"Violent death" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ditch-water; surrounded by stone walls; with a flagged floor for his pillow, and without so much as a blanket to protect him from the death-like cold that pierced his frame,—Jack's stout heart was subdued, and he fell into the deepest dejection, ardently longing for the time when even a violent death should terminate his sufferings. But it was not so ordered. Mr. Pitt returned with intelligence that the warrant was delayed, and, on taking the opinion of two eminent lawyers of the day, Sir William Thomson and Mr. Serjeant Raby, it was decided that it must be proved in a regular ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... dwell on the rapid events which led to Napoleon's abdication, but it would be impossible, even in this imperfect sketch, not to be struck by the strange coincidences of Josephine's life—twice married—twice escaped from a violent death—twice crowned—both husbands sought for a divorce—one husband was executed—the other banished! One of Napoleon's first cares, in making his conditions when he abdicated, was an ample provision for Josephine; L40,000 per annum was ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... lives, the battle method may be the more humane—I should prefer it for myself, for my child. What our pacifists desire is not so much peace as bloodlessness. We should be honest enough to recognize that for many human beings,—possibly a majority even in our prosperous, war-free society,—a violent death may not be by any means the worst event. And it may be the happiest if the individual is convinced that the sacrifice of his existence will help others to realize a better life. That is the hope, the faith ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... Truth, that the outrages committed by these two, particularly by him that went to Guatimala (for the other not long after his departure died a violent Death) would afford matter sufficient for an entire Volume, and when completed he so crouded with slaughters, injuries, butcheries and inhuman Desolations, so horrid and detestable as would Ague-shake the present as well as ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... had witnessed Toussaint's power— the power with which his spirit of gentleness and forbearance endowed him; and she believed that, if he would but try, he would find he could govern better by declaring always for the right and against the wrong, and leaving vengeance to God, than by the violent death of all the ignorant and violent men in the island. She would ask Afra. She was pretty sure Afra would think as she did: and, if so, the time might come—it made her breathless to think of it, but she could not help thinking of it every day—the time might ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... location is known to one surviving descendant—a man possessing wonderful occult power. Should any person unlawfully discover its whereabouts, four of his fingers are mysteriously removed, and one by one returned to him. The appearance of the final fourth betokens his swift and violent death. ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... better for me than riches and luxury. The Anointed our Master was poor for us. I am poorer still, for I could not have wealth if I wished it. Nor do I now judge myself, for I look forward daily to a violent death, or to be taken captive and sold into slavery, or some like end. But I fear none of these ...but let me not lose the flock I feed for Him, here in the ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... innocent man, not at all for the mob, however red their hands were with that innocent man's blood. Why? Because that innocent man was black, and because his murder helps to uphold white supremacy over millions of people whose only offense is that they are black. Into the violent death of a man like Hamilton there might not be instituted any official inquiry at all in many parts of the South any more than if he had been a horse or a dog. But if there happens to be an official inquiry the usual verdict ...
— The Ultimate Criminal - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 17 • Archibald H. Grimke
... accident, again dismissed one watch below, and repaired to the cabin, in a state of mental agitation impossible to be described. For notwithstanding the opinion which I had expressed to the contrary, I could not but entertain strong suspicions that the unfortunate man had met a violent death. ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... remote from men Sleeps Ossian, in the Narrow Glen, In this still place where murmurs on But one meek streamlet, only one. He sung of battles and the breath Of stormy war, and violent death, And should, methinks, when all was pass'd, Have rightfully been laid at last Where rocks were rudely heap'd, and rent As by a spirit turbulent; Where sights were rough, and sounds were wild, And everything unreconciled, In some complaining, dim retreat Where fear and melancholy meet; ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... swan; and each deity bestows a boon on the animal he had chosen. The peacock's tail recalls Indra's thousand eyes; the swan's colour becomes white, like the foam of the ocean (Varuna being its lord); the lizard obtains a golden colour; and the crow is never to die except when killed by a violent death, and the dead are to enjoy the funeral oblations when they have been devoured ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... been caused by the plague only, but by the conspiracy of Faliero, and the violent death of the master builder. The work was resumed in 1362, and completed within the next three years, at least so far as that Guariento was enabled to paint his Paradise on the walls, so that the building must, at any rate, have been roofed by this time. Its decorations and fittings, however, were long ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... land o' Canaan," said the Little Giant, "is rid over by Sioux warriors, ready to shoot us with rifles or stick us through with lances. I'd hate to die hangin' on a Sioux lance. Sech a death makes me shiver. Ef I've got to die a violent death, give me a good, honest bullet ev'ry time. You hevn't seen the Sioux at work with lances, ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... howled, spirits walked, and ghosts broke up their graves, a spirit rose, in compliance with certain ceremonies for making demons appear. Bolingbroke inquired of the evil one what would become of the king? The reply was, "The duke yet lives that Henry shall depose. But him outlive, and die a violent death." In answer to the question, "What fate awaits the Duke of Suffolk?" came the reply, "By water shall he die." The Duke of Somerset was advised by the spirit to shun castles. Having thus delivered itself, the ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... could stand it no longer, but started up. Lo! there she was; her great hazel eyes rounding and rounding in her head, like two stars, her whole frame in a merry quiver, and an expression about the mouth that was sudden and violent death ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... never die at all if it were not for the maleficent arts of sorcerers who cut the vital thread prematurely short. In other words, they disbelieve in what we call a natural death; they think that all men are naturally immortal in this life, and that every death which takes place is in fact a violent death inflicted by the hand of a human enemy, though in many cases the foe is invisible and works his fell purpose not by a sword or a spear but by magic. Thus the Abipones, a now extinct tribe of horse Indians in Paraguay, used to allege that they would be immortal and that none ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... clothes torn, his hands bloody, his hair matted to his forehead, and hatless. He had been last to leave the shops, and he had, unarmed, run the gantlet of the maddened strikers who had been held at bay for six long hours. Only his great strength and physical endurance had pulled him out of the arms of violent death. There had been no shot fired from the shops. The strikers saw the utter futility of forcing armed men, so they had hung about with gibe and ribald jeer, waiting for some one careless enough to pass them alone. This Bennington did. His men had forgotten him. Bennington's ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... Violent death in any form must always appear absurd to the young and energetic. And the fantastic horror of his death removed it definitely from any realm of possibility. The thing simply could not happen.... He thought of the amazement and ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... have been a very horrid sight to them on their entrance into the room; for to all appearance, I seemed to have suffered a violent death, either by my own rashness, or the cruelty of some murderer, as the pistols had fallen close ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... of Sweden, who has been assassinated, loved to excite hatred that he might have the glory of defying it to do its worst. He was a despot at heart, and he came to a despot's end. He might have foreseen a violent death, for throughout his life he was always provoking men to the point of despair. There can be no comparison ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... in the cabin of the HISPANIOLA, with plenty of arms and ammunition, and things to eat, and excellent wines, there had been one thing overlooked—we had no water. I was thinking this over when there came ringing over the island the cry of a man at the point of death. I was not new to violent death—I have served his Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland, and got a wound myself at Fontenoy—but I know my pulse went dot and carry one. "Jim Hawkins is gone," was my ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... would leap out, and strike, and vanish again, leaving that silent horror behind him. Such deeds, and the constant possibility of them, left their mark upon the whole population. They grew up familiar with violent death in its most terrible forms. The effect of Indian warfare upon the natures of those who engage in it, or are subjected to its perils, is different from that of what we must call civilized fighting. The end as well as the aim of the Indian's battle is death—a scalp. Murder for the mere pleasure ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... long time spent in hiding in secret places, wherein for safety's sake he was forced to keep close, he was found and taken, brought as a traitor and criminal to London, and imprisoned in the Tower, and eventually suffered a violent death. He was buried at Chertsey Abbey, but his body was afterwards removed to Windsor Castle."[3] Still, the idea was there, and it remained for a later generation only to imitate and complete. In 1483, just before ...
— A Short Account of King's College Chapel • Walter Poole Littlechild
... Nepomuk's demise came yet another John, surnamed Hus, and as he likewise met with a violent death, and that under yet more picturesque conditions highly coloured by national sentiment, his memory survived, whereas John Nepomuk's was lost in oblivion. After all, John Nepomuk's trouble was more a personal one, a quarrel ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... catastrophe involved in sudden destruction the fish of an area at least a hundred miles from boundary to boundary, perhaps much more. The same platform in Orkney as in Cromarty is strewn thick with remains which exhibit unequivocally the marks of violent death. In what could it have originated? By what quiet but potent agency of destruction could the innumerable existences of an area perhaps ten thousand miles in extent be annihilated at once, and yet the medium in which they ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... the dead man was soon established by papers found in his pockets. He was the trader. The skull found in the ruins was unmistakably that of an Indian. A break in this skull showed that the person had died a violent death and had not been caught by the fire. The conclusion the boys arrived at was that the trader had killed the Indian and had fled to the woods. The Indians in revenge had burned his trading station. That he had intended to destroy the explorers was beyond question. ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... be produced. She could remember dozens who had persevered in every possible vice, going on from crime to crime, murdering whomsoever they chose, without any feeling of humanity or remorse; till a violent death or a religious retirement closed their black career. The erection of the monument itself could not in the smallest degree affect her doubts of Mrs. Tilney's actual decease. Were she even to descend into the family ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... from me by the violent death of a man who had the brain and the heart to be an honor to our State, whose capacity and cordial good-nature might have gained him the love of better men than he ever knew in his brief and fiery career, and who had the brain to accomplish great ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... Revolution. He believes in two articles—two instruments, shall I say?—the Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence; and he used this expression in a conversation here concerning them: 'Better that a whole generation of men, women, and children should pass away by a violent death, than that one word of either should be violated in this country.'... He grew up a religious and manly person, in severe poverty; a fair specimen of the best stock of New England, having that force of thought and that sense of right which are the warp and woof of greatness.... ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... must keep free from all hampering burdens, all private cares. Above all, you must not think of marriage with a woman whose chief desire is to escape from India and all that India means, whose sympathies are utterly alien from her, and whose youth has died a violent death at her hands. Oh, don't you see the madness of ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... of a purpose to poison Amy, in November-January, 1559-1560. There is the explicit statement of Cecil, as to the intended poisoning (probably derived from Dr. Bayly), and as to Dudley's 'possession of the Queen's person,' the result of his own observation. There is the coincidence of Amy's violent death with Cecil's words to de Quadra (September ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... other. As for the quasi-mahouts, they were not particularly happy behind the ears of the elephants, who, with that keen appreciation of their herd, understood instinctively that they had to do with novices. But for the promise of gold that dangled before their eyes, threats of violent death could not have forced ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... head was the mockery of a wreath of flowers, while from its heart there projected the handle and half of the blade of a knife which had been thrust there. What was the meaning of this knife? It seemed to tell of a violent death. Yet the flowers must surely be a mark of honor. A violent death with honor, and the embalmed remains—these things suggested nothing else than the horrid thought of a human sacrifice. I looked away with eager and terrible curiosity. I saw ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... not want any deliberation. The lady was in danger; if the horse's flight was not checked, she would be dashed in pieces; and what then could excuse him for neglecting his duty? Not the fear of broken limbs, of mangled flesh, or even of a sudden and violent death. ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... thrown him over; and his director, anxious for the "punch" that was his fetish, had insisted on a panorama of the fall, so that there was no chance for Gil to save himself the bruises he got. Gil Huntley's part it was always to die a violent death, or to be captured spectacularly, because he was the villain whose horrible example must bear a moral ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... it is desirable, whether it is morally justifiable or not. In answer to that terrible question you merely shrug your shoulders and confine yourself to some commonplace, because for you, with your way of thinking, it makes absolutely no difference whether hundreds of thousands of people die a violent death, or a natural one: the results are the same—ashes and oblivion. You and I are building a railway line. What's the use, one may ask, of our worrying our heads, inventing, rising above the hackneyed thing, feeling for the workmen, stealing or not stealing, when we know that this railway ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... war-regime (already done justice to by many writers) and consider only the higher aspects of militaristic sentiment. Patriotism no one thinks discreditable; nor does any one deny that war is the romance of history. But inordinate ambitions are the soul of every patriotism, and the possibility of violent death the soul of all romance. The militarily patriotic and romantic-minded everywhere, and especially the professional military class, refuse to admit for a moment that war may be a transitory phenomenon in social evolution. The notion of a sheep's paradise like that revolts, ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... diplomatists; and we cannot even issue a penny bluebook without beginning it with the quite unprovoked statement that "no crime has ever aroused deeper or more general horror throughout Europe" than the assassination of the Archduke. The real tragedy was that the violent death of a fellow creature should have aroused ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... a Cary place, leagued in friendship as in blood with Greenwood. For seven months it had esteemed itself in mourning for the kinsman who had ridden from its gates to a violent death. But there were young girls in the house, and now, in the bright May weather, it was hard not to put forth leaf and bud and be gay once more. Actual gayety would not do, the place felt that, and very heartily; but pleasure that was also education, pleasure well within bounds, and education ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... destruction of Troy does in fable. Our delight, in cases of this kind, is very greatly heightened, if the sufferer be some excellent person who sinks under an unworthy fortune. Scipio and Cato are both virtuous characters; but we are more deeply affected by the violent death of the one, and the ruin of the great cause he adhered to, than with the deserved triumphs and uninterrupted prosperity of the other: for terror is a passion which always produces delight when it does not press too closely; and pity is a passion accompanied ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... calling to mind his youth and beauty, his valour and his many virtues, she washed his face with her tears and exclaimed, "Well-away and woe is me, O my lover, O Khudadad, do these eyes look upon thee in sudden and violent death? Are these thy brothers (the devils!) whom thy courage hath saved, the destroyers of thee? Nay 'tis I am thy murtheress; I who suffered thee to ally thy Fate with my hapless destiny, a lot that doometh to destruction ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... probably, to a worse fate. To this victim of proscription application was made by the conspirators who had just got rid of Domitian, and had to get another emperor. Nerva accepted, but not without hesitation, for he was sixty-four years old; he had witnessed the violent death of six emperors, and his grandfather, a celebrated jurist, and for a long while a friend of Tiberius, had killed himself, it is said, for grief at the iniquitous and cruel government of his friend. The short reign ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Violent death followed Lula Jackson's family like an implacable avenger. Her father's mother was struck and killed by lightning. Her mother's first husband was thrown to his death in a wrestling match. Her own husband was ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... captor was a cold-blooded murderer, who probably would not hesitate to add another to his list of crimes, was far from reassuring, and the perspiration burst out on Jet's face as he thus persuaded himself he was in immediate danger of a violent death. ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... it is called evil of nature, not merely from being a privation of the good of nature, but also from being an effect of nature; such are natural death and other like defects. But sometimes evil of nature arises from a non-natural cause; such as violent death inflicted by an assailant. In either case evil of nature is feared to a certain extent, and to a certain extent not. For since fear arises "from the imagination of future evil," as the Philosopher says (Rhet. ii, 5), whatever removes the imagination ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... the unwilling instrument of many a violent death—I have seen the most reckless sinners in the agonies of sudden and compelled repentance, but never have I witnessed so wild and fearful a struggle between earth and heaven—the world and the grave—passion and the rebuke of Providence—as attended the last ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... upon the surface. The Ritual this morning but furnished the occasion or, rather, hastened some crisis that was already near at hand. For some time now I am haunted by most potent premonitions of a violent death. Night after night, dark apparitions hang around my bed, and only last night I awoke to find the Bird of Nu, the Owl, from out the inner Sanctuary of the Temple, perched upon my pillow and shaking his head and croaking at me ...
— Within the Temple of Isis • Belle M. Wagner
... mouth he lay, And grim, as when he breathed his sullen soul away. In midst of all the dome, Misfortune sate, 580 And gloomy Discontent, and fell Debate, And Madness laughing in his ireful mood; And arm'd complaint on theft; and cries of blood. There was the murder'd corpse in covert laid, And violent death in thousand shapes display'd: The city to the soldiers rage resigned: Successless wars, and poverty behind: Ships burnt in fight, or forced on rocky shores, And the rash hunter strangled by the boars: The new-born babe by nurses overlaid; 590 And the cook caught within the raging ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... these, many tokens of hearts, gold and silver, thick below the altar, crowding the partition walls. The hearts were grateful ones—Alessandro explained in an undertone—brought and left by many who had been preserved from violent death by the saint there, and he who knelt was a workman just from hospital, who had fallen, with his son, from a building. The boy had been killed, the father only badly hurt. His heart token was the last—a little common thing—and tied with no rejoiceful ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... and erudition, that she hated him and was only afraid to express her hatred openly, dreading that he would leave her and so damage her literary reputation, that this drove him to self-contempt, and he was resolved to die a violent death, and that he was waiting for the final word from her which would decide everything, and so on and so on in the same style. You can fancy after this what an hysterical pitch the nervous outbreaks of this most innocent of all fifty-year-old infants ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... matters might have terminated between him and the baronet it is out of our power to detail. The man was at all times desperate and dreadful, where either revenge or anger was excited, especially as he labored under the superstitious impression that he was never to be hanged or perish by a violent death, a sentiment then by no means uncommon among persons of his outrageous and desperate life. It has been observed, and with truth, that the Irish Rapparees seldom indulged in the habit of intoxication or intemperance, and this is not at all to be wondered at. The meshes of authority were always spread ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... infinite goodness, ready for sacrifice; so in his Crucifixions, instead of following the example of his contemporaries, who depicted Christ already dead, with marks of sorrow on His features, and contorted by the spasm of a violent death; he represented Him living, calm and serene, conscious of the sacrifice He completed, and full of joy ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... rode away, and now lay in picturesque confusion, half thrown down the steep slope of the raised driving road, with his tragedy painted clearly as a picture. In the bright sunshine, with all absolutely quiet and peaceful around, it seemed impossible that these men should have met with a violent death such a short while ago amid a roar of sound. It was funny, curious, inexplicable.... For my men, however, there were no such thoughts; they climbed off their ponies, and, whipping out knives or bayonets, they slit the bandoliers and pouches from every dead ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... the old general freed him for some purpose of his own? Ramon had seen condemned prisoners released by his chief before. Always within a short time some enemy or doubtful friend of Pasquale had died a violent death. Was it his turn now? Could it be that Pasquale was anticipating ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... ruins, nor houses being put up, nor climb to the top of a mast, nor approach the edge of a precipice, nor stand in the way of the lightning, nor cross a swollen river, nor voyage at sea, nor ride a skittish horse, nor be shot at by an arrow, nor confront a sword, nor put thyself in the way of violent death; for this is hateful, and breaketh through all ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... your vnrelenting hearts? Then Ione discouer thine infirmity, That warranteth by Law, to be thy priuiledge. I am with childe ye bloody Homicides: Murther not then the Fruite within my Wombe, Although ye hale me to a violent death ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... task well finished when, like his great predecessor Bede, the brave old priest laid down his life. He himself had expected that a violent death would have finished his course. His enemies were many and powerful; the Primate, the King, and the Pope were against him—with the friars, whom he had so often and so fiercely defied; so that his destruction seemed but a mere question of time. But while his enemies were preparing ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... see how my violent death can assuage his grief." The Judge was not the only person in court to raise his eyebrows; if Manvers had not been angry he would have seen the whole assembly in the same act, and been certified that they were not with him now. His advocate whispered him urgently to ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... many a hiding-place in the city would be open to you, and some men might sooner give up their lives than betray you. There is one proof of the truth of what I say. The men who deserted you all died a violent death that night. They were found lying side by side in the Bergenstrasse, in spite of the fact that the city ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... him an unshakable confidence in my little detective talents. He was always saying, 'Perenna, if I die murdered'—he had a fixed notion in his head that he would meet with a violent death—'if I die murdered, swear that you will ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... F, the god of war, of human sacrifice and of violent death in battle, apparently a counterpart of the Aztec Xipe, who ...
— Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts • Paul Schellhas
... I'll be revenged." It was not unnatural, as the cats were fed on mutton cutlets and fresh milk, and cats' meat was at a discount. About three weeks before Peter disappeared, Mrs. Mee, in the short space of three or four days, had lost no less than five cats by a violent death, and five little graves had been dug, marked by five little tombstones, and the five dead cats had been laid in their last resting-places by the hands of the old lady herself. A funeral is not generally amusing, but I could not restrain a smile when I saw my eccentric ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... words of Rossthiof and upon his return to Asgard he reported all he had seen and heard to Odin, whose fears were confirmed and who thus definitely ascertained that he was doomed to lose a son by violent death. He consoled himself, however, with the thought that another of his descendants would avenge the crime and thereby obtain the satisfaction which a true Northman ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... of the most tragic events that has ever happened in these islands occurred in our province—namely, that that same night our father rector-provincial, Fray Vicente de Sepulveda, was choked to death, and was found dead in his bed at two o'clock in the morning, with clear signs of a violent death. In that most horrible crime were implicated three religious—one a priest, one a chorister, and one a lay-brother, namely, the creole who gave the poison to the father, and whom his relatives hid; and, as he had money, they helped him ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... man. Whether I was reminded of the bygone days when my sons were infants on my knee, listening to the ticking of my watch—or whether the friendless position of the poor little creature, who had lost one parent and was soon to lose the other by a violent death, moved me in depths of pity not easily reached in my later experience—I am not able to say. This only I know: my heart ached for the child while she was laughing and listening; and something fell ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... boundless love, For ever stifled, drained, and tainted now. Commerce! beneath whose poison-breathing shade No solitary virtue dares to spring, 45 But Poverty and Wealth with equal hand Scatter their withering curses, and unfold The doors of premature and violent death, To pining famine and full-fed disease, To all that shares the lot of human life, 50 Which poisoned, body and soul, scarce drags the chain, That lengthens as it ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... assemble all the Jews in Shushan, and fast three days and three nights, neither eating nor drinking; I and my maidens will do the same, and on the third day I will go before the king, and if I perish, I perish!" Noble and brave heart! death—a violent death—is terrible; but thou ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... eldest brother: there followed nothing but murders upon murders, poisoning, imprisonments, and civil war; till the whole race of that famous Emperor was extinguished. And though Debonnaire, after he had rid himself of his nephew by a violent death; and of his bastard brothers by a civil death (having inclosed them with sure guard, all the days of their lives, within a monastery) held himself secure from all opposition: yet God raised up against ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... than three feet deep. The Dyaks dare not step into the grave to deepen it, because, according to their superstitious ideas, any one who does such a thing will die a violent death. They use no spade or hoe to turn up the earth, but cut the soil with their choppers, and throw up the mould with their hands. They dig the grave as far as their arms will ...
— Children of Borneo • Edwin Herbert Gomes
... ne plus ultra in an Elementary, be he a suicide or a victim. The rule is that a person who dies a natural death will remain from "a few hours to several short years" within the earth's attraction—i.e., the Kamaloka. But exceptions are the cases of suicides and those who die a violent death in general. Hence, one of such Egos who was destined to live, say, eighty or ninety years—but who either killed himself or was killed by some accident, let us suppose at the age of twenty—would have to pass in the Kamaloka not "a few years," ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... living exhibited in their somewhat irregular versification, and in the concatenation of their ratiocinations regarding the three principal actions of the early Scottish life, which I take to have been birth, stealing, and a violent death." ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... to have been "fey"—namely, in high spirits—recklessly hastening to a violent death; for as he rode along the crags close above Kinghorn, his horse suddenly stumbled, and he was thrown over its head to the bottom of a frightful precipice, where he lay dead. The spot is ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... theirs. He traced their origin from a pork butcher's shop, and prophesied their end, ignominiously, in hell. Every now and then he assured Mary that she need have no fear; the rascal should marry her, or die a violent death. ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... would be the most glorious act of his life. No one could imagine, from the calm and subdued conversation, and the quiet appetite with which these distinguished men partook of the entertainment, that this was their last repast, and but the prelude to a violent death. But when the cloth was removed, and the fruits, the wines, and the flowers alone remained, the conversation became animated, gay, and at times rose to hilarity. Several of the youngest men of the party, in sallies ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... the cock crew, but the rattle of the weapons of the soldiers and imminent menace of a violent death left him no leisure to attend to anything but his own safety, for a soldier at the same moment exclaimed, "Look at this man. Of a truth ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead
... I want to say to you, and that is that you are to drop this fellow at once and for all time. I won't have any nonsense or sentiment just because he happened to do what any other man with a germ of humanity would have done to save you from a violent death. It is all very well to feel properly grateful to him, and I intend to pay him handsomely for it, only I don't want to hear anything more about him ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... from my knowledge of the times, the only explanation possible lies in that he perished shortly after the adventure with the wild pigs. That it must have been an untimely end, there is no discussion. He was in full vigor, and only sudden and violent death could have taken him off. But I know not the manner of his going—whether he was drowned in the river, or was swallowed by a snake, or went into the stomach of old Saber-Tooth, the tiger, ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... terrible calamity, and his attitude, as well as the horror-stricken expression of his elongated face, seemed to indicate that, at the very least, he had just found in the paper an announcement of the sudden and violent death of all his family. Below, in quotation-marks, were the words:!!! Que BARBARIDAD.!!! Han apresado UN VIVERO." ("What BARBARITY!!! ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... the destination of each being determined by the mode of death. The ghosts of those who die through old age or disease go to APO LEGGAN, the largest of these districts, where they live very much as we do in this life. Those who die a violent death, whether in battle or or by accident, go to the basin of a tributary river, LONG JULAN, where is BAWANG DAHA (lake of blood); there they live in comfort, and become rich though they do no work: they have for wives the ghosts of ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... came again from France to Canada. As our Indians had made peace with the French, he again left Canada, and took up his residence among the Mohawks. He indulged in the largest expectations of converting them to popery, but the Mohawks with their hatchets put him to a violent death. They then brought and presented to me his missal and breviary together with his underclothing, shirts and coat. When I said to them that I would not have thought that they would have killed this Frenchman, they answered, that the Jesuits did not consider the fact, that their people ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... down and found a heavy wire drawn very tightly across the trail, just above my knees. You will never know the feelings I experienced at that moment. I saw in an instant that my Heavenly Father had interposed and saved me from a violent death." ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... before the foe in preference to death with shame at the hands of the executioner. Where Chaka's armies went they conquered, till the country was swept of people for hundreds of miles in every direction. At length, after he had killed or been the cause of the violent death of more than a million human beings, in the year 1828 Chaka's own hour came; for, as the Zulu proverb says, 'the swimmer is at last borne away by the stream.' He was murdered by the princes of his house and his body servant Umbopo or Mopo. But as he lay dying beneath their ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... worth all else beside. The citizens form their own body-guard (6) without pay or service-money against slaves and against evil-doers. It is theirs to see that none of themselves, no citizen, shall perish by a violent death. And they have advanced so far along the path of guardianship (7) that in many cases they have framed a law to the effect that "not the associate even of one who is blood-guilty shall be accounted pure." So that, by reason of their ...
— Hiero • Xenophon
... a beautiful woman, whom he loved literally unto death. I shall not recite the whole story. God only knows it fully, and he will judge righteously. There was trouble, rage, and tears, passionate partings and penitent reunions—the old story of love dying a lingering yet violent death. On the fatal morning I met him on Washington street. I noticed his manner was hurried and his look peculiar, as I gave him the usual salutation and a hearty grasp of the hand. As be moved away, I looked after him with mingled admiration and pity, until his faultless ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... needed, but we must be without fear, remembering that almost every man who has gained real distinction in politics has met a violent death. There are the shining examples of Brutus, Cassius, Hampden and Sidney, but it is ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... indifference with which five of the unfortunates witnessed the execution of the first sufferer, and successively received the kriss in their own bosoms, was quite surprising, and shewed with what stoical composure the Mohammedan fatalist can meet a violent death. ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... half of it. Middleton looked down in horror upon the form that had just been so full of life and wrathful vigor—and now lay so quietly. Being wholly unconscious of any purpose to bring about the catastrophe, it had not at first struck him that his own position was in any manner affected by the violent death, under such circumstances, of the unfortunate man. But now it suddenly occurred to him, that there had been a train of incidents all calculated to make him the object of suspicion; and he felt that he could not, under the English administration of law, be suffered to go at large without rendering ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... tyrants and sensualists that had reigned since Augustus, but Domitian surpassed all his predecessors in unrelenting cruelty. He banished all philosophers from Rome and Italy, and violently persecuted the Christians, and was dissolute and lewd in his private habits. He also met a violent death from the assassin's dagger, the only way that infamous monsters could be hurled from power. Yet such was the fulsome flattery to which he and all the emperors were accustomed, that Martial addressed this monster, preeminent of all ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... new doctrine fail, because they are the weakest; apostles generally practise a perilous trade. Their courageous death proves neither the truth of their principles nor their own sincerity, any more than the violent death of the ambitious man, or of the robber, proves, that they were right in disturbing society, or that they thought themselves authorised in so doing. The trade of a missionary was always flattering to ambition, and formed a convenient method of living at the expense of the vulgar. These advantages ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... something of the old political life of Vienna, continually agitated by some "Balkan Question"; of the general dislike of the "Heir," whose violent death at Sarajevo had been the death knell of European peace; apprehensions of the day when he should ascend the throne, for he was intensely clerical and reactionary. If he had survived until the old Emperor's death, and there had ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... flower of her youth, and by what we call a violent death, the one child Richard Hardie loved; member of a religious party whose diction now and then offends one to the soul: but the root of the matter is in them; allowance made for those passions, foibles, and infirmities of the flesh, even you and I are not entirely ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... at the violent death of the king was very great. Don Diego Ordonez immediately sent a challenge to Don Arias Gonzalo, who, while accepting the combat for his son, swore that none of the Zamorans knew of the dastardly deed, which Dolfos ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... Hamilton had deserved his fate. On the charge that he had a copy of the English New Testament, and had been heard to say that Hamilton was no heretic, Henry Forrest was subjected to a rigorous imprisonment and a violent death. Forrest was a native of the county of Linlithgow, and had associated with Hamilton in St Andrews, and was the first to share his bloody baptism there. He was burned at the north kirk-style of the Abbey Church, that ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... There were, therefore, two parties in Russia: the men who had assisted the dead czar, Menzikoff, Apraxine, Tolstoi, and others, such as the members of the secret Court who had witnessed the violent death of Peter's only son. They dreaded the succession of Peter's grandson, the boy who, although only twelve years old, might order an investigation of his father's death. These men held the power and decided that, since Catherine had been crowned as Empress, it was she who should succeed. Thus ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... you know, almost all these men, the emperors, died a violent death? Murdered, or else they killed themselves. That speaks, don't it, for the beauty and beneficence of their reigns, and the loveliness ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... below, and we could drop stones from our outstretched arms directly into the boiling, foaming waters. Presuming too much upon the sagacity of a sure-footed horse, I carelessly attempted the passage of the ravine without dismounting, and came near paying the penalty of my rashness by a violent death. About half way through, where the trail was only eight or ten feet above the bed of the torrent, the ledge, or a portion of it, gave way under my horse's feet, and we went down together in a struggling mass upon the rocks in the channel of the stream. I had taken ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... a Sunday evening, when decent citizens had newly come from houses of God, where they had heard the message of life, crowds began to collect on that central spot in the heart of the great City dedicated to sudden and violent death. The coming event seemed to cast its shadow before; and throughout the night the roisterer or belated traveller made a detour to visit the human shambles. I confess to having felt the attraction. I could not then bring myself to be present at the strangulation proper; ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... time I witnessed violent death. The man marching by my side suddenly reeled, and, pressing his hand to his breast, fell forward. Only a moment before he had spoken to me, saying, 'I think we are going to have hot work.' Now he was ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... lie direct. It would have seemed incredible, monstrous, silly. Had all married men and women such things to go through—was this but a very usual crossing of the desert? Or was it, once for all, shipwreck? death—unholy, violent death—in ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... thousands fled to seek an asylum among savages in America, who were not permitted to live among men worse than savages in England. Thousands were immured in prisons, where many hundreds perished, and with those who suffered a violent death received the crown of martyrdom. Even now they that will live godly in Christ Jesus, must submit to taunts, jeers, and reproaches. May we forget not the Saviour's comforting declaration, 'Blessed are you when persecuted, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... subject when he tells us that the nobility of Sordello's birth, and his intrigue or marriage with Cunizza are attested by contemporaries; that a "mysterious obscurity" shrouds his life; and that his violent death is obscurely indicated by Dante, whose mention of him is now his only title to immortality. According to one tradition he was the son of an archer named Elcorte. Another seems to point to him when it ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... they took him to have been originally a black, in consequence of which they gave him the name of Rundi. Certain it is, they pressed him to show his side, and asked if he had not received a wound there—evidently as if the original Rundi had met with a violent death from a spear-wound in that place. The whole tribe, amounting in number to upwards of 150, assembled to see us take our departure. Four of them accompanied us, among whom there was one remarkable for personal strength and stature.—The 21st passed without our falling in with any new tribe, ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... has leave to lay His whole heart bare before its Maker, leave To clear up the long error of a life And choose one happiness for evermore. With all mortality about me, Charles, The sudden wreck, the dregs of violent death— What if, despite the opening angel-song, There penetrate one prayer for you? Be saved Through me! Bear witness, no one could prevent My death! Lead on! ere he awake—best, now! All must be ready: ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... I don't care to discourage a young man,—he has a violent death in his face; but I hope ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... were destined to become the heads of powerful tribes, even of the chosen people of God, these men have incurred the condemnation of all ages. But Judah and Reuben do not come in for unlimited censure, since these sons of Leah sought to save their brother from a violent death; and subsequently in Egypt Judah looms up as a magnanimous character, whom we admire almost as much as we do Joseph himself. What can be more eloquent than his defence of Benjamin, and his appeal to what seemed to him ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... the higher. But, in their degree, all, from Eton downwards, were to be subject to it. Then came the most revolutionary part of the whole scheme. Mr. Creakle and his congeners were to be abolished. They were not to be put to a violent death, but they were to be starved out. The whole face of the country is studded with small grammar-schools or foundation-schools, like knots in a network; and these schools, enlarged and reformed, were to be the ordinary training-places of the Middle Class. ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... reminiscences, that a certain room at Knebworth was once haunted by the phantasm of a boy with long yellow hair, called "The Yellow Boy," who never appeared to anyone in it, unless they were to die a violent death, the manner of which death he indicated by a series of ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... suffering, how much violent death, there is among animals. How much? The world is full of it, and has been full of it for ages. I dare to say, that of the millions on millions of living creatures in the earth, the air, the sea, full one-half live by eating each other. In the ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... would threaten to brain one of his children, to disembowel another, to gouge out the eyes of the third. He showed much ingenuity in varying the forms of menaced punishment. Not a child in the Gardens but was constantly threatened by its parents with a violent death; this was so familiar that it had lost its effect; where the nurse or mother in the upper world cries, 'I shall scold you!' in the nether the phrase is, 'I'll knock yer 'ed orff!' To 'I shall be very angry with you' in the one sphere, corresponds ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... followed by four men bearing a litter covered with a sheet, under which could be distinguished the rigid limbs of a dead body, while a cruel crimson stain upon one side of the white covering too plainly showed that some one had met with a violent death. ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... himself for being such an arrant coward. When free from danger, he dreams of nothing but heroic exploits and superhuman enterprises; but when any actual peril threatens him, his too vivid imagination conjures up such terrible visions of bleeding wounds and violent death that his heart fails him. Yet his pride revolts at the idea of being beaten; for a moment he is filled with rage, but his courage all disappears with the first blows he receives, and he finally shows himself to be the poltroon that he himself despises. This method it ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... could not forget. Nature had endowed him with a memory which recorded as minutely and as lastingly as the phonographic cylinder. The violent death of the boy haunted him, and mingled with the recurrent memories of the sad passing of the little Maria, and his own bitter life experience. Oh, the mystery of it all! The tragedy of life! The sudden blighting of hopes! ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... of capital and men. However, the loss of life arising from accidents and exposure is very great. It has been asserted that, on an average, two out of every five men employed in bird's-nesting meet with a violent death. In China a "catty" or one pound and a quarter English, of the best nests, sells at about 9 pounds sterling. Their value depends chiefly upon their translucent whiteness. Those which have not been lined or used by the birds obtain ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... clung. Barnriff, willing enough to accept his actual innocence on the double charges made against him, still could not forget that he had helped the real thief to escape. It mattered nothing to them that in the end the man had died a violent death. He had been helped to escape—their justice. So there was no employment of any sort in Barnriff for Jim Thorpe. And Eve, too, was only completing orders which had been placed with her ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... was some time before any friends came to her; the first that came was a very fit hand, that old singular Christian woman, in the Cummerhead, named Elizabeth Menzies, three miles distant, who had been tried with the violent death of her husband at Pentland, afterwards of two worthy sons, Thomas Weir, who was killed at Drumclog, and David Steel, who was suddenly shot afterwards when taken. The said Marion Weir, sitting upon her husband's ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... unfriendly spirits; [89] sometimes Kadaklan himself thus punishes those who refuse to obey the customs; sometimes they are brought about by mortals who practise magic, or by individuals themselves as punishment for violated taboos; and finally violent death is recognized as coming ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... slave of Louisiana, if she had not combined with the natural energy of her hatreds a considerable amount of superstition. A fortune-teller had once foretold, from the lines in her palm, that she would cause the violent death of some person. "It will be he," she had thought, glancing at her husband with a horrible tremor of hope.... And now she had the proof, the indisputable proof, that her plot for vengeance was to terminate in the danger of another. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... enforce their own by overpowering the captain and officers and making an opportunity for mutiny. Let the moralists think of it; four or five men at the mercy of a score of hang-dog scoundrels who despise every moral law, and who talk lightly of murder and every form of violent death! Let me ask them what their feelings would be suppose any of their near relations were placed in the position of having to fight for lawful supremacy and even for life? I think this might be trying to their faith in theoretic and sentimental government. But the ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... this FUNNY," she exclaimed, half aloud, standing on the threshold, her little milk-white forehead curdling to a frown, one sore finger on her lips. Then a great fear seized upon her. Inevitably she associated the house with a scene of violent death. ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... mingling with the record of merely natural decease, and sometimes even at these children's graves, were the signs of violent death or "martyrdom,"—proofs that some "had loved not their lives unto the death"—in the little red phial of blood, the palm-branch, the red flowers for their heavenly "birthday." About one sepulchre in particular, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... The soul of sin (for we have made sin immortal, and it must have a soul), the soul of sin is disobedience to thee; and when one sin hath been dead in me, that soul hath passed into another sin. Our youth dies, and the sins of our youth with it; some sins die a violent death, and some a natural; poverty, penury, imprisonment, banishment, kill some sins in us, and some die of age; many ways we become unable to do that sin, but still the soul lives and passes into another sin; and that that was licentiousness ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... pang. The violent occupy All the first circle; and because to force Three persons are obnoxious, in three rounds Hach within other sep'rate is it fram'd. To God, his neighbour, and himself, by man Force may be offer'd; to himself I say And his possessions, as thou soon shalt hear At full. Death, violent death, and painful wounds Upon his neighbour he inflicts; and wastes By devastation, pillage, and the flames, His substance. Slayers, and each one that smites In malice, plund'rers, and all robbers, hence The torment undergo of the first round In different herds. Man can do ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... a dragon, her legend: "Uno avulso non deficit alter aureus." This may be the epitome of her life's history, and upon it one may moralise at will; and certainly readers of the "Tragedy of Cammilla de' Martelli" will admit that a spoilt life is as great a catastrophe as a violent death. ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... procuring a general peace, which shall be so near a conclusion that public rejoicings shall be made at the courts of several great potentates upon that account; but just in the critical juncture, a certain neighbouring prince shall come to a violent death, which shall occasion new war and commotion all over Europe; but these shall continue but for a short time, and at last terminate in the utter ...
— Dickory Cronke - The Dumb Philosopher, or, Great Britain's Wonder • Daniel Defoe
... days; and tried to persuade Bassus, who was then set over the priests in the villages, to leave nothing within by him, but to close up the door with clay. He spoke to him of the difficulty, and warned him not to think that a violent death was a virtue. "Put by me then, father," he said, "ten loaves, and a cruse of water, and if I find my body need sustenance, I will partake of them." At the end of the days, that wonderful man of God, ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... about his father's land. But the records were not available. Fingal, for whom Fingal's Creek was named, also known as Judge Fingal, held possession of all the records, and—how, I never knew—but in some way he prevented the priest from finding out anything. Fingal was a Southern man; he met a violent death that year. You know O'mie's story after that." Le Claire paused, and a ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... collateral data, but she may have been older. She was probably from Wisbeach, England. The manner of her tragic death (by drowning, having fallen overboard from the ship in Cape Cod harbor), the first violent death in the colony, was especially sad, her husband being absent for a week afterward. It is not known ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... some day. These are bad times for bad negroes. You'll get into a quarrel with a white man, and at the end of it there'll be a lynching, or a funeral. You'd better be peaceable and endure a little injustice, rather than run the risk of a sudden and violent death." ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... covered the floor and the furniture was of the plainest kind, but the woman who lay outstretched on the stiff, old-fashioned lounge opposite the door was far from being in accord with the homely type of her surroundings. Though the victim of a violent death, her face and form, both of a beauty seldom to be found among women of any station, were so majestic in their calm repose, that Mr. Sutherland, accustomed as he was to her noble appearance, experienced a shock of surprise that found vent in ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... less than six nor more than fifteen persons, summoned by the coroner, to inquire into the cause of any violent death. ...
— Civil Government for Common Schools • Henry C. Northam
... is prone to the conviction, deduced, I fear, from the practice of the cheap melodrama and the cheaper novel, that "climax" and "tragedy" are synonymous terms, and that he is violating sacred traditions unless he ends his tale with a violent death. But it is by no means necessary that the climax of a short story should be or should contain a catastrophe or a tragedy. Its nature depends entirely upon the character of the tale in which it appears, and it may be just as strong and just as thrilling if it consists only of ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... buried the dead and went home. He had very little of the romantic complaint which now and then breaks out regarding the Indian, but knew full well that all the Indians ever born on the face of the earth could not compensate for the cruel and violent death of one good, gentle, ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... horror, turned to flee. But their victim recalled them to his side. "You need not run away now," he said. "You have done this thing to me. Stay." He was some twenty minutes dying, and his murderers sat with him the while: a scene for Shakespeare. All the stages of a violent death, the blood, the failing voice, the decomposing features, the changed hue, are thus present in the memory of Mr. Corpse; and since he studied them in the brother he betrayed, he has some reason to reflect on the possibilities of treachery. I was never more sure of anything than the tragic ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... move from her stately birthplace was to a lovely country residence called Woolbrook Glen, near Sidmouth. Here Victoria had the first of those remarkable narrow escapes from sudden and violent death which have almost seemed to prove that she bears a "charmed life." A boy was shooting sparrows in vicinity of the house, and a charge from his carelessly-handled gun pierced the window by which the nurse was sitting, ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... could ever have cared for you—to have believed you noble, honorable and—a gentleman. Why, you almost seem to be a different person in his guise—you are so changed in tone and manner from him to whom I gave my heart. The affection that I thought I had for you died a violent death." ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... no degree frequent," said the wise person after he had consulted a polished sphere of the finest red jade for some time; "and this is in a measure to be regretted, as the hair of these persons—provided they die a violent death, which is invariably the case—constitutes a certain protection against being struck by falling stars, or becoming involved in unsuccessful law cases. The persons in question can be recognized with certainty in ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah |
