"Torture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... new-made gardens, drooping and festering under a cruel sun in a scorched and unclean soil:—the place repelled and outraged every sense. Was it here that little Cecile had passed from a life of pain to a death of torture? ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... own! Delightful possibilities loomed before her through all her dressing. No more dreading of stormy days when she would be shut in the house; no more fears to torture her in the wakeful hours of the night. Help and protection would be hers at call!—And she could talk with Polly! She wanted to dance for very joy. And only two days ago her heart was aching! She felt as if ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... are Symonds's; let him speak still further: "Bruno burned, Vanini burned, Carnescchi burned, Paleario burned, Bonfadio burned; Campanella banished after a quarter of a century's imprisonment with torture; the leaders of free religious thought in exile, scattered over northern Europe. Tasso, worn out with misery and madness, rested at length in his tomb on the Janiculan; Scarpi survived the stylus of the Roman curia with calm inscrutability at St. Fosca; Galileo meditated ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... extent, but have preserved in a marvellous way their individuality as a race. They have the narrow eyes and the thick nose base of the pure Oriental; also much of his cunning. One of their special weaknesses seems to be the invention of the most hideous forms of torture, which they apply remorselessly to ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ran a swift stream almost knee-deep. Our way led across this stream, and there was only one means of getting over. That was to plunge in and splash through. Tired as we all were, after getting thoroughly wet our feet felt like lead, and marching was perfect torture. Still ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... another proof of the sturdiness and devotion which has filled so many pages of history and romance with their praise that as a class the Covenanters remained at home to establish their faith with torture, martyrdom, and death. ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher
... strange looking being who fanned her in such an amazing fashion was the young friend of the real Travers Gladwin who had appeared on the scene from time to time during that fateful afternoon, for his features were far from being in repose. Positive torture was written on his clean-cut boyish face as he wielded that fast fan in his handcuffed hands as if it were a task imposed upon ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... Ganges; to offer up human sacrifice; to murder children, either by throwing them into the Ganges, or by the Rajpoot secret method of infanticide; to encourage men to throw away their lives under temple cars and in other ways of religious devotion; to encourage various forms of voluntary self-torture and self-mutilation; to outrage girls under ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... heaven! is this not torture? I get it on both sides. [Turning to Nato:] Be still, ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... certain Vedius Pollio, who, in the presence of Augustus, would have given a slave as food to his fish for having broken a glass. With the Romans, the regular method of taking the evidence of their slaves was under torture. Here it has been thought better never to resort to their evidence. When a master was murdered, all his slaves, in the same house, or within hearing, were condemned to death. Here punishment falls on the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... book of school-boy's eloquence bend to the monstrous idea of a Son of God, begotten by a ghost on the body of a virgin, there is no imposition we are not justified in suspecting them of. Every phrase and circumstance are marked with the barbarous hand of superstitious torture, and forced into meanings it was impossible they could have. The head of every chapter, and the top of every page, are blazoned with the names of Christ and the Church, that the unwary reader might suck in the error before he began ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... were needed in the shop; business which he had left at a moment's warning awaited him, unfinished; but at this time he could not bear the torture of giving explanations, and alleging reasons to the languid intelligence and slow sympathies ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Monks of Camaldoli. By reason of all these works he made so long a stay in the Borgo that he almost adopted it as his home. He was a sorry fellow in matters of art, labouring with the greatest difficulty, and toiling with such pains at the execution of a work, that it was a torture to him. ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... brothers by brothers. The smoke rises in the valley, and the home is blotted out. All that makes life worth living goes, then life itself. What sterner test can a nation be put to than this? It is a torture long and slow; the agony and bloody sweat. I know well that if my own country were invaded I should, or hope I should, behave exactly as these men are doing; and as I should call it patriotism in my own case, ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... feel a sort of satisfaction that mine is going to the press first, though there is little danger that we should think on any subject alike, or stumble on any one character in the same track." De Quincey spoke of the hidden torture shown in Landor's play to be ever present in the mind of Count Julian, the betrayer of his country, as greater than the tortures inflicted in old Rome on generals who had committed treason. De Quincey's admiration of this play ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... impossibility to have his eyes on both passes at once, the old gentleman soon found that turning his head every few seconds from one side to the other became irksome. Then it became painful. At last it became torture, and then he gave up this plan in despair, resolving to devote a minute at a time to each pass, although feeling that by so doing his chances ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... incredible the torture to which they will sometimes put their prisoners; and the adult captives will endure it without a tear or a groan. In spite of all their sufferings, which the love of cruelty and revenge can invent and inflict upon them, they continue ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... the depths of his own soul another name. His years, his life, had been wasted, just as this man Prebol's life was wasted, just as Slip's life was being wasted. Buck gave himself over to the exquisite torture of memories and reflections. He wondered what had become of the woman for love of whom he had let go all holds and degenerated to this ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... and skipping is but the hypocrisy of bleeding vanity—haeret lateri—they are just the flush, wriggle, and hysterics of suppressed torture. ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... life, sir, this is infamous. You put upon me that I would mishandle my own son as he lies wounded and near death! I shall murder him, I suppose. You had that against me before. Shall I rob him too, or torture him maybe? This is raving. Carry it where you will, I'll none of it. ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... descended from that heroic little monkey who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper, or from that old baboon who, descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs, as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions." We have but to add:—if only the coming forth from the creative hand of God, the creation in his own image, the ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... pedantry, or pretension—with wit, conversational talents, and love of good society, without that desire of exhibition, that devouring diseased appetite for admiration, which preys upon the mind insatiably, to its torture—to its destruction; without that undefineable, untranslateable French love of succes de societe, which substitutes a precarious; factitious, intoxicated existence in public, for the safe self-approbation, the sober, the permanent happiness ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... And Maevius[16] reigns o'er Kentish town: Tigellius[17] placed in Phooebus' car From Ludgate shines to Temple-bar: Harmonious Cibber entertains The court with annual birth-day strains; Whence Gay was banish'd in disgrace;[18] Where Pope will never show his face; Where Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves or lose his pension.[19] But these are not a thousandth part Of jobbers in the poet's art, Attending each his proper station, And all in due subordination, Through every alley to be found, In garrets high, or under ground; And when they ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... had acknowledged with one accord that all hope of finding a means to render operations painless must be utterly abandoned—that the surgeon's knife must ever remain a synonym for slow and indescribable torture. By an odd coincidence it chanced that Sir Benjamin Brodie, the acknowledged leader of English surgeons, had publicly expressed this as his deliberate though regretted opinion at a time when the quest which he considered futile had already led to the most brilliant success in ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... persevered in making what they considered their escape from certain death, for, as I have said, the children had been taught, by the tales they had heard, to regard all strange Indians as ministers of torture, and of horrors worse than death. Exhausted with pain and fatigue, the poor little girl at length declared she ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... as a physician someone had heard and he was called in to treat the dislocated ankle of King Darius. The wily Greek, longing for his home, feared that if he confessed to a knowledge of medicine there would be no chance of escape, but under threat of torture he undertook a treatment which proved successful. Then Herodotus tells his story—how, ill treated at home in Crotona, Democedes went to AEgina, where he set up as a physician and in the second year the State of AEgina hired his services ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... the commandant writhed as we hoped in the torture of supreme insult, or slept as was likely from the after-effect of too much bottled beer with dinner—there were others who certainly did hear, and made no ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... as much right to fight for their principles as we have for ours, but I don't think they've the right to torture horses,' she rejoined. Her sympathy with oppressed shearers and dispossessed natives struck always a jarring note between them. His long upper lip closed tightly on the lower one, and he ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... how brave! What a noble lover for any woman! So tall and delicate and fair with all his strength! He never knew why you left him—he thought it was to wear the king's purple, to thrust a bit of gold in your hair! He must have suffered—you have suffered too—such delicious torture, I have often soothed myself to sleep with the thought of it. It is very sweet for me to see you lying there with my wound in your heart. It will rankle long; you cannot get it out—you are married to the king now, and Zoroaster has turned priest for love of you. I think even the king ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... rigid rule, The dull restraint, the chiding frown, The weary torture of the school; The taming of wild nature down. Her only lore, the legends told Around the soldiers' fire; at night Stars rose and set, and seasons rolled; Flowers bloomed, and snowflakes ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... is the pitilessness common to both extremes that shows most strongly in an old, wrinkled visage. He had laid his hand upon her. Every word was a stab ill the girl's heart, and so dreadful became her torture, so intolerable the sense of being drawn by a fierce will away from all she desired, that at length a cry escaped her lips. She fell on her knees by him, and pleaded in a ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... abroad that another deserter had been seen in that neighborhood, but the colored man would not reveal the whereabouts of Louis. His master beat him severely, but he would let neither threats nor torture wring the ...
— Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... prejudice will strike us as barbarian. Its roots go down to the unacknowledged fears left in the heart by religions that have long since died out in the mind of men. That is why the doctors act as though they were convinced that there is no known torture but is preferable to those awaiting us in the unknown. They seem persuaded that every minute gained amidst the most intolerable sufferings is snatched from the incomparably more dreadful sufferings which the mysteries of the hereafter ...
— Death • Maurice Maeterlinck
... except in Reykjavik, horse furniture is of the most miserable description, and the constant breakages cause many delays, while there are actually no side-saddles, except in the capital, and a chair is an instrument of torture only to be recommended to ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... accomplice, the "neighbour" who had put them up to the crime, were caught. The "neighbour," as soon as he arrived in the village, was given twenty-five lashes, and for two hours was subjected to the agonizing torture of having his head and his feet in the stocks at the same time. Next day he was given ten lashes, and the following day five, and eight days later they took him to Durango. His two Indian associates, father and son, were also put in the stocks, and for two weeks each ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... a favourite Irish form of physically insinuating to a man that he is not exactly popular. It consists of a wooden board with nails in it being drawn down the naked flesh of a man's face and body. This foul torture was often heard of, and it has been whispered that women and even girls have been the ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... house. He gave orders for himself not to be disturbed, and he went to bed; but in vain he tried to sleep. What rack exceeds the torture of an excited brain and an exhausted body? His hands and feet were like ice, his brow like fire; his ears rung with supernatural roaring; a nausea had seized upon him, and death he would have welcomed. In vain, in vain he courted repose; in ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... he woke. Some sound was threatening him. It was London, coming to get him and torture him. The light in his room was dusty, mottled, gray, lifeless. He saw his door, half ajar, and for some moments lay motionless, watching stark and bodiless heads thrust themselves through the opening and withdraw with sinister alertness ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... she put on one of her prettiest gowns, and waited with that wild torture of waiting which involves uncertainty and concealment, and Jerome did not come. Lucina began to believe that Jerome did not love her; she tried to call her maidenly pride to her aid, and succeeded ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... returns. Surrenders. The warriors march into the village. Liberating the captured Brabos. Ralph and Tom visit the large hut where they were confined. Blakely showing the Chief the maneuvers of the warriors. The Chief proposes to torture the Medicine men. John interferes. Asks that they be turned over to him. The Professor and the colony. The insulting message from the Illyas. The messenger to John. Building chairs and tables. Two-and three-room ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... or could it be that he—a being with heart and nerves like hers, had no conception of the rack on which she waa stretched—no suspicion that every one of his deliberate sentences was a turn of the screw that redoubled her torture? The Ayletts were a strong-willed race, and she repressed all sign of suffering save intense pallor; made this less palpable by screening her eyes from the lamp-light with a paper she took from the table, and thereby throwing ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... happy-go-lucky creative force, what would we think of the world then, poor thing? A poor woman with nothing to live for walks the streets that she may live; a rich woman with much to live for dies slowly and in great torture, of cancer. If we accept the Great Design we shouldn't even feel pity for these two women, we should say of them merely, 'How right! How beautiful!' But we do feel pity for them, and by that mere feeling ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... downfall of the tyrant. He escaped as you have just described. But the many whose lives he had ruined, whose nearest and dearest had suffered torture and death at his hands, would not let the matter rest. They banded themselves into a society which should never be dissolved until the work was done. It was my part after we had discovered in the transformed Henderson the fallen despot, ...
— The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge • Arthur Conan Doyle
... officer, smarting under insult—they are the result of deep and calm reflection. We have arrived to that grade, that, although we have the power to inflict, we are too high to receive insult, but we have not forgotten how our young blood has boiled when wanton, reckless, and cruel torture has been heaped upon our feelings, merely because, as a junior officer, we were not in a position to retaliate, or even to reply. And another evil is, that this great error is disseminated. In observing on it, in one of our works, called "Peter Simple," we have put the following ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... was no other than Rabbi Aser Abarbanel, a Jew of Arragon, who—accused of usury and pitiless scorn for the poor—had been daily subjected to torture for more than a year. Yet "his blindness was as dense as his hide," and he had refused to abjure ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... but she undoubtedly felt that she took her life in her hands (so to speak), and it did not give her courage. She returned to her post and cried no less than before. We were not heartless; we could not bear to torture the timid creatures, and therefore ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... Their boat had by this time been towed alongside of the frigate, and poor Tam was hoisted on board, and the surgeon was instantly at hand; but he said at once that the poor fellow was fast dying, and that it would be useless torture to carry him below ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... about your bag," I cried. "And I don't care a hang if I've lost my pyjamas and my best shoes and my only razor. And I've been through an hour's torture for nothing, and I don't mind that. But oh!—to think that you aren't going ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... horrors of the scene. While one of the hags sprinkles her hell-drops through the adjoining house, another is casting up earth from a pit, in which the boy is presently imbedded to the chin, and killed by a frightful process of slow torture, in order that a love philtre of irresistible power may be concocted from his liver and spleen. The time, the place, the actors are brought before us with singular dramatic power. Canidia's burst of wonder and rage that the ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... extract from Kemaleddin's History of Aleppo in Wilken, preface to vol. ii. p. 36. Phirouz, or Azzerrad, the breastplate maker, had been pillaged and put to the torture by Bagi Sejan, the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... dread disorder rise, Track the mute foe and scour the howling wood, Loud as a storm, ungovern'd as a flood; Or deep in groves the silent ambush lay, Lead the false flight, decoy and seize their prey, Their captives torture, butcher and devour, Drink the warm blood and paint ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... side) and some observances of the ascetics (such as pulling out the hair instead of shaving the head) are severe, but as a community the Jains lead sane and serious lives, hardly practising and certainly not parading the extravagances of self-torture which they theoretically commend. Mahavira is said to have taught that place, time and occasion should be taken into consideration and his successors adapted their precepts to the age in which they lived. Such monks as I have met[285] maintained that extreme forms ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... when the poor child was no longer upheld by moral force, and the body was about to break down. The priest calculated the time with the hideous practical sagacity formerly shown by executioners in the art of torture. He found his protegee in the garden, sitting on a bench under a trellis on which the April sun fell gently; she seemed to be cold and trying to warm herself; her companions looked with interest at her pallor as of a folded plant, her eyes like those of a dying gazelle, her ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... be a coincidence about the convent," Mary told herself. Why should Miss Bland wish to torture Angelo's wife, even if she knew anything? And she could not know. It was impossible that she should know. But suddenly the girl remembered Marie's hints about a long-ago flirtation between the cousins. And Idina's manner had been odd when she begged ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... now brought back to the camp. He had still a supply of biscuit and dates with him; but eating only aggravates the torture of thirst. Moist food is fitter to carry on such occasions. We found rum very useful in restoring ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... No need now to torture himself by refraining from his water-bottle. He seized and drained it, and then falling on his knees he thanked Heaven for this deliverance. For though, when considered calmly at a distance, he had recognised the perils which would attend his adventure in entering the ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... I looked into her eyes, but saw no tear. There was something which seemed strangely haughty in her air, and yet it was the air of woe. A Spanish and an Indian grief, which would not visibly lament. Pride's height in vain abased to proneness on the rack; nature's pride subduing nature's torture. ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... braver they esteem themselves. It is a positive fact, as we may gather from all their poems and songs, that the Scandinavians alone, probably, of all pagan nations, have had no measure of bravery and military glory beyond the infliction of the most exquisite torture and ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... word of the Hebrew which might be intelligible to him. He wondered much what sort of a man this Jew might be, actuated by what motives, impelled by what impulses to his lonely task. All the sorrow of a hope deferred through ages, and a long torture patiently borne, seemed gathered in the cadence; but the man—surely the man was no refined embodiment of the high sentiment of his psalm! And still the soft rich voice chanted the unknown language, and the daylight grew ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... to defend herself Lucie would become a heroine, and the door of my room being open, I might have been exposed to shame and to a very useless repentance. This rather frightened me. Yet, to put an end to my torture, I did not know what to decide. I could no longer resist the effect made upon my senses by this beautiful girl, who, at the break of day and scarcely dressed, ran gaily into my room, came to my bed enquiring how I had slept, bent familiarly ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... instruments of torture in the shape of paving-stones of which the Captain complained, and justly, he and Bob just managed to reach the Archimedes before she cast-off from the jetty alongside of which she had been coaling, the two only having time to jump on board as the gangway connecting ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... to have been a sort of compromise between the claims of the lake and the claims of the town. It was not too far from the town and not too far from the lake. Perhaps it had been built within sight of the lake so that the West Ketchem student body could see it while at their lessons. A kind of slow torture. ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... give to each nation its own language. For this purpose he placed a caldron of water on the fire, and commanded the different races to approach it in order, and to select for themselves the sounds which were uttered by the singing of the water in its confinement and torture.'" ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... these Spanish boats, was that "they had compelled our men by torture to confess where his frigate and ships were." To the disheartened folk about him it seemed that all hope of returning home was now gone, for they made no doubt that the ships were by this time destroyed. Some of them flung down their gold in despair, while all ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... carrying him away; and on finding that entreaties were of no use, he has struck at the provost, and, as he thinks, killed him. A crowd which he imagines to be composed of the Provost's attendants has followed him from the palace. Torture stares him in the face; and his physical sensitiveness has the upper hand again. For a moment Chiappino becomes a hero; he is shamed into nobleness. He flings his own cloak over Luitolfo, gives him ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... had made one, was drowned in the crashing of glass. Better that she should be startled, even to the point of swooning, rather than endure for another second the torture that that ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... edge] Everything we can say is useless, and it'll only torture and humiliate us. We must end ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... kill eels instantly, without the horrid torture of cutting and skinning them alive, pierce the spinal marrow, close to the back part of the skull, with a sharp-pointed skewer: if this be done in the right place, all motion will instantly cease. The humane executioner does certain criminals the favour to hang them ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... dying, of a sovereign who longs to labour for the welfare of his people, but who is racked by the thought that in giving his mind to temporal duties and domestic affections while such spiritual difficulties are still unsolved, he may be preparing for himself an eternity of torture such as that—" and he pointed to an old and blackened picture of the Last Judgment that hung ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... other hand, the torture which Prada experienced now became intense. Whilst the sovereigns continued conversing, the Queen with the ladies who came to pay her their respects, the King with the officers, diplomatists, and other important personages who approached him, Prada saw none but Benedetta—Benedetta ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Frederick immediate suspicion who was in the coach with her, and turning his head quickly, he met the stern eye of Dorriforth; upon which, without the smallest salutation, he turned from him again abruptly and rudely. Miss Milner was confused, and Miss Woodley in torture, at this palpable affront, to which ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... with bandaged eyes and bits in their mouths. From other towns as well as Bristol came forth plunderers, with humble gait and courteous discourse; who, when they met with a lonely man having the appearance of being wealthy, would bear him off to starvation and torture, till they had mulcted him to the last farthing. These and other indications of an unsettled government took place before the landing of Matilda to assert her claims. An invasion of England, by the Scottish King, without regard to the previous pacification, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... their leader, a man of low stature, with gray locks, but a fierce countenance, "where is the murderer? Where is Sir William Wallace? Speak, or the torture shall force you." ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... But the vigour of his intellect was too strenuous, and his curiosity and interest in every object of knowledge too inextinguishable. 'After all,' he said, 'the only thing to do is to put on a good face, and to march to the place of torture with a few friends to console you on the way. This is the charming image under which I picture my present situation. Mark you,' he added, 'I always count ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... charge, much to the sorrow and dismay of all. He disposed of all the elegant furnishings of the parsonage, and with haste left the spot that had been the scene of an exquisite torture. No defined plans were before him, save to get far away from any who could have had the least knowledge of him previously. No fugitive from justice ever felt more nervous haste. He pushed on, never pausing till he reached the very verge of civilisation in the far south-west. Not ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... bottom of his soul which he could not bear to speak of,—nay, which, as often as it reared itself through the dark waves of unworded consciousness into the breathing air of thought, he trod down as the ruined angels tread down a lost soul, trying to come up out of the seething sea of torture. Only this one daughter! No! God never would have ordained such a thing. There was nothing ever heard of like it; it could not be; she was ill,—she would outgrow all these singularities; he had had an aunt who was ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the presidency of Sharp, exercised a cruelty bred of terror. The prisoners were defended by George Mackenzie: it has been strangely stated that he was Lord Advocate, and persecuted them! Fifteen rebels were hanged: the use of torture to extract information was a return, under Fletcher, the King's Advocate, to a practice of Scottish law which had been almost in abeyance since 1638—except, of course, in the case of witches. Turner vainly tried to save from the Boot {208} ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... administered, and slowly did its work. It abode in his mind to torture him with the doubts that were its very essence. No reason, however well founded, that she might have urged for Sakr-el-Bahr's strange conduct could have been half so insidious as her suggestion that there was a reason. It gave him something vague and intangible to consider. ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... sick man between his teeth, and writhing impatiently in his bed. 'Isn't this mattress hard enough, and the room dull enough, and pain bad enough, but THEY must torture ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... fooles to purchase mocking so. That same Berowne ile torture ere I goe. O that I knew he were but in by th' weeke, How I would make him fawne, and begge, and seeke, And wait the season, and obserue the times, And spend his prodigall wits in booteles rimes, And shape his seruice wholly to my deuice, And make him ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... for all, was enough to embitter anybody's existence. He found it hard to accept the well-meant condolences of casual acquaintances, and still harder to do the right thing and congratulate Drake on his victory, a refinement of self-torture which is by custom expected of the vanquished in every branch of work or sport. But he managed it somehow, and he also managed to appear reasonably gratified when he went up to take his prize for the half-mile. Tony and the others, ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... be compelled to disgorge his secret. You saw that she would not have shrunk from a regimen of racks and thumbscrews. But there were no racks or thumbscrews on the island. Of course we could have invented various instruments of torture—I felt I could have developed some ingenuity that way myself—but too fatally well Mr. Tubbs knew the civilized prejudices of those with whom he had to deal. With perfect impunity he could strut about the camp, sure that no weapons worse than words would ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... every day, no attempt whatever being made to remedy this evil; on the contrary, their pitiless drivers urge them on by prodding the raw sores with sharpened sticks, and by belaboring them unceasingly with an instrument of torture in the shape of whips with six inches of ordinary trace-chain for a lash. As if the noble army of Persian donkey drivers were not satisfied with the refinement of physical cruelty to which they have attained, they add insult to injury by talking ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Vere Carter slunk away realistically, and the sight of it brought momentary delight to William's weary soul. Otherwise the rehearsals were not far removed from torture to him. The thought of being a wolf had at first attracted him, but actually a wolf character who had to repeat Mrs. de Vere Carter's meaningless couplets and be worsted at every turn by the smiling Cuthbert, who was forced to watch from ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... watched the war with abated breath,— Skeleton Boy against skeleton Death. Months of torture, how many such? Weary weeks of the stick and crutch; And still a glint of the steel-blue eye Told of a spirit ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... it was now a sweeter one, more womanly, faint lines beginning to mark its satin smoothness with impress of sorrow. To my thought a new, higher womanhood had found birth within, during weary days and nights of suspense and suffering. It was yet torture to me constantly beholding these two together, but, as I observed her then, I thanked the good God who had permitted me to be near her in time of trial. In patience I would serve, even though I must suffer. Tears were clinging to her long lashes, and occasionally one ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... precautions are taken, still some 10,000 sheep had an ominous large S on them. These poor sufferers are dragged down a plank into a great pit filled with hot water, tobacco, and sulphur, and soused over head and ears two or three times. This torture ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... dilated eyes staring at the sky—and among them, the happy, the enviable! how many living, groaning, bleeding men, writhing with pain, unable to raise their mutilated bodies from the gory bed of torture and death! ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... match back there. He's only a few years older. The French say that a woman should be half a man's age plus seven years. That would make her only a few years too young, and she can wait." Chad was scarlet under the girl's mischievous torture, but a cry from the house saved him. Dan ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... it is rarely in the world's history that its ideal has been one of joy and beauty. The worship of pain has far more often dominated the world. Mediaevalism, with its saints and martyrs, its love of self-torture, its wild passion for wounding itself, its gashing with knives, and its whipping with rods—Mediaevalism is real Christianity, and the mediaeval Christ is the real Christ. When the Renaissance dawned ...
— The Soul of Man • Oscar Wilde
... tell you," she said, "how comforting your words are. If you, a stranger, can estimate the truth so nearly, why should I torture myself because my husband is outrageously unjust? I will follow your counsel, Mr. Brett. If possible, Nellie and I will leave here to-morrow. Perhaps Mrs. Eastham may be able to come with us to town. Will you order my carriage? A drive will do me good. Come ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... scene that Ogilvie appeared. During his voyage home he had gone through almost every imaginable torture, and, as he reached Silverbel, he felt that the limit of his patience was almost reached. He knew, because she had sent him a cable to that effect, that his wife was staying in a country place, a place on the banks of the Thames. She had told him further that the nearest station to ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... returned, it was accompanied by a sensation of almost unendurable agony from my numerous smarting, inflamed, and stiffening wounds; and to this was added the torture of a ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... nothing of the effort, for the hand lay all but motionless. He saw nothing of the fading softness that glowed in the big, loving eyes, for his own eyes were blinded by a hot film. And the woman saw nothing of the hot film, so torture was saved them both. But suddenly the woman quivered, and Cummins heard ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... death-like stupor was broken by agonies of torture which racked the wasted frame for many hours. There was no respite for a prayer, or for a thought of the eternity into which his poor soul was hastening. The witch doctor fled in haste, unable to endure ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 9, September, 1889 • Various
... Van Berg; "I have had a greater escape than the child. In being 'at hand' as you express it, Miss Burton, I am beginning to feel that you have saved me from death by torture." ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... be one! There should be one. And there's the bitterness Of this unending torture-place for men, For the proud soul that craves a perfectness That might outwear the rotting of all things Rooted in earth. [Footnote: Josephine Preston ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... striking. On the 23rd they cruised about in search of the Pandora until the afternoon when, having drunk their last drop of water, they gave her up, and made sail for Namuka, the appointed rendezvous. The torture they suffered from thirst on the passage was such that poor Renouard, the midshipman, became delirious, and continued so for many weeks. Their leeway and the easterly current combined to set them to the westward ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... even Muscovites would chuse to have some pretence for what they do; and sure the first favourite and generalissimo of a prince, who boasts an inclination to civilize his barbarous subjects, will not, without any cause, torture them whom chance alone has put into his power, and who have never done him any personal injury.—By heaven, pursued he, turning to the prince, we all are innocent of any part of those crimes laid to our charge:—time, perhaps, if our declarations are ineffectual, will convince ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... and the dining-room in perfect order. Meantime Zany concluded that she had better tell Miss Lou. Her young mistress might blame her severely if she did not, and keeping such a secret over night would also be a species of torture. ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... glory. It is sublime in its ample outline, and exquisitely tender in its details. It is charged with many precious lessons, which flow freely at the gentlest touch; and it is cruel to put it to the torture to compel it to give meanings which it ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... theology of the pagan Hawaiians than of our Christian ancestors a few centuries ago if looked at from an ethical or practical point of view. At the worst, the Hawaiian sacrificed the enemy he took in battle on the altar of his gods; the Christian put to death with exquisite torture those who disagreed with him in points of doctrine. And when it comes to morals, have not the heathen time and again demonstrated their ability to give lessons in self-restraint to ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... had, was, of the cruel usage we should meet with from them, if we fell into their hands: then the story of Amboyna came into my head, and how the Dutch might, perhaps, torture us, as they did our countrymen there; and make some of our men, by extremity of torture, confess those crimes they never were guilty of; own themselves, and all of us, to be pirates; and so they would put us to death, with a formal ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... such a contemplation. There was a Jesus Christ crucified, by the same, very fine. One gets tired, indeed, whatever may be the conception and execution of it, of seeing that monotonous and agonised form for ever exhibited in one prescriptive attitude of torture. But the Magdalen, clinging to the cross with the look of passive and gentle despair beaming from beneath her bright flaxen hair, and the figure of St. John, with his looks uplifted in passionate ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... proximity. A few days later he came to those of the Faleme; and, in spite of the repugnance and fear of his guide, he made his way into Timbo, the capital of Fouta. The absence of the king and most of the inhabitants probably spared him from a long captivity abbreviated only by torture. Fouta is a fortified town, the king owns houses, with mud walls between three and four feet thick ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... facts of experience seem too strong for us. A hundred thousand Armenians butchered at the will of an inhuman despot, a whole city buried under a volcano's fiery hail, countless multitudes suffering the slow torture of death by famine—can such things be and God really care? Nor is it only great world tragedies like these which challenge our faith. The question is pressed upon us, often with sickening keenness, by the commonplace ills of our own commonplace lives: the cruel wrong of another's ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... production in China as we have found it in India and the islands; and it is used for all the purposes here, and more in addition than have been mentioned to you before. The bastinado of the magistrate and the schoolmaster's instrument of torture ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... might knock men on the head, will refrain from having his force take the form of butchering women and disembowelling children. Not so the Turk. His attempt at Government will take the form of the obscene torture of children, of a bestial ferocity which is not a matter of dispute or exaggeration, but a thing to which scores, hundreds, thousands even of credible European, witnesses have testified. "The finest gentleman, sir, that ever butchered a woman ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... Geoffrey; "a clumsy, unfeeling brute!" He kissed her little white wrinkled hand; then, still holding it, paused to listen. The voice came up again from the place of torture. ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... love with a woman in the valley of Sorek, named Delilah. Then the rulers of the Philistines came to her and said, "Find out by teasing him how it is that his strength is so great and how we may overpower and bind him that we may torture him. Then we will each one of us give you eleven hundred pieces of silver." So Delilah said to Samson, "Tell me how it is that your strength is so great and how you might be bound to torture you?" Samson said to her, "If they ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman |
