"Brutality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are opposed to vengeance: one by way of excess, namely, the sin of cruelty or brutality, which exceeds the measure in punishing: while the other is a vice by way of deficiency and consists in being remiss in punishing, wherefore it is written (Prov. 13:24): "He that spareth the rod hateth his son." But the virtue ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... to let them depart. It was then that the Federal Government was called upon to take action. The strike committee telegraphed Congress: "Twenty-five thousand striking textile workers and citizens of Lawrence protest against the hideous brutality with which the police handled the women and children of Lawrence this morning. Carrying out the illegal and original orders of the city marshal to prevent free citizens from sending their children out of the city, striking men were knocked down, women and mothers who were trying to protect their ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... elected sheriffs and constables, chiefs of police and county commissioners. As they became bolder, they substituted arson and murder for threats and bullying, and they made life intolerable by their reckless brutality. It was impossible to convict them, for the hatred against an informer, inbred in every Irishman through generations of experience in Ireland, united with fear in keeping competent witnesses from the courts. Finally ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... England to my grandparents. It was they who had apprenticed me on the Glenmore. I hope the captain of the Glenmore will forgive me, for I gave him a character that night in the Winnipeg police station. Such cruelty! Such brutality! Such diabolical ingenuity of torture! It explained why I had deserted the ...
— The Road • Jack London
... was about to give utterance to an indignant refusal, when a terrible glance from her tyrant assured her that resistance would be useless. His savage brutality—the blow he had given her—her forced submission to his loathsome embraces—and the consciousness that she was completely in his power, compelled her to obey ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... madam, is a brutal fellow, but I have a good regard for him; for his brutality is in ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... who, basely to comply with the brutality of Alvarez, had misused Father Xavier in his life, after his decease did honours to him; and many of them asked his pardon with weeping eyes, that they had forsaken him so unworthily in his sickness. Some amongst them exclaimed openly againt Alvarez, without fearing ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... innumerable colleges throughout the Republic, whose treasuries had absorbed countless millions of dollars, had proved a measureless curse, as they had become mere cramming machines and nurseries of lawlessness and brutality. The great universities had long idolized plug-ugly football kickers and baseball sluggers to the utter ignoring of scholarship, until the hordes of eleemosinary prize-fighters among the so-called students created ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... canny!" piped Allardyce, who was vexed at a fine chance for his peculiar craft being spoiled by mere brutality of handling. All this was most inartistic. Brodie never had ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... you yesterday that you might perhaps have more upon your conscience than the Thuillier house. But you were young; you had just come from your province, with that brutality, that frenzy of Southern blood in your veins which flings itself upon such an occasion. Besides, your relationship became known to those who were preparing the ruin of this new Clarissa Harlowe, ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... deceit in war, vide Hipparch., c. 5 [tr. Works, Vol. III. Part II. p. 20]. Interesting and Hellenic, I think, the mere raising of this sort of question; it might be done nowadays, perhaps, with advantage or disadvantage, less cant and more plain brutality. ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... Government, and the religious admonitions of a true priesthood. The greatest danger with which Society is threatened in modern times, arises from the lack of these essential concomitants of any high civilization. The degradation, squalor, ignorance, and brutality of the lowest classes; the irreverence, disrespect, dishonesty, and moral blindness of the middle orders; and the apathy, heartlessness, unscrupulousness, selfishness, cupidity, and irreligion of the upper stratum of Society, are alike due to the absence of a rightly organized ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... its fairest light in its provisions to protect the wife from sexual brutality on the part of her husband, and it deserves high praise for its stand on such matters.[384] Various other laws show the same regard for the interests of women. A man who was entering priestly office could not cast off his wife and leave her destitute, but must provide living and raiment for her.[385] ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... The brutality of these words did not prevent my suddenly experiencing an indescribable feeling which partook almost equally of the love of life and the idea that I was going to see my son, and all that was dear to ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... writhing features just after execution; for Valentin was an anti-clerical of some note. But O'Brien was an Irishman, with a kind of chastity even in his sins; and his gorge rose against that great brutality of the intellect which belongs only to France. He felt Paris as a whole, from the grotesques on the Gothic churches to the gross caricatures in the newspapers. He remembered the gigantic jests of the Revolution. He saw ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... English have borrowed, the one from France and the other from these States. Their passion for our colored minstrelsy is, in fact, something pathetic. They like Pierrots well enough, and Pierrots are amusing, there is no doubt of it; but they dote upon Niggers, as they call them with a brutality unknown among us except to the vulgarest white men and boys, and the negroes themselves in moments of exasperation. Negro minstrelsy is almost extinct in the land of its birth, but in the land of its adoption it flourishes in the vigor of undying youth: ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... with the last flash of a trampled-out love, has repulsed Mrs. Langtry with a petulance bordering on brutality. ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... the brutality of his vile nature fully awakened at perceiving Walter attempt to take her hand; "touch her not, though you are doubtless the youth to ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... and dogs, their invariable companions. The men alone landed, some six or seven in number, and came toward the tent. Nothing could be more coarse and repulsive than their appearance, in which the brutality of the savage was in no way redeemed by physical strength or manliness. They were almost naked, for the short, loose skins tied around the neck, and hanging from the shoulders, over the back, partly to ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... were certain to get abrasions on their bare feet and on their elbows and knees from the rough edges of the bricks. The soot working into these abrasions gave them a peculiar form of sore. Think of the terrible brutality to which a nervous child must have been subjected before he could be induced to undertake so hateful a journey for the first time. Should the boy hesitate to ascend, many of the master-sweeps had no compunction in giving him what was termed ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... "the father of obstinacy," or "of brutality," was the name of an Arab. He was uncle to the prophet Muhammad, and an inveterate opposer ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... Lady Muriel. Who shall turn aside from virtue in distress? Perhaps, in the whole of London, I alone have the brutality—shall we call ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... representative of his policy, always shouted out the opposite opinion, thinking that the fear of Carthage had a salutary effect on the Roman populace at large. But the ideas of Cato prevailed, and a cruel policy, carried out with needless brutality, led to the extinction of Rome's greatest rival. Cato did not live to see the conclusion of the war; he died in 149, at the age of 84 or 85 years, having retained his mental and physical vigor to the last. He had two sons, one by his first wife, and one by his second wife, born when Cato was ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... which was a mechanical genius, and shipped at sixteen as a ship-carpenter. He studied navigation in the forecastle, and found in its calm diagrams and tranquil eternal signs food for his thoughtful nature, and a refuge from the brutality and coarseness of sea-life. He had a healthful, kindly animal nature, and so his inwardness did not ferment and turn to Byronic sourness and bitterness; nor did he needlessly parade to everybody in his vicinity the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... tremble in her hand, a half-smile of contempt passed over her mouth. The answer to the restless question that had intruded itself upon her in the first moments of her grief was now before her. Its promptness, its polished brutality, had given her a shock, but not the pain she had expected. Perhaps her great grief—the real, the true, the grief death brings—recovered its place in her heart, and prevented her from feeling keenly any secondary emotion. Perhaps this man, who could pay court to her ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... enraging as you chose to take it. And once, when George attempted very plain language with his mother, Lady Tressady went into hysterics, and vowed that she would not be parted from her friends, not even by the brutality of young married people who had everything they wanted, while she was a poor lone widow, whose life was not worth living. The whole affair was, so to speak, sordidly innocent. Mr. Fullerton—such was the gentleman's name—wanted creature-comforts and occasional loans; Lady Tressady wanted company, ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... troupe of mountebanks, which for some time has favored us with performances of feats of strength and rope-dancing. You have seen this kind of women with sharp, yellow, prematurely-aged faces, creatures that are shattered by brutality, poverty, and miserable vices, and who always over-dress in shabby velvet and dirty red. There you have his crew. I don't understand our friend's passion. It is true that his fiancee met with a horrible death, but that does not explain the matter. I must ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... The vast brutality of the herculean emperor had not disgusted him at first; it had merely displeased his taste. Now, it became suddenly an atrocious contrast to the secret loveliness of unveiled beauty. That was a manly instinct in him, too, and ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... teeth, although some of them seemed to have skin diseases. They were a laughing, easy-tempered crew, and the women were as well-fed as the men, and were obviously well-treated, from the savage standpoint; there was no male brutality like that which forms such a revolting feature in the life of the Australian black fellows and, although to a somewhat less degree, in the life of so many negro and Indian tribes. They were practically absolutely naked. In many savage tribes ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... as follows: An Officer who, tho' her Relation, had not felt the happy Influences of her Favour, because he never made himself known to her, which renders his Impoliteness, I may even say, his Brutality inexcusable, resolving to give the ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... tremble; one for whom she has a feeling of fear, or rather repulsion. A man of large stature is seen loitering under the shadow of a tree, and looking at her as though he would devour her. Even in his figure there is an expression of sinister and slouching brutality. Still more on his face, visible by the light of a lamp which beams over the entrance door of the hotel. The young girl does not stay to scrutinise it; but shrinking back, cowers by ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... said he, "their moral is not your moral." Such international misinterpretations and exaggerations are instinctive and involuntary. A nation from its being a nation, has a certain one-sidedness. To the Italian (even to one who carries a stiletto) the English practice of boxing is a sheer brutality; while to an Englishman (himself perhaps not a Joseph) the cavaliere servente is looked upon with reprobation tempered by scorn. To this misjudgment from the foreign side and over-estimation on the domestic, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... to belief, but in talking it over with German officers, I found they fully believed in it as a practical proposition. They themselves enlarged on the idea of the use that they would thus make of the civil population, and foreshadowed their present brutality by explaining that when war came, it would not be made with kid gloves. The meaning of their commands would be brought home to the people by shooting down civilians if necessary, in order to prove that they were ...
— My Adventures as a Spy • Robert Baden-Powell
... la Duchesse de Berry, wished to improve his position by becoming her husband. He was encouraged in this desire by his uncle, M. de Lauzun, who had also advised him to treat her with the rigour, harshness—nay, brutality, which I have already described. The maxim of M. de Lauzun was, that the Bourbons must be ill- used and treated with a high hand in order to maintain empire over them. Madame de Mouchy was as strongly ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... her head. Either she realized that, for the present, the man was immune against all sentiment, or his calm brutality had had a correspondingly hardening ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... admire the greatness and nobility of this ideal, standing out as it does against a background of lawlessness and ignorance, rather than complain that in practice its valor often degenerated into ferocity, its Christianity into narrow bigotry, its worship of women into license and brutality. Chivalry, supplying a standard of excellence adapted by its nature to excite the admiration of men, did much to refine and civilize the rude age in which it arose; and this result is not belittled by the fact that that standard was pitched above the possibility of human ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... foolish no less than a barbarous act—one of those horrible barbarities of civilization, when moral principle suddenly forsakes the helm and the merest coarseness emerges in its room, as if to warn us against the childish belief that civilization is able to extirpate brutality from ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... under pretense of wishing to speak with us, he made us prisoners. He then burned and destroyed the whole valley, carried off our property, ravaged every place, destroyed everything, violated the women, dishonored the virgins, and dragging them from the arms of their mothers, gave them up to the brutality of his soldiery. If by any injury to the Florentine people we merited such treatment, or if he had vanquished us armed in our defense, we should have less reason for complaint; we should have accused ourselves, and thought that either our mismanagement or our arrogance had deservedly ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... fro, attending to the wants of their helpless nestlings, the plume-hunters glide among them noiselessly, threading the watercourses in an Indian dug-out or canoe, and when once within the peaceful colony, show themselves with bold brutality. For well they know that the devoted parents will suffer death rather than leave their young ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... to any community that tolerates such a horrible law or such a feeble administration of it, and such callousness to human suffering that it will not save these innocent victims from its outrageous injustice. When to this brutality are added the comparative safety of the criminal, and the vile jails and the vile inmates with whom young boys and girls and honest men and decent women are thrown for the crime of witnessing a crime, it convicts the civilization of the age with a combination of stupidity ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... condescending, and he had never condescended to any one in the whole course of his existence. He had, indeed, not even been condescended to. He had met with slanging and bullying, indifference and brutality of manner, but he had not ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... passion has been found wherever man exists. We know savages eat to the very acme of brutality, ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... feel it as I feel it?" she whispered. "The bigness of it, the wonder of it. Underneath all the horror, underlying all the vileness—the splendour of it all. The glory of human endurance. . . . People wondered that I could stand it—I with my idealism. But it seems to me that out of the sordid brutality an ideal has been born which is almost the greatest the world has ever known. Oh! Derek, we've just got to try ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... cannot but think, would have prepared us with more care and more dexterity for the revelation of some such redeeming quality in a character which in the act immediately preceding Webster has represented as utterly heartless and shameless, brutal in its hypocrisy and impudent in its brutality. ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Britain and explained how many years the women had tried to get the franchise by constitutional methods only to be deceived and spurned by the Government. She told how at last a small handful of them started a revolution; how they had grown into an army; how they had suffered imprisonment and brutality; how the suffrage bill had again and again passed the second reading by immense majorities and the Government had refused to let it come to a final vote. "We asked Prime Minister Asquith to give us a time for ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... wondrous are the works of God, the hate and brutality visited upon their child went into the making of his strong and self-reliant character. He never said, "My mother's religion is good enough for me." He despised her religion, and that of the Friars Gray who punished boys ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... she was silent. She thought that she had known the uttermost of fear and now for the first time did she fully know what terror was. His strength was many times her strength, his brutality was unbounded, she was alone with him. There was no one to call to, not even ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... tense form in his life than in that of the average individual. He is restless, ill-humored, easily roused and suspicious. He lives on the brink of a deep precipice. This helps to explain his passionate hatred, his brutality, his fear, and gives poignant significance to the adage that dead men tell no tales. He holds on to his few friends with a strength and passion rare among people who live a more normal existence. His friends stand ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... seen some stimulating things during those four months of actual warfare, a hundred intense impressions of death, wounds, anger, patience, brutality, courage, generosity and wasteful destruction—above all, wasteful destruction—to correct the easy optimistic patriotism of my university days. There is a depression in the opening stages of fever and a feebleness in a convalescence ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... Army. He himself would have been inundated with correspondence if he had not had the happy inspiration of diverting the flood into Mr. TENNANT's letter-box. Passionately he called upon the Government not to imitate Germany's brutality. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 8, 1916 • Various
... to be hanged, and as this fell out something too soon for me to be perfected in the strolling trade," &c.(p. 3). Every other word here is dryly satiric, and the large free callousness and careless brutality of Defoe's days with regard to the life of criminals is conveyed in half a sentence. And what an amount of shrewd observation is summed up in this one saying: "Upon these foundations, William said he was satisfied we might trust them; for, ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... it had, notwithstanding its fleshy, cheerful look, a singular cast as if some inward disease, and that a fearful one, were seated within. As the stripling stood before that place of judgment—that place so often made the scene of heartless and coarse brutality, of timid innocence confused, helpless child-hood outraged, and gentle feelings crush' d—Lugare looked on him with a frown which plainly told that he felt in no very pleasant mood. (Happily a worthier and more philosophical system is proving to men that ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... and settled the rest, I walked down to the common prison, where I could enjoy more air and room. But I was not long there when the execrations, lewdness, and brutality that invaded me on every side, drove me back to my apartment again. Here I sate for some time, pondering upon the strange infatuation of wretches, who finding all mankind in open arms against them, were labouring to make themselves a future and a ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... of companies in the division of spoil. A well-known anecdote, namely, that concerning the Vase of Soissons (Fig. 41), which King Clovis wished to preserve, and which a soldier broke with an axe, proves that many gems of ancient art must have disappeared, owing to the ignorance and brutality of the conquerors; although it is equally certain that the latter soon adopted the tastes and customs of the native population. At first, they appropriated everything that flattered their pride and sensuality. This is how the material remains of the civilisation of the ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... flushed for a second. There was a brutality about Sagan's denunciations which shocked the men around him. Rallywood deserved something, but not this, not that! Unziar's eyes burned, Wallenloup was frowning. But Sagan swept on. He was a man who trampled horribly upon a ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... action for divorce, with alimony, brought by Mrs. Grazella Jigbee Slapman against her husband, Ferdinand P. Slapman. The ground upon which the separation was sought, was the continual brutality of Mr. ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... under the ill-founded pretence that some gold had been secreted, and everything belonging to the English gentlemen and ladies, as well as to the native settlers, was plundered or destroyed by fire, with circumstances of atrocity and brutality that would have disgraced savages. The garden-house of the chief (Mr. Prince, who happened to be then absent from Tappanuli) at Batu-buru on the main was likewise burned, together with his horses, and his cattle were shot at and maimed. Even the books of accounts, containing ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... and all the men with him took to the boats to escape arrest and possibly murder from these exasperated frontiersmen. Mrs. Blennerhasset and her children were left in the mansion, with the expectation that their presence would restrain the brutality of the militia, and preserve the house and its valuable contents from destruction. It proved a fallacious hope. Colonel Phelps, the commander of the militia, pursued Blennerhasset. In his absence his men behaved like savages. They took possession of the house, became brutally drunk from the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... and deposited in a grave, which it is her duty to keep free from weeds; and should any such appear, she is obliged to root them out with her fingers. During this operation her husband's relatives stand by and beat her in a cruel manner until the task is completed or she falls a victim to their brutality. The wretched widows, to avoid this complicated cruelty, frequently commit suicide. Should she, however, linger on for three or four years, the friends of her husband agree to relieve her from her painful mourning. This is a ceremony of much consequence, and the preparations for it occupy ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... been attended with temptations perilous to character. Abundant testimony is not wanting to show that their tendency has been toward rowdyism, gambling, debauchery, and other disgraceful conduct. Some of the games scarcely rise above the brutality of the prize fight. They have no elevating tendency, and no apology can be made for their roughness and bad ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... the fore part of the coach, who used to contend for the honour of sitting on the box with the coachman when no sprig was nigh to put in his claim. Oh! what servile homage these craven creatures did pay these same coach fellows, more especially after witnessing this or t'other act of brutality practised upon the weak and unoffending—upon some poor friendless woman travelling with but little money, and perhaps a brace of hungry children with her, or upon some thin and half-starved man travelling on ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... say no more about it, only I thought you had better know." Only the inference was possible, and Jack stood stock-still burning with indignant fury that a woman should be subjected to such brutality at the hands of a man. The match burned down to his finger-tips and fell to the ground leaving the two in the shadows of ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... no avail. For the same feeling reappears whenever the established order of things is upset, when security ceases to exist, when all that is protected by the laws of men or those of protected nature, is at the mercy of unreasoning and ferocious brutality. The earthquake crushing a whole nation under crumbling houses; the overflowing river swirling the bodies of drowned peasants along with the dead oxen and the beams torn away from the roofs, or the glorious army ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... befell her son from the moment he set foot on the deck till he was consigned to the sea. She can describe the port from which he sailed, the crew of the ship, his fellow passengers. It was a weird story, for her son, by name George, was done to death by the brutality of the officers. This was partially corroborated by a passenger named Gilmour, who called on her after his arrival in London. When he entered the house she said, 'Why did you allow them to ill-use my son.' He started, and said, 'Who told ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... short intervals of peace until 1452. During its progress the English won three of the most brilliant military victories in their history, at Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt, in 1346, 1356, and 1415. But most of the campaigns were characterized by brutality, destructive ravaging, and the reduction of cities by famine. The whole contest indeed often degenerated into desultory, objectless warfare. A permanent settlement was attempted at Bretigny in 1360. The English required the dismemberment ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... brutality," Betty observed enigmatically. "I don't think daddy has a corner on the visible supply. Are you going to let ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... exhibition in the Carolina Legislature presents an epitome of the whole argument of cultivated brutality on the one hand, and of humane sense and rationality on the other. What were the protection and sense of justice here spoken of; and what the sequences flowing from such protection and justice? The whole question is answered in three words: Improvement, following ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... to a frazzle. Horribly unhealthy life and unnatural. To take a country girl, an ignorant, untrained, healthy animal, bring her to the city and force her under terrific pressure into a life so foreign to her—well! it was just a piece of d——d brutality." Then his acute eye suddenly fixed itself on the man standing on ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... misery: but then Captain Cawson (so he was named) himself came to me, hauled me to my feet, and with an oath bade me go and scrub the floor of the cook's galley. At the time I thought him a monster of brutality, driving me to my death; but I soon learned that nothing prolongs sea sickness, or indeed any sickness, so much as brooding on it, and the activity thus forced upon me had some part, I doubt ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... brutality calling for vengeance in one direction and a man firing at his back from the other, Winslow's aversion to bloodshed became nil; and, aiming cool, he began firing ...
— In the Clutch of the War-God • Milo Hastings
... despair" excited by this measure all over Belgium, our minister, Brand Whitlock, reported, "were beyond anything we had witnessed since the day the Germans poured into Brussels. I am constantly in receipt of reports from all over Belgium that bear out the stories of brutality ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... slandered without mercy. Murderers and thieves receive better treatment than Christians. The world regards true Christians as the worst offenders, for whom no punishment can be too severe. The world hates the Christians with amazing brutality, and without compunction commits them to the most shameful death, congratulating itself that it has rendered God and the cause of peace a distinct service by ridding the world of the undesired presence of these Christians. ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... seen was completed, revolutions notwithstanding. She owns to having then felt the attraction experienced in all time by those hard hit by public calamities, "to throw themselves back on pastoral dreams, all the more naive and childlike for the brutality and darkness triumphant in the world of activity." Tired of "turning round and round in a false circle of argument, of accusing the governing minority, but only to be forced to acknowledge after all that they were put there by the choice of the majority," she wished to forget ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... him ill with loathing and contempt. Brutality in any form was horrible to him, and the thought of the pretty, spiritual child under the control of the coarse, stern man was almost more than he could bear. Then memory added fuel to the present. It was that man who had conjured up some ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... of course, and especially parsons, will contend that Providence does discriminate. They have already been heard to hint that the Russian famine is on account of the persecution of the Jews. But this act of brutality is the crime of the Government, and the famine falls upon multitudes of peasants who never saw a Jew in their lives. They have to suffer the pangs of hunger, but the Czar will not go without a single meal or a single ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... overclouded his school-days. Of that persecution's effect upon him, he has left us, in The Revolt of Islam, a picture which to many or most people very probably seems a poetical exaggeration; partly because Shelley appears to have escaped physical brutality, partly because adults are inclined to smile tenderly at childish sorrows which are not caused by physical suffering. That he escaped for the most part bodily violence is nothing to the purpose. It is the petty malignant ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... The brutality of the question called a flush to Lawrence's pale face. The judge gave vent to a faint murmur of disapprobation, and the prisoner in ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... used by the Germans because it is within the French positions, and it cannot be used by the French because it is utterly exposed to German artillery. Thus, perhaps ten kilometres of it are left forlorn to illustrate the imbecile brutality of an invasion. There is a good deal more trench before we reach the village which forms the head of a salient in the French line. This village is knocked all to pieces. It is a fearful spectacle. We see a Teddy-bear left on what remains of a flight of stairs, a bedstead buried ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... in class, he whipped for coming late to school, he whipped because a scholar made a noise with his feet, and he whipped because he himself had eaten something unwholesome for his breakfast. The brutality of a master produces like qualities in scholars. The boys drew caricatures on the blackboard, put living cats or dead ones into Mr. Ball's desk, and tried to drive him wild by their ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... good-humoured. On the contrary, "Gentleman Jim," as they call him, has lost much of the rollicking, devil-may-care recklessness that earned his nickname, and is often morose now—sometimes even fierce and savage to brutality. ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... Montenero repeated, smiling at my warmth, "is too strong an expression: there was no brutality in the case. I must have expressed myself ill to give rise to such an idea. There was only a little want of consideration for the feelings of others—a little want ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... glances of contempt at the lords of Lebanon, who were ignorant of what everybody knows, they exhibited the arms without the slightest interest or anxiety to make the Sheikhs comprehend them; till Tancred, mortified at their brutality, himself interfered, and, having already no inconsiderable knowledge of the language of the country, though, from his reserve, Fakredeen little suspected the extent of his acquirements, explained felicitously to his companions the process of the arms; and then taking ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... it all: nobody can blame me more than I blame myself in my own heart; at any rate, nobody can regret more sincerely than I do the result of my brutality, as you ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... "you are absolutely despicable; a viler figure than you present at this moment could not be conceived. I shall move you to another dormitory, where some monitor can restrain your brutality; and, meanwhile, I confine you to gates for a month, and you will bring me up one hundred lines every day ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... a spectator," he said. Removing his sword-belt and taking the pistols from his holsters he handed them to his servant, who took them back to headquarters. I realized the brutality of my remark, but not clearly seeing my way to an apology, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... explored further, the scene became more terrible; in the back rooms and in the upper building a number of severely wounded men had been placed, who began to howl as soon as we entered. Many of them had been there for several days. The brutality of circumstances, the relief of units, the enormous sum of work, all combined to create one of those situations which dislocate and overwhelm ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... example by smashing that table," I once suggested with youthful brutality; and Paul, pulling himself up, cast a surprised glance at me, and then looked slowly about the parental library, in ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... stripped her of those things of which she had been inwardly most proud; her 'wisdom', her high civilization, her leadership of all that was most Hellenic in Hellas. The 'Beloved City' of Pericles had become a tyrant, her nature poisoned by war, her government a by-word in Greece for brutality. And Greece as a whole felt the tragedy of it. It is curious how this defeat of Athens by Sparta seems to have been felt abroad as a defeat for Greece itself and for the hopes of the Greek city state. The fall of Athens ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... others, progress and the multiplication of weapons with which civilization and the powers of goodness push their conquests over brutality and the powers of evil, had added to the original duties of the parish priest, a multifarious and all but impracticable variety of offices; which, in ordinary and late conditions, would have been performed by several more or ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... unto death of hatred, force, brutality; blood-letting will never bring about lasting results, for it automatically plants a crop of bitterness and a desire for revenge which start the trouble all over again. To kill a man does not prove that he was wrong, neither does it make ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... spree. A friend said to me of one of the most exquisite living geniuses, 'You can have no conception of the coarseness of his tastes: he associates with the very lowest women, and enjoys their rough brutality.'" To this specious and damaging objection our author makes the excellent reply, that in observing whole classes we generally see an advance in morals go along with an advance in culture. The gentleman of the present day is superior to his forefather whom Fielding described: he is better ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... critical era of our history have always produced. Riots, which have been hastily touched upon in the histories of the period, but which the minute descriptions of memoirs of that period show to have been attended with an unusual display of violence and brutality on both sides, broke out upon every anniversary which could recall the Stuarts to recollection. On St. George's day, in compliment to the Chevalier, who, according to an observer of those eventful days, "had assumed the name of that far-famed Cappadocian ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... open war, and, true to the instincts of a weak and corrupt power, it chose as its weapons delay, treachery, and intrigue. To individual Americans the Spaniards often behaved with arrogance and brutality; but they feared to give too serious offence to the American people as a whole. Like all other enemies of the American Republic, from the days of the Revolution to those of the Civil War, they saw clearly that their best allies were the separatists, the disunionists, and they sought to encourage ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... an enemy, and a moderate punishment would have sufficed for a violation of the harbour rules which the Spaniards themselves so little regarded. But the Inquisition was inexorable, and the men were treated with such peculiar brutality that after nine months ninety only of the two hundred ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... catch a glimpse of its head, its face; my blood freezes—it is horrible. It enters the room, grey and silent—it lays one hand on the man's sleeve and drags him forward. He ascends to the room above, and, with all the brutality of those accustomed to the dead and dying, drags the—— But I will not go on. The grey unknown, the occult something, sternly issues its directions, and the merely physical obeys them. It is all over; ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... which we incorrectly ascribe to the mental brutality of the judges of those times, were but a logical consequence of the contemporaneous theories. It was felt that in order to condemn a man, one must have the certainty of his guilty, and it was said that the best means of obtaining tins certainty, the queen of proofs, was ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... showed me the brutality of my conduct to Julia, opened my eyes to the true meaning of her mother's interdiction; and increased the pang of those bitter feelings, which my conscious dependence had awakened in my breast, it was necessary that this dependence should be lessened; that, as I was ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... nature; as wholly lacking in ethical development and in generosity as he was in fear; gradually becoming more sociable and companionable, although still reticent of certain periods of his past; his cunning and brutality increasing with years; and his business sagacity and keen strategy becoming the talk of the Street; with no need to raise his eyes beyond the low plane of his material endeavors; he pursued his business partly ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... o'clock. All of them were, or looked as if they were, young men, smart and alert, men who meant something. And they had all been polite and charming. They had "sat around" attentively, and had put their questions without brutality. They had seemed interested, sympathetic, as if they really cared about Claude's talent and the opera. His song, Wild Heart of Youth, had been touched upon, and a tall young man, with a pale face and anxious eyes, had told ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... Emperor addressed to the students at Bonn, when he said to them "Let your jolly rapiers have full play," or in other words, "Indulge to the top of your bent, and without regard to the laws, in your orgies of brutality." People in Germany are beginning to think that William reminds them a little too much of the incoherencies of his great-uncle, Frederick William, who was undoubtedly clever in all sorts of ways, but ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... in that neighborhood was growing worse instead of better. The amount of vice, drunkenness, crime and brutality made his sensitive heart quiver a hundred times a day as he went his way through it all. His study of the whole question led him to the conviction that one of the great needs of the place was a new home life for the people. The tenements were owned and rented by ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... the weak and starving animals. She rode for days, till they fell in the traces and the sled stood still. Charles and Hal begged her to get off and walk, pleaded with her, entreated, the while she wept and importuned Heaven with a recital of their brutality. ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... had read of slaves wading through streams to throw dogs off. He was just like an escaping slave now, he thought. It was curious that he should know all the dread and terror that they felt, that he should be experiencing the same sort of man-hunt. He felt sick at the thought of all the brutality men were showing to each other—the killing, the destruction of war, the gigantic effort to bring ruin down upon each other. Such ideas went streaking through his mind as he stumbled along the rough bed of the stream. It was ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... imprisoned man would some day return to his old place, fiercer than ever for the fight, and inflamed with an unappeasable hatred of the religion whose guardians prefer punishment to persuasion, and supplement the weakness of argument by the force of brutality. ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... as grim as graven stone. His large blue eyes glittered with the coldness of flint. His hair and long curling moustache were blond. Ootah recognized "Olafaksoah"—Olaf, the great white trader—whom he had seen two seasons before at a southern village. He was noted for his brutality and ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... on the second reading was marked by a little brutality and much sanctimony. Mr. Gladstone (March 25, 1851) spoke to a House practically almost solid against him. Yet his superb resources as an orator, his transparent depth of conviction, the unmistakeable proofs that his ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... metropolis of Central Africa, was also the most active center of the slave trade. French occupation (1894) has put an end to that traffic, and it is extending the pax Gallica throughout the vast and fertile territory of the Niger where formerly anarchy and brutality reigned."[14] ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... of the lowest pleasures, the cynicism of the vulgarest vice, the buffoonery of the wildest rabble, all the most brutal emotions, the basest aspects of tavern and alehouse life, have been painted by him with the brutality and insolence of an unscrupulous man, and with such a sense of the comic, such an impetuosity, such an intoxication of inspiration, one might say that words cannot express the effect produced. Writers ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... journey in the cab, had resolved that, old as he was, he would take this sinner by the throat, this brute who had striven to stain his daughter's name,—and would make him there and then acknowledge his own brutality. But it was now very manifest to Sir Marmaduke that there could be no taking by the throat in this case. He could not have brought himself to touch the poor, weak, passionate creature before him. Indeed, even the fury of his words was ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... his chair and looked at his guest from narrowed eyes that expressed intelligent energy and brutality. He was smiling, but there was something menacing even about his smile. It struck Steve that he was as simple, as natural, and about as humane as a wolf. He was not tall, but there was unusual breadth and depth to his shoulders. ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... of it as a customary thing that a man should regard a woman in any such manner. At the same time he was in a state of exaltation over his strange achievements, and hardly open, at the moment, to any common or base brutality of rage. ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... irregular train of thoughts occurring in meditation. Bes'tial (pro. bes'chal), brutish. Lit'er-al-ly, according to the first and natural meaning of words. 6. Pros'trate, lying at length. Grov'el-er, a base wretch. Bloat'ed, puffed out. 7. Im-brut'ed, reduced to brutality. Har'mo-ny, the fitness of parts to each other in any combination of things. Re'al-iz-ing, making one's own in experience. Mal-e-dic'tion, ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Versailles. They tore his body to pieces, and, having cut off his head, compelled his wife to kiss the scarcely cold lips, and then left her fainting on the pavement still covered with his blood. Even La Fayette was horror-stricken at such brutality. It was the only occasion on which he did his duty during the whole progress of the Revolution. He came down with a company of the National Guard, dispersed the rioters, seized the ruffian who was bearing aloft, the head of the murdered ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... irregularities in their transportation. I mention this fact merely to show how so practical and stout a voyager as Thatcher might have confounded the perplexities attending the administration of a great steamship company with selfish greed and brutality; and that he, with other Californians, may not have known the fact, since recorded by the Commodore's family clergyman, that the great millionaire was always true to ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... are good, strong, thorough stuff, with sentiment—yes, just enough sentiment to keep them from the brutality of Degas or the sensualism of Latouche. Whereas you, yourself, seem to ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... for some time a feeling of distinct anger against Maurice Kenyon, even while she came to acknowledge the truth of divers of his words. But their truth, she told herself indignantly, was no justification of his brutality. He was horribly rude and meddlesome and intrusive. What business was it of his whether she gave her father or not the meed of praise that he deserved? Why should she be lectured for it by a stranger? Maurice Kenyon's ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... upon that outraging of treaty faith. The deliberate initiation of the policy of "frightfulness" which had heaped such unspeakable horrors upon the Belgian people tore the veil from the face of German militarism and revealed in its sheer brutality the ruthlessness and lawlessness of ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... it became a bridge, as it were, between mother and daughter, which enabled the now grown-up daughter to make the acquaintance of the dead mother. These pencil notes were the story of a soul. Displeasure with the prose of life and the brutality of nature, had inflamed the writer's imagination and inspired it to construct a dreamworld in which the souls dwelled, disincarnate. It was essentially an aristocratic world, this dreamworld, for it required financial ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... feeling, and dare to award justice and uphold the supremacy of impartial law, they chose to swim with the tide, and sacrifice men whom they knew in their hearts to be innocent. It is this that adds tenfold guilt to the brutality of their conduct. We cannot forget that they were dishonest in their very cruelty; that they insulted their victims, browbeat the witnesses, trampled on judicial forms to gain the favor of an infuriated mob, whose madness ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... be cited to show that the Central empires were dead to the humanities. There were apparently no limits to the brutality of the German war-makers. Among the outstanding deeds of the Teutons that sickened the world was the killing of Miss Edith Cavell, an English nurse working in ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... fine drama, by Kotzebue. It is to be hoped that such horrible instances of cruelty are not now to be found in nature. Bryan Edwards, in his History of Jamaica, says that most of the planters are humane; but he allows that some facts can be cited in contradiction of this assertion.] Complaints of his brutality, from time to time, reached his master's ears; but though Mr. Jefferies was moved to momentary compassion, he shut his heart against conviction: he hurried away to the jovial banquet, and drowned all painful reflections ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... as it required no very extraordinary abilities to attain perfection as a watchcase engraver, I hoped to arrive at it. Perhaps I should have accomplished my design, if unreasonable restraint, added to the brutality of my master, had not rendered my business disgusting. I wasted his time, and employed myself in engraving medals, which served me and my companions as a kind of insignia for a new invented order of chivalry, and though this differed ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... which was his Wife, two Sons, and a Daughter, returned with them in Triumph to Cuzco; to which place the Vice-King went, so soon as he was informed of the imprisonment of the poor Prince." A mock trial was held. The captured chiefs were tortured to death with fiendish brutality. Tupac Amaru's wife was mangled before his eyes. His own head was cut off and placed on a pole in the Cuzco Plaza. His little boys did not long survive. So perished the last of the Incas, descendants of the wisest Indian rulers America has ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... taskmaster shuns every opportunity of browbeating her; and to the generous and impulsive being whose bills are paid with philosophic calm. Mrs. Fetherel, as wives go, had been fairly exempt from trials of this nature, for her husband, if undistinguished by pronounced brutality or indifference, had at least the negative merit of being her intellectual inferior. Landscape gardeners, who are aware of the usefulness of a valley in emphasizing the height of a hill, can form an idea of the account to which an accomplished woman may turn ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... been stained and polluted by murders so ferocious, and cruelties so abhorrent, that the heart shudders at the recital. It has been said, that not only were the miserable victims of the rage and brutality of the fanatics savagely murdered, but that in many instances their flesh was devoured by the cannibals, who are the advocates, if the rumours which are circulated be true. I will mention a fact to give Ministers the opportunity, if ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... enough to visit some low brothel of Las Penuelas or on Chopa Street, where he found rouged dowagers with cigarette-stubs in their lips, who looked like princesses to him. His narrow skull, his powerful jaw, his blubber-lip, his stupid glance, lent him a look of repellant brutality ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... her work and stood rigid, unmovable, stony as marble, the bag fallen at her feet, her hands fallen straight down at her sides. Mr. Joseph had sunk upon the ground moaning and writhing, but through all the torture of the terrible pain he was suffering, he thought of nothing but the inconceivable brutality of the act itself. Why had she ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... applaud it in the highest degree; for my own heart tells me how strong is the influence of fraternal affection. I ask you in your turn to put a liberal construction upon my vexation, and to conclude that when attacked by your relatives with bitterness, with brutality, and without cause, I not only ought not to retract anything, but, in a case of that kind, should even be able to rely upon the aid of yourself and your army. I have always wished to have you as a friend: I have taken pains to make you understand that I am a warm friend to you. I ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... he was so conscious of how vital to himself was the necessity for being a successful, even a 'strong,' husband, that he never spoke of a distaste born perhaps by the perverse processes of Nature out of a secret fund of brutality in himself. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... enough for everybody to hear, 'That woman is a nuisance.' He was very angry at King Leopold's coming here, received him very coldly at Windsor, had no conversation with him on business, and on one occasion exhibited a rudeness even to brutality. It seems he hates water-drinkers; God knows why. One day at dinner Leopold called for water, when the King asked, 'What's that you are drinking, sir?' 'Water, sir.' 'God damn it!' rejoined the other King; 'why don't you drink wine? I never allow anybody to drink water at ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... the matter, then," conceded Wingate, "from your point of view. Supposing that your nephew has been abducted and is held at the present moment as a hostage. It would be, without doubt, by some person or persons who resented the brutality, the dishonesty, the foul commercial methods of the company with which he was connected. An amendment of those methods might produce ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Last night, over cigarettes, he had been bored to death by the story of Flea. The boy had a little reminded him of Gerald—the Gerald of history, not the Gerald of romance. He was more genial, but there was the same brutality, the same peevish insistence on ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... "the very worst amongst the bad, such as David Haggart and John Thurtell; and not content with turning away the edge of an instinctive condemnation of crime, actually entitles the prize-fighters, the brutality of whose profession can scarcely be exaggerated, 'the priests of an old religion.'" More recently, while advocating the Children's Bill in the House of Commons (March 24th, 1908), Mr. Shaw said that "George Borrow never did a worse service ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... and the Saturday the unfortunate prisoner, despoiled of her man's dress, had much to fear. Brutality, furious hatred, vengeance, might severally incite the cowards to degrade her before she perished, to sully what they were about to burn. Besides, they might be tempted to varnish their infamy by a "reason of state," according to the notions of the day—by depriving ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... treatment of inferior creatures on the minds of those who practise it is still more deplorable than its effects upon the animals themselves. The man who kicks dumb brutes kicks brutality into his own heart. He who can see the wistful imploring eyes of half-starved creatures without making earnest efforts to relieve them, is on the road to lose his manhood, if he has not already lost it. And the boy who delights ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth |
