"Cruel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... buried friend may be replaced—a lost mistress renewed—a slandered character be recovered—even a broken constitution restored; but a dinner, once lost, is irremediable; that day is for ever departed; an appetite once thrown away can never, till the cruel prolixity of the gastric agents is over, be regained. 'Il y a tant de maitresses, (says the admirable Corneille), ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... towards woman—an attitude once, from necessity, endurable; now, from too long continuance, grown intolerable. It would not be natural for him to feel it with equal keenness. It takes a great-minded fox to find out, what every goose knows, that foxes' teeth are cruel. And while we do not complain of this incapacity on his part, the advocates of this cause feel the necessity for woman to take upon herself whatever share in the management of their mutual affairs shall be needed to right the balance; concluding that the defects in legislation ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... point in his reflections Mr. Allendyce's heart gave a quick throb of pity—he knew what that handsome lad had been to the old couple. He thought now how merciful it had been that old Christopher had died before that cruel accident on the football field in which the lad had been fatally injured. The brunt of the blow had fallen upon Madame. And after the boy's death, a gloom had settled over her and the old house which nothing had seemed able to dispel. As a last desperate resort ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... sell them at less than the market price to traveling pedlers. Her mother did manual labor for twelve hours a day to earn five cents. Starvation was constantly at the door, and the father was of a surly and cruel disposition, and frequently beat his ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... Deprive it of thought-food. Give the thought to the nobler mood, and the ignoble mood will die. And this also applies to the faults and vices of my brother. I must fight them with their opposites. If he is harsh and cruel, I must be considerate and gentle. If he is grasping, I must be generous. If he is loud and presumptuous, I must be soft-mannered and self-restrained. If he is devilish, I must be a Christian. This is the warfare which tells ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... become even under this last cruel blow, she could not but see something in his coarse eyes she had never seen before; could not but hear something in his brutal voice she had never heard before! Was it possible that somewhere in the ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... them the way to wells he had found where the beasts could drink, then he traveled back to us, reaching our camp at dawn. We waited all that day in the desert, with the sun beating down on us with cruel heat, and still drivers and cattle had not come back. It was a desperate plight, for another night without water would mean death. We must set out on foot and try to reach some of the other wagons, whose owners had gone ahead." Virginia ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... philosophical outlook which comprehends love, gentleness and wisdom. Charles H. Anderson, 3122 Fredonia Street, was born December 23, 1845, in Richmond, Virginia, as a slave belonging to J.L. Woodson, grocer, "an exceedingly good owner—not cruel to anyone". ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... may truly be said that, without money, Paris is the most melancholy abode in the world. Privations are then the more painful, because desires and even wants are rendered more poignant by the ostentatious display of every object which might satisfy them. What more cruel for an unfortunate fellow, with an empty purse, than to pass by the kitchen of a restaurateur, when, pinched by hunger, he has not the means of procuring himself a dinner? His olfactory nerves being still more readily affected when his stomach is empty, far ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... comprehend what they mean by a change in the conduct of the war, yet there seems to be no room to doubt, that they mean to threaten something more cruel, greater extremes of war, measures that shall distress the people and lay waste the country more than any thing they have yet done. "The object of the war is now entirely changed." Heretofore their massacres ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... man, and the ferocity and fearlessness of his attacks. Again and again he leaped in, and each time the club fell upon him with a force that threatened to break his bones. There was a tense hard look about Sandy's cruel mouth. He had never known a dog like this before, and he was a bit nervous, even with Kazan muzzled. Three times Kazan's fangs would have sunk deep in his flesh had it not been for the babiche. And if the thongs about his jaws ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... was nothing now, powerfully to foster her courage or excite her energy. She looked back at the trials she had passed, and her soul sickened at the recollection of that, which, while it was in act, she had had the fortitude to endure. Till the period at which Mr. Tyrrel had been inspired with this cruel antipathy, she had been in all instances a stranger to anxiety and fear. Uninured to misfortune, she had suddenly and without preparation been made the subject of the most infernal malignity. When ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... beside Sir Peter as we filed into the tavern. "My wife calls it a shameful sport, but the cockpit is a fashionable passion, damme! and a man out o' fashion is worse than an addled cluck-egg! Eh, Renault? Good gad, sir! Do not cocks fight unurged, and are not their battles with nature's spurs more cruel than when matched by man and heeled with steel or even silver, which mercifully ends the combat in short order? And so I tell my wife, Sir Peter, but she calls ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... to advance selfishness, if its progress merely increases physical wretchedness and makes moral decadence more terrible than before, if the head continues to silence the appeals of the heart, then divine Compassion will have no alternative but to destroy beneath the waters of another flood this cruel, implacable civilisation, which has transformed earth ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... 'The Newcomes' speaks of 'matrimonial crimes where the woman is not felled by the actual fist, though she staggers and sinks under the blows quite as cruel and effectual, where with old wounds still unhealed, she strives to hide under a smiling ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... "train on hoofs," laden with goods of the utmost value, had to be escorted by a squad of soldiers, and often by an entire company. Even thus protected, frequent and daring raids were made by the cruel and fearless savages, whose only dread seemed to be starvation and the on-coming of the white man, and who would go to any lengths ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady
... cruel lash, and their maddened horse, bounding at each stroke, broke into a wild canter. The frail vehicle swayed from side to side at each spring of the elastic shafts. Steadying himself by one hand on the low rail, Dunn drew his revolver ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... though thou be, thou leapest out of darkness; but I am darkness leaping out of light, leaping out of thee! The javelins cease; open eyes; see, or not? There burn the flames! Oh, thou magnanimous! now do I glory in my genealogy. But thou art but my fiery father; my sweet mother, I know not. Oh, cruel! what hast .. thou done with her? There lies my puzzle; but thine is greater. Thou knowest not how came ye, hence callest thyself unbegotten; certainly knowest not thy beginning, hence callest thyself unbegun. I know that of me, which thou knowest not of thyself, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... be," said the Doctor, as if to himself, "some eternal vast reservoir somewhere, that stores up all this terrible total of unnecessary suffering—the cruel and needless suffering inflicted upon children and animals, in particular. Perhaps it's a spiritual serum used for the saving of the race. Perhaps races higher up than we use it—as we use rabbits and guinea-pigs. ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... seemed to me every square inch of my hands had been burned to a blister, and there was a livid, red mark across my forehead, where an old hag had scorched me with a burning brand, did the squaws tire of their cruel sport, and then we were left comparatively alone, with sufficient of pain to keep us so keenly alive to the situation that weariness of body did not make ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... because when I became a working man I saw only the seamy side of the life of our town, and every day made fresh discoveries which brought me to despair. My fellow townsmen, both those of whom I had had a low opinion before, and those whom I had thought fairly decent, now seemed to me base, cruel, and up to any dirty trick. We poor people were tricked and cheated in the accounts, kept waiting for hours in cold passages or in the kitchen, and we were insulted and uncivilly treated. In the autumn I had to paper the library and ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... marriage was out of the question because her life was waning, then unconsciously there grew up in his heart a feeling that the young lord ought not to rob him of what was left. Had Marion insisted, he would have yielded. Had Mrs. Roden told him that it was cruel to separate them, he would have groaned and given way. As it was, he simply leaned to that view of the matter which gave him the greatest preponderance with his own child. It may be that she saw it too, and would not wound him by ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... lies away there on our right hand, called Formosa," said the captain. "The inhabitants are Chinese. They seem even more cruel and treacherous than the rest of their countrymen. Not long ago two vessels were wrecked, and their crews made prisoners. The natives marched them off to their capital, somewhere in the middle of the island, several days' journey from the coast, and there they kept them ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... you something that happened last night. Well, I met Charlie as I was coming home from saying good-bye to you. He was desolate. You really have been a little cruel. He said you gave him back his match-box and gold pencil, and that that meant you did not want anything more to do with him. He said he had been waiting behind the usual shrubbery in the park for two hours, ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... a cruel exercise of power to compel this delicate and shrinking female to stand once more in the pillory of the law; or, to put "ELISHA'S" orthography to a second test by a crucial and censorious public. Whatever may be the result of all ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... apparently they didn't. We were prepared for the thrilling moment when we were led to the edge of the cliff, and told to look down. Here was the very place where Tiberius amused himself by throwing his slaves into the sea to feed the fishes. Cruel old monster! But it was a long time ago. Time had marvelously softened the atrocity of the act, and heightened its picturesque character. If Tiberius must exhibit his colossal inhumanity, could he have anywhere in all the world chosen a ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... the best thing in the world? June-rose by May-dew impearled; Sweet south-wind, that means no rain; Truth, not cruel to a friend; Pleasure, not in haste to end; Beauty, not self-decked and curled Till its pride is over-plain; Light, that never makes you wink; Memory, that gives no pain; Love, when so you're ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... fell, and many soldiers were slain. Next day the high-priest Ananias, and his brother Hezekiah, were slain by the robbers. By these successes Menahem was puffed up and became barbarously cruel; but he was slain, as were also the captains under him, in an attack led on by Eleazar, a bold youth who was ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... Kurd stepped out from between the trees, and we could see that he had tied his horse to a branch in the gloom behind him. He had the long sleeves reaching nearly to the ground peculiar to his race, and the unmistakable sheeny nose and cruel lips. From the rifle that he carried cavalierly over his shoulder hung a woman's undergarment, with a dark stain on it that looked suspiciously like blood. My horse whinnied then, and his beast answered. At that he brought ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... humour in you; don't fancy they will last in that trade. Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil. That road goes down and down. The kind man drinks and turns cruel; the frank man kills and lies about it. Many a man I've known started like you to be an honest outlaw, a merry robber of the rich, and ended stamped into slime. Maurice Blum started out as an anarchist of principle, a father of the poor; ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... relentless, Spartan, Draconian, stringent, strait-laced, searching, unsparing, iron- handed, peremptory, absolute, positive, arbitrary, imperative; coercive &c. 744; tyrannical, extortionate, grinding, withering, oppressive, inquisitorial; inclement &c. (ruthless) 914a; cruel &c. (malevolent) 907; haughty, arrogant &c. 885; precisian[obs3]. Adv. severely &c. adj.; with a high hand, with a strong hand, with a tight hand, with a heavy hand. at the point of the sword, at the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... many-colored flowers. In all that vast extent over which I could look, there was visible no living creature save the tiny furred and feathered things whose home it was. The soft prairie wind blew caressingly against my cheek and seemed to whisper in my ear: "Why do men cling to the boisterous, cruel, lying sea as the emblem of freedom? Is not here beauty that allures with freedom's own charms? Is not here freedom herself, serene, smiling, constant, and blessed with a blessedness the ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... fore-gone conclusion in the reader's mind, and adverting in a casual, careless way to a Turk unknown, as to an old acquaintance. "This Turk he had—" We have heard of no Turk before, and yet this familiar introduction satisfies us at once that we know him well. He was a pirate, no doubt, of a cruel and savage disposition, entertaining a hatred of the Christian race, and accustomed to garnish his trees and vines with such stray professors of Christianity as happened to fall into his hands. "This Turk he had—" is a master-stroke—a truly Shakspearian touch. There ...
— The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman • Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray
... the object itself, but an analagous one whose peculiar character that property is; for examples: the quiet, peaceful, gentle disposition of a child, by a lamb; a man of cunning, artful, deceptive disposition, by a fox; or a cruel, bloodthirsty, vindictive tyrant, by a tiger, etc. This is hieroglyphical or symbolic language. This language takes precedence over every other for naturalness and simplicity, being common to a greater or less extent among ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... Professor Phillips remarks that, "gifted with ample means of flight, able at least to perch on rocks and scuffle along the shore, perhaps competent to dive, though not so well as a Palmiped bird, many fishes must have yielded to the cruel beak and sharp teeth of Rhamphorhynchus. If we ask to which of the many families of Birds the analogy of structure and probable way of life would lead us to assimilate Rhamphorhynchus, the answer must point to the swimming races with long wings, clawed feet, hooked beak, ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... seemed to see beauty in her. I know my brother Bob, he confided to mother once-t thet he thought she looked thess precizely like the Queen o' Sheba must'a' looked, an' I ricollec' thet he cried bitter because mother told it out on him at the dinner-table. It was turrible cruel, but she didn't reelize. ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... stretched to the distant horizon, presenting to the eye bright gleams of lakes and watercourses, of fertile fields and wooded hills; amongst which nestled the rich villages, and the flocks and herds were feeding in peace. She saw it not. She saw not the smiling land, the taunting crowd, the cruel executioner: she saw only the face of her Lord. Descending the hill, she knelt to pray; and so praying she was speared. No common honour descended upon her that day: she was the first martyr of Christ's church in the island of Madagascar. "Strange is it," said the executioner, "there ...
— Fruits of Toil in the London Missionary Society • Various
... [The cruel custom of throwing at cocks on Shrove Tuesday is of considerable antiquity. It is shown in the first print of Hogarth's "Four Stages ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... befall me: Ah!" he continued, with tears in his eyes, "if what you tell me be true, I am undone! Has Ebn Thaher, who was all my comfort, in whom I put all my confidence, left me? I cannot think of living after so cruel a blow." ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... warriors. The chief divinity was Jupiter, who ruled the heavens and sent rain and sunshine to nourish the crops. The war god Mars reflected the military character of the Romans. His sacred animal was the fierce, cruel wolf, his symbols were spears and shields; his altar was the Campus Martius (Field of Mars) outside the city walls, where the army assembled in battle array. March, the first month of the old Roman year, was named in his honor. Some other gods were borrowed from the Greeks, together ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... spite of his errors, because he was an earnest and suffering man and a great genius; but his fame must ever continue to lie where his greatest blame does, in his principal work. He was a gratuitous logician, a preposterous politician, a cruel theologian; but his wonderful imagination, and (considering the bitterness that was in him) still more wonderful sweetness, have gone into the hearts of his fellow-creatures, and will remain there in spite of the moral and ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... him of opportunity and happiness, and said, "Thank you, mother; you are awfully good"; but he shut his eyes when he kissed her. He was blind to the love, the yearning, the outstretched hands of motherhood,—not because he was cruel, or hard, or mean; but because he was young, and delighted ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... ill-favored Esther got the better of our elderly Vashti. But her ladyship, for her part, always averred that it was her husband's quarrel, and not her own, which occasioned the banishment of the two into the country; and the cruel ingratitude of the Sovereign in giving away, out of the family, that place of Warden of the Butteries and Groom of the King's Posset, which the two last Lords Castlewood had held so honorably, and which was ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... had been to Rome, the Eternal City, and had there learned, from the cruel Romans, how to build great enclosures, not of stone but of wood. Here, on holidays, they gave their prisoners of war to the wild beasts, for the amusement of thousands of the people. The Frisians could get no lions or tigers, for these fierce brutes live in hot countries; but they sent hundreds ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... implacable vengeance; and the fugitives, as they listened, might have reflected how fortunate they had been in discovering that unfathomed hole. But for it they would have already been in the clutches of a cruel enemy. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... effect; yet, if we might connect the plot of the "Antigone" with the former plays of either "Oedipus," there is something of retribution in the attempted parricide when we remember the hypocritical and cruel severity of Creon to the involuntary parricide of Oedipus. The whole description of the son in that living tomb, glaring on his father with his drawn sword, the dead form of his betrothed, with the subsequent picture of the lovers joined in death, constitutes ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was cruel to animals, therefore the Khoja did not like to lend him his beast; but as he was also a man of some consideration, the Khoja ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... men in many parts of the world, watching farmers toil in the fields, warriors dash into cruel fray, and merchants exchange their goods for bits of white and yellow metal. And everywhere the eyes of Claus sought out the children in love and pity, for the thought of his own helpless babyhood was strong within him and he yearned to give help to the innocent little ones of his race even as he ...
— The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus • L. Frank Baum
... the tenth and last persecution of the Christian Church by the Romans. The judge, who condemned him to death, was Aquilinus. After being importuned to renounce the Christian religion, and to embrace the Pagan creed, as the only condition of his being rescued from an immediate and cruel death, St. Florian firmly resisted all entreaties; and shewed a calmness, and even joyfulness of spirits, in proportion to the stripes inflicted upon him previous to execution. He was condemned to be thrown into the river, from a bridge, with a stone fastened round his neck. The soldiers at ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... have just acknowledged is undoubtedly attributable to my circumstances, though I trust I am still beyond the reach of the graver imputation. But I should be ambitious of proving more than this—the utter extravagance of such a theory; for it is a cruel one, and has caused both mischief and misery. How many otherwise inoffensive persons have I known implicitly to adopt an opinion to the prejudice of their less fortunate acquaintance, merely from their deficiency of the world's wealth! But, not content with this, these ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... again on the stone seat. "The frost is really cruel," thought he, "and a very good thing is such a woolly sheepskin; but the Saviour endured far other sufferings than these, and for what did I quit the world but to imitate Him, and to endure to the end ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Socialist papers, condemned the execution as a cruel and unnecessary act. The charges of conspiracy were utterly unproven, and were merely an excuse. The Central Executive Committee, however, accepted the decision of the Ural Regional Soviet as being regular, and a decree by the Bolshevist Government ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... faces peered at the man. The silence of the buried Temple was solid, awesome. Through the mist of wreathing incense-smoke and heavy shadows the giant head of the idol stared down, cruel in the coldness of the rock it had been ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... least send my son to present our homage to His Majesty. The King surely would do something for the Count—give him a company, for instance, or a place in the Household, a chance, in short, for the boy to win his spurs. My uncle the Archbishop suffered a cruel martyrdom; I have fought for the cause without deserting the camp with those who thought it their duty to follow the Princes. I held that while the King was in France, his nobles should rally round him.—Ah! well, no one gives us a thought; a Henry IV. would have written ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... therefrom, and measures brought forward to solve them. The reader easily learns that the handling of the question in South Africa has not been very different from the method of attack in the United States. The South African method has, in some respects, been more cruel than that ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... and the head of a household; living with a child who was one incessant and irrepressible demand for attention, and a wife who was wrestling with weakness and sickness—eating out her heart in cruel loneliness, and cowering in the grip of fiends ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... Children, came into the world on purpose to tell us all about our Father's Love. If you read His words, you will see how full His heart is of the love of God. "We KNOW that He loves us," He says. And so He loved men Himself and though they were very cruel to Him and at last killed Him, He was willing to die for them because He loved them so. And, Helen, He loves men still, and He loves us, and He tells us that we ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... that were within the reach of the inferior courts of justice; for this reason he observed, that if the lord-provost and citizens of Edinburgh should suffer in the terms of the present bill, they would suffer by a cruel, unjust, and fantastical proceeding; a proceeding of which the worst use might be made, if ever the nation should have the misfortune to fall under a partial self-interested administration. He told them he sat in the parliament of Scotland when that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Drewins, whose natives are a powerful and spirited race, equally accustomed to either element. There are no better canoe-men on the coast. They ship only on board the Bristol ships, and they have more than once flogged a cruel skipper caught ashore. Passing King George's Town, we halted (11 A.M., January 23) opposite the river and settlement of Fresco, where two barques and a cutter were awaiting supplies. Fresco-land is beautified ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... serious and so sad that the chirping of the birds was silenced at once. They looked at the beautiful, large, thoughtful eyes full of tears and of thoughts, gazing shiningly and imploringly at them, and understood that it was useless and even cruel to insist. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... throve, turned their hands (like true sailors) to all manner of trades, and made much money; so that all went well, until the fatal year 1574, when, much against the minds of many of the Spaniards themselves, that cruel and bloody Inquisition was established for the first time in the Indies; and how from that moment their lives were one long tragedy; how they were all imprisoned for a year and a half, racked again and again, and at last adjudged to receive publicly, on Good Friday, 1575, some three ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... shining brink He hath not crossed. The wrathful gods deny Him entrance! Where, oh, where do spirits fly Whom gods have cursed? Alas, he is condemned To wander lone in that dark world, contemned And from the Light of Happy Fields is barred! Oh, why do gods thus send a fate so hard, And cruel? O dear moon-god, moon-god Sin! My seer hath erred. Receive his soul within To joys prepared for gods and men! Though seer He was, he immortality did fear, As some unknown awakening in space. Oh, turn upon ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... background, however, ready to leap forward as soon as she should be alone, was the torturing fact that Miss Sniffen still kept cruel wardship over her prisoners, and she counted over and over, joyfully marking them off one by one on her calendar, the days before Mr. Randolph would be at ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... division of the civet-weasel tribe; and one of which there are numerous species. They are usually pretty spotted creatures, with immensely long tails; and but for their cruel and sanguinary habits would, no doubt, be favourites. They exist in South Europe; and, under different forms and appellations, extend over all Africa to Madagascar and the Cape—as well as through the countries of Southern Asia ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... true because we feel that a false theory has prevented the artist from viewing life concretely and clearly. We could, for example, accept as natural and inevitable the ending of Tess of the D'Urbervilles, if Hardy had not presented it as an illustration of the cruel sport of the gods. As it stands with the author's commentary, we suspect that the girl's fate might have been different,—that perhaps he gave it this turn in order to ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... by her, he furiously renounced his faith, and eventually died blaspheming. In vain through many years he had tried to detach his daughter from the religion of her guilty mother, now long since dead. Domini had known how to resist; but the cruel contest had shaken her body ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... it meant to almost perish from the cold. She had felt the cruel blasts of the winter winds upon her chilblained feet, for she had never known the luxury of shoes. She had also seen the dying and understood what it meant to turn a longing face toward heaven, with a burning desire ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... had never been christened, a good Anabaptist, named James, beheld the cruel and ignominious treatment shown to one of his brethren, an unfeathered biped with a rational soul, he took him home, cleaned him, gave him bread and beer, presented him with two florins, and even wished to teach him the manufacture of Persian ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... husband's family came, and I realized that I was a mere baby in a new world—a complicated and not very friendly world, at that. Though they never put it into words, they made me understand, in their cruel, polite way, that Tom was the hope of the family, and his sudden marriage to a stranger had been a great shock, if ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown
... slept; But he sigh'd, and he sobb'd, and he groan'd, and he wept; Lamenting his sins, And his two broken shins, Bewailing his fate with contortions and grins, And her he once thought a complete Rara Avis, Consigning to Satan,—viz., cruel Miss Davis' ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... too young to fall in love with anybody. I shall at least wait until this cruel war ...
— Young Captain Jack - The Son of a Soldier • Horatio Alger and Arthur M. Winfield
... che vien cenere Penando un amator benche fedele! Cosi vuol Venere, Nata nell' ocean, nume crudele." [Footnote: "Ah that there should be ashes from the torture of a lover, though faithful! So Venus wills it, the ocean-born, a cruel deity."] ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... somewheres in Missouri, but whereabouts I don't know. One of her masters was John Goodet. His wife was named Eva Goodet. He was a very mean man and cruel, and his wife was too. My grandmother belonged to another slaveholder and they would allow her to go to see my mother. She was allowed to work and do things for which she was given old clothes and other little things. She would take em and bring em to my mother. As soon as she had ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... idea, which we have seen to be the key to Indian social life, showed itself in universal helpfulness. Ferocious and pitiless as these people were toward their enemies, the women even more ingeniously cruel than the men, nothing could exceed the cheerful spirit with which, in their own rough way, they bore one another's burdens. It filled the French missionaries with admiration, and they frequently tell us how, if a lodge was accidentally burned, the ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... sacrifices, although they took care to search the people of their own country beforehand, and both suspected and watched them; while they were not so much afraid of strangers, who, although they had gotten leave of them, how cruel soever they were, to come into that court, were yet often destroyed by this sedition; for those darts that were thrown by the engines came with that force, that they went over all the buildings, and reached as far as the altar, and ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... interest in the public mind as to the result of the trial. The facts that the alleged poisoner was a woman, that the murdered man was her own brother, that her own sister was supposed to be an important witness against her, that the murder, if murder it was, was in the highest degree cruel, mercenary, and devilish, that at the time of her arrest she was prominently connected with religious and benevolent institutions of the city, though it was well known she had previously led an irregular life, and the profound secrecy ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... terror, signified, by a motion to the executioner, his perfect willingness to meet death. "I doubt, my dear Cassander," writes De Knobelsdorf, "whether those celebrated philosophers, who have written so many books on the contempt of death, would have endured so cruel tortures with such constancy. So far did this youth seem to be raised above what is of man." Letter of July 10, 1542. Translated in Bulletin, vi. (1858), 420-423; and Baum, Theodor Beza, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... recollected by Mr. Sims, was now the editor of a big New York daily. Good things might have been expected of him, but it transpired that he had undergone "wizening of the brain." In fact, a number of Mr. Sims's former friends had suffered from this cruel disease, consisting apparently of a shrinkage ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... Jamaica's resources, and they will find that it was slavery; yes, it was its very name which prevented the idea of undertakings such as are being brought about. Had it not been for the introduction of freedom in our land; had the cruel monster, Slavery, not partially disappeared, when would we have seen banks, steamers, or railroads? No man thought of hazarding his capital in the days of slavery, but now that a new era has burst upon us, a complete change ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Savages have always many vices, but I do not think that these are worse in the New Hollanders, than in many other aboriginal races. It is said, indeed, that the Australian is an irreclaimable, unteachable being; that he is cruel, blood-thirsty, revengeful, and treacherous; and in support of such assertions, references are made to the total failure of all missionary and scholastic efforts hitherto made on his behalf, and to many deeds of violence or aggression committed ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... dull, pale tint has spread around, Where rose and lily erst were found. The throat, and bust—but, ah! forbear, Let's draw a veil for ever there; Too fearful is 't to put in rhyme The changes wrought by cruel Time, The faithful mirror well reveals The truth that flattery conceals; The charms once boasted, now are flown, But mind and heart are still thine own; And thou canst see the wreck of years, And ghost of beauty, ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... such as one might manifest in a prison to which he was being conveyed. And, as a prisoner of the Church, he inwardly prayed that his remaining days might be few. The blows which had fallen, one after another, upon his keen, raw nerves had left him benumbed. The cruel bruises which his faith in man had received in Rome and Cartagena had left him listless, and without pain. He was accepting the Bishop's final judgment mutely, for he had already borne all that human nature could endure. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... is me! the gentle knot That did in willing durance bind My happy soul to hers for life By cruel death ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... ecclesiastical ordinances obscure God's commands, since they prepare man for these, as fasts suppress the lust of the flesh and help him from falling into luxury. False also is it that it is impossible to observe ordinances, for the Church is not a cruel mother who makes no exceptions in the celebration of festivals and in fasting and the like. Furthermore, they falsely quote Augustine in reply to the inquiries of Januarius, who is diametrically opposed ...
— The Confutatio Pontificia • Anonymous
... and also craft and deception, he was in the moment of need most cunning in device. In rewarding courage he was bountiful, and in punishing for offences he was merciful. And yet, in the last part of his life, his cruel and vindictive treatment of the hostages may be alleged as a proof that his temper was not naturally humane, but that he put on the appearance of mildness through calculation and as a matter of necessity, ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... course master and I both know that one isn't whipped for a little thing like that, so we retired into the study, and while master pretended to whip me I pretended to howl. I was just beginning to howl in a very lifelike way when the woman rushed in and called master a cruel brute, and said she didn't mean ...
— Punch, Volume 156, January 22, 1919. • Various
... knew where they were at, they ran in three goals—one-two-three, just like that! Oh! you ought to have seen that rink, Mamma, and you ought to have heard the yelling! I wish you had been there! And then, just at that last goal didn't that horrid Jumbo make a terrible and cruel swing at Snoopy's ankle, just as he passed. Knocked him clean off his feet so that poor Snoopy lay on the ice quite still! He was really nearly killed. They ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... are to lift them up, but, by a tremendous concentration of all of our consciences and all our powers, which shall make a public sentiment, that shall look into the sweaters' hells as much as it looks into the factories, and into the stores, and establishments of men who do not mean to be cruel or more cruel than you are, and I should be, but who, in the tussle and competition of life, are led to take part in a system which is sweating and destroying life which is as brave and worthy as any of theirs. I wish to create a public opinion which ...
— Silver Links • Various
... their tribe, Captain John must die, for this was their law. So they dragged him, bound, before the great chief Powhatan, who sat in mighty state surrounded by his warriors. They stretched the prisoner on the ground with his head on a large stone, to beat out his brains with their cruel clubs. And it seemed as though at last the gallant Captain's time had come. But just as the Indian brave was about to strike, his great war club swinging high in the air, Pocahontas rushed forward and threw herself between him ...
— The Story of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith • E. Boyd Smith
... Oh, it was cruel! By this time there was not a man in the army but could have taught the General the madness of it. But the General was down at the sawmill, two miles away; and the broken regiments reformed and faced the rampart ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... caused the girl to recoil inwardly. Could it be that this hard, cruel man had the right to address her ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock
... outlook is necessarily limited. Tibby neither wished to strengthen the position of the rich nor to improve that of the poor, and so was well content to watch the elms nodding behind the mildly embattled parapets of Magdalen. There are worse lives. Though selfish, he was never cruel; though affected in manner, he never posed. Like Margaret, he disdained the heroic equipment, and it was only after many visits that men discovered Schlegel to possess a character and a brain. He had done well in Mods, ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... his love for his little daughter. She had brown eyes and brown hair, and those who most loved her called her Wee Brown Elspeth. Ian Red Hand was richer and more powerful than Malcolm of the Glen, and therefore could more easily work his cruel will. He knew well of Malcolm's worship of his child, and laid his plans to torture him through her. Dark Malcolm, coming back to his rude, small castle one night after a raid in which he had lost followers ...
— The White People • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... sonne and the mone, that thou telle us and (if) thou be Goddys sone!', Jesus says calmly, 'Goddys sone I am, I sey not nay to the!' Still later in the same scene, the silence of Jesus before Herod (sustained through forty lines or more of urging and vile abuse, besides cruel beatings) lifts Him into infinite superiority over the blustering, bullying judge and his wretched instruments. It is true that the Bible gives the facts, but with the freedom allowed to the dramatist the excellence of the original might have ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... in his way. "And," he added, "my benefactor is an exceedingly intelligent man, for he seemed to guess my thoughts intuitively. I have now only one wish, that of learning the name of the gentleman who so cleverly assisted his king out of his dilemma, and extricated him from his cruel position." ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... of brigandage in countries not subject to foreign invasion, or where [v.04 p.0564] the state is not very feeble. The Sicilian peasants of whom Gibbon wrote were not only encouraged by the hope of impunity, but were also maddened by an oppressive system of taxation and a cruel system of land tenure. So were the Gauls and Spaniards who throughout the 3rd and 4th centuries were a constant cause of trouble to the empire, under the name of Bagaudae, a word of uncertain origin. In the years preceding the French Revolution, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... coincide with the line m m, which is at right angles to the line c D. If we should now make a locking face with a "draw" and at an angle to the line c D, say, for illustration, to correspond to the line c c' (leaving the pallet center at D), we would have a strong draw and also a cruel ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... said John, under his breath. But the medieval mind of Auersperg was not disturbed. The slow, cruel smile ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Japan better. What dire consequences to humanity lie in the contemptuous ignoring of Eastern problems! European imperialism, which does not disdain to raise the absurd cry of the Yellow Peril, fails to realise that Asia may also awaken to the cruel sense of the White Disaster. You may laugh at us for having "too much tea," but may we not suspect that you of the West have "no tea" in ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... eyes met. "I had been wiser," thought the man, "I had been wiser to have myself told her of that brown witch, that innocent sorceress! Why something held my tongue I know not. Now she hath read my idyl, but all darkened, all awry." The woman thought: "Cruel and base! You knew that my heart was yours to break, ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... and dwelling in their abodes. He inspired them by his words with fresh spirit and confidence, telling them that this state of things could not last, and that he was going to join the king, who doubtless would soon call them to take part in a fresh effort to drive out their cruel oppressors. Edmund found that although none knew with certainty the hiding-place of King Alfred, it was generally reported that he had taken refuge in the low lands of Somersetshire, and Athelney was specially named as the place which he ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... I took it from a man that met me. I thought God sent him to me. I rode here joyfully thinking so all the time to myself. Then I noticed that the child was like lead in my arms. God would never have been so cruel as to send me the horse to disappoint me ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... wandered about; the two wounded men became the center of attraction and related for the hundredth time their sensations when the juramentado had struck them down. They were not seriously wounded, but the cruel cuts were displayed, and they did not prove an antidote to the tenseness ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... man of his period, a barbarian and a soldier born; brave, crafty, adventurous, faithful to Igor, his ward, cruel and treacherous to others. Under his rule the Russian dominions ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... situation was desperate enough. He was helpless in the hands of Hanno. The friends and partisans of Hannibal were ignorant of his coming, and he could hope for no help from them. He had little doubt as to what his fate would be; he would be put to death in some cruel way, and Hannibal, his relatives, and friends would never know what had become of him from the moment when he left the Italian vessel in ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty |
