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Ferocity   /fərˈɑsəti/   Listen
Ferocity

noun
1.
The property of being wild or turbulent.  Synonyms: fierceness, furiousness, fury, vehemence, violence, wildness.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Ferocity" Quotes from Famous Books



... tiger pacing up and down in his cage, with his eyes riveted on the human faces before him. He has observed how he will single out some individual, and finally stopping short in his rounds, turn on him with a look of such intense ferocity as makes a man's blood stand still, and his very breath come thick and hard, as he momentarily expects the beast will tear away the bars of the cage and leap forth on the obnoxious person. Now, Andy's fine, open, manly face had nothing of the tiger in it, but, for a moment, ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore

... degenerates often simulate symptomatologically genuine epilepsy so far as the ferocity of the excitement and the state of consciousness are concerned. In some cases the retention of suggestibility during the attacks shows clearly the psychogenetic character of the disorder, while in others the tendency toward the ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck

... guerilla skirmishes that raged over a minute stretch of territory were characterised by an extraordinary ferocity. Around Oudenarde, which town Philip was determined to relieve, men were beheaded ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... clerical, now under rustic brows. 'Tis the city of Lacedaemon; 'tis a stack of bayonets. There are asking eyes, asserting eyes, prowling eyes; and eyes full of fate,—some of good, and some of sinister omen. The alleged power to charm down insanity, or ferocity in beasts, is a power behind the eye. It must be a victory achieved in the will before it can be signified in the eye. 'Tis very certain that each man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense scale of ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... he could against his father's blows, pale and bathed in perspiration, his teeth clenched, his eyes brilliant as a wolf's, slowly retreated, and as his father charged upon him, gesticulating with ferocity and blind with rage, like a wild boar, he turned and ran out of the cabin, down towards ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky

... of these crests and devices (lions, tigers, dragons, griffins, and other emblems of ferocity), the English character of many of the names, and the Latin mottos, identical with some in common use in England, may give us a confused and not very dignified idea respecting their almost universal use by the middle classes in England. M. Taine, a ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn

... be regarded as tutelary daimons of supernatural power and intelligence. At first the animals, like the undifferentiated things of hecastotheism, are regarded in fear or awe by reason of their strength and ferocity, and this regard grows into an incipient worship in the form of sacrifice or other ceremonial; meanwhile, inanimate things, and in due season rare and unimportant animals, are neglected, and a half dozen, ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee

... Islands, in the Bay of Bengal, are remote from any shores, and are protected from foreign influences by dangerous coral reefs, and by the reputed ferocity and cannibalism of the natives. These are Negritos, and are commonly spoken of as most abject savages. They are not, however, without distinctions of rank; they are clean, modest, moral after marriage, and most strict in the observance of prohibited degrees. Unlike ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... brother-loving. That said itself. But on the other hand, to escape the consequences of his act, he must hold himself in instant readiness to be in savage earnest what a common thief would be in similar straits; a thing of duplicity and double meanings and ferocity, alert to turn and slay at any moment ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... events struck them apart. Out of the night leaped danger, enhancing love and forbidding it. From the starboard bow Captain Abernethy shrilled a cry of warning, and the heavy, bellowing voice of Loge shouted an answer of challenge and ferocity. The wind had fallen, but the lightning played from the clouds now almost without intermission. Cleggett saw Loge and his followers, machete in hand, flinging themselves at the rail. They lifted a hoarse cheer as they came. The fire ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis

... his fist in the face of the three men and calling them murderers, assassins, with a violence that shook his frame from head to foot. But Lapoulle seemed not even to hear him. Squatted on the ground beside the corpse, he was devouring the bloodstained bread, an expression of stupid ferocity on his face, with a loud grinding of his great jaws, while Chouteau and Loubet, seeing him thus terrible in the gratification of his wild-beast appetite, did not even ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... drew himself together, his jaws shutting with ferocity, and his hand flying to the belt where his voyageur's case-knife hung. The Cure did not see this. Without turning his head towards Pomfrette, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... this strange being was covered with a crimson cap, and his countenance, might have been truely termed handsome, had not the lower part of it been enveloped in a mass of long black hair, which gave to its possessor an air of wild and savage ferocity. ...
— Blackbeard - Or, The Pirate of Roanoke. • B. Barker

... bed-quilts and pillow-cases—the most gorgeous bed-quilts and pillow-cases—made of patchwork, and now and again you will see a mosquito-bar in course of construction, of course not made of net or muslin because of the awesome strength and ferocity of the Lembarene strain of mosquitoes, but of stout, fair-flowered and besprigged chintzes; and you will observe these things are often being sewn with a ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... lasted two months with various success, and a considerable loss of life on either aide; and hence arose the savage ferocity which disgraced, on the part of the victors, the last scene of this miserable tragedy. The assailants having endured much from drought, as well as from the sword of the enemy, betook themselves to pious exercises in order to ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... unarmed. They marched arm-in-arm with their new friends, singing, like them, the "Marseillaise" and "Mourir pour la Patrie." In the quarter of the Champs Elysees, where well-to-do foreigners formed a considerable part of the population, there was no ferocity exhibited by the mob. The insurgents were like children at play,—children on their good behavior. They had achieved a wonderful and unexpected victory. The throne had fallen, as if built on sand. Those who had overturned it were ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... Especially when the mysterious unseen power throws him helpless on the ground, jerks and writhes him in convulsions, makes him leap upon the bystanders with a giant's strength and a wild beast's ferocity, impels him with distorted face and frantic gesture, and voice not his own nor seemingly even human, to pour forth wild incoherent raving, or with thought and eloquence beyond his sober faculties to command, to counsel, to foretell—such a one seems to those who watch ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen

... came. A wild, long, savage yell from hundreds of throats rose on the still night air, and, confident as they were in their position, there was not one of the garrison but felt his blood grow cold at the appalling ferocity of the cry. Simultaneously there was a tremendous rush at the doors and windows, which tried the strength of frame and bar. Then, as they stood firm, came a rain of blows with hatchet ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty

... and adventurers seized upon the literal meaning, instead of the spiritual one. The time, being that of Don Quixote and of the Inquisition, accounts for the childish credulity on one side and the unparalleled ferocity on the other. The search for El Dorado, whether it was believed to be a fabulous country of gold, or an inaccessible mountain, or a lake, or a city, or a priest who anointed himself with a fragrant oil and sprinkled his body with fine gold dust, ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... complaint was against the corporations and trusts. Their creed was, "Bust the Trusts." All oppression originated in the trusts, and one and all told the same tale of woe. They advocated government ownership of such trusts as the railroads and telegraphs, and excessive income taxes, graduated with ferocity, to destroy large accumulations. Likewise they advocated, as a cure for local ills, municipal ownership of such public utilities as water, gas, ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London

... through Moors, once through Jews; [Footnote: It is well known, that the very reason why the Spanish of all nations became the most gloomily jealous of a Jewish cross in the pedigree, was because, until the vigilance of the Church rose into ferocity, in no nation was such a cross so common. The hatred of fear is ever the deepest. And men hated the Jewish taint, as once in Jerusalem they hated the leprosy, because even whilst they raved against it, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... by the strangeness and ferocity of the natives, so I concealed myself hastily in some brushwood behind a large tree. Much to my horror I found that the screams, groans, and singing only drew nearer and nearer. The procession then ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang

... Action, the doctrine everywhere known, and enthusiastically laid to heart? The fit pabulum, in these times, for a certain rugged workshop intellect and heart, nowise without their corresponding workshop strength and ferocity, it requires but to be stated in such scenes to make proselytes enough.—Admirably calculated for destroying, only not for rebuilding! It spreads like a sort of Dog-madness; till the whole World-kennel will be rabid: then woe ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... been of opinion that the allowing actors to die in the presence of the audience has an immoral tendency, but trifling when compared with the ferocity acquired by viewing the reality as a show; for it seems to me that in all countries the common people go to executions to see how the poor wretch plays his part, rather than to commiserate his fate, much less to think of the breach ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft

... tales of whom they knew by heart. It was enough to see the width and length of the space occupied by the count in the bed, to imagine his gigantic proportions. When awake, his gray eyebrows hid his eyelids in a way to heighten the light of his eye, which glittered with the luminous ferocity of a wolf skulking on the watch in a forest. Under his lion nose, with its flaring nostrils, a large and ill-kept moustache (for he despised all toilet niceties) completely concealed the upper lip. ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac

... if possible, the words and music of the old song. "Courtesies such as yours," he wrote, "refine the spirit, while they mitigate the ferocity, ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... and enterprising, seemed to fit him for the situation. Delighting in the tumult and in the struggles of life, he was equally a stranger to pity and to fear; his very courage was a sort of animal ferocity; not the noble impulse of a principle, such as inspirits the mind against the oppressor, in the cause of the oppressed; but a constitutional hardiness of nerve, that cannot feel, ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... to the house. When we have gone to bed the faithful creature will lie on guard in the hall, and no amount of poisoned liver thrust through the letter-box will assuage its ferocity or weaken its determination to protect the hearth and home of its master against marauders. For the dromedary is not only a strict teetotaler and non- smoker, but a lifelong vegetarian. Famous for its browsing propensities, a dromedary about the garden will save untold labour and expense, keeping ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various

... water with unreasonable ferocity for a few minutes, trying to enjoy a diversion that had not failed her until ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... being just what I am and what I have been! Risks? Fail her? I? I couldn't fail her. I'll get those letters for her to-night, if Hunter has hidden them in the beam of his eye!" He turned to me with a sudden white glare of ferocity that appalled me. "I could kill him with my hands," said he, with a quiet cold deadliness to chill one's marrow, "and Inglesby after him, for what they've made her endure! When I think of to-night—that brute daring to touch ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... terror of that countryside, had all four feet in the air. A flame of hatred surged about the husky's heart. His snarl as he bounded to his feet was truly awe-inspiring. His writhen lips drew up and back crescent-wise over red gums, showing huge yellow fangs and an expression of most daunting ferocity. ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson

... and make my meaning clear to your miserably weak comprehension, sir," cried Dickenson, with mock ferocity. "Here were you just taking a bit of a dive, and there were we, your friends, from the captain down to the latest-joined private, suffering—oh! I can't tell you what we suffered. I don't mean to say that Roby was breaking his heart because he thought there was an end ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn

... how the high beatitude consequent upon that wonderful event of Dorothy's love put Richard in a vaguely belligerent mood. It was an amiable ferocity at that, and showed in nothing more dire than just an eye of overt challenge to all the world. Also, he dilated and swelled in sheer masculine pride of himself, and no longer walked the streets, but stalked. Naturalists will not be surprised by these revelations, having observed kindred phenomena ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... Monday took on the same levity it wore then, and excited him in the same way. He saw her laughing with Ed over his dismay. He sat down and wrote a letter to her at last-a letter that came from the ferocity of the ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... despised religion Barbara Blomberg, washerwoman of Ratisbon Believed in the blessed advent of peace Compassing a country's emancipation through a series of defeats Don John of Austria Don John was at liberty to be King of England and Scotland Ferocity which even Christians could not have surpassed Happy to glass themselves in so brilliant a mirror His personal graces, for the moment, took the rank of virtues Necessary to make a virtue of necessity One-half to Philip and one-half to the Pope and Venice ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger

... for itself an absolute supremacy over the law of the land, it has time and again dyed its hands in the blood of men who were imbeciles. Two or three noteworthy cases will suffice to show with what inhuman ferocity irresponsible men have been put to death by this system ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett

... of the incredible ferocity exhibited by the Italian despots.[218] It must be remembered that they were very rarely legitimate rulers, but usurpers, who could only hope to retain their power so long as they could keep their subjects in check and defend themselves against equally illegitimate usurpers in the neighboring cities. ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... from beneath which two long curls hung down upon her shrivelled neck, with its tightly drawn veins. Beside her lay a child, grasping convulsively at her shrunken breast, and squeezing it with involuntary ferocity at finding no milk there. He neither wept nor screamed, and only his gently rising and falling body would have led one to guess that he was not dead, or at least on the point of breathing his last. They turned into ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... in a north-easterly direction along the coast of Kamchatka, which he surveyed. On the 19th/8th August in 64 deg. 30' N.L. he fell in with Chukches, who had still a reputation among the Russians for invincible courage and ferocity. First one of them came to the vessel, swimming on two inflated seal-skins, "to inquire what was intended by the vessel's coming thither," after which their skin-boat lay to. Conversation was carried on with them by means of a Koryaek ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... the grating, but at these words he suddenly roused. It was as if a current of electricity had galvanized him. He strained at his manacles and the bars groaned under his weight. His eyes began to roll, his lips drew back over his blue gums. Noting his expression of ferocity, Esteban cut at his naked back with ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach

... good of thy soul!" whispered the Neapolitan, with a strange mixture of Christian zeal, in the midst of all his ferocity. ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... violence and pillage, utterly devastated and conquered the above provinces, burning the chateaux, decapitating their defenders and soiling the reputation of the Swiss soldier by inexcusable acts of cupidity and ferocity. Never was so venal and brutal a war waged at the will of a foreign and detestably traitorous king, and the coming of the great Duke Charles was awaited by all the inhabitants of the Romand country as a welcome deliverance from the hated Bernois. Postponing his Italian campaign, Duke Charles, ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven

... horrified her by telling her that the noted British chief Beric, who had defeated our best troops several times with terrible slaughter, was coming here to remain under my charge until we sail for Rome. She was shocked, considering that you must be a monster of ferocity; and even my pretty cousins were terrified at the prospect. I had half a mind to get you to attire yourself in Roman fashion, but I thought that you would not consent. However, we shall surprise them sufficiently ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty

... from the wound finished the killing of the fainting Piera. The blood shed served to infuriate more the barbarous executioners who in order to give the finishing stroke to the martyr, as an unrivalled expression of their savage ferocity, thrust a red-hot iron into his mouth and eyes. That same night these treacherous and ferocious tyrants whose sin made them hate the light, buried the body in the darkness of the night in a patch of cogon grass ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... recognised the ferocity of the primitive epics, those of the Greeks as well as those of the northern nations. Thus spoke Patroclus to Cebrion when he fell headlong from his chariot, "with the resolute air of a diver who seeks ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... Dirk Peters drew the first. Fate favoured him. He had nothing more to fear. Arthur Pym calculated that one more chance was against him. Augustus Barnard drew in his turn. Saved, too, he! And now Arthur Pym reckoned up the exact chances Parker and himself. At that moment all the ferocity the tiger entered into his soul. He conceived an intense and devilish hatred of his poor ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne

... but the numbers and ferocity of the pirates prevailed. Cain rushed forward followed by Hawkhurst, bearing down all who opposed them. With one blow from the pirate-captain, the head of Don Ribiera was severed to the shoulder; a second struck down the eldest son, while the sword of Hawkhurst passed through ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat

... of this transaction Captain Bligh exerted himself to the utmost to reduce the people to a sense of their duty by haranguing and expostulating with them, which caused me to assume a degree of ferocity quite repugnant to my feelings, as I dreaded the effect which his remonstrances might produce. Hence I several times threatened him with instant death unless he desisted; but my menaces were all in vain. He continued to harangue us with so ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery

... universality of death, regarded as the penalty incurred by Adam; of general reflections upon the heathen world and the idolatry of the Jews; and of the sentences pronounced by Jehovah against the Canaanites. In one of his sermons, of portentous length and ferocity (vol. vii., sermon iii.), he expands the doctrine that natural men—which includes all men who have not gone through the mysterious process of conversion—are God's enemies. Their heart, he says, 'is like a viper, hissing and ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... at Hartlebury, he found Lord Porlock, a slight, sickly, worn-out looking man, who had something about his eye of his father's hardness, but nothing in his mouth of his father's ferocity. ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... man. She is much younger than the Prince, a girl of two-and-twenty, sick with vanity, superficially clever, and fundamentally a fool. She has a red-brown rolling eye, too large for her face, and with sparks of both levity and ferocity; her forehead is high and narrow, her figure thin and a little stooping. Her manners, her conversation, which she interlards with French, her very tastes and ambitions, are alike assumed, and the assumption is ungracefully apparent: Hoyden playing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Chetwynd, who, when 'Uncle Horace' had in the House expressed a hope that the question might be carried, had exclaimed, 'I hope to see you hanged first!' 'You hope to see me hanged first, do you?' cried Horace, with all the ferocity of the Walpoles; and thereupon, seizing him by the most prominent feature of his face, shook him violently. This was matter enough for a brace of swords and coffee for four, and Mr. Chetwynd had to repent of his remark after being severely wounded. In ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... royal honours seldom acquire the grace of genuine royalty, and the Cardinal pursued with vindictive ferocity those who offended his sensitive dignity. In 1515, Polydore Vergil said, in writing to his friend, Cardinal Hadrian, that Wolsey was so tyrannical towards all men that his influence could not last, and ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... genius of civilization. The dominant nations of the plains Indians—those whose numerical strength and war-like character made them feared by their neighbors—had their domain above the Platte. The Sioux in particular had a mighty reputation, established by treachery and ferocity in war. Their history recorded a constant succession of cruel wars, most of which had had no justification save in arrogance and bloody-mindedness. They did not want to live at peace; for peace signified ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton

... what we do with girls in Europe," I began in a grimly matter-of-fact tone. I think Miss Jacobus was disconcerted by my sudden appearance. I turned upon her with cold ferocity: ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad

... system. In resisting his enemies he does not set himself in opposition to governmental authority per se, but only to the abuse of authority by subordinates who disgrace their master and his. And in assuming the leadership of the insurgent rabble he thinks to restrain their ferocity and thus earn the thanks of the supreme authority.—It remained for Schiller to convert this rude self-helper in the age of expiring feudalism into a savage anarchist in the boastful age ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... bottle, might possibly have succeeded in infringing the aforesaid rule: no other human being could have got his cranium through the bars. I suspect, it was simply an outbreak of the plethoric sentry's irrational ferocity (he had been sweltering under a burning sun for two hours) on the first helpless object that came across him; for I could not make out that the women had answered or aggravated him. I addressed to my friend many compliments on his prowess—trusting that his soldierly zeal would be appreciated in ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... storms of rain and a close thundery atmosphere prevailed. This might have affected the patient, or, did this relapse mean that his condition had been one of superficial strength induced by sheer power of will? The doctor resumed his usual ferocity of manner and refused to be questioned. For hours he and Philippa sat beside the bed, watching a feeble, flickering spark of life—so feeble that it seemed that every moment it must be extinguished; but gradually—very gradually—the distressing symptoms decreased, a little ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay

... the conquests of the Mohammedans in Europe. It is true that the wave of Saracenic invasion had been arrested by Charles Martel four or five hundred years before; but in the mean time a new Mohammedan power sprang up, of greater vigor, of equal ferocity, and of a more stubborn fanaticism. This was that of the Turks, who had their eye on Constantinople and all Eastern Europe. And Europe might have submitted to their domination, had they instead of the Latins taken Constantinople. The conquest of that city was averted several hundred ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord

... scutcheon of the Elisei; perhaps their having been poor, and transplanted (as he seems to imply) from some disreputable district. Perhaps they were known to have been of ignoble origin; for, in the course of one of his most philosophical treatises, he bursts into an extraordinary ebullition of ferocity against such as adduce a knowledge of that kind as an argument against a family's acquired nobility; affirming that such brutal stuff should be answered not with ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt

... them retreated from his position; a single word made them spring upon each other. There was none of the vague boredom, the somniferous satiety which at times had saddened their old gatherings; at present there was real ferocity in the struggle, a longing to destroy one another. The tapers of the hanging lamp flared up, the painted flowers of the earthenware on the walls bloomed, the table seemed to have caught fire amid the upsetting of its symmetrical arrangements and the violence ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... were wisdom and courage; but the one was often mere cunning, and the other brutal ferocity. But no one like the Norman had yet appeared in Wales—no one with a vision so clear, or with so hard a grip. A hard, worldly, tenacious, calculating race they were; and they turned their faces ...
— A Short History of Wales • Owen M. Edwards

... here take a short view of Gregory's incessant activity among the western nations in process of formation. In his struggle to tame the ferocity, lawlessness, and unbelief of the Lombards, he betakes himself to the illustrious Catholic queen Theodelinda. He strives to use her influence with her husband Agilulf, on behalf of Rome, ever the object of oppression. Knowing ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies

... he had dared to hope. When Saturday came, it seemed to him that the crisis in his work had been reached. The Holy Spirit and the Satan of rum seemed to rouse up to a desperate conflict. The more interest in the meetings, the more ferocity and vileness outside. The saloon men no longer concealed their feelings. Open threats of violence were made. Once during the week Gray and his little company of helpers were assailed with missiles of various kinds as they left the tent late at night. The police sent down a special force, ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon

... would: my manner altered with my feelings, and became so cold and shy that she could not fail to notice it. She soon did notice it, and HER manner altered too: the familiar nod was changed to a stiff bow, the gracious smile gave place to a glare of Gorgon ferocity; her vivacious loquacity was entirely transferred from me to 'the darling boy and girls,' whom she flattered and indulged more absurdly than ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte

... They gave a great gasp as they recognized the countenance of King Anko, the sea serpent, its gray hair and whiskers bristling like those of an angry cat, and the usually mild blue eyes glowing with a ferocity even more terrifying than ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum

... decadence: that lust for power and sensation, those incredible temples, palaces, feasts, revelries, blasphemies, butcheries. Commencing with a beauty which knew no bounds, he moved on to lust or satiety or impotence for his theme; in the end he brought little but a glittering ferocity to that cold chronicle of the czars from Ivan to Catherine, The Imperial Orgy. His phrases never failed him, flashing like gems or snakes and clasping his exuberant materials in almost the only discipline they ever had. Wit withheld him from utter lusciousness. Though he employed Corinthian ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren

... "southern continent," then the grand object of nautical inquiry, and anchored in Frederick Hendrik Bay, the 4th March. The visit is chiefly memorable for a fatal collision with the natives, who, according to the French, exhibited uncommon ferocity. On his stepping on shore they offered Captain Marion a fire stick, which he supposed a ceremony of friendship; but when he lighted a heap of wood, as he imagined in compliance with their custom, they retired to a hill, and threw a shower ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... deepened until it became the master-passion. A quick foot-fall behind him was enough to send his heels flying as though they had been released by a hair-trigger. He kicked first and investigated afterward. The mere sight of a man within reaching distance roused all his ferocity. ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford

... their infernal aspect; they looked more like demons than like men. The foremost, who appeared to be dismounted dragoons, were clashing their sabres together in a kind of accompaniment to the yelling chant in which they all joined. On they went, trampling the dead with whom their bestial ferocity had strewn the devoted town, the sound of their high shrill voices and the ring of the clashing steel being audible for some time after they had passed out of sight. At length it died away and all was still again, so silent that ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan

... doctrine of the real presence, called transubstantiation, was the test of adherence to the Romish church, which unless all persons pretended to believe they were sacrificed with brutal ferocity.—Ed. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... him as on the whole taller than the English, and their faces were not brown, but grey. He admired their coats, there was a martial air in the long sweep of them. And he confessed that one looked far more of a soldier in a helmet. There is a ferocity about the things, a grimness well suited to a soldier.... Not that ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"

... because we will not own it to ourselves; the satisfaction of seeing all our favourite and selfish ideas dressed up in a garb so becoming, that we persuade ourselves that our false pride is proper dignity, our ferocity courage, our cowardice prudence, our irreligion liberality, and our baser appetites, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... The grin of unnatural ferocity which Don Diego put on while he spoke, surprised and perplexed the travellers not a little, but he suddenly explained the mystery by clutching his hair, setting his teeth and muttering wildly while he gave a ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne

... already examined our three machine-guns so that they might be in readiness for any emergency, if some of the ideas of which we had read as to the probable ferocity of the Martians should prove correct. It had, however, been definitely agreed between us that the guns were only to be used as a last resort to defend our lives against a wanton attack, and were to be kept out of ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks

... and methodically chops him to pieces with his hatchet. Then the press roars about the brutal ferocity of the pagan. ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling

... they nearly forced one another over the brink of the causeways into the water below. Some had climbed on the terraces, others feebly supported themselves against the walls of the buildings. Their squalid and tattered garments gave a wildness to their appearance which still further heightened the ferocity of their expression, as they glared on their enemy with eyes in which hate was mingled with despair. When the Spaniards had approached within bow-shot, the Aztecs let off a flight of impotent missiles, showing to the last the resolute spirit, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... shall be just, and shall depict their good qualities as well as their preying habits. How many people know that the very worst animal, the tiger, is a better husband and father than many men? Or that the ferocity of the tigress is prompted entirely by her maternal instinct—and that in every case of unusual ferocity yet recorded it was afterward found that there was a helpless cub somewhere near? Hence in subsequent books ...
— The Wonders of the Jungle - Book One • Prince Sarath Ghosh

... these words he attacked with the utmost ferocity the Scottish youth, who had but just time to throw himself into a posture of defence. But the rash fury of the assailant, as frequently happens, disappointed its own purpose; for, as he made a desperate thrust, ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... condemned cell. Then he accompanied her to the bank directors, and applied to Lord Sidmouth personally, but all in vain. It was not blood for blood, nor life for life, but blood for "filthy lucre;" so the poor woman was hung in obedience to the inexorable ferocity of the ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman

... has been for four full years, did contain any bodies of authority and disposition to treat with you, (most assuredly she does not,) such is the levity of those who have expelled everything respectable in their country, such their ferocity, their arrogance, their mutinous spirit, their habits of defying everything human and divine, that no engagement would hold with them for three months; nor, indeed, could they cohere together for any purpose of civilized society, if left as ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... industrious citizens who have been jumping claims in this county. A reporter of the Journal, which finds out everything before it happens, attended the ceremonies of giving some of these people a coat of tar and feathers, and can speak from personal observation as to the ferocity of this ruffian Vandemark—also ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick

... once heard governors express their disapproval of the starvation system and of the ferocity of treatment toward men who some day or other must go ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... a rocky gorge that extends for three miles along Big Sioux River, Iowa, was hewn through the stone by a spirit that took the form of a dragon. Such were its size and ferocity that the Indians avoided the place, lest they should fall ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... spies were sent among them, who openly joined the desperadoes, and gathered evidence to put the Rangers on their trail. Then, in the wilderness, with only the soaring buzzard or prowling coyote to look on, the Ranger and the outlaw met to fight with tigerish ferocity to the death. Shot, and lying prone, they fired until the palsied arm could no longer raise the six-shooter, and justice was satisfied as their bullets sped. The captains had the selection of their men, and the right to dishonorably discharge ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington

... now clenched upon his knees and leaning forward a little across the table toward the surgeon, his cheeks white as paper, his eyes burning, and burning with ferocity. He had the look of a dangerous animal in the trap. His body was gathered, his muscles taut. Sutch had a fear that the lad meant to leap across the table and strike with all his strength in the savagery of despair. He had ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason

... of the number of teachers that had been "ousted" by the boys. In fact, it was one of those places still to be found occasionally in the West, far from railroads and schools, where the primitive ignorance and ferocity of men still prowl, like the panthers which are also found sometimes in the deeps ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... that a bear in early spring is apt to be ravenous from hunger. The next insists that the California grisly is the only really dangerous bear; while another stoutly maintains that it does not compare in ferocity with what he calls the "smaller" silver-tip or cinnamon. And so on, and so on, without end. All of which is ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... Marco's serpents here are crocodiles, in spite of his strange mistakes about their having only two feet and one claw on each, and his imperfect knowledge of their aquatic habits. He may have seen only a mutilated specimen. But there is no mistaking the hideous ferocity of the countenance, and the "eyes bigger than a fourpenny loaf," as Ramusio has it. Though the actual eye of the crocodile does not bear this comparison, the prominent orbits do, especially in the case of the Ghariyal of the Ganges, and form one of the most repulsive features of the reptile's ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... of warning the Irishman stepped forward and struck the negro brutally in the face. The boy reeled, whimpering. Two more blows delivered with murderous ferocity silenced him altogether. He collapsed like a broken puppet, insensible on the floor, his face a curious ashen colour beneath ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... a large number of Catholics by the Carrickfergus garrison, driving them over the cliffs into the sea at the point of the bayonet, madly excited the Irish thirst for blood. Mr. Darcy Magee admits that, from this date forward till the arrival of Owen Roe O'Neill, the war assumed a ferocity of character foreign to the nature of O'Moore, O'Reilly, and Magennis. 'That Sir Phelim permitted, if he did not in his gusts of stormy passion instigate, those acts of cruelty which have stained his otherwise honourable conduct, is too true; but he stood alone ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... keeps governments faithful to their ends. Crude, unconnected truths are in the world of practice what falsehoods are in theory. A reasonable, prudent, provident, and moderate coercion may be a means of preventing acts of extreme ferocity and rigor: for by propagating excessive and extravagant doctrines, such extravagant disorders take place as require the most perilous and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... hero, spreading rapidly over the earth, and developing with prodigious strides when once fairly launched upon his career. Can it be possible, we ask, that this god was fathered by the low bestial orders below him,—instinct giving birth to reason, animal ferocity developing into human benevolence, the slums of nature sending forth the ruler of the earth. It is a hard proposition, I say, undoubtedly the hardest that science has ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... Sanguinis Clamor: His Reasons, and his Reassertions of the Charge in a Modified Form: His Notices of Dr. Crantzius and Ulac: His Renewed Onslaughts on Morus: His Repetition of the Bontia Accusation and others: His Examination of Morus's Printed Testimonials: Ferocity of the Book to the last: Its Effects on Morus.—Question of the Real Authorship of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor and of the Amount of Morus's Concern in it: The Du Moulin Family: Dr. Peter Du Moulin the Younger the Real Author of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor, but Morus ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... sleek roundness, but they, too, are stained with greenish and black splotches, such as may be seen on the skins of snakes. Assuredly no corpse, either here or elsewhere, has ever preserved such an expression of intense life, of ironical, implacable ferocity. Her mouth is twisted in a little smile of defiance; her nostrils pinched like those of a ghoul on the scent of blood, and her eyes seem to say to each one who approaches: "Yes, I am laid in my coffin; but you will very soon see I can get out of it." There is something ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... command of Edward I. "the greatest of the Plantagenets," (as his latest biographer boastfully terms him)—constructed, some six centuries ago, a cage of iron and wood, in which he immured, with Bomba-like ferocity, for four weary years, a poor prisoner, and that prisoner a woman—the Countess of Buchan—whose frightful crime consisted in having assisted at the coronation of her liege sovereign, Robert the Bruce. In the construction of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway the line ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson

... be for the French to blame Rostopchin's ferocity and for Russians to blame the scoundrel Bonaparte, or later on to place an heroic torch in the hands of their own people, it is impossible not to see that there could be no such direct cause of the fire, for Moscow had to burn as every village, factory, or house must burn ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... eastward, and they were fiercer than the fiercest which the Americans have at last brought under control in the plains of the Far West. Pitiless as Sioux and Apache and Comanche have shown themselves in their encounters with the whites in our day, they were surpassed in ferocity by the Shawnees, the Wyandots, and the Miamis whom the backwoodsmen met in a thousand fights, a century or a century and a half ago. The Ohio Indians were unspeakably vicious, treacherous, and filthy, but they were as brave as they were vile, and they were as sagacious as they ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... ideal served to make him less a savage and more a good and true man. Although he was rendered no less brave and warlike by this influence, it inclined him to tenderness and mercy, acting as a curb to the ferocity that in his fathers had been almost entirely unrestrained. It made him recognize the sacredness of womanhood. The true value of the wife and the mother had never before been known. In none of the ancient communities did women attain the position ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... out of him; but when it comes to his cross-examination, it will be different. He will want all his pluck then, and all the simplicity which he can master. You must remember that a skilful man will have been turned loose on him with all the ferocity of a bloodhound; a man who will have all the cruelty of Lax, but will have nothing to fear; a man who will be serving his purpose all round if he can only dumbfound that poor boy by his words and his looks. A man, when he has taken up the cause of these ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope

... Empecinado fall, they threw themselves upon him with as much ferocity as they had previously shown cowardice, and beat and ill-treated him in every possible manner. Not satisfied with that, they bound him hand and foot, and pushed him through a cellar window, throwing after him stones, and every thing they could ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various

... stealthily, she would rain a little shower of crumbs, from her left hand, on the grass beside her, to a confiding group of finches assembled there. And if ever a sparrow ventured to intrude his ruffianly black beak into this sacred quarter, she would manage, with a kind of restrained ferocity, to "shoo" him away, without ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland

... Gordon introduced him. Mrs. Slocum did not bow, she jerked her great chin upward, then she spoke with really alarming ferocity. "Where has my boarder went? That's what I want to know. That's what I have come here for, not for no bowin's and scrapin's. Where has ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman

... himself upon Vasling, to whom, no doubt, was confided the task to fight him alone; for his accomplices rushed to the beds where lay Misonne, Turquiette, and Nouquet. The latter, ill and defenceless, was delivered over to Herming's ferocity. The carpenter seized a hatchet, and, leaving his berth, hurried up to encounter Aupic. Turquiette and Jocki, the Norwegian, struggled fiercely. Gervique and Gradlin, suffering horribly, were not even conscious of what was passing ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne

... answer, but the savage ferocity of his tone made her shiver, and she instantly abandoned the plan she had formed of trying, by little touches of hand and heel, to make Freckles still further hamper Lynch's actions. Through the settling ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames

... his delight in committing crimes. In the rest of the country the royalists were conducting guerrilla warfare, preventing the reunion of patriotic bodies and rendering the situation very critical for Bolivar. The largest troops of royalists were generally commanded by men distinguished for their ferocity. To the names appearing elsewhere we must add those of Calzada, Yanez' successor, and of Rosete, who competed with each other for the distinction of shedding the ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell

... country only by night, howling as they go. They let their beard and nails grow, and then seeing themselves armed with claws and covered with shaggy hair, they become confirmed in the belief that they are wolves. Impelled by ferocity or want, they throw themselves upon young children and tear, kill, and devour them." (Esquirol, Des Maladies Mentales, Paris, 1838, vol i., p. 521.) Those whom the French called loups-garous were in ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian

... August last the Sioux Indians in Minnesota attacked the settlements in their vicinity with extreme ferocity, killing indiscriminately men, women, and children. This attack was wholly unexpected, and therefore no means of defense had been prodded. It is estimated that not less than 800 persons were killed by the Indians, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... Commons, Thursday.—House seems to have been meeting all day. Began at three o'clock: Sitting suspended at half-past; resumed at 4.30; off again till nine; might have been continued indefinitely through night, only thunderstorm of unparalleled ferocity burst over Metropolis, and put an end to further manoeuvring. "Bless me!" tremulously murmured Lord SALISBURY's Black Man, as a peal of thunder shook Clock Tower, and lighted up House of Lords with lurid flame, "if these are home politics, wish ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 27, 1892 • Various

... of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... fanatical priest who accompanied Pizarro in his destructive expedition to Peru. If we were to search the history of mankind, we should not find another such example of the united efforts of ecclesiastical hypocrisy and military ferocity, of unresisted murder and insatiable plunder, as we meet with in the account ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... qualities, mixed with ferocity and pitiless cruelty. Pizarro and Cortes were attractive; we like to look at them a second time. Much we condemn, but much we admire. Their sagacity, their prowess, their heroic spirit, take us captive despite their baser qualities. In them was duplicity, revenge, bigotry, heathenish cruelty; ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... and was broad in proportion. Though of enormous size, he progressed at a speed which was surprising. Something had evidently irritated the brute considerably, for his whole appearance was characteristic of unrestrained ferocity. ...
— Brave and True - Short stories for children by G. M. Fenn and Others • George Manville Fenn

... they were nearer. They were like a long drawn p-u, p-u, p-u. The tone was of indescribable ferocity. Ned was brave, but he shivered all over and there was a prickly sensation at the roots of his hair. He felt like some primeval youth who with club alone must face the rush of the saber-toothed tiger. But he drew upon his reserves of pride which were large. He would not awaken ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler

... of which preceded the rest mounted on some of the horses which they had taken that morning from the Ancient Britons at Prosperous; That Examinant as soon as he came out of his door was surrounded by a party of the said Rebels, who presented their Pikes at him, and who he expected from the ferocity of their looks would have instantly put him to death; that one of the said Rebels held a musket at Examinant's breast with his finger on the trigger; that another of the said Rebels who was a turf-cutter, held a drawn sword over Examinant's head, ...
— An Impartial Narrative of the Most Important Engagements Which Took Place Between His Majesty's Forces and the Rebels, During the Irish Rebellion, 1798. • John Jones

... in hoisting the donkey up to the path, and then I collected the wood and helped her to load it again—an operation which involved a frequent meeting of hands and of the eyes, which had now lost the ferocity that had startled me at first, and seemed getting more soft and beaming every time I glanced at them, till at last, producing my sketch-book, I ventured to remark, "Ah, signorina, what a picture you would make! Now that ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various

... hell right has anybody got," demanded Brown with querulous ferocity, "to interfere between me and a lady? Eh? Whose compartment was she in? Me in hers or her in mine? Eh? Me. I'm sleeping. Hasn't a gent a right to sleep? Next thing I know she's fingerin' my whiskers. How should I know she's not balmy on red beards an' makin' ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... be a good-natured man on the near side of fifty. His close-cropped hair was an iron-gray, and his stubby beard and mustache a fierce red, the ferocity of which was tempered by the mildness of deep-set, small blue eyes. His general appearance would, I thought, have been more in accord with the driver of a beer-truck than anything so comparatively genteel as driving a grocer's wagon—his occupation, ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... my lord?" cried Halbert, viewing with increased alarm the resolute ferocity which now, blazing from every part of his countenance, seemed to dilate his figure with more than mortal daring. "What can you do? Your ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... in heaven. A homely body, coarsely dressed in gray and white. Deborah (for Haley had let her in) took notice of her. She watched them all—sitting on the end of the pallet, holding his head in her arms with the ferocity of a watch-dog, if any of them touched the body. There was no meekness, no sorrow, in her face; the stuff out of which murderers are made, instead. All the time Haley and the woman were laying straight the limbs and cleaning the cell, Deborah sat ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis

... thing riders loved. Most of them would not own a horse that would not pitch. Bostil presently decided, however, that in the case of this red stallion no rider in his right senses would care for such a fight, simply because of the extraordinary strengths, activity, and ferocity of the stallion. ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey

... a summons to arms took the place of the customary call to prayer: and on October 21st the French garrison was so fiercely and suddenly attacked as to leave the issue doubtful. Discipline and grapeshot finally prevailed, whereupon a repression of oriental ferocity cowed the spirits of the townsfolk and of the neighbouring country. Forts were constructed in Cairo and at all the strategic points along the lower Nile, and Egypt ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... in modern history the workmen of the capital rose against the body of the more or less well-to-do citizens. There was not a man in Paris who did not tremble for his property and his life. Householders feared the very servants in their homes. Between these days of ferocity intervened a day of sentiment. On May 21, 1848, the Assembly attended a Feast of Concord. There were carts filled with allegorical figures, there were processions, there were embraces; the whole town, soldiers, ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey

... he clubbed his rifle, and advanced towards the party in what seemed a paroxysm of insane fury, brandishing the weapon and rolling his eyes with a ferocity that could have only arisen from his being in that happy frame of mind which is properly termed "frightened ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird

... scrambled to his feet. Nick was a sight indeed with his face bloody, and one of his eyes giving evidence of going into mourning. He snarled something at Leon with a degree of his one-time ferocity, and the other turned back to assist him off the field. Nick stopped to look back. He made no threat, but the malevolence in that stare toward Hugh told better than words would have done what bitterness was in his heart. No town bully is dethroned without his hating the object of his ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson

... "they told me otherwise in New York. But I can see no very great ferocity in your soldiers' countenances. Nor do they dress in rags. Mr. De Lancey told me that the Continentals scarce mustered a pair of breeches ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... a monkey or a revengeful savage, but guided by remarkable intelligence. He will find his way into a camp and destroy every object made by the hand of man with a thoroughness akin to genius, and what he cannot destroy he will carry to a great distance and carefully conceal. As his ferocity is equal to his craftiness, he is very appropriately termed the Indian Devil.] and others the Wolverine, who is exceeding subtle above the beasts of the forest, and who is gifted with more evil mischief than all of them in one. And when the Weasels called to him for ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland

... unscrupulous class, with a fixed idea that all enjoyment consists in undetected sinning; and in certain phases of civilization people of this kind are apt to get the upper hand of more amiable and conscientious races and classes. They have the ferocity of a chained dog, and are proud of it. But the end of it is that they are always in chains, even at the height of their military or political success: they win everything on condition that they are afraid to enjoy it. Their civilizations rest on intimidation, which is so necessary to them that ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw

... him. It was terrible to see with what intense energy and cruelty the little yellow devil, with bared arms blooded to the shoulders, pounced upon his prey. With a quick jerk he pulled his fish in, then clutching it with one hand and thrusting the fingers of the other with the prompt ferocity of a young tiger into the panting gills, he tore off with a single wrench the head, and threw the body, yet quivering with life, among the lifeless heap of his victims lying at the bottom of his boat. The sea gulls, hovering about shrieking shrilly and pouncing ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various

... refusing to fulfil his engagement, he still confided to them the guard of his own person and the custody of the factory. This gave them ample opportunity of revenging the ill usage they had met with, and with that ferocity which is so natural to untutored barbarians. They rose in mutiny one night, and murdered Mr Katchpole, and all who were at the time along with him in the factory. A few, who happened to lodge on the outside of the fort, hearing ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... was inexperienced in warfare, but had a veteran counsellor in his old father-in-law; for Ali Atar knew every secret of the country, and as he prowled through it his eye ranged over the land, uniting in its glare the craft of the fox with the sanguinary ferocity of the wolf. He had flattered himself that their march had been so rapid as to outstrip intelligence, and that Lucena would be an easy capture, when suddenly he beheld alarm-fires blazing upon the mountains. "We are discovered," said ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... of the sect from the neighbourhood of Tachindu, or Ta-t'sien-lu, to be saturated with Sakta attributes, i.e. with the spirit of the Tantrika worship, a worship which he tersely defines as "a mixture of lust, ferocity, and mummery," and which he believes to have originated in an incorporation with the Indian religions of the rude superstitions of the primitive Turanians. Mr. Hodgson was told that the Bonpo sect still ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... fervid fancy from which it sprang. It drove the dragon prows of the Vikings marauding over the seas. It rolled the Goths' conquering squadrons across the nations, from the shores of Finland and Skager Rack to the foot of the Pyrenees and the gates of Rome. The very ferocity with which it blazed consumed itself, and the conquest of the flickering faith by Christianity was easy. During the dominion of this religion, the earnest sincerity with which its disciples received it appears ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... thinking all at once of the circus, sickened unutterably of Virtue. To drive eight spirited white horses, seated high on one of those gay closed wagons—those that went through the street with that delicious hollow rumble—hearing perchance the velvet tread, or the clawing and snarling of some pent ferocity—a leopard, a lion, what not; to hear each day that muffled, flattened beating of a bass drum and cymbals far within the big tent, quick and still more quickly, denoting to the experienced ear that pink and spangled Beauty danced on the big white horse at a deathless gallop; ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... ruler with which to strike; besides, she was too quick. Springing upon me with all the proverbial ferocity and activity of her tribe, she fastened upon my side with her teeth and began to rend and tear with her claws like unto a fury. In vain did I strive to disengage her. Her teeth seemed to be fastened about my ribs, and all my efforts served but to ...
— Scouting with Daniel Boone • Everett T. Tomlinson

... water-butt, and of enormous dimensions. His face was not so negrofied (if I may use the word) as some of his companions', but it had a still worse expression than that of the very thick-lipped kind, for it was not stupid like theirs. On the contrary, it exhibited a mixture of ferocity with a large share of cunning—a countenance, in fact, full of all wickedness. It resembled a good deal the faces I have afterwards observed in India,—among the fat despotic princes that are still permitted to misrule some portions ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid

... figure that was fouler as to shirt and coat and trousers than anything the boy had seen; though the tramps used to swarm through Willoughby Pastures before the Selectmen began to lock them up in the town poorhouse and set them to breaking stone. There was no ferocity in the loathsome face; it was a vagrant swine that looked from it, no worse in its present mood ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells

... remembered of hearing about their being let loose after sunset, to reconnoiter the premises, and I called to mind what I had heard and read in history, that however ferocious an animal is, a stern and steady gaze in the eye, by a human being, would disarm it of ferocity, and cause it to leave. This course I resolved to pursue with these three formidable enemies, that were already assuming a threatening attitude, with a low growl, showing their teeth, with hair on ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland

... page of the French Revolution and the days of terror, when the click of the guillotine and the rush of blood through the streets of Paris demonstrated to what extremities the ferocity of human nature can be driven by political passion. Who led those bloodthirsty mobs? Who shrieked loudest in that hurricane of passion? Woman. Her picture upon the page of history is indelible. In the city of Paris, in those ferocious mobs, the controlling ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various

... push—or blow—it might be termed either one or the other,—violent enough, in her weak state, to have again extended her on the ground, had not a chair received her as she fell. He looked at her with ferocity, grappled a moment in his pocket; then ran to the window, and throwing the sash violently up, thrust himself as far as he could without falling, into the open air. Terrified, and yet her feelings of his unkindness predominating even above her fears, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... cousin Felicia and—naturally—of himself, the Verity breed was almost indecently true to type. Prize animals, most of them, he granted, still cattle—for didn't he detect an underlying trace of obstinate bovine ferocity in ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... for the exhibition of all South Sea island craft, and the moment was about at hand, too, for exhibition of the full measure of a South Sea islander's ferocity! The islander glided from the ditch, crept to the house and slowly put forth his head until he could see around the corner. There, within three feet of him, back to the window, kneeling beside his chair, was Alf, ostensibly paying deep attention to his father's unctuous ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo

... see his empire in a more flourishing condition than on this spot: those who were smitten before they came to it, felt a mighty augmentation of their flame; and those who seemed the least susceptible of love, laid aside their natural ferocity, to act in a new character. For the truth of the latter, we shall only relate the change which soon appeared in the conduct ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton

... of acute national emergency, while the war was settling into its groove, there was no more zealous, no more persevering, and no more ineffectual subject of the King than the Self-Appointed Spy-Catcher. You never know what ferocity means until you have been approached by a titled lady who has persuaded herself that she is on the track of a German spy. We Britons are given to boasting of our grit in adversity and of our inability to realize when we are beaten. In no class of the community were these national ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... connexion there is between any man's sense and his sensibility—so much so, that instead of Lord Ferrers having any ascendant over his passions, I am disposed to think, that his drunkenness, which was supposed to heighten his ferocity, has rather been a lucky circumstance-what might not a creature of such capacity, and who stuck at nothing, have done, if his abilities had not been drowned in brandy? I will go back a little into his history. His misfortunes, as he called them, were dated from his marriage, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... of human flesh. But since all the Marquesans were human-flesh eaters, to be so designated was the token that the Typeans were the human-flesh eaters par excellence. Not alone to Nuku-hiva did the Typean reputation for bravery and ferocity extend. In all the islands of the Marquesas the Typeans were named with dread. Man could not conquer them. Even the French fleet that took possession of the Marquesas left the Typeans alone. Captain Porter, of the frigate ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London

... and that he might suffer some terrible fate at his hands, as often happens in the case of rival lovers. Therefore he had the wine-bearers, who were well-disposed to him, administer some drug that abated the visitor's ferocity. And so Zoticus after a whole night of embarrassment, being unable to secure an erection, was deprived of all that he had obtained, and was driven out of the palace, out of Rome, and later out of the remainder of Italy; and this saved his life. [However, the emperor drove ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio

... white men and Indians. Coronado soon picked out a couple of rancheros whom he knew as capital riders, fair marksmen, faithful and intelligent. Next his eye fell upon a man in Mexican clothing, almost as dark and dirty too as the ordinary Mexican, but whose height, size, insolence of carriage, and ferocity of expression marked him as of another and more ...
— Overland • John William De Forest

... between them during the following hours of the morning, though several times Dade caught Calumet watching him with a puzzled, amused smile in which there was a sort of slumbering ferocity. By the middle of the morning the front of the ranchhouse had been raised with the assistance of jacks, the old rotted sills taken out and new ones substituted. About an hour before noon, while Calumet, in woolen shirt and overalls, his face dirty, his ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer

... manner in which Graspum had divided the spoils of their degradation. He had set his dignity and position in society at a much higher value than they were willing to recognise,—especially when it was to share the spoils in proportion. Dan Bengal, so called from his ferocity of character, was a celebrated dog-trainer and negro-hunter, "was great in doing the savager portion of negro business." This, Romescos contended, did not require so much cunning as his branch of ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... it, and what he suffered, were not considered; and no more was it with labor, and no more with the purchaser of meat. That was true everywhere in the world, but it was especially true in Packingtown; there seemed to be something about the work of slaughtering that tended to ruthlessness and ferocity—it was literally the fact that in the methods of the packers a hundred human lives did not balance a penny of profit. When Jurgis had made himself familiar with the Socialist literature, as he would ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... the animal, but at the least movement he made they drew back. In order to observe more nearly the manners of these creatures, we went into the little skiff that accompanied our canoe. Tigers very rarely attack boats by swimming to them; and never but when their ferocity is heightened by a long privation of food. The noise of our oars led the animal to rise slowly, and hide itself behind the sauso bushes that bordered the shore. The vultures tried to profit by this ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... yellowish-brown in color, and had a peculiar vibrating movement, as though they were hung on a pivot, like a compass-needle. The nose was long and hooked, and the mouth set in a thin, cruel line. There was in the man's aspect an extraordinary combination of ignorance, vanity, cunning and ferocity. ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey

... others at his heels, the morio slowly made his way up the stairs. Goaded by the taunts of the outlaws, his face was distorted with ferocity; through his lips came a fierce, sibilant breathing; in the dim light his colossal figure and enormous head seemed in no wise human, but rather a murderous phantasm. With head rolling from side to side, stabbing in the air with his knife, he continued to approach,—an object calculated ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... every man's skin, in a greater or less degree, was in the full ascendancy at last. The unnamable ferocity that marks the death-leap of the wild hunters was in his face. In his eyes was cunning,—such craft as marks the pack in its hunting. All over him was written that unearthly rage that is alone the property and trait of the woods creatures: the fury with which a she-wolf fights for her cubs or a ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall

... for blood and revenge. Aided by those in authority, who feared lest a widespread conspiracy had been formed, she seized, on the slightest suspicion, hundreds of innocent victims and put them to death with all the ferocity of a famished beast. Members of nearly a hundred noble families, and at least a thousand persons of lower rank, of every age and of both sexes, fell beneath her savage vengeance. She is said to have further whetted her appetite for horrors by wading, at Fahrwangen, in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... steak with ferocity, slammed a generous section on a plate and fairly threw it at the young man opposite. Phil wasn't interested in steak. He scarcely looked at it. His eyes were on Mr. Cressy, his thoughts were on that gentleman's ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper

... the walrus to our domestic land-animals has obtained for it, among sailors, the names of the sea-horse and sea-cow, and the records of its ferocity when attacked are numerous. Its hide is nearly an inch thick, and is put to many useful purposes by the Esquimaux, who live to a great extent on the flesh of this creature. They cut up his hide into long lines, to attach ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... fancy, involved in the steady and ardent adherence which the population of London in particular, and most of the great cities, exhibited to the person and the cause of Edward IV. There was a feeling that his reign was an advance in civilization upon the monastic virtues of Henry VI., and the stern ferocity which accompanied the great qualities of "The Foreign Woman," as the people styled and regarded Henry's consort, Margaret of Anjou. While thus the gifts, the courtesy, and the policy of the young sovereign made him popular with the middle classes, he owed the allegiance of the more powerful barons ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the Saracens, conceded to them a degree of respect, which subsided into feelings of a very different complexion, as they themselves rose in the scale of civilization. This sentiment of respect tempered the ferocity of a warfare, which, although sufficiently disastrous in its details, affords examples of a generous courtesy, that would do honor to the politest ages of Europe. [19] The Spanish Arabs were accomplished in all knightly ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... colors were almost as fresh and bright as the day they were laid on. And as a character study it was a masterpiece second to none, and in my estimation superior to his 'Gilder,' which is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. It represented a Pole or a Russian, with a face of intense ferocity. His rank was shown by his rich cloak, the decorations on his furred hat, and by the gold-beaded mace held in his hand. Von Whele declared that the subject was John the Third, of Poland; but that was mere conjecture. And now Drummond ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon

... neighbouring countries, although the condition of the serf in Poland was never as deplorable as, for instance, that which obtained in Russia. France had only just effected the relief of her lower classes—and this by an orgy of revolt and ferocity. Kosciuszko now came forward with his reforms. The forced labour of the peasant who could not bear arms was reduced to less than a half of his former obligation, and for those who could take part in the national war, abolished. ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner

... turning to us, "because of his ancestors. In him is the blood of a Great Dane noted for its strength, size and ferocity, a fierce brute which I brought over the mountains with me many years ago. Pluto's mother was a pure black wolf of a mean disposition, and his father the half-breed son of a Great Dane and a she-wolf. ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard

... likewise a friend and old acquaintance of his, very unintentionally gave David mortal offence on a similar occasion. Throwing back his jealous glance as he was ushering her into his garden, he fancied he observed her spit, and exclaimed, with great ferocity, 'Am I a toad, woman! that ye spit at me—that ye spit at me?' and without listening to any answer or excuse, drove her out of his garden with imprecations and insult. When irritated by persons for whom he entertained little respect, his misanthropy displayed itself ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott

... I stepped sharply into the room. The grasp of the lunatic was on the child's throat. I loosed it somewhat roughly, throwing him off with a force that brought him to the ground. He rose quickly, glared at me with tiger-like ferocity, and then darted out of the room. The affair had become serious, and the same night I posted a letter to Yorkshire, informing Mr Oxley of what had occurred, and suggesting the propriety of his immediately coming to London. Measures ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various

... yield to the admirable swiftness and spirit of the Arabian horses: their riders were skilled in the evolutions of irregular war; and the Northern Barbarians were astonished and dismayed, by the inhuman ferocity of the Barbarians of the South. A Gothic soldier was slain by the dagger of an Arab; and the hairy, naked savage, applying his lips to the wound, expressed a horrid delight, while he sucked the blood of his vanquished enemy. The army of the Goths, laden with the spoils of the wealthy ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... it made you shudder to think of that enormous ferocity, that dynamic truculence, doing its best to destroy you in ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... head to stoop. A fearful-looking man was before me. A man of gigantic stature, with a beard reaching to the second button of his coat; and above it a face, not to be looked upon without a sensation of terror: a countenance expressive of determined courage, but, at the same time, of ferocity, untempered by any trace of a softer emotion. A shaggy sand-coloured beard, slightly grizzled; eyebrows like a chevaux-de-frise of hogs' bristles; eyes of a greenish-grey, with a broad livid scar across ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid



Words linked to "Ferocity" :   savageness, ferocious, intensity, intensiveness, savagery



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