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Inhuman   Listen
adjective
Inhuman  adj.  
1.
Destitute of the kindness and tenderness that belong to a human being; cruel; barbarous; savage; unfeeling; as, an inhuman person or people.
2.
Characterized by, or attended with, cruelty; as, an inhuman act or punishment.
Synonyms: Cruel; unfeeling; pitiless; merciless; savage; barbarous; brutal; ferocious; ruthless; fiendish.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Inhuman" Quotes from Famous Books



... fierce cries, as they wheeled over Vritra's head. Then, in that encounter, Indra, adored by the gods, and armed with the thunderbolt, looked hard at the Daitya as the latter sat on his car. Possessed by that violent fever, the mighty Asura, O monarch, yawned and uttered inhuman cries.[1394] While the Asura was yawning Indra hurled his thunderbolt at him. Endued with exceedingly great energy and resembling the fire that destroys the creation at the end of the Yuga, that thunderbolt overthrew in a trice Vritra of gigantic form. Loud shouts were once more uttered by ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... tragic fight of man to save himself, this immortal craving for immortality which caused the man Kant to make that immortal leap of which I have spoken, all this is simply a fight for consciousness. If consciousness is, as some inhuman thinker has said, nothing more than a flash of light between two eternities of darkness, then there is nothing more execrable ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno

... trying to defend itself against the storm of world-criticism, has admitted and justified the slaughter of innocent hostages as a "military necessity." No other civilised country does this; and Americans consider the German Government both brutal and barbarous for permitting this utterly inhuman practice. American soldiers in Vera Cruz were killed by franctireurs; but our Government would hang any American officer who permitted the murder of innocent hostages on that account. Your Government justifies and excuses such measures; therefore Americans have been forced to conclude ...
— Plain Words From America • Douglas W. Johnson

... The high inhuman note of the wind, the violence and continuity of its outpouring, and the fierce touch of it upon man's whole periphery, accelerated the functions of the mind. It set thoughts whirling, as it whirled the trees of the forest; it stirred them up in flights, as it stirred ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Poggin was supreme. If Poggin had a friend no one ever heard of him. There were a hundred stories of his nerve, his wonderful speed with a gun, his passion for gambling, his love of a horse—his cold, implacable, inhuman wiping out of his path ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey

... and courage had, by this time, gained him a considerable influence and authority in Rome, when the senate, favoring the wealthier citizens, began to be at variance with the common people, who made sad complaints of the rigorous and inhuman usage they received from the money-lenders. For as many as were behind with them, and had any sort of property, they stripped of all they had, by the way of pledges and sales; and such as through former ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... and Stout and Campbell did at Ottawa. I will never catch and return slaves in obedience to any law or constitution. I do not believe a man's liberty can be taken from him constitutionally without a trial by jury. I believe the law to be not only unconstitutional, but most inhuman.' 'Oh,' said Mr. Lincoln, and I shall never forget his earnestness as he emphasized it by striking his hand on his knee, 'it is ungodly! it is ungodly! no doubt it is ungodly! but it is the law of the land, and we must obey it as we find it.' I said: 'Mr. ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... came to take their last look at Som-kad', now a black, bloated, inhuman-looking thing, and they turned away apparently unaffected ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks

... forcing your attention upon the petty ripple of daily events and duties, until you present, to the outsider, the appearance of a commonplace, non-tragic person, bearing no noticeable scars of the crime which society perpetrated on you. You perhaps lose, at last, the realization of your own inhuman plight, and are received, unawares, into the gray prison protoplasm, no longer really sensitive to impressions, though presenting the semblance of human reactions. You drift down the stream, passive, in ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... two were brought up to be sentenced; and then Rogers said that his poor wife, being a German woman and a stranger in the land, he hoped might be allowed to come to speak to him before he died. To this the inhuman Gardiner replied, that she was not his wife. 'Yea, but she is, my lord,' said Rogers, 'and she hath been my wife these eighteen years.' His request was still refused, and they were both sent to Newgate; all those ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens

... prevent me from flinging myself into the sea? Will he prevent me from following her by swimming? The sea cannot be more fatal to me than the land. Since I cannot live with her, at least I will die before her eyes; far from you, inhuman mother! woman without compassion! May the ocean, to which you trust her, restore her to you no more! May the waves, rolling back our corpses amidst the stones of the beach, give you, in the loss of your two children, an ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre

... of others; that they were poorly paid, and that it had become sickening to him to do the bloody work for others. Don Ramon Mora had gold at his command, enough to give each more in a day than they could hope to receive for years of this inhuman servitude. He could possibly pay to each two thousand dollars for his freedom, guaranteeing them his gratitude, and pledging to refrain from any prosecution. Would they accept this offer or refuse it? As many as were in favor of granting his life ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams

... uncontrolled will. You could never reason with or influence him, where his appetites or his passions were concerned. A mocking spirit looked out upon you, just before his blow fell. He was a mere force—inhuman and sinister. ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Allcraft, pray. Such being the case, I shall decline, at present, giving any answer to the unjust, inhuman observations which you have made upon my conduct. Painful as it is to pass this barbarous treatment over for the present, still my own private affairs shall be as nothing in comparison with the general good. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... that bull, and terror in those who are waiting to behold a death so unexampled, besides which there is the seated figure of Phalaris (so I believe), ordaining with an imperious air of great beauty the punishment of the inhuman spirit that had invented a device so novel and so cruel in order to put men to death with greater suffering. In this work, also, may be perceived a very beautiful frieze of children, painted to look like bronze, and other figures. Higher ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari

... all the world. This speech was immediately published throughout the kingdom; nor did any thing terrify the people so much as those encomiums on his majesty's mercy; because it was observed, that the more these praises were enlarged and insisted on, the more inhuman was the punishment, and the sufferer more innocent. Yet, as to myself, I must confess, having never been designed for a courtier, either by my birth or education, I was so ill a judge of things, that I could not discover the lenity and favour of this sentence, but conceived it (perhaps ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift

... since the children's fleet sailed out of European life. Then a vague rumor of treachery began to circulate, and, little by little, the details came out of one of the most inhuman crimes that ever shocked the hearts of men. The benevolent merchants who furnished the ships had sold the children to the barbarous Moslems, and the course of the fleet was turned from east to south. On the second day out a great storm arose, and two of the ships foundered, and ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot

... were left so that they died in a few days. They also burned the men with a hot iron upon the forehead, leaving the word "Christian" stamped upon it. They cut the fingers from the hands, even of children, inflicting other indignities that cannot be written. The inhuman pagan, not content with this, had some men and women conducted through the streets of certain villages with insignia of dishonor commonly applied among the heathen to criminals, but of great glory to our Lord God, for whose ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various

... November 18th, Augusta and Amelia came to me after church, very much grieved at the inhuman decrees just passed in the Convention, including as emigrants, with those who have taken arms against their country, all who have quitted it since last July; and adjudging their estates to confiscation, and their persons to death should ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay

... it was that the inhuman brute gave the order to resort to Indian methods, and even old Moreno begged and prayed and blasphemed all to no purpose. Furious at their repulse, the band were ready to obey their leader's maddest wish. The word was "Burn them out." Ned Harvey, crouching behind his barley-bags, felt his blood ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King

... probable that many of these abandoned children were rescued and reared by the lower classes, which would partially account for the fierce resistance so often offered by these classes to those who deprived them of liberty. If such an inhuman practice had been encouraged by other nations of the world, many of the greatest benefactors of the race would have been consigned to an untimely death, for some of the noblest men that have ever lived ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley

... oh! What shall I say to thee, Lord Scroop; thou cruel, Ingrateful, savage, and inhuman creature! Thou that didst bear the key of all my counsels, That knew'st the very bottom of my soul, That almost mightst have coined me into gold, Wouldst thou have practised on me for thy ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... West Point, which citizens sometimes read of, one would think the plebes would offer some resistance or would complain to the authorities. These tales are for the most part untrue. In earlier days perhaps hazing was practised in a more inhuman manner than now. It may be impossible, and indeed is, for a plebe to cross a company street without having some one yell out to him: "Get your hands around, mister. Hold your head up;" but all that is required by tactics. Perhaps the frequency and unnecessary ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper

... cruelty, or brutal indifference on the part of their captors? Did the inhuman monsters gloat over the sufferings of these unfortunates, and deny them even the alleviation of physical pain? The affirmative answer to all these questions was probably the true one, since hardly better—no better, indeed—is the behaviour of these savages towards ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... the nation, for near the space of five hundred years. Yet, even in this very dark period, the LORD left not himself altogether without some to bear witness for him, whose steadfastness in defense of the truth, even unto death, vanquished the inhuman cruelty of their savage enemies. The honor of the church's exalted Head being still engaged to maintain the right of conquest he had obtained over this remote isle, and raise up his work out of the ruins, under ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery

... of the Revolution passed away; a new generation sprang up, impatient that an institution to which they clung should be condemned as inhuman, unwise, and unjust. In the throes of discontent at the self-reproach of their fathers, and blinded by the lustre of wealth to be acquired by the culture of a new staple, they devised the theory that slavery, which they ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft

... will doubtless be astounding to most persons who have never given the subject any very particular attention. Deluded by the false doctrines of peace societies, they doubtless regard war as an evil, at once inhuman and unnecessary. Altogether hostile to this idea is the position of De Quincey; he solemnly declares that war neither can be abolished nor ought to be. 'Most heartily,' says he, 'and with my profoundest sympathy, do I go along with Wordsworth in his grand lyrical ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... over wet, rough boulders, creeping like cats along a thread of a trail overhanging the gulf, clinging to the face of rocks that do not seem to offer a foothold to a mountain goat, and all the time straining with every muscle at a thousand-foot rope. An inhuman task where men take great risks for a pittance, where death by drowning or by being dashed to pieces on the rocks confronts them at every turn, and where, at best, strains and exposure bring an early end. In my dreams I see them, the long lines of naked men, their ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... the dire result of his apparently inhuman thoughtlessness, Alfred glanced at Aggie, uncertain as to ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo

... for an official assurance that he is now miserable himself. He was a worm; a good man in the worse sense of the word. It was the contrast—the contrast between his gentle clothing and ungentle heart, which moved my spleen. What a self-sufficient and inhuman brood were the Victorians of that type, hag-ridden by their nightmare of duty; a brood that has never yet been called by its proper name. Victorians? Why, not altogether. The mischief has its roots further back. Addison, for example, ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... town. I had never seen it in prosperity, and it now looked like a city of the plague, represented by empty dogs and empty houses; and, but for the tolling of a convent-bell by some unseen hand, its appearance was altogether inhuman. ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid

... on, monster," exclaimed Mrs. Garrison, fiercely. "Do you know who we are? Surely you are not inhuman enough to—" ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon

... since you might have some hopes to see it thus better provided for than was in the power of yourself, or its wicked father, to provide for it. I should indeed have been highly offended with you had you exposed the little wretch in the manner of some inhuman mothers, who seem no less to have abandoned their humanity, than to have parted with their chastity. It is the other part of your offence, therefore, upon which I intend to admonish you, I mean the violation of your chastity;—a crime, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... "very good"—fine poetry, and, in a sense, true. Yet he was surprised that he had ever selected it so vehemently. This afternoon it seemed a little inhuman. Half a mile off two lovers were keeping company where all the villagers could see them. They cared for no one else; they felt only the pressure of each other, and so progressed, silent and oblivious, across the land. He felt them to be nearer the truth than Shelley. Even if they suffered ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster

... Bothwellhaugh. This unfortunate lady, together with her baby, was—during the temporary absence of her husband—stripped naked and turned out of doors on a bitterly cold night, by a favourite of the Regent Murray. As a result of this inhuman conduct the child died, and its mother, with the corpse in her arms, was discovered in the morning raving mad. Another instance of this particular form of apparition is to be found in Sir Walter Scott's "White Lady of Avenel," and there are endless others, ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell

... Pamphlets, speeches, sermons, all were employed to stimulate the general agitation and to brand with atrocity the conduct of the Ministry. The tombstone erected over the murdered man Allan chronicled his inhuman murder "by Scottish detachments from the Army," and quoted from Proverbs the words, "Take away the ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... I thought," some will say, "business is inhuman." One who takes this attitude has an incomplete view of the facts. If business were to tolerate a repetition of mistakes, its general level of productivity—which, in turn, means income to its employees—would be lowered ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various

... confidence that the Emperor would drive them from the soil of France. His Majesty assisted the old veteran to rise, and said to him cheerfully that he would spare nothing to accomplish such a favorable prediction. The allies conducted themselves in the most inhuman manner at Saint-Dizier: women and old men died or were made ill under the cruel treatment which they received; and it may be imagined what a cause of rejoicing his Majesty's arrival was to ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... of the King's Dominions, but in every quarter of the globe. For the national character of Britain is not less distinguished for humanity than strict retributive justice, which will consider the execution of this inhuman threat as deliberate murder, for which every subject of the ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond

... creditors, not to any one representing them, but to a country attorney who has succeeded him in the charge of the debts and affairs, and whom he knows to be a sharp practitioner and suspects to be a scoundrel. The inhuman uncle and the licentious duke are mere cardboard characters: and the featherheaded Lisa talks and behaves like a mixture of the sprightly heroines of Richardson (for whom Lady Mary most righteously prescribed a sound whipping) and the gushing heroines of Lady ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury

... the most reckless manner, and I tremble for the consequences! I can do no more: I have humiliated myself into following him, believing that in giving too ready credence to appearances I had been narrow and inhuman, and had caused him much misery. But he does not mind, and he has no misery; he seems just as well as ever. How much this finding him has cost me! After all, I did not deceive him. He must have acquired a natural aversion for me. I have allowed myself ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... of love for the Union; its primary object was to save the Union, its incident, to liberate the slave. Such was the act which brought to a close two hundred and forty-four years of barbarous maltreatment and inhuman oppression! After all these years of unremitting toil, the negro was pushed out into the world without one morsel of food, one cent of money, one foot of land. Naked and unarmed he was pushed forward into a dark cavern and told to beard the lion ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs

... twenty years more? Though I am, like Sir John, old only in judgment and understanding, I have again and again seen the wealthy emir of yesterday sitting on the ash-heap to-day, scraping himself with a bit of crockery, but happily too broken to find an inhuman sneer for the vagrants whom, in former days, he would have disdained to set with the dogs of his flock. I could write you a column of these emirs' names. And if there is one impudent interpolation in the Bible, it is to be found ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... inhuman, and Charley, for one, could not think of letting the figure huddle there, in the cold and the night, until the watchman should arrive. He did ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin

... ye;"—now I say, where would be my sincerity all the time? When I have pushed the contenders for reprobation in this manner, the cry has been, "O, that is your carnal, human reason!" Indeed I think the other is devilish, inhuman reason. ...
— A Solemn Caution Against the Ten Horns of Calvinism • Thomas Taylor

... the field, whom he caused to be seized, as having violated the law, and condemned to the gallows without a trial, by his usual word of doom: "Let the rascal be hung!" The soldier protested, and proved his innocence. "Then let them hang the innocent," cried the inhuman Wallenstein; "and the guilty will tremble the more." The preparations for carrying this sentence into effect had already commenced, when the soldier, who saw himself lost without remedy, formed the desperate resolution ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer

... Pocket bitterly, and told the whole truth about himself in a series of stertorous exclamations. It scarcely lessened the austerity of the eyes that still ran him through and through; but the hard mouth did relax a little; the lined face looked less deeply slashed and furrowed, and it was a less inhuman voice that ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung

... districts. The most damaging of these stories seems to have emanated from Senator John Slidell of Louisiana, whose midsummer sojourn in Illinois has already been noted. A Chicago journal published the tale that Douglas's slaves in the South were "the subjects of inhuman and disgraceful treatment—that they were hired out to a factor at fifteen dollars per annum each—that he, in turn, hired them out to others in lots, and that they were ill-fed, over-worked, and in every way so badly treated that they were spoken of in the neighborhood where they are ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... is the end of this to be? If the police cannot cope with this blood-mad ruffian, is New York to sit idly by and submit to another reign of terror instituted and carried on under the nose of authority by this inhuman jackal? If so, we are committing a crime against ourselves, we are ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... not furnish his slave with less than a peck of corn a week. This has a barbarous look. But to see the slaves feasting on the fat of the land you certainly would not be reminded of the "peck of corn," except by contrast. There must be some legal standard, below which if an inhuman master falls in providing for his servant, he can be prosecuted. Hence the "peck of corn." By the will of an eminent citizen at the North, establishing courses of lectures for all coming time, the pay of each lecturer is to be determined by the market value, at the time, of a bushel ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams

... face of his the hungry cannibals Would not have touch'd, would not have stain'd with blood; But you are more inhuman, more inexorable, O, ten times more, than tigers of Hyrcania. See, ruthless queen, a hapless father's tears; This cloth thou dipp'dst in blood of my sweet boy, And I with tears do wash the blood away. Keep thou the napkin, ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]

... can toward setting things right between us. Betty Clayton will tell you that I have repented of my treatment of you, but she cannot tell you how deep is the realization of the injury I have done you through my inhuman attitude toward you. I fear that I have ruined your character and that it may be too late to save you from those passions which, if not checked, will spoil ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer

... always adds, at the conclusion, that poor Dickie's cautious removal to Burgh under Stanemore, did not save him from the clutches of the Armstrongs; for that, having fallen into their power several years after this exploit, he was put to an inhuman death. The ballad was well known in England, so early as 1556. An allusion to it likewise occurs in Parrot's Laquei Ridiculosi, or Springes for ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott

... use the shovels to throw open the furnace doors. Then from these fiery round holes in the black a flood of terrific light and heat pours full upon the men who are outlined in silhouette in the crouching, inhuman attitudes of chained gorillas. The men shovel with a rhythmic motion, swinging as on a pivot from the coal which lies in heaps on the floor behind to hurl it into the flaming mouths before them. There is a tumult of noise—the ...
— The Hairy Ape • Eugene O'Neill

... the child became the man who either preyed on humanity and filled the prisons and robbed his fellows, or else grew into a useful, healthy citizen. It was nothing less than sheer folly as well as inhuman cruelty to let the children sleep in crowded, hot rooms, reeking with diseases, and run wild throughout the long summer, learning vice in the city streets. And we still had slavery—economic slavery—yes, and the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... faculties, acuteness of feeling, and command of it. A poet is great, first in proportion to the strength of his passion, and then, that strength being granted, in proportion to his government of it; there being, however, always a point beyond which it would be inhuman and monstrous if he pushed this government, and, therefore, a point at which all feverish and wild fancy becomes just and true. Thus the destruction of the kingdom of Assyria cannot be contemplated firmly by a prophet of Israel. ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... opprobrious imputation of being wholly devoted to making money, which your disinterested and gold-despising countrymen delight to cast upon us, when you nevertheless declare that we are ready to sacrifice it for the pleasure of being inhuman. You remember that Mr. Pitt could not get over the idea that self-interest would insure kind treatment to slaves, until you told him your woful stories of the middle passage. Mr. Pitt was right in the first instance, and erred, under your tuition, in not perceiving the difference ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... ever enacted in even the most barbarous age of the world, could compare in fiendish cruelty with the early penal enactments of the Pale—so forcibly supplemented in after years by the perjured "Dutch boor" and the inhuman Georges. The foul fiend himself could not have devised laws more diabolical in their character or destructive in their application. So close were their meshes and sweeping their folds, that the possibility of escape was obviously out of the question; as their victim ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh

... deepened into a rippling laugh. "I am in one of my inhuman moods this morning," she said, "but I believe my forte is action rather than speech. Let me take your place, and ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam

... nation never loved anarchy, nor was wont to spend its sympathy on miserable mad seditions, especially of this inhuman and half-brutish type; but always loved order, and the prompt suppression of seditions, and reserved its tears for something worthier than promoters of such delirious and fatal enterprises who had got their wages for their ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle

... have endeavoured to prove it, how foreign, and indeed how opposite to it, must such a behaviour be! and can any man call a duke or a dutchess who wears it well-bred? or are they not more justly entitled to those inhuman names which they themselves allot to the lowest vulgar? But behold a more pleasing picture on the reverse. See the earl of C——, noble in his birth, splendid in his fortune, and embellished with every endowment of mind; how affable! how condescending! himself ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... against the Mahrattas, he was bound to do. That, instead of such previous inquiry, or tender of good offices, the said Warren Hastings did stimulate the ambition and ferocity of the Nabob of Oude to the full completion of the inhuman end of the said unjustifiable enterprise, by informing him "that it would be absolutely necessary to persevere in it until it should be accomplished"; pretending that a fear of the Company's displeasure was his motive for annexing the accomplishment of the enterprise as a condition ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... a little inhuman in the Dean's attitude, and indeed in the way in which everybody at Ashwood regarded Quisante. Not even Dick Benyon was altogether free from this reproach, in spite of his enthusiasm and his resulting blindness to Quisante's lesser, but not less galling, faults. Not even to Dick was ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope

... futile and inhuman, much more would it be so to seek out this woman who is sick in fortune and say to her, "Go and vote for the parliamentary candidate who will be likely to influence the trend of legislation in a direction ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright

... of a like faith in the power of the dead mother, is the inhuman practice of the people of the Congo, where, it is said, "the son often kills his mother, in order to secure the assistance of her soul, now ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... administered the inhuman castigation, Landry (the owner of the girl) pleaded guilty, but urged in extenuation that the girl had dared to make an effort for that freedom which her instincts, drawn from the veins of her abuser, had taught her was the God-given right of all who possess the germ of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... you bloody-minded man," she cried, "to slaughter your own son—your only son—to come behind him and knock him down with a club as if he had been an inhuman ox! You are no husband of mine. He sha'n't own you for a father. If I had the pick, I'd choose a thousand fathers for him, from here to Massassippi, sooner than you. He's only too good and too handsome to be son of yours. And for what should you strike him? For a stranger—a man we never ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... this, yet it was impossible to do more toward saving one's life than to take to the boats. And even that, under the inhuman and ruthless system of the Huns, was no guarantee that one would be saved. Lifeboats had, more than once, been ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front - Or, The Hunt for the Stolen Army Films • Victor Appleton

... a crescent. The two male Colossi, on the contrary, were draped, and presented a terrifying cast of features, especially the one to our right, which had the face of a devil. That to our left was serene in countenance, but the calm upon it seemed dreadful. It was the calm of that inhuman cruelty, Sir Henry remarked, which the ancients attributed to beings potent for good, who could yet watch the sufferings of humanity, if not without rejoicing, at least without sorrow. These three statues form a most awe-inspiring trinity, as they sit there in their solitude, ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard

... mortal, doomed to death Irreparably; hence a hostile force, Destructive, smites him from within, without, On every side, perpetual, e'en from The day of birth, and wearies and exhausts, Itself untiring, till he drops at last, By the inhuman mother crushed, and killed. Those crowning miseries, O gentle friend, Of this our mortal life, old age and death, E'en then commencing, when the infant lip The tender breast doth press, that life instils, This happy nineteenth century, I think, ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi

... out their error! and woe now to the Judge! The fact that a dozen other influential citizens had also refused shelter to the vagabond will not help the matter. Those very men will probably be the first to cry, "Hypocrite! inhuman! a judgment upon him!"—for it is always the person of doubtful virtue who is most eager to assume the appearance of severe integrity; and we often flatter ourselves that our private faults are atoned for, when we have loudly denounced them ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... society and not nationalistic scene shifting. His conditions can be ameliorated only through a union with his fellow sufferers, through human brotherhood, and not by means of separation and barriers. In his struggles against humiliating demands, inhuman treatment, economic pressure, he can depend on help from his non-Jewish comrades, and not on the assistance of Jewish manufacturers and speculators. How then can he be expected to co-operate with them in the building ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various

... began to reach out to fresh conclusions. There was something about them, an indescribable sort of silent vitality that suggested, to my broadening consciousness, a state of life-in-death—a something that was by no means life, as we understand it; but rather an inhuman form of existence, that well might be likened to a deathless trance—a condition in which it was possible to imagine their continuing, eternally. 'Immortal!' the word rose in my thoughts unbidden; and, straightway, ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson

... and the Oriental dainties of Hong Fah the scrappings of a Yankee grocery store. Yet behind the shoddy tinsel of Doyers and Pell Streets, as behind Alice's looking-glass, there is another Chinatown—a strange, inhuman, Oriental world, not necessarily of trapdoors and stifled screams, but one moved by influences undreamed of in our banal philosophies. Hearken then to the story of the avenging of ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train

... Inhuman Chief! a judgment stern Hath stopped thee in thy mad career; And thou, who hast made thousands mourn. Must shed, thyself, the hopeless tear, And long, in helpless grief, deplore Thy only ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French

... "Inhuman monster! how long do you expect thus to dare the vengeance of heaven? You have stained your soul with crimes that would darken the pit of night; you have committed robberies, and thefts, and murder! Ay, start and turn pale when your crimes stare you in the face, you have done so before, and ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison

... shadows, I have seen, have not had material counterparts. They have invariably proved themselves to be superphysical danger signals, the sure indicators of the presence of those grey, inscrutable, inhuman cerebrums to which I have alluded; of phantasms of the dead and of elementals of all kinds. There is an indescribable something about them, that at once distinguishes them from ordinary shadows, and puts me on my guard. I have seen them in ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell

... are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there—there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were—No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it—this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity—like yours—the thought of your remote kinship ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad

... protect her merchant fleet in order that she might devote all her energies to army organisation. But the freedom of the seas was a popular phrase. Furthermore it explained to the German people why their submarine warfare was not inhuman because it was really fighting for the freedom of all nations on ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman

... child's feet in order to ensure its death and yet avoid having actually murdered it (Schol. Eur. Phoen., 26); the whole treatment of the parricide and incest, not as moral offences capable of being rationally judged or even excused as unintentional, but as monstrous and inhuman pollutions, the last limit of imaginable horror: all these things take us back to dark regions of pre-classical and even pre-homeric belief. We have no right to suppose that Sophocles thought of the involuntary parricide and ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles

... astonished with the sight of these things, that I entertained no notions of any danger to myself from it for a long while: all my apprehensions were buried in the thoughts of such a pitch of inhuman, hellish brutality, and the horror of the degeneracy of human nature, which, though I had heard of it often, yet I never had so near a view of before; in short, I turned away my face from the horrid spectacle; my stomach grew sick, and I was just at the point of fainting, when ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe

... make no difference, Herr Dreiner, whether you admit or deny that inhuman attempt to murder four helpless prisoners," Dave rejoined. "It so happened that all four of us kept alive until rescued, and we are all four ready, at any time, to appear against you. So there is no ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock

... time in her life she took herself to task and examined her own heart. What a joyous heart it was! And yet how could she be so inhuman as to admit a pleasure which must be cruelly productive of another's pain? Here was a person whom she had known, as it were, but yesterday, and his lightest word or glance had already become dearer to her than the wealth of care and affection which tended her from childhood, ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville

... seek the coveted bride. Of course, it was all nonsense about his shooting the poor creature, though no doubt, in ordinary circumstances, he would have sent them off the station. But hard as he was—and Lady Bridget had learned that her husband could be very hard, he would never be inhuman, and, naturally, Oola's wound ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... Brutal, savage, inhuman! [Halting and extending his arms.] And what's been her fault? She's dared to love me eagerly, impetuously, uncontrollably—me, a conceited, egotistical fellow who is no more worth her devotion than the pompous beast who opens her father's front-door! And ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero

... favorable an opportunity of releasing themselves from their Jewish creditors, under favor of an imperial mandate. Duke Albert of Austria burned and pillaged those of his cities which had persecuted the Jews—a vain and inhuman proceeding which, moreover, is not exempt from the suspicion of covetousness; yet he was unable, in his own fortress of Kyberg, to protect some hundreds of Jews, who had been received there, from being ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... also trivial and tame; the talk in Anthony Trollope is surprisingly natural and abundant, but it is also commonplace and immemorable; the talk of Mr. George Meredith is always eloquent and fanciful, but the eloquence is too often dark and the fancy too commonly inhuman. What Disraeli's people have to say is not always original nor profound, but it is crisply and happily phrased and uttered, it reads well, its impression seldom fails of permanency. His Wit and Wisdom is ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... of the other three dogs wore during this time an expression of inhuman selflessness of superhumanly kind interest in ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson

... the float-stage, where others [sic] calkers were at work, I was told that every white man would leave the ship, in her unfinished condition, if I struck a blow at my trade upon her. This uncivil, inhuman, and selfish treatment was not so shocking and scandalous in my eyes at the time as it now appears to me. Slavery had inured me to hardships that made ordinary trouble sit lightly upon me. Could I have worked at my trade I could have earned ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... Russian could be picked out by his staring eyes and pallid face. There was a moment's silence, then a hissing sound as of the breath drawn sharply inward, followed by a murmur hoarse and inhuman, not good to hear. Rosenblatt trembled, started to his feet, vainly tried to speak. His lips refused to frame words, and he ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor

... softly up to Lois's side. This strange child seemed to be tossed about by varying moods: to-day she was caressing and communicative, to-morrow she might be deceitful, mocking, and so indifferent to the pain or sorrows of others that you could call her almost inhuman. ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... whatever we happen to owe them; such as good advice, frequent fellowship, affable and pleasant conversation without flattery." Therefore there is no need for a man to desire neediness or distress in his benefactor before repaying his kindness, because, as Seneca says (De Benef. vi), "it were inhuman to desire this in one from whom you have received no favor; how much more so to desire it in one whose kindness has made you ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... impolitic. Taxes would also be levied on the minerals exported. It is noticeable that all the companies which have been proposed in Portugal have this put prominently in the preamble, "and for the abolition of the inhuman slave-trade." This shows either that the statesmen in Portugal are enlightened and philanthropic, or it may be meant as a trap for English capitalists; I incline to believe the former. If the Portuguese really wish to develop the resources of the rich country beyond their possessions, they ought ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... flyer with a load of these inhuman monsters arrived on the earth, we foolishly took them for the angels whom we had been taught to believe spent eternity in glorifying Him. We welcomed them with our best and humbly obeyed when they spoke. This illusion was fostered by the name the Jovians ...
— Giants on the Earth • Sterner St. Paul Meek

... parts and study the natural causes that produced it. The loveliest painting is but a mess of pigments to the microscope, the loveliest face but a mess of cells and hairs and blood vessels. There is something gruesome and inhuman about embryology and all ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... of perfectly suitable and devoted young men and women, of marriageable age, with dozens of interests and sympathies in common, and one extraordinarily vital bond, continued to walk side by side in a state of inhuman preoccupation, their gaze fixed inward instead of upon one another; and no Divine Power, happening upon the curious circumstance, believed the matter one for His intervention nor stooped to take the respective puppets by the back of their unconscious necks, and so knock ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley

... of the unknowable, Professor Ralston did an unbelievable thing. He resumed his lecture at the exact point of interruption! But he spoke with the tonelessness of a machine, a machine that pulsed to the will of a dictator, inhuman and inexorable! ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various

... that I might not hear the dull thud of the Red Axe, on the block nor the inhuman howlings of the dogs in the ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... a feeling of horrible sickness swept over me. Strive as I would, I could not help it, as this inhuman wretch spoke, with evident gusto, of the torments to which I might—failing Morillo's ability to devise still greater refinements of cruelty—be subjected. But by the time that he had finished speaking, I had succeeded in rallying my courage ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood

... he, with an inhuman laugh. "And when the work is completed, and you have faithfully stood by me, then, signora, you may be sure of the gratitude of the empress. Catharine is the exalted protectress of the muses, and in the fulness of her grace ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... advancing civilisation; so much so as to be unfaithful to its special charge and mission. The prophet had ceased to rebuke, warn, and suffer; he had thrown in his lot with those who had ceased to be cruel and inhuman, but who thought only of making their dwelling-place as secure and happy as they could. The Church had become respectable, comfortable, sensible, temperate, liberal; jealous about the forms of its creeds, equally ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church

... inhuman custom of abandoning the aged and helpless, leaving them to starve or be devoured by wild beasts; also if a mother died it was their practice to bury the infant or infants of that ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane

... education he had seen enough to realize that side by side with great talent, with a warm impulse toward beauty, with an ardor that counts labor as nothing, or as delight, may exist coldness, meanness, the tendency to slander, egoism almost inhuman in its concentration, the will to climb over the bodies of the fallen, the tyrant's mind, and the stony heart of the cruel. Art, so it seemed to Claude, often hardened instead of softening the nature of man. That, no doubt, was because ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... the corpse of her husband laid out in a coffin, ready for burial! Mourning over it, she at length returned to the governor, fiercely exclaiming, "You have kept your word! you have restored to me my husband! and be assured the favour shall be repaid!" The inhuman villain, terrified in the presence of his intrepid victim, attempted to appease her vengeance, and more, to win her to his wishes. Returning home, she assembled her friends, revealed her whole story, and under their protection she appealed to Charles the Bold, a strict lover ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... to me inhuman and unnatural to live in this way," I persisted, perhaps a little more impatiently than I ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic

... I must tell you! In your own interests, Miss Emily—in your own interests. I won't be inhuman enough to leave you alone in the house to-night; but if this delirium goes on, I must ask you to get another nurse. Shocking suspicions are lying in wait for me in that bedroom, as it were. I can't resist them as I ought, if I go back again, and hear your aunt saying what she has been ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins

... the fathers of his country, was this the fact? Was he not insulted?—was not the nation insulted under his administration? How came the posts to be detained after the definitive treaty with Great Britain? What dictated that inhuman deed to stir up horror and destruction among us—Lord Dorchester's insolent and savage speech to the hordes of Indians on our frontiers to massacre our inhabitants without distinction? Were those ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon

... Idaan, or Muruts, as they are called here, I cannot give any account of their disposition; but from what I have heard from the Borneyans, they are a set of abandoned idolaters; one of their tenets, so strangely inhuman, I cannot pass unnoticed, which is, that their future interest depends upon the number of their fellow creatures they have killed in any engagement, or common disputes, and count their degrees of happiness to depend on the number of human skulls in their possession; ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher

... So inhuman were these faces, so malignant their staring eyes, and shadowy, clawing gestures, that it did not occur to Mr. Bessel to attempt intercourse with these drifting creatures. Idiot phantoms, they seemed, children of vain desire, beings unborn and forbidden ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... bastinadoed, often in the presence of the master or mistress, and 'the ladies of quality, however young and beautiful, do not show much delicate reluctance in similar instances of authority.' Other punishments, some very inhuman, were inflicted; and although the owners had no power of life or death over them, if the latter were the result of too severe beating 'neither the Government nor the public took notice of the circumstance.' Not only was it 'under the care ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson

... is life a boon? To me, at any rate, it was a misfortune. After their shameful desertion, I owed them only vengeance. They committed against me the most inhuman, the most infamous, the most monstrous crime which can be ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... she was suffering the most excruciating pain. Medical aid was called in by the magistrate, and every attention extended to the little sufferer, who seemed to forget her pain in the consciousness of her mother's presence. The inhuman wretch who had thus brutally maltreated a mere child, enraged to a state of insanity in finding herself thwarted in obtaining the child, made an appeal to the city court, then in session, and had all the ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur

... with any decency. It seemed to participate horribly in Violet's agony, to throb with her tortures and recoils, to fill itself shuddering with her cries, such cries as Ransome had never heard or conceived, that he would have believed impossible. They were savage, inhuman; the cries and groans of some outraged animal; there was menace in them and rebellion, ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair

... by saying: "No one ever Will risk his head on it; and if he should, In any case the Emperor would be blameless, Since it were question of an edict sworn, And noised abroad." And what she willed was done. A fable, is it? Is it a fable, all That this inhuman law ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller

... across the table, and after one of the inhuman monsters had stuffed a filthy rag into the poor lad's mouth to smother his screams, Kansas Shorty, as the jocker of the lad, gleefully assisted by the others in his savage task, pounded poor Jim until he ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)

... brother, Alexander II, the flower of the flock; and his reputation was evidently much enhanced by comparison with his brother next above him in age, the Grand Duke Nicholas. It was generally charged that the conduct of the latter during the Turkish campaign was not only unpatriotic, but inhuman. An army officer once speaking to me regarding the suffering of his soldiers at that time for want of shoes, I asked him where the shoes were, and he answered: "In the pockets of the ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... beholders than instruct them. They conceive the worst of me now, and yet fear worse; they give me for dead now, and yet wonder how I do when they wake at midnight, and ask how I do to-morrow. Miserable and inhuman posture, where I must practise my lying in the grave by lying still.' This preying upon itself of the brain is but one significant indication of a temperament, neurotic enough indeed, but in which the neurosis is ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... Yang, where, even the non-Christians loved him. He was arrested on Independence Day and sent to prison where a barbarous Japanese officer, whom the natives called "The Brute" kicked him in the side because he would not give up his Christ. From that kick and further inhuman treatment running over a period of six months; a disease developed which a most reliable missionary doctor told me ended Pak ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger

... acting as a trap equally for the feet of Mrs Higden coming out, and the feet of Mrs Boffin and John Rokesmith going in, greatly increased the difficulty of the situation: to which the cries of the orphan imparted a lugubrious and inhuman character. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... a cruel, inhuman thing to think of setting these savages against the Americans at all, for their notion of war was simply to murder men, women and children indiscriminately, and to burn houses and take scalps; but to try to make soldiers out ...
— Captain Sam - The Boy Scouts of 1814 • George Cary Eggleston

... under less propitious circumstances is given by Mrs. Price. Mrs. Norris, we are told, would have done much better than Mrs. Price in her position. It must have given Jane Austen great pleasure to make this remark. None of her bad characters (except possibly Elizabeth Elliot) were quite inhuman to her, and to have found a situation in which Mrs. Norris might have shone would be a ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh

... rented the room, was ransacking the chamber in which the girl died, when, in a cavity of the chimney where it had fallen unnoticed, was found a paper written by this girl, declaring her intention to commit suicide, and closing with the words: 'My inhuman father is the cause of my death'; thus explaining her dying gestures. On examination of this document by the friends and relatives of the girl, it was recognized and identified as her handwriting; and it established the fact that the father had died innocent of every crime, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... makes little account of time, little of one generation or race, makes no account of disasters, conquers alike by what is called defeat or by what is called victory, thrusts aside enemy and obstruction, crushes everything immoral as inhuman, and obtains the ultimate triumph of the best race by the sacrifice of everything which resists the moral laws of the world. It makes its own instruments, creates the man for the time, trains him in poverty, inspires his genius, and arms him for his task. It has given every race its own talent, ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various

... frightful invocations, loathsome debaucheries, perverted vice in every form, Sadic cruelties, horrible sacrifices, and, finally, holocausts of little boys and girls collected by his agents in the surrounding country and put to death with the most inhuman tortures. During the years 1432-40 literally hundreds of children disappeared. Many of the names of the unhappy little victims were preserved in the records of the period. Gilles de Rais met with a well-deserved end: in 1440 he was hanged ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... as I hope to be saved, 'tis but a copy of her Countenance—inhuman Wife—lead her to your Apartment, Sir! barbarous honest Woman,—to your Chamber, Sir,—wou'd I had married thee an errant Strumpet; nay, to your Royal Bed, Sir, I'll warrant you she gives you taunt for taunt: try her, Sir, try her. [Puts ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn

... fellowship with slave-holders," and "Slave-holding always and every where a sin," were found practically to conflict with frequent undeniable and stubborn facts. The cases in which conscientious Christians found themselves, by no fault of their own, invested by inhuman laws with an absolute authority over helpless fellow-men, which it would not be right for them suddenly to abdicate, were not few nor unimportant.[275:3] In dealing with such cases several different courses were open to the church: (1) To ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... war with the Dutch republics of South Africa and the entrusting of them immediately afterwards to the Boers and General Louis Botha? For accepting the principle of popular government, that the majority must rule, Bagot was assailed with an inhuman vehemence, which astounds the reader of the present day by its venom and its indecency. Because the governor was a just man and loyally followed constitutional usage, he was abused as a fool and a traitor not only in the colony but in England. It is small wonder that his health ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan

... glanced at each other. It was unnecessary, and it would certainly be inhuman, to irritate old Josey Letherbarrow, considering Ms great ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli



Words linked to "Inhuman" :   cold-blooded, inhumane, inhumanity, insensate



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