"Let loose" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... feed Arrow at both places. It was easy for him to do this as he used to ride over to our house a great deal. When he took Arrow away from one place he would leave some grain there. Arrow knew this. So when he was let loose he would fly straight to the grain. He never seemed to lose his way or ...
— Five Little Friends • Sherred Willcox Adams
... way; and many similar instances are on record.* As in all periods of religious panic, the Apocalypse was carefully studied, and the Millennial ideas rapidly spread. The signs of the time were plain: Satan was being let loose for a little season. Men anxiously looked for the ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... Christian meekness and benevolence, and claims the name of virtue; and the Saviour of the world, with all his works of mercy, being forgotten, man becomes cruel, and unjust, and selfish, and implacable, and unmerciful; for all the violent passions of our nature are let loose. ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... your parched feet over the pantiles of a Turkish stove. There is, indeed, a 307grass-plot within the rails, but the luxury of walking upon it is reserved for the fishermen of the place exclusively, except on some extraordinary occasion, when the whole rabble of the town are let loose to annoy the visitants by puffing tobacco smoke in their faces, or jostling and insulting them with coarse ribaldry, until the genteel and decent are compelled to quit the promenade. I have had two or three such specimens of Brighton manners while staying here, and ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... o'clock P.M. our boats were sent well manned to cut their cables and hawsers and tow them out to sea. On coming to them, one of the largest of these ships was found to be the Falcon of London, commanded by a Scots pilot who passed her off as his own. But our men let loose three other smaller ships, which they towed towards us, most of their men leaping overboard and swimming on shore with loud outcries, which were answered from the town, which was all in an uproar ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... the blood-hounds are let loose, The lynch-mobs with the knotted noose; In legal sanctioned mask and gown The New Black Hundreds hunt ...
— Bars and Shadows • Ralph Chaplin
... not the place for asking if he was wrong; grave authors have demonstrated at length the economic troubles which would have been let loose upon the world if men had followed him. Alas! his madness, if madness it were, is a kind of which one need not fear ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... this town become a field of slaughter, And brother-killing Discord, fire-eyed, Be let loose through its streets to roam and rage? Shall the decision be delivered over 15 To deaf remorseless Rage, that hears no leader? Here is not room for battle, only for butchery. Well, let it be! I have long thought of it, So let it burst then! [Turns to MAX. Well, how is it with ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... capable of seizing it: you must have happiness and genius. Let us wait and hope! The forces are there: the forces of faith, knowledge, work, old France and new France, and the greater France.... What an upheaval it would be, if the word were spoken, the magic word which should let loose these forces all together! Of course, neither you nor I can say the word. Who will say it? Victory? Glory?... Patience! The chief thing is for the strength of the nation to be gathered together, and ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... thou too. The King keeps his forest head of game here, and when that horn sounds, a score of wolf-dogs are let loose that will tear thee piecemeal. Linger not till the ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... all was. My knees shak' tergedder, an' I bit my tongue tryin' ter hol' my jaws shet. W'en Mars' Colby done let loose——well!" and Uncle ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... Camillo. So, now you are safe. Ha, ha, ha, thou entanglest thyself in thine own work like a silkworm. [Enter Brachiano.] Come, sister, darkness hides your blush. Women are like cursed dogs: civility keeps them tied all daytime, but they are let loose at midnight; then they do most good, or most mischief. ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... seal of reality on it) what should he do next? Or rather what must he do next? He felt that when he knew absolutely for certain who had said this about him, a force of indignation and hatred, which at present he kept chained up, must infallibly break its chain, and become merely a wild beast let loose. He felt he would be no longer responsible for what he did, something had to happen; something more than mere apology or retraction of words. To lie and slander like that was a crime, an insult against human and divine justice. It would be nothing for the criminal ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... and the Egyptian border. Judah was his vassal, and for three years Jehoiakim paid him tribute, but then defaulted, probably because of promises from Egypt after the fashion of that restless power. As if not yet ready to invade Judah in force, Nebuchadrezzar let loose upon her, along with some of his own Chaldeans, troops of Moabites, Ammonites and Arameans. Soon afterwards Jehoiakim died and was succeeded by his son Jehoiachin, a youth of eighteen, who appears to have maintained his father's policy; for in 598, if not 597, Nebuchadrezzar came up against ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... prudence, and we soon found ourselves surrounded by a raging host, who, perceiving how few we were, stood at bay, and in their turn assumed the offensive. Seen in the dim starlight, with their tawny faces, gleaming eyes, white burnous, and furious gesticulations, the Arabs seemed a legion of devils let loose for our destruction. Our ranks were disordered by the pursuit, and we thus lost one of our chief advantages; for the Bedouins, unable to resist the charge in line of disciplined cavalry, are no despicable opponents in a hand-to-hand melee. And this the combat soon became. ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... wears on, these halls fill up with young and old. The bright face of youth is seen, inflamed with every burning passion, let loose in the wild uncontrolled West. It is side by side with the haggard visage of the veteran gamester. Every race has its representatives. The possession of gold is the cachet of good-fellowship. Anxious crowds criticise rapid and dashing play. The rattle of dice, ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... are no longer looked to as the perfections of a Christian, but ignorance and blind obedience; not the mortifying all our evil passions universally, but the keeping them chained up, as it were under priestly control, to be let loose at the priest's bidding, against those whom he calls the church's enemies; that glorious church which he has destroyed and converted it into an idol temple, in that he, as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... Elsa started to speak. "That isn't all. The flapping canvas, with part of the gaff, pounded around like the devil let loose for the ten seconds before we couldn't loosen the halyards and lower away the wreckage, but in that time it had parted the mainstay in two like a ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... language the Dakota Indians speak of the sun as "grandmother" and the moon as "grandfather." The Chiquito Indians "used to call the sun their mother, and, at every eclipse of the sun, they would shoot their arrows so as to wound it; they would let loose their dogs, who, they thought, went instantly to ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... Warburton, "to the opinion of some philosophers, that the vapours being congealed in air by cold, (which is most intense towards the morning,) and being afterwards rarified and let loose by the warmth of the sun, occasion those sudden and impetuous guests of wind which ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 4, Saturday, November 24, 1849 • Various
... distance out into the field, and came back towards the boy, keeping him between her and the corner. Caw! said the rooks, Caw! Caw! Thwack, thwack, bang, went the ash stick on the sleeping boy, heavily enough to have broken his bones. Like a piece of machinery suddenly let loose, without a second of dubious awakening and without a cry, he darted straight for the gap in the corner. There the faggot stopped him, and before he could tear it away the old woman had him again, thwack, thwack, and one last stinging slash across ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... beings, with bold and contemptuous looks, an insolent and cynical laugh, pressing one against the other, at the bottom of this court, offered something strangely suspicious. It caused a shudder to think that this ferocious horde would be, in a given time, again let loose among mankind, against whom they had declared an implacable warfare. How much sanguinary revenge, how many murderous projects, lurk under this appearance ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... the breast of the earth. The first light turned it silver and showed it decked with flowers and jewels, that the old mother might mistake it, perhaps, for a wedding-gown instead of a winding-sheet; but the sun, knowing better, lifted, let loose his tiny warriors, and from pure love of beauty smote it with one stroke gold, and the battle ended with the blades of grass and the leaves in their scarlet finery sparkling with the joy of another day's deliverance and ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... pretends that nothing but folly makes men deny these systems; perhaps, however, if he had suppressed his negation, he would have more closely aproximated the truth. Doctor Bentley, in his Folly of Atheism, has let loose the whole Billingsgate of theological spleen, which he has scattered about with all the venom of the most filthy reptiles: if he and other expounders are to be believed, "nothing is blacker than the heart of an atheist; nothing ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... Let loose in the wire cage, the Pieris is regarded as excellent game. The Empusa lies in wait for her, seizes her, but releases her at once, lacking the strength to overpower her. The Butterfly's great wings, beating the air, give her shock after shock and compel her to let go. I come ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... August Statue may this be; veiled in canvas,—which swiftly we shear off by pulley and cord? The Statue of Liberty! She too is of plaster, hoping to become of metal; stands where a Tyrant Louis Quinze once stood. 'Three thousand birds' are let loose, into the whole world, with labels round their neck, We are free; imitate us. Holocaust of Royalist and ci-devant trumpery, such as one could still gather, is burnt; pontifical eloquence must be uttered, by handsome Herault, and Pagan ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... sounds. He did not in the least understand, and he did not suppose that anybody in the dance-studio understood, the delicate secret mechanism by which these other sounds were produced. All he knew was that by means of the trumpet attachment they were transmitted through the wooden partition and let loose into the larger air of the studio, where the waves of them had a singular effect on the brains of certain bright young women and sombre young and middle-aged men who were arranged in clasped couples: with the result that the brains of the women and men sent orders to ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... created a great scandal in Ballyards, and responsible people went about saying that he had always been "quare" and was getting "quarer." Willie Logan's father had even talked of the asylum. Whose windows, he demanded, were safe when, a fellow like that was let loose on the town? Uncle William had gone to see Mr. Logan ... no one knew quite what he said to that merchant ... but it was evident ever after that he had accepted Uncle William's advice to keep a civil tongue in his head. The Reverend Mr. McCaughan, ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... to let loose like that, Harran," he said at length. "I am willing to do what I can for you. I'll hurry the ploughs through, but I can't change the freight ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... lives for the security of the larger number of lives that may be valuable to the community. Or again if, by the profligate use of the pardoning power, the murderer sentenced to perpetual imprisonment will probably be let loose upon society unreformed, and with passions which may lead to the repetition of his crime, it is immeasurably more fitting that he be killed, than that he be preserved to do farther mischief. Yet again, if there be in the death-penalty for murder an educational force,—if by means of it each ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... to love. There was the big house dog Rover. Tiger, the watch dog, was kept chained in the daytime and let loose at night to ward off marauders. But he soon came to know her voice and wagged his tail joyously at her approach. She was quite afraid of the cows, but a pretty-faced one with no horns became a favorite, and she used to carry it tid-bits to eat. The cats, too, would come at her call, though they ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... side, an aspect of existence, but the whole of it that seemed to storm round her, in the darkness. No wonder, when the wind was let loose among the mountains, that the old Highland people thought that their dead were about them. All night long, after Hadria returned to her room in the keep, the wind kept up its cannonade against the walls, hooting in the chimneys with derisive voices, and flinging ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... weakness to violence; and he raved of duties and obligations, of paternal authority, of the obedience of children and children-in-law, in all the boundless, self-assured incoherence of feebleness suddenly let loose against ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... and he came down on a soft bed of struggling and scared rabbits, and the other horsemen stopped at the edge of the corral and watched pa, and I got off my horse and climbed up on a post of the corral and tried to pick out pa. Then all the hundred or more dogs were let loose in amongst Pa and the rabbits, and it was a sight worth going miles to see if it had been somebody else than Pa that was holding the center of the stage, and all the crowd laughing at pa, and yelling to him to stand ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... in companies with their wives and children, and set about building little fortifications, to defend themselves from such barbarian and inhuman enemies, whom they concluded would be let loose upon them at pleasure.—The Reverend Hugh ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... themselves, seem to have been especially shocked by the way in which the King's birthday had been kept. "We hope," they wrote, "ye are against observing anniversary days as well as we, and that ye will mourn for what ye have done." As to the opinions and temper of Alexander Shields, see his Hind Let Loose.] ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... encampment of the French; it is the usual sign of victory to sleep in the bed of the vanquished. They established their bivouac beyond Rossomme. The Prussians, let loose on the retreating rout, pushed forward. Wellington went to the village of Waterloo to draw up ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... universally, in the days before the flood—the flood of knowledge let loose upon mankind, beginning with the days of the Renascimento and continuing down to our own. But the philosopher-poet of the nineteenth century sees nothing of it in the altar and system set up in this Western world. ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... wild-eyed Anarchists, and desperate hungry wretches from the vilest dens, who had just sworn with unspeakable oaths to burn and plunder the city that very night, to murder all the rich, to commit outrages no fiend had ever dared to dream before. When they were about to rush out and let loose the dogs of carnage and unspeakable horrors, suddenly in the glare of their torches appeared the priest who an hour before, had played such an important part in the State House cupola conference. A hush fell upon the rabble as they recognized their spiritual adviser; with a voice of almost ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... exactly the kind of persons whose speech, habits, and opinions she must conscientiously avoid. But for the instinct of summing up values, circumstances, and intentions, it is probable that she would have lost her head, let loose her temper and her tongue, and have become insubordinate. But the quickness of perception which had revealed practical potentialities to old Reuben Vanderpoel, revealed to her the value of French which was perfectly fluent, a voice which was musical, movements which ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... go that tail holt which in the winter had seemed to be all that the Detroit News cartoonist pictured it, "H—- to hang on, and death to let loose." And we did not get many more bad scratches or bites ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... into the midnight, to conceal the little jewelry, money or silver left them, fearing general sack of the city and treachery of even the most trusted negroes. For none knew but that a brutal and drunken mob might be let loose upon the hated, long-coveted Capital, in their power at last! None knew but that the black rule of Butler might be re-enacted—excelled; and women—who had sat calm and restful, while the battle of Seven Pines and the roar of Seven Days, and the later Cold Harbor, ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... well explained in the "Conference entre un ministre d'etat et un Conseiller au parliment," which I send you, with some small pamphlets. In the meantime, all tongues in Paris (and in France as it is said) have been let loose, and never was a license of speaking against the government exercised in London more freely or more universally. Caricatures, placards, bons mots, have been indulged in by all ranks of people, and I know of ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... it was like Hades, lit grimly by a gas-jet or two, small and flickering, with the orange haze about them. Filthy, flagging, murky doorways, broken steps and broken windows stuffed with rags, and the smell of the sewers let loose had Apple Blossom Court. ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... which the country looks, with confidence, for wise, moderate, patriotic, and healing counsels. It is not to be denied that we live in the midst of strong agitations, and are surrounded by very considerable dangers to our institutions and government. The imprisoned winds are let loose. The East, the North, and the stormy South combine to throw the whole sea into commotion, to toss its billows to the skies, and disclose its profoundest depths. I do not affect to regard myself, Mr. President, as holding, or as fit to hold, the helm in this combat ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... and ready for a "brush" with any opponents. At Smith's suggestion, a band of men, under the name of the "Fur Company," was formed to "commandeer" food, teams, and men for the Mormon campaign. This practical license to steal let loose the worst element in the church organization, glad of any method of revenge on those whom they considered their persecutors. "Men of former quiet," says Lee, who was among the active raiders, "became perfect demons in their efforts to spoil ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... one of the most resolute and intrepid novelists I have met, and his directness of speech may give offence, I fear, to the more reticent of his readers. His story of two white men and Alice Desmond, freed from the social conventions and let loose among the natives on a remote island in the Pacific, proceeds apace and with little regard for the susceptibilities of civilisation and refinement. Familiar but rarely printed language is used when occasion demands; primitive passions stalk naked and unashamed; and when ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 6, 1914 • Various
... a demon or a god let loose. As we have said, there is an interesting point to be observed in looking at woman as decoration; whether the medium be fresco, bas relief, sculpture, mosaic, stained glass or painting, the decorative line, shown in costumes, presents the same recurrent types that we found ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... noblemen exchanged principles from that instant. The first was hardened into a sturdy patriot, the other suppled into an obsequious courtier. Lord Hervey, on this occasion, made a florid harangue upon the pernicious effects of that destructive spirit they were about to let loose upon their fellow-creatures. Several prelates expatiated on the same topics; but the earl of Chesterfield attacked the bill with the united powers of reason, wit, and ridicule. Lord Carteret, lord Bathurst, and the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... of respect to the dignity of his fiancee. But I found that was not the true motive, or at least the only one, for concealment. Prepare yourself, my poor wife. Thou hast heard of these terrible journals which the decheance has let loose upon us. Our unhappy boy is the principal writer of one of the worst of them, under the name ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... able to clench his fist. That fact was enough for Felix, and next moment he was gone, and the moonlight cast his black shadow as he ran, making northeast, a darkness let loose on life and on ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... Mrs. Granger. Her exclamation was drowned, however, in the babble of youthful sound let loose upon the "best people of the County" by the opening of the door. "Miss Gordon is going in for the pretty charity thing, ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... this picture during the troubles of Italy ... when the devil was let loose for the space of three and a half years. Afterwards shall he be chained, and we shall see him trodden down as in ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... meeting dissolved. This caused another general shout, outdoors and in, and what with the noise of breaking up the meeting, one might have thought that the inhabitants of the infernal regions had been let loose. ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... Huzzaing, and making Noises, under pretence of being Joyful that they were to be remov'd on the Morrow, to prevent the Workmen being heard; and in two Hours time more, if their Design had not been discover'd, near One Hundred Villians had been let loose into the World, to have committed new Depredations; nothing was wanted here but Sheppard's great Judgment, who was by himself in the strong Room, call'd the Castle, meditating his own Deliverance, which he perfected in the ...
— The History of the Remarkable Life of John Sheppard • Daniel Defoe
... the slavery question throughout the country that revolution, if inaugurated at any point, would sweep the land and liberate the slaves. Brown was also possessed of the belief that he was himself the divinely chosen agent to let loose the forces of freedom; and that this was the chief motive which prompted the deed at Pottawatomie is as probable as ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy
... grew warmer again. It was as though she had let loose a swarm of bees. Parliamentary law went to the winds. For a moment, every common courtesy seemed to be forgotten. Her suggestion met with some favor. To the surprise of Elizabeth, Mary Wilson was its strongest advocate. Landis now also favored such a course, ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... the law was made on the subject. It is safer that a wicked man should even never be accused, than that he should be acquitted; and luxury, if it had never been meddled with, would be more tolerable than it will be, now, like a wild beast, irritated by having been chained, and then let loose. My opinion is, that the Oppian law ought, on no account, to be repealed. Whatever determination you may come to, I pray all ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... she skated nervelessly, with hanging arms. But, watching, he saw her summon up her strength and shoot down the glimmering ice-way like a swallow let loose from his hand. So swift was her flight that, all unknowing, she overtook and passed the travellers jogging parallel with her on the high road; and had reached Kelstein and was putting her two small charges to bed, when her father's knock sounded ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Lord Elgin had obtained his famous firman from the Sultan, to take down and remove any antiquities or sculptured stones he might require, and the infuriated Dodwell saw a set of ignorant workmen, under equally ignorant overseers, let loose upon the splendid ruins of the age of Pericles. He speaks with much good sense and feeling of this proceeding. He is fully aware that the world would derive inestimable benefit from the transplanting of these splendid ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... "Let loose Mistress Nutter's stag-hounds upon them," replied the squire. "They are kept in leash by a varlet stationed behind yon yew-tree hedge, who only awaits my signal to let them slip; and by my faith it ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... streaked with black, suddenly became vermilion. Lights from the underworld struck across the desert like swords of fire; arms of flame broke the vermilion, soaring to heaven like the fires from hell's furnace let loose. The anger and beauty and recklessness was appalling. Then with magic swiftness, during the flickering of an eye, the horizon became one vast ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... which chilled the perfumed August noon. Her perception of the invisible was as sensitive as the needle of a compass to the thrill of the magnetic north. Her brain suddenly buzzed as if a hive of bees had been let loose in her head. A voice seemed to be yelling in her ears accusations: "What a fool you have been—what a fool you have been. It's all your fault if he has found out. You needn't have done the thing. ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... are let loose by frosty sunshine. Frost in the ground, or on it in the shape of snow and the air full of sunshine are the most favourable conditions. A certain chill and crispness, something crystalline, in the air are necessary. A ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... once there was a roar like thunder, a terrible rushing sound, the echoes of the mountains seemed to have been let loose, and his hair began to bristle, while a cold perspiration gathered on his face as he listened to the sounds dying ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... that when Arulenus Rusticus published the praises of Paetus Thrasea, and Herennius Senecio those of Priscus Helvidius, it was construed into a capital crime; [3] and the rage of tyranny was let loose not only against the authors, but against their writings; so that those monuments of exalted genius were burnt at the place of election in the forum by triumvirs appointed for the purpose. In that fire they thought to consume the voice of the Roman people, the freedom of the senate, and the ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... right!" thought the Gray battery commander, who had judged the distance by the staff map. This was all he wanted to know for the present. He would let loose at the proper time to support the infantry attack, when there were enough driblets across the road to make a charge. The driblets kept on coming, and, one by one, the number of dead ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... appear. An earthquake may have first shattered its ponderous arches, and thus made an opening for the destroying hand of time. There can be no doubt that it suffered violence from the hands of civil and foreign war. But more destructive agencies than those of earthquake, conflagration or war, were let loose upon it. Its massive stones, fitted to each other with such nice adaptation, presented a strong temptation to the cupidity of wealthy nobles and cardinals, with whom building was a ruling passion; and for many ages the Coliseum became a quarry. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... Hell was let loose: Hell and Death were dashing around, converting that normal sky and that sane earth into a Pandemonium. The wonder was that a human life was spared. The Subaltern had a fleeting feeling that every one except himself must be dead. When the storm ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... clad either in nothing at all or else in a sack, carefully guarding his bare head with a tattered Gamp, is very ridiculous. Often some one walks along playing upon a rude pipe, whilst the others jog before and after him, laughing and capering like boys let loose from school, and all chattering loudly. You never meet a man carrying a burden unless he is a white settler's servant. When a chief or the induna of a kraal passes this way, I see him, clad in a motley garb of red regimentals with his bare "ringed" head, riding a sorry nag, only ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... pathway in the blue water, and scooping it up in an impalpable mist, hurrying on to the low beach of the island, and tearing the sand and shells up in heaps—and then a lull. Now, as if all the demons of winds had let loose their cavernous lungs from the four quarters of the earth, and like the shocks of artillery, volley upon volley, came the hurricane. The sea became one boiling, seething, hissing surface of foam, pressed and flattened by the weight of the tempest, which laid the black rocks bare on the ledge, and ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... No empty hope, your Honour, but the full Assurance that to-day, as yesterday, Savonarola will let loose his thunder Against the vices of the idle rich And from the brimming cornucopia Of his immense vocabulary pour Scorn on the lamentable heresies Of the New Learning and on all the art ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... intentionally. An inch nearer, and he had been a dead man. To accomplish such a delicate piece of sword play required nothing short of mastery. Beauvais experienced a disagreeable chill, which was not unmixed with chagrin. The boy had held his life in his hand, and had spared it. He set his teeth, and let loose with a fury before which nothing could stand; and Maurice was forced back step by step until he was almost ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... alone—as it were abandoned in the immensity of the universe. We live in a world, hard, savage, full of hatred; whose one cruel law is the struggle for existence, and in which we are no more than those natural elements, let loose to war with each other in fierce selfishness, without pity, with no appeal beyond, no hope of final justice. And above us, in place of the good God of our happy youth, nothing, any more! or worse than nothing—a deity, barbarous ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... let loose these hell-hounds upon us, and butchery must be sent into our soft and innocent homes;—beings that we have sheltered from the air of heaven, brows that have grown pale at the breath of an ungentle word, must meet the red knife of the Indian now. Oh ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... the Assize at Lincoln, which I give as an Appendix, reminds me of the condition of the law and of its victims at that time. At every assize it was like a tiger let loose upon the district. If a man escaped the gallows, he was lucky, while the criminals were by no means the hardened ruffians who had been trained in the school of crime; they were mostly composed of the most ignorant rural labourers—if, indeed, in those days there were any degrees of ignorance, ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... days of idleness, riot, wantonness and excess; in which the slaves assemble together in alarming crowds, for the purposes of dancing, feasting and merriment. At such seasons the inhabitants have the greatest reason to dread mischief from them; when let loose from their usual employments, they have fair opportunities of hatching plots and conspiracies, and of executing them with greater facility, from the intemperance of their ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... methods of reaction, the individual, resolved, so to speak, into his proximate elements, permits or is compelled by biological determinism to permit these split off tendencies to break forth once more, albeit in exaggerated fashion, as if let loose from the leash of control by the higher nervous centres, and reanimified, intensified, and magnified, our infantile, archaic, instinctive, inherited, hidden, phylogenetic ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... ceased, and was again answered by the shouts of the audience. These were unanimous; for circumstances contributed to convince the malecontent party that they stood at the Sovereign's mercy, and the edict that they heard having shown his acquaintance with their guilt, it lay at his pleasure to let loose upon them the strength of the Varangians, while, from the terms on which it had pleased him to receive Tancred, it was probable that the Apuleian forces ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... disaster at Sanna's Post. For the second time in one campaign they were exposed and in imminent danger of capture. A body of mounted Boers with great dash and hardihood galloped down within close range and opened fire. Instantly the 12th Lancers were let loose upon them. How they must have longed for their big-boned long-striding English troop horses as they strove to raise a gallop out of their spiritless overworked Argentines! For once, however, the lance meant more than five pounds dead weight and an encumbrance to the rider. ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... He at first let loose upon her resentment and jealousy two mortal enemies to all tranquillity and happiness. A tall creature, pale-faced, and nothing but skin and bone, named Churchill, whom she had taken for a maid of honour, became the object of her jealousy, because she was then the object of the duke's affection. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the spirit of hell let loose—drawn by it, as by a magnet, although subsequent events proved him not to have been altogether without a plan. He got up, with his eyes fixed on the dance, and dragged King with him to a place ten rows nearer ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... like fighting a swarm of bees in your shirt-tail with a willow switch," old Bill panted at my shoulder. "Gosh!" as the snapping of firecrackers let loose beneath our feet. "Some o' these mosquito-net skirts'll get afire next—then ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... between the railings indicate the place where they were standing when they first saw the figure. When the apparition became aware of their presence it arose, and calling them to her, said in French, shedding tears abundantly all the time, 'If my people will not submit, I shall be obliged to let loose the arm of my son; it is so heavy and weighty that I cannot retain it any longer. You may pray and do what you like, you will never be able to recompense the labour I have taken for you. I have given you six days for work, ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... Fenelon of politics, whose genius was in every thing opposed to that of Bonaparte; and genius he certainly had, for it requires at least as much of that to put one's self in harmony with heaven, as to invoke to one's aid all the instruments which are let loose by the absence of laws divine and human. I went once more to look at my father's study, where his easy chair, his table, and his papers, still remained in their old situation; I embraced each venerated mark, I took his cloak which till then I had ordered to be left upon his chair, and carried ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... an air of engaging frankness, which would have beguiled the most hardened cynic, he let loose upon our cousin a voluminous flood of chatter, which drowned his protests ere they were mouthed, overwhelmed his inquiries ere they were launched, and finally swept him off his feet into the whirlpool of uncertainty, ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... demonstrations of affection. He promised himself, however, an ample compensation for all this ingratitude, in the wholesale vengeance which he purposed to wreak upon Alkmaar. Already he gloated in anticipation over the havoc which would soon be let loose within those walls. Such ravings, if invented by the pen of fiction, would seem a puerile caricature; proceeding, authentically, from his own,—they still appear almost too exaggerated for belief. "If ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... which are caused by the damming up of a river by a glacier which has increased during a succession of cold seasons, and descending from a tributary into the main valley, has crossed it from side to side. On the failure of this icy barrier the accumulated waters, being let loose, sweep away and level many a transverse mound of gravel and loose boulders below, and spread their materials in confused and irregular beds ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... a veritable pandemonium that would seem to have been let loose around us. Bands of ghazis, worked up by their religious enthusiasm into a frenzy of fanatical excitement, would charge our breastworks again and again, leaving their dead in scores after each repulse, while those of their comrades who were unarmed would encourage their efforts by shouting, with ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... was exposed to every barbarity and license, and only the treasures accumulated and deposited in the churches of St. Paul and St. Peter were saved. A cruel slaughter of the citizens added to the miseries of a sack. Forty thousand slaves were let loose upon the people. The matrons and women of Rome were exposed to every indignity. The city was given up to pillage. The daughters and wives of senatorial families were made slaves. Italian fugitives thronged the shores of Africa and Syria, begging ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... returned from exile, and made his appearance on the frontier. His eagle appeared at Strasburg, and from Strasburg advanced to the capital; but it arrived at Paris with a keeper, and in a post-chaise; whence, by the orders of the sovereign, it was removed to the American shores, and there magnanimously let loose. Who knows, however, how soon it may be on the wing again, and what a ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the issues of many human careers? Could we accustom ourselves to meditate upon this truth as seriously as we would upon a religious one, to examine our conscience from it as from a reliable standpoint every day of our lives, what a flood of sympathy and Christian charity would be let loose upon the social world ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... ails you? are you mad?—we are safe, and free as Winds let loose to ruffle all the Groves; what is't delays you ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... the cords round her hands that he had let loose before, and she advanced pretty firmly and knelt before the altar, between the doctor and the chaplain. The latter was in his surplice, and chanted a 'Veni Creator, Salve Regina, and Tantum ergo'. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... you?" shouted Bandy-legs. "It is a precipice after all, and p'r'aps an awful high one! Hold on, Toby, don't you dare let loose ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie
... home broke. The Fidelio hombre said to look for you in six days after Easter, and meet you with water at the Rio Seco, so we'll do that. He called you capitan and said the Deliverer had made you an officer; how about it? He let loose a line of talk about your two women in the outfit, but I sort of stalled him on that, so Billie wouldn't get it, for I reckon that's a greaser lie, Kit, and you ain't hitched up to no gay Juanita down there. I had a monkey ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... beads, tobacco, pipes and looking-glasses. If the slightest preference or inequality was shown, adieu to order. Unga-golah descended below zero! The favorite wife, outraged by her neglected authority, became furious; and, for a season, pandemonium was let loose in Bangalang. ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... the Finance Minister's Budget. These ladies, and the French coxcomb, could at the utmost have claimed a distinction—such as that which belonged to a particular Turkish gunner, the captain of a gun at Navarino, viz., that he, by firing the first shot without orders, did (as a matter of fact) let loose and unmuzzle the whole of that dreadful iron hurricane from four nations which instantly followed, but which (be it known to the gunner) could not have been delayed for fifty minutes longer, whether he had fired the unauthorized gun ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... with any sufficient temptation to risk his position and advancement by a dangerous crime. So that, in fact, the tragedy of Othello is in a sense his tragedy too. It shows us not a violent man, like Richard, who spends his life in murder, but a thoroughly bad, cold man, who is at last tempted to let loose the forces within him, and ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... into the music-room, leaving the folding doors between open, and sat down at the piano. There was no light but the moon's, and Hilaire saw the beloved head dark against the silvery grey of the wall beyond. The skilled hands let loose a torrent of harmonies. ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... and yet you have discerned its presence through its working. [18] And have you never marked the terrors which the spirits of those who have suffered wrong can send into the hearts of their murderers, and the avenging furies they let loose upon the wicked? Think you the honours of the dead would still abide, if the souls of the departed were altogether powerless? [19] Never yet, my sons, could I be persuaded that the soul only lives so long as she dwells within this mortal body, and falls dead so soon as she is quit of that. Nay, ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... the party saw the apparition of a hoof, which kicked a candlestick and lighted candle into the middle of the room, and then politely scratched on the red snuff to extinguish it. Other and worse tricks were practised on the astonished Commissioners who, considering that all the fiends of hell were let loose upon them, retreated from Woodstock without completing an errand which was, in their opinion, impeded by infernal powers, though the opposition offered was rather of a playful and malicious than of a ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... was like hell let loose. You could hear the noise of oaths and blows, as the men fought for the door, a half-mile away. And above it the horrid bellowing and the screaming of ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... women's counsel And let loose all these throbbing voids in yourself As well as in ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... not get beyond the Shetlands.] This gentleman not having a compass, (he lived about A.D. 864,) nor knowing exactly where the land lay, took on board with him, at starting, three consecrated ravens—as an M.P. would take three well-trained pointers to his moor. Having sailed a certain distance, he let loose one, which flew back: by this he judged he had not got half-way. Proceeding onwards, he loosed the second, which, after circling in the air for some minutes in apparent uncertainty, also made off home, as though it still remained ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... These hurricanes are let loose in order to speak to the people, to stir and rouse the dull ocean of humanity. The Requiem is a Last Judgment, not meant, like that of the Sixtine Chapel (which Berlioz did not care for at all) for great aristocracies, but for a crowd, a surging, excited, and rather savage ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... the coupling-chains keeping time with the puffs and pants of escaping steam—my temporary emotion at parting with Uncle George was banished by the exultant feeling of being set free, like a bird let loose from ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... ardent passion of a lover. The odalisque opened her lovely hazel eyes and seeing corroboration of all the touch of the kiss had told her, as she looked into eyes that brimmed with tears like hers, upon lips that quivered like hers, she let loose the flood gates of her woes in a torrent of sobs and tears, and throwing herself upon his shoulders, poured out her long pent sorrows in a ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... know. "If the jury is packed, hang the jury!" advised certain far-seeing ones. A grim, quiet, black-bearded man expressed the undercurrent of opinion: "Mark my words," said he, "if Charles Cora is left for trial, he will be let loose on the community to assassinate his third victim!" It seemed that Cora had been involved in a previous shooting scrape. But to swing a mob to action there must be determined men at its head, and this mob had no leaders. Sam Brannan started to say something in his coarse, roaring voice, ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... the openings in the tent-cover and reported that a heavy shower was coming up. Anxious mothers began to collect their flocks of children as hens do their chickens at sunset; timid people told cheerful stories of tents blown over in gales, cages upset and wild beasts let loose. Many left in haste, and the performers hurried to ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... pure Air, wherein he had let loose the vultures of hate, dropping death upon helpless women and harmless babes, found the burden and the stench of him intolerable, ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... sentimentality. I think it is the downright lashing out, left and right, up and down, of a powerful reckless spirit able "to lash out" for the mere pleasure of doing so. I think it is the pleasure we get from the spectacle of mere splendid energy and devil-may-care animal spirits let loose to run amuck as they please; while genius, like a lovely camp-follower tossed to and fro from hand to hand, throws a redeeming enchantment over the ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... clearly seen from the foundation of the world. Then he mentions his finding the altar to the unknown God, mentioned also by Pausanias and other Greek writers, one of whom, Diogenes Laertius, says that in a time of plague, not knowing to what god to appeal, they let loose a number of black and white sheep, and whereever any one laid down they erected an altar to an unknown god, and offered sacrifices thereon. Then he announced as his central and main theme the Most High God, maker of heaven ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... confusion as if all the devils of hell had suddenly been let loose. We heard the shouts of the Englishmen, hoarse and deep, and the shriller cries of the Spaniards, above the roaring of the guns. On deck there sounded the wild rush and hurry of feet as the combatants were driven hither and thither. The overseers had thrown down their whips and fled to the ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher
... Peter started to run, out of the compound for the dubious safety of the cloistered road, other men of the Gray Dragon, posted for such a contingency, let loose a shower of bullets ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... wigwam, Hung the cage with rods of silver, And fair Oweenee, the faithful, Bore a son unto Osseo, With the beauty of his mother, With the courage of his father. "And the boy grew up and prospered, And Osseo, to delight him, Made him little bows and arrows, Opened the great cage of silver, And let loose his aunts and uncles, All those birds with glossy feathers, For his little son to shoot at. "Round and round they wheeled and darted, Filled the Evening Star with music, With their songs of joy and freedom Filled the Evening Star with ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... for the "zero" hour. Exactly at the designated time the artillery opened. It was as though all the hounds of hell were let loose. Such a wailing and screeching and hissing as filled the air, from the eighteen-pounders ("whizz-bangs"), which seemed to just shave our own parapet, to the gigantic missiles from the "How-guns," as the Howitzers are affectionately called, each with its own peculiar ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... whom he could have chosen. It was a new boy named Brigson. This boy had been expelled from one of the most ill-managed schools in Ireland, although, of course, the fact had been treacherously concealed from the authorities at Roslyn; and now he was let loose, without warning or caution, among the Roslyn boys. Better for them if their gates had been open to the pestilence! the pestilence could but have killed the body, but this boy—this fore-front fighter in the devil's battle—did ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... near enough to take a long look—'Why, that Chat has forgotten to fold up his legs, they are hanging straight down.' He has not forgotten, however; it is merely one of his odd habits at this season to cut all sorts of capers in the air, with his legs and wings and tail let loose, while his mate is quietly house-keeping in some thick bush near by. The nest is something like a Catbird's, not very tidy outside, but snug inside, and easy to find if you look in the right place. If you ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... one saw the wildest struggle for gain, and love of destruction; on the other hand were the daily examples of the kindest human nature, self-sacrifice for fellow-creatures, and an almost unearthly devotion to heroic conceptions of duty. Now it appeared as if the primitive animal nature in man were let loose, and bellowing for joy that the chains in which he had lain were burst, and now again as if the noblest virtues were proudly blossoming, only wanting favorable circumstances in which to develop themselves. Life was worth nothing, the laws of property very little; ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... order of things is upset, when security no longer exists, when all those rights usually protected by the law of man or of Nature are at the mercy of unreasoning, savage force. The earthquake crushing a whole nation under falling roofs; the flood let loose, and engulfing in its swirling depths the corpses of drowned peasants, along with dead oxen and beams torn from shattered houses; or the army, covered with glory, murdering those who defend themselves, making ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... up and kindles a fire, and a snowy nightcap and a pair of very bright black eyes beam upon us from the bed. That is Mrs. Robert Pollock. The log cabin is a comfortable one. I make coffee in my French coffee-pot, and let loose some of the roast chickens in my basket. (Tired of fried bacon saleratus bread—the principle bill of fare at the stations —we had supplied ourselves with chicken, boiled ham, onions, sausages, sea bread, canned butter, cheese, honey, &c. &c., ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... grunted, "don't want none," and squinting down the sights let loose another trio. "This," he ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... Aztec nation. Through the subtle influence of psychic forces, it stirred up a passion of hate for Spain in the hearts of the people of the United States, and it fostered the awful spirit of strife, and at the right moment it let loose the dogs of war. One convulsive touch of its rocky claws on the hidden currents coursing in earth's veins and an evil spark fired the fatal mine under the battleship Maine, ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... tortures of suspense. How many tragedies of this sort are there nightly in the metropolis, none the less tragic because they are subjects of jest in the comic papers and on the stage! What would be the condition of social life if women ceased to be anxious in this regard, and let loose the reins in an easy-going indifference? What, in fact, is the condition in those households where the wives do not care? One can even perceive a tender sort of loyalty to women in the ejaculation of that battered old veteran, the Major, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... to look as little as possible at the hideous glass which the Philistinism of modern piety has inserted, during the last half-century, in the windows of the clerestory and the nave. Its obtrusive unpleasantness make one wish that "Blue Dick" and his Puritan troopers might once more be let loose, under judicious direction, for half an hour on the cathedral. When Erasmus visited Canterbury, the nave contained nothing but some books chained to the pillars, among them the "Gospel of Nicodemus"—printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1509—and the "tomb of some person unknown." The last words ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers |
