership of able men, inspired with a patriotic desire for freedom and independence. The barbarity of the reconcentrado policy excited, throughout the civilized world, deep sympathy for the Cubans, and, April 6, 1896, a resolution passed Congress, expressing the opinion that a "state of war existed in Cuba," and ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... books had been lost, but declared that they were glad they had been found, for they knew that he was grieved at the loss of them. "Though they had been exceedingly kind to me," he says, "I still as before detested them, on account of the barbarity I beheld after Braddock's defeat. Neither had I ever before pretended kindness, or expressed myself in a friendly manner; but now I began to excuse the Indians on account ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... cruel to make me feel the barbarity of my sex," he replied, drawing his feet together and pressing his finger-tips upon an imaginary opera-hat or malacca cane. "We've been discussing all sorts of dull things, and now I shall never know what I want to know more than anything in ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... but also from Ireland, Scotland, Jersey, Garnsey. It is needless also to remember what Miracles of this nature were performed by the very Bloud of his late Majesty of Blessed memory, after whose decollation by the inhuman Barbarity of the Regicides, the reliques of that were gathered on Chips and in Handkerchieffs by the pious Devotes, who could not but think so great a suffering in so honourable and pious a Cause, would be attended ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... occasion to describe the decay of the free population in Italy, and the great increase in the number of slaves from the foreign conquests of the state.[59] As slaves were cheap, in consequence of the abundant supply, the masters did not care for their lives, and treated them with great barbarity. A great part of the land in Italy was turned into sheep-walks. The slaves were made responsible for the sheep committed to their care, and were left to supply themselves with food as they best could. It was an aggravation of their wretched lot, that almost ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... through thrice, and each time we found it more admirable; the embarrassing thing was how to dare to let his Majesty know its contents. However temperate the allusions to himself, there was still the reproach of injustice and barbarity, set against the clemency of Anne of Austria, and ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... had abroad, and that which, to the joy of good men you now exercise at home, seem all to conspire to this design: the genius of the nation seems to call you out as it were by name, to polish and adorn your native language, and to take from it the reproach of its barbarity. It is upon this encouragement that I have adventured on the following critique, which I humbly present you, together with the play; in which, though I have not had the leisure, nor indeed the encouragement, to proceed to the principal ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... or three centuries ago an act of barbarity was committed in India, which, though the number of lives destroyed was but a few score, was attended by such peculiar horrors that its memory is likely to be perpetual. A number of English prisoners were shut up in a room ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... these are matters of secondary importance. In the Soudan there are no divorce courts, hence the probable necessity of the apparatus, and, as the woman is not obliged to wear it unless she chooses to go out unattended, it can hardly be considered as a compulsory barbarity. In the United States such a practice might do away ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... or bartering for human flesh is pregnant with the most glaring turpitude, and the blackest barbarity of disposition.—For can any one say, that this is doing as he would be done by? Will such a practice stand the scrutiny of this great rule of moral government? Who can without the complicated emotions of anger and impatience, suppose himself in the predicament of a slave? ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... adored that piece of wood. On this, at the suggestion of Cortes, Father Olmedo explained the mystery of the cross, by virtue of which the evil spirits were chased away, and endeavoured to instruct them in the principles of Christianity, representing the abomination of their idolatry, and the barbarity of their human sacrifices, the putting a stop to which was the principal object of our voyage to their country. He then shewed them an image of the Holy Virgin with the child Jesus in her arms, desiring them to take it with ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... flints, and his knife is a sharpened bone or the edge of a broken silex. His untutored mind has not been ingenious enough to design or execute any thing so savage or destructive as these civilized refinements on Indian barbarity. The scalping-knife, in a beautiful scabbard which is carried under the belt, is generally used in all Indian countries where knives have been introduced. It is the size and shape of a butcher's knife with one edge, manufactured at Sheffield perhaps for sixpence, and ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... retreat, and in 1814 when the Russians were there, that while she laughed with one eye and cried with the other, we were almost inclined to do the same. She had been pillaged by a French officer in a manner which surpassed any idea we could have formed of French oppression and barbarity. At one time the Cossacks caught her, and on some dispute about a horse, 4 of them took her each by an arm and leg and laying her upon her "Ventre" flat as a pancake, a fifth cracked his knout (whip) most ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... hatched they were very savage. He put various plants into the glass, but they refused them, in order to prey upon each other. He next tried insect food, and put several ants into the glass to them, but they then betrayed as much cowardice as they had before done of barbarity; for the instant the Mantes saw the ants, they attempted to escape in every direction. He next gave them some common house flies, which they seized with eagerness in their fore claws, and tore in pieces; notwithstanding ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 398, November 14, 1829 • Various
... caught at school, where it is one of the rare sports of the boys to torment the miserable brutes that fall in their way. The transition, as they grow up, from barbarity to brutes to domestic tyranny over wives, children, and servants, is very easy. Justice, or even benevolence, will not be a powerful spring of action, unless it extend to the whole creation; nay, I believe that it may be delivered ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... thought, "and I wonder what I have done." He wondered also how far he had been sincere and how far affected by a very natural aversion from being murdered obscurely by ferocious Moors with all the circumstances of barbarity. It was a very naked death to come upon one suddenly. It was robbed of all helpful illusions, such as the free will of a suicide, the heroism of a warrior, or the exaltation of a martyr. "Hadn't I better make some sort of fight of it?" he debated with himself. ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... by these atrocities, and especially by the barbarity of Tullia, that the street in which the transaction took place, the day on which it was perpetrated, and the very name of the parricide, were branded with ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... a hundred lands, contains perhaps as many Gypsies, it not being uncommon to find whole villages inhabited by this race; they likewise abound in the suburbs of the towns. In Hungary the feudal system still exists in all its pristine barbarity; in no country does the hard hand of this oppression bear so heavy upon the lower classes - not even in Russia. The peasants of Russia are serfs, it is true, but their condition is enviable compared with that of the same class in the ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... now return to Natchez, where we left Currer in the hands of the Methodist parson. For many years, Natchez has enjoyed a notoriety for the inhumanity and barbarity of its inhabitants, and the cruel deeds perpetrated there, which have not been equalled in any other city in the Southern States. The following advertisements, which we take from a newspaper published in the vicinity, will show how ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... his nephew being shooting in this place, the dogs, upon the report of the gun, made towards them. Their shooting them or hanging them would have been merciful, but they buried them alive; and what words can express the abhorrence of such barbarity to such innocent creatures following the dictates of nature? To prevent a possibility of their scratching a way out, they covered them down with black thorns; over these they laid a sufficient quantity ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... can the Effect prove different from the Cause? Or how can any thing but damn'd Barbarity ensue a Woman's much more damn'd Design? Who wou'd expect Reason from one that raves, or hope for Mercy in a Tyger's Den? Believe me, Friendly, all this may sooner be; Mercy may sooner dwell among the Savage Wolves and Bears, than ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris
... consequence sought every opportunity to mortify us. It is true that the passengers had some reason to reproach themselves; they were not free from blame; but he had been the aggressor; and nothing could excuse the act of cruelty and barbarity of which he was guilty, in intending to leave us upon those barren rocks of the Falkland isles, where we must inevitably have perished. This lot was reserved for us, but for the bold interference of Mr. B. ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... latter was a man who styled himself a Prince of Queda, and had two Nacatas, some women, and a numerous crew on board his large prow. He committed everywhere the grossest acts of barbarity, and in Kar Nicobar murdered two persons, of which I was soon informed. Shortly after, he came into our neighbourhood, and anchored under Tricut, where he seized upon Sayet Ismael's prow. The latter, having sent his palong to Nancauwery, with eight sacks of rice, two ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel
... this. I am not sorry that we should here take notice of the barbarous horror of so cruel an action, but that, seeing so clearly into their faults, we should be so blind to our own. I conceive there is more barbarity in eating a man alive, than when he is dead; in tearing a body limb from limb by racks and torments, that is yet in perfect sense; in roasting it by degrees; in causing it to be bitten and worried by dogs and swine ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... the poor man any hearing on shore, or suffering him even to see his wife or child, he was carried away, and probably doomed never more in this world to see them again. Nor was this the only instance of this kind of barbarity I was a witness to. I have since often seen in Jamaica and other islands free men, whom I have known in America, thus villainously trepanned and held in bondage. I have heard of two similar practices even in Philadelphia: and ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... taught to amuse herself with books, and being much inclined to despise the ignorance and barbarity of the country ladies, disdained to learn their sentiments or conversation, and had made no addition to the notions which she had brought from the precincts of Cornhill. She was, therefore, always recounting the glories of the city; enumerating ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... that wincing terror which an unarmed man experiences at the sight of "shootin'-irons" in the grasp of other and antagonistic men. More than all, he looked at those hell-lighted flames, as he esteemed them, rising out of the lustrous water, and believed the jocose barbarity of the threat of the brutal henchman might be serious ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... in his eyes, "do not look at these eager people from the point of view of their curiosity and barbarity, though that is real enough, but consider it part of the humiliation sent by God for the expiation of your crimes. God, who was innocent, was subject to very different opprobrium, and yet suffered all with joy; for, as ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Africa and marched towards Fez, where many of their race resided, were attacked by the desert tribes, robbed, slain, and treated with the most shameful barbarity. Many of them, half-dead with famine and in utter despair, returned to the coast, where they consented to be baptized with the hope that they might be permitted to return ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... them with punishment by death; and in the East they were withstood by several bishops, among whom was Janussius, of Gnesen, and Preczlaw, of Breslau, who condemned to death one of their Masters, formerly a deacon; and, in conformity with the barbarity of the times, had him publicly burnt. In Westphalia, where so shortly before they had venerated the Brothers of the Cross, they now persecuted them with relentless severity; and in the Mark, as well as in all the other countries of Germany, they pursued them as if ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... sees in spring, which shoot first from the stem, and sometimes die before the summer. It nursed that people, whose least vestiges we discover to-day with surprise and wonder; a people who, in the very dawn, in the midst of the original barbarity, conceived magnificently the infinite and the divine; who placed with such certainty and grandeur the first architectural lines, from which afterwards our architecture was to be derived; who laid the bases of art, of science, and of ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... insulted, and sometimes ill treated. A poor woman, some little time ago, who conceived perhaps that her salvation might depend on exercising her religion in the way she had been accustomed to, persisted in going, and was used by the populace with such a mixture of barbarity and indecency, that her life was despaired of. Yet this is the age and the country of Philosophers.—Perhaps you will begin to think Swift's sages, who only amused themselves with endeavouring to propagate sheep without wool, not so contemptible. I am almost convinced ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... said no; each sergeant (he himself was one) was put in charge of fifty men, and was answerable with his life in case any should escape." There were, however, some compensations for the primitive barbarity of these arrangements. The Serbian people did not attack their prisoners, they fed them. They might have learned a less human attitude under more civilised conditions. "As we motored through the town we were amused at the number of greetings our prisoner received; he was evidently ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... of Moscow au patriotisme feroce de Rostopchine, * the Russians to the barbarity of the French. In reality, however, it was not, and could not be, possible to explain the burning of Moscow by making any individual, or any group of people, responsible for it. Moscow was burned because it found itself in a position in which any town built of wood was bound to burn, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... accents, its harsh and uncouth speech, sets us without circumstance in that sunken world, sets us in the very midst of the stark men and grave, savage women for whom the sagas were made, so that we can see them in all their hurtling strength and rank barbarity, can well-nigh touch them with the fingers of our hands. And because Sibelius is so fundamentally man as combat with the North has made him, only vision of his native earth could bring him rich self-consciousness. For his individuality is but the shape of soul given his ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... Marie Antoinette was to be drawn from the prison to the scaffold in a common cart, seated on a bare plank; the executioner by her side, holding the cords with which her hands were already bound. With a refinement of barbarity, those who conducted the procession made it halt more than once, that the people might gaze upon her, pointing her out to the mob with words and gestures of the vilest insult. She heard them not; her thoughts were with God: her lips were uttering nothing but prayers. Once for a moment, as she passed ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... them into their wilds, and laid the foundations of new States. In the northwest, Colonel Hamilton, the British commander at Detroit, who was more responsible, perhaps, than any other British officer for inciting the Indians to deeds of barbarity, was defeated and captured by George Rogers Clark, and the whole country north of the Ohio River, from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, became subject to ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... every expression of the life of a people. Abundant knowledge and learning, however, are not essential to it, nor are they a sign of its existence; and, at a pinch, they might coexist much more harmoniously with the very opposite of culture—with barbarity: that is to say, with a complete lack of style, or with a riotous jumble of all styles. But it is precisely amid this riotous jumble that the German of to-day subsists; and the serious problem to be solved is: how, with all his learning, he can ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... entertain him with an account of his travels. This savage monster expected nothing more than some overtures to be proposed to him of an intention to yield; but finding himself disappointed, in the utmost rage, ordered his torments to be redoubled. At length having glutted his barbarity, the confessors were dismissed, their clothes rent, their bodies inhumanly torn, and their beards and hair plucked off. The very Arians were ashamed of such cruelty, and their bishop offered to punish the priest, if Fulgentius would but undertake his prosecution. His ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... recognize. He upheld without diminution or modification the constitutional duty of sending escaping slaves back to bondage; and from the legal soundness of this position there is no escape. The trouble was that he had no word to say against the cruelty and barbarity of the system. To insist upon the necessity of submitting to the hard and repulsive duty imposed by the Constitution was one thing. To urge submission without a word of sorrow or regret was another. The North felt, ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... a parallel case is a strong presumption that this barbarity was falsely laid to his charge. Edward earl of Warwick, his nephew, and son of the duke of Clarence, was in his power too, and no indifferent rival, if king Edward's children were bastards. Clarence had ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... George Bates, principal physician to his Majesty, and to Charles II also, we read that when the sentence of the Court presided over by Bradshaw, condemning the King "to death by severing his Head from his Body," had been read, the soldiers treated the fallen monarch with great indignity and barbarity. They spat on his clothes as he passed by, and even in his face; and they "blew the smoak of Tobacco, a thing which they knew his Majesty hated, in his sacred mouth, throwing their broken Pipes in his way ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... more violent form than it did even at Delhi. It was only the wonderfully quick acceptance by the people of the principle of Satyagrah that effectively checked the spread of violence throughout the length and breadth of India. And even to-day it is not the memory of the black barbarity of General Dyer that is keeping the undoubted restlessness among the people from breaking forth into violence. The hold that Satyagrah has gained on the people—it may be even against their will—is curbing the forces of disorder and violence. But I ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... few years ago the wile of Muchtar Pacha complained to his father of his son's supposed infidelity: he asked with whom, and she had the barbarity to give in a list of the twelve handsomest women in Yanina. They were seized, fastened up in sacks, and drowned in the lake the same night. One of the guards who was present informed me, that not one of the victims uttered a cry, or showed ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron |
